Philip Kerr - Research

‘Thanks, old sport.’

‘You know, it has to be said, John, yours is an interesting life. In a Chinese curse sort of way. Much more interesting than mine. If it wasn’t for you the most interesting thing in my life would be my daily newspaper.’

‘To that extent, you’re a typical writer, Don. Being boring is an essential prerequisite to getting any writing done. Whenever I meet creative writing classes I always tell them the same thing: don’t think that to be a writer you have to be like Ernest Hemingway. If you want to write a book don’t do anything, don’t go anywhere, don’t talk to anyone, don’t tell anyone you’re writing a book, just stay home with a pencil and paper. Thanks to my interesting life I may never write again.’

‘I can’t see that happening.’

‘I’m glad you think so.’

‘At the very least you should get a fascinating memoir out of this story. Like Jeffrey Archer. He managed to publish three volumes of his prison diaries. They were the funniest books I’ve read in a long time. Made me laugh, anyway.’

‘Oh, I see.’

‘My God, John, you’ve given me a lot to think about. Russian gangsters. Pakistani arms dealers. Boiler-room scammers. Wannabe femmes fatales . Friends in the French DGSE. To say nothing about all of the people Mike Munns identified as your enemies when he wrote that piece of poison for the Daily Mail . Disgruntled publishers and agents and ghost-writers. Irish republicans.’ He frowned. ‘Do tell me if there’s anyone I’ve left out, John.’

‘Yes, I see what you mean, old sport.’

‘I need to think about everything you’ve told me, John. I can’t imagine more plot for plot’s sake outside of a novel by Agatha Christie. You’ve got a whole Orient Express of likely suspects there. I’ll have to spend some time with my own little grey cells before I can suggest your best course of action. Until then I’d like a cognac. Ever since I sat down I’ve been wondering what some of that bottle of old Hine on the drinks tray tastes like.’

I got up and fetched a bottle of cognac and a couple of brandy glasses off the silver tray by the mantelpiece.

‘You’ve a good eye, Don. This is a 1928. And I’m going to have to leave Mechanic several hundred euros when I leave because I’ve already had a couple of glasses of it myself.’

‘From what you’ve told me it sounds like you needed it. So. Let’s talk about this again over a decent breakfast. And I don’t mean a bowl of fucking Alpen.’

We both laughed; for a while we’d both worked on the Weetabix advertising account writing commercials for muesli.

‘It’s not the tastiest hamster food for nothing,’ I said, bowdlerizing the slogan we’d helped to devise.

Don laughed some more. ‘That’s the thing I never get about Mad Men ,’ he said. ‘They take all that shit so seriously. We never did. Did we?’

‘Never.’ Still shaking my head, I handed Don a glass of Mechanic’s best cognac and then toasted him. ‘Thanks, Don. You know, I really appreciate you coming here. I don’t know what I’d have done without you.’

‘You already thanked me.’

‘So, I’m thanking you again. If I ever manage to clear my name you won’t find me ungrateful.’

‘All right, but promise me one thing: if you do decide to write a prison diary, don’t for Christ’s sake say that I used to work on the Weetabix account. Come to think of it, don’t mention any of the advertising accounts I used to work on. That kind of shit can follow you around. Remember Salman Rushdie and his naughty but nice cream cakes and his fucking Aero chocolate bars? Of course you do. Everyone does. The poor bastard. Forget the Ayatollah Khomeini and his bloody fatwa, that ’s the sort of stuff that can really harm us. Crummy advertising slogans stay with a writer like a dose of herpes.’

In the morning I worked hard in the gym as though trying to punish myself for my earlier crimes and misdemeanours; after all, there were so many; Colette, me going on the lam, me going to the Baroque — what was I thinking of, looking for girls at my age? — me alienating the very people who ought to have been most on my side: Hereward, Bat, Munns, Stakenborg, French — I was spoiled for choice; and severe punishment was what I most deserved. A heart attack after forty minutes on the running machine might have solved all of my problems. And, after I’d checked into a posh Swiss hospital and kept the police and an extradition to Monaco nicely at bay for several more weeks without compromising my own legal defence, I could have engaged a team of private detectives to find Colette Laurent, not to mention some forensic evidence that might even clear me.

Heart attacks were on my mind again when I surveyed the breakfast that Don had cooked in Mechanic’s dauntingly minimalist kitchen: eggs, bacon, sausage, mushrooms, tomatoes, fried bread, buttered toast and plenty of hot coffee.

‘Jesus, Don, you weren’t kidding about breakfast, were you? I haven’t seen so much cholesterol since I left fucking Yorkshire. Do you eat like this in Putney?’

‘Sometimes. At weekends. When I’m on my own. Which is pretty much all the time, these days. Women don’t go in much for the full English any more. Not the ones I know. Not that I know very many. Since Jenny walked out that whole area of my life seems to have been closed down pretty comprehensively.’

‘Perhaps I should have married you instead of Orla. She couldn’t abide the smell of fried food, even when it was what I most wanted in the world. You’d think — her being a Mick — that she’d have liked the smell of a good fry-up.’

‘That and the stink of a fucking petrol bomb,’ observed Don.

‘You old racist, you.’ I grinned. ‘But entirely bloody accurate, of course. She used to cheer when she saw nationalists on the telly throwing Molotov cocktails at the security forces. Can you believe it?’

‘Yes,’ said Don. ‘I can.’

I sat down in front of a generously heaped plate and inhaled happily.

‘Jenny was just the same — about a fry-up,’ said Don. ‘She said the smell of frying bacon and eggs stuck to her hair and to her clothes.’ He shrugged. ‘Not that she had many good clothes. But that’s one of the reasons she left me, I think. To get herself a better wardrobe.’ He sat down and started to eat his own breakfast. ‘Anyway, we ought to have a good meal inside us, when we get on the road.’

‘Are we going somewhere? Geneva’s not exactly a tourist city, old sport. The Ron Jeremy memorial fountain just shoots its load all day and the Rolex factory isn’t much fun unless you’re going to buy a watch. I’d buy you one myself — as a thank you — but I figure the money you brought from London is going to have to last me an unfeasibly long time.’

‘Yes. We are going somewhere.’

‘Where? Do tell? But it will have to be somewhere better than this. I’m feeling just a bit like Le Grand Meaulnes now that the prospect of leaving this particular lost domain has been mooted.’

‘When we first talked, John, you mentioned trying to find Colette Laurent.’

‘Yes. I did.’

‘I think that’s a good idea. I think it’s best to be proactive in this situation. Everything else I can think of involves doing nothing very much except sit here on our arses. You said this girl had family in Marseille, so that’s where I think we should go and search for her.’

‘Okay, Popeye, but the trouble is Marseille is a city of one and a half million frogs and I don’t have an address.’

‘That’s a pity.’

‘But I do know where I could find one. In her apartment.’

‘At the Tour Odéon? In Monaco?’