Philip Kerr - Research

‘Lev,’ I said, shaking Twentyman’s hand. ‘Originally from Smolensk, but now mostly travelling somewhere on business. Pleased to meet you.’

I’d always been quite good at imitating accents; back in my advertising days, I’d often voiced a radio commercial when the so-called acting talent couldn’t quite manage it to my high standard. Most of the actors who do voice-overs are drunken has-beens you haven’t seen for so long they look like Dorian Gray’s picture. In truth I’d never done a Russian accent, professionally, but seeing The Hunt for Red October on television as many times as I had, I figured I only had to be as good as — or no better than — Sean Connery or Sam Neill to persuade the American that I was the genuine article. With any accent, less is more.

I turned and walked toward the lift.

‘Not as pleased as I am,’ said Twentyman. ‘I’m having a few friends over for Sunday night cocktails in my apartment tomorrow. And then we’re going to dinner at Joël Robuchon. My girlfriend is from Kharkov. So it’d be great if you could join us.’

It figured that someone like him would have had a Russian girlfriend and, for a brief second, I tried to picture her: blonde, blue-eyed, glass-cutting cheekbones, with hooks and gut-suckers like a liverfluke — which is a parasite in sheep almost impossible to be rid of. Russian girls in Monaco would have looked at Twentyman the way a wolf on the steppe might have seen a lost lamb.

‘I’d love to,’ I said. ‘But I’m on my way somewhere.’

‘Business or pleasure?’

‘Is there a difference?’

Twentyman laughed. ‘You’re right. Not in Monaco.’

The lift arrived and we stepped inside. I pressed the button to take us down to the Odéon garage.

‘I’m headed out myself.’

I nodded politely.

‘I assume you heard about our news,’ he said.

‘What news might that be?’

‘What news?’ Twentyman laughed. ‘My God, you have been away, haven’t you? Why our murder, of course. Mrs Houston. The actress. In one of the sky duplexes nearly two weeks ago. That’s why I mentioned ghosts.’

‘I did hear about that, yes. Terrible. I hadn’t met the poor lady myself. But it was my information that the husband did it. The writer. And that he’s still at liberty.’

‘He’s the number one suspect, yes. But that’s the French police for you. The husband is always the number one suspect, right? This is the home of le crime passionnel . But if you ask me, the culprit could be anyone in this building. The first twenty floors are affordable housing. For Monégasques. Which means this place is hardly as exclusive as I’d hoped it might be when I bought it. All right, maybe the locals have a different elevator, but you wouldn’t ever get this kind of European social engineering in an apartment building on Park Avenue. It smacks of communism.’

‘You think it is one of them, perhaps? The locals?’

‘Why not?’

I shrugged. ‘Then perhaps it’s good that I have alibi. I was in Geneva when this happened. At least that’s what my wife thinks.’

Twentyman laughed. ‘Who knows? Maybe we’ll all need an alibi before this is over. It’s almost two weeks since it happened but the police are still here and no further forward with their inquiry. Asking questions and being a general pain in the ass. I mean you can’t blame them, they’re just doing their jobs. But I really hate cops. You don’t want to hear about that right now. Suffice to say that I’ve been thinking of getting out of town for a while. Until today there were television cameras outside the front of our building. And I just hate that.’

‘Me, too,’ I said. ‘If my wife saw me here she would also kill me.’

The lift door opened not in the garage but in the ground-floor lobby; with its geometric bronze wall patterns which might have signified some ancient hermetic meaning and enormous beige marble pillars, it resembled something from a big-budget sci-fi movie. Whenever I was in it I half expected to see Mr Spock standing on the polished floor; instead I caught sight of someone who was just as unwelcome as any extraterrestrial creature: it was Chief Inspector Amalric and he was talking to the concierge by the front desk.

‘That’s him there,’ said Twentyman. ‘The Chief Inspector of Police. His name is Amalric and he’s a suspicious son of a bitch. Shit. He’s seen me. Hell, now I really am going to be late.’

‘Monsieur Twentyman, hello.’

Amalric’s gravelly voice echoed through the lobby; he was wearing a little straw hat and holding a glass of water in his hand.

‘Chief Inspector,’ Twentyman said weakly. ‘How are you?’

I pressed myself into the side of the lift, hiding behind the side wall and control panel as the Monaco detective set out across the enormous floor toward us. I was pretty sure he hadn’t yet seen me but I figured it was only a matter of seconds before he did and Twentyman introduced me as his neighbour, Lev Kaganovich, which was going to be very hard to explain. I was surely the living proof of the old wives’ tale that murderers always return to the scene of the crime.

‘Good, thank you. Could I have a word with you, please?’

‘It’s a little inconvenient right now,’ he said. ‘I’m just on my way out somewhere.’

‘It won’t take a moment,’ insisted Amalric, nearer now. ‘I just have a few questions to ask you.’

I’d already pressed the close doors button, several times, and to my immense relief the doors started to slide shut.

‘ Attendez un moment .’

Twentyman pushed his face close to the narrowing gap between the doors and called out ‘Perhaps later’ and ‘Sorry’ before they closed completely and the lift continued smoothly down to the Odéon garage.

‘That was fast work,’ said Twentyman and chuckled. ‘I can see you’re a good man in a tight spot, Lev, my friend. But for your nifty work with those elevator buttons I’d have been stuck with that fucking nosy cop for twenty minutes.’

‘Why does he want to speak to you anyway? The twenty-ninth floor is a long way from those sky duplexes.’

‘Because I knew her. Mrs Houston was a fellow Tifosi — like me a keen supporter of the Scuderia Ferrari. We met in the Ferrari hospitality suite at the Hôtel de Paris during the last Grand Prix. I imagine the Chief Inspector thinks that I can shed some light on some of the people she knew here in Monte Carlo.’ He chuckled. ‘Even if I could, I’d rather not, if you know what I mean. One question leads to another and before you know it, you’re in handcuffs. I had a similar experience on Wall Street a few years ago. I went from witness to wanted in twenty-four hours. So fuck that, right?’

‘I just hope I haven’t got you into trouble.’

‘Hey, you’re not the only guy who can produce an alibi,’ said Twentyman as the car arrived in the garage. ‘It so happens I was in the library with Colonel Mustard at the time.’

I frowned as though not understanding what he’d said. ‘Please?’

‘American humour,’ said my putative neighbour. ‘Come to think of it, Chief Inspector Amalric didn’t see the joke either.’

‘French, Russian — cops are the same all over. The only jokes they like are the ones they make up themselves. In Russia we sometimes call these jokes “evidence”.’

Twentyman laughed again. ‘That’s very good. Are you sure you can’t come along tomorrow night? My girlfriend, Anastasia, would love to meet you. More importantly so would her friends.’

‘You’re forgetting about my wife. One murder in the Odéon is quite enough, don’t you think?’

Twentyman was still laughing as he walked toward a red Ferrari 599 GTO. ‘Knock me up next time you’re in town, as the actress said to the bishop.’