by Philip Kerr
Her apartment was small but nicely furnished, if you like that very French idea of modern living, with several armchairs that were more comfortable than they looked and, above a plain hardwood dining table, a sort of chandelier or light-fitting that resembled Jupiter and its four largest moons. On a coffee table in front of the window was a copy of a stick-thin Giacometti figure that had once inspired me – if that’s the right word – to write a television commercial for a building society using a snatch of music from Lou Reed’s Transformer: ‘Take a walk on the safer side, with the Nationwide’. (I’m always haunted by some of the shit I wrote back then.) On another table – somewhat incongruously – there was small pot-plant holder, shaped like a baby donkey with a basket on its back. I guessed the Giacometti copy was the Russian’s and the stupid donkey planter was hers.
Colette opened a bottle of white wine, which we didn’t drink – at least not right away – because then she went into the bedroom and started to undress. I could hardly ignore that as it wasn’t a big apartment and besides, she rather helpfully left the door open. Even I could recognize where this was going now and about that kind of thing I’m usually laughably slow; at least so I’ve been told – by John, of course. I joined her in the bedroom and swiftly removed her panties, just to be helpful. I stood back and looked at her for a moment, as if appraising a work of art, which wasn’t so very far from the truth. She enjoyed being looked at, too, which hardly surprised me, all things considered. And I did consider them. Very carefully.
‘There’s probably a better way of getting even with Houston than this,’ I said. ‘Although right now I’m not at all inclined to try and think of one.’
‘Shut up and fuck me,’ was all she said.
*
John left for Geneva the next day; Orla went to visit her family of Fenian fuck-ups in Dublin. Neither of them knew that I had stayed on in Monaco, at the Odéon, fucking Colette and wondering how to broach with her a subject I’d been thinking about for a while – ever since that day on the autoroute when John had told me he was closing down the atelier. Exactly how do you suggest murder to someone? It certainly doesn’t happen the way it does in Hitchcock – all that Strangers on a Train ‘I can’t believe you’re really serious about this’ crap. No, it was much more like The Postman Always Rings Twice.
As things turned out I hardly needed to bring up the subject of homicide at all. There were lots of small, bitter things that Colette said – ‘I hope his brakes fail’ and ‘I wish she’d just go away and die’, that kind of thing – which persuaded me she was on the same wicked wavelength as me.
And she was scared, of course; scared about what was going to happen to her if John went back to England.
‘I’m thirty-four,’ she said. ‘Nearly thirty-five. That’s old for a girl like me in Monte Carlo. That’s right, I’m old. I used to look in the mirror and think it would last for ever. But it doesn’t. It never does. At my age the choices are fewer for a girl than they are when you’re ten years younger. No, really, Don, I’m not exaggerating. Why have a girl in her thirties when there are so many to be had in their twenties? Believe me, in Monaco, if you haven’t met your grand-père gâteau who’s prepared to take care of you by the time you hit thirty-five then you’re probably lying about your age and spending a fortune in the beauty salon and doing escort work: fucking rich Arabs who use women like Kleenex down here. And sometimes worse than that. This is not going to happen to me. But I really thought I could rely on John. I trusted him, you know. He told me he loved me, and that he would look after me. I do not say that he promised to marry me, but he did say he would take care of me – to help me out with some of my expenses, to help me with my English and to find me an apartment of my own when I have to leave this place. If he leaves Monaco then I’ll simply have to go back to Marseille and get a job somewhere. In a real estate office or a travel company. But shall I tell you what really upsets me?’
‘Yes.’
‘It was when you told me he’d had a vasectomy.’
‘Oh, I see. You’d hoped that you and John might eventually have a child together.’
‘No, not eventually,’ said Colette. ‘As soon as possible. I wanted to have a child and that he would help me to support it. That was the express condition of me becoming John’s lover. At my age your biological clock starts ticking quite loudly. But the fact is I’d been on the pill so long I couldn’t conceive. So I was having fertility treatment at a clinic here in Monaco. Paid for by John and from a doctor he knew personally. Of course that now looks like a complete waste of time, given that John is physically incapable of fathering any more children.’
Colette swallowed with difficulty and then started crying again. I let her weep for a while and then handed her my own handkerchief. She wiped her eyes while I fetched her a glass of water.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said.
‘I said it looks like a complete waste of time,’ she said. ‘But it’s more than that. What he’s done to me is really criminal, I think.’
I nodded but I have to admit it sounded all too typical of John; and I certainly couldn’t blame him for not wanting any more children at his age. I have to say I’d probably have done the same thing myself.
‘Have you any idea of how painful IVF can be?’ she asked. ‘You have to inject hormones into the wall of your stomach. No doubt John had persuaded my doctor not to say anything about his own little problem. It was all a way of keeping me quiet. So now I feel destroyed. Il m’a prise pour une belle connasse.’
An hour or so later, when she was chopping cucumber for salade niçoise, I saw her holding the big Sabatier in a way which made me think that if John had been standing in front of her she would have pricked him with it, right through his cheating heart.
There’s something about the whole idea of murder that just arrives in the atmosphere, unbidden, like a ghost, and starts to shadow everything you do. That’s how it was with us. I knew what she was thinking because after a couple of years in County Fermanagh, when I was operating off-reservation with the Int and Squint boys, I’m a bit like a Geiger counter where that kind of thing is concerned. I only have to detect just a few homicidal particles in the air and I start to amplify that effect. Back then nobody ever said ‘We’re going to kill some left-footers tonight’; nobody had to; it happened as a sort of malign understanding between like-minded people, as if you were playing a rather lethal game of bridge. You might be in a pub talking about football with a few loyalist boys and then, an hour later, opening the boot of a taxi to reveal some trussed-up Mick you and them had snatched off the street; you would have questioned the bastard first, but no one there would have been in any doubt that someone – usually me, as it happened – was always going to trepan the fucker’s head with a bullet. But there are ad campaigns I wrote that I regret more than any one of those killings. For a while, after Warrenpoint, I really learned how to hate.
But on my third morning with Colette we were eating breakfast on the balcony staring out to sea when she finally brought the subject a little more into the open.
‘When you were in Ireland, Don, did you ever shoot anyone?’
I stood up silently and, leaning over the handrail, looked up and then down to see if there was any chance we might be overheard.
Colette shook her head. ‘I’ve never seen anyone on these balconies,’ she said. ‘Most of the people who live here don’t actually live here, if you know what I mean.’
‘Your Russian included.’
She shrugged. ‘I don’t know anything about what happened to him. I tried to ask around – you know, there are lots of Russian girls in Monaco. I even tried to watch the Russian news on TV. But I think he’s dead. I really do. I was desperate. And then I met John. He seemed like the answer to my prayers.’
I sat down and lit a cigarette and waited for her to say something else, and when she didn’t I started to steer the conversation back in the fatal direction I wanted.
‘You were asking me if I
’d ever shot someone. The answer is that I have.’
And then I told her the truth. In fact it all came out; oddly, she was the first person I’d ever spoken about it with. But unlike my wife Jenny, who’d certainly guessed about what I’d done, Colette didn’t look shocked or revolted. In fact, she looked excited, even a little pleased, at what I’d told her.
‘I thought as much,’ she said. ‘My grandfather was in the Foreign Legion. He was in Algiers, in the mid-1950s. And I think he did some bad things there, too. He had the same faraway look in his eyes that you do.’
‘Of course,’ I added, ‘in Algeria and Ireland it was a damn sight easier to get away with that kind of thing. Back in the day, they were finding bodies all over the province. Not just the ones we did, but the ones they did, too. I lost several friends to IRA murder squads. It was like bloody Chicago. They’d hit one of ours and we’d hit one of theirs and so on.’
‘And since then? Have you ever been tempted to kill anyone else?’
I smiled. ‘When I worked at the ad agency there were several account executives I’d cheerfully have killed. One guy in particular. He hated my guts and enjoyed tearing a strip off me in front of everyone. More than once he tried to get me fired. He usually worked late, so one night I waited for him near his car in St James’s Square, close by the office. I was going to kill him but, at the last minute, I changed my mind and gave him a good working over instead. Took his wallet to make it look like a mugging. He was lucky I only put him in hospital. It could so easily have been the morgue. I regretted that a little afterward. Not killing him, I mean.’
‘So, you’re not so squeamish about such things?’
‘Me, squeamish? No. But don’t get me wrong. I’m no psychopath. All of the people I’ve killed really needed killing.’
‘Did you ever want to kill John?’
‘Once or twice, maybe. But not seriously. To be sure, he can be an infuriating man. But now that you’ve suggested this—’
‘You mistake me, Don. I haven’t suggested anything of the kind.’
‘Colette. Please. You’ve every right to feel upset. It’s perfectly normal that you should want to hit back. If something like that happened to me I’d be as angry about it as you are. But I think we both know why you’re asking these questions. And I understand that, too. What he did was quite unforgivable.’
She didn’t contradict any of this. Instead she started to cry. So I put my arm around her and hugged her close, and kissed the back of her neck for a while until she stopped; and then I wiped her eyes with my handkerchief, and stroked her hair.
‘You’ve been through a lot,’ I said. ‘I can tell. I’ve seen it before. And there’s no need to feel ashamed about what’s in your mind right now. Not a bit. However, I’m thinking that John’s hardly the best person to kill in this particular situation. Not if it’s your own future you’re really concerned about.’
‘He isn’t?’
‘No. It seems to me that John is our golden goose. And you don’t kill your golden goose so long as he keeps on laying golden eggs. It’s the giant you want to kill. The giant that owns the goose. The one who collects the eggs.’
Colette thought for a moment, but without any apparent result. It might have been the language barrier or maybe she was even less bright than I thought she was. She looked like I’d handed her a particular fiendish Sudoku puzzle.
‘Who is it who benefits most from all those golden eggs that John lays, right now?’ I asked her patiently.
‘You mean Orla, don’t you?’
We were on the same wavelength, at last.
‘Precisely.’
‘But she hasn’t done anything, to either one of us.’
‘You might think so. But now that I come to think about it, with Orla out of the way a lot of problems – yours and mine – are solved.’
‘They are?’
‘Oh yes. Besides, I’m quite sure it’s her who’s behind this move back to London. This would certainly explain why he hasn’t told you about it. From one or two things he said to me at the time I think it was probably Orla’s idea that they should move back to London, not his, and that he was simply too scared to tell you about it. In some ways she’s a very intimidating woman. And John hates confrontation.’
I paused to allow that to sink in. You have to take a conversation like ours very carefully. There’s no sense in rushing things. It’s like painting an enamel miniature. You need fine sable brushes and a very steady hand.
‘Perhaps, if Orla was off the scene, things might be very different. In fact I’m quite sure of it. For one thing you might even marry John. And once you were married to him you could easily persuade him to restart the atelier. You could get your man and secure your own future and I could get my old job back. John could start earning the top money once more and you could avoid going back to work in a Marseille estate agent’s.’
‘You make it sound very simple. But I don’t think it is that cut and dried, Don. He hasn’t ever mentioned divorcing her to marry me. Not once. Unless he’s mentioned something to you.’
I shook my head. ‘Really, I had no idea about you and him until you mentioned it.’
‘Then I don’t know what we’re talking about. And even if I did, I’m not sure I could marry anyone who has been as deceitful as John has been. I really do want children, you know. Like I told you already, I’m not getting any younger.’
‘And you can have children. You see, I was rather hoping that if you married John then you and I might continue to see each other. That we could be lovers. You might have my child. In fact, you could even conceive right now. I certainly haven’t had a vasectomy. And as far as I’m aware there’s nothing wrong with my fertility either.’
I paused, waiting to see if she would actually be dumb enough to swallow that. Dumb or desperate. Either way, she was.
She brushed my cheek with her fingertips and smiled. ‘I see.’
‘It’s perfectly understandable that you should want to have a future. To have a child. I understand all that. It’s what any normal woman wants, isn’t it? To be a mother?’
I looked at her as tenderly as I could manage whilst suppressing a flash of contempt for John who, when he could have had any woman, had chosen someone so unforgivably stupid.
After a while she said, ‘I still don’t quite see why you need to kill her.’
‘Everything I described just now – about a new start for us both – that can quite easily happen, but only if we kill Orla in a way that makes you John’s only alibi. If we kill her in a way that leaves him as the prime suspect and means you’re his best chance – perhaps his only chance – of staying out of jail.’
By now Colette had told me all about John’s habit of sneaking downstairs from his apartment several nights a week, to fuck her while Orla was asleep; and this had given me an idea which I now described to her in detail. She listened attentively and then nodded.
‘That’s so simple it really might work,’ she said, nodding sagely. ‘You’re very clever, Don.’
I pretended to be flattered.
I nodded. ‘From what you’ve told me, John won’t even notice she’s dead when he gets back into bed. He’ll be so anxious not to wake her that he’ll creep in – as you’ve described – and go straight to sleep. By the time he wakes up in the morning, you’ll be miles away, with your family in Marseille, perhaps. Or better still in Paris. Yes, in Paris, I think. But wherever it is, you’ll wait there for a while, until he’s good and desperate of course, and ready to make a deal, and then you can call to offer him the lifeline. In fact you should offer to say that he was with you for almost the whole night when Orla died. It’s important that you should lie on the record for him. That way he’ll always be in your debt. You can leave it to me to suggest that you and he ought to get married in order to make sure that you never go back on what you tell the police. After all, a wife cannot be forced to give evidence against her own husband.’
Not that it r
eally mattered but I had no idea if this was still true or not.
‘That will make us both look guilty, won’t it?’
‘By then it will be too late. Look here, in the beginning the police will make it rough for you both, but as long as you both stick to your story – that he spent the whole night with you after giving his wife a sleeping pill – then you and he should be in the clear. After all, the autopsy will certainly support John’s story. They’ll find the drugs in her system. And who would give his wife a sleeping pill if he was also planning to shoot her? Why not just give her an overdose and tell the police she had talked of suicide? And who would get back into bed with the body of someone he had already murdered? It just doesn’t make sense, does it?’
‘No, I can see that.’ She paused. ‘How would you kill her?’
‘Do you really want to know?’
She shook her head. ‘No, perhaps not.’
Colette put her feet on the handrail and lit us both a cigarette; she hoovered it into her lungs and then blew the smoke at the sea, where it hung over a little flotilla of boats like a sudden fog.
‘Suppose he doesn’t give himself up to the police after he finds Orla’s body? Suppose he makes a run for it? If he looks as guilty as you say he will, then he might panic and leave Monaco. On his boat. Or in his plane. I think I would, if I was him. Wouldn’t you?’
‘Perhaps.’
‘What then?’
‘Then he’ll still try to call you, Colette. My guess is that in those circumstances you’ll continue to be the linch-pin – the déclic, if you prefer – for his whole future. In fact I should say he’ll be even more desperate to find you than before.’
‘But won’t he suspect that I’ve had something to do with Orla’s murder? Surely I’ll be the obvious suspect in his eyes.’
‘No, not if you think about it logically. Look, before he comes downstairs from his apartment Orla is very much alive, so you’re in the clear then. You’re certainly in the clear while he’s in bed with you here in your apartment, of course. And afterward, when he’s back in bed with her, you’re in the clear then, too. You can hardly murder Orla while he’s lying next to her. He’s your alibi as much as you are his. Don’t you see? That’s what makes it so perfect.’