Authors: Philip Kerr
Phil opened his hand as if expecting me to put something other than money in it. ‘In what?’ he repeated. ‘Don’t make me strip naked for it.’
‘In you, Phil. In you. You see I’ve got a nice proposition for you that can make us both much wealthier than a few hundred grand a piece. Enough for you to pay off your wife and to keep this place, if that’s what you want to do.’
‘What kind of proposition? And don’t say a novel, or a
script, or I’ll laugh. It’s only the people who’ve got almost nothing to say who are being paid the big money to say it in print: cooks and fucking footballers and national treasure actresses with backsides almost as big as their books. These days the Christmas bestsellers look like they were published by
Hello!
magazine.’
‘Just hear me out. If you were describing my idea as a plot for a book, you would call it a simple reversal of fortune plot. You know?
The Prisoner of Zenda
. We put John Houston to work. For us.’
‘And how would that work? He’s a wanted man.’
‘In a way, that’s not true. John Houston no longer exists. John is using a false passport. That’s how we’re getting around without any trouble. At the moment he’s someone called Charles Hanway.’
‘I might have known he’d have done something like that. Yes, I remember him getting that passport for research when he wrote whichever fucking book it was. And he employed the Forsyth method to get it. So that’s how he’s managed to evade capture. He’s nothing if not resourceful, is our John.’
‘My plan is this: we get Charles back to England and we put him up at my place in Cornwall. It’s so out of the way that everything but the rain avoids the fucking place. John keeps that beard going until he looks like all of the other hobbits who live down there. He’d be like the man in the iron mask. He stays there and continues to do what he does best, which is to write story outlines for us. And then we write the actual books. Simple as that. Just like before. Only this time it will be us who reap the benefits. We’ll pay him what he used to pay us. Just enough to enable him to live, reasonably, in Cornwall. Which is to say not very much. Meanwhile you and I will become Philip Irvine – a pseudonym for our writing partnership.
I would say Don French, but there’s Dawn French, of course. And we wouldn’t want to be confused with her. Not to mention another pseudonymous writing partnership called French: Nicci French.’
‘Sean French and Nicci Gerrard. Yes, that’s right.’
‘So Philip Irvine it has to be. At least until we can come up with something better. We can write alternate chapters, like they do. It will take a few books and a couple of years to get ourselves properly established, but I reckon if we stick closely to the old Houston formula Hereward can make a deal with VVL. In less than ten years I see no reason why we shouldn’t be as rich as John.’
‘You’re joking, aren’t you?’
‘No, I’m not. I’m perfectly serious. This can really work, Phil. I’m absolutely certain of it.’
‘Suppose we get caught? Christ, Don, we’d go to prison. They’d give us five years for something like this. And the prisons down here are exactly what they say on the tin. There’s none of that open-prison shit you get back home. You serve hard time in the south of France. There’s no telly in a cell, just some jihadi with a hard-on and a welcoming smile.’
‘There’s a book in that, too, I shouldn’t wonder. But I really don’t see how we’d get caught. Like I say, Polruan – that’s where I live in Cornwall – it’s so quiet and out of the way that you could be living next door to Lord Lucan and have no idea.’
‘Have you talked about this with John?’
‘Not yet. I’m waiting for him to get really desperate before I broach the subject. Which he will when we travel to Marseille and fail to find the woman he’s relying on to give him an alibi for where he was and what he was doing on the night Orla was murdered. That’s where he’ll have his
meltdown and I point out the many advantages of living in Cornwall.’
‘Suppose he says no?’
‘Frankly, if it’s a choice between a prison cell in Monaco and a life of freedom in Cornwall then Cornwall edges it.’ I laughed. ‘But only just. Seriously though. What would you choose? It’s an offer he can’t refuse.’
French nodded. ‘That’s quite a plot you’ve got there. Although a little far-fetched, perhaps.’
‘It will work.’
He stood up. ‘Come with me, Don. I want to show you something.’
I got up and followed him, pausing only to go back and fetch John’s bag.
‘It’ll be all right there,’ he said.
‘With twenty grand in there, it doesn’t leave my sight,’ I said.
‘Fair enough.’
I picked up the bag and followed French around the back of the house to a neat little cottage bungalow with a flat roof. He opened the door, switched on a light and showed me into an office with everything a writer would have needed: an Apple iMac the size of a window, a Herman Miller Aeron chair, a wraparound desk, a Dyson fan, a Flos Piani desklamp, an Eames lounger and ottoman, and all surrounded with floor-to-ceiling brushed aluminium shelves that were home to a library of beautiful books.
‘This is what I call a writer’s study,’ I said. ‘I’d love to have somewhere like this to work in. It’s fantastic.’
‘I don’t know why,’ he said, ‘but I couldn’t bear to sell any of this shit. Which is absurd when you think about it because I don’t actually write anything. Not any more. I just come in
here and read or stare at the walls. You see I meant what I said, Don. About writer’s block.’
‘Oh come on, Phil: writer’s block. That’s just an ignorant question for the literary festivals. Athlete’s foot I believe in. But not writer’s block. Do lawyers get lawyer’s block? Do policemen get policeman’s block? I don’t think so. It’s a bullshit excuse invented to cover up for one’s own laziness. It doesn’t exist.’
‘Maybe not for you. But the thought of sitting down and writing something now fills me with dread. And it’s more than just writer’s block. I’m written out. Finished. I couldn’t write another book if Erle Stanley Gardner was in here to dictate it.’
‘Nonsense. You might just as well say that your heavenly muse has deserted you. There are no muses. All that stuff is for Virgil and Catullus and Dante, not you and me. You don’t need a muse to write what we write any more than there could be a mental block that stops us from doing it. We’re pros. That’s what we do.’
French smiled wearily.
‘This will explain it better, perhaps.’
He leaned over his desk, moved the mouse on its mat and chose a file on the iMac which had simultaneously come to life.
‘It’s an email I wrote to my wife Caroline and never sent. But it explains everything. Forgive the pet names and intimacies. But please read it.’
‘You’re depressed, Phil. That’s all. And who wouldn’t be? I know what I’m talking about because my wife left me, too. That sort of thing affects writers the same way it affects anyone. But it isn’t writer’s block.’
‘Please read it.’
I shrugged and sat down in his chair. It was a nice desk. Everything felt just right.
Dear Mrs Cat,
Forgive my silence. It’s not just you that I have failed to write to but rather that I have failed to write
anything at all
. Not one paragraph. Of course the urge dies hard but however much I try, nothing comes. Not even a trickle of words. It is as if there was no ink in my pen or ribbon in my typewriter. Faced with a blank page I feel as clumsy as if I was a savage who knew only grunts and sign language. I’m as blocked as if I was entombed inside a pyramid, sealed for ever. It is like being impotent except that there is no Viagra or Cialis that can fix this.
You’ll remember that whenever my writing was blocked I would sit down and write a long letter to you – to kick start my writing. And so, here goes. It’s probable that I shall never send this but if I do, then I apologize for any pain this might cause on top of so much pain I have caused you before. Please try to understand, I wish only happiness for you. Do you remember the first time we met? It was at Felicity’s house, in Hampstead, and I told you then that I was going to dedicate my life to making you happy. I still feel that way.
Mrs Cat. How did it get to be like this between us? I don’t know. And I have no words to explain it, not because there are no words but because what I feel is locked in a general sense of my own impotent wordlessness. I don’t think that it’s that I have been trying to explain the inexplicable, just that I have learned that any explanation with words is now a task that is beyond
me, Caroline. The craft or art of writing something has, like you, quite deserted me; and I am wise enough to know that if it can’t be done – if I can no longer put something as important as you and me into any words – then perhaps I am no longer a writer at all.
I think a good writer always tries to overcome each and every obstacle, like a horse going over the fences. But there are many horses that refuse those fences that look to be impossible; those horses are often retired from racing for it is said they lack heart. Some are even destroyed. Unfortunately this has also happened to me. Since you left our home in Tourrettes I can no longer overcome the writer’s everyday obstacles. I no longer have the heart for it. Every day I make an effort to write something – the same effort I always did – but without success. I do not seem to have the resources to do that simple thing I used to do with such facility. Of course, it’s true that a man may change and become someone else, but if that has happened to me then I think the man who was the writer has now gone for ever, as perhaps you have done. I am not bitter. I do not blame you for anything. But I think that without you I am another man entirely – a man who cannot write a thing. And that is intolerable to me …
I stopped reading and shook my head.
‘You’ve been smoking too much weed,’ I said. ‘You’re depressed, Phil. That’s why you can’t work. It’s evident in every word. You need to get away from here – from yourself, for a while. It’s not Viagra you need, it’s a fistful of Prozac. Come back to England with me and John. Forget being a writer for a bit. Do something else. And then, when you’re
ready, we’ll give you a story outline and you can start work again. Just like before. Only this time you’ll be working for yourself. Think about it, Phil. There will be lots of other women. Foreign book tours with willing publicity girls. Fancy cars. Expensive houses. You’re not a bad-looking guy. I promise you this will seem like a bad dream in a few months’ time. Just give yourself a chance.’
‘Thanks, Don, but no. It’s a kind offer and I wish you success with it, only I’m through with writing; even if I wasn’t washed up as a writer I’m not sure I could take the pressure of writing two books a year. Not any more. But don’t worry. I won’t tell a soul. Your secret is safe with me.’ He grinned. ‘Besides, it’s so far-fetched who would believe me? Seriously though. Mum’s the word.’
I nodded. ‘I know that, Phil.’
Of course, I didn’t know it at all; I was thinking, ‘Once a blackmailer, always a blackmailer,’ and I could see no option now but to kill Phil as I had killed Colette. That’s the trouble with murder. There’s an exponential factor – the same one that Macbeth encounters. Blood will have blood. If I didn’t kill Philip French then I would have killed both Orla and Colette for nothing. Because this had always been my goal, to have John working for me, just as I’d once worked for him. There was nothing spontaneous about this plan. I’d been working toward this ever since John had closed the
atelier
. The idea I’d just outlined to Phil had been quite genuine; even the offer I’d made him – that he and I should become writing partners – had been real. At the same time, ever since our unexpected meeting at the Château Saint-Martin I’d always known that killing Philip French was also a possibility; and now that I’d seen the email he’d written – but not sent – to his wife, Caroline, I
recognized an opportunity to turn his death to my immediate advantage.
John would cease to be wanted by the Monty police if someone else was held responsible for Orla’s murder. Not to mention Colette’s.
I leaned forward on the desk chair and pointed at the Eames lounger.
‘Sit down,’ I told him. ‘I want to say one more thing and then I’ll leave you alone.’
He nodded and sat down on the Eames.
‘When I’ve got the box and the papers, for the watch, I’ll FedEx them here. All right? I wouldn’t be surprised if the name of Ciribelli, the jewellers, is on them. So that should make things easier for you to get a decent sum for the Hublot.’
‘Thanks a lot, Don.’
‘And by the way, when you’ve got the money promise me that you’ll fix yourself up. Buy some new clothes. Get a haircut. See a dentist. And quickly. All that dope you’re smoking is affecting your gums.’
‘It is?’
‘Yes, I’m afraid so.’
‘It’s been a while since I could afford to see a dentist.’
‘They’re receding badly.’
Philip French touched his mouth.
‘It’s the first thing I noticed when I saw you again, Phil. You know it looks to me that you’re suffering from the same thing Martin Amis had back in 1995, when he spent twenty grand on his teeth. You remember that? Talk about a mountain out of a molehill. The chattering classes thought it was vanity, but of course it wasn’t; it was gum disease: Marty smokes roll-ups just like you. So, see a dentist, Phil. And soon.
You wouldn’t want to get an abscess, would you? I’m not so sure you don’t already have one on the way – your face is looking just a little puffy on one side.’
‘What are you, my dentist?’
‘No.’ I smiled thinly. ‘But you’re forgetting that I once studied dentistry. So just occasionally I let my white tunic show.’
‘I thought it was law you studied.’
‘Don’t you think I remember what degree I started?’
‘I didn’t know they did dentistry at Oxford.’
‘They don’t. I was at Cambridge. I couldn’t afford to finish my studies so then I joined the army. That’s why they put me on a toothpaste account when I went into advertising. Because I’d been a dental student.’
French nodded firmly as if he actually recalled my fictional early career as a dental student and said, ‘Yes, I remember now.’