Philip Kerr - Research

‘That would have been my choice, too,’ I said, deciding to play the car game — at least for a short while; if you can’t beat them join them. ‘The Range Rover is always the Goldilocks choice for a getaway: just right. Especially the particular model that John owned: it’s the top-of-the-line Autobiography. A hundred thousand quid. There’s not much that John had I envied except that particular car.’

‘Will you forget about the cars for a moment?’ insisted Munns. ‘The point is that officially John is now a wanted man. Which probably means the Monty cops know a lot more about what happened in John’s apartment than they’re telling. John always did have a thing for guns.’

‘Since when did the Monty cops ever know a lot more about anything very much except how to indulge and humour people with pots of money?’ asked Stakenborg. ‘They may have the largest police force in the world—’

‘Do they really?’ said Munns.

‘Per capita. There are five hundred cops for thirty-five thousand people. But what I’m saying is while the crime rate is low, there’s a hell of a lot that just gets swept under the silk Tabriz in the Salon Privé .’

‘A sunny place for shady people,’ I said, quoting Somerset Maugham.

‘Exactly,’ said Stakenborg. ‘And what was that scandal back in 1999? When they fucked up the case of that billionaire banker guy who died in a house fire?’

‘Edmond Safra,’ I said. ‘Dominick Dunne wrote a pretty good piece about how the cops buried that case, in Vanity Fair .’

‘The Monty cops may have a bigger budget than Scotland Yard,’ continued Stakenborg, ‘but that doesn’t mean they have the brains to go with all that loot. I mean nearly everyone who’s anyone in that pimple of a country comes from Monaco itself, and that’s not much of a gene pool to draw on when it comes to producing cops who can do more than write out a few parking tickets. I mean, look at the Grimaldis for Christ’s sake.’

‘For John’s sake,’ I said, ‘I hope you’re wrong.’

‘That all depends on whether you think he killed her or not,’ said Munns.

‘Obviously I don’t think he killed her. Which is why I hope the cops are equal to the task of catching the real culprit.’

‘In spite of them naming John as their prime suspect? Jesus, Don, what makes you so loyal to that madman?’

‘Loyal? I’m not loyal. Although next to you, Mike, it must seem as if I am. It’s just that I refuse to see him hanged until I’ve heard his side of the story.’

We ordered lunch and I had what I always have when I go to Chez Bruce: the foie gras parfait and then the roast cod with olive mash. This is standard practice for me — ordering the same things wherever I go — and I dare say it’s one reason my wife couldn’t stand to live with me; but as my favourite Genesis song goes — which is another reason my wife left me, I think — I know what I like, and I like what I know.

‘His side of the story stopped counting for very much when he ran away,’ said Mike Munns.

‘Flight is only circumstantial evidence of guilt,’ I said. ‘Think about it. Maybe John argued with Orla and someone overheard that. And if the murderer used one of John’s many guns to shoot her then there’s your case, right there. Two plus two equals fifteen to twenty years in a Monty jail. Under those circumstances I might have lit out of there myself. Jesus, you don’t need to be Johnnie Cochran to see how to defend your client against running away from shit like that.’

‘Monty jail isn’t probably that bad,’ murmured Stakenborg. ‘As jails go. I imagine the cells are quite cushy, with a sea view in the better ones. Just like the Hôtel Hermitage. I wonder if they forbid card games for the inmates like they do for the locals in the casino.’

‘Who the fuck is Johnnie Cochran?’ asked Munns.

‘I think it’s no accident that the novels Mike used to write for John were so often the biggest sellers,’ Stakenborg said to me. ‘John always valued that. He used to talk about Mike being the lowest common denominator of a set of very vulgar fractions.’

‘Very funny,’ said Munns.

‘Cochran was O. J. Simpson’s lawyer,’ I said.

‘That explains it,’ said Munns. ‘Jesus, that was twenty years ago. Sometimes I forget that you two are so much older than me. At least I do until I see your grey hair.’

‘So much older and so very much wiser,’ said Stakenborg.

‘As it happens I think I wrote John’s biggest-selling book of all,’ I said. ‘ Ten Soldiers Wisely Led . Which was the last one. Not that it matters very much now.’

‘Not as long as you got your bonus.’

‘Three bonuses as I recall. One for each million sales.’

‘That was the one about the private detective, wasn’t it?’ said Stakenborg.

‘No, Ten Soldiers is the one about the Pakistani arms dealer. Fools of Fortune was the one about the private detective. Peter Coffin. Who reappeared in The Manxman .’

‘And then again in The Riddle Index . Which is the worst of the lot, frankly.’

‘John’s characters,’ Munns sneered. ‘I mean who could believe in a hero called Peter fucking Coffin?’

‘As a matter of fact,’ I said, ‘Peter Coffin is a character in another novel you might not have read either. Moby-Dick by Herman Melville. For a man whose books the Guardian newspaper described as “Vogon novels” John is remarkably well-read.’

‘The Vogons,’ said Munns. ‘From Douglas Adams’s A Hitch-hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy , right?’

‘At last,’ said Stakenborg. ‘A book Munns has read.’

‘Vogon novels being like Vogon poetry, I suppose,’ continued Munns. ‘The third-worst poetry in the Universe.’

‘And clearly one book he’s read all the way to the last page,’ added Stakenborg. Laughing, he ordered another bottle of wine.

‘Fuck off,’ said Munns, but he was laughing, at least until he checked the wine list and saw the price of the Rully.

The starters arrived; and the second bottle of Rully which Munns changed for something cheaper.

‘You know, it’s a pity Philip French isn’t here,’ said Munns. ‘To make up the Houston quartet.’

‘I suppose he’s at his place in the South of France,’ I said. ‘The lucky bugger.’

‘You make it sound like it’s something special,’ said Munns.

‘I think it is, to Philip,’ I said. ‘It cost him all he had.’

‘It certainly wouldn’t have been my choice,’ said Munns. ‘It’s a modest little house. There’s an olive grove but there’s no air conditioning.’

‘It sounds quite idyllic,’ insisted Stakenborg.

‘Tourrettes-sur-Loup is hardly that. It’s more of a syndrome, really.’

‘Coming from you, Mike, that’s almost witty.’

‘Hey, I wonder if they’ll make Philip a suspect,’ said Munns.

‘Why would they do that?’ I asked.

‘Because Tourrettes is just an hour’s drive from Monaco,’ said Munns.

‘And?’

‘And because Philip hated John Houston even more than I do. Am I right, or am I right?’

‘You’re never right, Mike,’ I said. ‘Even when you’re not wrong.’

‘You just think you hate him,’ Stakenborg told Mike. ‘Which is something altogether different from the way poor old Phil feels. Besides, Phil doesn’t really hate John. It’s just that he’d gone out on a limb to buy that house in Tourrettes; he assumed that his income from ghosting Houston’s books was going to stay at a steady hundred grand per annum plus bestseller bonuses for the next ten years.’

‘It’s always a mistake to assume anything when you’re a freelance hack,’ I said. ‘Which is what we all were.’