Research (30 page)

‘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 unidentifiable 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.’

‘As if I care.’

‘I’m sorry you think that. Look, Phil you won’t – you won’t call the police, will you? At least give me a chance to prove myself innocent.’

‘That’s a good one. You, innocent. An oxymoron if ever I heard one. Sorry. That’s not a word we’re allowed to use in one of your books, is it? Because most of your readers wouldn’t understand it.’

‘Please, Phil. I’m begging you. Don’t give me away.’

‘Did I say I would give you away? Did I?’

‘No, you didn’t. Phil, you’ve got every right to be angry with me. And I apologize if you think I treated you badly. All I can say is that I was under a great deal of pressure at the time. But look here, Don has found it within himself to forgive me. Can’t you?’

French glanced at me and I shrugged back at him as if John was speaking something like the truth.

‘Don was always the best of us,’ said French. ‘I’m made of less noble stuff than he is, I’m afraid.’

That made me smile. It’s funny how people think they know you when in fact they don’t know you at all. There is certainly nothing noble about me; but I’m no psychopath, just someone preternaturally disposed to killing, A hundred years ago, in the trenches, I’d have been up to my neck in death and – I wouldn’t be surprised – quite comfortable with that.

‘If I can clear myself I shall try very hard to make it up to you,’ said John.

I almost laughed. John might have been trying his best to throw himself on Philip French’s mercy but instead he only managed to sound pompous.

French shook his head and then glanced over his shoulder at the maître d’. ‘Look, I can’t talk now, but I’m near the end of my shift. Meet me in the underground parking lot at three o’clock and we’ll talk then. All right?’

‘All right.’

French walked quickly away without a backward glance.

‘That’s all I fucking need,’ said John, and for a moment he buried his face in his hands. After a moment he looked up, tried to eat some lunch and then drained his glass empty. ‘He’s probably calling the police right now.’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘No? He hates my guts. Why wouldn’t he?’

I shrugged. ‘Because he said he wouldn’t. More or less. Philip generally means what he says. Besides, does he really want the trouble if he’s working here? The management, the other guests – they might not appreciate it if a hundred gendarmes descend on this place. That might reflect on him, and if he does need the money he also needs the job.’

‘Yes, good point.’

I ate my lunch, most of John’s, lit a cigarette, ordered some coffees and pushed my face outside the shade of our umbrella and into the sun. I realized I was enjoying myself and decided I’d been a little unjust to the Château Saint-Martin. The Coche-Dury and truffle-poached chicken salad had been excellent and the gardens were nice, too. As usual I had more of a taste for expensive places and hotels than I would ever have let on. I decided that when I was in possession
of a fortune of my own – which, I hoped, would be quite soon – I would come back to the Château Saint-Martin, perhaps with Twentyman’s shapely young Russian friend Katya, and, in the hotel’s best suite, fuck the arse off her morning, noon and night.

Meanwhile John had gone off and cancelled his massage. There didn’t seem to be much point in having it now, since it seemed unlikely that he would ever relax again.

At three o’clock we both went to the hotel’s underground car park where we had left the Bentley and found Philip French already waiting for us in the cool gloom. He was no longer wearing his waiter’s uniform, but it wasn’t just his own clothes that made him seem different; he was altogether more businesslike, even intimidating. He lit a roll-up and for a moment he just faced us in silence.

‘So then,’ said John, ‘what did you want to talk about?’

French laughed. ‘What do you think?’

‘I really don’t know why you’re taking this tone with me, Phil,’ said John.

‘Don’t you?’

‘No, I don’t.’

‘Then I’ll come straight to the point. The price of my silence is 250,000 quid.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

‘Fine. As soon as you’ve left here I’ll call the police. I don’t think they’ll have too much of a problem finding a nice Bentley like the one you arrived in.’ He walked over to the Bentley and sat on the blue bonnet. ‘You see, I already checked that with the concierge. The Swiss number-plate should make it easy to spot. By tonight you’ll be sharing a sweaty Monaco police cell with some Russian pimp and wishing you’d taken my offer.’

‘So that’s how it is,’ said John.

‘That’s how it has to be,’ said French. ‘I can’t afford it any other way. I’m skint, John. I owe money to all sorts of people down here. Which means I’m desperate. Maybe not quite as desperate as you are, perhaps, but that’s how it is,
old sport
.’

‘I don’t have that kind of money right now,’ said John.

French stroked the hood of Bentley and smiled. ‘Don’t give me that. This lovely car is worth at least a hundred K.’

‘It’s not mine. If I gave it to you the true owner would eventually report it stolen and then where would you be?’

‘No worse off than I am right now and that’s the truth. Caroline – my wife – she’s left me. Taken the kids and fucked off back to England. All I have down here are debts and dead mosquitoes. I can’t even afford to fill my swimming pool or switch on my air conditioning.’

‘When I closed the
atelier
I gave you a generous redundancy payment,’ said John. ‘Maybe you’ve forgotten that.’

‘That was taxable, since I am self-employed. Tax down here is something akin to demanding money with menaces. So the French government had more than half of it. But then you wouldn’t know anything about tax, would you? Famously, you don’t pay any tax at all. Besides, what you gave me, after writing all those bestsellers I wrote for you, it was fucking chickenfeed. You know it and I know it and Don knows it. I don’t know why he’s helping you after what you did to the four of us. Unless he has some other agenda. Your biography perhaps, when you’re banged up in a Monaco jail. Yes, that might be it. No one has known you for as long as he has, which would make him best placed to write a book like that.’

‘Please leave Don out of this,’ said John. ‘No one had a better friend than him.’

‘Have it your way, Houston. But my price stands. Two hundred
and fifty grand or I telephone the cops. And don’t think I won’t do it. I’ve been on the go since seven o’clock this morning so, believe me, it’ll be the best job I’ve had all day.’

‘You weren’t listening. I simply don’t have that kind of money. Look, use your loaf, Phil, I’m on the run. I’ve got a few thousand and that’s it. The minute I use an ATM I’m toast.’

‘He’s right,’ I said.

‘Do you think I’m stupid? I looked at your fucking lunch bill. It was 650 euros. That’s a week’s wages for me. Including tips.’

‘That was my fault,’ I said. ‘I ordered a bottle of Coche-Dury. I don’t know what came over me. Touch of the sun I think.’

‘In all the years I’ve known you, Don, you never once ordered a really expensive bottle of wine. Not once. Your thrift always impressed me because that’s how I am myself. So if anyone ordered a 500-euro bottle of white Burgundy it wasn’t you.’

‘That doesn’t alter the fact that I don’t have two hundred and fifty grand,’ said John.

‘No?’ French smiled. ‘Then I tell you what, John. I’ll take that famous watch of yours, on account. The Hublot Black Caviar. According to the
Daily Mail
it’s worth a million dollars. So if I sell it I ought to get how much – maybe 150,000 euros? Who knows? These things are never worth as much second-hand as you think they are. Believe me I know. Lately I’ve had to sell a lot of my possessions on eBay: a nice guitar, a racing bicycle. I’ll take that watch and whatever cash you can raise by nine o’clock tonight. But I’ll be disappointed if it’s not at least 20,000 euros.’

John said nothing.

‘That’s a good offer,’ said French. ‘Best deal you’re going to get from me, anyway. I’d advise you to take it, Houston. Besides, you’ve probably got a whole drawer full of expensive watches at home. Me, I’ve got this fucking ten-euro Casio.’ He held up his wrist to show us a strip of black plastic on his wrist. ‘Matter of fact, why don’t we swap?’

John took off his watch and handed it over to French, who put it on immediately. John looked at the Casio he’d received in return and then hurled it across the garage.