Philip Kerr - Research

‘How much cash?’

‘There’s about a hundred grand in euros.’

‘Suppose they see it on the X-ray?’

‘They won’t. It’s all new 500-euro notes. So, you buy a copy of a nice big history book. Something thick and very worthy-looking by Max Hastings or Antony Beevor. One banknote between two pages. Simple as that. Besides, the law says that you can actually move as much cash as you like around the EU. You only need a cash declaration form if you’re leaving or entering the EU and it’s more than ten thousand euros. But even so, you wouldn’t want to have to explain it to them because then the Revenue would want to know where you got a hundred K. So best use the book.’

‘Okay, I get your box. Then what do I do?’

‘Wait for the Monty cops to fly home, just in case they have any more questions for you; and then come and see me here. Use some of the cash to pay your expenses. Air fare. Car hire at the airport. Just make sure you’re not followed.’

‘Where?’

‘Geneva.’

‘Hang on, that isn’t actually in the EU.’

‘Depends what exit you choose at Geneva airport, doesn’t it? There’s a Swiss side and there’s a French side. Look, the worst that can happen is that they’ll confiscate the money. Which isn’t yours anyway. So don’t worry about it.’

‘All right.’

John gave me the address and phone number. ‘I’ve been staying here on and off since I closed the atelier . To write my book. The place belongs to a hedgie I know. I keep a few million in his fund so he’s cool about me being here. He’s in the Antarctic, right now. On some charity expedition to drive across the continent. At one stage I was going to go with him. I wish to Christ I had. Anyway, he won’t be back for months.’

‘I should have guessed you were there.’

‘Look, call me when you get to Geneva. It’s about a thirty-minute drive to the house from the airport.’

‘Okay.’

John nodded silently. For a moment he looked overcome; then he said, ‘Don. Thanks, old sport. I really appreciate this.’

‘I doubt that. I really do, John. But you can rely on me. I’ll be there.’

I clicked the mouse and ended the Skype call while he was still staring sincerely into the camera on his laptop and trying to look properly grateful but not bringing it off.

A few days later I took the 14.00 British Airways flight to Geneva. For a change I flew Business Class. I figured John could afford it. As well as five stones in his Mont Blanc that were each about a carat in size and probably worth at least thirty thousand pounds, the box at the lock-up in Townmead Road had contained 100,000 euros in cash. At Cointrin Airport I breathed a sigh of relief that I had arrived ‘without let or hindrance’ as a British passport has it. I called John on a payphone to let him know I’d landed and then went to the Avis desk to rent a car. I had to use my own credit card for that, so I chose something small — a VW Golf — just in case I ended up doing more driving than I anticipated. But in the car I helped myself to a generous amount of John’s folding to cover a week’s car hire and petrol and then keyed the address he’d given me on the phone into the satnav. The highlighted route away from the airport took me east onto Lake Geneva and then north along the Quai de Coligny.

I’ve never liked Geneva that much. Before going up to Cambridge I went to summer school at the University of Geneva for six weeks to improve my French, fell in love with a peach of a girl from Italy called Ernestina who wasn’t in love with me, and had a thoroughly miserable time. And when I was still in advertising I went to the Geneva Motor Show with some suits from the agency to view a range of shitty French cars before we pitched for the manufacturer’s account; we didn’t get it. These days I associate Geneva with EasyJet flight delays at the end of ski holidays that had already proved disappointing, or ludicrously expensive, or both. It’s hard to feel enthusiastic about a city that was once home to a bigot like John Calvin and which in le jet d’eau has a landmark that resembles nothing so much as a giant stream of piss.

Twenty-eight minutes from the airport (Rolex time), the village of Collonge-Bellerive is one of the most exclusive places to live in the world, not just Geneva. Houses on the lakeshore cost anything up to sixty million euros. I knew that because I’d been on a website called The Leading Properties of the World and I’d also explored the area a bit on Google Maps. From the air the house where John was holed up, on Chemin Armand Dufaux, was surrounded with trees and looked like a small hunting lodge, but only if you were the Crown Prince of Austria. With its own jetty and boat house, a box-hedge maze, and a drive longer than the Hadron Collider, the red-roofed manor house was as cosy and private as a ruby ring in a green velvet box; Martin Bormann could have been living there and no one would have known, or cared. The Swiss are like that. It doesn’t matter who you are or what you did somewhere else just as long as you wipe your shoes and wash your hands before you walk off the plane.

I pulled up in front of an impressive-looking gate, leaned out of the car window, tapped the number John had given me into the security keypad and waited to be admitted. A camera moved, the lens twisting as it focused on my face.

‘It’s me,’ I said. ‘Don Irvine.’

Minutes later I was approaching the house.

‘Jesus,’ I exclaimed as the real scale of the place became more apparent to me. ‘What is this place? East Egg?’

In front of the house was a courtyard that lacked only Captain Dreyfus and a full court martial while the enormous, dihedral roof properly belonged on the massif of a small Alpine range. As I stepped out of the car the front door opened to reveal not a count or a baron, nor for that matter a cadaverous butler, but John Houston wearing a tweed suit and a big smile, and looking more than a little like Toad of Toad Hall. He tap-danced his way down the stone steps to the door of my car and shook me firmly by the hand.

‘Don,’ he said, fondly. ‘I appreciate you coming all this way to help me try to unfuck my life.’

‘That’s okay, Mr Hanway,’ I said, pointedly. ‘And it makes a pleasant change for me to try and unfuck someone’s life.’

‘You brought my passport and driving licence?’

‘Of course. I was wondering why you picked that name.’

‘Charles Hanway?’ He shrugged. ‘I didn’t pick it. Not exactly. That’s not how it works, old sport. You have to find some poor bastard about the same age who died young. And apply for a new birth certificate in his name. So you can then apply for the passport. The police do it themselves when they want to go and work undercover. At least, that’s what The Guardian says.’

‘Only you picked someone who was a bit younger, I see.’

‘Why not? Applying for a false passport is an excellent way of knocking a few years off your mug. Cheaper than surgery. You know, there’s a small part of me that’s going to enjoy being someone else for a while. Come in and have a drink and I’ll show you around Xanadu.’

‘Who owns this place?’

‘A fellow named Bob Mechanic. He runs a hedge fund in Geneva called The Mechanism. It’s one of those funds run by a series of algorithms that no one understands which adds up to a licence to print money. Last time I looked in Forbes he was worth about two billion dollars.’

‘Two billion’s a figure I can understand. He’s the guy driving across Antarctica, right?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Sounds like a useful friend to have.’

John led me into a large hallway which was dominated by the sculpture — if that’s the right word — of a seated golden nude woman with several hundred surgical syringes instead of hair.