Authors: Philip Kerr
‘No.’
‘Did you know his wife has left him?’
‘I didn’t know that either. Look, it’s been a while since we spoke.’
‘Would you say that he was the type of fellow to bear a grudge?’
‘Phil? No more than anyone else. Look, if you’re asking me if he’s the type to commit murder then the answer is absolutely not. Besides, if he did have a grudge against John why would he take it out on Orla?’
‘Why indeed?’
‘On the other hand.’
‘Yes?’
‘I was just thinking. No one has seen or heard of John in almost two weeks. To be quite frank with you, Chief Inspector, the last time we spoke I lied to you. I said I didn’t think he would try to get in contact with me. The truth is, I did, kind of. And since he hasn’t I’ve begun to fear the worst.’
‘So have I,’ said Amalric. ‘So have I. Look, I’d better go. My sister is calling. She and I – we’re supposed to meet some old school friends at a restaurant in town tonight.’
‘Oh?’ I was trying to conceal the panic in my voice. ‘Which one? Just in case I ever go back there.’
‘L’Auberge de Tourrettes. Do you know Tourrettes?’
‘A little. It’s very pretty. I’ve always rather envied Philip having a house there.’
‘Yes, that’s the restaurant I’d recommend, if you’re ever back here.’
‘As good as Claridge’s?’
‘In its own way, yes, perhaps.’
‘When you see him, say hello to Philip from me.’
‘I’ll do that.’
‘And enjoy your dinner.’
As soon as the Chief Inspector had rung off I called John to tell him to take a taxi back to the Château Saint-Martin, immediately. But he wasn’t answering, so I sent him a text and asked him to acknowledge it straight away. He didn’t.
At the same time I tried to do a Google search for L’Auberge de Tourrettes on my iPhone, but I had already exceeded my monthly data download limit and I had little choice but to go back into Philip’s study and, ignoring his bloodshot staring eyes, to try and find the restaurant on his iMac. From the Google map it appeared that L’Auberge de Tourrettes, on Route de Grasse, was about 200 metres
from La Cave de Tourrettes, on Rue de la Bourgade and on the opposite side of the town square where, earlier on, I’d parked the Bentley. As soon as I had located the restaurant where the Chief Inspector was dining I removed my Google searches from the iMac’s browsing history, just in case some resourceful cop attending the murder scene decided to check that, too. Then I wiped the keyboard and tried to call John again.
The Chief Inspector hadn’t ever met John, but he was a clever man and I was sure that if they did run into each other – in the Place de la Libération, perhaps – a thin beard wasn’t going to fool him, even at night; when cops are looking for missing persons and fugitives they always construct photofits and facial composites of how that person might look with a beard, glasses, or a different hairstyle. Amalric would almost certainly have committed those pictures to memory, and if he hadn’t he would certainly have loaded them onto his smartphone.
Once again John didn’t answer his phone, so I called the restaurant and asked them if the Englishman was still there on the terrace. They told me he’d paid the bill and left about ten minutes before, and I guessed that almost certainly he was now sitting outside one of the many bars on the Place de la Libération, nursing a cognac, girl-watching and probably not even hearing his ringtone. It was more than likely that in just a few minutes John would see Amalric parking his car and – what was worse – that Amalric might see him.
Three murders are quite an investment and it was obvious that all of my efforts to turn John into my secret employee would be rendered futile if he was arrested. Realizing I now had little option but to go back into Tourrettes-sur-Loup and fetch him from under the Chief Inspector’s nose, I cursed
loudly, for there was just as great a risk that I myself might bump into him.
I jumped back into the Bentley and took off in a spray of gravel. Naturally I could have wished for a less noticeable car; but with the hood up it was dark inside the passenger cabin and there was every chance of not being recognized.
A few minutes later I entered the Place de la Libération and slowly made my way anti-clockwise around the square, steering carefully around the Sunday night tourists for fear of knocking one down, and pausing in front of one café and then another until I was back where I started, with no sign of John anywhere.
On my third trip around the square – and in front of the Café des Sports – I turned right and drove a short way along the Route de Vence, with still no sign of John. A hundred metres further on I steered the Bentley around a miniroundabout and approached the square again, this time from the east.
‘Where the fuck are you, John?’ I muttered through clenched teeth as once more I entered the square. This time I followed the road into the car park that occupied the centre and circled again. All the time I was repeat-dialling his phone every ten seconds.
Then I saw him sitting on the edge of a water trough next to the Café des Sports like some feckless teenager, except that he had a brandy glass in one hand and a cigar in the other. He was talking to a bicyclist clad from head to toe in matching blue Lycra who was filling his water bottle from the public tap.
I tapped gently on the horn, lowered the passenger window and stopped the Bentley.
‘Get in,’ I said as urgently as I dared in front of the cyclist.
John drained his glass, laid it and a banknote on a table behind the trough, and opened the car door.
‘Quickly,’ I said.
John jumped in, hauled the car door shut and I pressed my foot gently on the accelerator.
‘Where the fuck were you?’ I said. ‘Why didn’t you answer your phone? I’ve been round this fucking square four times.’
‘I was in the public toilet,’ he said. ‘Sorry. Is there a problem?’
I didn’t reply. I’d meant to turn left again – around the square – so as to avoid the Auberge de Tourrettes further on, but the way into the main square was now blocked with traffic and the driver of the van behind me was too impatient to let me wait. So I drove on and, anxious to avoid going past the Auberge on the left, I turned right onto the Route de Saint-John, and along to the Route du Caire, which led up to Phil’s villa. I had no intention of going back there, of course, and the Château Saint-Martin was in the opposite direction, but just then, beside a short rank of parked cars opposite the foot of the Route du Caire, I saw Chief Inspector Amalric get out of a blue Renault with a busty-looking blonde who looked much too young and pretty to be his sister; they paused and then, arm in arm, came toward the Bentley.
‘Christ, there he is,’ I muttered and pulling down the sun-visor, turned sharply up the Route du Caire.
In my rear-view mirror I saw him turn – to look at the Bentley? I told myself Amalric probably had other things on his mind at that moment, such as getting in the blonde’s pants, but I couldn’t be absolutely sure he hadn’t seen my face.
‘Would you mind telling me what the fuck is going on?’ demanded John.
‘That’s one of those Monty cops back there,’ I said.
John let out a curse and turned sharply in his seat to look back, but we were already round the corner.
‘The detective who called me last night in Èze.’
‘What the fuck is he doing here?’
‘He’s going to see Phil in the morning,’ I said.
‘I knew that bastard was going to sell me out,’ snarled John. ‘Fucker.’
‘Relax,’ I said. ‘That’s not going to happen.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Because I know Phil. Look, shut up and let me think for a moment, will you?’
I keyed the Château Saint-Martin’s details into the Bentley’s satnav and saw that there was no point in driving on much further, as the road we were on continued away from Vence for several miles; so a bit further up the hill, I turned the car around and drove back the way we came – but slowly, so as not to overtake Amalric and his girlfriend.
Finally, we were back on the road to Vence and the Château and I was able to put my foot down and do some thinking.
‘Maybe we should check out of the hotel,’ said John. ‘Go somewhere else. Or even drive to Marseille tonight.’ He looked at the empty space on his wrist where his watch had been, swore once again and then peered at the clock on the Bentley’s dashboard. ‘We can be at the Villa Massalia before midnight,’ he said.
‘No,’ I said. ‘We’ve both had too much to drink. Besides, that detective – Amalric – he isn’t going to see Phil until ten o’clock tomorrow morning.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Because he called me again. While I was at Phil’s house. Wanting to get the low-down on what kind of a bloke he is.
Whether he was the type to do you and Orla in. That kind of thing.’
‘Jesus. And what did you tell him?’
‘That he’s not. No more than you are, John.’ I shrugged. ‘At least I think so. Frankly Phil seemed a bit suicidal. I think it was fortunate I went up there and spoke to him.’
‘You’ll forgive me if I don’t set up a collection for him.’
I grunted.
‘Did he go for the deal? The box and the papers for the watch?’
‘The money’s in the glovebox.’
‘Really?’ John opened the glovebox and found his twenty thousand euros. ‘Bloody hell, old sport. How did you talk him out of it?’
‘It’s you he hates. Not me.’
‘So what makes you think he won’t grass me up when that cop goes to his house tomorrow?’
‘Then he won’t get the full bar mitzvah for the Hublot. He’ll be out of pocket by a considerable margin.’ I shook my head. ‘Look, it’s just a coincidence that cop coming here on the same day we did. Amalric hadn’t managed to speak to Phil before, so he’s doing it tomorrow.’
By now I’d decided not to tell John that Phil was dead; at least not for a while, until I had him somewhere less public; I’d had enough of panic for one Sunday evening. And I was dog-tired to boot – too tired to devise an edited version of what had happened. Nervous exhaustion, I imagine. It’s amazing what one simple murder can take out of you. With a gun you’d think there’d be nothing to it. Just pull the trigger and stand back. But not a bit of it. Probably something to do with the adrenalin rush you get when you blow someone’s brains out.
We arrived back at the Château and I dropped John at the front door.
‘I don’t know about you,’ I said, ‘but I need a drink.’
‘I’ll wait for you in the garden.’
‘Order me a large Calvados, will you?’
One of the parking valets offered to park the Bentley for me – the way they do when they know there’s five euros in it for them – but I needed a few minutes to myself. So I declined the offer and drove the Bentley down the ramp into the underground car park myself, and sat in the car’s womb-like, dark interior for a few minutes with eyes closed. Had Amalric recognized me? If so then I would surely be his prime suspect when he found Philip French’s body on Monday morning. Or had he just been admiring the Bentley, like those kids in the square earlier on? I would know which it was soon enough.
I got out of the car, and as I walked to the lift I heard footsteps somewhere behind me. It always makes me nervous when I hear footsteps in the dark. It’s the one legacy of Northern Ireland I know I’ll never be able to shake off: the nerves I get when I hear that sound. It always make me think about what happened to Robert Nairac, an intelligence unit British army captain who was snatched from outside a pub in South Armagh during an undercover op in 1977; he was tortured and killed by the Provos. Nairac is one of nine IRA victims whose graves have never been revealed, although it’s rumoured he ended up being fed to pigs.
I got into the lift and breathed a small sigh of relief when the doors closed and the car delivered me into the hotel’s air-conditioned lobby. At the reception desk, I asked for a six o’clock call in the morning. The girl on duty smiled at me in a way that made me think that I was a decent, law-abiding
man; it’s strange how no one can ever tell when you’ve just shot someone dead. It’s one of the things that make life so interesting. I went to the spotless men’s room and devoted a few lubricious thoughts to the receptionist and her panties while I washed my face and hands. I like the smell of gunpowder, in a nostalgic sort of way, but still, I saw no reason to make things easy for the cops in case they did come calling after all.
In the bar a couple of American newlyweds were sitting as close to each other as it was possible to sit without having sexual intercourse; a short distance away, a rather glum-looking couple and their pre-adolescent daughter were having a post-prandial drink with their bodyguard: it was the Cordura gun tote by his leg that gave his game away. He paid me no regard at all, which was a mistake given that I was the only one there – apart from him – who had held a weapon that particular Sunday evening. Even without the tote I would always have picked him out as a shooter; his eyes were always working the room, one way and then the other, like a ventriloquist’s dummy. The tote bag looked like a bad idea: if I’d still had the P22 I could easily have shot his preppy, blazered boss in the time it took for him to unzip his handgun. It might have livened up the dinner for them; certainly the wife didn’t look as if she’d have minded very much. She was probably dying to fuck the bodyguard anyway; the wives usually do.
Outside, the garden was full of the scent of flowers, orange blossom and violets and night jasmine, and made a mockery of the perfumed soap on my fingers. The sky looked like a painting by Van Gogh: yellow and blue with a rolling tsunami of cloud. Already I was feeling much better about what I had done. A large Calvados looked like the perfect way to
end what had been an awkward sort of day. Shooting an old friend is always difficult.
John had one foot on a stool and his phone in his hand, out of habit I supposed, as no one but me was going to call him. Not for a long while. I sat down opposite him, fired up a cigarette and blew a couple of smoke rings around the moon and tried to imagine what Vincent would have done with an advertising brief for cigarettes: the world was a much less colourful place without cigarette advertising. I certainly missed the old Benson & Hedges Gold commercials when I went to the cinema. I decided that when my new career as a bestselling thriller writer was up and running I was going to quietly approach a few cigarette companies and offer them a discreet bit of product placement. The Ian Fleming estate were surely missing a trick not trying to get some money out of Liggett who owned Chesterfield, the preferred cigarette of James Bond. Who knows? With a few handsome covers on a new edition of paperbacks they might even have turned that brand around.