I Kill (65 page)

Frank sat down on the sofa where Helena had been a minute before. The warmth of her body was still on the leather and that warmth became his. He pointed to the armchair in front of him.

‘Sit down, general.’

‘Don’t you tell me what to do!’ Frank noticed the slight hysterical note in Parker’s voice. ‘Hurry up and spare me your ranting. We have a plane to catch in . .
.’ He looked at his watch. Frank smiled to himself. It must have become a habit for him, too. Frank noticed that he had to move his arm further away to see the dial.

Parker looked up from his watch. ‘We all have a plane to catch in less than an hour.’

Frank shook his head.
Negative, sir.

‘I’m sorry to contradict you, general. Not
all of you.
Just
you.’

Parker looked at him as if he could not believe what he had just heard. He seemed surprised, like he had just heard the punch line of a very long joke. Then, suddenly, he burst out laughing.
Frank was happy to see that his laughter was sincere, and it gave him great pleasure to know that in another minute it would be silenced.

‘Laugh if you like. That doesn’t change the fact that you’re leaving on your own and your daughter and
grandson
are staying here in France, with me.’ Parker shook
his head with the pity one feels before the ramblings of an idiot.

‘You’re out of your mind.’

Frank smiled and relaxed on the sofa. He crossed his legs and stretched his arm over the back.

‘Sorry to contradict you again. I once was, I think. But I’m cured. I’ve never been so sane. So much the worse for you. You see, general, you were so concerned with finding my
mistakes that you never stopped to think about yours, which were
much
worse.’ The general looked towards the door and took a couple of steps in that direction. Frank cut that plan
short. ‘There’s no help coming. I wouldn’t advise involving the police, if that’s what you’re thinking. And if you’re hoping Captain Mosse will come to the
rescue, I’ll be the first to inform you that he’s lying in the morgue with his throat cut.’

The general spun around. ‘What are you saying?’

‘I just told you. As good as he was, you can always find someone better. Your lackey was an excellent soldier, but unfortunately for him, the man he was supposed to kill, No One, was a
much better fighter. He killed him so very easily, which must have come as an unpleasant surprise to Mosse.’

Parker had to sit down at that news. His tanned face clouded over.

‘In any event, so far as your daughter’s killer is concerned, we caught him. There’s no chance that what you were afraid of could happen now. We’re locking him up in an
insane asylum and he’ll never get out.’

Frank paused briefly. He moved to the edge of the sofa and looked carefully at the man sitting before him. He couldn’t imagine what he was thinking just then, and he didn’t care. All
he wanted was to wrap things up quickly and stare at his back as he walked to the plane.

Alone.

‘It might be better if I start at the beginning, general. And the beginning has to do with me, not with you. I don’t think I need to dwell on my story, do I? You know everything
about me, about my wife and her suicide after my miraculous escape from an explosion while I was investigating Jeff and Osmond Larkin, two drug dealers who ran a $300 million-a-year enterprise. I
was destroyed by that experience. I ended up here trying to pull myself out of the mire and I started investigating this serial killer case almost against my better judgement. A killer as ferocious
as a shark, whose first victim was your daughter Arianna. And then you appeared on the scene. You came to Monte Carlo, distraught with suffering, thirsting for revenge . . .’

‘And what would you have done if someone had killed your wife like that?’ Parker took Frank’s comment to mean that he doubted the sincerity of Parker’s grief.

‘I would have done exactly what you said you wanted to do. I would have had no peace until I killed the murderer with my own bare hands. But it’s different in your case.’

‘What the hell are you saying, you clown? What do you know about a father’s feelings towards his daughter?’

Parker spoke hastily, without thinking, but he immediately realized his mistake. Frank felt like kicking Parker’s face to a bloody pulp and leaving a nice stain on the deep-pile carpet.
The effort he made to control himself probably took ten years off his life.

‘You’re right, general. I’m totally ignorant of the feelings a father can have for a daughter. But I know exactly what
your
feelings are for
your
daughter. You
make me sick, Parker. You completely disgust me. I told you that you are a despicable person and that I would crush you like an ant, but in your egomania, you didn’t believe me.’

A shadow of a smile passed over Parker’s face. He probably considered the reaction he had provoked in Frank a small personal triumph.

‘If it’s not too much for you, could you tell me just how you plan on doing that?’

‘Here. There’s confirmation of everything I’m about to tell you inside this envelope. Now, if you don’t mind, I’ll continue.’ Frank pulled a large yellow
envelope from his inside pocket and threw it down on the glass table in front of them. Parker waved at him to go on.

Frank’s mind was still in turmoil and he had to force himself to calm down and explain things in order. ‘As I was saying, you came here to Monte Carlo, distraught over the death of
your daughter and the barbaric way she was killed. I must say, you were hardly reticent about your desire to get your hands on the killer yourself. You were so obvious about it that you aroused
some suspicion. But that intention was the furthest thing from your mind.’ His voice became a chilling hiss. ‘
What you wanted most was the exact opposite. You wanted the murderer to
go on killing
.’

Parker jumped to his feet as if suddenly bitten by a snake.

‘Now I’m sure of it. You’re off your rocker and you should be locked up in a cell with that other one.’ Frank nodded to him to sit down again.

‘Quit protesting, general. It’s completely useless. You don’t get it yet, do you? I know all about you and the late, not at all lamented Captain Mosse.’

‘You know all about just
what,
exactly?’

‘If you’d just stop interrupting me, you’d find out before you get on that plane – alone. You realize of course that we have to go back a minute to my story. Remember the
two drug lords I was telling you about? One of them, Jeff Larkin, was killed in a shootout when they were arrested, may he rest in peace. The other one, Osmond, landed in jail. When the
investigation into the activities of those two gentlemen continued, the FBI started to suspect that someone high, very high up, was involved in their trafficking. But despite all their efforts,
they couldn’t figure out who it was.’

Nathan Parker’s face was now a mask of stone. He sat on the leather armchair and crossed his legs, his eyes half closed, waiting. This was Frank’s moment to show his cards, one by
one, and the general was curious to know what they were. Frank couldn’t wait to turn that curiosity into the certainty of defeat.

‘Locked in prison, Osmond’s only contact with the outside world was through his lawyer, a little-known attorney in New York who came out of nowhere. We suspected that this lawyer,
one Hudson McCormack, was more than just a defence attorney. We started to think that he might be the outside contact for his jailed client. My partner at the FBI who was running the Larkin case
e-mailed me McCormack’s picture because, by pure coincidence, he showed up in Monte Carlo. Life’s funny that way. Officially, he came here for a regatta, but you know as well as I do
that official reasons can hide more important unofficial ones.’

The general raised an eyebrow. ‘Would you be so kind as to explain what I have to do with this cops-and-robbers business?’

Frank leaned over the table, opened the yellow envelope and pulled out the photograph of McCormack that Cooper had sent him, the picture taken in the New York bar. He pushed it over to Parker.
It reminded him of the night of Mosse’s arrest, when he had shown him the picture of Roby Stricker.

‘May I introduce the late Hudson McCormack, legal representative of Osmond Larkin and the last victim of the serial killer Jean-Loup Verdier, better known as No One.’

‘I only recognize him because I saw his picture in the paper,’ the old man said, shooting a glance at the photo and then raising his eyes. ‘I never knew he existed before
that.’

‘Really? Strange, general. See the person with his back to McCormack? You can’t see his face, but the bar is full of mirrors.’ Frank’s voice changed, as if he were musing
over something. ‘You have no idea how important mirrors are in this whole story. Mirrors have a terrible tendency of reflecting what’s in front of them.’

‘I know how mirrors work. Every time I look in one, I see the person who’s going to reduce you to dust.’

Frank smiled in conciliation. ‘May I commend your sense of humour, general? It’s more than I can say for your strategic ability and choice of men, however. As I said, the bar where
this photo was taken is full of mirrors. With the help of a talented,
very talented
young man, I managed to figure out who is the person sitting at the table with Hudson McCormack. All the
young man did was enlarge the reflection in the mirrors. And just take a look at who he is.’

Frank took another picture from the envelope and threw it on the table without even looking at it. This time, Parker picked up the photo and stared at it for a long time.

‘You can’t really say that Captain Ryan Mosse was photogenic. But you didn’t need a fashion model, did you, Parker? You needed someone exactly like the captain: a borderline
psychopath who was loyal to the point of fanaticism. Someone willing to kill anyone you told him to.’ He leaned in towards Nathan Parker. ‘General, does your surprised expression mean
that you deny the person in that picture with Hudson McCormack is Ryan Mosse?’

‘No, of course I don’t. It’s definitely Captain Mosse. But this picture only proves that he knew the lawyer in question. What does that have to do with me?’

‘We’re getting there, general. We’re getting there.’

This time, it was Frank who looked at his watch. And without having to move it away to see it.

‘We’ll have to get there quickly. Your plane’s due to depart soon, so I’ll summarize. Here’s how things went. You and Mosse came to an agreement with Laurent Bedon,
director at Radio Monte Carlo. The poor guy needed money desperately and it couldn’t have been hard to convince him. You gave him piles of money in exchange for any information he could find
out about the investigation. A spy, like in any war. That’s why, when we suspected that Roby Stricker might be the next victim after the killer’s phone call, Mosse was already there,
outside Stricker’s apartment building. Then Stricker was killed and I got ahead of myself and slipped up. I forgot the first rule of a cop: examine
everything
from
every
angle.
Ironic, isn’t it? A reflection in the mirror helped Nicolas Hulot realize who the real killer was and the same detail helped me realize it too. Funny how simple things look, in
retrospect.’

Frank rubbed his face with his hands. He was beginning to feel all his aches and scratches from his adventure on the cliff, but it wasn’t the moment to feel sorry for himself, not yet.
When it was over, he would have all the time in the world to relax. And in the right company.

‘You must have felt a little lost with your stooge in jail, didn’t you? You didn’t need that at all. When we finally realized who No One was, Mosse was proven innocent and
released from prison. You must have been a mite relieved. Nothing lost. You still had all the time you needed to solve your personal problems, and you even got a stroke of luck.’

Frank had to admire Nathan Parker’s self-control. After his initial furious outburst, he was now sitting impassively in front of him, not batting an eye. There must have been many people
in his past who had met him and decided not to take him on as an enemy. But Frank had crossed his path and now he couldn’t wait to get rid of him.

He felt no elation, just a profound emptiness. He was surprised to realize that his real desire was not simply to beat him. What he wanted more than anything was never to see him again. He
continued listing the facts.

‘Let me tell you exactly what that stroke of luck was. No One was identified but he managed to escape. You must have had a hard time believing it. Captain Mosse was back and the killer was
hidden out there somewhere, outsmarting the police and free to kill again.’

He looked at the backs of his hands and remembered a time not long ago when they always trembled. Now his hands were firm, strong. He could make a fist with the knowledge that General Parker was
crushed.

‘Not long after, No One called Agent Frank Ottobre again. But not the usual way. This time, he called from a mobile phone, without masking his voice. Why should he bother, after all?
Everyone knew who he was: Jean-Loup Verdier, the deejay of Radio Monte Carlo. Just an anonymous phone left on a bench in Nice. We traced it through a satellite system and found it easily. No prints
on the phone, except those of the boy who had found it. And that was strange.’ He shot a glance at Parker as if he didn’t know the answer to his own question.

‘Why did No One bother rubbing off the fingerprints when we knew who he was? I didn’t pay much attention to it then, partly because we were thinking about what the phone call meant.
The killer told us that he was planning more murders, regardless of the fact that the police were looking for him. And that’s what he did. Hudson McCormack was found dead right in front of
the Sûreté headquarters, in Jean-Loup Verdier’s car with his face skinned off. The world was horrified at this new killing. Everyone wondered the same thing. Why couldn’t
the police catch this monster who went on killing unchecked and then disappeared like a ghost?’

Frank got up from the couch. He was so tired that he was surprised his joints didn’t audibly creak. His knee, though, had strangely stopped bothering him. He took a few steps around the
room and went to stand behind the general who was sitting motionless in the armchair. The man didn’t even turn to follow him with his eyes.