The Killer in My Eyes (27 page)

Then he had opened a drawer and found a heavy folder with a black cover tied at the front with red string. On the black cover was a white sticky label bearing a handwritten title:
Solace for a Disappointed Man.

He had taken it out and opened it. Inside were hundreds of numbered sheets covered in small, nervous handwriting. Alex could scarcely believe that, in this day and age, someone could have had the patience and devotion to write that mass of pages by hand.

Alex had taken the folder to his room and kept it hidden among his most private possessions. He eventually read the whole manuscript, a novel that Wyman had written over the years without ever telling anybody. Alex hadn’t understood it completely but had kept it as a memento of his greatest friendship, and later as a kind of treasure to be spent in the future.

And spent it he had.

After his first novel had met with public and critical indifference, he had decided to publish
Solace
under his own name, making just a few small modifications to adapt the story to modern tastes and his own way of expressing himself.

There had been no signal while they were driving through the Midtown Tunnel, and so that awful conversation with his agent had been suspended. But as soon as they came out into the open, he pressed
call
, and Ray replied at the first ring.

‘I’m sorry,’ Alex said. ‘I was in the tunnel, there was no network.’

‘I was just saying there’s no need to worry. Ayeroff was harsh, but I think if I go to work on them, they may be willing to give you the time you need to get the book the way it should be, the way only you know how to write it.’

No, I don’t know how to write it. The person who might have known has been dead for a long time.

He would have liked to scream these words until he cracked his vocal cords, instead of which he kept silent, hiding his true thoughts, as he had almost always done in his life.

‘We’ll work it out, you’ll see,’ Ray went on. ‘There are worse things in the world. Have you heard what’s been happening here in New York?’

‘No, you know I cut myself off completely when I’m on Saint Croix.’

‘The Mayor’s son was murdered. You know, the painter. And Chandelle Stuart, too.’

Alex Campbell started feeling palpitations in his chest, and he broke out in a cold sweat. The hand holding the cellphone grew clammy.

He asked a question to which he already knew the answer. ‘Chandelle Stuart the steel heiress?’

‘That’s the one. They’re not saying much about it, but it looks like it’s the same killer both times. Could be a good idea for a thriller.’

Alex Campbell’s mouth was so dry, he could barely speak.

‘Are you still there?’

‘Yes, I’m here. How did it happen?’

‘Nobody knows. Like I said, they’re not giving anything away. Only what I just told you. Understandable, given that it’s the son of Christopher Marsalis . . . What’s the matter, Alex, are you all right?’

‘Sorry, I’m just a little tired. Don’t worry, I’m fine.’

But he wasn’t fine at all.

The sour taste of fear had returned, and as so often in the past, his first impulse was to run away. He would have liked to tell the cab driver to turn around and go back to the airport. He wanted to be back in the peace and quiet of his island. Only the fact that there wouldn’t be any planes to take him there until the next day stopped him.

‘OK,’ Ray said. ‘Let’s talk tomorrow. We can decide what to do then.’

‘All right.’

He hung up as the cab turned from First Avenue onto 34th Street. From that moment on, the ride home was a series of out-of-focus images of neon signs and moving cars through the dirty windows.

His temples were throbbing. Even though it wasn’t the right time, he searched in his bag for the plastic box and swallowed a Ramipril, the pill he took to keep his blood pressure down.

Two names continued to echo in his head.

Gerald and Chandelle.

And one word.

Murdered.

He didn’t have time to indulge in memories. The cab stopped outside his building almost without his having noticed the distance they had travelled. He paid and got out. As he looked for his keys, he walked towards the low, welcoming building, with the three steps leading up to the walnut front door and the brass knocker.

Bedford Street was a short, narrow street close to the Hudson, and at that hour was quiet and dimly lit. The only light came from an old-fashioned tailor’s shop on the corner with Commerce Street, just opposite his building. The fact that the light was on was a sign that someone was still working there, but Alex Campbell was so lost in thought that he barely noticed. Nor did he notice a rundown old car parked 100 yards further back that set off as his taxi entered the street and drove up behind him with its headlamps off. He did not hear the car stop or see the man who got out, leaving his car door open, and came towards him. The man was wearing a tracksuit with the hood up and limping slightly with his right leg. Alex Campbell had just climbed the steps and was inserting the key in the lock when he saw an arm enter his field of vision. Immediately he felt a damp cloth pressed to his nose and mouth. He tried to struggle free, but his attacker was holding him in a suffocating vice, with his other arm around his neck.

He tried to breathe, but a sharp smell of chloroform filled his nostrils. He felt a slight burning sensation in his eyes, his sight grew blurred, and his legs gradually gave way. His slender body collapsed into the arms of his attacker, who held him up without any difficulty.

A few moments later, he was slumped in the back seat of a beat-up Dodge Nova. The hooded man sat down in the driving seat and, without switching on the headlamps, moved away from the kerb and unhurriedly joined the lights and chaos of the traffic.

Alex Campbell was naked and terrified.

He lay there, freezing cold, ribs jolted by the poor suspension, in the dark, foul-smelling trunk of a fast-moving car.

After the attack outside his front door, he had not fainted completely but had remained sunk in a strange torpor that had left his body as heavy as if his bones had suddenly turned to lead. The first corners the driver had taken had sent him slipping little by little from the worn seat to the floor of the car. He had lain there as they had driven along a street that had seemed interminable, with the dusty smell of the carpet under his nose, seeing the lights of the city from a low angle. After a time, they had stopped in a deserted, dimly lit area, with a yellow light flashing intermittently in the distance: a lighthouse, maybe, or an air traffic control tower.

He had heard the click of the back door opening and cold air had rushed in. The air smelled of rust and seaweed, and for the first time in his dazed state he had had a lucid thought. He had realized that they must be somewhere near water.

A man had entered his field of vision, dressed in a cheap tracksuit, his face covered in a ski mask, with openings through which only the eyes and mouth could be glimpsed. He had grabbed Alex with black-gloved hands, pulled him up as easily as if he was a weightless bundle, and sat him up again on the back seat with his legs protruding out of the car, dangling in the air like a puppet at the mercy of a puppetmaster.

He had seen his abductor take a roll of adhesive tape and a large utility knife from his pocket. The blade had glittered menacingly in the semi-darkness as, with a few rapid, precise gestures, the man cut a strip of tape and placed it over Alex’s mouth and another which he placed around his wrists.

He had then taken him out and, supporting him effortlessly, had dragged him to the back of the car. There, he had propped him against the bodywork, keeping him in that position by putting one arm around his waist, while opening the lock of the trunk with his free hand.

The man had hoisted Alex roughly inside, lifting his legs to cram them in, and trained a torch at his face. Alex had seen the blade of the knife enter the beam of light just in front of his eyes. His heart pounding crazily, he had lost control of his body and had urinated and defecated at the same time.

He had emitted a desperate whimper, which the man had ignored completely, just as he had ignored the dark stain spreading over Alex’s pants. Calmly but skilfully, the man had started systematically cutting off his prisoner’s clothes. Alex had shuddered every time the blade had come into contact with his skin.

Tears continued streaming from his eyes. Bit by bit, he had been stripped bare, until he lay surrounded by torn shreds of clothing stinking of piss and shit and fear. The lid of the trunk had been closed, plunging him into darkness and leaving him alone with his terror and his stench.

In the silence, there were more sounds of doors closing, and then the engine started up, telling him that this had been only a halt and not their final destination.

Now he lay there in the trunk, thinking frantically.

Who was this man?

What did he want from him?

He remembered what Ray had told him not so long ago –
an hour? a century?

– Gerald Marsalis and Chandelle Stuart were dead.

The two people he had once known as Linus and Lucy had been murdered. And now he was bound naked in the trunk of a car, perhaps travelling to the same fate.

He could feel his teeth chattering uncontrollably with fear beneath the tape that covered his mouth. And with the fear, as predictably as those signals from his cellphone telling him when to take his pills, came the remorse – guilt and sorrow for something that had happened a long, long time ago.

For years he had wanted to tell that story, but had never had the courage. In a way he had tried to tell it in his books, through the medium of words on paper, hiding his confession in metaphors, even though he knew these attempts would never bring absolution.

After a while –

an hour? a century?

– Alex felt the car stop with a jolt, as if it had mounted the sidewalk.

While the engine purred, he heard a door opening. Immediately afterwards came a sharp metallic noise, and then another like an anchor chain being pulled and the squeal of a gate opening on badly oiled hinges.

Again the door closing and again the movement, as they drove slowly down a street that seemed to be full of holes. Then the car stopped for good and the engine was switched off.

Alex again heard the creak of the door opening and then the noise of footsteps on the gravel, and at every step his heart thudded. The lid of the trunk was opened and the light of the torch aimed downwards, allowing him to glimpse the outline of the man, who was clutching a long pair of wire-cutters in his right hand, holding it across his shoulder to balance the weight. He gave a brief glance at his passenger, lighting the interior of the trunk for a moment, and then, as if satisfied by what he had seen, closed the lid again, leaving a yellow blotch in Alex’s eyes as his only memory of the light.

All the noises from outside reached Alex through the filter of the throbbing he felt in his ears. After what seemed an endless series of palpitations, the thumping in his heart suddenly became a paroxysm of irregular beats, a phenomenon he had learned over time to recognize and dread. He was finding it harder and harder to breathe, as if the oxygen was not getting to his lungs.

In normal circumstances, he would have started breathing through his mouth, sucking greedily at the air he needed to survive, but right now, with the tape preventing him from doing that, he had only his nostrils to rely on. The dust and the stench of his own excrement were like a film gradually clogging the narrow passageways through which the air reached his ribcage.

His heartbeat was now a succession of short, desperate contractions.

pa-tuc pa-tuc pa-tuc pa-tuc pa-tuc pa-tuc

Acid sweat was running down his forehead and into his eyes, burning them. He tried to raise his arms to wipe his face, but the position he was in and the tape on his wrists made that impossible.

From outside came a new noise, sharp and metallic, like that of a padlock being cut, then the screech of a sliding door, then footsteps approaching on a gravel surface.

pa-tuc pa-tuc pa-tuc pa-tuc pa-tuc pa-tuc

The lock of the trunk snapped open. As a sliver of light came in, Alex heard a muffled cry and saw his attacker raise his left arm to support his right as if, as he had opened it, the lid of the trunk had somehow injured him.

By the light of the torch, which he had placed on the roof of the car to have his hands free, the man, with an instinctive gesture, rolled up the right sleeve of his tracksuit to check the injury. There was blood on his skin, all the way from his wrist to . . .

Alex’s eyes opened wide in surprise.

On his abductor’s right forearm was a big, colourful tattoo depicting a demon with the body of a man and thin butterfly wings.

Alex knew that tattoo, and knew who wore it. He knew when it had been done, where it had been done and who had one just like it.

And he also knew that the person who had one just like it was dead.

The effect of the chloroform had by now completely worn off. He started whimpering and tugging and kicking in a fit of hysteria while his heart