Philip Kerr - Research

‘I’m not trying to confuse you, John. I’m just trying to think through all of the possible permutations. That’s fair, isn’t it? After all, before advertising, before the army, I did train to be a lawyer.’

Don took off his blazer and tossed it down on the sofa. It was a blazer I recognized. The label said Huntsman of Savile Row but I was certain Don had been wearing that jacket for at least twenty years. The buttons were brass, regimental ones. He had been out of the army for even longer but he always managed to make his clothes look like military attire. He smoothed his hair; once a very English shade of blonde, it was now streaked with grey, but there was something — a firm set to his jaw, a clipped way of speaking, his wiry frame, a lean ascetic way about him — that made me think he could easily have taken command of a brigade of guardsmen. Don refilled his glass from the bottle, sniffed the bouquet for a moment and then swallowed a generous mouthful.

‘Sorry, Don. I know you’re only trying to help.’

‘Look, I’m not saying that this is what happened, John. I’m just saying that it could have. Painting a picture for you. But it might not be like that at all. For all I know the girl is completely innocent and worships the fucking ground you walk on. And perhaps there’s a simple explanation for Colette’s protracted absence. Then again she might be dead after all. Although now we can at least be sure that her body is not on your boat — the police have already searched that.’

I got up and went to the window again, trying to get my head around the idea of Colette’s duplicity. I was also obliged to concede Don’s argument: the idea that Lev might have killed Orla was ridiculous. It was a rare occasion in which I’d been the victim rather than the beneficiary of my own imagination. Perhaps I’d been too hasty in fleeing from Monaco after all.

‘I was going to ask you to help me try to find Colette,’ I said. ‘But maybe I should just hand myself in after all and take my chances with a trial. Hire that French lawyer, Olivier Metzner — the one who defended Dominique de Villepin when he was accused of a conspiracy to defame Nicolas Sarkozy. He’s supposed to be the best defence attorney in France.’

‘I think that would be a mistake,’ said Don. ‘I really can’t see that handing yourself in now is going to be any better for you than in a few days’ time. Besides, I happen to know that Metzner won’t take your case.’

‘Oh? Why’s that?’

‘Because he was found dead in the waters around his private island in Brittany, just a year or two ago.’ Don shrugged. ‘No, if you decide to hand yourself in, John, you’ll have to think of someone else. The best firm in France is probably Baker and McKenzie. And a female attorney would play better with a jury than a man. Like the one Phil Spector had when he was tried for the murder of Lana Clarkson. What was her name? Linda Kenney Baden.’

‘Sure. I’ll find a fright wig-maker now, shall I? Besides, she can’t have been that good. The guy’s in jail, isn’t he?’

‘Yes, however the first time he went to trial she got him off. Which has to count as some kind of fucking miracle, right? I mean he was much guiltier-looking than you are. Spector’s chauffeur saw him with the murder weapon in his hand . Anyway, all that’s beside the point. Until you’ve told me about some of the other strange things you mentioned that have happened to you here in Switzerland, I’m not sure I can properly judge your best course of action.’

‘What’s that?’

‘When you were starting your story earlier on you said that some strange things had happened to you here in Switzerland that you thought might be connected with Orla’s death.’ Don shrugged. ‘Look, if this was a military operation we’d certainly want to gather all the intelligence before we sent a patrol into the Bogside to snatch a couple of Paddies, so to speak.’

‘There were a couple of things that seemed unusual, yes.’

I pressed my head against the windowpane. To my surprise the glass wasn’t cold and didn’t shift under the weight of my skull; it was clearly thicker than I had expected. Might it also have been bulletproof? I tapped it with my finger experimentally. The glass sounded reassuringly dull and solid; and bulletproof. I don’t know why I was at all surprised. I certainly wouldn’t have put having bullet-proof glass windows beyond someone as security-conscious as Bob Mechanic. When I’d first arrived at the house in Collonge-Bellerive I’d had a good nose about the place. As well as a rather ornate safe in Mechanic’s study that was formerly the property of the Emperor Louis Napoleon the Third but was just for show, there was also a more substantial Stockinger in the wine cellar that would have been the envy of many a small bank. The house itself had more security cameras than the London Underground. But most impressive of all was a panic room with a tunnel that led to a secret boat house — you probably wouldn’t have found it from the garden — where a high-performance RIB with a powerful Yamaha 350 outboard could have provided an immediate getaway onto Lake Geneva, although from what I wasn’t quite sure. Whoever or whatever it was that Bob had prepared for — the Swiss financial authorities, Interpol, the mob — it was clear he wasn’t about to risk being arrested or worse for lack of careful preparations for a swift exit, and I almost wished that I’d been able to ask for his advice instead of Don’s.

‘Such as?’ said Don. ‘Give me an example.’

‘Such as ...’ I sighed wearily. ‘I can’t think. I thought things would seem a little clearer when you got here, Don. But they’re not. Not so far. Look, I need to take a break. And I need some fresh air. You go and change and in a short while I’ll order in. And we can resume this conversation after dinner. Okay?’

‘Sure, John. Whatever you say.’

I went for a walk across the sloping lawn, past the sleeping swans and down to the neat shores of the shimmering blue lake where there was a short dog-leg of a stone jetty built at right angles to the house so that Mechanic’s moneyed, pampered visitors might arrive by boat even more discreetly than via the lightly travelled road. A soft, Alpine breath of cool wind stirred the tops of the recently pruned trees and somewhere in the distance I could hear the clamour of some local children playing. As if inspired by that very un-Swiss, carefree sound I walked to the end of the jetty and down the polished stone steps to the water’s edge, where I took off my shoes and socks and paddled in the lake, and sat there in a solitary vigil, brooding on the charmed life I had once known and might never know again. I was bound to be convicted, I could see that. How could I hope to escape? And I wanted the whole thing to come to an end. What was the point of going on? I knew how this story was going to finish, so why see it through to the credits?

To give up and to disappear for ever, was that so bad? I had escaped from Monaco and the Monty police. Could I also now escape from myself?

It was odd how my feet had almost vanished in the seductive water, as if, with a little more effort, the rest of me might also disappear underneath the icy surface. The water — from the Rhône glacier, and a thousand feet deep at the lake’s deepest point — was remarkably cold for a summer’s day and seemed to slowly anaesthetize my feet, so much so that I wondered how painless and easy it would be just to step off the jetty and into the lake, to swim away from the house and then perhaps, when I could swim no more, to let myself sink into the black depths to meet a quiet, cold and very private death. Something had broken in my soul — assuming I had a soul — and I wanted to fall asleep for a very long time. To escape from everything. To avoid that final, judicial moment when all that I had was taken away from me. The relentless, inductive truths offered by Don Irvine in the brisk, no-nonsense manner of a serving army officer were more than I could stand. Talking to him I felt like I was back before the headmaster at school. It was only too easy to see that this was how it was going to be from now on: cunts who were friends offering me advice, cunts who were policemen asking me questions, cunts who were lawyers and journalists and God knows who else commenting on my inadequacies as a husband, as a man, as a human being, and as a writer. It really didn’t bear thinking of.