Authors: Philip Kerr
‘With all due respect to Hereward Jones, it’s more
complicated than a midlife crisis or a nervous breakdown.’ I shrugged. ‘John is a complicated man. And you might say that it was an existential choice, although I hesitate to argue such a thing before two Frenchmen.’
‘What do you mean by that?’ asked Savigny.
‘I have to go to the bathroom, first.’
*
On my way to the men’s room in Claridge’s I checked my phone for text messages and thought a little about what I had just said and tried to remember exactly what John had told me before telling everyone else that he was closing the
atelier
. I wanted to get it right for the cops; as Raymond Chandler might have said in
The Long Goodbye
– more realistically, perhaps – it’s advisable not to invent too much when you are talking to them.
I drank some water from the tap – quite a lot – to help keep my head clear; I wouldn’t have put it past the wily Chief Inspector to try to loosen my tongue with fine wine. A mixture of Louis Roederer and Vosne-Romanée was an excellent way of doing it, too; what writer could ever have resisted something as subtle as that? And looking like a fox as much as he did, I didn’t doubt that Chief Inspector Amalric could probably smell a lie with almost as much certainty as he would recognize the bouquet of a good red. Two bottles of hundred-quid Burgundy were probably a much more cost-effective means of conducting an interview than paying someone to operate a polygraph machine.
I drank some more water and then washed my face.
It wasn’t that I was lying – not exactly – but then I’d hardly been honest either because, in spite of what I had told the Chief Inspector, there wasn’t a doubt in my mind that before very long John Houston would telephone me; nor did I have
any doubt that I would never have betrayed him to the Monty cops.
I went back to the table, where I found Savigny had gone and my glass had been refilled with wine. For a moment I left it alone and waited to resume my story.
‘Where’s the sergeant?’
‘He’s gone outside for a cigarette.’
‘Shall I wait for him?’
‘No. Besides, it will be his job to transcribe what’s on the tape. I mean the digital recorder. He will hear everything you say again soon enough. That’s another reason I brought him to London. Savigny’s English is almost as good as mine. His mother is Canadian. From Quebec City.’
‘I thought they spoke French in Quebec.’
‘Oh, they do. But Didier’s mother was raised to be bilingual. And so was he. So, I think you were about to tell us about John Houston’s existential choice.’
‘I was only going to say that money gave John an enormous amount of freedom. He was free to behave like a fool. Free to marry, several times. Free to have many homes, and fast cars, and even faster mistresses. He was free to be his own boss, to say yes, to say no – free to be and to do whatever he liked. And yet, in the end he wasn’t free at all. I think it was the fifteen-book contract with VVL that did it. One morning John woke up with the idea that he was a prisoner not just of that but everything else too. It was the responsibility of his position as an employer and the sense that so much was riding on him that began to weigh on him.’
‘
Noblesse oblige
,’ said Amalric.
‘Perhaps. At least that’s what he told me. As a matter of fact I think it was me he told before anyone else.’
‘Told you when? How?’
‘We were on the autoroute, driving to Paris from Monaco early one morning about three months ago in an Aston Martin Vantage, ostensibly to discuss a book I was writing for him called
Dead Red
. But he’d been quiet and I could sense that something was bothering him, not least because he was driving below the speed limit. I thought it might have something to do with what I’d written and asked him about that, but he said it wasn’t, and finally he told me what was on his mind:
‘It seems only fitting that you should be the first to know, old sport.’
‘First to know what, John? Are you ill?’
‘No, but thanks for asking, Don. You were always the one who I could talk to like a friend. It’s just that I’ve had enough of all this – I’ve had enough of producing six books a year. I’ve had enough of overseeing websites, supervising blogs about my wonderful life and my books, employing all these fucking people, the marketing meetings in London and New York with VVL. I’ve had enough of agents, fucking agents. Did you know that Hereward drives a fucking Rolls-Royce? The other day I read an interview with him in
The Times
, and there he was pictured sitting astride the bonnet like he was Tom fucking Jones. The self-importance of the man staggered me; he talked like everything he’d achieved was by his own hard work; and like somehow I owe everything to him. He went on and on about his legendary New Year’s Eve parties at his legendary Windsor house with his smart lefty fucking friends. I thought, “What a cunt”, and “That cunt is your agent”; and then I thought, “Let’s see what happens to your legendary Windsor house and your smart Rolls-Royce and your legendary party when I’m not around to generate the ten per cent that pays for it, you cunt.” Did you know he didn’t invite me to his last party?’
‘He probably thought that living in Monaco, you wouldn’t come.’
‘Bollocks. It’s because he and his lefty friends all read the
Guardian
and the book world still regards me as a kind of literary pariah. That’s why he didn’t invite me. I vote Conservative. I don’t pay UK taxes. I’m his guilty little secret.’
‘Perhaps the invitation got lost in the Christmas post. I’m sure he didn’t mean to upset you.’ I shrugged. ‘But he didn’t invite me either, if that’s any consolation.’
‘So, I’ve had enough of all that,’ said John, ignoring me. ‘And I’ve certainly had enough of living in Monaco. It’s a dump. A housing estate for billionaires. A traffic jam. I’ve had enough of the travel. The tax-exile thing. The IRS and the Inland Revenue. The meetings with financial advisers. The accountants. The lawyers. The hedgies selling their funds. The boats. The plane. The cars. Do you know I rent a garage in Monaco with my own personal mechanic just to look after all the cars? It’s ridiculous. Who needs all these fucking cars, anyway? I mean some of them are just more trouble than they are worth. The Ferraris especially. The other day I spent a thousand euros just to have the wheels aligned on the F12. A thousand euros. I told them – I’m not Fernando Alonso, you thieving bastards. And as for the houses. Jesus, the fucking houses with their caretakers and
gardiens
. Whenever we go to our house in Courchevel we spend a whole morning listening to the
gardien
’s problems: the roof has a leak, his child was sick, the gardener is unreliable, the sauna still isn’t fixed; could I have a cheque for this, and one for that? It’s the same everywhere else. Bastards moaning that you don’t pay them enough or stealing from you when you do. I think I know how God feels on a Sunday. All of these fucking people complaining about this and that must drive him mad; no wonder
he sent a flood to destroy the world and drown everyone. I’d have done the same, just to get some peace and quiet. Several times over, probably. No, I’ve had enough of it, old sport.
‘Lately it’s all begun to weigh on me rather. When I was taken ill a few years ago, remember? And I was only able to produce three books in one year instead of five? I never told you this, but VVL’s share price actually fell by five per cent when that happened and so VVL’s publishing director – Bat Anderton – had to go to Wall Street to explain why VVL’s profits were going to be down on the previous year. And while he was there I had to do a conference call from my sickbed to reassure a load of wankers I’d never seen that my output would soon be back to normal. Then there’s the fact that VVL have employed a whole department of copy-editors and publicity people to look after my output.’
‘They are trying to keep you happy, that’s all.’
‘Oh, I understand why they’re doing it, old sport. I get it, all right. But it’s started to annoy me that I am personally responsible not just for the shares in some tosspot institutional investor’s pension fund but also the livelihoods of as many as forty people. And for what? So that my wife can blow it on fucking handbags and hats. Orla’s got more hats than Ascot races.’
‘Handbags and hats don’t sound so bad, John, in the scheme of things. It could be cocaine. Or American miniature horses, like your last missus.’
‘True. True. And as for my kids. They’re useless, one and all. Stephen has given up his legal studies at Bristol and decided he wants to go to film school, in L.A. While Heddy wants to open a shop in Chelsea selling her ghastly fucking jewellery. You know, the rough diamond stuff she designs herself that was inspired by her gap year in Thailand?’
I smiled; Heddy Houston’s jewellery designs – ‘every bracelet tells a story’ – were beloved of magazine editors and fashion mavens everywhere, but to me they looked childlike and naïve, and I guessed that like me John was a man who liked a diamond ring to look like a diamond ring and not a half-eaten boiled sweet.
But my smile lasted only as long as it took for it to dawn on me that I was probably out of work.
‘Let me get this straight,’ I said. ‘You’re saying that you want to wind the whole thing up. The
atelier
– everything?’
‘That’s right, old sport. The whole shooting match. Everything. I’ve bought a house in Chelsea – in St Leonard’s Terrace. As soon as the builders have finished with it I’m going to sell the penthouse in Monaco and move back to London. And to hell with the income tax. I want to go to the Garrick Club on a Friday, walk down the King’s Road on a Saturday, and see Chelsea play football on a Sunday. I want to watch the BBC and ITV and eat fish and chips in the Ivy and have Christmas with all the trimmings. And I’m going to spend the rest of the week writing a book – I mean not just the plot, but the whole thing, the way I did when I first started writing. I’ve got an idea that I might have one good book in me – the sort of book that might last a bit longer than the glue on the spine, if you know what I mean. I think perhaps that if I go back to basics, so to speak, I might even win one of those smaller awards – a dagger, or an Edgar. Maybe something better. Fuck knows.’
‘But what about your fifteen-book contract with VVL?’
‘To hell with it. And to hell with them, too. I’ll just have to pay them back the twenty million dollars advance.’
‘Just like that?’
‘Just like that.’ John grinned. ‘Yes.’
‘But what about
Dead Red
?’
‘Don’t worry, you can finish
Dead Red
and get paid just like we agreed, old sport; for that matter all of you guys can finish whatever it is you’re writing now. That should also help to soften the blow for VVL. Naturally I’ll try to cushion the blow for you and everyone else in the
atelier
with some sort of severance package. Which, of course, will be rather more generous in your own case, Don, since you’ve been with me the longest. Fifty thousand quid. How does that sound?’
‘Very generous,’ I said, although I could have pointed out that in any normal year this was only half of what I made from writing John Houston books.
‘And I certainly haven’t forgotten my promise – to try to find you a decent outline for a bestseller of your own, old sport.’
I felt my heart skip a beat; this was something much more worrying than a catastrophic reduction in my earnings.
‘Holy shit, John. You goddamned asshole.’
‘What?’
‘What do you mean “try”? You already said you were going to give me the outline of
The Geneva Convention
.’
As a reward for twenty years of loyal service, John had previously promised to ‘donate’ me the very much-needed plot for a book I was going to write myself, just as soon as I’d finished writing
Dead Red
. This was to be a stand-alone thriller about a Geneva-based hedge fund called
The Geneva Convention
and John had said it was one of the best outlines he’d written in a long time; when I read it I knew he wasn’t wrong, and I had no doubt that provided I observed all of the lessons I had learned while writing thrillers for John then
The Geneva Convention
might actually make me a small fortune. Perhaps even a large one. My own agent, Craig Conrad, had listened
to my description of John’s outline and assured me he could probably sell it to someone at Random House for at least fifty grand; all that I had to do was write the damn thing.
‘I think I said that it was probably the best outline I
could
give you. Which, to be fair, is not quite the same thing as actually agreeing to give it to you, old sport. Or even saying that I was
going
to give it to you. I hate to split grammatical hairs here, but I really don’t think what you’re saying truly reflects our conversations about this idea.’
‘Come on, John. You certainly led me to believe that this was the outline you were going to give me.’
‘No, you led yourself to believe it, Don. I think that’s more accurate. And it’s not like I gave you the finished article, is it? Bound in leather, with gold letters on the cover, like we normally do? With a contract? No. Look, don’t worry about it. I told you, I’ll try to give you something else. Something just as good, I promise. But it so happens that
The Geneva Convention
is the book I’m going to write myself. The whole damn thing. After all, it is my story to do with as I like. I don’t know why I feel I have to justify this to you. It’s not as if you’ve ever had anything to do with writing the outlines, old sport. Besides, this book needs to be a little different from what we’ve been writing up until now. This book is going to need more atmosphere. More detail. Closer observation. Which is precisely why I want to write it myself.’
‘Sure, John, sure. It’s your damned outline to do whatever you like with.’
We were both silent for about thirty or forty miles of auto-route. I stared out of the Aston’s passenger window as we hurtled through the French countryside. Outside, the car’s V12 engine sounded like some wild beast in distress; but cocooned inside, the quiet was a little unnerving and the
silence nothing short of awkward. John felt it, too; and after a while he said, ‘Tell you what, old sport. I’ve had a great idea. You can write the next Jack Boardman book.’