by Philip Kerr
‘Perhaps. But did you stop and think about what might happen to me if you killed yourself?’
‘Oddly enough, I didn’t.’
‘Perhaps you should have done. You might have considered the job I’d have explaining to Plod just how it is that a man who everyone thought to be dead happens to be hanging in my bloody orchard like a Cox’s Orange Pippin? No, I thought not. They’d have fucking nicked me for sure. I’d be in Vine Street Magistrates Court right now, facing extradition.’
‘I can think of worse fates than a nice prison cell in Monaco.’
‘Don’t forget, two of those homicides occurred on the Côte d’Azur, so for helping you to escape justice the French police could probably claim priority for my extradition over the Monégasques. And I bet the Monty cops would be quite glad to yield authority to the French cops. It would save them the problem of having an embarrassing trial. I may not be nearly as famous as you, but the death of your wife still generates a lot of press. And while a cell in Monty might sound okay to you, the one at Les Baumettes isn’t quite so appealing.’
‘Les Baumettes?’
‘It’s a prison near Marseille. According to the Daily Telegraph, the EU justice minister has described it as a living hell and the most repugnant prison in Europe. The next time you feel like sending yourself to heaven, just remember that at the same time you’ll be sending me to hell.’
‘Point taken.’
‘Look, old sport, it’s bound to seem a little quiet down here at first. But things will get better.’
‘You mean I’ll get used to it being shit here.’
‘Yes. If you like. Please, John. Promise me you won’t try anything like that again.’
‘Yeah, all right. Anyway, it’s not something I want to try again. Hanging myself, I mean. It’s not all it’s cracked up to be.’
‘Thanks.’ Don nodded. ‘It’s difficult enough keeping you a secret as it is. But now the fucking hospital is wondering just how it is that you have no medical records.’ He grinned. ‘Next time pull the bung out of your boat while you’re out at sea. Like Maxim de Winter. No body means no awkward fucking questions.’
‘It didn’t exactly work out for him, did it?’
‘No. But he was an amateur. And besides, Rebecca left a note. I trust you won’t be so careless.’
‘Thanks, I’ll bear that in mind.’
What is especially touching in retrospect is the way Don was so upset about my wish to die; indeed, he took it very personally, almost as if he had become my guardian, and I realized just what a true friend he is. Anyway, I’m over that now. I hardly ever think about suicide and I’m settling into life down here, like the rain.
Tonight I shall probably listen to Little Dorrit again on CD. There are passages in that book I can never hear without the temptation to weep.
DON IRVINE’S STORY
PART THREE
It’s a tiny apartment I have in Monaco – about the size of a postage stamp – but that’s okay. You don’t own an apartment in Monaco to live large but to save millions in tax. There’s just a bedroom, a sitting room (which serves as my office), a bathroom and a kitchen area. It’s nicely decorated though; Le Point magazine are going to do a little spread on it, and me. It’s a far cry from the sort of penthouse that John used to own in the Tour Odéon, but this apartment cost less than a tenth as much as that one did and does me for now. The pre-war, cream stucco building occupies the corner of the Rue des Violettes, and my apartment is on the second floor, above a chicken and pizza restaurant, which sounds awful but is actually quite handy given the size of my kitchen. From my bedroom window you can see across a picturesque series of steps that lead up onto Rue des Roses, and straight into the sitting room of the apartment opposite. It’s not very private but at this price I can’t really complain. Not when I consider how much money I’ll be saving when, eventually, I move out of London and live here permanently. The apartment opposite is owned by a woman who I think must be a prostitute; she spends ages getting ready to go out and all sorts of men seem to visit her at various times of the day and night. People-watching: it’s one of the things that make Monaco so fascinating. At night the delivery motorcycles for the chicken and pizza restaurant can get a bit noisy as they rev up like angry mosquitoes; and the electrical wholesaler next door to the chicken and pizza place seems to open pretty early in the morning when several white vans collect outside to load up with various bits and pieces; but that’s just the penalty you pay for living in an interesting part of town. Other than that, everything is working out just fine.
Whenever I’m in Monaco I’m always up early to catch the best of the day; so, most mornings at around six o’clock, I put on a pair of Bose noise-cancelling headphones and start writing on my iMac. I work through until midday, when I go to Le Neptune Plage, which is a private beach on Larvotto. In the summer Le Neptune is always busy and it’s usually advisable to reserve a sunbed, which costs about twenty euros a day. That’s where I eat my lunch. I have the set menu, which is about forty euros. They know me there and I like that. The water is nice but right now it’s best not to swim at all because of the many jellyfish. I stay at Le Neptune until about four, when I go and do another five hours at my desk before going out again to have dinner somewhere. Usually I go to the Hôtel Columbus, which is a pleasant half-hour walk – if you don’t mind all the tourists. You get used to them – even the large coaches that deliver them in their hundreds just outside Casino Square. Anyway I’m not really here often enough to mind them very much. My books are already published in forty-seven languages, so I’m frequently touring a new title abroad. It’s a rare month when I don’t have to go to another country to promote something; this year I have a book being published somewhere, in translation, every week.
It’s all a marked contrast to my life in Putney, where I have a penthouse flat in Putney Wharf Tower that overlooks the river, and which is where I conduct my business when I’m in London. It’s there that I have meetings with Neville – the web-master I’ve employed to look after my Facebook, Twitter and website – and Tiffany – the PR person who I have on a monthly retainer to handle all my print and broadcast media publicity. The first thing I do every morning is send Neville a little publishing or philosophical aperçu that he can put up on my Facebook page. These are especially popular in France. Don’t ask me why but they love me in France. Right now I have two books on Le Nouvel Observateur’s list of top twenty bestsellers.
Naturally, when I’m in London I see a lot of my new agent, Hereward – I sacked Craig Conrad – and the small but dedicated team at VVL who are now publishing my books. Of course, I have contractual approval of all jacket designs and I write all my own blurbs for the VVL catalogues. On the back of a television sale that CAA – my film and television agents in Los Angeles – have made, Hereward predicts great things for us in the spring of next year. HBO bought my latest book, Devils Offended, while it was still in manuscript. So I’ve taken on Peter Stakenborg to pen one of my future titles, as the pressure to tour the books often means that I now have less and less time to write them; and I’m looking for an additional writer, which ought to be easy enough; the state of British publishing means there are plenty of good writers around who nobody wants to publish any more. What with writing, dealing with an almost endless series of editing queries, book tours, and general publicity, I find I have little or no time to myself.
And, of course, once a month I have to drive all the way down to Cornwall to see John, to collect a new story outline or an edited manuscript for submission to the publisher, and to try to keep him sweet, of course. Which isn’t easy. John always was an awkward customer, even when we were working in advertising. Fortunately, if ever I have need of such a thing, I have a fail-safe guarantee to ensure his continuing cooperation: a plastic bag containing some forensic treasures incriminating him which would certainly be of interest to the Monty police.
He still asks questions about what happened in Monaco and France. H
ow was it that Phil and Colette ever met, since John only ever saw the former in Paris and never in Monaco? Why was Colette killed at all? Why didn’t they try to get in contact with him to extract some sort of ransom in return for an alibi? And how was it that Phil – who had studied theology before becoming a copywriter and had even once considered entering the priesthood – could become the kind of person who was capable of murdering two people in cold blood?
‘Listen,’ I said. ‘Half of the SS were judges and lawyers.’
‘That you can understand. But a priest is something else.’
‘Priests can kill, too,’ I insisted. ‘I wouldn’t let the fact that Phil studied theology persuade you otherwise. History is full of priests who were also killers. The Templars. The Holy Inquisition. Josef Stalin.’
‘Stalin was a priest?’
‘He certainly trained to be one. At least according to Simon Sebag Montefiore’s biography, Young Stalin. You should read it. Besides, if our latest novel is to be believed, anyone is capable of murder. Any man, at least. Isn’t that what we were saying? That it’s quite normal for men to kill. That it’s a rare moment in history when men aren’t killing each other. That this is why we have wars. That war is not, as Clausewitz says, the continuation of politics by other means but rather a normal expression of male psychology. This was the premise of your storyline; and a jolly good one, too, if I may say so. We’re going to make millions off that book when it gets on the telly.’
‘I’m just saying that you wouldn’t have tipped Phil to become a murderer,’ said John. ‘But you, on the other hand … You must have fired your SLR in anger when you were in Ireland.’
‘For sure. I’m not sure I ever hit anything, mind.’
‘Orla thought different. She always said you had a dark past. That she’d had you checked out by someone who used to be an IRA intelligence officer, and that you’d been with some secret black ops outfit in the late Seventies.’
‘Did she? I never knew.’
We were in the sitting room, in front of the wood stove which was blazing away; it might have been summer in Europe but in Cornwall it was something else; I always felt you need a fifth season to properly describe the climate in Cornwall. I’d brought some new books and some good wine and a box of the cigars that John liked and was now enjoying.
‘Were you?’
‘Oh yes.’ I grinned. ‘Can’t you tell? I’m a natural born killer. That’s why I became a writer. Kill your darlings. Isn’t that what they say? Well, I do. And I have. And I enjoy it.’
‘But you do know guns.’
‘Everyone who’s been in the British army knows guns. It comes with the job, John. It’s called basic training. And you were the one with the gun collection, not me. Orla might still be alive if you hadn’t given her a bloody gun for Christmas. She was shot with her own gun, wasn’t she?’
‘That’s another thing. How the fuck did Phil know where it was?’
‘You must have told him.’
‘I don’t remember it.’
‘John, when we had the atelier in Paris you used to say all sorts of things you probably don’t remember now. I do remember you telling us all you’d bought her a gun for Christmas. You even told us what kind of gun it was. You made a joke about it. Frankly, I was a little surprised that Mike Munns never mentioned it in that hatchet job he did on you in the Daily Mail. He managed to mention everything else about you that was incriminating.’
‘Which one? The piece that followed on from Orla’s death? Or mine?’ He shook his head. ‘I don’t remember making a joke about my buying her a gun.’
I nodded. ‘You said you’d bought her two things for Christmas. A new Ferrari and a gun. And if she didn’t like the Ferrari you would fucking shoot her. Words to that effect.’
‘I really said that?’
I nodded.
‘Jesus. I can just see that one playing in court.’
‘Exactly.’ I shook my head. ‘Anyway, you said you bought it for her because she got nervous when you went away on book tour. Therefore, it wouldn’t be such a stretch of the imagination to suppose that she kept it in the bedside drawer.’
‘No, I suppose not. But look here, Phil loved dogs. He used to have a dachshund and a beagle. At least before Caroline took them back to London. I can’t imagine him shooting the boys any more than I can imagine him shooting Orla herself.’
‘Someone shot them.’
‘That they did. And perhaps we’ll just have to await the book to find out what really happened. And then the inevitable film of the book for television.’
‘What book?’
‘I thought you knew.’
‘Knew what?’
‘That Mike Munns is writing a book about the murders. Mike Munns. You didn’t know?’
‘A book? What kind of book?’
‘A true crime story. That’s the sort of thing he does these days.’
‘True crime?’
‘Yes. His book is about me and Orla and Phil and Colette. About you, too, for all I know.’
‘Me? I can’t see why he’d want to write about me.’
John shrugged. ‘It’s called The Man Who Shot the Bitch in Monte Carlo. Good title, don’t you think? If a little unfair to poor Orla. I mean, she could be a bitch. But then what woman isn’t like that sometimes?’
‘Who’s this book for?’
‘For John Blake Publishing. They do a lot of that kind of thing. I don’t think we’re talking about In Cold Blood here. Mike’s no Truman Capote, that’s for sure. Or The Executioner’s Song. No, I imagine it’ll probably be his usual sleazy exposé of life among the super-rich, with plenty of gore and gratuitous sex thrown in. That’s what sells these days. Like that book he wrote last year about the gay Saudi Arabian prince who murdered his man servant. What was that called?’ John snapped his fingers. ‘The Prince and the Toyboy. Which was pretty good, even though I say so myself. He’s a useful turn of phrase, has our Mike. And gratuitous sex and violence was always his strong suit. Anyway, I saw it on Publisher’s Lunch. You know? Today’s publishing news and gossip that’s on the web. Who knows? He might actually find something out. Something the police missed, perhaps. I wouldn’t be surprised. Mike is quite tenacious when there’s a fast buck to be made.’
‘Yes, he might. And he is.’
‘Now that’s one publishing party I’d like to go to. Just to see the look on his face as I ask him to sign my already redundant copy.’
‘He hasn’t been in touch with me about a book,’ I said. ‘And I’m sure Peter would have mentioned it if he’d asked him to help.’ I shook my head. ‘Matter of fact, I haven’t seen him in ages. Last I heard he and Starri were living in Brighton.’
‘Perhaps he figures neither of you trust him enough to help him.’
‘I don’t. And nor does Peter.’ I lit a cigarette. ‘But what the fuck does he know about what happened? He doesn’t know anything.’
‘Nor do you,’ said John. ‘At least that’s what everyone believes.’
‘I haven’t spoken to him since we had lunch in Wandsworth, on the Tuesday Orla’s death was on the TV. Not after that stitch-up piece he did on you. And it’s not like her family would have helped. Not with a title like that. They’re not the kind of people you’d want to betray. So. It has to be a cuttings job. Returning to his own vomit. Speculation. Without speaking to you, or me, he has nothing. The only other people who knew anything are dead. Orla. Colette. Phil.’
‘Maybe the copper is going to offer some new ideas. Chief Inspector Amalric. Do you ever see him around? In Monaco?’
I shook my head.
‘He doesn’t know anything either. He couldn’t know anything. Could he?’
‘Don’t ask me, old sport. I’m dead.’
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