by Philip Kerr
‘The house? About a million euros. Which was pretty much all he had saved. I haven’t seen the place myself. But I understand he’s had to take a local job, as a waiter, to help with the maintenance.’
‘That’s too bad. But what about the redundo money I gave him?’
‘Most of that went to pay the builders for the swimming pool he’d had built.’
‘That’s too bad,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry.’
Don shrugged. ‘It’s not your fault, John. No one asked him to buy that house. Or install a pool. Frankly, a freelance writer should know better than to buy anything like that. What did Robert Benchley say? The freelance writer is a man who is paid per piece or per word or perhaps.’ He shrugged. ‘Is that it, then? The sum total of the strange things that have happened to you while you were in Geneva?’
‘You think I’m paranoid, don’t you?’
‘I can see why you think there might be a connection. If someone was trying to scam the Mechanism fund then it might be useful to have Bob Mechanic – or even someone who looked like Bob Mechanic – out of the way. One way or the other.’
‘But actually that’s just the half of it,’ I said.
Don smiled. ‘I don’t suppose there’s a shaggy dog around here, is there?’
‘Not so much as a bloody campfire,’ I admitted. ‘This is all on the level, unfortunately.’
‘And what you’re going to tell me now – this also happened in Geneva? Is that right?’
I nodded. ‘There’s a club in the Calvin district of Geneva called the Baroque, popular with Middle Eastern types. I don’t know why I went there. Yes, I do: Mechanic said that there were always plenty of beautiful girls in the Baroque. They have these girls called ambassadors, although for what, I’m not quite sure, since they never seem to want to negotiate anything, if you know what I mean. There was one girl called Dominique who worked there who had a body from your best wet dream: not so much an hourglass figure as a twenty-four-hourglass figure. Anyway, it must have been about two or three in the morning and there was a guy on the next table who seemed to have gathered quite a crowd of girls around him, which was hardly surprising given the size of the bottle of champagne on his table. He seemed to be Indian or Pakistani – I wasn’t quite sure, at the time – and he was accompanied by a couple of bodyguards. Anyway, he was having a good time – a better time than me – and I was just about to call it a night when he put his feet up on the table and I noticed his shoes. The heels of his white loafers were encrusted with diamonds, Don. And if that wasn’t bad enough he seemed to be looking not at the girls, who were all very pretty, but straight at me.’
I paused, assuming that Don would realize why this was significant. He didn’t.
‘Don’t you remember? The character of the arms dealer, Dr Shakil Malik Sharif, in Ten Soldiers Wisely Led? He had diamond-encrusted crocodile leather shoes, too. They were especially made for him by Amedeo Testoni at three million dollars a pair.’
Don shrugged. ‘So?’
‘Maybe I never told you, old sport, but Dr Shakil Malik Sharif was based on a real guy – someone who people told me about when I was doing my research in Islamabad. You know how it is with me and research. I like to make things as accurate as possible. I become my characters. If my characters are involved in a dodgy arms deal then you can bet your bottom dollar that I was involved in one myself. And I was. With this guy’s representative in Islamabad. Now this was a man I never met myself but whose reputation went before him like a troop of Janissaries. His name was Dr Haji Ahmad Wali Khan, and he’s a major player in international arms trading. The South Asian press call him King Khan while the Western media refer to him rather less affectionately as Doctor Death. He owns a company called gunCO which deals in everything from gold-plated handguns to ballistic missiles. I remember when the book was published my Pakistani source – a useful fellow named Shehzad who works at the Serena Hotel in Islamabad – rang me up and said that Khan had recognized the portrait of himself in my book and was none too pleased by it. Or by me. And there he was now, sitting at the next fucking table, and giving me the bad eye.’
‘How do you know it was the same guy? Perhaps Aldo were having a sale of diamond-encrusted shoes that week.’
‘I asked Mehdi, the club manager, and he confirmed that it was Dr Khan and that he was celebrating a major deal with the new government of a flea-bitten, fucked-up somewhere. Not that Khan only deals with governments. It’s said he deals with everyone from Somali pirates to Al-Qaeda Al-Shabaab. That man would sell a gun to Anders Breivik.’
‘Please tell me you got up and left,’ said Don.
‘Of course I did. The only thing is that to book a table at the Baroque you have to give your name and address and mobile number, right? So it’s quite possible that if Khan did recognize me, he could easily have persuaded the club to give him my address here in Collonge-Bellerive.’ I shrugged. ‘Which must have been what happened, because a couple of days later I went out to the wheely bin on the other side of the front gate here to put a bag of trash in it and inside, lying on top of the other trash bags, was a copy of my book.’
‘You mean, Ten Soldiers Wisely Led?’
‘Yes.’
‘Ah. A critic.’
‘Critics I can handle. Even that cunt of a woman who used to work for VVL who described me in The Times as a cancer on the face of publishing. What was her name?’
‘Helen Channing-Smith.’
‘Exactly. No, people like that I can take. That’s the game we’re in, after all. Someone doesn’t like your stuff, that’s fine. You read critics, it can make you strong. And my book in the garbage, I can deal with that shit, too. Only someone had given my book the Richard Ford treatment. There was a bullet through it.’
‘I remember,’ said Don. ‘That was Alice Hoffman’s book, wasn’t it? After she gave him a lousy review for The Sportswriter in the New York Times, he shot her book with a 38 and sent it to her in the mail.’
‘It doesn’t matter whose fucking book it was,’ I said. ‘It’s the bullet hole that matters. And by the way this was bigger than a 38. This was a rifle bullet. Maybe even a Barratt 50-calibre. It went straight through the first letter “O” in my fucking surname. Like a scene from Winchester ’73.’
‘And you think that might have been this arms dealer fellow with the diamond-encrusted loafers – Dr Haji Khan?’
‘Don’t you?’
Don shrugged. ‘Maybe. Yes, probably I do. Then again, shooting a book – your book – it’s not like he shot you, is it? It seems to me that if he wanted you dead, he’d have had some hit man shoot you when you went to the gate to put out the trash. Instead of which he told you – rather stylishly, it seems to me – exactly what he thought of you and your book. I mean, hasn’t every writer wanted to do something like that to a critic? I know I have. I always rather admired Richard Ford for doing that.’
‘I thought maybe you’d be a little more sympathetic. You did write Ten Soldiers Wisely Led, in case you’d forgotten.’
‘Yes, but your name is on the cover.’
‘Thanks, old sport.’
‘You know, it has to be said, John, yours is an interesting life. In a Chinese curse sort of way. Much more interesting than mine. If it wasn’t for you the most interesting thing in my life would be my daily newspaper.’
‘To that extent, you’re a typical writer, Don. Being boring is an essential prerequisite to getting any writing done. Whenever I meet creative writing classes I always tell them the same thing: don’t think that to be a writer you have to be like Ernest Hemingway. If you want to write a book don’t do anything, don’t go anywhere, don’t talk to anyone, don’t tell anyone you’re writing a book, just stay home with a pencil and paper. Thanks to my interesting life I may never write again.’
‘I can’t see that happening.’
‘I’m glad you think so.’
‘At the very least you should get a fascinating memoir out of this story. Like Jeffrey A
rcher. He managed to publish three volumes of his prison diaries. They were the funniest books I’ve read in a long time. Made me laugh, anyway.’
‘Oh, I see.’
‘My God, John, you’ve given me a lot to think about. Russian gangsters. Pakistani arms dealers. Boiler-room scammers. Wannabe femmes fatales. Friends in the French DGSE. To say nothing about all of the people Mike Munns identified as your enemies when he wrote that piece of poison for the Daily Mail. Disgruntled publishers and agents and ghost-writers. Irish republicans.’ He frowned. ‘Do tell me if there’s anyone I’ve left out, John.’
‘Yes, I see what you mean, old sport.’
‘I need to think about everything you’ve told me, John. I can’t imagine more plot for plot’s sake outside of a novel by Agatha Christie. You’ve got a whole Orient Express of likely suspects there. I’ll have to spend some time with my own little grey cells before I can suggest your best course of action. Until then I’d like a cognac. Ever since I sat down I’ve been wondering what some of that bottle of old Hine on the drinks tray tastes like.’
I got up and fetched a bottle of cognac and a couple of brandy glasses off the silver tray by the mantelpiece.
‘You’ve a good eye, Don. This is a 1928. And I’m going to have to leave Mechanic several hundred euros when I leave because I’ve already had a couple of glasses of it myself.’
‘From what you’ve told me it sounds like you needed it. So. Let’s talk about this again over a decent breakfast. And I don’t mean a bowl of fucking Alpen.’
We both laughed; for a while we’d both worked on the Weetabix advertising account writing commercials for muesli.
‘It’s not the tastiest hamster food for nothing,’ I said, bowdlerizing the slogan we’d helped to devise.
Don laughed some more. ‘That’s the thing I never get about Mad Men,’ he said. ‘They take all that shit so seriously. We never did. Did we?’
‘Never.’ Still shaking my head, I handed Don a glass of Mechanic’s best cognac and then toasted him. ‘Thanks, Don. You know, I really appreciate you coming here. I don’t know what I’d have done without you.’
‘You already thanked me.’
‘So, I’m thanking you again. If I ever manage to clear my name you won’t find me ungrateful.’
‘All right, but promise me one thing: if you do decide to write a prison diary, don’t for Christ’s sake say that I used to work on the Weetabix account. Come to think of it, don’t mention any of the advertising accounts I used to work on. That kind of shit can follow you around. Remember Salman Rushdie and his naughty but nice cream cakes and his fucking Aero chocolate bars? Of course you do. Everyone does. The poor bastard. Forget the Ayatollah Khomeini and his bloody fatwa, that’s the sort of stuff that can really harm us. Crummy advertising slogans stay with a writer like a dose of herpes.’
CHAPTER 5
In the morning I worked hard in the gym as though trying to punish myself for my earlier crimes and misdemeanours; after all, there were so many; Colette, me going on the lam, me going to the Baroque – what was I thinking of, looking for girls at my age? – me alienating the very people who ought to have been most on my side: Hereward, Bat, Munns, Stakenborg, French – I was spoiled for choice; and severe punishment was what I most deserved. A heart attack after forty minutes on the running machine might have solved all of my problems. And, after I’d checked into a posh Swiss hospital and kept the police and an extradition to Monaco nicely at bay for several more weeks without compromising my own legal defence, I could have engaged a team of private detectives to find Colette Laurent, not to mention some forensic evidence that might even clear me.
Heart attacks were on my mind again when I surveyed the breakfast that Don had cooked in Mechanic’s dauntingly minimalist kitchen: eggs, bacon, sausage, mushrooms, tomatoes, fried bread, buttered toast and plenty of hot coffee.
‘Jesus, Don, you weren’t kidding about breakfast, were you? I haven’t seen so much cholesterol since I left fucking Yorkshire. Do you eat like this in Putney?’
‘Sometimes. At weekends. When I’m on my own. Which is pretty much all the time, these days. Women don’t go in much for the full English any more. Not the ones I know. Not that I know very many. Since Jenny walked out that whole area of my life seems to have been closed down pretty comprehensively.’
‘Perhaps I should have married you instead of Orla. She couldn’t abide the smell of fried food, even when it was what I most wanted in the world. You’d think – her being a Mick – that she’d have liked the smell of a good fry-up.’
‘That and the stink of a fucking petrol bomb,’ observed Don.
‘You old racist, you.’ I grinned. ‘But entirely bloody accurate, of course. She used to cheer when she saw nationalists on the telly throwing Molotov cocktails at the security forces. Can you believe it?’
‘Yes,’ said Don. ‘I can.’
I sat down in front of a generously heaped plate and inhaled happily.
‘Jenny was just the same – about a fry-up,’ said Don. ‘She said the smell of frying bacon and eggs stuck to her hair and to her clothes.’ He shrugged. ‘Not that she had many good clothes. But that’s one of the reasons she left me, I think. To get herself a better wardrobe.’ He sat down and started to eat his own breakfast. ‘Anyway, we ought to have a good meal inside us, when we get on the road.’
‘Are we going somewhere? Geneva’s not exactly a tourist city, old sport. The Ron Jeremy memorial fountain just shoots its load all day and the Rolex factory isn’t much fun unless you’re going to buy a watch. I’d buy you one myself – as a thank you – but I figure the money you brought from London is going to have to last me an unfeasibly long time.’
‘Yes. We are going somewhere.’
‘Where? Do tell? But it will have to be somewhere better than this. I’m feeling just a bit like Le Grand Meaulnes now that the prospect of leaving this particular lost domain has been mooted.’
‘When we first talked, John, you mentioned trying to find Colette Laurent.’
‘Yes. I did.’
‘I think that’s a good idea. I think it’s best to be proactive in this situation. Everything else I can think of involves doing nothing very much except sit here on our arses. You said this girl had family in Marseille, so that’s where I think we should go and search for her.’
‘Okay, Popeye, but the trouble is Marseille is a city of one and a half million frogs and I don’t have an address.’
‘That’s a pity.’
‘But I do know where I could find one. In her apartment.’
‘At the Tour Odéon? In Monaco?’
‘Of course, she might actually be there. Just not answering her phone. Wouldn’t that be interesting? But her iPad was lying on the kitchen worktop when I left. That’s got her diary on it. And an address book. We might also look for her Apple Mac. The one I bought her. If it’s not there we’ll know for sure she’s not dead.’
‘How’s that?’
‘She took it everywhere. It had her whole life on it.’
Don was nodding, thoughtfully. ‘It’s risky.’
I shrugged. ‘Yes, but it’s almost the last place the Monty cops will expect to find me. And after all I still have a key for her apartment. Not to mention a pass for the Odéon’s underground garage. If we wait until this afternoon before we leave, we can arrive in Monaco when it’s dark. There’s less chance of me being recognized then.’
Don shook his head. ‘There’s no question of you going in the building. That would be crazy. You can wait in that wop restaurant around the corner you mentioned before.’
‘Il Giardino.’
‘I’ll go in your building, fetch her iPad from the apartment, and her laptop if it’s there. Then we can get the hell out of Monaco. Spend the night in a hotel in Beausoleil, finding an address on Colette’s iPad. And head to Marseille in the morning.’
‘Using what? Your hired car?’
‘Of course. Why not?’
; ‘We can do better than that, I think. And as a matter of fact, I rather think we should.’
After breakfast I led Don to Mechanic’s garage, opened the side door, and switched on the light to reveal a whole series of Top Gear: Ferraris, Astons, Lamborghinis, Bentleys, there was even a Bugatti Veyron. ‘Bob Mechanic’s an even bigger petrol-head than I am.’
‘Magnificent,’ said Don. ‘It’s like Jay Leno’s garage. Christ, there must be at least a million quid’s worth of cars in here.’
‘Two million. You’re forgetting the Veyron.’
‘He won’t mind if you borrow one of these?’
‘Mechanic is worth at least a couple of billion dollars. He once left a new Porsche Turbo in the car park at Nice airport and forgot all about it. By the time he remembered he’d run up a bill for almost seven thousand quid. So, no, he won’t mind at all. Anyway, I have the best part of two million quid invested in his Mechanism fund. If we wreck his fucking car he can deduct the cost from my year-end dividend. Besides, if we’re going to drive into the Tour Odéon, we’d better do it in a car that looks like it belongs there. And that also means we’d better stay somewhere other than Beausoleil. Èze, probably. I hear Le Château Chèvre d’Or is pretty good. I should think they’re used to smart cars there. And in Marseille, we’d better stay at Villa Massalia; they have an excellent business centre. It actually works, unlike most business centres in France. It’s just the spot to do a bit of research, if necessary.’
‘Makes sense.’
‘We’ll drop your car off at the airport and take the A1 out of Geneva.’ I watched as Don ran his hand along the wing of the Bugatti, open-mouthed with envy. ‘But not this one, obviously. Even in Monaco this will attract a lot of attention. I think we’d better borrow the Bentley. They’re ten a penny on the Côte d’Azur. And unlike the Ferrari the boot offers room for more than just a tart’s clean panties.’
‘One thing before we go, John.’
Don was looking grave again. Resentful, even. To be honest, it was his natural default expression, but on this occasion he had also deployed an accusatory forefinger, like I was a soldier in his platoon who was now on report.