by Philip Kerr
‘I hope so.’
‘He’s under a lot of pressure to get a result. From the Police Commissioner. And the Minister of Interior. He probably called me because he can’t think of anything else to do. That’s what cops are like when they’re not getting anywhere. They do everything they did before, again, in case they missed something. At least that’s what the clever ones do, and like I said before, Amalric is nothing if not clever.’
‘You’re not just saying that, are you? To make me feel better. Because as it is I’m not going to sleep a fucking wink tonight. My heart feels like a bloody canary.’
‘No,’ I said. ‘It was just a coincidence that he should have called me on the very night we went back to Monaco. Look, if they were really on to us, they’d have arrested us by now, don’t you think? I mean what’s to be gained by not picking us up now? He was on a fucking fishing trip, I’m sure of it. Because of the pressure from the top.’
I was trying to persuade myself of this as much as I was trying to reassure John that everything was all right. I was half inclined to climb in the Bentley and leave Èze as quickly as possible. Suddenly it seemed dangerously near Monaco. But I was dog-tired. Half a bottle of decent rosé will do that to you after a long drive. All I wanted now was to go to bed in a nice air-conditioned bedroom.
But I still had one thing to do.
‘My heart bleeds for him,’ said John.
I laughed. ‘Typical bloody Frenchman though. Always thinking about their cocks. He more or less asked me if I had a mistress. And when I said I didn’t, he suggested I should get one. He sounds like he’s a shagger. A real DSK.’
John frowned. ‘A DSK? What’s that?’
‘Dominique Strauss-Kahn. You know? He was MD of the IMF before he got caught with his trousers down and the French press turned him into Monsieur Cinq-à-Sept.’
‘Oh him, yeah.’ John smiled as light dawned on Marble-head. ‘That’s it, Don, old sport. You bloody genius. I remember now. 0-5-0-7. That’s Colette’s fucking passcode.’
‘You’re not serious.’ I made an innocent face. ‘Really?’
‘That’s what Colette used to call me. Monsieur Cinq-à-Sept. For obvious reasons.’ John was already tapping the number into Colette’s iPad. ‘Brilliant,’ he said. ‘We’re in.’ His smile widened. ‘And here it is. Her list of contacts.’
He scrolled down through the list.
‘This must be it. Didier and Mala Laurent. Boulevard la Savine, in the fifteenth arrondissement. There’s a telephone number.’ John picked up his mobile – the one he’d borrowed from Bob Mechanic – and started to dial.
‘No, wait,’ he said, tossing the phone back onto the table. ‘If she is there and she is involved in some sort of blackmail scam, then I’d just be putting her on alert, wouldn’t I? Better to have this conversation if we’re sitting outside the front door. Might be interesting to see what reaction it provokes.’
‘The fifteenth. That’s northern Marseille, isn’t it?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘There was an article about the Marseille banlieues in the Guardian. Pretty rough area to take a friend’s Bentley.’
John shrugged. ‘So maybe we won’t wash it tomorrow.’
‘But more importantly, have you given any thought to what you’re going to say to Colette when we catch up with her? I mean apart from demanding to know where the hell she’s been for the last two weeks?’
‘No. I can’t say that I have.’
‘Let’s suppose for a moment that she really did have nothing to do with Orla’s murder. In which case she’s probably scared witless that she’s going to be a police suspect, too. It seems to me that she’s not just your alibi, you’re hers, too. In which case it might be better if you were both to say that you spent the whole evening together instead of your just having had a quick shag, like you say you had. In one sense that makes you more of a cunt – the fact that you were prepared to do something like that, under your wife’s nose. But being a cunt doesn’t make you a murderer.’
‘Yes, I can see how that might play.’
‘Then all you’ll have to do is think of a way of making sure Colette stays onside.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘How long have you known her? Less than a year?’
‘Six months.’
I shrugged. ‘If it was me I would want to be sure that she knew that you were going to look after her after this is all over. For a start she’ll need a good lawyer. And she’ll need money. Probably quite a lot of money.’ I laughed and then shook my head as if I’d thought better of saying something.
‘What?’
‘Nothing.’
‘No, go on, say it.’
‘Just that it might actually be cheaper if you married her. When this is all over.’
‘What?’
‘No, think about it. A wife can’t give evidence against her own husband. So if she did ever retract her story, there would be no point.’ I shrugged again. ‘It might actually be a good move. After all, it’s not like you have a wife, is it?’
‘You’re a devious fucker, Irvine. Do you know that?’
I smiled. ‘It has been said.’
CHAPTER 7
‘What’s that book about a road trip?’ asked John.
We were driving west, heading toward Marseille on the busy A8 which, according to the Bentley’s satnav, was a journey of about two and a half hours. I was at the wheel and John had his notebook open on his thigh.
‘There are several. The Hobbit. Travels with Charley.’
‘It’s not The fucking Hobbit.’ John frowned. ‘Travels with Charley. Is that Graham Greene?’
‘Steinbeck. You’re thinking of Travels with My Aunt. Which isn’t a book about a road trip at all.’
‘Think of some others.’
I shrugged. ‘The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho.’
John looked nauseous. ‘Ugh. No. I hate him. That’s a real Richard and Judy book. Zero sugar philosophy for muppets.’
‘The Grapes of Wrath. On the Road.’
‘Kerouac. Yeah, that’s a real life-changing book. After I read it I promised myself I would never waste my time finishing a book I wasn’t enjoying ever again. It’s the kind of road book that would give you road rage.’
I smiled. John’s opinions of books were always amusing.
‘Come to think of it, it’s not a book at all, the story I’m thinking about. It’s Two-Lane Blacktop. A Seventies movie with James Taylor and Dennis Wilson from The Beach Boys.’
‘Haven’t seen it.’
‘Few have. But it’s a cult classic.’
‘What happens?’
‘Not very much. They drive across Route 66 in a ’55 Chevy. Don’t say anything. Get in a couple of races with Warren Oates.’
‘Sounds a bit existential. Not your kind of thing at all.’
‘Nope. It isn’t. But I was thinking. That’s kind of like you and me, old sport. Taylor and Wilson. Except that we’re twice as old as they were in that movie. And this is a much better car, of course. Plus, we’ve got a lot more money. And we don’t have a girl in the back.’
‘Not yet. Maybe we’ll find one on the way.’ I put my foot down. ‘Hey, there’s a green Porsche up ahead. We can race that if you like.’
‘Just keep it to 130.’
We hadn’t driven far past Nice when John noticed a French police car in our mirrors. He turned around in his seat and said, ‘There’s a cop on our tail.’
‘I know.’
‘How long’s he been there?’
‘Couple of miles,’ I said.
‘What’s he doing?’
‘Don’t keep looking at them. It’ll make us look suspicious. Just ignore them.’
‘Easy for you to say.’
‘Easy to say because I’m right.’ I smiled. ‘I know. Let’s play the secret subtitle game. Like we used to do when we were on the road. To keep your mind off them.’
This is a simple game; you give me the
title of some worthy book as if it’s the beginning of a sentence which I complete with something funny; extra marks are awarded for vulgarity and political incorrectness. So, for example, if someone said Farewell to Arms, I might reply, ‘Hello, Stoke Mandeville.’
‘I’ll go first,’ I said. ‘I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.’
John hesitated for only a moment. ‘Because if it doesn’t then we’re going to feed it to the fucking cat.’
‘Excellent,’ I said. ‘Your turn.’
‘And the Mountains Echoed.’
‘With the sound of an enormous fart.’ I thought for a minute. ‘Here’s a hard one for you. Disgrace.’
John smiled. ‘Dat’s Glenda.’ He chuckled. ‘Here’s an easy one. A Million Little Pieces.’
‘Of shit, are what make Kilburn High Road so interesting to walk along. All right I have one for you, John. The Elected Member.’
‘Made the Chinese woman’s vagina wet just to look at it. The Remains of the Day.’
‘Refused to flush away until they found a plumber. How late it was, how late.’
‘Oops. It looked as if she was pregnant after all.’ John smiled grimly. ‘Here’s one you won’t get. The Inheritance of Loss.’
I was quiet for a moment; then I said, ‘Was the leadership of a big band from his father Joe. The Reluctant Fundamentalist.’
‘Was encouraged greatly by the regular application of electricity to his testicles.’
We carried on this childish vein for a while, but after another ten kilometres the police were still there and, despite our laughter, John was now a nervous wreck.
‘What’s their bloody game?’ he said.
‘That’s all it is. A game. Just like ours. You must have encountered this sort of thing before.’
‘No. What do you mean?’
‘When you were making your road trips between Monaco and Paris in your Lamborghinis and Aston Martins. Look, they’re just fucking with us. We’ve got an expensive supercar we can’t drive like an expensive supercar because they’re right behind us. That’s the game. You’ll see, in a few more miles they’ll get bored and move on to someone else.’
‘They’re on to us, I’m sure of it. They’ll probably try to arrest me at the next toll.’
‘You’re paranoid.’
‘I don’t think so. After what you told me last night, about that cop telephoning you, I think the game is up for me, Don. Really I do.’
‘I don’t blame you for being paranoid. But that’s what you are. You’ve got to relax. Close your eyes. Zone out. Pretend they’re not there. Just be calm and I’ll tell you when they’re gone. Look here’s another one. American Pastoral.’
But John wasn’t listening. He delved into the little black Tumi briefcase he’d brought from Geneva and, to my horror, produced an automatic pistol.
‘What the fuck is that?’ I demanded.
‘What’s it look like? It’s Orla’s Walther P22.’
‘Are you crazy?’
‘I’m damned if they’re going to take me without a fight. I can’t spend the next twenty years in jail like Phil fucking Spector.’
‘Put that thing away. You’ll get us both killed.’
‘I fucking mean it, Don. I’m not going to jail. I’m sixty-seven years old. I’d rather go out in a hail of bullets than die in prison.’
I could see he was desperate – desperate enough to do something stupid, and he gave me little choice but to turn sharply off the A8 at the next junction. The cops however stayed on the A8, which left us heading north on the M336 toward St-Paul-de-Vence and me wondering what to do now. But first I needed to get the gun out of John’s hand and him in a slightly calmer frame of mind.
I kept on driving north for about ten or fifteen kilometres. It was an uninspiring landscape typical of the crappy roadside hinterland of the Côte d’Azur: garden centres, Casino markets, builder’s merchants, tyre centres, McDonald’s, car showrooms, petrol stations and banks. The sort of road that makes the south of France look more like a ring road around Hemel Hempstead.
‘They’re gone,’ I said after a while.
‘I know.’
‘The Monty cops said Orla was killed with a 22-calibre Walther,’ I said. ‘Is that the same gun?’
‘Yes.’
‘You brought the murder weapon with you? Shit, John. Are you crazy?’
‘I couldn’t very well leave it on the floor of my bedroom in Monaco,’ said John. ‘There was enough evidence stacked against me already.’
‘Yes, but why didn’t you chuck it in the sea. Or in Lake Geneva?’
‘I told you. I thought Colette’s Russian mafia boyfriend was involved in this. I’m not yet convinced he isn’t.’
‘Fair enough. But put that away, for Christ’s sake, before you shoot someone.’
John put the Walther back in his Tumi.
‘Is it loaded?’
‘Of course it’s fucking loaded.’
I glanced sideways at him.
‘Did you sleep last night?’
‘Not really. I kept thinking that Chief Inspector was about to turn up and put me in manacles.’ He shook his head. ‘Jesus, I need some air.’
‘Why don’t I lower the hood?’
‘Are you kidding? I feel quite exposed enough as it is. Look, let’s stop somewhere. For a coffee.’
‘We’ve been driving for less than an hour.’
‘I know, I know. But – let’s just stop somewhere, okay? Please?’
‘I’ve got an idea. We could have an early Sunday lunch. Perhaps with a glass of wine in you, you’ll relax a bit. Maybe you could have a nap in the car afterward. We could go to the Colombe d’Or, perhaps. That’s not far from here.’
‘No. I couldn’t go there. They know me. I used to go there all the time with Orla.’
‘Of course. Somewhere else then. Somewhere they don’t know you. There’s a café up ahead. With parking.’
John nodded. ‘I’ve got a better idea,’ he said. ‘Head a bit further north, to Vence. We can stop at the Château Saint-Martin. A couple of times I almost went there with Colette. They don’t know me there but I hear they’ve got a pretty good spa and an excellent restaurant. Maybe I can have a massage. I really think that might help. I’ve got a bitch of a tension headache like you wouldn’t believe.’
‘All right. If that’s what you want to do. But I don’t know how you ever made it to Geneva. At this rate we’re never going to get to Marseille.’
‘I know. And I’m sorry. Look, I’ll be a lot better when I’ve got rid of this headache, okay?’
‘Okay, sure.’
The Château Saint-Martin was set amidst the ruins of an old fortress – an antiseptic sort of place in about thirty acres of grounds that looked like any overpriced luxury hotel in Southern California. The lawns were lush and green and so carefully cut they looked less mown than Brazilian-waxed. The Beverly Hills air was augmented by the staff’s ill-fitting beige-coloured uniforms and there was a gift shop selling overpriced silk scarves and straw hats and lots of other stuff including some books you didn’t want. It was the kind of place you went for your second honeymoon and read Fifty Shades of Grey to look for some ideas about how to make your stay more interesting; which was probably why the guests looked so very bored. Several women were doing some yoga in the sun and probably trying to work up an appetite for a light lunch. They were mostly Americans who liked the French but only if they spoke English good enough for them to wish someone a nice day.
John went and booked himself a deep-tissue massage while I sat in the garden restaurant in the shade of some old olive trees and chose a bottle of cold Meursault. Since John was paying I chose the Coche-Dury Meursault 2009, a snip at 500 euros; then I sat and read about another forest fire in The Riviera Times. There are always forest fires in the Alpes-Maritimes and Provence during the summer. This one was in the Forêt de l’Albaréa, near Sospel; 900 hectares of forest and several dozen houses had been destroyed, and the unidentifi
able body of a man had been found. I wondered how badly you had to be burned for your body to be unidentifiable. Sometimes life in France seemed very much more precarious than in England. At last John returned from the spa and I waved over the maître d’ and we ordered some gazpacho followed by two chicken salads.
‘You were a while,’ I observed.
‘Got talking to the girl who’s doing my massage,’ he said. ‘Nice-looking bird so I tipped her in advance.’
‘Why?’
‘To double my chance of a happy ending, of course.’
‘Is that a possibility?’
‘It is now. Besides, she’s from Yorkshire.’ He nodded. ‘From Keighley. If there’s one thing I know about it’s women from fucking Keighley.’
‘That’s a surprise. A girl from Keighley, in a place like this.’
‘Isn’t it?’
‘That’s Brontë country, isn’t it?’
‘It is.’
But when the waiter arrived with our food, we were in for a bigger surprise. Because our waiter was none other than Philip French, who had been the fourth musketeer in John’s atelier of Mike Munns, Peter Stakenborg and myself. And it was only now I remembered that French’s home in Tourrettes-sur-Loup was only a few miles away from Vence and the Château Saint-Martin. If either John or I had ever accepted his invitation to visit him there, we would have known that and perhaps avoided the area altogether.
French regarded us both, but more especially John, with something close to loathing before laying the chicken salads very carefully on the table.
‘Bon appétit,’ he said quietly.
‘Christ, Philip,’ said John. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘As you can see, I’m your fucking waiter.’
‘Yes, but why?’
‘I should have thought that was obvious. I need the money, that’s why. I have bills to pay. I can no longer do that with my writing because no one will publish my work. Rather more to the point, what are you doing here? You’re the one who’s wanted for murder by the police. Or was that just some cheap publicity stunt to help you sell more crappy books?’
‘No. Orla’s dead. I really didn’t do it, Phil. I give you my word. Whatever you think of me, I’m not a murderer. We’re on our way to Marseille. To look for someone who’ll help to clear me I hope.’