Philip Kerr - False Nine

Pavements that were greasy with dirt and cracked with the relentless heat of the sun looked like trays of toffee and were almost as sticky. Fence posts and gates collapsing because of the damp and the voracious appetites of many insects resembled driftwood that, at any moment, might find its way back into the sea that seemed never very far away. There was salt in the hot air and on almost everything else, like a hoar frost. Large pelicans wheeled across the sandy beaches like pterodactyls before dive-bombing the waves for fish and one had the feeling that at any moment a dinosaur might have lumbered noisily out of the trees, crushing several shacks underfoot before eating a small 4x4, or perhaps a dozing Rasta man. Crickets whistled away in the bushes like the wheels of a dozen rusty wheelbarrows. Dogs dozed in doorways and on street corners with only the twitch of a flea-bitten ear or the slight ripple in a ribcage to persuade you that they were not fresh roadkill.

In the central square of Pointe-à-Pitre there was a spice market that was about as picturesque as a cheap tea-towel and just as small, where none of the so-called traders seemed to care very much if anyone bought anything or not. I’ve seen more obvious enterprise in a hospice for the chronically ill. Here and there were a few traces of former French elegance; a fountain, the bronze statue of some forgotten Gallic hero, an ignored wall plaque; otherwise a guillotine might have seemed more in keeping with the look of the place. It was indeed like a Devil’s Island without Papillon, a penal colony bereft of convicts, although the many aimless French tourists who had recently disembarked from the two cruise ships now docked in the harbour of Pointe-à-Pitre seemed as if they might have been sent there as a punishment. With their pale skins, backpacks and ugly, shapeless sportswear they had the bewildered look of men and women who were uncomfortably far from home and true justice. Certainly there was nothing attractive in the shops of this unlikely capital that might have made any of them glad to be here. Even the local graffiti seemed to lack style.

But while the island and its buildings were less than attractive the same could not be said of the indigenous people. With the exception of a bearded lady I saw eating garbage off the street and the fat hookers inhabiting the shanties on the western edge of the town, the Guadeloupeans themselves were altogether more noble in appearance. Some of them were astonishingly beautiful and looking at them it was easy to understand how it was that this island of less than half a million inhabitants could have produced such fine-looking men as Thierry Henry, Lilian Thuram, William Gallas and Sylvain Wiltord. All of the islanders spoke French but to each other they spoke Creole, which is a mixture of French and Spanish and as different from normal French as Welsh is from English. I can speak both French and Spanish and yet I couldn’t understand a word of Creole — it made me glad that Grace had insisted on accompanying me. There was that and the fact that she was great in bed, which may have been the best reason why we decided to check into a local hotel and base our search from there, at least for one night.

‘The Auberge de la Vieille Tour doesn’t begin to compare with Jumby Bay or any of the better places on Antigua,’ explained Grace as we arrived at the hotel in Le Gosier, to the east of Pointe-à-Pitre, ‘but it’s the best of a bad lot. Believe me, we could do a lot worse. I’m told that there are times when the food here is almost edible. Besides, it’s quite close to the spot where we’re going to commence our search for Jérôme Dumas.’

Built around an old eighteenth-century windmill and occupying three hectares of tropical gardens on the edge of the Caribbean, the hotel resembled one from a very old Bond movie, Thunderball or Live and Let Die , perhaps, and, in lieu of a bottle opener, whenever we were there I was looking around for a man called Tee Hee with a steel claw for an arm. I could equally have used a steel-claw-type arm for a telephone aerial as the mobile signal on the island was almost non-existent, as was the whole concept of service with a smile. The Guadeloupeans may have been a handsome people but they weren’t in the least bit interested in giving customer satisfaction. In the hotel some of them were just rude.

Which drew the scorn of my female companion.

‘They’ve got no idea how to run a hotel or a restaurant,’ she said. ‘Which is odd considering that this is part of France. I mean, you’d think they’d have learned a bit about food and hotel-keeping from the French.’

‘Why is that?’

‘Perhaps it’s something to do with their dislike of the so-called Mother Country,’ she said. ‘They’d certainly like to be independent of France. So perhaps their rejection of French cuisine and decent hotel service is a corollary of that. Either way, I always feel rather sorry for all those French tourists who get off those hideous cruise ships in search of a good meal. You can go from one end of this island to the other in search of edible food and you won’t find it. You haven’t tasted really bad food until you’ve eaten in a local Creole restaurant.’

‘I can’t wait.’

We were sitting in the hotel bar while this conversation took place, having ordered a glass of fruit juice with which to refresh ourselves after the bumpy flight from Antigua.

‘I mean, look at that,’ she said, pointing at the hotel’s hapless barman. ‘It’s a scandal. This island is sinking under the weight of all the fruit growing on the trees and still he’s giving us fruit juice out of a bottle and then diluting it with mineral water. Because he’s too lazy to squeeze a few goddamn oranges.’

‘I’m beginning to see why you left,’ I said.

‘This place always drives me crazy. What you were saying at Jumby Bay about how it’s hard to know why so many footballers in the French national team come from this island, I was thinking that it’s a lot easier to understand why so few of them — if any — ever come back. Imagine if you were a hugely well-paid footballer from Guadeloupe, living in Paris. All those fine restaurants. All that lovely shopping. The beautiful houses. You’d think you’d died and gone to heaven.’

‘So what’s Jérôme Dumas doing back here?’ I asked. ‘I’ve seen the way he lived in Paris. And I can tell you, the guy was behind heaven’s velvet rope.’

‘Now that I don’t know,’ said Grace. ‘I’ve got no idea why he was here. All I have are four possible addresses where we might find him.’

‘Courtesy of our mystery convict?’

‘Courtesy of our mystery convict.’

‘That’s it?’

‘Not quite. My client was specific that we should visit these four locations in turn. One after the other.’

‘I wonder why.’

‘I think we’ll have a better idea about that when we’ve been to the first address. Don’t you think? It’s a short walk from here. In Le Gosier.’

After we finished the ersatz fruit juice we walked out of the hotel entrance and went west along the road. After a short while we came to the Morne-à-l’Eau cemetery — a gated necropolis full of hundreds of tombs and mausoleums all made of black and white marble tiles and resembling a village made of liquorice. Next to this was a strangely modern church with a corrugated roof and a bright blue, eight-storey bell tower that the local fire department might have used for exercises.

As we passed the church, Grace looked at me and said, ‘Do you believe in God?’

‘When I’m more than two goals down I’ve been known to pray, yes.’

‘That’s not quite the same thing.’

‘Depends if it works or not. When it works I believe and when it doesn’t I don’t. It’s as simple as that.’