by Philip Kerr
I went into my study and checked my emails and read a bit while Orla had a bath. Then she took the sleeping pill so I knew she would be soundly asleep for several hours. Which left me with ample opportunity to do what I often did when she took Halcion, which was to go out again; at least out of our apartment – which, as you may remember, is the sky duplex on the forty-third floor of the Tour Odéon – and down to an apartment on the twenty-ninth which is occupied – for the time being – by a friend of mine, a girl called Colette Laurent.
At least it was; Colette Laurent seems to have disappeared.
Until the night of Orla’s death I’d been seeing her for a while. Colette was originally set up in the Tour Odéon by a Russian oligarch called Lev who abandoned her, although it’s hard to imagine why, because girls don’t come looking any more spectacular than Colette Laurent. I used to see her in the Odéon’s gymnasium and it was lust at first sight on my part. One day we got talking. She’s a French-Algerian who looks a bit like Isabelle Adjani. Tall, shapely – I mean she had tits to die for, real ones – and as fit as a butcher’s dog. After we got to know each other a little better I agreed to offer her some help with her English and at first that’s all that happened. Everything was above board between us for almost a month – I mean it was like the matchmaker was keeping her beady eye on us; but I’m only human and one thing led to another and before very long we were sleeping together at least once or twice a week. At first it was only on the boat, but one day Orla showed up and almost caught us at it; after that I only saw Colette at her Russian’s apartment in the Tour or occasionally in Paris: she’d fly up for the weekend to the house in Neuilly-sur-Seine, when there was no one working there. It was an arrangement that suited us both because her job left her with little opportunity or energy for a social life. Colette was a yoga teacher and a masseuse and in Monaco that can keep you very busy; it’s possible to make at least a thousand euros a day. But I’d also give her a bit of money now and then, just to tide her over when the poor thing had to miss a client to see me.
On what turned out to be my last night in Monaco there was nothing that seemed at all unusual. At about 11.30 when I was satisfied Orla was genuinely asleep – she snored – I swallowed a tablet of Cialis and armed with nothing more than a cold bottle of Dom I took the stairs down to the twenty-ninth floor, which is what I always did – to avoid nosy-parker neighbours and the CCTV. No one ever takes the stairs in our building. Most of the other residents would need a defibrillator if they climbed into their beds a bit too quickly. But not as quickly as I did when I saw Colette. She was wearing a baby-doll nightdress that was as light as a summer morning mist and I spent a very happy thirty minutes mapping every inch of her fabulous body. And before you say anything, old sport, yes, I know, it was a dreadfully deceitful and underhand thing to do, like something from the pages of the Decameron. Peronella, is it, who tells her husband how to clean a large wine jar that he’s inside while she’s being fucked from behind by her lover? That’s what it was like. I really do feel ashamed of myself; and yet I know I’d probably do it again if I ever got the chance. That’s the funny thing about being a bloke; to some extent we’re ruled by our pricks. I’ve tried to understand it but I’m afraid I still haven’t found a better description of male-pattern sexuality than what John Lewis says in That Uncertain Feeling by Kingsley Amis when he asks himself why he likes women’s breasts. ‘I was clear on why I liked them, thanks, but why did I like them so much?’ That’s it, in a nutshell. We know we shouldn’t fuck around but we do and then end up rather pathetically feeling ashamed of what we’ve done and hoping for the best. You might just as well call the male libido Russia and say that it’s a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma.
At about two o’clock I went back upstairs to my own apartment. Again, nothing seemed unusual. No, that’s not quite true. I stepped in some dog shit; the dogs – who slept in Orla’s dressing room – were always crapping in the apartment and I spent the next ten minutes tracking it down and cleaning it off the fucking carpet before I went back into the bedroom. As usual our bedroom was like a fridge so I put on a T-shirt and some pyjama bottoms, slipped into bed and went straight to sleep. I awoke at about 7.30, got up, made myself a cup of tea and cleaned some more dog shit off the carpet. I bet the cops loved that. Traces of fucking bleach all over the place as if I’d tried to clean away something incriminating. Anyway, at that stage, as far as I was aware, Orla was still asleep. Again, there was nothing unusual about that. After she’d taken a sleeping pill it would have been quite usual for her to have slept through until about eleven. I had a shower and went into my study to work, like I always did. I emerged at around two and was a little surprised to find Orla wasn’t around. It simply didn’t occur to me that she was lying dead in our bed. I assumed she must have gone out somewhere. And besides, I couldn’t hear the dogs. If that sounds at all unlikely you have to remember that this is an apartment that’s twelve hundred square metres, which is about five tennis courts.
I made a bite of lunch, watched a bit of TV and then went back into my study for a couple of hours. At around five I came out again and still finding no sign of Orla I called her mobile to find out where she was, and when I heard it ringing in her dressing room I realized something was very wrong, especially when I came across the bodies of her pet dogs. It was only now that I went into the bedroom and found her lying just as I had left her earlier that day, facing the curtains and away from my side of the bed. I drew the curtains and saw that she’d been shot at close range, as if she’d been executed. My own gun – a twenty-two calibre Walther – was lying on the floor. Orla’s skin was cold to the touch and it was clear she’d been dead for several hours.
For a while I just sat there on the floor beside her body and wept like a baby. I was horrified. It’s a sight that will stay with me for as long as I live. Every time I close my eyes I can see her beautiful face and the bullet hole in the centre of her forehead, like a dreadful caste mark. I hope to God it never happens to you that you see something like that. The only consolation I have is that I’m certain Orla was asleep when it happened and that she could have experienced neither fear nor pain. After a while I took off my shirt and covered her beautiful face with it, almost as if I wanted to preserve her dignity and give Orla some privacy from those who were going to come into our home now and look at her. Crazy I know. After all the crime scenes I’ve described in my books you’d think I’d know exactly what to do. But in truth I wasn’t thinking straight at all. The cliché ‘I was beside myself’ describes me very well; it was like I was hardly functioning in my own skin. My hands and my feet hardly seemed to belong to me at all. I remember pouring myself a stiff drink and going out onto the balcony to get some fresh air before I called the police. For a while I watched the swallows dive-bombing the air for insects near the top of the tower; out in the sea a pod of dolphins was clearly visible in the water; and I wondered how it could be such a beautiful evening when one of the most beautiful women in the world had just died so horribly.
I picked up the phone and was about to call the police and then it dawned on me that Orla must already have been dead when I returned from Colette’s apartment. Clearly I must have got into bed with a corpse. It was obvious that the only time Orla could have been murdered was when I was downstairs with Colette, but I didn’t think the cops were going to buy that. The more I thought about it the more I realized that I was about to become their number one suspect: my wife, my bedroom, my gun, my opportunity and, I dare say, with a little help from the staff and customers at Joël Robuchon, my motive, too.
I considered calling Ince & Co, who are my lawyers in Paris and Monaco, and asking their advice about what to do next; but then I decided to go down to Colette’s apartment and discuss what to do with her. She was my alibi for the time that Orla had been murdered after all, although the precise time of death was going to be difficult to prove. Of course, my alibi in such an alluring shape as Colette was equally problem
atic; there’s nothing cops like more than a lover’s triangle.
I had a key to Colette’s apartment but she wasn’t at home. That wasn’t unusual, she often worked on a Saturday. I was going to call her on my mobile and then changed my mind on the assumption that, if I was arrested by the police, my call would probably incriminate her. I tried to use Colette’s landline but for some reason it wasn’t working, so at around 5.30 I walked out onto the Boulevard d’Italie and called Colette’s mobile from a payphone next to the BNP Paribas bank. Again, I wasn’t alarmed that she didn’t answer. I assumed she had a client and that she would be free to talk on the hour. I walked a bit further down the boulevard to an Italian restaurant called Il Giardino, had a coffee and then called her again at exactly six o’clock. Several times, without reply. I called her again at seven and when she still didn’t answer I went back to the Odéon where I checked her car-parking space and saw her car wasn’t there. I went back to Colette’s apartment and it was now, as I searched the place for some clue as to where she might have gone, that I made a very unwelcome discovery: an empty bottle of Russian Shampanskoye in the very same ice-bucket I’d used to chill the Dom. You know? That awful sweet fizz that Russians call champagne and that frankly only they find palatable. When I first saw it I thought it was the Dom. But as soon as I realized what it was it was clear that someone else had visited Colette after I had left her and that more than likely this someone was Russian.
You might wonder why a man whose wife had just been murdered would devote any thought to something as trivial as a bottle of Russian champagne.
I can assure you it wasn’t out of jealousy. After seeing the bottle of Russian champagne I decided to take a good look around the apartment and see what else I could find. In the wastepaper bin I came across an empty packet of Russian fags. And some other stuff, too. A book. A newspaper. The Moscow Times. And it was now that I began to consider the frightening possibility that Colette’s former boyfriend, Lev Semyonovich Kaganovich was now back from Russia and had returned to his apartment. Thinking I’d better make myself scarce, I went back up to my apartment, made myself a drink and considered my options.
Was it possible that Lev’s arrival back in Monaco was connected with Orla’s death? Was it possible that Lev had intended to frame me for my wife’s murder? Not for a moment did I think that Colette had killed Orla by herself. The only time I’d been out of my apartment was when I was with her. I was her alibi, as much as she was mine. But I could hardly ignore the idea that Lev had turned up while I was fucking his girlfriend and perhaps killed Orla in revenge. According to her he was like all Russians – a very violent man with connections in the world of organized crime; I’d only ever started seeing Colette on the understanding that Lev was completely off the scene. But it was now perfectly obvious to me that he wasn’t and before very long I was absolutely shitting myself.
To be honest I’d never been completely satisfied at Colette’s explanation concerning Lev’s protracted absence. According to her, Lev was the kind of man who had a girl in every port and she was required to look after the apartment and him whenever he was in Monaco. But the telephone number she had for Lev in Moscow had been disconnected and the email address he had given her no longer functioned either. The service charge on the apartment in the Odéon was paid up until the end of the year, at which point it looked probable that she would have to leave Monaco and return to her family home in Marseille. I didn’t mind that Colette was obviously looking for someone to replace Lev and that I might be it. I’d already considered the possibility of renting her a small place in Beausoleil. What I did mind hugely was the idea that a Russian gangster might now have me in his sights.
For several minutes I wandered through my apartment in a cold sweat and trying to figure out what to do. I don’t mind telling you, I was sick with fear, old sport. I mean I actually vomited with fear. Since there was no sign of a break-in at my own apartment, it was clear that whoever had killed Orla must have had a key and that more than likely this was the key I had left on the hall table while I was fucking Colette.
Until now I don’t suppose I had even considered robbery as a motive, so I went to the safe and found everything there that should have been there: a couple of thousand euros, some chequebooks, and a few smaller pieces of Orla’s jewellery – all of the decent stuff was in a security box at Jacob Safra’s Bank. None of the pictures were missing. What kind of burglar was it who ignored a decent-sized Picasso on our living-room wall and yet was compelled to shoot a sleeping woman? There were no answers that came my way. Just more questions, and one thing was soon obvious: the only way I had a chance of answering any of them and clearing my name was not to contact the police. Whichever way I looked at it I was squarely in the frame for my wife’s murder, which bore all the hallmarks of a professional hit. For this reason it seemed to me that there was also a very real possibility that I was in danger myself. All of this meant I had to get out of Monaco, and fast.
I packed a bag, returned to Colette’s apartment and waited around in the hope she might come back; I even took a gun with me in case Lev showed up. But by midnight I was convinced that something must have happened to her, too, and the possibility that I might find myself incriminated in two murders seemed all too possible. Perhaps her body was already lying in a cabin in my boat and I’d be kneeling there on the floor holding her body in one hand and a knife in the other like Roger Thornhill in North by Northwest when the cops showed up.
So I went down to the garage, where I got into my car and drove straight here.
CHAPTER 2
Not exactly straight, no; the obvious route from Monaco to Geneva would have been on the A10, via Italy. Instead, I took a much longer route along the coast road west – there are lots of traffic cameras on the A8 out of Monaco – and then north, through the Écrins National Park, to avoid any toll roads. That’s another way they have of tracking you. I mean things have changed a bit since Tom Ripley went on the lam. Not that anyone was looking for me when I got here – and I figured I had seventy-two hours before the maid found Orla’s body – but Interpol can be quite tenacious when it sets its mind to catching someone. There was always a slim chance that the Monty cops would pay the French some serious cash to spend thousands of man-hours combing through CCTV footage of the roads in and out of the principality. Stranger things have happened. I recently read a couple of excellent thrillers by a fellow named Mark Russinovich – Zero Day and Trojan Horse – that really made me think about digital forensics, old sport. Russinovich is a PhD computer scientist and Microsoft Technical Fellow and really knows his stuff. There’s not much the geeks can’t find out with their drones and their satellites and their ‘digital bloodhounds’. You should check him out before you write the next Jack Boardman. Some of that high-tech stuff I put in the outline already looks like an old version of Windows.
Anyway, by the time poor Orla’s body was found in the Tour Odéon I was safely hidden here in Collonge-Bellerive, which really is one of the most private places in the world; forget South America – you could hide the whole of the ODESSA here, in Jerry uniform, too, and no one would be any the wiser. Bob Mechanic – the guy who owns this place – has lived in this house for five years and he’s never even seen his fucking neighbours. For all he knows he could be living next door to Joseph Kony and he wouldn’t have a clue. And he’s so bloody paranoid about being spied on he has his own pet geeks at the hedge fund’s office in Geneva block Google Earth street views; the image that’s on the site right now is at least a year or two old.
When the cleaner turns up I lurk down in Mechanic’s study where she’s forbidden to go in case she ever tries to dust his PC, which is on twenty-four hours a day, and Mechanic loses some important data. I think he must log into it remotely from an internet café on the Ross Ice Shelf to check his trades. Anyway, she’s also the one who fills the fridge, not me. Mechanic had a butler for a while. So, as you can see, this is an ideal place to hide when you’re a wanted
man. It was an ideal place to write, too, which is why I came here in the first place. I just wish I’d stayed on to work through the summer instead of going back to Monty that weekend. I wouldn’t have gone at all, but it was our wedding anniversary – something the cops don’t seem to have noticed. I mean why would I have murdered Orla on her wedding anniversary? If I stayed on here in Switzerland then perhaps none of this would have happened. I wrote at least thirty thousand words of The Geneva Convention before Orla was murdered. Frankly, it’s the best work I’ve done in a long time. Seriously, old sport, if you want to drive life and all its attendant cares into a remote corner, forget Walden Pond, this is it. This is what I call a writer’s retreat. You can really think in a place like this, which is all I’ve been doing, of course, since I left Monaco.
*
I paused and waited for Don to say something. His habitual demeanour is always pretty calm and unflappable, as befits a former army officer with two tours of Northern Ireland under his belt. Don’s more of a Guy Crouchback than a Christopher Tietjens, but he was looking even more composed and unemotional than was normal even for him. His fingers were laced and his thick forefingers were touching the end of his square jaw, like a man contemplating a chess move. To my surprise he was still wearing his wedding ring, although Jenny, his wife, gave him the heave-ho more than eighteen months ago. Found herself someone else, apparently – and of all people he was a High Court judge, with a title, so the former Mrs Irvine is now Lady Somebody with a nice house in Kensington and a holiday home in Fiesole. Frankly I think she did him a favour; Jenny was always a bit too fast for old Don. On one occasion she even made a pass at me.
‘I can imagine,’ was all he said.