Research (39 page)

‘But I am involved. Very much more involved than you know.’

‘What are you talking about, old sport?’

‘Last night, when I went to see Phil he was in an extremely difficult frame of mind. He’d been drinking a lot. Smoking
a lot of dope, too. I didn’t know he smoked weed, did you? Anyway, he told me that I could stuff your twenty grand because the Chief Inspector from the Monaco
Sûreté Publique
was coming to see him at ten o’clock on Monday morning and that he was going to tell him that you were staying in Vence, at the Château Saint-Martin. Yes, that’s what he said. He told me he’d thought it all over and he couldn’t bring himself to forgive you for destroying his life as a writer, not to mention destroying his life as a man. He told me then that he’d found out you’d fucked Caroline and said that no amount of money could compensate for the pain he’d felt – that a man he considered to be his friend could have betrayed him quite so egregiously.

‘I tried to reason with him. I said that what was done was done. I’m afraid I even told him about my plan to hide you away in Cornwall and that we could reinstate the
atelier
with him as one of your writers. I said everything would be just like it was before and that in the fullness of time, if he was writing and making a decent living again, Caroline might even come back to him. But he wasn’t interested in any of that. He told me the only writing he was capable of doing these days was jotting down a lunch order at the Château Saint-Martin. Tempers got a bit frayed and he started to shout at me.

‘I only meant to threaten him with the gun – your gun, which I’d found in your bag when I was taking the money out to give it to him. I told him that he might manage to get you arrested but that he’d better think twice if I was going to allow him to grass me up. Or words to that effect. I said that if I did get nicked he could be sure that eventually I’d come back there and kill him. Anyway, he was pissed and stoned like I said – which is probably why he tried to take the gun off me. We wrestled a bit, in his study and that was when the
gun went off. It seemed you’d left a bullet in the breech. I should have checked it before I pointed the thing at him but I didn’t. There wasn’t time.’ I shrugged. ‘It was me who shot Philip French, John. It was me who killed him.’

‘Jesus.’

‘After that I set about trying to make it look like a suicide. I put the gun in his hand, let off another shot for the forensics boys. I left your bag and your watch in the hope that it might persuade the police – as it seems to have managed to persuade you – that Phil had something to do with Orla’s death. It was the same gun after all. There was an unsent draft of a rather self-pitying email he’d been composing to his wife on his computer which he’d insisted on reading to me as a way of explaining that he was finished as a writer; I don’t think he’d ever intended sending it to Caroline; so I sent it, for appearance’s sake, you understand. Then I left. That’s why I was so fucking panicky when I came to fetch you in the village square last night. And why I started bricking it when I saw that copper and realized he was already in Tour-rettes. Because I’d just shot Phil.’

John nodded. ‘I see. Fuck me. You had quite an evening, didn’t you? But where do you think the cops got the idea that Philip French had anything to do with Colette Laurent’s death?’

‘The circumstances, I suppose. You’re the missing link, after all. You knew Phil and I dare say they’ll have worked out that you knew Colette, too; and intimately. They must have found her laptop when they came across her body. It’s just a suspicion I have, but I rather think Chief Inspector Amalric might be playing a clever game here. He could be hoping you’ll hear on the news that the cops think Phil had something to do with Colette’s death and that, as a result,
you’ll think it’s now safe to hand yourself in. And look, for all I fucking know, they don’t really believe that Phil killed himself either. I have no idea what kind of fist I made of making his death look like a suicide. My expertise in these matters only extends to writing thrillers. They’re not stupid, these people. So it’s not just you who’s now facing jail, it’s me, too.’ I shook my head and added, ‘They’re not actually looking for me, of course. Not yet. And before you ask I have no more intention of handing myself in than you have. Or had.’

‘Yes, I see.’

I flicked the cigarette into the guttering where it lay like an exploded incendiary device waiting to detonate and set the whole building on fire.

‘I do agree with you about one thing, though, John. Phil and Colette certainly do look as if they killed your wife and framed you for it. For whatever reason. Money, revenge – we may never know for sure. But suspecting it is one thing; proving it is something else. With your gun and your bag and your watch all found at the scene of Phil’s homicide a jury might just as easily be persuaded by a good lawyer that you killed all three of them: Orla, Colette and Phil. And make no mistake about it, I shall certainly deny that I had anything to do with Phil’s death. In court. On oath. I’m telling you now, there’s no way I’m going to put my hand up to that. Not while I’ve been assisting a wanted felon to escape from justice. You do see my problem, don’t you? A jury might easily be persuaded that I shot Philip French on purpose. At your behest. To stop him from telling the cops about you. That’s me in a conspiracy to commit murder, which probably carries a life sentence in France, just like in England. I’m not going to take that chance. Not for you. Not for anyone. Me, I’m
going back to London on the Eurostar first thing tomorrow morning. You can do what the fuck you like, chum. Come with me. Stay here in Paris. It’s entirely up to you. But I’ve had enough. I’m going straight to Manderley. It will nice to be in a place where nothing ever happens and no one ever does anything. And if you’re sensible you’ll come with me.’

John, who had remained seated on the edge of my bed all this time, got up and helped himself to a miniature of whisky from my minibar.

‘I feel a little like Oscar Wilde,’ he said, pouring the contents into a glass. ‘You remember? At the Cadogan Hotel in 1895. Him being urged to flee for France by Robbie Ross before the coppers could turn up and arrest him for sodomy and gross indecency.’

‘Thanks a lot, chum,’ I said. ‘I always saw myself playing Robbie Ross to your Oscar.’ I smiled thinly. ‘I should like it to be known now that in no circumstances are my ashes to be interred in your tomb, as his are, in Père Lachaise.’

John sipped at the whisky for a moment and then drained the glass.

‘And of course fleeing to Cornwall is rather less glamorous than catching the boat train to Paris.’ He shrugged. ‘But it will have to be that way, I suppose. I regret I can now see no alternative to Cornwall.’

Last night I dreamt I was still at Manderley. It seemed to me that I stood by the rusting iron gate at the bottom of the short drive and could not leave, for there was a bloody great padlock and chain upon the gate. I called in my dream for someone – anyone – in the road outside to come and open it, and had no answer because no one was there. No one is ever there.
Because this is fucking Cornwall
.

It’s two years since I came to live my secret life in Don Irvine’s house in Polruan. It’s a nice enough house, I suppose; Georgian probably, made of grey Cornish flint, with four bedrooms, several acres of garden and a nice view of Fowey harbour on the other side of a picturesque-looking estuary river. A view of Fowey is, in my opinion, rather better than a view of Polruan; but only just. Together, Fowey and Polruan are about the same size as Monaco, and in the summer the place is very popular with yachtsmen, although these are nothing like the kind of magnificent yachts we used to see in the harbour there. They’re more your weekend sort of yacht – more of a polite letter from the bank than a statement. And when I say popular I don’t mean popular like Monaco was popular. There’s no money here and it’s not remotely fashionable. Fashion is something that only exists east of Exeter. I think everyone in Cornwall must wear a shit-coloured fleece,
even in summer. And hardly anybody who’s anybody ever comes to Fowey and Polruan.

Frankly I think there are even fewer people living down here than when Daphne du Maurier was still alive. Back then she wasn’t the only famous writer living in Fowey. Kenneth Grahame and Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch used to live down here, too. But today there’s no one you’ve ever heard of writing in Fowey. Which is probably lucky for me. There’s a small literary festival of course. These days no town with aspirations can afford to be without one of these. Not that the Du Maurier Festival is any good; it certainly doesn’t surprise me that no writer of note can be bothered to travel five hours from London to sit in a rain-lashed tent in front of a small, unresponsive audience that looks like it has been hand-reared on fudge, clotted cream, cider and Winston fucking Graham. I sneaked into the back of the tent to hear some bitch no-hoper down from the Smoke bore us all to death with her so-called comedy novel about mother culture – whatever that is – but I left before I passed out with ennui.

I keep myself to myself, which is easy enough. Not long after I arrived in Polruan I read in the newspapers that a body was found in a forest north of Monaco; it had been burned beyond all recognition and it was generally assumed that this charred body was mine, dumped there by my murderers, Philip French and Colette Laurent, which means that the police aren’t looking for John Houston any more. But this doesn’t mean to say I can relax and go exactly where I want. Far from it. I keep away from London where people might recognize me, even with my Papa Hemingway-sized beard. If ever I was seen again then the whole case might be reopened and I might easily find myself under arrest; for me it would be a very short step from being a hapless victim to becoming
an obvious suspect. I’ve been to Truro and Penzance a few times and Exeter once or twice, but one of my daughters is at university there now, so I tend to keep away, especially during term time. Of course, I’d like to see her, but I don’t dare take the risk. Sometimes I feel a bit like Abel Magwitch in
Great Expectations
. And, truth be known, I probably look like him, too.

So I stay down here and knock out seventy-five-page storylines just like before, only now I do most of my research online; there’s not much you can’t find out with a decent broadband connection and Google. I find I was more right than I ever knew that the internet connection and a TV are all you really need to see enough of the world to write a book. Hemingway describes sitting in the Café des Amateurs on the Rue Mouffetard to write, and truth be told that’s how most punters still think it ought to be done; but the truth is that you can write a lot more if you just stay home and write. Travel might broaden the mind but it means you get less writing done. Besides, the world is all the same when you actually look at it. Denver looks like a smaller version of Chicago; Lyon looks like Cheltenham; Cagnes-sur-Mer looks like St Austell; and Athens looks like Sunderland. The so-called global village is just one huge shopping mall. I don’t miss the world very much. It certainly doesn’t miss me.

I write the storylines and Don writes the books – most of them anyway, and it’s an arrangement that suits us nicely. Lately he has brought in Peter Stakenborg to write one of our new titles:
The Other Man from Nazareth
. Peter doesn’t know anything about me, of course. As far as Peter’s concerned it’s Don who writes the storylines; and after all, it’s Don Irvine’s name that’s on the books now. Don’s become very successful doing it, too; not as successful as I was, but that’s
to be expected; besides, we’ve only been doing this for two years. Publishing has changed a lot in that time. There’s less money sloshing around than there used to be. Publishers are feeling the pinch thanks to eBooks and the general ignorance of a public who seem to have a diminishing appetite for books – at least books for which you have to pay more than a couple of dollars. Even so, he’s doing all right; he just signed a new contract with VVL that means he will deliver six books within three years for ten million dollars. And that’s just in the US. I don’t doubt that in three years’ time when he comes to negotiate a new contract he could expect to make at least twice as much.

Don pays me thirty thousand pounds a year. That might not sound like much when you compare it with what he gets, but I don’t pay any tax of course – I don’t even have a National Insurance number – and down here thirty thousand a year is still a fortune. Besides, there’s nothing to spend the money on anyway. The local shops are full of pasties and tourist tat – hideous ornaments and ghastly paintings of Cornwall. I get a Tesco online delivery once a week, paid for by Don, as is almost everything else: oil for the Aga and the heating, electricity, water, broadband charges, books and DVDs from Amazon, the car – even my Celestron telescope was paid for by Don. So that thirty grand is mine to do whatever I like with. But mostly the money just stays in the bank.

Yes, Don has been a good friend to me. But for him I’d be in prison, I’ve no doubt about that. True, I get a bit depressed, sometimes. It can be lonely here, especially in winter when the ferry across the estuary stops and if you want to get to the other side you have to drive all the way around the river, which takes exactly forty-one minutes. There’s a woman called Mrs Trefry who comes in to clean and we chat a bit
sometimes, and there used to be a gardener, too – Mr Twigg – only I discovered I liked doing the garden myself, so he stopped coming because there was nothing left for him to do; after a morning sitting in front of a computer there’s nothing I like better than a bit of gardening. Kipling used his Nobel Prize money to add a rose garden and a pond to his house in East Sussex. I’m thinking of doing something similar so that I can see more of the bird life that is abundant in this part of the world. I’ve already built a small observatory in the old cider house, where with the aid of an eight-inch telescope I can look at the stars and the planets; the skies down here are remarkably clear. It makes me feel small but I don’t mind that. I’ve discovered a kind of humility I never had before.