Philip Kerr - Research

John walked me through some other rooms with modern art installations and pictures until we came into an otherwise empty conservatory that was dominated by a female version of Michelangelo’s greatest sculpture, David .

‘Who’s this? Davina, I suppose.’

‘This is another Perucchetti,’ explained John. ‘It’s half size and made of the same Carrera marble as the original.’

‘I always wondered who buys this kind of shit,’ I said. ‘I guess now I know.’

‘You don’t like it?’

‘On the whole I prefer something with a little less novelty and a bit more original thought. You know — stuff that doesn’t need a whole catalogue and Waldemar Januszczak to explain it.’

‘Hmm. You could be right.’

The drawing room was dominated by a huge blue chandelier that looked like a sort of amoebic creature from a Men in Black movie. I had to admit that this was impressive, but couldn’t help but add that I wouldn’t care to try and dust it.

‘You know, I’d forgotten what a fucking philistine you are, old sport,’ said John.

‘That’s what I am, I guess. But then again, isn’t that why you used to pay me to write your books?’

‘Oh, I see.’ John grinned, patiently. ‘Now that I’m a wanted man you figure you can insult me with impunity, is that it?’

‘You’ve been doing it to me for years. And you’re going to have to get used to me telling you what a cunt you are, John. At the very least you’ll have to put up with it until you’ve explained what the fuck happened in Monaco. So why don’t you skip the Jay Jopling, White Cube tour of this absurdly impressive house and try to take this situation a bit more seriously? Out of respect for the person who just brought thirty grand’s worth of diamonds through customs for you. I’ve been very patient, John. But as you yourself pointed out on Skype I’m running quite a risk in helping you here. And I certainly didn’t come all this way to Geneva just to see Michelangelo’s David missing a dick and wearing a nice pair of tits. So let’s hear it: the undisputed truth or I swear I am leaving on a jetplane.’

‘You’re right, Don, I’m sorry. I’m afraid I just don’t know how to behave in this situation. I suppose I was trying to put on a brave face; to play the good host and make you feel welcome after coming all this way. Especially after the way things ended between us. Really, I’m so grateful you came. But I don’t know how to be myself. I’ve got quite a lot on my mind, old sport. It’s not easy to talk about any of this. Not easy at all. You hear me chattering away about fucking art but inside I’m mute with horror at what’s happened.’ He tapped his diaphragm and swallowed uncomfortably. ‘I have this persistent feeling of indigestion. Look, sit down. I’ll fetch another bottle and we’ll talk. I’ll talk. The fact is I haven’t talked to anyone since it happened. Since I arrived here in Geneva.’ He shook his head. ‘I’ve just sat around in silence and stared at the walls, wondering what the fuck to do. I’m like a monk in this place.’

I sat down on a large cream sofa and raised my glass. ‘At least it’s a nice monastery.’

John went away to fetch a second bottle and I stood up and walked around the room. Photographs of Bob Mechanic and his family were arranged along the broad white piste that was the mantelpiece; in pride of place was what looked like a Grayson Perry vase featuring a series of obscene cuddly toys that resembled the children in the photographs. Grey-coloured faux fur throws were arranged neatly on a crescent of cream sofas, only they weren’t faux, they were real; the silver foxes who had worked closely with the interior decorator were doubtless glad to have given their lives to keep such a nice family warm on colder Geneva nights. In the centre of the crescent was a coffee table on which you could have dried a year’s entire crop of arabica beans.

How the other half live or, to be more accurate, the other 0.001 per cent. Were the rest of the Mechanic family crossing the Antarctic continent, too? If so it probably made a stimulating change from a summer in the Hamptons. It certainly made a change from Switzerland. Outside the window a lawn as big as a polo field led down to the lakeside and a stone quay. An American flag hung limply on a tall pole and a couple of swans were dozing in the sun. There wasn’t much happening on the shores of Lake Geneva, either. Then again that was why you lived on the shores of Lake Geneva. That was probably why they had built le jet d’eau ; so something harmless could happen in Geneva, even if it was just a few people enduring the momentary discomfort of getting hit with the spray.

John came back in the room bearing another bottle of liquid gold.

‘“Things fall apart,”’ I said. ‘“The centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, the blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity.”’ I smiled and came back to the coffee table. ‘Although not in Switzerland.’

‘What’s that?’

‘With apologies to William Butler Yeats.’

‘I think I’d forgotten what a fucking lefty you are. Cheers.’

‘I’m only a lefty by your rough, bestial standards, John.’

He arranged fresh glasses on the table and poured the wine.

‘Old sport, I have the strangest feeling that any minute now, you’re going to give me a lecture about brotherly love and the cuckoo clock. Are you?’

‘I’m not the one the police are looking for, Mr Lime. Cheers.’

‘Is that really how you see me?’

‘Why not? You’ve always reminded me a little of Orson Welles.’

‘Don’t be so melodramatic. We’re friends, you and I. We’ve always done everything together. And when all this is over, when I’ve cleared my name, it will be just like it was before. Maybe not exactly like it was before. Orla won’t be there of course, and that’s a tragedy. She had her whole life before her, poor girl. Oh, I know you and she didn’t get on and I always regretted that. But she was a great woman and a wonderful wife and I really did love her, Don. In my own way. You mentioned Yeats and I suppose you could say she was my Maud Gonne. It’s true, I have a bad conscience about some things that happened between us — times when I didn’t behave as I ought to have done, that’s the real pain; then again, my conscience is not so bad, in the great scheme of things. I remember the first time I saw her. She was the centrefold in a magazine. I can’t remember the one but it might have been Playboy . As soon as I saw her picture I promised myself that I was going to marry her and I did.’

He paused for a moment as something welled up from deep inside him and then two tears that were full of white wine and self-pity trickled down the sides of his broad nose, and his big shoulders started to shake as if there was something almost seismic about what was happening to him; it was nothing less than a tsunami of grief.

For a moment he wept without a sound, his face a grey, Guernican rictus of agony and bereavement which reminded me of Michael Corleone’s silent scream of agony at the end of Godfather 3 when he has seen his beloved daughter Mary murdered on the steps of the Palermo Opera House. It was painful to watch, much more painful than I might have expected.

There’s something about another man’s tears that’s more awful than a woman’s. In Northern Ireland there had been several occasions when I’d seen the boys from my platoon crying — I wept myself after the Warrenpoint ambush. Nothing wrong with that. No one is unmanned by tears. Mostly you just sat it out in the Bulldog, waited for them to finish — if there was time — and then never mentioned it again. Not ever. That was it, done, and it was all right. This was all right, too — it was all right because as I watched John weep his heart out in front of me I knew he couldn’t have murdered his wife. Not him. Not in a thousand years.