Quintin Jardine - For The Death Of Me

I glanced at Susie; she shrugged her tanned shoulders. ‘Get in a taxi and come to the Hotel de Paris, Le Grill on the roof. You can have lunch with us, make up a foursome. You might even be amused by it.’

‘I can’t just drop everything and come.’

‘Everything, as in what exactly? You were ready to bomb up here and see Tom. Just get your ass’ (Gone Hollywood: can’t help it) ‘in a taxi and don’t argue.’ I hung up on her.

Conrad was waiting at the front door in the Mercedes. We have two in Monaco, an S-class for posh stuff like being driven to the Hotel de Paris, and an M-class, which Susie uses for the supermarket trips. (I’ve never understood the need for off-road capability in the Intermarche car park, but I’m no expert in such matters.) The Merc is the people’s car in the principality. You don’t see many BMWs there; someone I know told me that it’s because they’re seen to have Mafia connotations, but I wouldn’t know about that.

He’s a smooth driver, the boy, as skilled behind the wheel as he is in everything else he does for us. Conrad (woe betide anyone who ever calls him Connie) doesn’t have a job description. Some people think he’s my minder, but he isn’t, not first and foremost at any rate. I can handle such stuff myself and, besides, it doesn’t look good for someone like me to have a well-suited heavy on his shoulder all the time. It takes the gloss off the smile, if you understand me. No, he’s there to make sure that the intruder protection systems on all our properties are working, all the time, but first and foremost to look after Susie and the kids. Is he good at that? Well, all I’ll say is that when we moved to Monaco and Janet and Tom started nursery school, we had a paparazzi problem, guys following them right up to the gate and even inside. We don’t, not any more. I don’t know how he solved it, because I never asked, but he did.

The traffic was a little bit hairy, so it took fifteen minutes to reach Casino Square. With a clear run you can cross the principality in five. As we pulled up in front of the hotel, its impressive commissionaire stepped forward, ignoring the taxi that followed us as he seized the door handle. He bowed as we stepped out, greeting us by name. . we weren’t regulars, but such courtesies come with the uniform. I bunged him the usual, took Susie’s arm and was about to lead her inside when I heard a call from behind.

‘Hold on!’

We turned, and there was Prim. She’d had no time to posh up, so I suppose she’d been planning to visit Tom in a close-fitting green satin dress that looked as if it had been cut to make the most of her maternal bosom, and in chosen-to-match shoes with three-inch heels. I suppose the poor wee chap might not have recognised her if she hadn’t been wearing a touch of blusher and deep red lipstick. She’d looked a bit scrawny when we’d seen her last, but she’d replaced the few pounds she’d lost in the nick, and the lines around her eyes had vanished.

‘Sorry I took so long,’ she exclaimed. ‘I thought taxis came on demand here, I had to wait almost ten minutes.’ She and Susie embraced, briefly, although I could still read a little tension in my wife’s body-language. I gave her a small nod, then stood aside for them to lead the way into the hotel’s spectacular foyer.

‘Who’s the fourth member?’ Prim asked, as we waited for the lift.

I filled her in quickly on Benedict Luker, his book and the bold and zany approach that had led to our lunch date.

‘So you’ve never met the guy?’

‘No,’ I agreed, as the elevator arrived and we stepped inside.

‘You know how old he is?’

‘No. His biog on the book jacket describes him as “an international man of mystery”, and that’s all.’

‘Or what he looks like?’

‘There’s no photo on the jacket.’

‘So how will you know who he is?’

‘Well,’ I told her as we stepped out and walked towards Le Grill, ‘first of all, it’s more than likely that he knows what I look like. But if by some tiny chance he doesn’t, the fact that he’ll be sitting at my table, probably into his third or fourth cocktail by now, should give me a clue.’

His back was towards us as the head waiter led us through the crowded restaurant to the table; the sod had grabbed the best place, facing the sea. He wore a Hawaiian shirt that declared the area to be a taste-free zone, and a cowboy hat. . yes, a bloody Stetson. . sat on his head at a jaunty angle. A copy of USA Today lay discarded on the floor beside him. As we drew close he heard us, turned and. .

. . and that’s when the shit hit the fan as spectacularly as I have ever seen, in one of the most prestigious venues in Europe. . no, make that the world.

Susie let out a scream; her hands flew to her mouth, her knees buckled and she’d have fallen if I hadn’t reacted quickly enough to catch her and pull her to me. I let Prim look after her own equilibrium. Fortunately she was up to it. She didn’t scream, just stood there staring, like me, and like him. The four of us, indeed probably the whole restaurant, seemed frozen. We had become a diorama, a tableau, a paused DVD, creatures trapped in amber, or any other metaphor that may come to your mind and please you.

I don’t know how long we were like that, before Prim broke the spell with a cry of ‘Jesus fucking Christ.’

The Archbishop of Monaco was seated at the second table along. I caught the look of outraged horror that crossed his face. At another time I might have apologised for my guest’s behaviour, but at that moment, all I cared about was my wife. Plus, Prim had beaten me to the exclamatory punch by about half a second.

Susie was trembling in the crook of my arm, still staring, pop-eyed. I couldn’t say anything: I had to let her take it in, let her come to believe what her eyes were telling her, and work out how I was going to tell her what I knew I’d have to.

‘Mike?’ she said at last. It wasn’t at full scream volume, but it wasn’t far short of it.

The so-called Benedict Luker stared back at her; as he did, the cowboy hat slid slowly off the back of his head and landed on the floor. He looked to be in his mid forties, although I knew he was younger. He had a lean, weathered face, it had been around the block a few times. One of its more recent features was a scar that started on his right cheek and disappeared into a light, stubbly beard, which, like his hair, was greying. His eyes were the same, though. They’ll always give you away.

‘Let’s go somewhere else,’ said Prim, ‘somewhere private.’

‘No,’ I replied, almost before she had finished. ‘If we do that I’ll probably kill this bastard again, for real this time. Sit down, both of you.’

As I eased my wife into a chair, my guest started to rise from his. Maybe it was courtesy, maybe it was flight; I don’t know which and I didn’t care. I grabbed hold of his shoulder, doing my best to crush it, and slammed him back down. As I took the seat facing him, my back to the view, his face was twisted in pain, because I really am very strong. I wanted to hurt him more, but with the archbishop still watching it wouldn’t have been the thing to do, so I released him.

Susie seemed to have retreated from the edge of hysteria, but she was still stunned; her mouth hung open slightly. Prim had recovered her self-control. ‘It really is you, Dylan,’ she murmured, ‘isn’t it?’

He nodded, then looked across at me, into my eyes. ‘I didn’t mean for this to happen, Oz. You never said you’d bring either of them. If I’d known that. .’

I’ve rarely been lost for words.

‘You’re dead,’ said Prim. ‘See the man in the red cloak two tables away? We should get him over here to pronounce a fucking miracle. You were a Special Branch cop, you went rogue, and you were shot dead in Amsterdam about six years ago. It was on the telly and everything.’