When Allen Yoshida comes to, his vision is hazy and his head hurts. He tries to move his arms, but he cannot. He squints to regain his focus. Finally, he opens his eyes and discovers that he is in an armchair in the middle of the room. His hands and legs are tied with wire, his mouth covered by a tape.
In front of him, sitting on a chair, a man is staring at him in silence. The man is wearing what seems to be an ordinary black canvas work shirt, at least four or five sizes too large. His face is covered with a black ski mask and the upper part of his face around the eyes is protected by large dark glasses with reflective lenses. He is wearing a black hat with the brim pulled down. His hands are covered with large gloves, also black.
Yoshida’s terrified gaze looks up and down the figure. Under the long coat, his black trousers are of the same fabric as the shirt, and again oversized. The loose trouser bottoms rest on his canvas shoes. Yoshida notices something strange. There are protrusions at the man’s knees and elbows that hold the material of his clothes, as if the person in front of him had extensions on his arms and legs.
They sit in silence for what seems an eternity. One man who has decided not to speak and one who cannot.
How did the intruder get in? Even though Yoshida was alone in the house, the villa was surrounded by impenetrable security, consisting of armed men, guard dogs and cameras. How did he bypass all that? And most of all, what did he want from him? Money? If that is the problem, he can give him all he wants. He can give him anything he wants. There is nothing that money cannot buy. Nothing. If only he could speak…
The man continues to look at him in silence, sitting on the chair.
Yoshida makes a faint moan, muffled by the tape on his mouth. The man’s voice finally comes out of that dark blotch of his body.
‘Hello, Mr Yoshida.’
The voice is warm and resonant, but strangely enough, to the man tied to the chair, it sounds harder and sharper than the wire cutting into his arms and legs.
He widens his eyes and moans again.
‘Don’t try to answer. I can’t understand you. And in any case, I’m not remotely interested in what you have to say.’
The man gets up from the chair, moving unnaturally because of the oversized clothes and the extensions on his arms and legs. He goes behind Yoshida, who tries to turn his head to keep him in sight. He hears the voice again, coming from somewhere behind his back.
‘You’ve got yourself a wonderful place here. A discreet place for your little private joys. Some pleasures in life are hard to share. I understand you, Mr Yoshida. I don’t think anyone can understand you better than I…’
As he speaks, the man returns to face him. He gestures at the room around them, rectangular and windowless. There is a ventilation system with air nozzles set in the walls just below the ceiling. Against one wall is a bed with silk sheets. There is a painting over the bed, the only lapse in the room’s monastic simplicity. The two longer walls are almost entirely covered in mirrors, the optical illusion of a larger room to eliminate the sense of claustrophobia.
In front of the bed is a series of flat screens connected to a group of VHS and DVD players. When a movie is shown, you can feel surrounded by images and be at their centre. There are also cameras that can shoot any point of the room with no corner overlooked. The cameras are also connected to the home movie system.
‘Is this where you relax, Mr Yoshida? Is this where you forget about the world when you want the world to forget about you?’
The man’s warm voice transmits cold. Yoshida feels it climb up his arms and legs that are growing numb as the wire cuts his circulation. He feels the wire ripping into his flesh, just like that voice digging into his brain.
With his artificial movements, the man bends over a canvas bag on the floor next to the chair. He takes out a record, an old LP with the sleeve protected by a plastic cover.
‘Do you like music, Mr Yoshida? This is heavenly, believe me. Something for a real connoisseur. Which, of course, is what you are.’ He goes over to the stereo and looks at it. He turns back to face Yoshida and the light in the room is a brief flash reflected in his glasses. ‘My compliments. You’ve forgotten nothing. I was prepared for an alternative, in case you didn’t have a record player, but I see you’re well equipped.’
He turns on the system and puts the record on the turntable after slipping it carefully out of its sleeve. He places the needle on the LP and the mournful notes of a trumpet emanate from the speakers and spread through the room. It is sorrowful music, intended to evoke a melancholy that leaves you breathless; the sounds of grief, demanding only to be forgotten. For a moment, the man stands motionless, listening. Yoshida imagines him with his eyes half closed behind the dark glasses. Then he snaps back.
‘Lovely, isn’t it? Robert Fulton, one of the greats. Maybe the greatest of them all. And misunderstood, like all the great ones were.’ He goes and looks curiously at the controls of the video system. ‘I hope I can understand this. I wouldn’t want your equipment to be beyond my meagre abilities, Mr Yoshida. No, it looks fairly simple.’
He presses some buttons and the monitors light up, with the snow-like effect they have when there is no signal. He busies himself with the buttons and the video cameras finally go into action. The screen shows Yoshida, immobilized in the armchair in the middle of the room, sitting before an empty chair.
The man seems pleased with himself.
‘Excellent. This system is excellent. But then, I wouldn’t have expected anything less of you.’
The man comes back in front of his prisoner, turns the chair around, and sits astride it. He leans his deformed arms on the back of the chair. The extensions on his elbows hold the canvas of his shirt.
‘You’re wondering what I want, aren’t you?’
Yoshida gives a lengthy moan.
‘I know, I know. If you think it’s your money I want, don’t worry. I’m not interested in money. Not yours or anyone else’s. I want a trade.’
Yoshida exhales through his nose. Thank God. Whoever the man is, whatever his price, there might be some way of reaching an agreement. If it isn’t money he wants, it is certainly something that money can buy. There is nothing that money can’t buy, he repeats to himself. Nothing.
He relaxes in the chair. The wire seems a little bit looser now that he sees a glimmer of hope, a chance to negotiate.
‘I took a look at your videos while you were asleep, Mr Yoshida. I think we have a great deal in common. Both of us, in some way, are interested in the death of people we don’t know. You for your own pleasure; me, because I have to.’
The man bows his head as if he is studying the shiny wood of the chair. Yoshida has the impression that he is thinking about something that for a moment takes him far away. There is a sense of inevitability in his voice that is the very essence of death.
‘And that is all we have in common. You do it through a third party. I’m forced to do it myself. You’re someone who watches killing, Mr Yoshida, while I…’
The man puts his faceless head next to Yoshida’s.
‘I kill…’
Suddenly, Yoshida knows there is no hope. The front pages of all the newspapers flash through his mind with their headlines of the murders of Jochen Welder and Arianna Parker, the woman who was with him. For days now, the TV news has been full of the horrifying details of those two crimes, including the signature in blood that the murderer left on the table on a yacht. The same words now spoken by the man sitting before him. He is distraught. Nobody can come to his rescue because nobody knows of the existence of his secret room. Even if his bodyguards looked for him, they would search outside when they did not find him at home. He starts to moan again, struggling, panic-stricken, in the chair.
‘You have something that interests me, Mr Yoshida. Something that interests me very much. That is why I feel obliged to propose a trade.’
He gets up from the chair and goes to open the glass door of the cabinet holding the video cassettes. He takes out a new tape, removes the cellophane wrapping and inserts it in the VCR. He presses the RECORD button and the spindles begin to turn.
‘Something for my pleasure in exchange for yours.’
With a graceful gesture, he puts his hand in his shirt pocket and removes a dagger that gives out a sinister gleam. He goes up to Yoshida, who thrashes violently, ignoring the wire cutting into his flesh. With the same fluid movement, the man sticks the dagger into his thigh. The prisoner’s hysterical moaning becomes a scream of muffled pain from behind the tape over his mouth. ‘There. This is what it feels like, Mr Yoshida.’
That last ‘Mr Yoshida’, said in a smothered voice, rings through the room like a funeral eulogy. He stabs the bloodstained dagger again, now in the victim’s other thigh. The movement is so swift that this time Yoshida does not even feel any pain, only a cool sensation in his leg. Immediately afterwards, he feels the tepid dampness of blood dripping down his calf.
‘Funny, isn’t it? Things change when you see them from a different point of view. But you’ll see. You’ll be pleased with the result anyway. You’ll have your pleasure this time, too.’
With cold determination, the man continues stabbing his victim, as his gestures are projected on the screens by the cameras. Yoshida watches himself being stabbed over and over again. He sees the blood rush out in large red streams on his white shirt and the man who raises and lowers, in the room and on the screen, the blade of his knife, again and again. He sees his eyes widen with terror, and pain fills the indifferent space of the monitors.
Meanwhile, the music in the background has changed. The trumpet cuts through the air with high notes sustained by a rhythmic accentuation, a sound of ethnic percussion that evokes tribal rituals and human sacrifice. The man and his dagger continue their agile dance around Yoshida’s body, opening wounds everywhere, with the blood rushing out in evidence, on the fabric of his clothes and on the marble floor. The music and the man stop at exactly the same time, like a ballet rehearsed an infinite number of times.
Yoshida is still alive and conscious. He feels his blood and his life ebbing from the wounds opened everywhere on his body, which is now sending a lone signal of pain. A bead of sweat rolls down his forehead and drops burning into his left eye. The man wipes Yoshida’s soaked face with the sleeve of his bloodstained shirt. A reddish smudge remains on his forehead.
Blood and sweat. Blood and sweat, like so many other times. And through it all, the gaze of the cameras, surprised by nothing.
The man is panting under his ski mask. He goes over to stop the VCR and rewinds the cassette. When the tape is back at the beginning, he presses PLAY.
On the screen, in front of Yoshida’s half-closed eyes and slowly bleeding body, it all begins again. The first stab, the one that went through his thigh like a searing iron. Then the second, with its cool breeze. And then the others…
The man’s voice is that of fate now, soft and thickened by desire. ‘Here’s what I offer you. My pleasure for yours. Relax, Mr Yoshida. Relax and watch yourself die…’
Yoshida hears the voice through space as if from the next room. His eyes are staring at the screen. As his life blood slowly evacuates his body, as the cold slowly rises to occupy every cell, he cannot help but feel that same damnable pleasure.
When the light abandons his eyes, he cannot decide whether it is heaven or hell that he sees before him.
Margherita Vizzini drove into the underground garage at the Place du Casino. There weren’t many people around at that time of morning. The residents of Monte Carlo who took part in its nightlife, the rich and the desperate, were still asleep. And it was too early for tourists. Everyone on the street, like her, was going to work. She left the sunshine, the colourful, meticulously maintained flower beds, and the people having breakfast at the Café de Paris for the warm, damp shadows of the garage. She pulled up her Fiat Stilo at the entrance and stuck her card in the machine. The barrier rose and she drove slowly inside.
Margherita came in every day from Ventimiglia, in Italy, where she lived. She worked at the Securities Office of ABC, Banque Internationale de Monaco, located in the Place du Casino right next to the Chanel boutique.
She had been very lucky to find a job like that in Monaco, especially without any contacts or referrals. Like all good students she’d had a number of job offers after getting her degree in business and economics with honors. Surprisingly, one of the offers had been from ABC.
She had gone to the interview without much hope, but to her surprise she had been selected and hired. There were many advantages. First of all, her starting salary was considerably higher than anything she would have had in Italy. Then there was the fact that, working in Monte Carlo, the tax situation was much more favourable.
Margherita smiled. She was a good-looking woman, with light brown hair cut short to frame a face that was friendly as well as attractive. A smattering of freckles on her straight nose gave her a mischievous elfin expression. A car was reversing to get out and she had to stop. She took advantage of the moment to glance at her reflection in the rearview mirror. She was happy with what she saw.
Michel Lecomte was coming back that day, and she wanted to look her best.
Michel…
She felt a warm fluttering in the pit of her stomach at the thought of his tender gaze. A delightful game had been going on between them for some time, very delicate and therefore very intense. The time had come to step it up a notch.
The way was clear. She turned on to the ramp and started to drive down to the next-to-last level in an area set aside for bank employees. Her parking space was at the back, behind the wall. But when she turned right, past the wall, she was surprised to see her space taken by a limousine, a glossy black Bentley with tinted windows.
Strange. One rarely saw that kind of car in the underground garage. Those cars usually had chauffeurs in dark suits holding the door open for passengers, or else they were left carelessly in front of the Hôtel de Paris for the hotel staff to park. It probably belonged to a customer of the bank. Given the make of the car, complaining would be a bad idea. She decided to park in the free space next to it.
Distracted by these thoughts, Margherita misjudged the distance and hit the back of the Bentley on the left side. She heard her headlight smash as the heavy limousine absorbed the shock with a light bounce of its suspension.
She backed up slowly, as if this extra caution could somehow make up for the small disaster she had just caused. She stopped and looked nervously at the back of the Bentley. There was a dent on the body, not very large but visible as a mark from her plastic bumper. She banged her hands on the steering wheel in irritation. Now she would have to deal with all the annoying red tape involved in an accident, not to mention the embarrassment of confessing to a bank customer that she had damaged his car.
She got out and walked over to the limo, bending to look in the back window. She was suddenly puzzled. There appeared to be someone inside, a form she could see indistinctly through the tinted glass. She looked closer, shielding her eyes with her hands. It did indeed seem that there was someone in the back seat.
She narrowed her eyes. Just then, the figure inside bent over and slumped to the right, his head pressed against the window. In horror, Margherita saw the face of a man completely covered in blood, his wide-open, lifeless eyes staring at her, his teeth completely bared in the smile of a skull.
She jumped back without realizing that she had already started to scream.
Neither Frank Ottobre nor Inspector Hulot had been able to sleep. They had spent the night staring at a meaningless record sleeve, listening over and over again to a tape that told them nothing. One by one, they had constructed one hypothesis after another and demolished them all. Anyone with the slightest expertise in music had been asked for help. Even Rochelle, a cop and music fanatic with an amazing record collection, was stumped by the agile fingers of Carlos Santana fondling the neck of his guitar.
They had surfed the Internet for hours in search of any hint that might help them decipher the killer’s message.
Nothing.
They were confronted with a locked door and the key was nowhere to be found. It had been a long night of confusion and bitter-tasting coffee, no matter how many sugars they added. Time had passed and all their hopes had turned to naught.
Outside the window, beyond the rooftops, the sky was turning blue. Hulot got up from his desk and went to look through the glass at the worsening traffic. For all those people, it was a new day of work after a good night’s sleep. But here, it would be another day of waiting after nothing but nightmares.
Frank was sitting on a chair, one leg swung over the arm, staring intently at the ceiling. He had been in that position for quite some time. Hulot pinched his nostrils together with his fingers, then turned to Morelli with a sigh of fatigue and frustration.
‘Claude, do me a favour.’
‘What is it, inspector?’
‘I know you’re not a waiter, but you’re the youngest so you’ve got to pay your dues. Could you manage to get us some coffee that’s any better than the mud in that machine?’
‘I was waiting for you to ask,’ replied Morelli with a smile. ‘I wouldn’t mind some decent coffee myself.’
As the sergeant left the office, Hulot ran his hand through his salt-and-pepper hair, slightly parted at the nape of his neck to reveal the puffiness of his skin after a sleepless night.
When the call came, they knew they had failed. As Hulot lifted the receiver to his ear, it seemed as heavy as lead.
‘Hulot,’ the inspector answered laconically. He listened to the person on the other end and paled. ‘Where?’ Another pause. ‘Okay. We’ll be right there.’ He hung up and buried his face in his hands.
Frank had got to his feet during the conversation. His weariness seemed to have instantly disappeared. Suddenly, he was on high alert. His jaw tightened and his red eyes narrowed to tiny slits.
‘There’s a body, Frank, in the underground car park next to the casino. No face, like the other two.’
Hulot got up from his desk and went to the door, followed by Frank. They almost bumped into Morelli, who was holding a tray with three cups.
‘Here’s the coffee, inspector.’
‘Put it down and get us a car, Morelli. They found another one – let’s get out of here.’
As they left the office, Morelli addressed a policeman walking past. ‘Dupasquier, get me a car downstairs. Now.’
It felt like the lift was descending to the lower depths.
Frank and Hulot went outside where a car was waiting, with its engine running. The doors had barely closed when they sped off.
‘Place du Casino. Turn on the siren, Lacroix, and don’t worry about the tyres.’ The policeman at the wheel was a young man with quick reflexes. The car took off with a screech.
They drove up Saint-Dévote and reached the plaza with the siren shrieking and heads turning as they passed. In front of the entrance to the garage a small crowd was forming, just as it had at the quayside a few days before. There was a splash of colour from the flower beds in the public garden in front of the garage. And more colour in the centre of the roundabout in front of the Hôtel de Paris, where a landscaper had composed the date in flowers. Frank could not help thinking that for the new victim, today’s date was written in blood.
The car squeezed through the crowd, a policemen pushing back the staring onlookers trying to make out who was inside. They drove into the garage, their tyres screeching as they sped down to where two other police cars were waiting at the level below. Their revolving lights made kaleidoscopic designs on the walls and ceiling.
Frank and the inspector jumped out of the car as if their seats were burning. Hulot yelled at an officer, pointing to the other cars: ‘Tell them to turn those lights off. They’re making me feel sick.’
They went over to the large black Bentley parked against the wall. The body of a man was leaning against the window, the glass covered in blood. As soon as he saw him, Hulot squeezed his fist so tightly that his knuckles whitened.
‘Merde! Merde! Merde!’ he repeated over and over, as if his fit of rage could take away the sight before his eyes. ‘He did it again, God damn it.’
Frank felt the exhaustion of his sleepless night slide into despair. While they had been sitting in the office, desperately trying to decipher the message of a maniac, he had struck again.
‘Who found him?’ Hulot asked, turning to the policeman behind him.
‘I did, sir,’ replied a uniformed officer. ‘That is, I was the first to arrive. I was here to tow a car and I heard the girl screaming.’
‘What girl?’
‘The girl who discovered the body. She’s sitting in the car. In shock and crying like a baby. She works for the ABC bank above us. She hit the Bentley while parking her car, got out to check the damage, and that’s when she saw-’
‘Did anyone touch anything?’ Frank interrupted.
‘No, I didn’t let anyone get close. We were waiting for you.’
‘Good.’
Frank went to the police car to get a pair of latex gloves and pulled them on as he went over to the limo. He tried the handle of the front door on the driver’s side. It clicked open. He leaned in and looked at the body. The man was wearing a white shirt soaked with so much blood that Frank could barely make out its original colour. His trousers were black, presumably evening clothes. There were slashes all over him from numerous stabbings. Next to the body, on the leather seat, were the words written in blood.
I kill…
Leaning over the padded leather, Frank grabbed the body by its shoulders, pulled it upright, and leaned it against the back of the seat so that it would not slip down again. As he did so, he heard something hit the floor.
He backed out of the car and went to open the other door, next to the body. He squatted down to peer inside. Hulot, standing behind him, bent over to see better, keeping his arms behind his back. He was not wearing gloves and didn’t want to risk touching anything.
From his position, Frank could see something had fallen on the floor. Wedged under the front seat was a VHS videocassette. It had probably been on the corpse’s lap and the movement had caused it to fall. Frank took a pen from his pocket and stuck it into one of the spindles of the tape. He lifted it and looked at it for a second. Then he took a plastic evidence bag out of his pocket, slipped the cassette inside and sealed it.
During this operation, he noticed that the dead man’s feet were bare. Frank stretched out his hand and tested the flexibility of the toes. He raised the trouser legs to see if there were marks on his ankles.
‘This guy was bound with something stiff, probably wire. Judging from the clotting of the blood and the mobility of his limbs, he hasn’t been dead long. And he didn’t die here.’
‘From the colour of his hands, I’d say he died through loss of blood, said Hulot.’
‘Exactly. So, if he died here, there’d be much more blood on the seats and the floor, not just on the clothes. And it doesn’t really seem like the right place to do the job. No, this guy was killed somewhere else and put in the car afterwards.’
‘But why go to so much trouble?’ Hulot stepped back so that Frank could stand up. ‘I mean, why move a body from one place to another, at night, in a car, at the risk of being discovered. Why?’
‘I don’t know,’ Frank responded, looking around him, puzzled. ‘That’s one of the things we have to figure out.’
They stood in silence a moment, looking at the body leaning against the back seat with wide-open eyes in the narrow space of its shiny, sumptuous coffin.
‘Judging from his clothes and car, he must have had a shitload of money.’
‘First, let’s see whose licence plate this is.’
They went around the Bentley and opened the door on the passenger side. Frank pressed a button on the dashboard and the door to the glove compartment slid open noiselessly. He took out a leather folder. The papers were inside.
‘Here it is. It’s a company car, Zen Electronics.’
‘Jesus Christ, it’s Allen Yoshida.’ The inspector’s voice was a shocked whisper. ‘The owner of Sacrifiles.’
‘Shit, Nicolas. That’s what the clue meant.’
‘How’s that?’
‘The song by Santana, the one we listened to over and over. Live in Japan. Yoshida’s half-American, half-Japanese. And remember the song? It’s called “Soul Sacrifice”, get it? “Soul Sacrifice”! Sacrifiles is a play on the word sacrifice. And there’s another song on Lotus called “Kyoto”. I wouldn’t be surprised if Yoshida had something to do with that, too.’
Hulot pointed at the body in the car. ‘Do you think it’s him? Allen Yoshida?’
‘I’d bet my life on it. And there’s something else.’
Hulot looked at Frank in surprise. He could see an idea taking shape in his friend’s mind.
‘Nicolas, if Yoshida was killed somewhere else and then brought here to be discovered in the Place du Casino of Monte Carlo, there’s a reason for it.’
‘What reason?’
‘That bastard wants us to investigate.’
Hulot realized that if Frank was right, then there was no end to what this man would do. He froze at the thought of what was to come, of who they were up against, and the murders they already had to solve.
The sound of screeching tyres announced the arrival of an ambulance and the medical examiner. The forensic van was close behind. While Hulot briefed them, Frank stood apart, lost in thought. His eyes fell on the car radio. There was something sticking out of the tape recorder. He pulled it out.
It was a normal audiocassette that had been recorded and rewound. Frank studied it for a moment, then stuck it in the stereo and pressed PLAY. Suddenly, everyone could hear the jeering notes of ‘Samba Pa Ti’ floating through the still air of the garage.
When they returned to police headquarters, there was a crowd of reporters in front of the building.
‘Fucking vultures.’
‘What did you expect, Nicolas? We steered clear of them at the garage, but you can’t avoid them forever. They’re the least of our problems. Just keep that in mind.’
Lacroix stopped the car at the entrance. Seeing the inspector inside, the horde of reporters shifted position with a single movement, so well synchronized that it looked rehearsed. The barrier was only halfway up when the car was surrounded by people and questions. Hulot was forced to lower the window on his side. The shouting of the reporters grew louder. One man with red hair and freckles practically stuck his head in the window.
‘Inspector, do you know the identity of the body found in the garage?’
From behind him: ‘Do you think it’s the same man who killed Jochen Welder and Arianna Parker?’ It was a reporter from Nice Matin that Hulot knew well, brusquely shoving his colleague aside. ‘Is there a serial killer at large in the city?’
‘What can you tell us about the phone call last night to Radio Monte Carlo?’ yelled someone else behind them.
Hulot raised his hands to stop the volley of questions.
‘Gentlemen, please. You’re all professionals and you know very well that I can’t tell you anything right now. There will be a statement from the chief of police later. That’s all for now. Excuse me. Drive on, Lacroix.’
The driver edged the car forward slowly so as not to hit anyone. At last they passed the barrier, which lowered behind them. When they got out of the car, Hulot rubbed his face with one hand. He had dark circles under his eyes caused by lack of sleep and the horror he had just witnessed.
He handed Morelli the videotape from the victim’s car. Forensics had checked it for prints and returned it.
‘Claude, make a copy and then give it to us. And bring a monitor and VCR to my office. Then call the people in Nice and talk to Clavert. Tell him to let us know as soon as they analyse the tape from last night’s phone call. I don’t expect much, but you never know. We’ll be in my office.’
As they went up in the lift, Frank mused that from the moment they had arrived at the radio station the evening before, he and Hulot had not been alone together.
‘What do you think?’ asked the inspector.
Frank shrugged. ‘The problem is that I no longer know what to think. This guy is different. In every case I’ve ever been on, there’s always been something left to chance, some series of clues that showed, first of all, how the serial killer could endure his condition. The lucidity of this guy is mind-boggling.’
‘Yeah. Meanwhile, three people are dead.’
‘One thing is really puzzling me, Nicolas.’
‘Just the one?’
‘Beyond the fact that we don’t know why he removes the faces of his victims, the first case – Jochen Welder and Arianna Parker – involved a man and a woman. Here, just a man. What’s the connection? In other words, if we exclude the woman for the moment, what’s the connection between Jochen Welder, twice Formula 1 world champion, and Allen Yoshida, world-famous computer tycoon?’
‘Well, both are rich and well known and around the same age, thirty-five,’ Hulot mused, leaning against the door of the lift. ‘And, I might add, both rather handsome men.’
‘That’s fine. Then what does Arianna Parker have to do with it? Why a woman?’
‘The killer was probably interested in Jochen Welder and she just happened to be there. So he had to kill her, too.’
‘I’ll buy that. But why give her the same treatment?’
They walked down the corridor and stopped in front of Hulot’s office. To the people walking by they looked as if they had survived a war.
‘I don’t know, Frank. I don’t know what to say. Three dead and no clues. We couldn’t even figure out the one clue we had, so now there’s one more dead man on our conscience. And all told, it was rather simple.’
‘All puzzles are simple once you’ve solved them.’
They went into the office, where patterns of sunlight streaked the floor. It was almost summer outside but felt like winter inside the room. Hulot went over to his desk, picked up the phone and called Froben, the inspector in Nice. Frank slumped down in the chair in the same position he had been in just a few hours before.
‘Christophe? It’s Nicolas. Listen, I have a problem. A new one. We just found another body in a car. Same method as the other two. The face completely flayed. The documents show that the car was owned by Zen Electronics, Allen Yoshida’s company. You know, the…’
The inspector stopped. ‘What? Wait, I’m here with Frank Ottobre. I’m going to put you on loud speaker so he can hear, too. Repeat what you just said.’
He pushed a button on the phone and Froben’s voice blared out, slightly distorted by the phone mike.
‘I said I’m at Yoshida’s house in Beaulieu. Billionaire’s pad, of course. Multibillionaire. Security with armed guards and cameras everywhere. We got a call this morning about seven. The servants don’t live in – they all come to work around six thirty. Today, after they got here, they started cleaning up from a party the owner hosted last night. When they went downstairs, they found a room they didn’t know about.’
‘What do you mean, “didn’t know about”?’
‘Exactly that, Nicolas. A room they knew nothing about. A secret room that opens by an electronic lock hidden in the base of a statue.’
‘Sorry, go on.’
‘They went in and found an armchair covered in blood. There was blood on the floor and the walls. A lake, as the security guard who called me put it. He wasn’t exaggerating. We’ve been here a while and forensics are still working on it. I’ve started questioning but I’m not getting anywhere.’
‘He killed him there, Christophe. He came to Yoshida’s house, killed him, did his disgusting routine, loaded him into the car, and then left the body inside the car at the casino garage.’
‘The head of security, an ex-cop named Valmeere, told me they saw Yoshida’s car leave last night at 4 a.m.’
‘And they didn’t see who was driving?’
‘No. He said the car has tinted windows and you can’t see in. And it was dark out, so it was even worse with the reflection of the light.’
‘Didn’t he find it strange that Yoshida would go out by himself at that time of night?’
‘That’s exactly what I asked him. Valmeere told me that Yoshida was strange. He did things like that. Valmeere had pointed out to him that it wasn’t safe to go around alone, but he wouldn’t listen. Sure you really want to know how strange Yoshida was?’
‘Tell me.’
‘We found a collection of snuff videos in the room, enough to make you sick. There’s stuff here you can’t even imagine. One of my boys who watched spewed up his breakfast. Can I tell you something?’ Froben continued without waiting for an answer. ‘If Yoshida liked this kind of stuff, he got exactly what he deserved!’
The disgust in Froben’s voice was clear. That was the life of a policeman. You thought you had reached rock bottom, but something happened every time to take you lower.
‘Okay, Christophe. Let me know the results of your investigation: photos, prints – if there are any – and so on. And leave everything there so that we can come and take a look later, if necessary. Thanks.’
‘Don’t mention it. Nicolas?’
‘Yes?’
‘The last time I thought it to myself, but this time I’ll say it out loud. I wouldn’t want to be in your shoes, believe me!’
‘I believe you, my friend. And how.’
Frank was leaning back in the chair looking at the blue patch of sky without seeing it. His voice seemed a thousand miles and a thousand years away.
‘You know something, Nicolas? Whenever I think about the things that happen in the world – 9/11, this business here, wars and everything else – I start thinking about dinosaurs.’
The inspector looked at him, not understanding what he was getting at.
‘For a long time now, everyone’s been trying to figure out why they became extinct. They wonder why these animals that dominated the earth suddenly disappeared. Maybe they died because they all went crazy. Just like us. That’s what we are, you know, tiny dinosaurs. And sooner or later, this madness will be the end of us.’
Morelli pushed the cassette into the VCR and the coloured bars at the beginning of the tape filled the screen. As Hulot went to lower the blinds in order to reduce the glare from the windows, Frank sat in his armchair and turned in the direction of the monitor. Next to him was Luc Roncaille, chief of Sûreté Publique of the Principality of Monaco. He had unexpectedly dropped by Hulot’s office while Morelli and a policeman were getting the monitor and VCR ready on a small table they had wheeled in.
Roncaille was a tall, suntanned man with hair greying at the temples, a modern-day Stewart Granger. Frank looked at him with instant suspicion. The man looked more like a politician than a cop. A handsome face and a career that was more PR than fieldwork. He was the perfect poster boy to exhibit on official occasions. When Hulot introduced them, he and Frank looked each other over for a second, each sizing up the other. Judging by the look in Roncaille’s eyes, Frank decided, he was not a stupid man. An opportunist, maybe, but not stupid. Frank could tell that if Roncaille had to throw someone overboard in order to save himself, he wouldn’t hesitate for a second. And he would never get thrown overboard himself.
Roncaille had rushed over after hearing about the Yoshida killing. For the moment there had been no complaints, but he was obviously there to get enough information to cover his own backside with his superiors. The Principality of Monaco was a tiny speck of land, but it was no fairytale kingdom. There were strict rules and a first-rate government, the envy of many other countries. And the Monaco police force was considered one of the best in the world.
At last an image appeared on the screen. First, they saw a man tied to a chair, tape over his mouth, eyes wide with terror, looking at something to his left. There was no mistaking the face of Allen Yoshida. His photograph had been on magazine covers worldwide. Then a man in black came into the frame. Hulot held his breath. Looking at the man and his clothing, Frank thought for a moment that there was something wrong with the tape or the shot, given the bulges on his elbows and knees. Then, he saw that it was part of the disguise and realized the sophistication of the person he was watching.
‘Fucking bastard,’ he muttered.
The others flashed a look at him and Frank nodded, as if apologizing for the disturbance. Everyone turned back to the video. They watched in horror as the figure in black repeatedly stabbed the man tied to the chair, methodically, so that none of the stab wounds would be fatal. They saw his movements, hampered by his clothes, opening wounds that would never heal. They saw the blood ooze and drip slowly down Yoshida’s white shirt, like a blossoming scarlet flower. They saw death itself dancing around the man, tasting his pain and terror before taking him away for all eternity.
After what seemed like hours, the man in black stood still. Yoshida’s face was dripping with sweat. The man stretched out an arm and wiped Yoshida’s brow with the sleeve of his shirt. On the forehead of the prisoner there remained a reddish smudge, a comma of life in that ritual of death.
There was blood everywhere. On the marble floor, on the clothes, on the walls. The man in black went over to the VCR to his left. He reached for one of the machines. Suddenly, he stopped and leaned his head to one side, as if struck by a thought. Then he turned towards the cameras and bowed, pointing with an elegant flourish of his right arm at the man dying in the chair. He turned again, pressed a button, and the freezing snow of winter covered the screen.
The silence in the room had a different meaning for each of them.
Frank was taken back in time, to the house on the shore and the images he never stopped seeing like an endless film before his eyes. The memory was once again of pain – and that pain became hate and Frank distributed it evenly between himself and the killer.
Hulot went to raise the blinds and sunlight returned to the room as a benediction.
At last Roncaille spoke, relieving the unbearable tension. ‘What in hell’s name is going on here?’ He shuddered as if the air-conditioning were blowing air from the North Pole.
Frank got up from his chair. Hulot saw the light of pain and hatred in his eyes.
‘Gentlemen,’ said Frank, his voice icy and distant. ‘That’s the Devil incarnate on that tape. The man may be completely insane, but he’s got superhuman clarity and shrewdness.’ He pointed to the monitor that was still on, covered with static. ‘You saw how he was dressed. The bulges at the elbows and knees. I don’t know if he had planned to make this tape when he went to Yoshida’s house. Probably not, because he couldn’t have known about the secret room and the perversion in there. He might have been improvising. Maybe he surprised Yoshida when he was opening his inner sanctum. But the point is he was amused at the idea that we could watch him at work, killing the guy. No, the proper term is admire. That’s where you can see that he’s crazy. Morelli, rewind the tape, please.’
The sergeant pointed the remote control and the machine started to rewind with a click and a swish. A few seconds later, Frank stopped him with a wave of his hand.
‘That’s enough, thanks. Can you pause it at a place where we can get a good view of our man?’ Morelli pressed a button and the image on the screen froze upon the figure in black with his dagger raised. The still image showed a drop of blood falling from the knife in midair. The chief of police narrowed his eyes in disgust. He obviously didn’t see that kind of thing every day.
‘Here,’ said Frank, going over to the screen and pointing at the elbow of the killer’s raised arm. ‘The man knew there’d be cameras in the house. And he knew that there are cameras all over the Principality. He knew that by taking the car to the Parking de Boulingrin garage, he risked being captured on tape. And most of all, he knew that anthropometric measurement is a form of identification and that you can do it by analysing a video shot. There are average values for individuals. The size of the ears, the distance from the wrist to the elbow, from the ankle to the knee. Police all over the world have that kind of equipment. So he put protection over his elbows and knees to prevent such measurement. And we can’t analyse anything. No face or body. Only his height, which tells us nothing. That’s why I say that, apart from being insane, he’s also perfectly lucid.’
‘Why did that maniac have to end up here?’ Roncaille was probably seeing his job as chief of police crumble away. He looked at Frank, trying to recover some semblance of level-headedness. ‘What are you planning to do now?’
Frank looked at Hulot, who understood that he was responding in kind to Roncaille’s considerations.
‘We’re investigating in various directions,’ said the inspector. ‘We don’t have many clues, but we do have something. We’re waiting for Lyons to send us the results of their analysis of the phone call tapes. Cluny, the psychiatrist, is preparing a report, again based on the tapes. There are results from the tests on the boat, and from Yoshida’s car and house. We’re not expecting an early breakthrough, but something could come out of it. The protocols of the autopsies didn’t add very much to the first reports. The only real connections we have with the murderer are the phone calls he made to Radio Monte Carlo before striking. We’re monitoring the station 24/7. But he’s a clever bastard. We’ve seen that. And he’s as well prepared as he is ferocious. All we can hope for now is that he’ll slip up somehow. We’ve set up a special unit under Morelli, here, that fields calls and controls anything that might be suspicious.’
‘There have been lots of calls,’ Morelli added, feeling obliged to say something. ‘And now there’ll be more. Sometimes the callers are raving lunatics, you know, UFOs and avenging angels. But for the rest, we’re examining everything. Of course, checking all that out takes time and manpower, of which we have neither.’
‘Hmm. I’ll see what I can do,’ said Roncaille. ‘I can always ask for some support from the French police. I don’t need to tell you that the Principality could have very well done without this. We’ve always been the picture of security, a happy island in the midst of the chaos everywhere else in the world. Now we’ve got this madman who has given us a shock, and we have to solve the case with a show of efficiency in keeping with our image. In other words, we have to get him. Before he kills someone else.’
Roncaille stood up and brushed down the folds of his linen trousers. ‘Okay. I’ll leave you to your work. I should inform you that I’ll be reporting all of this to the attorney general, which is something I’d rather not have to do. Hulot, keep us informed, at any time, day or night. Good luck, gentlemen.’
With that he left the office, closing the door gently behind him. By his demeanour and, most of all, his tone, the words ‘we have to get him’ were understood by all. He meant ‘you have to get him,’ and the threat of unpleasant reprisals in the face of failure was crystal clear.
Frank, Hulot and Morelli remained where they were, savouring in silence the bitter taste of defeat. They’d been given a clue but hadn’t understood it. They’d had a chance to stop the murderer and now there was another body lying on a mortuary slab with its face skinned off. Roncaille had only come as a form of advance notice, to get the lie of the land before the real battle began. He wanted to warn them that from there on in, the forces above would want heads to roll. And in that case, his head would not be the only one. Not by a long chalk.
There was a knock at the door.
‘Come in.’ Christophe Froben’s drawn face appeared. ‘Hi, Christophe. Come on in.’
‘Hello, everyone. I just saw Roncaille outside. Not a good sign, huh?’ Froben immediately noticed the downcast feeling in the room.
‘Could hardly be worse.’
‘Here, Nicolas. I brought you a present. Developed in record time, just for you. You’ll have to wait a bit longer for the rest of it. Sorry.’
He placed a brown envelope on the table. Frank got up from his chair and went to open it. Inside were black-and-white photos. Turning them over, he saw a still version of what he’d seen in the video: an empty room that was the metaphysical image of a crime. The room where a man had been butchered by a figure in black with an even blacker soul. Neither of them was there in the photographs.
He flipped rapidly through the photos and handed them to Hulot. The inspector put them back on the table without even looking.
‘Did you find anything?’ he asked Froben with little hope.
‘You can imagine the care my boys used in going over the room and the house. There are a bunch of fingerprints, but as you know, prints often mean nothing. If you let me have the prints from the body, I can compare them for a definitive ID. We found some hairs on the armchair, probably Yoshida’s-’
‘The hair is Yoshida’s. He’s the dead man. No doubt about it,’ interrupted Hulot.
‘How can you be so sure?’
‘Before we go on, I think you should see something.’
‘What?’
‘Sit down and brace yourself.’ Hulot leaned back and turned to Morelli. ‘Start the tape.’
The sergeant pressed the remote and the screen was once again filled with the macabre dance of a man killing another man who must die. His dagger looked like a needle sewing a blood-red costume of death on to Yoshida’s body. Froben’s eyes widened. When the film ended with that strange, self-satisfied bow of the man in black, it took him a few minutes to regain his composure.
‘My God. This isn’t even human any more. I feel like crossing myself. What kind of creature is this?’
‘He uses all his talent to serve evil: he’s cold-blooded, he’s intelligent, he’s shrewd. And without a shred of pity.’
Frank’s words were a condemnation of himself as well as the killer. Neither of them could stop. One would continue killing until the other nailed him to the wall. And if he wanted to succeed, he had to abandon his rational mind to a darker one.
Froben, what can you tell us about the videos you found at Yoshida’s place?’ Frank jumped from one topic to another without changing his tone.
For an instant, the inspector seemed relieved at the change of subject. He was intimidated by the light in Frank’s eyes. And by his cold whisper – he sounded like someone invoking spirits at a séance. Froben pointed to the monitor with a grimace.
‘Stuff like this blows your mind. We’ve started an investigation and we’ll see where it leads. There were things in there that make me think the late Mr Yoshida was not worth much more than the man who killed him. Things like that take away your faith in humanity. In my opinion – I’ll say it again – that sadistic motherfucker got exactly what he deserved.’
‘There’s something else I’m wondering,’ said Hulot, finally voicing his thoughts. ‘Why do you think the murderer decided to make this tape?’
‘He didn’t do it for us,’ said Frank, moving towards the window. He leaned on the marble windowsill and looked blindly out at the street.
‘What do you mean by that?’
‘There’s a point towards the end of the video when he stops, just before he turns off the camera. That’s when he thought about us. That’s when he turned and bowed. No, that tape wasn’t made for us.’
‘Then who was it for?’ Froben turned around, but all he saw was the back of the American’s neck and shoulders.
‘He made it for Yoshida.’
‘For Yoshida?’
Frank turned slowly to face the room.
‘Of course. Didn’t you see that he made sure none of the stab wounds was fatal? He wanted Yoshida to bleed to death, slowly. Sometimes, evil has its own bizarre form of retribution. The guy who killed him made him watch a film of his own death.’