Time Is a Killer

by Michel Bussi

  Hermann was a gentler person than the average.

  He loved music. He loved beauty. He learned how to sing, to play the violin, he painted seascapes, skies, pale with washed-out colours, in a studio run by a retired watercolourist. Hermann was an only son. He liked to make a world that was all his own, build a universe from treasures assembled at random; he hadn’t hung posters of tennis-players, singers or Formula 1 drivers on the walls of his room, but dozens of pages from a herbarium that he constantly enriched, month after month. At the age of ten, he’d had the idea to create a magnificent collection: a collection of stars, all the ones he could find, starfish, gilded Christmas-tree decorations, sheriff’s badges, stars photographed at night, in the depths of the forest, stars printed on flags, posters, and novels. Hermann had been a brilliant student, he had been accepted into the Polytechnische Schule in Munich, to study Applied Arts. Hermann was both an artist and a craftsman. He was interested in the way things worked, in physics and mechanics, but above all he was attracted by beauty, by the material existence of beauty, convinced that nature was the greatest creative genius the earth had ever known, and that it alone attained the ultimate harmony and perfection; that men should merely admire it, and draw inspiration and nourishment from it.

  Hermann was a simple, straightforward creature.

  Often alone. Shy, secretive, misunderstood, but a stranger to lies. Unaware of evil. It was the others who had taught him that. The ones his own age. Hermann didn’t understand their codes. Hermann was too fragile. Hermann wanted only to be like them, to be accepted for a summer. He didn’t know about their cruelty. Without all that, Hermann would never have sabotaged the steering of that car, the car that Maria-Chjara and Nicolas were going to get into. Hermann had never planned to kill them, he just wanted to take his revenge; he only wanted their attempt to run off together to fail, he wanted to make the car impossible to drive in the middle of the night so that they would end up on foot, and Nicolas would have to shed his arrogance and Maria wouldn’t give herself to him. He just wanted to frighten them, to teach them a lesson. He had never known a girl in the true sense. He didn’t want Nicolas’s hands to sully all that beauty, the grace, the perfection of that face, that body with which he was obsessed, the body of that little whore Maria-Chjara.

  Jakob Schreiber stared at the rocks that tumbled into the Mediterranean, and slowed down once more.

  No, of course, Hermann didn’t intend to kill Maria and Nicolas. Nicolas was supposed to borrow his parents’ car that evening to go to the Camargue, that damned nightclub, with Aurélia, Cervone and himself; Nicolas had promised them all. But during that day, Hermann had followed them. And a few hours later, after they had parked at the campsite, he had heard Maria-Chjara agreeing to go with Nicolas, but without anyone else, all those idiots from the campsite … A trip for the two of them. Which would be cut short, Hermann had imagined as he lay down under the car. How could he have anticipated the change of plan? That it would be Paul Idrissi who found himself at the wheel, with his wife and children? That he would cause the deaths of an entire family? That he would find himself wearing the skin of a murderer, when he wasn’t even eighteen years old?

  8.56 p.m.

  Arrival time 9.02 p.m.

  These days, Jakob Schreiber thought, you could plan your death to the minute.

  Hermann had said nothing. The police had concluded that it was an accident.

  But Hermann had never got over it. He was responsible for the deaths of three innocent people.

  Hermann had spent a term being unable to set foot inside the Polytechnische Schule, cloistered away in his room, with his herbarium and his stars. It had taken almost thirty therapy sessions before Hermann confessed to them, before he told them everything – everything that Anke and he had already understood since that day in August 1989.

  Hermann continued to see the therapist. He took up the violin again. He went back to collecting plants and observing the stars. Jakob had found a new college for him, less prestigious than the Polytechnische Schule, but a private school that specialised in marketing, where you could take year-long courses; he got him a job at the company, less to make him work than to keep him busy.

  Hermann was better, Jakob believed, wanted to believe, tried to convince himself.

  On 23 February 1991, exactly eighteen months after the accident at Petra Coda, Hermann got too close to a vat of lye on the production line he was supervising. His body was devoured by the substance, like some horrific scene from a science-fiction film in which a body is reduced to a smoking broth before disappearing. Jakob wanted to believe that it was an accident, just an accident. But ten workers, in studio B3 of line 07 in the factory, had seen Hermann deliberately toppling the vat and pouring it over himself.

  Hermann was gentle and talented. Hermann had had a brilliant future ahead of him, he could have enjoyed an important role in a large company, could have seduced a beautiful woman, lived a life in harmony with his ideals, the life he deserved; identical to the one that Jakob had described to Clotilde Idrissi two days earlier on the phone, when she had called and he had passed himself off as his son. He hadn’t made it all up. He had simply described the life that had been stolen from his son.

  Anke had died a few years later, of grief. In August 1993, his wife had insisted that they should holiday in Croatia, on Pag, an island vaguely reminiscent of Corsica, with its cliffs and its villages. One morning, as she went to fetch some bread in their Mercedes, she had come to a bend in the road with a sheer drop underneath. She hadn’t turned the wheel. There was one word on a note in the wallet that she hadn’t taken with her. Entschuldigung. Sorry.

  There was an investigation.

  The Mercedes had been kept in immaculate condition. The steering worked perfectly.

  *

  Since then, Jakob had had time to reflect. Hermann and Anke had paid for a crime that they hadn’t committed.

  He had had time to weigh up the responsibilities.

  Yes, the Schreiber family’s tragedy was a match for that of the Idrissi family.

  After 23 August 1989, after the accident, when he had found Hermann sitting helplessly on the steps of their mobile home, Jakob had guessed that his son bore part of the responsibility. They were supposed to have another eight days of holiday, but they decided to return to Germany the following day. That morning, Jakob went to bungalow C29, where the Idrissis had been staying. It was empty. But the notebook belonging to Clotilde, the little survivor, the one she always carried around with her, was on the kitchen table, along with the other things Basile Spinello was supposed to bring to her in the hospital. Jakob had simply taken it. So that he might understand. So that he alone could read it, in case there were any clues, in case there was any kind of evidence against his son concealed among its lines.

  He had read and reread that notebook; and once more that summer. There was nothing to indicate that Hermann was the murderer, unless you were the most perceptive reader of detective novels. Clotilde Idrissi certainly wasn’t aware of anything.

  But there was one witness, a direct witness. Cervone Spinello. On 23 August 1989, working at reception in the campsite, he hadn’t taken his eyes off Nicolas and Maria-Chjara; he had seen Hermann sliding under the Fuego, then he had heard rumours about the damaged steering column. Cervone had been careful to let Jakob know that he knew who had murdered the Idrissis, but he never publicly accused Hermann, he never talked about him to the police or to Cassanu Idrissi. Jakob had wondered why, at first, until the first bricks of the Roc e Mare marina began to grow, until the breeze on Oscelluccia beach blew on the Tropi-Kalliste beach bar and it didn’t fly away. The explanation was obvious. Cervone Spinello was blackmailing Cassanu Idrissi. He had a hold on him, even if Jakob didn’t quite understand, didn’t know which version, which false truth he had invented. He knew only that Cervone held a trump card in his hand: he knew who the real murderer of Paul and Nicolas Idrissi was. Cassanu would never have suspected Hermann Schreiber, t
he young German tourist whose existence he was unaware of.

  Jakob glanced back. Valentine wasn’t reading the notebook any more, he had heard her putting it carefully back in the plastic bag. Palma Idrissi and her granddaughter were motionless, only their hair was moving, stirred by the wind that passed through the slightly open rear windows. The two women were staring at him, at the back of his neck, his shoulder, his arm. And his eyes, which met those of Valentine in the rear-view mirror.

  He had waited patiently for this August to come around, he had waited to see the Mediterranean one last time, to share one last beer, play one last game of pétanque. According to the doctors, the cancer would at least allow him that, one last summer, just one. And all of a sudden here was Clotilde Idrissi, getting off the boat, searching, investigating, claiming the impossible. That her mother was alive! A hobbyhorse, a folly, but she was stirring up the past, interrogating Maria-Chjara, Natale Angeli, Sergeant Cesareu Garcia and his daughter Aurélia, she was bringing back memories, stripping the shrouds from the ghosts. As he had foreseen, she had come and asked him if she could see all the pictures from the summer of ’89. Who knows whether one of them mightn’t have helped her guess the truth? He had feigned his surprise perfectly in front of Clotilde Idrissi, when he had opened the empty file. And if he had wanted to retrieve the photographs held in the cloud, it was so that he could destroy them for ever.

  He didn’t think the danger would come from Cervone Spinello. He didn’t suspect that the campsite manager had even more to lose than he did. Before he pulled the trigger and the harpoon pierced his heart, Spinello had confessed everything to him. Spinello had been frightened, the evening when Jakob had come to ask him for a wi-fi connection so he could recover his photographs. Cervone had panicked. Since Clotilde Idrissi had come back to the Euproctes, he had done everything he could think of to make her go away again, but Clotilde was stubborn, she was perceptive. Persuasive, too. Cervone was worried that she might persuade Jakob to admit the truth, that the two survivors of those two families destroyed by the tragedy might fall into each other’s arms, so that he might finally ease his conscience.

  Jakob Schreiber clenched his fingers on the wheel. In front of him, the sun formed a long line of fire that set the sea ablaze. Yes, Cervone Spinello had been afraid of losing everything. If Clotilde discovered the truth, if she brought it out into the daylight, his whole business would collapse. Even worse, if that old Corsican up at Arcanu learned that twenty-seven years ago Cervone had witnessed the sabotage of his son’s car, and had kept his mouth shut for so many years, then he would probably have had no qualms about having him executed, whether or not he was his best friend’s son. Then Cervone had knocked out Jakob, without premeditation, in haste, by smashing a pétanque ball against his temple. He would probably have managed to do more than that if some campers leaving the poker game hadn’t called out to him as they walked along the path. It was impossible to hide the corpse, there was no time to clean up the scene of the crime, and Cervone had had to leave the mobile home. He probably planned to come back a little later, at night, to finish off the job. Except that Jakob had somehow found the strength to flee. To drag himself away from the campsite, taking something with him to sterilise the wound. After roaming the area for fifty years, he too knew the maquis.

  What else could Cervone do except affect bewilderment, the following morning, before the pétanque players who were waiting for the old German? Except pretend to be surprised in front of Clotilde, when he found the mobile home empty. What choice did he have but to wait, tremble, hope that the German had gone off to die in a corner like a wounded, frightened animal?

  Jakob had waited calmly, letting him ripen, so he could kill him at the right moment.

  He’d simply needed some time.

  That unidentified body dragged from the Bay of Crovani had been the opportunity he had dreamed of; probably some reckless swimmer, the kind they fished out of the sea almost every summer. Jakob had only had to throw some clothes, a watch and his papers off the top of the Mursetta headland, where the current in the Mediterranean was the strongest. The police wouldn’t fall for it for long, it would only take them a few hours, perhaps a day, to find out the real identity of the corpse, or at least to work out that the decomposed body did not match his own. But a few hours was all he needed to lull Cervone into a false sense of security.

  The campsite manager couldn’t have known that Jakob was already a condemned man, and that he didn’t care how he ended it all. That his hatred wasn’t reserved only for the Idrissis; that he planned to make everyone here feel it, everyone who had taken away his paradise. Cervone couldn’t have suspected that grief and loneliness had driven him mad, that he too was giving half of his pension to a therapist; that he too, in avenue B3 of line 07 in the factory, had come to a stop by the vat of lye; that he had made himself dizzy leaning over the white rocks on the island of Pag, the red rocks of Petra Coda, at the foot of the Revellata Peninsula.

  It was only this morning that Jakob had learned Cervone Spinello’s secret, the one that had meant he could enjoy Cassanu Idrissi’s protection.

  Palma Idrissi. Alive.

  Sentenced by a people’s jury in place of Hermann; imprisoned ever since the summer of 1989 in a shepherd’s cabin.

  Over the years, Cervone had staked his lot on both versions, letting each party believe his own truth: Cassanu was unaware of the real culprit, Jakob Schreiber was unaware of the accused. Cervone hadn’t even needed to lie – his silence had been enough to make him master of the situation. Until the return of Clotilde Idrissi.

  Cervone Spinello hadn’t deserved to die, but firing an arrow into his heart was merely a patient form of self-defence. The Idrissis, they deserved it. And they deserved to suffer before they died. If it wasn’t for all their lies, over three generations, none of this would have happened.

  *

  9.01 p.m.

  The sun had not yet disappeared behind the Bay of Calvi. It was floating above the citadel like a dazzling spotlight, transforming the world into a theatre of shadows. Jakob’s eyes became blurred. Ever since this morning, since this summer, for twenty-seven years, he had been replaying the same words in his head:

  We were just an ordinary family, we liked simple things, we came here to spend our holidays in the sun.

  On the Island of Beauty.

  We didn’t know that such beauty burns anyone who approaches it, that such beauty lies, that it escapes anyone who wants to touch it.

  We hadn’t taught Hermann. That you could damn yourself by coveting it.

  Hermann was too pure, too different.

  They couldn’t bear it.

  They killed him.

  I am going to join Anke. Join Hermann.

  On 23 August, at 9.02 p.m.

  In a red Fuego.

  At Petra Coda, on the Revellata Peninsula.

  A man, a woman, a fifteen-year-old girl.

  Three corpses.

  And all will be concluded.

  In beauty.

  64

  23 August 2016, 9.01 p.m.

  Just over a minute.

  Her eyes filled with tears, Clotilde continued to accelerate.

  She had thrown her mobile on to the dashboard, it was only making her lose precious seconds. The Revellata Peninsula stretched in front of them, but she had to drive around the edge of it, climb to the middle and then back down again, about fifty metres of descent, twenty short bends.

  She wouldn’t make it.

  Unless Jakob Schreiber was late. Unless his watch, the clock in his car, his telephone weren’t all synchronised to the same universal clock, even a few seconds might be enough.

  On the passenger seat, Papé Cassanu said nothing.

  The landscape closed in on them for the duration of a few turnings that snaked along the foot of the peninsula, with the campsite to the south and the lighthouse to the north. Clotilde took them at speed, driving in the middle of the road, not worrying that a car might s
uddenly appear in front of her. The white line was now nothing more than a ribbon, preventing the Passat from taking off, like an adhesive strip to which the car was glued.

  The car now climbed again, sending up a cloud of dust as they passed some vehicles parked in the car park. Tourists taking pictures of the view cursed the girl racer as she sped by without noticing them. The road was clear for almost a kilometre. After the ten bends leading down the hill they could make out the corniche of Petra Coda.

  Clotilde spotted him.

  She felt Cassanu’s wrinkled hand gripping his seatbelt as she recklessly pressed down on the accelerator.

  The red Fuego had only just appeared a kilometre further down, emerging from the Port’Agro cove, driving smoothly towards them. It was now only a few hundred metres away from Petra Coda.

  Taking the first turning in fourth, at over eighty kilometres per hour, Clotilde felt as if the two wheels on the left were about to lift off, as if the Passat was going to flip over; she counter-steered at the last minute, too much, losing more seconds, but less than if she’d slowed down. Her foot came down again on the pedal. She had to concentrate on the road, not stare at the red dot coming towards them in the distance.

  It was impossible, however. Her daughter and her mother were inside that dot.

  At first she thought it was slowing down. She was seized for a moment by a flicker of hope that went out as quickly as a match in a gale. The Fuego suddenly accelerated again, along the long straight line that finished with the deadly bend above Petra Coda.