Philip Kerr - Research

‘What’s their bloody game?’ he said.

‘That’s all it is. A game. Just like ours. You must have encountered this sort of thing before.’

‘No. What do you mean?’

‘When you were making your road trips between Monaco and Paris in your Lamborghinis and Aston Martins. Look, they’re just fucking with us. We’ve got an expensive supercar we can’t drive like an expensive supercar because they’re right behind us. That’s the game. You’ll see, in a few more miles they’ll get bored and move on to someone else.’

‘They’re on to us, I’m sure of it. They’ll probably try to arrest me at the next toll.’

‘You’re paranoid.’

‘I don’t think so. After what you told me last night, about that cop telephoning you, I think the game is up for me, Don. Really I do.’

‘I don’t blame you for being paranoid. But that’s what you are. You’ve got to relax. Close your eyes. Zone out. Pretend they’re not there. Just be calm and I’ll tell you when they’re gone. Look here’s another one. American Pastoral .’

But John wasn’t listening. He delved into the little black Tumi briefcase he’d brought from Geneva and, to my horror, produced an automatic pistol.

‘What the fuck is that?’ I demanded.

‘What’s it look like? It’s Orla’s Walther P22.’

‘Are you crazy?’

‘I’m damned if they’re going to take me without a fight. I can’t spend the next twenty years in jail like Phil fucking Spector.’

‘Put that thing away. You’ll get us both killed.’

‘I fucking mean it, Don. I’m not going to jail. I’m sixty-seven years old. I’d rather go out in a hail of bullets than die in prison.’

I could see he was desperate — desperate enough to do something stupid, and he gave me little choice but to turn sharply off the A8 at the next junction. The cops however stayed on the A8, which left us heading north on the M336 toward St-Paul-de-Vence and me wondering what to do now. But first I needed to get the gun out of John’s hand and him in a slightly calmer frame of mind.

I kept on driving north for about ten or fifteen kilometres. It was an uninspiring landscape typical of the crappy roadside hinterland of the Côte d’Azur: garden centres, Casino markets, builder’s merchants, tyre centres, McDonald’s, car showrooms, petrol stations and banks. The sort of road that makes the south of France look more like a ring road around Hemel Hempstead.

‘They’re gone,’ I said after a while.

‘I know.’

‘The Monty cops said Orla was killed with a 22-calibre Walther,’ I said. ‘Is that the same gun?’

‘Yes.’

‘You brought the murder weapon with you? Shit, John. Are you crazy?’

‘I couldn’t very well leave it on the floor of my bedroom in Monaco,’ said John. ‘There was enough evidence stacked against me already.’

‘Yes, but why didn’t you chuck it in the sea. Or in Lake Geneva?’

‘I told you. I thought Colette’s Russian mafia boyfriend was involved in this. I’m not yet convinced he isn’t.’

‘Fair enough. But put that away, for Christ’s sake, before you shoot someone.’

John put the Walther back in his Tumi.

‘Is it loaded?’

‘Of course it’s fucking loaded.’

I glanced sideways at him.

‘Did you sleep last night?’

‘Not really. I kept thinking that Chief Inspector was about to turn up and put me in manacles.’ He shook his head. ‘Jesus, I need some air.’

‘Why don’t I lower the hood?’

‘Are you kidding? I feel quite exposed enough as it is. Look, let’s stop somewhere. For a coffee.’

‘We’ve been driving for less than an hour.’

‘I know, I know. But — let’s just stop somewhere, okay? Please?’

‘I’ve got an idea. We could have an early Sunday lunch. Perhaps with a glass of wine in you, you’ll relax a bit. Maybe you could have a nap in the car afterward. We could go to the Colombe d’Or, perhaps. That’s not far from here.’

‘No. I couldn’t go there. They know me. I used to go there all the time with Orla.’

‘Of course. Somewhere else then. Somewhere they don’t know you. There’s a café up ahead. With parking.’

John nodded. ‘I’ve got a better idea,’ he said. ‘Head a bit further north, to Vence. We can stop at the Château Saint-Martin. A couple of times I almost went there with Colette. They don’t know me there but I hear they’ve got a pretty good spa and an excellent restaurant. Maybe I can have a massage. I really think that might help. I’ve got a bitch of a tension headache like you wouldn’t believe.’

‘All right. If that’s what you want to do. But I don’t know how you ever made it to Geneva. At this rate we’re never going to get to Marseille.’

‘I know. And I’m sorry. Look, I’ll be a lot better when I’ve got rid of this headache, okay?’

‘Okay, sure.’

The Château Saint-Martin was set amidst the ruins of an old fortress — an antiseptic sort of place in about thirty acres of grounds that looked like any overpriced luxury hotel in Southern California. The lawns were lush and green and so carefully cut they looked less mown than Brazilian-waxed. The Beverly Hills air was augmented by the staff’s ill-fitting beige-coloured uniforms and there was a gift shop selling overpriced silk scarves and straw hats and lots of other stuff including some books you didn’t want. It was the kind of place you went for your second honeymoon and read Fifty Shades of Grey to look for some ideas about how to make your stay more interesting; which was probably why the guests looked so very bored. Several women were doing some yoga in the sun and probably trying to work up an appetite for a light lunch. They were mostly Americans who liked the French but only if they spoke English good enough for them to wish someone a nice day.

John went and booked himself a deep-tissue massage while I sat in the garden restaurant in the shade of some old olive trees and chose a bottle of cold Meursault. Since John was paying I chose the Coche-Dury Meursault 2009, a snip at 500 euros; then I sat and read about another forest fire in The Riviera Times . There are always forest fires in the Alpes-Maritimes and Provence during the summer. This one was in the Forêt de l’Albaréa, near Sospel; 900 hectares of forest and several dozen houses had been destroyed, and the unidentifiable body of a man had been found. I wondered how badly you had to be burned for your body to be unidentifiable. Sometimes life in France seemed very much more precarious than in England. At last John returned from the spa and I waved over the maître d’ and we ordered some gazpacho followed by two chicken salads.

‘You were a while,’ I observed.

‘Got talking to the girl who’s doing my massage,’ he said. ‘Nice-looking bird so I tipped her in advance.’

‘Why?’

‘To double my chance of a happy ending, of course.’

‘Is that a possibility?’

‘It is now. Besides, she’s from Yorkshire.’ He nodded. ‘From Keighley. If there’s one thing I know about it’s women from fucking Keighley.’

‘That’s a surprise. A girl from Keighley, in a place like this.’

‘Isn’t it?’

‘That’s Brontë country, isn’t it?’

‘It is.’

But when the waiter arrived with our food, we were in for a bigger surprise. Because our waiter was none other than Philip French, who had been the fourth musketeer in John’s atelier of Mike Munns, Peter Stakenborg and myself. And it was only now I remembered that French’s home in Tourrettes-sur-Loup was only a few miles away from Vence and the Château Saint-Martin. If either John or I had ever accepted his invitation to visit him there, we would have known that and perhaps avoided the area altogether.