Philip Kerr - Research

‘I’ll show him the twenty thousand, like we agreed. But then I’ll suggest that if he lets me keep the money then I’ll bring him the box and the paperwork. I get to keep the twenty thousand but he stands to make an extra hundred 150,000 when he sells the watch. Maybe more.’

‘So he thinks you’ve double-crossed me for twenty grand?’

‘Exactly. I’m figuring he’s got nothing against me. In fact I’m sure I can persuade him that I’m his friend and that he owes me — something . Without you there to make things personal I’m sure I can get him to believe that the Bentley and the cash are what I’ve been after all along. I’ll tell him I’d forgotten all about the watch. He’ll want to believe that I really hate you as much as he does. And that I’m no better or worse than him when it comes to revenge.’

‘But I already told him the Bentley wasn’t mine.’

‘Of course you did. Only I’ll tell him I know different. Or that I know someone who’ll buy the car with no questions asked, for fifty grand. I’ll tell him I’m willing to settle for the cash and the car if he settles for your watch, in its box.’

‘Yes, that might work. But why would he trust you to come back with the Hublot box?’

‘Because I’m not you. He isn’t a fucking criminal, John. He’s actually quite law-abiding, only right now he’s also desperate. I know him. Phil and I go way back. He used to work at J. Walter Thompson, remember? That’s how he and I met. Besides, I didn’t work in advertising for all those years without becoming just a little bit persuasive.’ I shrugged. ‘Anyway, what have you got to lose?’

‘What happens when you don’t come back to Tourrettes with the Hublot box?’

‘It will be too late by then. Hopefully you’ll have found Colette and your alibi. With any luck you’ll be out on police bail. Facing trial, perhaps, but with every chance of being acquitted. Meanwhile, you can instruct your lawyers in Monaco to threaten Phil with jail unless he returns the watch.’ I finished the wine in my glass. ‘So, what do you say?’

‘Give me a minute to think this over,’ said John. ‘I’m not saying yes. Not yet. Just — give me a minute, okay?’

The cassoulet arrived and I made short work of it while John — ignoring his own main course — concentrated on the Bandol. He was drinking more than was good for him but I could hardly blame him for that; given the strain he was under the surprise was that he wasn’t drunk more often.

Then at 8.45 he ordered another bottle of Bandol and told me he would wait at the restaurant for me. ‘I guess there’s no harm in you trying to talk him around,’ he said. ‘It’s not like I have anything to lose.’

‘Good.’ I picked up the Tumi bag and collected the car keys off the table. ‘I’ll be back as soon as I can.’

‘You do that, old sport. If I’m not here I’ll be at one of those bars on the Place de la Libération.’

I walked back to the square in front of the church where we had left the Bentley and found some small boys next to it, taking pictures of themselves. One of them even crouched down near the exhaust and filmed the start-up on his mobile phone. Tourrettes wasn’t like Monaco where expensive cars are ten-a-penny; it was altogether smaller and much less glamorous; to that extent it reminded me of Cornwall.

I smiled kindly, steered the car carefully away from the busy square and drove north onto the Route de Saint-Jean and then up the narrow, dry-stoned road that was Route du Caire, in the direction of Phil’s villa. Once or twice I had to move quickly into the side as a van driven by some mad local came hurtling down the road the opposite way. There was no street-lighting, since this was rural France, but there were several houses along the way providing just enough illumination to help me navigate. Soon after the hacienda-style entrance of the Hôtel Résidence des Chevaliers on my right, the road narrowed even further until at the top of the hill, on the left, the Bentley’s headlights picked out a rusting metallic sign that read ‘ Le VILLA SEUREL, Propriété privée ’; next to this was another sign from Immobilière Azuréenne which read ‘ À Vendre ’. I steered the car through an open gate and up a narrow twisting drive. Ill-kempt bushes brushed the dusty blue doors of the Bentley as the car crawled up a steep hill until the ground beneath the twenty-one-inch wheels flattened and widened and I was turning onto a gravel parking area in front of a two-storey cream house with pale green shutters. I turned off the engine, collected the Tumi bag off the passenger seat and stepped out of the car to find Philip French standing behind a zigzag wall with a glass of wine in one hand and a roll-up in the other.

‘Where’s John?’

‘I thought it best if I came up here on my own,’ I said. ‘Things being what they are between the two of you it seemed best to avoid a scene.’

‘That’s all we’ve ever had — he and I. He’d think of a scene and I’d write it. Today, in the car park at the Saint-Martin was the first conversation we’ve ever had about something real.’

‘He’s not so bad. He didn’t kill her, you know. He really is an innocent man.’

‘I couldn’t give a fuck if he killed her or not. Since I never met her I have no feelings about the woman one way or the other.’

‘Phil. That’s not worthy of you.’

‘Come to do his dirty work, have you?’

‘Not at all.’

‘I hope you brought the money, for his sake.’

French turned on his heel and walked back onto the terrace, and as I followed him I noticed a strong smell of marijuana in the air.

The house occupied a good space at the top of a hill that provided uninterrupted views of the countryside to the south and probably the sea as well. The garden was not overlooked by anyone or anything as far as I could see, and about the only thing that gave a clue as to the parlous state of the owner’s finances was the empty swimming pool and a second immobilière’s sign that had been placed behind a garden shed, only this one read ‘ À Louer ’. A wrought-iron balcony ran the length of the front of the house, and underneath this was a refectory-style table on which sat a wine-box, a couple of glasses, some cigarette papers and next to a Rizla rolling machine a plastic bag containing tobacco and whatever else you needed to make a joint these days.

‘Nice place you have here,’ I said.

He smiled and I saw that his teeth were not in the best condition; they were the colour of the keys on an old piano. He was a thin man, even a little cadaverous, with skin as thin as the Rizla papers on his joints.

‘How many square metres have you got?’

‘It’s 4,400 square metres of mostly olive grove. Originally we were going to make our own olive oil, but that was another pipe dream down a long borehole of pipe dreams.’

‘But a great place for writing, I’d have thought.’

‘It might be, if I had anything to write. But I’m all written out, Don. I fear my days of writing anything other than some newlywed’s bloody lunch order are over.’ Phil took a deep drag on the roll-up and I noticed he was still wearing John’s Hublot watch. It stood up from his racket-shaft of a wrist like the lid on an Aga cooker.

‘Yes, I know what you mean. Now that we no longer have John’s outlines to work from I’ve found it hard to get going again myself.’

Phil smiled a cynical smile. ‘Sure. Whatever you say, Don.’

‘Look, Phil, I don’t recall there being any bad blood between you and me. I always did my best for all the guys in the atelier . Perhaps you didn’t know, but it was me who persuaded John to give you that redundo money. He needn’t have given any of us any money at all, since we were all technically self-employed. But if you’re going to behave like a cunt I’ll fuck off now and save us both the emotional energy of an argument. Frankly I’ve got enough on my plate dealing with John without you as well.’