Philip Kerr - Research

I went through her handbag, took some things I thought might come in useful later — including her laptop — turned off her mobile phone and then stuffed the bag under the passenger seat.

I locked up the car and checked in for my flight back to London.

It was a nice day to fly somewhere.

Tourrettes-sur-Loup is an attractive higgledy-piggledy village that occupies a high space on the edge of the spectacular Loup valley and seems to grow out of the rocky plateau it’s built on, like a huge and sprawling geranium; it put me in mind of that mystical albeit much colder place, Shangri-La, from James Hilton’s Lost Horizon . I didn’t know if the inscrutable locals enjoyed impossible longevity, as in Hilton’s hugely successful novel, but they seemed no more interested in the outside world than if they had been Tibetans and, in a local restaurant close to the medieval town square where John and I ate an early dinner, the waiters seemed to regard our attempts to speak French as if they themselves continued to speak ancient Occitan, which was once the language in that part of France. Still, the food was good and there was a decent wine cellar from which we had chosen an excellent ten-year-old Bandol. We were sitting on a small terrace at a restaurant called La Cave de Tourrettes, with a view of the valley that would have given a Sherpa vertigo, and in the air was a strong smell of night-scented jasmine which quite overpowered the smoke from my cigarette. I’d just eaten a delicious terrine of crab and was now contemplating the arrival of a gut-busting cassoulet.

‘That cunt,’ muttered John.

‘Who?’

‘Phil. Who do you think? My friend and former fucking colleague.’

‘Perhaps.’ I shrugged. ‘Good writer, though.’

‘Yes,’ John admitted. ‘Good enough. Or at least he was.’

‘I’m surprised he can’t get published.’

‘The whole business is changing. You’ve got to write exactly what they want or you’re fucked.’

‘Maybe. Still, I can easily see why he chose to live here. This is a nice little place — Tourrettes. It’s a bit Name of the Rose , isn’t it? Unlike the rest of this part of the world there’s something completely unspoiled about it.’

‘The same cannot be said of him.’

‘No, perhaps not.’

‘To be frank, I hardly recognized the bastard.’ John shook his head. ‘He’s changed a lot since I last saw him. I had no idea he was quite so bitter. Thinner, too.’

‘It’s not just money that changes people for the worse,’ I said. ‘It’s the lack of money, too. He’s had a rough time of it, these last few months. That much is clear. I mean, I’d no idea that Caroline had cleared off with the kids. Or indeed that he was working as a waiter.’

‘I think I told you that, John.’

He shrugged. ‘Did you? I don’t remember. Anyway, it’s quite a comedown for any writer to endure.’

‘There’s nothing holy about being a writer, Don. And what’s wrong with being a waiter? George Orwell worked as a waiter. Didn’t do him any harm.’

‘No, he was a plongeur . A dishwasher. And besides, the normal trajectory is that you wait on tables on your way to becoming a famous writer, not the other way around.’

‘The world doesn’t owe you a living just because you’re a writer. Besides, your wife cleared off. And it hasn’t made you a cunt like him.’

‘Kind of you to say so, John.’

‘The way he was talking, you’d think his whole fucking life was my bloody responsibility. I mean, Jesus, he was supposed to be self-employed. When I wound up the atelier I was under no obligation to give him a penny. You know that better than anyone, Don. But I felt an obligation to him, for old times’ sake. To soften the blow. Because he’d been with me for almost as long as you have. Twenty grand I gave him. Twenty fucking grand. And how does he repay me? With threats. Blackmail. The cops.’ He frowned. ‘Do you think it’s true? That the French really took most of it in tax?’

‘Depends how much he owed them already. But they’re pretty good at getting tax out of people, the French. Much better than the Italians.’

I took a drag on my cigarette and blew the smoke toward an American woman who must have thought that every country in the world ought to have behaved like the United States and outlawed the habit; she tutted loudly and waved a napkin ostentatiously in front of her face as if I’d directed some neurotoxic gas in her direction. I toyed with trying to update Oscar Wilde’s famous remark about a cigarette, to take account of this kind of thing: ‘A cigarette is the perfect type of a perfect pleasure. It irritates Americans. What more could one want?’ But it didn’t really work; it’s always a mistake to think you can improve on anything Oscar said.

‘I read a rather good Elmore Leonard novel about a blackmailer once,’ I said. ‘ 52 Pickup . Fifty-two is the amount of money in thousands of dollars that two blackmailers ask their victim to pay.’

‘Then that guy got off lightly, didn’t he? Me, I’m down a million-dollar watch. Not to mention another twenty grand at nine o’clock.’ John glanced at the tan mark where his Hublot Caviar watch had been, shook his head and cursed, again. ‘I can’t tell you how gutted I am about that watch. I bought it in Ciribelli. It wasn’t just an impulse thing. It had sentimental value. It really meant something. To me, at any rate. It was a present to myself for selling one hundred million books. I was going to have it engraved to that effect, only I never quite got around to it.’

‘I didn’t know that. I’m sorry.’

‘What really pisses me off is that he’s probably going to sell it for way less than it’s worth.’

I surveyed the red wine in my glass for a moment and then shook my head.

‘Not without the box, he won’t. These days, people who buy that sort of thing second-hand want everything that goes with it. The box, the certificate, the original receipt, the bloody carrier bag and wrapping paper for all I know. It’s the same with books. Try selling a first-edition Brighton Rock without the dust-jacket and see how much you get. I know. I did.’

‘Yes, that’s a point. Without the box he’ll be lucky if he gets a tenth of what the watch is really worth. But with the box it’d be worth at least twice that. Maybe more.’ John laughed bitterly. ‘That’s a happy thought. Thanks, old sport. I’ll be thinking of that tonight, when I hand over the twenty grand.’

‘In 52 Pickup the victim manages not to pay the blackmailers anything at all. That’s why I mentioned it. He tricks them. In fact he goes a lot further than that.’

‘Easier said than done.’

‘I don’t think so. It’s just possible that if we were to offer to get Phil the Hublot box and all the Black Caviar paperwork for your watch he might be persuaded to give up on the twenty grand. That way he’d get much more money when eventually he sells it. And no questions asked, probably.’

‘But I don’t have the box or the paperwork. It’s back at the apartment in Monaco. And there’s no chance of getting it from there.’

‘He doesn’t know that. Look, John, if I went up to Phil’s house on my own tonight I could sell him a story that the box is somewhere else. At the atelier in Paris, perhaps. That only I can get it; and that I’m ready to make a deal with him.’

‘Go on.’

I glanced at John’s Tumi bag, which was on the ground by his leg.

‘Have you got the money in there?’ I asked.

‘Of course.’

‘Give the bag to me.’

John handed over the bag and I took a quick look inside it just to check it was all there, like he said.