Philip Kerr - The Other Side of Silence

“Is bridge a game involving money?”

“It can be. But not for us.”

“How did you meet?”

“We were introduced. I can’t remember by who. Someone at the Voile perhaps.”

“Two years isn’t very long. Surely you can remember.”

“You would think so. Perhaps the barman at the Voile. Maurice. Nice fellow. Good barman.”

The questions were arriving fast now, like a boxer’s jabs, snapped in from one man and then the other. I’d fought this bout and many others like it before, however; so I tucked my head down into my shoulder, lifted my left to cover myself against a sucker punch, and prepared to defend myself at all times.

“Were you ever at his apartment in Nice?”

“No. He never asked me.”

“And the casino? Did you ever go there?”

I pulled a face. “I don’t like casinos very much. For one thing, I don’t have any money I can afford to lose. And for another, I don’t care for the odds. And I haven’t even mentioned the architecture. Most casinos look like opera houses and I never much liked the opera.”

“Is money important to you?”

“Not especially,” I lied. “As a matter of fact, I’ve always found it very purifying to be without much of it. Especially when you see what a lot of the stuff can do to people.”

“What about Spinola? Is he short of money, do you think?”

“No. But then he hasn’t showed me his checking account.”

“Does he have any enemies?”

For a moment I thought about the gun he’d given me that was now on top of my lavatory cistern and then shook my head. All of a sudden I seemed to have so many guns and so little documentation for any of them. I felt like a forgotten armory.

“None that he’s mentioned.”

“What about friends?”

“That’s what I say. What about them? Inspector, Spinola’s my only real friend. I can’t say if the same is true for him. I certainly hope not, because I’m not much of a friend.”

“What about women?”

“He doesn’t talk about them that much. He’s careful like that. Too careful, perhaps. Because I imagine there must have been someone.”

“Why do you say so?”

“Inspector, he’s an Italian. And a good-looking Italian at that. Not to mention the fact he’s unmarried. I can’t imagine him letting those three things go to waste in a place like the French Riviera.”

“And you’re a German.”

“What can I say? I’ve not been as lucky with women as he is, I expect.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“All right then, how about this. Germans and Italians-we have a habit of forming alliances. By the way, you have my apologies for the previous alliance.”

“Where were you last night?”

“Last night? I had dinner at the Villa Mauresque. With Mr. Somerset Maugham, the famous writer. He’s a very private sort of man, as I expect you know, but I’m sure he won’t mind confirming my alibi. Assuming I need one.” I lit a cigarette and paused, checking out their sweating, swarthy faces, which were almost as creased and nondescript as their clothes. “Look, would you mind telling me what this is all about? Is Monsieur Spinola in some kind of trouble? Is he all right? I think now would be a good time to tell me if something has happened. And why you’re asking me all these questions.”

Up to now we’d been doing just fine using the present tense; but then, the way cops do sometimes, they changed it, they went straight to the past tense with just a short, sharp delay that explained Spinola’s current situation all too clearly. You might have said it was brutal except that there’s no way to sweeten words like these; best just to spit them out like tacks.

“He’s dead, I’m afraid. Monsieur Spinola was murdered. Someone shot him at his home late last night.”

“We found your hotel business card by his telephone. And your name in his diary for tomorrow evening. The casino isn’t open today so we thought we’d come and see you first.”

Feeling the honor, I nodded slowly. “Tomorrow evening-that would be our regular game of bridge at the Voile. Shot? How? I mean, where was he shot?”

“Once, through the heart.”

I kept on nodding but I was thinking about Hebel’s gun now pressing against my kidney like a giant stone, and remembering that it had been cleaned and recently; you could still smell the gun oil in the muzzle. Not that it’s difficult to get hold of a gun on the Riviera. There was a gun shop in Villefranche. And the French have the most relaxed gun laws in Europe. Hitler could have bought a gun without much of a problem. Easy enough after buying the whole French army.

“Do you own a gun, monsieur?”

“Me? No. Guns tend to frighten the guests. Even the Americans, oddly enough. Generally speaking, we find that we can make them pay their bills without too much of a problem.”

“Was he scared of anyone? Did he seem upset about anything?”

“No.”

“You don’t seem that upset about the death of Monsieur Spinola.”

“Oh, but I am. Good bridge partners are rather hard to come by.”

“That’s a pretty callous thing to say.”

“Obviously you don’t play bridge. Let’s just say that I’m most upset about something when I appear to be taking it lightly.”

“Any ideas as to who might have killed him?”

I smiled. Cops are the same the world over, always expecting someone else to do their thinking for them. It’s a wonder that any of them ever managed to pass an exam at school without looking over the shoulder of the next boy. Then again, that’s certainly one way of passing.

“No. I can’t think of anyone. Least of all me. Given the way I play cards, it’s much more likely that Spinola would have killed me. Look, why don’t you ask the people at the casino? It strikes me that the kind of shady folk who operate these places, not to mention the ones who win and lose large sums of money-they’re just the sort of people on the Riviera who kill other people without a second thought. There’s organized crime in Nice, isn’t there? Much of it centered around the casino. Maybe Spinola might have had a run-in with the local mafia.”

“Rest assured that we will make every inquiry.”

“Is that all?”

“It’s enough, isn’t it?”

“What I meant was,” I said with true grand hotel patience and froideur , “do you require me for very much longer? Only, I have an appointment for which I’m already late.”

“You won’t try to go back to Germany, will you? Not until we’ve completed our inquiries.”

The last time I had seen my home in Berlin it was just one tall, improbably perpendicular wall of blackened brick with three short floors somehow attached, like a giant letter E . No doors, no rooms, no roof, just the open sky, which was so crimson from the setting sun it looked as if it was the blood of all those who’d wasted their lives in the battle for Germany, which had felt like the end of the world. I remembered looking at it and thinking how much pain and murder there was in that red sky and how it would never be blue again. You could smell death on the wind, like the Last Judgment. Not that any of this mattered much now that the end of the world was so very much nearer than it ever was before.

“Go back to Germany?” I said. “To Berlin? No, gentlemen. That certainly won’t be happening.”

As I drove up the gravel drive, the tall green front door was opened by Ernest, the butler, and a moment later there was Maugham wearing an open-necked blue shirt, white linen trousers, and espadrilles. He was carrying a Pan American flight bag over one shoulder. I didn’t get out of the car. I switched off the engine, wound down the window, and then Maugham leaned in. It was a beautiful deep summer evening-the kind of evening for talk of love, not blackmail money and an incriminating photograph.