Philip Kerr - Research

‘I have to take care of my own expenses.’

‘Let’s go back to my apartment,’ she said. ‘In the Odéon.’

‘Suppose we bump into John?’

‘Do you really care if we do?’ She shrugged. ‘I know I certainly don’t. Not any more. And if he’s with her, what can he say?’

‘Good point.’

I paid the waiter, who shot me the same ‘lucky bastard’ look he’d given me earlier, only this time it was alloyed with an element of amused respect, as if he’d underestimated me. And her perhaps: the glasses made her look much more formidable.

In the lift, Colette said, ‘But why doesn’t John let you stay in that enormous apartment? Or on his boat? Which is almost as big.’

‘Like I said. It’s a professional arrangement. Not a friendship. Besides his wife, Orla — we don’t exactly get on, she and I. It’s all she can do to say hello to me when I come through the door. Which isn’t very often.’

‘What do you think of her?’

‘Beautiful. Irish. Bitch. To be fair, I only dislike her as much as she dislikes me. You see, I used to be a soldier. In Northern Ireland. And I think she holds me responsible for the death of every Irish man and woman since Oscar Wilde was sent to Reading Gaol.’

We left the hotel and walked east from Fontvieille Port to Larvotto and the Tour Odéon. Colette took my arm, not because she wanted to be close to me but because her high heels made it difficult to walk. It was a fine evening and we walked in companionable silence for a while, enjoying the Silvikrin sunset and the warm air. Out of the corner of my eye I took in the sexy toe-cleavage in her Louboutins, the Fabergé lacquer manicure, the sugar and gold Rolex, the tailoring details on her jacket sleeve; after more than a year of monastic celibacy it felt exciting to be out with a good-looking woman. As we made our way through the streets we got a few looks from other people who were out that evening, which is to say that Colette was the subject of more than a few appreciative glances. But with a much younger woman on my arm — even one wearing eyeglasses — I looked like any other old fool in Monaco: a slightly gnarled olive tree next to a rather luscious pink bougainvillea. If Toulouse-Lautrec had been alive today he might found much to inspire him in the principality.

We went into the Odéon and rode the lift up to Colette’s floor without seeing either John or his wife.

Her apartment was small but nicely furnished, if you like that very French idea of modern living, with several armchairs that were more comfortable than they looked and, above a plain hardwood dining table, a sort of chandelier or light-fitting that resembled Jupiter and its four largest moons. On a coffee table in front of the window was a copy of a stick-thin Giacometti figure that had once inspired me — if that’s the right word — to write a television commercial for a building society using a snatch of music from Lou Reed’s Transformer : ‘Take a walk on the safer side, with the Nationwide’. (I’m always haunted by some of the shit I wrote back then.) On another table — somewhat incongruously — there was small pot-plant holder, shaped like a baby donkey with a basket on its back. I guessed the Giacometti copy was the Russian’s and the stupid donkey planter was hers.

Colette opened a bottle of white wine, which we didn’t drink — at least not right away — because then she went into the bedroom and started to undress. I could hardly ignore that as it wasn’t a big apartment and besides, she rather helpfully left the door open. Even I could recognize where this was going now and about that kind of thing I’m usually laughably slow; at least so I’ve been told — by John, of course. I joined her in the bedroom and swiftly removed her panties, just to be helpful. I stood back and looked at her for a moment, as if appraising a work of art, which wasn’t so very far from the truth. She enjoyed being looked at, too, which hardly surprised me, all things considered. And I did consider them. Very carefully.

‘There’s probably a better way of getting even with Houston than this,’ I said. ‘Although right now I’m not at all inclined to try and think of one.’

‘Shut up and fuck me,’ was all she said.

John left for Geneva the next day; Orla went to visit her family of Fenian fuck-ups in Dublin. Neither of them knew that I had stayed on in Monaco, at the Odéon, fucking Colette and wondering how to broach with her a subject I’d been thinking about for a while — ever since that day on the autoroute when John had told me he was closing down the atelier . Exactly how do you suggest murder to someone? It certainly doesn’t happen the way it does in Hitchcock — all that Strangers on a Train ‘I can’t believe you’re really serious about this’ crap. No, it was much more like The Postman Always Rings Twice .

As things turned out I hardly needed to bring up the subject of homicide at all. There were lots of small, bitter things that Colette said — ‘I hope his brakes fail’ and ‘I wish she’d just go away and die’, that kind of thing — which persuaded me she was on the same wicked wavelength as me.

And she was scared, of course; scared about what was going to happen to her if John went back to England.

‘I’m thirty-four,’ she said. ‘Nearly thirty-five. That’s old for a girl like me in Monte Carlo. That’s right, I’m old. I used to look in the mirror and think it would last for ever. But it doesn’t. It never does. At my age the choices are fewer for a girl than they are when you’re ten years younger. No, really, Don, I’m not exaggerating. Why have a girl in her thirties when there are so many to be had in their twenties? Believe me, in Monaco, if you haven’t met your grand-père gâteau who’s prepared to take care of you by the time you hit thirty-five then you’re probably lying about your age and spending a fortune in the beauty salon and doing escort work: fucking rich Arabs who use women like Kleenex down here. And sometimes worse than that. This is not going to happen to me. But I really thought I could rely on John. I trusted him, you know. He told me he loved me, and that he would look after me. I do not say that he promised to marry me, but he did say he would take care of me — to help me out with some of my expenses, to help me with my English and to find me an apartment of my own when I have to leave this place. If he leaves Monaco then I’ll simply have to go back to Marseille and get a job somewhere. In a real estate office or a travel company. But shall I tell you what really upsets me?’

‘Yes.’

‘It was when you told me he’d had a vasectomy.’

‘Oh, I see. You’d hoped that you and John might eventually have a child together.’

‘No, not eventually,’ said Colette. ‘As soon as possible. I wanted to have a child and that he would help me to support it. That was the express condition of me becoming John’s lover. At my age your biological clock starts ticking quite loudly. But the fact is I’d been on the pill so long I couldn’t conceive. So I was having fertility treatment at a clinic here in Monaco. Paid for by John and from a doctor he knew personally. Of course that now looks like a complete waste of time, given that John is physically incapable of fathering any more children.’

Colette swallowed with difficulty and then started crying again. I let her weep for a while and then handed her my own handkerchief. She wiped her eyes while I fetched her a glass of water.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said.

‘I said it looks like a complete waste of time,’ she said. ‘But it’s more than that. What he’s done to me is really criminal, I think.’

I nodded but I have to admit it sounded all too typical of John; and I certainly couldn’t blame him for not wanting any more children at his age. I have to say I’d probably have done the same thing myself.