Research (2 page)

I heard Mike’s cellphone ringing – ‘Paperback Writer’ by the Beatles – on the other end and waited a moment while he answered it.

‘Peter,’ I heard Munns say. ‘Yes, I have. He does, I’m on the line to him now. I’d better call you back. No, wait, I’ve a better idea. Why don’t the three of us meet for lunch? Today. You can? Good. Hang on a mo, I’ll ask Don.’

Munns came back to me on the landline. ‘It’s Stakenborg,’ he said. ‘Look here, why don’t we all have lunch at Chez Bruce to talk about it.’

Chez Bruce is a restaurant in south-west London that was conveniently close to where both Mike Munns and Peter Stakenborg lived, in Wandsworth and Clapham.

‘What’s there to talk about?’ I said. ‘She’s dead. John’s missing. Maybe he’s dead, too, only we just don’t know it yet.’

‘Come on, Don, don’t be such a miserable cunt. Besides, it’s been months since the three of us sat down and talked.
It’d be good to catch up. Look, I’ll pay for it, if that’s what’s bothering you.’

It wasn’t. ‘Lunch gets in the way of my writing, that’s all. I won’t be good for anything after I’ve drunk a bottle of wine with you bastards.’

‘You’re working on something?’

‘Yes.’

‘In that case I insist,’ said Munns. ‘I’ll do anything to interfere with a fellow writer’s work. Come on. Say yes.’

‘All right,’ I said. ‘Yes.’

‘Great. The set lunch is a bargain. Pete? You still there? We’re on. Don? Pete? Chez Bruce. See you there at one.’

*

In the culinary wasteland that is south-west London Chez Bruce is, quite justifiably, up itself; but while the kitchen is undeniably excellent it isn’t a smart kind of place. The clientele is mostly pairs of bored housewives spending their city husbands’ modest bonuses, final salary pensioners blowing their ill-gotten gains and middle-aged couples celebrating – if that’s the right word – Pyrrhic wedding anniversaries.

Outside, on the narrow main road, was a long line of near-stationary traffic and beyond this lay the large expanse of unfeasibly green and pleasant parkland that is Wandsworth Common. Only the week before summer had finally arrived, but already it was looking like it had jumped on the first plane and was now headed somewhere warmer. They certainly hadn’t seen much of the sun the previous weekend in Fowey, which was where I had a holiday home in Cornwall called Manderley after the house in
Rebecca
, by Daphne du Maurier. I think all holiday homes in Cornwall are probably called Manderley.

Naturally I was the first to arrive at Chez Bruce, as I had
travelled the furthest distance. I took a look at the wine list and ordered a bottle of Rully: at sixty quid it was hardly the most expensive wine on the list but it would certainly spoil us for anything cheaper and could hardly fail to deter Mike Munns from ordering too many more. I was determined to leave the lunch sober – more or less – especially since I had come by car.

Peter Stakenborg was the next to arrive, a tall, slightly anxious-looking man wearing a badger’s coat on his head, a blue velvet jacket, a white shirt and brown corduroy trousers.

‘Christ, what a morning,’ he said. ‘I’ve been fielding telephone calls from Hereward Jones, Bat Anderton and the
Evening
fucking
Standard
. You?’

Hereward Jones was Houston’s literary agent; and B. A. T. ‘Bat’ Anderton was his publisher. I shook my head.

‘Didn’t answer the phone. I figured it was probably just people wanting to feed me gossip and speculation about John.’ I shrugged. ‘Besides, I never answer the phone when I’m trying to work.’

‘Yes, I heard you were working on something.’

‘I’m trying. Put it that way. I was in Fowey for the weekend but it wasn’t working there either so I came back. I kept looking out the window and marvelling that it could rain anywhere quite as much as Cornwall.’

‘A novel?’

I nodded and poured Stakenborg a glass of the Rully.

‘What’s it about?’

‘I’ve already forgotten. When I’m away from my desk it really doesn’t exist at all. That way I can’t talk the book away. I think all writing should be conducted like a kind of exorcism.’

‘Who said that?’

‘I did, Peter.’

‘You mean you’ve actually got a plot – an outline and everything?’

‘Not exactly. I’m just writing, seeing where that takes me.’

‘I tried that once.’

‘And what happened?’

‘To be honest with you, Don, very little.’ Stakenborg made a face. ‘Without one of John’s leather-bound outlines to work from it was just typing really. And it didn’t seem to go anywhere at all. Like trying to drive to the Hay Festival without a satnav. I got lost before I had even started. The man has an extraordinary capacity for creating stories out of thin air. His plots are like Rolex fucking watches. I bet you could lock him in a room with a sheet of paper and a pencil and an instruction to give you a five-hundred-word plot about – about this wine, and he could probably do it. Not only that but he’d actually start to believe it was a good plot, too. I’ve seen that happen. A germ of an idea that becomes a fully-fledged plot in the space of one lunch. I don’t know how he does it.’

I nodded, recognizing this description of our erstwhile employer. ‘That’s true, although I’ve seen him get carried away with an idea, too. So much so that he starts to believe an idea might actually be true.’

‘So, what’s your take on today’s sensational news?’

‘Until today becomes tomorrow I think it’s far too early to say.’

‘Come on, Don. You know him better than anyone. From the beginning, as it were. You must have an opinion about what happened. I’m afraid that Twitter has already got John bang to rights.’

‘That’s it then. You might as well fetch the black cap and hand it to the judge. He must be guilty if a few tweets have said so.’

‘It’s more than a few,’ said Stakenborg. ‘God, the people of this country are without mercy. Especially the writing sister-hood. You’d think Orla had got them the vote the way they’re writing about her now. But really. What do you think?’

‘Yes, Don. Do tell.’ Mike Munns sat down opposite me, poured himself a glass and then measured the Burgundy’s golden colour against the white of the tablecloth. He was short, with floppy hair, large heavy-framed lightly tinted glasses and a checked suit that belonged in the window of a charity shop; but Munns had a personality that seemed the very opposite of charitable. ‘The least you can do is give us your honest opinion. Guilty or not guilty?’

‘For fuck’s sake. With friends like you, what chance does the poor bugger have of clearing his name?’

‘Friend? Who said I was his friend? I thought I already made it quite clear that John Houston was no friend of mine.’

I let that one go. Lunch was effectively over if I didn’t. I shook my head. ‘Beyond the few facts that were reported on Sky News at eight o’clock this morning there isn’t much to go on, yet; surely we can all agree on that.’

‘It so happens that’s why I’m a little late,’ announced Munns. ‘Some cop from the
Sûreté Publique
just made a statement on TV outside John’s building in Monty. Orla and the dogs were shot with a nine-millimetre handgun; and one of John’s cars – the Range Rover it looks like – is missing from the garage. The cops have named Houston as a prime suspect and issued an international warrant for his arrest.’

‘I always liked that car,’ said Stakenborg. ‘That’s the one I’d have taken from the garage if I had to lit out of somewhere in a hurry.’

‘Lit?’ Munns frowned. ‘I’m not sure I recognize that verb.’

‘Huckleberry Finn,’ explained Stakenborg.

‘That explains it. Twain’s always been a bit of a grey area for me.’

‘I guess that means you haven’t read him,’ I said cruelly.

‘John’s Lamborghini is too flashy and too blue,’ continued Stakenborg. ‘And the Bentley is just too big to do anything but stay in the garage. With the top down he might have been recognized, and in Monaco, with the top up anyone would look conspicuous. No, the Range Rover is what I’d have selected. It’s also grey – a useful colour for going anywhere unnoticed in Monaco.’

‘That would have been my choice, too,’ I said, deciding to play the car game – at least for a short while; if you can’t beat them join them. ‘The Range Rover is always the Goldilocks choice for a getaway: just right. Especially the particular model that John owned: it’s the top-of-the-line Autobiography. A hundred thousand quid. There’s not much that John had I envied except that particular car.’

‘Will you forget about the cars for a moment?’ insisted Munns. ‘The point is that officially John is now a wanted man. Which probably means the Monty cops know a lot more about what happened in John’s apartment than they’re telling. John always did have a thing for guns.’

‘Since when did the Monty cops ever know a lot more about anything very much except how to indulge and humour people with pots of money?’ asked Stakenborg. ‘They may have the largest police force in the world—’

‘Do they really?’ said Munns.

‘Per capita. There are five hundred cops for thirty-five thousand people. But what I’m saying is while the crime rate is low, there’s a hell of a lot that just gets swept under the silk Tabriz in the
Salon Privé
.’

‘A sunny place for shady people,’ I said, quoting Somerset Maugham.

‘Exactly,’ said Stakenborg. ‘And what was that scandal back in 1999? When they fucked up the case of that billionaire banker guy who died in a house fire?’

‘Edmond Safra,’ I said. ‘Dominick Dunne wrote a pretty good piece about how the cops buried that case, in
Vanity Fair
.’

‘The Monty cops may have a bigger budget than Scotland Yard,’ continued Stakenborg, ‘but that doesn’t mean they have the brains to go with all that loot. I mean nearly everyone who’s anyone in that pimple of a country comes from Monaco itself, and that’s not much of a gene pool to draw on when it comes to producing cops who can do more than write out a few parking tickets. I mean, look at the Grimaldis for Christ’s sake.’

‘For John’s sake,’ I said, ‘I hope you’re wrong.’

‘That all depends on whether you think he killed her or not,’ said Munns.

‘Obviously I don’t think he killed her. Which is why I hope the cops are equal to the task of catching the real culprit.’

‘In spite of them naming John as their prime suspect? Jesus, Don, what makes you so loyal to that madman?’

‘Loyal? I’m not loyal. Although next to you, Mike, it must seem as if I am. It’s just that I refuse to see him hanged until I’ve heard his side of the story.’

We ordered lunch and I had what I always have when I go to Chez Bruce: the foie gras parfait and then the roast cod with olive mash. This is standard practice for me – ordering the same things wherever I go – and I dare say it’s one reason my wife couldn’t stand to live with me; but as my favourite
Genesis song goes – which is another reason my wife left me, I think – I know what I like, and I like what I know.

‘His side of the story stopped counting for very much when he ran away,’ said Mike Munns.

‘Flight is only circumstantial evidence of guilt,’ I said. ‘Think about it. Maybe John argued with Orla and someone overheard that. And if the murderer used one of John’s many guns to shoot her then there’s your case, right there. Two plus two equals fifteen to twenty years in a Monty jail. Under those circumstances I might have lit out of there myself. Jesus, you don’t need to be Johnnie Cochran to see how to defend your client against running away from shit like that.’

‘Monty jail isn’t probably that bad,’ murmured Staken-borg. ‘As jails go. I imagine the cells are quite cushy, with a sea view in the better ones. Just like the Hôtel Hermitage. I wonder if they forbid card games for the inmates like they do for the locals in the casino.’

‘Who the fuck is Johnnie Cochran?’ asked Munns.

‘I think it’s no accident that the novels Mike used to write for John were so often the biggest sellers,’ Stakenborg said to me. ‘John always valued that. He used to talk about Mike being the lowest common denominator of a set of very vulgar fractions.’

‘Very funny,’ said Munns.

‘Cochran was O. J. Simpson’s lawyer,’ I said.

‘That explains it,’ said Munns. ‘Jesus, that was twenty years ago. Sometimes I forget that you two are so much older than me. At least I do until I see your grey hair.’

‘So much older and so very much wiser,’ said Stakenborg.

‘As it happens I think I wrote John’s biggest-selling book of all,’ I said. ‘
Ten Soldiers Wisely Led
. Which was the last one. Not that it matters very much now.’

‘Not as long as you got your bonus.’

‘Three bonuses as I recall. One for each million sales.’

‘That was the one about the private detective, wasn’t it?’ said Stakenborg.

‘No,
Ten Soldiers
is the one about the Pakistani arms dealer.
Fools of Fortune
was the one about the private detective. Peter Coffin. Who reappeared in
The Manxman
.’

‘And then again in
The Riddle Index
. Which is the worst of the lot, frankly.’

‘John’s characters,’ Munns sneered. ‘I mean who could believe in a hero called Peter fucking Coffin?’

‘As a matter of fact,’ I said, ‘Peter Coffin is a character in another novel you might not have read either.
Moby-Dick
by Herman Melville. For a man whose books the
Guardian
newspaper described as “Vogon novels” John is remarkably well-read.’

‘The Vogons,’ said Munns. ‘From Douglas Adams’s
A Hitch-hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
, right?’

‘At last,’ said Stakenborg. ‘A book Munns has read.’

‘Vogon novels being like Vogon poetry, I suppose,’ continued Munns. ‘The third-worst poetry in the Universe.’

‘And clearly one book he’s read all the way to the last page,’ added Stakenborg. Laughing, he ordered another bottle of wine.

‘Fuck off,’ said Munns, but he was laughing, at least until he checked the wine list and saw the price of the Rully.

The starters arrived; and the second bottle of Rully which Munns changed for something cheaper.

‘You know, it’s a pity Philip French isn’t here,’ said Munns. ‘To make up the Houston quartet.’