Philip Kerr - False Nine

‘Yes, a very good fuck. And I’m going to miss that.’ I paused and thought for a second. ‘But it might explain why she didn’t want to come back to London to represent me before the FA. Because she didn’t want to be involved with this little scam any more than was absolutely necessary. The plain fact of the matter is that it’s fraud, pure and simple.’

‘And the father? John? Where does he fit into this picture?’

‘I’m not quite sure. My brain is still a bit puffed out after thinking of this answer.’

‘You didn’t exactly think of it. I mean, it sort of arrived in your subconscious mind, while you were napping. It’s not like you deduced it while smoking your favourite pipe, is it?’

‘Where does it say that all your best thinking has to be done consciously?’

‘True. But don’t think this makes you a fucking genius. It doesn’t. Not by a long chalk.’

‘Maybe so, but if two big clubs like Barcelona and Paris Saint-Germain thought that I was the one man in football who could solve this fucking problem for them then you have to admit they were bloody clever, because that’s exactly what I’ve done, isn’t it?’

‘Good for you. But where does that leave your three million euro bonus? Have you thought about that? Will they still pay it if all this comes out into the open? They never said anything about paying you if it turns out that Jérôme’s disappearance was related to some wrongdoing. Did they?’

‘I don’t remember. But look, that hardly matters right now. All that matters is the truth, surely?’

‘Don’t be too sure about that. Lies and lying are the oil that keeps the wheels of civilisation turning smoothly.’

‘Who said that?’

‘I did.’

‘Well, you should know. The amount of lies you’ve told. Or maybe I should say that you are planning to tell.’

‘To who?’

‘That nice policewoman. Louise. You are going to lie to her, aren’t you? When you get back home. About what you’ve been getting up to here and in Paris with that other bird. The lovely Bella.’

‘I don’t know that I’m planning to lie to her, exactly.’

‘No, you’re just going to do what Grace Doughty did. Which is to be economical with the truth.’

‘Touché.’

‘You know it’s not fair to her, don’t you? Louise. She’s a nice girl. Too good for a bastard like you, probably.’

‘Agreed. But what can I do? Grace handed it to me on a plate. And so did Bella Macchina, more or less.’

‘Would you Adam and Eve it? What a load of bollocks. “And the man said, The woman thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree and I did eat.”’

‘Yeah, all right. Guilty as charged. I’m feeling bad enough about that as it is without you making me feel even worse.’

‘Are you? Are you really? I doubt that. I really do.’

‘It’s not like we’re married or anything.’

‘And that would make such a big difference to someone like you, wouldn’t it? Need I remind you of how you behaved when you were married? You were shagging someone else’s missus, that’s what you were doing. Paolo Gentile was right, you know. For you, this is a weakness. An Achilles heel. Which is a nice way of saying that you’re just a cunt. A clever cunt. But a cunt nonetheless.’

I sighed and turned away from the bathroom mirror. You can take only so much from your own conscience.

Feeling a little cross with myself I went to find Jérôme 2 — or whatever the hell his name was — and then have it out with him.

As I passed the master bedroom I saw the door was open a few centimetres and, peering through the gap, I glimpsed Jérôme 2 lying fast asleep on his bed. For a second or two I contemplated barging in there and waking him up with my hands wrapped around his neck to demand an immediate explanation but a few moments of reflection convinced me that it was probably best to adopt a slightly softer, more laid-back approach than half-throttling him first. Nobody reacts well to being rudely awakened and while I thought I could probably hold my own in a fight with him, I saw little point in exacerbating what already promised to be a delicate situation. And, thinking it might be better if I waited for him to wake up on his own, I went downstairs to search Gui-Jean-Baptiste Target’s extensive drinks tray for a bottle of oak-aged bourbon I’d seen the previous night.

I was about to help myself from a bottle of Elijah Craig when I glanced out of the window and, in the garden lights, caught a glimpse of Charlotte leaving the house with a laden tray in her hands. Given her size she would have been hard to miss. It was like watching a Swiss ball float through the garden. I quickly followed the housekeeper in time to see her place the tray on the lawn and unlock a door near the bottom of the garden before picking the tray up again and going through the door. She closed it carefully behind her and running after her I was just in time to hear the sound of the key turning.

Was the tray for her, I wondered, or for someone else? Maybe she was a live-in housekeeper and these were her quarters. Perhaps she locked the door to ensure some privacy for herself. You could hardly blame her for that. Then again, I remembered her saying goodnight to everyone during dinner last night, and having gone out by the front door. Besides, there was a bottle of beer on the tray and I seemed to recollect Jérôme Dumas saying something about her not touching alcohol. So the beer could not have been for her but for someone else.

As I pondered these circumstances the thought now occurred to me that, perhaps, I had misjudged the situation. It wouldn’t be the first time. Was it possible that Jérôme 1 was being held prisoner, just like the man in the iron mask? Far from being in cahoots with Jérôme 1 perhaps Jérôme 2 was intending to take the place of his twin brother whom he’d incarcerated in order that he might enjoy a taste of the Lamborghini lifestyle himself. Having seen Guadeloupe you could hardly blame him for that. And who would ever know? Even if he wasn’t as talented a player as his twin, Jérôme 2 might even manage to play a couple of games for Barcelona before they concluded he simply wasn’t up to scratch and returned him to PSG. Meanwhile, Jérôme would still be on a hundred grand a week — six or seven times as much as an islander’s average yearly salary. Only a few months earning this kind of loot would probably be enough for any young man living out his days in Pointe-à-Pitre. It might easily leave him set up for life. That’s a lot of temptation for anyone to resist, even a brother. Perhaps especially a brother.

I took a few steps back and surveyed the low, flat-roofed building into which Charlotte had disappeared. It seemed to be a large garage or perhaps a small house that was the twin of the larger one, and, thinking I might gain access to this building more easily from the beach, I walked to the very bottom of the lushly planted garden and used the door through which Grace and I had first entered the house, the previous day.

The beach was clear of French tourists now; a cheap foam mattress lay abandoned; further up the strand I could hear a guitar being strummed and some laughter, and there was a strong smell of dope in the air. I wouldn’t have minded a toke myself. My heart was throbbing in my chest like a squid in a net. Squadrons of pelicans were still hitting the waves in the moonlight like feathered harpoons in search of unwary fish. You had to admire their skill; they seldom came up short. The turbid sea crashed onto the shore and drew back again in a grating, melancholy roar of sand and shingle while the blackening night sky was regularly pierced by a ruby red beam from the island lighthouse that was more than enough to illuminate my new purpose. I walked a few yards along the beach and turned a corner onto some large wet rocks that seemed to cover a long sewage pipe that led into the sea. There I found a steel gate padlocked several times, yet which could easily be mounted provided there was something to cover the no mans’ land of barbed wire that festooned the top.