Philip Kerr - Research

‘You make it sound very simple. But I don’t think it is that cut and dried, Don. He hasn’t ever mentioned divorcing her to marry me. Not once. Unless he’s mentioned something to you.’

I shook my head. ‘Really, I had no idea about you and him until you mentioned it.’

‘Then I don’t know what we’re talking about. And even if I did, I’m not sure I could marry anyone who has been as deceitful as John has been. I really do want children, you know. Like I told you already, I’m not getting any younger.’

‘And you can have children. You see, I was rather hoping that if you married John then you and I might continue to see each other. That we could be lovers. You might have my child. In fact, you could even conceive right now. I certainly haven’t had a vasectomy. And as far as I’m aware there’s nothing wrong with my fertility either.’

I paused, waiting to see if she would actually be dumb enough to swallow that. Dumb or desperate. Either way, she was.

She brushed my cheek with her fingertips and smiled. ‘I see.’

‘It’s perfectly understandable that you should want to have a future. To have a child. I understand all that. It’s what any normal woman wants, isn’t it? To be a mother?’

I looked at her as tenderly as I could manage whilst suppressing a flash of contempt for John who, when he could have had any woman, had chosen someone so unforgivably stupid.

After a while she said, ‘I still don’t quite see why you need to kill her.’

‘Everything I described just now — about a new start for us both — that can quite easily happen, but only if we kill Orla in a way that makes you John’s only alibi. If we kill her in a way that leaves him as the prime suspect and means you’re his best chance — perhaps his only chance — of staying out of jail.’

By now Colette had told me all about John’s habit of sneaking downstairs from his apartment several nights a week, to fuck her while Orla was asleep; and this had given me an idea which I now described to her in detail. She listened attentively and then nodded.

‘That’s so simple it really might work,’ she said, nodding sagely. ‘You’re very clever, Don.’

I pretended to be flattered.

I nodded. ‘From what you’ve told me, John won’t even notice she’s dead when he gets back into bed. He’ll be so anxious not to wake her that he’ll creep in — as you’ve described — and go straight to sleep. By the time he wakes up in the morning, you’ll be miles away, with your family in Marseille, perhaps. Or better still in Paris. Yes, in Paris, I think. But wherever it is, you’ll wait there for a while, until he’s good and desperate of course, and ready to make a deal, and then you can call to offer him the lifeline. In fact you should offer to say that he was with you for almost the whole night when Orla died. It’s important that you should lie on the record for him. That way he’ll always be in your debt. You can leave it to me to suggest that you and he ought to get married in order to make sure that you never go back on what you tell the police. After all, a wife cannot be forced to give evidence against her own husband.’

Not that it really mattered but I had no idea if this was still true or not.

‘That will make us both look guilty, won’t it?’

‘By then it will be too late. Look here, in the beginning the police will make it rough for you both, but as long as you both stick to your story — that he spent the whole night with you after giving his wife a sleeping pill — then you and he should be in the clear. After all, the autopsy will certainly support John’s story. They’ll find the drugs in her system. And who would give his wife a sleeping pill if he was also planning to shoot her? Why not just give her an overdose and tell the police she had talked of suicide? And who would get back into bed with the body of someone he had already murdered? It just doesn’t make sense, does it?’

‘No, I can see that.’ She paused. ‘How would you kill her?’

‘Do you really want to know?’

She shook her head. ‘No, perhaps not.’

Colette put her feet on the handrail and lit us both a cigarette; she hoovered it into her lungs and then blew the smoke at the sea, where it hung over a little flotilla of boats like a sudden fog.

‘Suppose he doesn’t give himself up to the police after he finds Orla’s body? Suppose he makes a run for it? If he looks as guilty as you say he will, then he might panic and leave Monaco. On his boat. Or in his plane. I think I would, if I was him. Wouldn’t you?’

‘Perhaps.’

‘What then?’

‘Then he’ll still try to call you, Colette. My guess is that in those circumstances you’ll continue to be the linch-pin — the déclic , if you prefer — for his whole future. In fact I should say he’ll be even more desperate to find you than before.’

‘But won’t he suspect that I’ve had something to do with Orla’s murder? Surely I’ll be the obvious suspect in his eyes.’

‘No, not if you think about it logically. Look, before he comes downstairs from his apartment Orla is very much alive, so you’re in the clear then. You’re certainly in the clear while he’s in bed with you here in your apartment, of course. And afterward, when he’s back in bed with her, you’re in the clear then, too. You can hardly murder Orla while he’s lying next to her. He’s your alibi as much as you are his. Don’t you see? That’s what makes it so perfect.’

I paused to let that sink in a bit before adding, ‘But look here, she’s not without enemies. Her family are all Irish republicans. And they have enemies, too. Dangerous enemies in the Irish Protestant community, the UDA and UVF. These people are just as dangerous as the IRA. I should know. I worked with them. Orla has been giving Sinn Féin money for years. When it comes to court I’m sure that this is what John’s defence will rest upon. Orla’s connections in Irish nationalism.’

Colette nodded. ‘Yes. John told me about her family. But won’t it seem suspicious that I went away on the very night his wife was murdered?’

‘Not if you send him a text first thing in the morning; you can tell him that something unexpected came up — your sister in hospital, something like that. That way your absence will be easily explained. He’ll call you of course. But you won’t answer. Not for a while.’

‘And where will I be?’

‘In Paris. The minute I come back downstairs from John’s apartment we’ll go straight to the airport. You’ll catch the first plane and stay there until I can get to you. Meanwhile I’ll go to London and wait for the police to get in contact with me and the other guys. Which they will, of course. So it’s important I’m there when they make contact. If it comes to that I expect John will call me, too. If he’s on the lam, that is. When he’s needed some dirty work done before I’ve been virtually the first person he calls.’

I described three such occasions to Colette: once when he got done for drink-driving and needed someone to go and collect his car; a second time when he wanted me to hire a couple of students to become his personal sock-puppet, posting five-star reviews for John’s books on Amazon — there’s a lot of that goes on, these days; and a third time when he wanted me to sack one of the writers in the atelier . But there were many more I could have told her about.

‘Wait, won’t the police know you were in Monaco on the night of Orla’s murder? Won’t that make you a suspect?’

I shook my head.

‘That might have been the case once. But the staff at British border control don’t bother to record the names of people leaving the UK, so no one will know that I was out of the country. If the Monty cops ask I’ll tell them I spent that weekend at my place in Cornwall. Besides, I’ll be using a false passport. Both John and I managed to get one when we were researching one of his books. No one will ever know I was even here.’