by Philip Kerr
‘Yes, I’d forgotten that.’
‘So. Think of another friend. And base this new character on him. Steal him, if you like. Steal him like a body snatcher. Simple.’
The trouble was that after writing almost forty books for John, I’d used up all of my own friends – and quite a few of my ex-wife’s – so that there was no one left I could use now for my own novel. I could hardly use Piers Perceval again. After six Jack Boardman books I never wanted to think about or see Piers again. So it was probably just as well that he had been dead for more than thirty years.
I badly missed John’s suggestions on how to improve what I’d written – he was brilliant at doing that. This is different from mere editing; in my experience most editors can tell you what is wrong with a page of writing but have little or no clue how to fix it. That’s why they’re editors and not writers, I suppose. Constructive criticism is the most difficult thing to give any writer. But mostly I missed John’s carefully researched story outlines. These were 75-page outlines of as yet unwritten books, with research appendices, maps and photographs – story epitomes in which all of the questions had been asked and answered – bound in red leather with purple silk bookmarks and their titles lettered in gold. Which seemed only appropriate: each of John’s outlines was worth about four million dollars. Unlike my own novel; the way things were going I would be lucky to sell it at all.
CHAPTER 3
On the face of it the restaurant at Claridge’s did not augur well; there was something about the art deco room with its purple chairs, high marble ceilings, telescopic peach lampshades and modern carpet that made me feel slightly nauseous. Maybe it was the prospect of dining with two French policemen, but the restaurant looked like the dining room on a passenger-liner that was about to sink.
The maître d’ led me to a table where two men got to their feet and shook me by the hand. Amalric was a weary-looking man with grey hair, a neat, grey moustache and beard, and a good navy-blue suit with a custom lining, pocket silk handkerchief and Hermès tie that made him seem more like a banker. His sergeant, Didier Savigny, was about twenty years younger, with a shaven head and altogether more muscular; his suit was less expensive than his superior’s but rather more fashionable, which is to say the jacket was cut a little too short for my taste and made his arms stick out like a chimp’s. Each of them handed me a nicely printed business card with the embossed gold seal of the principality and which I read politely.
‘Rue Notari,’ I said. ‘Why does that seem familiar to me?’
‘It’s close to the main harbour of Monaco,’ explained Amalric. ‘Your boss’s boat, the Lady Schadenfreude, is moored less than fifty metres from police headquarters, on the other side of the Stade Nautique swimming pool. You can actually see the bridge of the boat from my office window.’
‘That’s handy,’ I said. I collected the menu off the table and ordered a glass of champagne from the waiter. It’s not often you get taken out for an expensive dinner by the police.
‘You know Monaco?’ asked Savigny. He reminded me a little of Zinedine Zidane. Tanned, muscular, not very patient. From the look of him I imagined his shaven head would feel every bit as hard butting against my sternum as the Marseille-born footballer’s.
‘Enough to know that Monaco is the name of the country; that Monte Carlo is just one neighbourhood; and that the capital is the neighbourhood known as Monaco-Ville, which according to your card is where your office appears to be located. I’ve been going there for quite a few years. Ever since John Houston relocated there for tax reasons.’
‘Which is why you know the Hermitage, perhaps?’
‘Not to stay there. Whenever I’ve been in Monaco I’ve stayed in Beausoleil. At the Hôtel Capitole on Boulevard General Leclerc. At a hundred euros a night that’s more in my price range, I’m afraid. And by the way, John Houston was never really my boss. I’m a freelance writer. Self-employed.’
I neglected to add that on one occasion when I’d been staying in Beausoleil I had stood on my tiny balcony and urinated into Monaco which, at the time, gave me an absurd amount of schoolboy pleasure.
‘You never stayed with him?’ Savigny sounded a little surprised. ‘In your friend’s apartment?’
‘No. I was never asked. Oh, I went to the apartment in the Odéon Tower several times to deliver or to collect something. But ours was more of a business arrangement. It’s been a long time since we were something so innocent as friends.’
The waiter came back with my champagne and I toasted the two policemen politely. They were drinking gin and tonic. The sergeant put down his glass and placed a little Marantz dictation machine upright on the table in front of me.
‘Do you mind this?’ he asked. ‘It is difficult for us to eat and take notes at the same time.’
I shrugged. ‘No, I don’t mind. But look, what are you expecting me to say? I should tell you right now that I don’t think John Houston murdered his wife. I’ve known the man for twenty-five years and he doesn’t strike me as a killer. And believe me I know what I’m talking about. If he’s done a runner it’s probably because he’s scared, not because he’s guilty.’
‘Let’s order first,’ said Amalric, ‘and then you can tell us some more about why he’s innocent.’
I ordered a beetroot tartare and a seared loin of venison; Amalric ordered his own food and a hundred-and-twenty-quid bottle of Vosne-Romanée.
‘Your expense account must make entertaining reading,’ I said. ‘For a policeman.’
‘The Interior Minister of Monaco, Dominique de Polignac, takes all crime in the principality very seriously,’ said Amalric. ‘His specific orders to me before we came to London were that no expense is to be spared in catching Mrs Houston’s killer, and as you can see I am not a man who is inclined to disobey his superiors.’
‘Under the present circumstances, I’m very glad to hear it.’
‘Not that he reads much, you understand. The Minister is more interested in football. AS Monaco is his great passion. Did you know that Arsène Wenger used to manage the team?’
‘Yes, I did. And you, Chief Inspector? Do you have much time for reading?’
‘My wife died a few years ago and since then I have developed quite a habit for reading. Mostly I like to read history. Simon Sebag Montefiore. Max Hastings. But I confess I have never read a book by John Houston. Until his wife died I had never even heard of him. But Sergeant Savigny has read a lot of his books. Haven’t you, Sergeant?’
Savigny nodded. ‘I don’t know the English titles, only the French. But the Jack Boardman books. I have read all of them.’
‘Did you like them?’
‘Yes. I buy one at the airport every time I go on holiday. What I like is that you always know exactly what you’re going to get.’
The sergeant made it sound like a Big Mac. For some writers this would have been an insulting remark, but for Houston this was what his books were all about; a successful brand was based on a consistent product. Give them what they want and then teach them that they can have it again. And again. John had been a great believer in creating his own writing style, or more accurately his lack of one. He’d paid particular attention to the number of words in a sentence and the number of sentences in a paragraph. Verbiage, as he called the excessive use of words, was the great enemy of writers: Words only appear to be your friends; but you should think of them as the speed bumps on your page; they can slow the story down as much as they can keep it bowling along.
He had even created a writing lexicon of words that writers from the atelier were forbidden to use; words like ‘corollary’, ‘detumescent’, ‘uxorious’, ‘polyglot’, and ‘felicitous’.
As a rough rule of thumb, don’t use a word that isn’t in the Microsoft Word dictionary, unless it’s a proper noun, of course. Equally, don’t ever be afraid of using clichés. Not in my books. If you want your novel to be a page-turner then make clichés your friends. Clichés – the kind of writing that Martin Amis ma
kes war on – are the verbal particle accelerators to finishing books. Original writing just slows a reader down and makes him feel inadequate. Like he’s thick. Which of course he is, but there’s no sense in rubbing that in. My readers actively approve of clichés. And forget about similes and metaphors; if you want to use similes and metaphors then go and write fucking poetry, not one of my books. People don’t like it. That’s why poetry doesn’t sell.
About the use of swear words in his books Houston was equally circumspect:
No more than one per chapter. And only in situations of extreme stress. A lot of people in Middle America don’t much care for profanity, so within reason, it’s best avoided.
Sergeant Savigny was still explaining why he admired the Houston canon. Harold Bloom it wasn’t, but listening to the Frenchman I had an idea that John would have been delighted with his deconstruction of John’s work:
‘The great thing about Jack Boardman is the way that you don’t get too much useless description; the woman wore a white dress and that’s it. Job done. I don’t need to know if the dress came from Chloé and if her shoes matched her handbag and her panties. If I want that kind of shit I’ll read Vogue. Also, I like the fact that you can just put the books down and then pick them up again without losing the plot.’
‘As a matter of fact I wrote all of the Jack Boardman books.’
‘You don’t say.’
Amalric frowned. ‘This is not something we understand. Houston puts his name to a book that you write, Monsieur Irvine, and he gets the big money while you are paid – forgive me – like a hired hand. How is this possible?’
‘He comes up with the story,’ I said. ‘The stories are pretty good. As Sergeant Savigny has explained, the stories are why people buy Houston’s books, not because of any fancy writing. We didn’t go in for much in the way of metaphors and similes. Just straight descriptions. You’re not supposed to notice the writing very much – just the story. He came up with the plots and I – or someone like me – wrote them. The actual writing was something that bored him greatly. Really it’s a bit like what Bismarck is supposed to have said about laws being like sausages. You should never watch either one being made. It’s best just to read the final product and not to pay any attention to the creative process. But that’s only my opinion. John himself loved to talk about the whole business of writing and exactly how he produced his books. He was really very open about it. Much more open than I’d ever have been. Especially when you’re talking to these bastards on the Guardian who are just looking to trip you up and tell the world what a fraud you are. The Guardian is a left-leaning newspaper in this country. They don’t like anyone with a bit of money. A bit like Libération in France, I think, but with less style. Anyway the lefties loved to hate John. What was it they called him? The Mies van der Rohe of the modern novel; because form follows function and ornament is a crime. The novelist of the machine age; that was another thing they called him. John loved that. He thought that was a compliment. I told him it wasn’t but he insisted it was, even though they meant it to be insulting. He had that page framed and hung on his office wall. And as a quote on some of his publicity. He was very good at creating publicity.’
‘In the last forty-eight hours he’s had more of that than perhaps even he could have bargained for,’ said Amalric. ‘With his face on the front of so many newspapers it won’t be long before we find him. So it would be better for Monsieur Houston if he were to turn himself in. I’m only saying this in case he does decide to get in touch with you.’
‘He won’t. I’m almost certain of that. If he has decided to disappear he certainly wouldn’t need my help. The man can manage on his own.’
I sipped my champagne and surveyed the starters as they arrived at the table.
‘You see, John’s a clever man, Chief Inspector. Very well read. Independently minded. Highly resourceful. He was always good at accumulating esoteric, sometimes forbidden wisdom. He prided himself on getting the facts right so that the books could seem more plausible. He said he didn’t care if anyone faulted his style just as long as they weren’t able to fault his facts. Facts were what he wanted. Painstaking, solid research was the part of the writing process that John really enjoyed. He knew everything from how to manufacture ricin, to the best place to buy an illegal assault rifle. That’s Poland, in case you’re interested. In Gdansk you can put in an order for a new Vepr and within the hour have one delivered to your hotel. That’s why so many people read his books, Chief Inspector. Not because they seem authentic but because they are authentic. Isn’t that right, Sergeant?’
Savigny nodded. ‘That’s right, sir.’
‘John used to offer ten thousand bucks to anyone who could fault his research. To this date that money is unclaimed. Oh, he had the odd letter from some nutter claiming the money, but John was always able to write back and point out just where his correspondent was incorrect. No, he’s quite a character, is John. If he doesn’t want to be found you might have a hard job finding him.’
I winced a little as I heard myself saying this; it sounded very like some bullshit I’d read on the overheated blurb of the last Jack Boardman: You won’t find him unless he wants you to find him.
Amalric nodded. ‘Perhaps,’ he said. ‘Mais il faut cultiver notre jardin.’
I nodded, recognizing this, the last line from Voltaire’s Candide. ‘Yes, of course. You are only doing your job. I understand that.’
‘You know, so far you are the only one who talks about Monsieur Houston as if he might be innocent. We have spoken to his agent, Hereward Jones, his publisher, Monsieur Anderton, Monsieur Munns of course, and his first wife, Madame Sheldrake.’
‘You’ve been busy.’
‘And you are the only one who gives him the benefit of the doubt.’
‘Maybe they know more about what happened than I do.’ I shrugged. ‘Which is only what was on television.’
‘Then let me tell you what we do know. I’d show you some photographs only it might put you off your food.’
I shook my head. ‘I was a soldier in Northern Ireland. Blood doesn’t bother me. At least not any more. Believe me, there’s nothing you could show me that could ever put me off a free dinner at Claridge’s.’
Amalric nodded at Savigny, who reached down to his case and took out an iPad. A few seconds later I was looking at a digital slideshow of the Odéon crime scene: two dead dogs, and a woman – Orla – who might almost have been asleep but for the black and ragged hole in the centre of her Botoxed forehead.
Meanwhile Amalric explained exactly what was known; or at least exactly what was known that he wanted me to know.
‘A week last Friday night, Mr and Mrs Houston had dinner at Joël Robuchon, where they were regulars.’
‘Somewhere else I can’t afford.’
Amalric nodded. ‘While they were there they argued. It was a violent argument. Blows were exchanged. The maître d’ at the restaurant says that Mr Houston twisted his wife’s ear. The doorman says that Mrs Houston hit him with her bag. Soon after this they left, with Mrs Houston in tears. He drove them back to the Tour Odéon in her cream Ferrari. At around 10.30 Mrs Houston took a sleeping pill and they went to bed. Then, sometime between midnight and six o’clock that morning, she was shot at point-blank range in the forehead while she lay in bed. We think he probably got out of bed, fetched a gun and shot her while she was asleep. There’s a burn mark on the skin of her forehead.’
‘There’s no exit wound,’ I remarked. ‘On the news they said it was a nine-millimetre. Only that can’t be right. But for the fact that I know this woman I might say it almost looks like a neat job. There’s hardly a hair out of place on this body. A nine-mill bullet would certainly have blown off the back of her skull, not to mention the fact that the pillow would have been covered in blood.’ I shrugged. ‘By the way, that’s the writer in me talking, not the murder suspect. Just so you know.’
‘You’re right,’ said Amalric. ‘It wasn’t a nin
e-millimetre pistol that killed her.’
Amalric glanced over the top of the iPad and, with a neatly manicured finger, moved the picture on to a shot of a smallish pistol. ‘That’s a Walther 22-calibre automatic,’ he said. ‘The same kind of gun that probably shot Mrs Houston. Mr Houston bought just such a gun in Monaco six months ago. We think it was probably bought for and owned by her. It’s now the only gun missing from what was, after all, a substantial gun cabinet.’
I glanced again at the dead dogs, where considerably more blood was in evidence. It looked like a photograph from a press ad for the RSPCA.
‘The Walther has a ten-shot magazine,’ said Amalric. ‘He used four more shots on the dogs, possibly to silence them, I don’t know.’
‘Four shots? Then I’d say whoever shot the dogs enjoyed it.’
‘Why do you say so, monsieur?’
‘They were small dogs. Two shots for each one. That’s a little excessive. Like he was making sure they were dead. But to be quite frank with you, I think he might have enjoyed it, because I know that I would have enjoyed it. Those two dogs were a bloody nuisance. Not just the noise they made. But the hair they left on your clothes. Nor were they properly house-trained. John was always stepping on the crap they left around the house. It used to drive him mad that they weren’t properly house-trained and so he did his best to have nothing to do with them.’
‘I thought all English people love dogs,’ said Amalric.
‘Whatever gave you that idea? Anyway, I’m Scottish. And I thought they were a bloody nuisance.’
‘Then perhaps the real motive behind her murder was to kill the dogs,’ said Savigny. ‘The husband shoots the wife because he really wants to shoot the dogs.’
Amalric shot him an impatient sort of look.
‘Stranger things have happened,’ said the younger policeman.
Amalric shrugged. ‘At about 8.30 on Saturday morning the concierge knocked on Houston’s door and gave him the English newspapers. According to him Houston seemed quite normal. Neither Mr nor Mrs Houston was seen all day, but that wasn’t unusual. At around 5.30 in the evening Houston left the building on foot. He was out until about 7.30. He remained in the Tower until about midnight, when he went away in his Range Rover. He hasn’t been seen since. Meanwhile the body of Mrs Houston was found on Tuesday morning by the maid.’