Research

Chapter 1

It was the American novelist William Faulkner who once said that in writing you must kill all your darlings; it was Mike Munns — another writer but, like me, not half as good as Faulkner — who made a joke out of this quote when he telephoned my flat in Putney early that Tuesday morning.

‘It’s me, Mike. I’ve heard of kill your darlings but this is ridiculous.’

‘Mike. What the hell? It’s not even eight o’clock.’

‘Don, listen, switch on Sky News and then call me at home. John’s only gone and killed Orla. Not to mention both of her pet dogs.’

I don’t watch much television any more than I read much Faulkner but I got out of bed and went into the kitchen, made a pot of tea, switched on the telly, and after a few seconds was reading a rolling strip of news across the bottom of the screen: BESTSELLING NOVELIST JOHN HOUSTON’S WIFE FOUND MURDERED AT THEIR LUXURY APARTMENT IN MONACO.

About ten minutes later the twinkly-eyed Irish news anchor was announcing the bare facts of the story before asking a local reporter positioned outside the distinctive glass fan entranceway to the Tour Odéon, ‘What more can you tell us about this, Riva?’

Riva, a fit-looking blonde wearing a black pencil skirt and a beige pussy-cat-bow blouse, explained what was now known:

‘The writer — millionaire John Houston is being sought by Monaco police in connection with the murder of his wife, Orla, whose body was found early this Tuesday morning at their luxury apartment in the exclusive principality of Monaco. It’s believed that her murderer also killed Mrs Houston’s pet dogs. The sixty-seven-year-old Houston, who hasn’t been seen since Friday night, made his fortune as the author of more than a hundred books and is widely considered to be the bestselling novelist in the world, with sales of more than 350 million copies. He regularly tops the Forbes list of the world’s highest-paid authors with earnings estimated at over one hundred million dollars a year. Mrs Houston was aged thirty-seven; as Orla Mac Curtain she was a former Miss Ireland and actor who won a Tony Award for Best Leading Actress in a Musical for her portrayal of Sophie Zawistowska in Sophie’s Choice: The Musical. Orla Mac Curtain was generally acknowledged to be one of the world’s most beautiful women and had recently written her first novel. The couple were married five years ago at Mr Houston’s home on the Caribbean island of St Maarten. But other than the fact that they are treating her death as a murder the Monaco police have given us no information on the exact circumstances of Mrs Houston’s death. Eamon.’

‘Riva, Monaco isn’t exactly a large place,’ said the news anchor. ‘Have the police any idea where John Houston might have gone?’

‘Monaco’s less than a square mile in area and bordered by France on three sides,’ said Riva. ‘It’s only ten miles from Italy and I’m told you could even be on the North African coast in maybe ten or twelve hours. He owned a boat and he had a pilot’s licence so it’s generally held that he could be absolutely anywhere.’

‘It’s like a scene from one of his books. John Houston was on this programme just last year and I read one of them then and I thought it was very good — although I can’t remember what it was called. He seemed like a very nice fellow. Have the police said how she died?’

‘Not yet, Eamon—’

I turned off the TV, refilled my mug with tea and was scrolling through the numbers in the contact list on my cellphone to find Mike’s telephone number when the landline rang. It was Mike Munns again.

‘Are you watching this, Don?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’ I lied. ‘But I think you’re jumping to conclusions here, Mike. Just because the Monty cops are looking for John doesn’t mean John actually did murder her. We’ve both written enough of his books to know that’s not how a plot works. The husband’s always the first and most obvious suspect in a case like this. It’s almost a given that he should be the early favourite. Any husband can be made to look as if he might have had a motive to kill his wife. Guilty until proven innocent, that’s how it always works. Mark my words, it will be someone else who turns out to be the murderer. An intruder. Orla’s lover, perhaps. Assuming she had one.’

‘Nil nisi bonum,’ said Munns. ‘But Orla was a gold-plated bitch and I certainly can’t imagine anyone loving her. If John did bump her off then I can hardly say I blame the poor bastard. I’m sure I’d have killed Orla if I’d had to live with her. Jesus, that woman would have tried the patience of Saint Monica. Do you remember the way she used to ignore Starri at the Christmas party?’

A dull and monosyllabic Finn from Helsinki, Starri was Mike’s wife, but I could hardly have faulted Orla for ignoring her at the Christmas party. I was none too fond of Mike’s wife myself. I could easily have ignored her presence in a mug of tea.

I smiled. ‘Say nothing of the dead unless it’s good,’ I said. ‘That’s what nil nisi bonum is supposed to mean, Mike.’

‘I know what it fucking means, Don,’ said Munns. ‘I’m just saying that maybe Orla had it coming. Her and those bloody mutts. And I’m surprised to hear you of all people defending her. She didn’t like you at all. You do know that, don’t you?’

‘Of course I know it but, strictly speaking, I don’t think I was defending her,’ I said. ‘It was John I was defending. Look, our former friend and employer is a lot of things, and many of them have four asterisks on the printed page if it appears in a newspaper, but he’s not a murderer. I’m sure of it.’

‘I’m not so sure. John has one hell of a temper. Come on, Don, you’ve seen him when he gets into one of his rages. He was Captain bloody Hurricane. Strong, too. Those hands of his are as big as car doors. When he makes a fist it’s like a wrecking ball. I wouldn’t like to tangle with him.’

‘You did tangle with him, Mike. As I recall you hit him and for some reason that is still beyond me he didn’t hit you back, which I must say showed a remarkable amount of control on his part. I don’t think I could have been as restrained as he was.’

This was truer than Munns probably realized; I’d always wanted to punch him on the nose — perhaps now more than ever.

‘Yes,’ admitted Munns, ‘but that was only because he was feeling ashamed of the way he’d behaved already. For bawling me out so violently.’

‘In fairness he might also have sacked you for hitting him, Mike,’ I added. ‘And he didn’t do that either.’

‘Only because he needed me to finish a book.’

‘Maybe so, but I think you’re being a little quick to judge him here.’

‘Why shouldn’t I judge him? No one knew John Houston better than us. Look, I don’t owe him a thing. And in the long run, he sacked us all, didn’t he? His friends and colleagues.’

‘Not without compensation.’

‘That was pizza money for a bloke as rich as him.’

‘Come on, Mike, you could buy a whole pizza restaurant for what he gave the four of us.’

‘All right, a watch then. He spent more on wristwatches than he did on our compensation. You can’t deny that.’

I heard Mike’s cellphone ringing — ‘Paperback Writer’ by the Beatles — on the other end and waited a moment while he answered it.

‘Peter,’ I heard Munns say. ‘Yes, I have. He does, I’m on the line to him now. I’d better call you back. No, wait, I’ve a better idea. Why don’t the three of us meet for lunch? Today. You can? Good. Hang on a mo, I’ll ask Don.’

Munns came back to me on the landline. ‘It’s Stakenborg,’ he said. ‘Look here, why don’t we all have lunch at Chez Bruce to talk about it.’

Chez Bruce is a restaurant in south-west London that was conveniently close to where both Mike Munns and Peter Stakenborg lived, in Wandsworth and Clapham.

‘What’s there to talk about?’ I said. ‘She’s dead. John’s missing. Maybe he’s dead, too, only we just don’t know it yet.’

‘Come on, Don, don’t be such a miserable cunt. Besides, it’s been months since the three of us sat down and talked. It’d be good to catch up. Look, I’ll pay for it, if that’s what’s bothering you.’

It wasn’t. ‘Lunch gets in the way of my writing, that’s all. I won’t be good for anything after I’ve drunk a bottle of wine with you bastards.’

‘You’re working on something?’

‘Yes.’

‘In that case I insist,’ said Munns. ‘I’ll do anything to interfere with a fellow writer’s work. Come on. Say yes.’

‘All right,’ I said. ‘Yes.’

‘Great. The set lunch is a bargain. Pete? You still there? We’re on. Don? Pete? Chez Bruce. See you there at one.’

In the culinary wasteland that is south-west London Chez Bruce is, quite justifiably, up itself; but while the kitchen is undeniably excellent it isn’t a smart kind of place. The clientele is mostly pairs of bored housewives spending their city husbands’ modest bonuses, final salary pensioners blowing their ill-gotten gains and middle-aged couples celebrating — if that’s the right word — Pyrrhic wedding anniversaries.

Outside, on the narrow main road, was a long line of near-stationary traffic and beyond this lay the large expanse of unfeasibly green and pleasant parkland that is Wandsworth Common. Only the week before summer had finally arrived, but already it was looking like it had jumped on the first plane and was now headed somewhere warmer. They certainly hadn’t seen much of the sun the previous weekend in Fowey, which was where I had a holiday home in Cornwall called Manderley after the house in Rebecca, by Daphne du Maurier. I think all holiday homes in Cornwall are probably called Manderley.

Naturally I was the first to arrive at Chez Bruce, as I had travelled the furthest distance. I took a look at the wine list and ordered a bottle of Rully: at sixty quid it was hardly the most expensive wine on the list but it would certainly spoil us for anything cheaper and could hardly fail to deter Mike Munns from ordering too many more. I was determined to leave the lunch sober — more or less — especially since I had come by car.

Peter Stakenborg was the next to arrive, a tall, slightly anxious-looking man wearing a badger’s coat on his head, a blue velvet jacket, a white shirt and brown corduroy trousers.

‘Christ, what a morning,’ he said. ‘I’ve been fielding telephone calls from Hereward Jones, Bat Anderton and the Evening fucking Standard. You?’

Hereward Jones was Houston’s literary agent; and B. A. T. ‘Bat’ Anderton was his publisher. I shook my head.

‘Didn’t answer the phone. I figured it was probably just people wanting to feed me gossip and speculation about John.’ I shrugged. ‘Besides, I never answer the phone when I’m trying to work.’

‘Yes, I heard you were working on something.’

‘I’m trying. Put it that way. I was in Fowey for the weekend but it wasn’t working there either so I came back. I kept looking out the window and marvelling that it could rain anywhere quite as much as Cornwall.’

‘A novel?’

I nodded and poured Stakenborg a glass of the Rully.

‘What’s it about?’

‘I’ve already forgotten. When I’m away from my desk it really doesn’t exist at all. That way I can’t talk the book away. I think all writing should be conducted like a kind of exorcism.’

‘Who said that?’

‘I did, Peter.’

‘You mean you’ve actually got a plot — an outline and everything?’

‘Not exactly. I’m just writing, seeing where that takes me.’

‘I tried that once.’

‘And what happened?’

‘To be honest with you, Don, very little.’ Stakenborg made a face. ‘Without one of John’s leather-bound outlines to work from it was just typing really. And it didn’t seem to go anywhere at all. Like trying to drive to the Hay Festival without a satnav. I got lost before I had even started. The man has an extraordinary capacity for creating stories out of thin air. His plots are like Rolex fucking watches. I bet you could lock him in a room with a sheet of paper and a pencil and an instruction to give you a five-hundred-word plot about — about this wine, and he could probably do it. Not only that but he’d actually start to believe it was a good plot, too. I’ve seen that happen. A germ of an idea that becomes a fully-fledged plot in the space of one lunch. I don’t know how he does it.’

I nodded, recognizing this description of our erstwhile employer. ‘That’s true, although I’ve seen him get carried away with an idea, too. So much so that he starts to believe an idea might actually be true.’

‘So, what’s your take on today’s sensational news?’

‘Until today becomes tomorrow I think it’s far too early to say.’

‘Come on, Don. You know him better than anyone. From the beginning, as it were. You must have an opinion about what happened. I’m afraid that Twitter has already got John bang to rights.’

‘That’s it then. You might as well fetch the black cap and hand it to the judge. He must be guilty if a few tweets have said so.’

‘It’s more than a few,’ said Stakenborg. ‘God, the people of this country are without mercy. Especially the writing sister-hood. You’d think Orla had got them the vote the way they’re writing about her now. But really. What do you think?’

‘Yes, Don. Do tell.’ Mike Munns sat down opposite me, poured himself a glass and then measured the Burgundy’s golden colour against the white of the tablecloth. He was short, with floppy hair, large heavy-framed lightly tinted glasses and a checked suit that belonged in the window of a charity shop; but Munns had a personality that seemed the very opposite of charitable. ‘The least you can do is give us your honest opinion. Guilty or not guilty?’

‘For fuck’s sake. With friends like you, what chance does the poor bugger have of clearing his name?’

‘Friend? Who said I was his friend? I thought I already made it quite clear that John Houston was no friend of mine.’

I let that one go. Lunch was effectively over if I didn’t. I shook my head. ‘Beyond the few facts that were reported on Sky News at eight o’clock this morning there isn’t much to go on, yet; surely we can all agree on that.’

‘It so happens that’s why I’m a little late,’ announced Munns. ‘Some cop from the Sûreté Publique just made a statement on TV outside John’s building in Monty. Orla and the dogs were shot with a nine-millimetre handgun; and one of John’s cars — the Range Rover it looks like — is missing from the garage. The cops have named Houston as a prime suspect and issued an international warrant for his arrest.’

‘I always liked that car,’ said Stakenborg. ‘That’s the one I’d have taken from the garage if I had to lit out of somewhere in a hurry.’

‘Lit?’ Munns frowned. ‘I’m not sure I recognize that verb.’

‘Huckleberry Finn,’ explained Stakenborg.

‘That explains it. Twain’s always been a bit of a grey area for me.’

‘I guess that means you haven’t read him,’ I said cruelly.

‘John’s Lamborghini is too flashy and too blue,’ continued Stakenborg. ‘And the Bentley is just too big to do anything but stay in the garage. With the top down he might have been recognized, and in Monaco, with the top up anyone would look conspicuous. No, the Range Rover is what I’d have selected. It’s also grey — a useful colour for going anywhere unnoticed in Monaco.’

‘That would have been my choice, too,’ I said, deciding to play the car game — at least for a short while; if you can’t beat them join them. ‘The Range Rover is always the Goldilocks choice for a getaway: just right. Especially the particular model that John owned: it’s the top-of-the-line Autobiography. A hundred thousand quid. There’s not much that John had I envied except that particular car.’

‘Will you forget about the cars for a moment?’ insisted Munns. ‘The point is that officially John is now a wanted man. Which probably means the Monty cops know a lot more about what happened in John’s apartment than they’re telling. John always did have a thing for guns.’

‘Since when did the Monty cops ever know a lot more about anything very much except how to indulge and humour people with pots of money?’ asked Stakenborg. ‘They may have the largest police force in the world—’

‘Do they really?’ said Munns.

‘Per capita. There are five hundred cops for thirty-five thousand people. But what I’m saying is while the crime rate is low, there’s a hell of a lot that just gets swept under the silk Tabriz in the Salon Privé.’

‘A sunny place for shady people,’ I said, quoting Somerset Maugham.

‘Exactly,’ said Stakenborg. ‘And what was that scandal back in 1999? When they fucked up the case of that billionaire banker guy who died in a house fire?’

‘Edmond Safra,’ I said. ‘Dominick Dunne wrote a pretty good piece about how the cops buried that case, in Vanity Fair.’

‘The Monty cops may have a bigger budget than Scotland Yard,’ continued Stakenborg, ‘but that doesn’t mean they have the brains to go with all that loot. I mean nearly everyone who’s anyone in that pimple of a country comes from Monaco itself, and that’s not much of a gene pool to draw on when it comes to producing cops who can do more than write out a few parking tickets. I mean, look at the Grimaldis for Christ’s sake.’

‘For John’s sake,’ I said, ‘I hope you’re wrong.’

‘That all depends on whether you think he killed her or not,’ said Munns.

‘Obviously I don’t think he killed her. Which is why I hope the cops are equal to the task of catching the real culprit.’

‘In spite of them naming John as their prime suspect? Jesus, Don, what makes you so loyal to that madman?’

‘Loyal? I’m not loyal. Although next to you, Mike, it must seem as if I am. It’s just that I refuse to see him hanged until I’ve heard his side of the story.’

We ordered lunch and I had what I always have when I go to Chez Bruce: the foie gras parfait and then the roast cod with olive mash. This is standard practice for me — ordering the same things wherever I go — and I dare say it’s one reason my wife couldn’t stand to live with me; but as my favourite Genesis song goes — which is another reason my wife left me, I think — I know what I like, and I like what I know.

‘His side of the story stopped counting for very much when he ran away,’ said Mike Munns.

‘Flight is only circumstantial evidence of guilt,’ I said. ‘Think about it. Maybe John argued with Orla and someone overheard that. And if the murderer used one of John’s many guns to shoot her then there’s your case, right there. Two plus two equals fifteen to twenty years in a Monty jail. Under those circumstances I might have lit out of there myself. Jesus, you don’t need to be Johnnie Cochran to see how to defend your client against running away from shit like that.’

‘Monty jail isn’t probably that bad,’ murmured Stakenborg. ‘As jails go. I imagine the cells are quite cushy, with a sea view in the better ones. Just like the Hôtel Hermitage. I wonder if they forbid card games for the inmates like they do for the locals in the casino.’

‘Who the fuck is Johnnie Cochran?’ asked Munns.

‘I think it’s no accident that the novels Mike used to write for John were so often the biggest sellers,’ Stakenborg said to me. ‘John always valued that. He used to talk about Mike being the lowest common denominator of a set of very vulgar fractions.’

‘Very funny,’ said Munns.

‘Cochran was O. J. Simpson’s lawyer,’ I said.

‘That explains it,’ said Munns. ‘Jesus, that was twenty years ago. Sometimes I forget that you two are so much older than me. At least I do until I see your grey hair.’

‘So much older and so very much wiser,’ said Stakenborg.

‘As it happens I think I wrote John’s biggest-selling book of all,’ I said. ‘Ten Soldiers Wisely Led. Which was the last one. Not that it matters very much now.’

‘Not as long as you got your bonus.’

‘Three bonuses as I recall. One for each million sales.’

‘That was the one about the private detective, wasn’t it?’ said Stakenborg.

‘No, Ten Soldiers is the one about the Pakistani arms dealer. Fools of Fortune was the one about the private detective. Peter Coffin. Who reappeared in The Manxman.’

‘And then again in The Riddle Index. Which is the worst of the lot, frankly.’

‘John’s characters,’ Munns sneered. ‘I mean who could believe in a hero called Peter fucking Coffin?’

‘As a matter of fact,’ I said, ‘Peter Coffin is a character in another novel you might not have read either. Moby-Dick by Herman Melville. For a man whose books the Guardian newspaper described as “Vogon novels” John is remarkably well-read.’

‘The Vogons,’ said Munns. ‘From Douglas Adams’s A Hitch-hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, right?’

‘At last,’ said Stakenborg. ‘A book Munns has read.’

‘Vogon novels being like Vogon poetry, I suppose,’ continued Munns. ‘The third-worst poetry in the Universe.’

‘And clearly one book he’s read all the way to the last page,’ added Stakenborg. Laughing, he ordered another bottle of wine.

‘Fuck off,’ said Munns, but he was laughing, at least until he checked the wine list and saw the price of the Rully.

The starters arrived; and the second bottle of Rully which Munns changed for something cheaper.

‘You know, it’s a pity Philip French isn’t here,’ said Munns. ‘To make up the Houston quartet.’

‘I suppose he’s at his place in the South of France,’ I said. ‘The lucky bugger.’

‘You make it sound like it’s something special,’ said Munns.

‘I think it is, to Philip,’ I said. ‘It cost him all he had.’

‘It certainly wouldn’t have been my choice,’ said Munns. ‘It’s a modest little house. There’s an olive grove but there’s no air conditioning.’

‘It sounds quite idyllic,’ insisted Stakenborg.

‘Tourrettes-sur-Loup is hardly that. It’s more of a syndrome, really.’

‘Coming from you, Mike, that’s almost witty.’

‘Hey, I wonder if they’ll make Philip a suspect,’ said Munns.

‘Why would they do that?’ I asked.

‘Because Tourrettes is just an hour’s drive from Monaco,’ said Munns.

‘And?’

‘And because Philip hated John Houston even more than I do. Am I right, or am I right?’

‘You’re never right, Mike,’ I said. ‘Even when you’re not wrong.’

‘You just think you hate him,’ Stakenborg told Mike. ‘Which is something altogether different from the way poor old Phil feels. Besides, Phil doesn’t really hate John. It’s just that he’d gone out on a limb to buy that house in Tourrettes; he assumed that his income from ghosting Houston’s books was going to stay at a steady hundred grand per annum plus bestseller bonuses for the next ten years.’

‘It’s always a mistake to assume anything when you’re a freelance hack,’ I said. ‘Which is what we all were.’

‘So when John pulled the plug on our little atelier—’

I felt myself wince: I’d always been a little embarrassed by Houston’s name for our writing quartet: the atelier. It made us sound as if we had all been employed in the workshop of a real artist, instead of someone whose only talent was for making tons of money.

‘Philip felt especially aggrieved.’

‘... And blamed Orla,’ added Munns. ‘For putting him up to it. That’s what he told me at any rate.’

‘Best keep that to yourself,’ I said.

‘What do you mean?’

‘If the Monty cops turn up here asking questions it might be best if you didn’t repeat that,’ I said. ‘For Philip’s sake. There’s no point in dropping him in it, too. And before you ask, no, I don’t believe Philip killed Orla any more than I think it was John who did it. Or you, or Peter.’

‘Do you think they will?’ Munns asked. ‘The cops. Turn up here, I mean?’

‘Peter’s right,’ I said. ‘The Monty cops have got plenty of money and not much else to do. Which means some cops are bound to show up here before very long. London is the most logical place to start an inquiry like this. Let’s face it, his publisher lives in London. His agent lives in London. We all live in London. His two ex-wives and his kids live in London. His old mother lives in London.’

‘And they all hate him, too,’ said Munns. ‘Yes, you’re right. You just named the whole pack of Cluedo cards for those who might have had a bit of malice aforethought where John is concerned.’

‘Never let the facts get in the way of a good story,’ said Stakenborg. ‘It’s easy to see why John thought you had a talent for fiction, Mike.’

‘Actually it was Don here who brought me into the atelier,’ said Munns. ‘Not John.’

‘Mike used to bring those same rigorous talents to his journalism when he was a hack on the Daily Mail,’ I said. ‘Didn’t you, Mike? But for that, who knows where you’d be now, post-Leveson? In prison for phone hacking, probably.’

Munns grinned. ‘Maybe. I pulled a few strokes in my time, sure. But look here, you can’t argue with the fact that when Houston switched off the atelier’s router he let everyone down. Not just the monkeys like us who wrote John’s books to order, but a virtual industry that was dedicated to one man: the publisher, the agent, the whole fucking shooting match. He had his own bloody West Wing dedicated to his publishing brand at Veni, Vidi, Legi. How many was it? Ten, fifteen people? Not to mention those three girls in the Houston office. All of whom lost their nice jobs when John decided he wanted to go back to basics and write something on his own. To say nothing of the effect on VVL’s share price, reduced lawyers’ fees, accountants’ fees, and Christ only knows what else. I reckon you’ve got more motives there than at the Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute.’

‘For murder?’ I laughed.

‘Certainly for murder. Why not? But you’re right, Peter. That wasn’t the reason why the ex-wives and the kids and his old mother hated him. They hated him already.’

‘Need I remind you that it’s poor Orla who’s dead,’ I said. ‘Not John.’

‘Listen to him. Poor Orla. Poor Orla, my arse. Poor Orla had it coming. Even so I reckon John must have used a silver bullet from a melted-down crucifix for her. He’d certainly have needed one.’

‘Unless he’s dead, too,’ added Stakenborg. ‘And we just don’t know it yet. Russian mafia, a disgruntled hooker — Christ, there must be plenty of those, I never knew a man who liked having rentals more than John. A jealous husband or two — John never could keep his hands off another chap’s girl. A dope dealer, perhaps — yes, he liked a bit of blow now and then, especially when he was partying with the ladies. Or, maybe you’re right after all, Mike, his literary agent; Hereward’s income must have fallen off a cliff since John got to fancying he could win the Booker Prize. And if it hasn’t yet, it soon will. Agents are an egotistical lot. Always think they made their client’s money for them. Or none at all, as in my case. Actually I’m sure my agent wishes I was dead. He could probably sell my novel — yes, my novel — if I could only do something that might make me a bit more of a marketable commodity, such as die in some trendy way. Like Keith Haring. You know, a dead John Houston might actually sell a shedload of his next book. The one Mike wrote.’ Stakenborg snapped his fingers as he tried to remember the title.

‘The Merchant of Death,’ said Munns.

‘So, who knows, maybe he’s cooked up this whole thing to sell even more. No one knows more about how to sell a book than John Houston. I mean look how many records Michael Jackson sold after he checked out of Neverland. Or wherever it was. In the twelve months following his death the King of Crap sold thirty-five million albums.’

‘I never thought of that,’ said Munns. ‘Not a bad idea at all. This celebrity slaying is bound to get more column inches than Jordan’s tits.’

‘Now who’s writing fiction?’ I said.

‘But either way, however you look at it,’ added Munns, ‘you have to admit that John himself is totally fucked.’

It was past six o’clock when I got back to my flat in Putney. This was on the top of one of those gloomy but large red-brick buildings near the bridge and overlooking the river — what the Americans would have called a wraparound apartment, with a little corner turret and a round window; handy for the shops, some quite decent pubs, and the number 14 bus to Piccadilly. The writer J. R. Ackerley — the one who was overly fond of his Alsatian dog — had once lived opposite; and, in one of the other mansion blocks nearer the bridge, so had the poet Gavin Ewart and the novelist William Cooper, both of whom I had sort of known. Putney’s a bit like that, with lots of writers you haven’t quite heard of, which is why they live in Putney and not Monaco, I suppose. As I stared out of my turret window at the small boats that passed up and down the dirty brown river Thames I often told myself that the view from University Mansions was infinitely preferable to the one John had enjoyed of the Ligurian Sea from the double-height windows of his apartment in the Tour Odéon; but this was just another fiction in my life — like the one that I was happier living alone, or the one that I didn’t need John Houston to get a novel published. The fact of the matter was that I hated London. The place was full of miserable people who were always moaning about the weather, or the bankers, or Europe, or this government or the last government; Cornwall wasn’t any better; that was just moaning with a fucking fleece on. John was fond of describing Monte Carlo as a slum full of billionaires, but that sounded just fine to me. Billionaires have higher standards than yokels who buy all their clothes at Primark.

I was pissed of course. In spite of my best intentions we had drunk at least a bottle apiece, followed by vintage brandies off the trolley, which is when the Chez Bruce bargain set lunch stops being such a bargain. I’d paid for all six of those, which ended up costing more than the food. That’s what they mean by vintage brandy: filling the tank of an old Rolls-Royce would have been so much cheaper.

There was no chance of me being able to write anything other than my name and form number at the top of the paper, so I switched on the telly and sat on the sofa in the hope of having a nap. It wasn’t long before ITV News got round to the murder of Orla Houston in the running order of ‘stories’. That’s one of the reasons I never watch television news; because ‘stories’ used to be ‘reports’ (I have enough of stories during my working day); possibly this might be because there’s nothing in the news that sounds very much like news — it’s all speculation and opinion and stream of consciousness, or just plain bullshit. Facts are rare. Virginia Woolf could write the script for the six o’clock news. And so it was with the Houston ‘story’: John was still missing and the prime suspect — anyone who knew of his whereabouts was encouraged to call the Monty police; Orla’s body had been removed from the apartment and taken to a local mortuary; and her family had been informed and some of them were travelling from Dublin, presumably to identify the body and arrange a funeral. Cruelly I wondered if there might be a colour party. Orla’s cousin, Tadhg McGahern, was a Sinn Féin MEP and had already arrived in Monaco from Brussels. The last time I’d seen him he’d been at Orla’s wedding, when he’d been wearing an expression that was not unlike the one his half-brick of a face was wearing now — the bastard.

The Mac Curtain family were a rough lot. One of her brothers, Colm, was a Fianna Fáil member of the Dáil Éirann, which is the principal chamber of the Irish parliament; of course there’s nothing wrong with that, but at his sister’s wedding in St Maarten, Colm and I had almost come to blows when someone — most likely it was Orla herself — told him that before working for the London advertising agency where I’d met John, I’d been a junior officer in the British army. Colm had received this news with something less than the good humour that ought to have been required at his sister’s wedding. As I recalled it now, sprawled on the sofa with eyes half closed against the undulating room, the conversation had gone something like this:

‘So you’re Donald Irvine.’

‘That’s right,’ I said, extending my hand to shake his. ‘And you must be Orla’s brother, Colm. I’m pleased to meet you.’

Colm had stared at my hand as if it had been covered in the blood of Bobby Sands; but I still left it out in front of me, if only for the sake of Anglo-Irish relations. Not that I’m English, but you know what I mean.

‘I can’t shake your hand, Don,’ he said. ‘Not until I’ve found out if it’s true.’

‘If what’s true, Colm?’

‘If it’s true that you were a British soldier in Northern Ireland?’

I smiled a conciliatory smile and dropped my hand.

‘It was twenty-five years ago, Colm. It would be a real shame if the British Prime Minister and Gerry Adams can manage a handshake in Downing Street and we can’t do the same at your own sister’s wedding.’

‘Tony Blair didn’t murder any of my friends,’ said Colm. ‘And you still didn’t answer my question.’

‘It’s not a proper question for a day like this. We’re supposed to be celebrating, not opening old wounds. But for the record, I’ve never murdered anyone.’

‘If you say so. But it certainly doesn’t sound like you’re denying that you were a Brit soldier in Ireland.’

‘I’m not denying anything.’

‘Then it is true. That you were part of an occupying force in my country.’

‘Please, Colm,’ I said. ‘Let’s not fall out over this. If you want to pick a fight with me then do it later, preferably outside, and I’ll gladly accommodate you, all right? But not now, old son.’

‘No one is falling out over anything. I asked you a civil question, Mr Irvine. The least you can do is to give me a civil answer.’

‘You were hardly being civil when you refused to shake my hand, Colm.’ I held it out once more. ‘Look. There it is again. So, what do you say? Shall we let bygones be bygones, for John and Orla’s sake? After all this day is not about the past, it’s about the future.’

‘Bullshit.’

Colm looked at my hand for a moment and then smacked it away, which transformed my hand into a fist; the next second he had caught me neatly by the wrist and held the fist in front of his face, as if it had been a crucial and damning piece of evidence in a court of law.

‘Go ahead,’ he said, coolly. ‘Punch me. It’s what you want to do, isn’t it, soldier?’

‘I think it’s what you’d like me to do,’ I said pulling my wrist from his wiry fingers. ‘To prove a point to yourself, or perhaps to some of these other people. But you’re not going to do that, Colm. I won’t let you.’

By now several other guests had seen something of this incident and moved to separate us; but for some reason — I’m not sure how — Tadhg McGahern got it into his head that I had threatened his cousin, and it wasn’t long before I was being painted by the wedding’s Irish contingent as the old colonial villain of the piece. Later on, I tried to explain what had happened to Orla, but she wasn’t having any of it; naturally she sided with her chimp of a brother. Blood is thicker than water, although in Northern Ireland it’s more often just thick.

Now, as I watched the television footage of Orla’s body being lifted into a panelled forensic van I heard the reporter’s voice utter some nonsense about how following her tragic murder ‘tributes’ had been paid to ‘the beautiful actress’ by some of the people who worked with her. Then the doors of the van closed on Orla and she was driven swiftly away to her autopsy, which hardly bore thinking of with a woman as stunningly beautiful as she had been. That much was true at any rate. You could hardly blame John for marrying a woman like Orla — especially at his age; at the wedding John had been sixty-two and Orla just thirty-one. There were trophy wives and then there was Orla Mac Curtain, who had been nothing less than the FA Cup.

Chapter 2

The next morning I awoke feeling better than perhaps I deserved. I showered, put on a tracksuit, went for a run along the towpath, ate breakfast and tried to work up some enthusiasm for working on my novel. The day was cool and overcast, perfect conditions for standing at my desk; like Erasmus, Thomas Jefferson and Winston Churchill I prefer to stand while I’m writing; the human body is not best served by sitting on your arse all day. But whatever feelings of optimism I possessed about the day ahead lasted only until the moment when Peter Stakenborg telephoned.

‘The bastard’s only gone and written an article about John and us in today’s Daily Mail,’ he said.

‘Who has?’ I asked dimly.

‘Mike fucking Munns, that’s who. Two whole pages of crap that includes several less than choice remarks I made over lunch yesterday that I assumed were made in confidence. About Orla. About John. About his books.’

‘I should have realized he’d do something like this,’ I said. ‘Once a reptile always a reptile. You know, I wondered why he went to the lavatory so often. He must have been taking notes.’

‘Cunt. What amazes me is that he was sober enough to write a piece like that when he got home. Me, I was wasted. I spent the whole evening in front of the telly sleeping it off. Where does he get his stamina?’

‘That’s part of the old Fleet Street training. Even the worst of them can knock out three hundred words on almost any subject when they’re pissed. Some of those hacks write better drunk than when they’re sober.’

‘This is considerably more than three hundred words,’ said Peter. ‘More like nine hundred.’

‘Look, I’ll call you back when I’ve read it.’

‘Do it on my mobile, will you? I’ve got a caller display on that; there are several people I’m going to try to avoid for the rest of the day. Hereward for one. My describing a list of people who might have a reason to murder John himself isn’t likely to make me popular with him or John’s publisher. I was rather hoping VVL might read my own book with some favour. But there’s fat chance of that now, I should say.’

‘Maybe it’s not as bad as you think it is, Peter.’

‘Oh, it bloody is, Don. They’ve even printed pictures of us all at the atelier. I’ll kill that bastard the next time I see him. Read it and weep. All right. Catch you later.’

I put on some clothes and walked around the corner to a newsagent just off the High Street. Putney was a bottleneck of traffic, as always; and yet the river — wider than a ten-lane freeway and running from one end of the city to the other — was almost empty. To that extent London was like a body in which the veins and arteries were hopelessly clogged except for the aorta. I bought all of the newspapers and some cigarettes, which made nonsense of the run earlier on but there we are, I need the occasional ciggie when I’m working on a book. Orla’s murder and John’s disappearance was on the front pages of nearly all of them except the Financial Times and the Guardian. The Sun’s headline brought a half-smile to my lips: HOUSTON, WE HAVE A PROBLEM. It’s not the half-naked girl on Page Three that sells that paper — not for many years; it’s the anonymous guys who write the headlines. As an anonymous writer myself I always had a soft spot for those guys.

I bought a coffee from a Starbucks and carried it and the papers back to my flat where, after glancing quickly over the other articles, I finally read Mike Munns’s story. The purpose of lunch the previous day was now plain to me: Munns had needed some quotes to spice up his piece, which was every bit as hurtful as Peter Stakenborg had said it was — worse, if you were John Houston, Stakenborg or Philip French. I came out of it marginally better than they did. Oddly the thing that irritated me most was that Munns had attributed Somerset Maugham’s famous quote about Monte Carlo to me; it looked as if I’d tried to pass it off as my own, and since the subtext of the article was that I was the ‘Machiavellian’ mastermind behind a kind of grubby fraud in which a sweatshop of poorly paid, ruthlessly exploited authors wrote all of Houston’s books in order that he might pass them off as his own work, I saw myself portrayed as a sort of literary forger, like Thomas Chatterton or, more recently, Clifford Irving. It mattered not a bit to Munns or to the Mail that over the years, in the many interviews he conducted with the press — including the Daily Mail — John had always been perfectly open about his modus operandi. And after all, what was so wrong with the idea of a writing factory? Hadn’t painters like Van Dyck and Rubens kept ateliers where other artists skilled in painting landscapes or children or animals were employed to fill in the blank spaces on some of those enormous canvases? And like Andy Warhol, didn’t Jeff Koons and Damien Hirst do something very similar to what Van Dyck and Rubens had done? Why in the minds of critics — and the critics had been very critical of John Houston, the author — was it all right for a painter to rely on assistants but not all right for an author to do the same? Would War and Peace have been any less of a great novel if today it were to be revealed that Tolstoy had employed another writer to pen that account of the Battle of Borodino in exactly the same way that Eugène Delacroix employed Gustave Lassalle-Bordes to help him paint some of his larger murals? I doubted it very much.

But then I would say that, wouldn’t I?

I called Peter Stakenborg back and tried to reassure him the article wasn’t nearly as bad as he had imagined it was; he wasn’t convinced; so I called Mike Munns and left a one-word message on his cellphone that Samuel Beckett informs us was the trump card of young wives. Then I stood in front of my standing desk, switched on my computer and tried to forget the whole wretched affair.

The thing is I feel more alert while I’m standing; when I’m sitting behind my other desk I am too easily distracted by the internet — the PC on the standing desk isn’t connected, so there’s no temptation to send an email, to pay a visit to YouTube or Twitter, or make a bet on the William Hill website. Writing is all about the elimination of distractions. I’m always amazed how some writers have music playing in the background. Like anything else, a standing desk takes a little bit of getting used to; you have to learn not to lock out your knees and to spread the weight between both legs; but there’s no doubt that I feel much more alert while I’m standing. Above my desk there’s a picture of Ernest Hemingway typing something while he’s standing up: the typewriter is balanced on top of a music case which is on top of a set of shelves, and so strictly speaking there’s no desk involved, but it always reminds me that a good writer ought to be able to write anywhere. A standing desk hasn’t made me the writer Papa was, but then again it hasn’t done me any harm either: I couldn’t fall asleep at my desk when I was standing up or browse any online porn. Being on your feet all day — like a beat copper — burns calories, too, and there are already enough lard-arse writers around as it is.

At lunchtime I wandered out onto the High Street and picked up a sandwich from Marks & Spencer; after eating it I had a short nap in my Eames chair, and then continued work until around 4.30. The phone did not ring again until almost six o’clock, which was a bit of a surprise; it was much more of a surprise to discover that it was the cops who were calling me.

‘Monsieur Irvine?’

‘Speaking.’

‘My name is Vincent Amalric and I am a chief inspector of police with the Sûreté Publique in Monaco. My Commissioner, Paul de Beauvoir, has ordered me to investigate the murder of Madame Orla Houston. I believe you knew her quite well, yes?’

It was a masculine-sounding voice, masculine and very French; every few seconds there was a short pause and a quiet inhalation of breath, and I guessed he was smoking a cigarette. Cops should always smoke when they’re working on a case; not because it makes them look cool or anything but because a cigarette is the perfect baton for conducting an interrogation; it gives the smoker pause for thought and a pregnant pause for disbelief, and if all else fails you can always blow smoke in someone’s face or press it into your suspect’s eye.

‘I knew her.’

‘Tell me, monsieur — and forgive me for asking this so soon in our conversation — but has John Houston spoken to you recently?’

‘No, not for several weeks.’

‘An email, perhaps? A text?’

‘Nothing. I’m sorry.’

‘So. I am arriving in London on Saturday. My sergeant and I will be staying at Claridge’s.’

‘Very nice for you both. I can see that life as a policeman in Monaco has its rewards.’

‘Claridge’s is a nice hotel? Is this what you mean, monsieur?’

‘It’s probably the best hotel in London, Chief Inspector. Not quite as opulent as the Hermitage, perhaps, or the Hôtel de Paris, but probably as good as it gets in London.’

‘Bon. In which case I feel there could be no problem in me inviting you there for dinner next Monday evening. I was hoping that you might help me with my inquiries.’

I could have pointed out that this was once a euphemism in English crime reporting — a phrase that implied a degree of guilt — but I felt this was hardly the time to help Chief Inspector Amalric with the subtleties of his English, which anyway was better than my French. Besides, the phrase seemed almost to have disappeared; these days the Metropolitan Police just arrested you and then tipped off the newspapers.

‘Certainly, Chief Inspector. At what time?’

‘Shall we say eight o’clock?’

‘Fine. I’ll be there. By the way, how did you get my telephone number?’

‘Your colleague Mike Munns gave us your contact details. We saw the article in today’s newspaper and spoke to him only a short while ago. He was most helpful. He said that if we spoke to anyone in London we should make sure that we spoke to you, since you have known Monsieur Houston the longest?’

‘Longer than Mike Munns, yes.’

‘And longer than his late wife, too?’

‘Oh yes. I’ve known John for more than twenty years. Since before he became a published author.’

‘Then I have just one more question for the present, sir. Is it possible you have some idea where Monsieur Houston might have gone?’

‘I’ve been thinking about that. I know he’d been working on a book in Switzerland but he didn’t think to tell me where and I didn’t ask. He had a largish boat, as I’m sure you know. The Lady Schadenfreude. And a plane at Mandelieu. A twin-engined King Air 350. With a plane like that he could have gone anywhere in Europe in a matter of hours. In fact I know he used to fly it quite regularly here to London.’

‘The boat is still in its berth in the Monte Carlo harbour. And the plane is still at the airfield. No, we believe Monsieur Houston must have left Monaco by road. A car has been taken from his garage.’

‘Which one?’

‘The Range Rover.’

I smiled. Got that one right. ‘Okay. I’ll see you on Monday. Goodbye.’

‘Goodbye, monsieur.’

Goodbye. Easy. I never quite bought that last line in Chandler’s The Long Goodbye: ‘I never saw any of them again — except the cops. No way has yet been invented to say goodbye to them.’ What does that mean? People give the cops the brush-off all the time; and if anyone was equal to the task of doing it for real it was surely John Houston; the man was very resourceful. Still, Chandler’s is a great title. One of the best I’d say. That and The Big Sleep. Sometimes a good title helps you to write the novel. I wasn’t at all happy with the title of my own novel. I wasn’t happy with the beginning. And I certainly wasn’t happy with the hero — he was too much like me: dull and pompous with a strong streak of pedantry. John was always picking me up for that when, earlier in our working relationship, he read a draft I’d written for one of his own books:

‘As usual you’ve made the hero much too professorial, Don. He’s a bit cold. Not likeable at all. You need to go back and make us like him more.’

‘I don’t know how to do that.’

‘Sure you do, old sport. Give him a pet dog. Better still let him find an abandoned kitten. Or have him call his mother up. That always works. Or maybe there’s a kid he knows who he gives a few bucks to now and then. People like that. Shows he’s got a heart.’

‘It’s a bit obvious isn’t it?’

‘This isn’t Nicholson Baker, Don. We don’t sweat the small stuff. We tell it how it is in broad strokes, and people can take it or leave it. I’m not much interested in the finer aspects of characterization any more than I am in winning the Man Booker Prize. We’re not writing for Howard Jacobson or Martin Amis.’

‘But he’s supposed to be a ruthless killer, John.’

‘That’s right.’

I shrugged. ‘Which would imply a degree of unlikeability. Did people like the Jackal in Forsyth’s novel?’

‘I did,’ said John. ‘The Englishman, as Freddie more often calls him, is bold and audacious. Yes, he is cool and self-contained and a cold-blooded killer. But he also has style and considerable charm. Remember that French bird he shags when he’s on the run. When he’s with her he’s a bit like James Bond. Smooth and full of smiles. Charm will take a character a long way. Even when he’s also a bastard. Until I fix them your characters tend to lack charm, Don. A bit like you.’

He chuckled at his little joke.

‘It’s there — the old army officer charm — but you keep it hidden, old sport. It’s buried deep along with a lot of other shit. Look, Don, if we’re going to spend three hundred pages with this guy we have to like him a bit. If you write a biography of Himmler you at least have to find him interesting, right? So, it’s the same with this guy in the novel. He has to be someone you might want to have a beer with. That’s the key to any successful character in fiction, Don. No matter who he is, no matter what he’s done, he has to be someone you might want to sit with in a bar. If it comes to that it’s also how you get elected to be the President of the United States, or the Prime Minister of Great Britain. For that to happen you have to look like someone to have a drink with.’

‘Right.’

‘Remember what we did with Jack Boardman?’

Then there were only two, but Jack Boardman became the hero of six novels, of which the most recent was The Second Archangel: A Jack Boardman Story.

‘Yes, I think so.’

‘We based him on your best friend at Sandhurst. What was his name? Piers something or other? The one who was a lieutenant in the Parachute Regiment.’

‘Piers Perceval.’

‘That’s right. I asked you what it was you liked about Piers and we drew up a list of all the things that made him seem like such a good bloke. And then I suggested you stick to that when you were writing about Jack Boardman. I told you to always be asking yourself, what would Piers have done in a situation like this? If Piers slept with this woman what would he say to her afterward? If Piers was going to tell a joke what kind of joke would it be? That kind of thing. It’s how we put Jack Boardman together.’

‘Yes, I’d forgotten that.’

‘So. Think of another friend. And base this new character on him. Steal him, if you like. Steal him like a body snatcher. Simple.’

The trouble was that after writing almost forty books for John, I’d used up all of my own friends — and quite a few of my ex-wife’s — so that there was no one left I could use now for my own novel. I could hardly use Piers Perceval again. After six Jack Boardman books I never wanted to think about or see Piers again. So it was probably just as well that he had been dead for more than thirty years.

I badly missed John’s suggestions on how to improve what I’d written — he was brilliant at doing that. This is different from mere editing; in my experience most editors can tell you what is wrong with a page of writing but have little or no clue how to fix it. That’s why they’re editors and not writers, I suppose. Constructive criticism is the most difficult thing to give any writer. But mostly I missed John’s carefully researched story outlines. These were 75-page outlines of as yet unwritten books, with research appendices, maps and photographs — story epitomes in which all of the questions had been asked and answered — bound in red leather with purple silk bookmarks and their titles lettered in gold. Which seemed only appropriate: each of John’s outlines was worth about four million dollars. Unlike my own novel; the way things were going I would be lucky to sell it at all.

Chapter 3

On the face of it the restaurant at Claridge’s did not augur well; there was something about the art deco room with its purple chairs, high marble ceilings, telescopic peach lampshades and modern carpet that made me feel slightly nauseous. Maybe it was the prospect of dining with two French policemen, but the restaurant looked like the dining room on a passenger-liner that was about to sink.

The maître d’ led me to a table where two men got to their feet and shook me by the hand. Amalric was a weary-looking man with grey hair, a neat, grey moustache and beard, and a good navy-blue suit with a custom lining, pocket silk handkerchief and Hermès tie that made him seem more like a banker. His sergeant, Didier Savigny, was about twenty years younger, with a shaven head and altogether more muscular; his suit was less expensive than his superior’s but rather more fashionable, which is to say the jacket was cut a little too short for my taste and made his arms stick out like a chimp’s. Each of them handed me a nicely printed business card with the embossed gold seal of the principality and which I read politely.

‘Rue Notari,’ I said. ‘Why does that seem familiar to me?’

‘It’s close to the main harbour of Monaco,’ explained Amalric. ‘Your boss’s boat, the Lady Schadenfreude, is moored less than fifty metres from police headquarters, on the other side of the Stade Nautique swimming pool. You can actually see the bridge of the boat from my office window.’

‘That’s handy,’ I said. I collected the menu off the table and ordered a glass of champagne from the waiter. It’s not often you get taken out for an expensive dinner by the police.

‘You know Monaco?’ asked Savigny. He reminded me a little of Zinedine Zidane. Tanned, muscular, not very patient. From the look of him I imagined his shaven head would feel every bit as hard butting against my sternum as the Marseille-born footballer’s.

‘Enough to know that Monaco is the name of the country; that Monte Carlo is just one neighbourhood; and that the capital is the neighbourhood known as Monaco-Ville, which according to your card is where your office appears to be located. I’ve been going there for quite a few years. Ever since John Houston relocated there for tax reasons.’

‘Which is why you know the Hermitage, perhaps?’

‘Not to stay there. Whenever I’ve been in Monaco I’ve stayed in Beausoleil. At the Hôtel Capitole on Boulevard General Leclerc. At a hundred euros a night that’s more in my price range, I’m afraid. And by the way, John Houston was never really my boss. I’m a freelance writer. Self-employed.’

I neglected to add that on one occasion when I’d been staying in Beausoleil I had stood on my tiny balcony and urinated into Monaco which, at the time, gave me an absurd amount of schoolboy pleasure.

‘You never stayed with him?’ Savigny sounded a little surprised. ‘In your friend’s apartment?’

‘No. I was never asked. Oh, I went to the apartment in the Odéon Tower several times to deliver or to collect something. But ours was more of a business arrangement. It’s been a long time since we were something so innocent as friends.’

The waiter came back with my champagne and I toasted the two policemen politely. They were drinking gin and tonic. The sergeant put down his glass and placed a little Marantz dictation machine upright on the table in front of me.

‘Do you mind this?’ he asked. ‘It is difficult for us to eat and take notes at the same time.’

I shrugged. ‘No, I don’t mind. But look, what are you expecting me to say? I should tell you right now that I don’t think John Houston murdered his wife. I’ve known the man for twenty-five years and he doesn’t strike me as a killer. And believe me I know what I’m talking about. If he’s done a runner it’s probably because he’s scared, not because he’s guilty.’

‘Let’s order first,’ said Amalric, ‘and then you can tell us some more about why he’s innocent.’

I ordered a beetroot tartare and a seared loin of venison; Amalric ordered his own food and a hundred-and-twenty-quid bottle of Vosne-Romanée.

‘Your expense account must make entertaining reading,’ I said. ‘For a policeman.’

‘The Interior Minister of Monaco, Dominique de Polignac, takes all crime in the principality very seriously,’ said Amalric. ‘His specific orders to me before we came to London were that no expense is to be spared in catching Mrs Houston’s killer, and as you can see I am not a man who is inclined to disobey his superiors.’

‘Under the present circumstances, I’m very glad to hear it.’

‘Not that he reads much, you understand. The Minister is more interested in football. AS Monaco is his great passion. Did you know that Arsène Wenger used to manage the team?’

‘Yes, I did. And you, Chief Inspector? Do you have much time for reading?’

‘My wife died a few years ago and since then I have developed quite a habit for reading. Mostly I like to read history. Simon Sebag Montefiore. Max Hastings. But I confess I have never read a book by John Houston. Until his wife died I had never even heard of him. But Sergeant Savigny has read a lot of his books. Haven’t you, Sergeant?’

Savigny nodded. ‘I don’t know the English titles, only the French. But the Jack Boardman books. I have read all of them.’

‘Did you like them?’

‘Yes. I buy one at the airport every time I go on holiday. What I like is that you always know exactly what you’re going to get.’

The sergeant made it sound like a Big Mac. For some writers this would have been an insulting remark, but for Houston this was what his books were all about; a successful brand was based on a consistent product. Give them what they want and then teach them that they can have it again. And again. John had been a great believer in creating his own writing style, or more accurately his lack of one. He’d paid particular attention to the number of words in a sentence and the number of sentences in a paragraph. Verbiage, as he called the excessive use of words, was the great enemy of writers: Words only appear to be your friends; but you should think of them as the speed bumps on your page; they can slow the story down as much as they can keep it bowling along.

He had even created a writing lexicon of words that writers from the atelier were forbidden to use; words like ‘corollary’, ‘detumescent’, ‘uxorious’, ‘polyglot’, and ‘felicitous’.

As a rough rule of thumb, don’t use a word that isn’t in the Microsoft Word dictionary, unless it’s a proper noun, of course. Equally, don’t ever be afraid of using clichés. Not in my books. If you want your novel to be a page-turner then make clichés your friends. Clichés — the kind of writing that Martin Amis makes war on — are the verbal particle accelerators to finishing books. Original writing just slows a reader down and makes him feel inadequate. Like he’s thick. Which of course he is, but there’s no sense in rubbing that in. My readers actively approve of clichés. And forget about similes and metaphors; if you want to use similes and metaphors then go and write fucking poetry, not one of my books. People don’t like it. That’s why poetry doesn’t sell.

About the use of swear words in his books Houston was equally circumspect:

No more than one per chapter. And only in situations of extreme stress. A lot of people in Middle America don’t much care for profanity, so within reason, it’s best avoided.

Sergeant Savigny was still explaining why he admired the Houston canon. Harold Bloom it wasn’t, but listening to the Frenchman I had an idea that John would have been delighted with his deconstruction of John’s work:

‘The great thing about Jack Boardman is the way that you don’t get too much useless description; the woman wore a white dress and that’s it. Job done. I don’t need to know if the dress came from Chloé and if her shoes matched her handbag and her panties. If I want that kind of shit I’ll read Vogue. Also, I like the fact that you can just put the books down and then pick them up again without losing the plot.’

‘As a matter of fact I wrote all of the Jack Boardman books.’

‘You don’t say.’

Amalric frowned. ‘This is not something we understand. Houston puts his name to a book that you write, Monsieur Irvine, and he gets the big money while you are paid — forgive me — like a hired hand. How is this possible?’

‘He comes up with the story,’ I said. ‘The stories are pretty good. As Sergeant Savigny has explained, the stories are why people buy Houston’s books, not because of any fancy writing. We didn’t go in for much in the way of metaphors and similes. Just straight descriptions. You’re not supposed to notice the writing very much — just the story. He came up with the plots and I — or someone like me — wrote them. The actual writing was something that bored him greatly. Really it’s a bit like what Bismarck is supposed to have said about laws being like sausages. You should never watch either one being made. It’s best just to read the final product and not to pay any attention to the creative process. But that’s only my opinion. John himself loved to talk about the whole business of writing and exactly how he produced his books. He was really very open about it. Much more open than I’d ever have been. Especially when you’re talking to these bastards on the Guardian who are just looking to trip you up and tell the world what a fraud you are. The Guardian is a left-leaning newspaper in this country. They don’t like anyone with a bit of money. A bit like Libération in France, I think, but with less style. Anyway the lefties loved to hate John. What was it they called him? The Mies van der Rohe of the modern novel; because form follows function and ornament is a crime. The novelist of the machine age; that was another thing they called him. John loved that. He thought that was a compliment. I told him it wasn’t but he insisted it was, even though they meant it to be insulting. He had that page framed and hung on his office wall. And as a quote on some of his publicity. He was very good at creating publicity.’

‘In the last forty-eight hours he’s had more of that than perhaps even he could have bargained for,’ said Amalric. ‘With his face on the front of so many newspapers it won’t be long before we find him. So it would be better for Monsieur Houston if he were to turn himself in. I’m only saying this in case he does decide to get in touch with you.’

‘He won’t. I’m almost certain of that. If he has decided to disappear he certainly wouldn’t need my help. The man can manage on his own.’

I sipped my champagne and surveyed the starters as they arrived at the table.

‘You see, John’s a clever man, Chief Inspector. Very well read. Independently minded. Highly resourceful. He was always good at accumulating esoteric, sometimes forbidden wisdom. He prided himself on getting the facts right so that the books could seem more plausible. He said he didn’t care if anyone faulted his style just as long as they weren’t able to fault his facts. Facts were what he wanted. Painstaking, solid research was the part of the writing process that John really enjoyed. He knew everything from how to manufacture ricin, to the best place to buy an illegal assault rifle. That’s Poland, in case you’re interested. In Gdansk you can put in an order for a new Vepr and within the hour have one delivered to your hotel. That’s why so many people read his books, Chief Inspector. Not because they seem authentic but because they are authentic. Isn’t that right, Sergeant?’

Savigny nodded. ‘That’s right, sir.’

‘John used to offer ten thousand bucks to anyone who could fault his research. To this date that money is unclaimed. Oh, he had the odd letter from some nutter claiming the money, but John was always able to write back and point out just where his correspondent was incorrect. No, he’s quite a character, is John. If he doesn’t want to be found you might have a hard job finding him.’

I winced a little as I heard myself saying this; it sounded very like some bullshit I’d read on the overheated blurb of the last Jack Boardman: You won’t find him unless he wants you to find him.

Amalric nodded. ‘Perhaps,’ he said. ‘Mais il faut cultiver notre jardin.’

I nodded, recognizing this, the last line from Voltaire’s Candide. ‘Yes, of course. You are only doing your job. I understand that.’

‘You know, so far you are the only one who talks about Monsieur Houston as if he might be innocent. We have spoken to his agent, Hereward Jones, his publisher, Monsieur Anderton, Monsieur Munns of course, and his first wife, Madame Sheldrake.’

‘You’ve been busy.’

‘And you are the only one who gives him the benefit of the doubt.’

‘Maybe they know more about what happened than I do.’ I shrugged. ‘Which is only what was on television.’

‘Then let me tell you what we do know. I’d show you some photographs only it might put you off your food.’

I shook my head. ‘I was a soldier in Northern Ireland. Blood doesn’t bother me. At least not any more. Believe me, there’s nothing you could show me that could ever put me off a free dinner at Claridge’s.’

Amalric nodded at Savigny, who reached down to his case and took out an iPad. A few seconds later I was looking at a digital slideshow of the Odéon crime scene: two dead dogs, and a woman — Orla — who might almost have been asleep but for the black and ragged hole in the centre of her Botoxed forehead.

Meanwhile Amalric explained exactly what was known; or at least exactly what was known that he wanted me to know.

‘A week last Friday night, Mr and Mrs Houston had dinner at Joël Robuchon, where they were regulars.’

‘Somewhere else I can’t afford.’

Amalric nodded. ‘While they were there they argued. It was a violent argument. Blows were exchanged. The maître d’ at the restaurant says that Mr Houston twisted his wife’s ear. The doorman says that Mrs Houston hit him with her bag. Soon after this they left, with Mrs Houston in tears. He drove them back to the Tour Odéon in her cream Ferrari. At around 10.30 Mrs Houston took a sleeping pill and they went to bed. Then, sometime between midnight and six o’clock that morning, she was shot at point-blank range in the forehead while she lay in bed. We think he probably got out of bed, fetched a gun and shot her while she was asleep. There’s a burn mark on the skin of her forehead.’

‘There’s no exit wound,’ I remarked. ‘On the news they said it was a nine-millimetre. Only that can’t be right. But for the fact that I know this woman I might say it almost looks like a neat job. There’s hardly a hair out of place on this body. A nine-mill bullet would certainly have blown off the back of her skull, not to mention the fact that the pillow would have been covered in blood.’ I shrugged. ‘By the way, that’s the writer in me talking, not the murder suspect. Just so you know.’

‘You’re right,’ said Amalric. ‘It wasn’t a nine-millimetre pistol that killed her.’

Amalric glanced over the top of the iPad and, with a neatly manicured finger, moved the picture on to a shot of a smallish pistol. ‘That’s a Walther 22-calibre automatic,’ he said. ‘The same kind of gun that probably shot Mrs Houston. Mr Houston bought just such a gun in Monaco six months ago. We think it was probably bought for and owned by her. It’s now the only gun missing from what was, after all, a substantial gun cabinet.’

I glanced again at the dead dogs, where considerably more blood was in evidence. It looked like a photograph from a press ad for the RSPCA.

‘The Walther has a ten-shot magazine,’ said Amalric. ‘He used four more shots on the dogs, possibly to silence them, I don’t know.’

‘Four shots? Then I’d say whoever shot the dogs enjoyed it.’

‘Why do you say so, monsieur?’

‘They were small dogs. Two shots for each one. That’s a little excessive. Like he was making sure they were dead. But to be quite frank with you, I think he might have enjoyed it, because I know that I would have enjoyed it. Those two dogs were a bloody nuisance. Not just the noise they made. But the hair they left on your clothes. Nor were they properly house-trained. John was always stepping on the crap they left around the house. It used to drive him mad that they weren’t properly house-trained and so he did his best to have nothing to do with them.’

‘I thought all English people love dogs,’ said Amalric.

‘Whatever gave you that idea? Anyway, I’m Scottish. And I thought they were a bloody nuisance.’

‘Then perhaps the real motive behind her murder was to kill the dogs,’ said Savigny. ‘The husband shoots the wife because he really wants to shoot the dogs.’

Amalric shot him an impatient sort of look.

‘Stranger things have happened,’ said the younger policeman.

Amalric shrugged. ‘At about 8.30 on Saturday morning the concierge knocked on Houston’s door and gave him the English newspapers. According to him Houston seemed quite normal. Neither Mr nor Mrs Houston was seen all day, but that wasn’t unusual. At around 5.30 in the evening Houston left the building on foot. He was out until about 7.30. He remained in the Tower until about midnight, when he went away in his Range Rover. He hasn’t been seen since. Meanwhile the body of Mrs Houston was found on Tuesday morning by the maid.’

‘Why not suicide?’ I asked.

‘The dogs, monsieur. Why would she kill her own pet dogs?’

‘If she was going to kill herself she might have reasoned that John wasn’t likely to care for them himself. I’ve already told you about those dogs; he was none too fond.’

‘And the sleeping pill? How do you explain that?’

‘She takes a pill out of habit before she decided to do it. And maybe she shoots herself in bed in order to embarrass her husband. To put him in a tight spot, if you like.’

‘For what reason?’

‘John would have given her plenty of reasons. Other women, perhaps. He was always a bit of a pussy-hound.’

Savigny frowned and spoke in French to Amalric, who provided what I presumed was the translation; my French isn’t bad but the Chief Inspector was too quick for me.

Savigny smiled. ‘It’s an interesting theory but for one thing: the gun is missing.’

‘I see. But that still doesn’t rule out suicide. Not entirely. How about this, for example? John takes the gun when he finds out that Orla has killed herself. He takes it because it’s his gun. Or at least one he’d purchased. I’m not sure if he owned a Walther 22, but I wouldn’t be at all surprised. He owned quite a few weapons.’

Amalric nodded. ‘Yes, he owned a Walther 22.’

‘Anyway, he leaves Monaco because he recognizes that he’s in a tight spot and takes the gun with him so that there’s less evidence against him other than the mere fact of his flight.’ I shrugged. ‘Tosses it into the sea from the car window as he drives along the Croisette.’

‘I can see how it is that you are a writer, Monsieur Irvine,’ said Amalric.

‘I have my moments. But to be honest plotting is not my strong suit. That was John’s particular forte.’ I finished my champagne and sat back on my chair. ‘Or how about this? Someone else killed her while John was asleep. They didn’t always share the same bed. Sometimes he slept alone. So maybe John wakes up after hearing the shots — although the shots from a 22 aren’t so very loud. And it’s a big apartment. He gets up. Finds her dead. Reasons that he’s the most obvious suspect, panics and decides to take off. Can’t say I blame him. Because in spite of all I’m saying I admit the case against him is strong.’ I shrugged. ‘But you know, from what he had told me they’d had some problems with the CCTV in that building, so it’s going to be hard to prove he didn’t go straight out again after they came home from Joël Robuchon.’

‘Not problems. Issues. The residents of the Tour Odéon objected to their being filmed. They felt that the use of CCTV in that building invaded their privacy and so the system was switched off a while ago everywhere but the garage. Many of the other residents had bodyguards, of course, some of whom also lived in the tower. Others like Monsieur Houston made do with the security on the front desk.’

‘Isn’t that convenient for whoever shot Orla Houston? Doubtless her murderer was aware of this, too.’

‘This is typical of people who live in Monaco, of course. They are very private people.’

‘Those are the ones who usually have something to hide,’ I said.

‘Yes. You’re right. And without them I would be out of a job.’

I shrugged. ‘And that’s it? This is all you have?’

Amalric smiled sheepishly. ‘There were other forensics, which I can’t go into right now. But it’s already quite a lot, don’t you think? A murdered wife. A missing husband. It’s only in books that one can afford to ignore the convenience of such an obvious suspect as Monsieur Houston. And until we find him we have to go about building a picture of their marriage and what might have made him kill her. That’s fair, surely?’

‘Which is why we’re here in London,’ said Savigny, tucking into his scallop starter.

‘Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, with better cars,’ I said. ‘That’s a picture of their marriage.’ I shrugged. ‘At least it’s the only one I ever saw. I don’t know what else I can tell you about their marriage.’

‘Perhaps nothing, but according to Monsieur Munns, you know all there is to know about Houston himself,’ said Amalric. ‘So why don’t you tell us the whole story? From the very beginning. How you two met. The way things worked and then the way things changed. Recently, wasn’t it? When he made the decision to wind up the atelier?’

‘Il était une fois, as it were,’ I said.

‘Exactly. This is your métier, after all. And there’s nothing policemen like more than to listen to a story. It strikes me that this might be quite a good one, too. One minute Houston is the most successful writer in the world, making millions of dollars every year, and the next he decides to throw it all up. Why?’ Amalric sniffed the wine as it was poured by the waiter and nodded his approval. ‘I have the strong feeling that this is the key to everything. Yes, indeed, I have the distinct sense that once one understands this then much else will become clear. And perhaps we will have a good idea of where to find the elusive Monsieur Houston.’

Chapter 4

My father died while I was still studying law at Cambridge. He left my mother very little and joining the army on an undergraduate bursary was the only way of finishing my degree; for this I had to give the army three years, but I ended up giving them six. I went to Sandhurst in September 1976, and stayed in the army until 1982 when I met a rather marvellous man called Perry Slater, who had known my father during national service in the Royal Scots Greys. Perry was the kind of chap who knew everyone and who everyone seemed to like. He’d been a keen motorcyclist, as was I — we’d both ridden bikes at the Isle of Man TT — and was famously a sports commentator for the BBC; he was also an advertising executive with an agency called D’Arcy MacManus Masius and he kindly managed to find me a job as an account executive in the summer of 1982.

In the late Seventies and early Eighties British advertising was undergoing something of a revolution; thanks to entrepreneurs like the Saatchi Brothers and commercials directors like Alan Parker and Ridley Scott, London’s agencies were making much more creative work than their Madison Avenue counterparts and suddenly it was cool to be an advertising man.

At least it was unless you worked for Masius, which was known in the business as the civil service of advertising agencies; Masius looked after clients such as Pedigree Petfoods, Peugeot, Mars, Beechams, Kimberly-Clark and Allied Breweries whose brands were long-established and distinguished by their dullness and conservatism. It might have been the after-effects of my military service — back then we hadn’t a clue about PTSD — but the tedium and monotony of my new career left me rather depressed and, after a year as an account executive, I persuaded someone to let me become a copywriter. That was how I first met John Houston. He was my creative director, which is to say he was the person to whom I reported and to whom I was supposed to present the press advertisements, TV and radio commercials that I had written for various clients. I liked working for John, but only in so far as he let me do what I liked, and I quickly learned that John himself was interested in advertising in so far as it enabled him to pay his bills; his real interest was writing not advertising copy but a novel to which he had devoted every weekend and evening for almost two years. I’d been writing something myself, and jealously I was spurred to greater effort by the thought that John might beat me into print. From time to time after that we would each politely enquire how the other’s novel was coming along; but John always played his cards close to his chest and I had no idea that his book was as advanced as it turned out to be. Because one day, to everyone’s surprise but mine, he announced that this novel — The Tyranny of Heaven — was going to be published and simultaneously handed in his notice. It was, as John himself describes, his Keep the Aspidistra Flying moment, which is a novel by George Orwell wherein the hero, Gordon Comstock, quits an advertising agency and takes a low-paid job so that he can write poetry instead. Of course the major difference between John Houston and Gordon Comstock was that there was nothing low-paid about John’s future prospects; he had obtained a lucrative three-book deal with a leading British publisher and very soon he landed similarly generous deals with American, Japanese, German and French publishers which seemed likely to make my former boss a millionaire before the first book was even published. But still he was not satisfied; he quickly discovered that publishers possessed none of the marketing and advertising skills that John himself had; in those days publishing was full of gentlemen with bow-ties and cigarette-holders who had an eye for good books but no idea how to sell them. And it was typical of the man that instead of spending his advance money on a house or a car John used it all to advertise The Tyranny of Heaven on television and radio, with the result that it was soon a number one bestseller. After that the people at John’s publishers were not inclined to disagree with him about anything very much.

It was about this time that John called me up and invited me out to lunch. He told me he wanted to pick my brains about my army service in Northern Ireland for his follow-up novel and I pretended I was happy to let them be picked, although in truth I rather envied his success and hardly wanted to see him for fear that this might show. On the principle that lightning never strikes in the same place twice I’d let myself imagine that John’s being published made it much less likely that the same good fortune would happen to me. But I put a smile on my face and went along to a restaurant near Masius in St James’s Square called Ormond’s Yard, bit my tongue and congratulated him effusively and thanked him for the signed copy of his novel which, of course, I’d not dared read in case it was actually any good. I’m afraid this is a very typical reaction among writers. No one reads anyone else’s stuff if they can possibly avoid it: we’re an insecure, spiteful, jealous lot. Nothing confounds like a good friend’s success; and as Gore Vidal once said, ‘Whenever a friend succeeds, a little something in me dies.’

‘The Tyranny of Heaven? What’s that?’ I asked John. ‘Shakespeare?’

He shook his head. ‘John Milton. If you’re looking for a good title you’ll find there are lots of good titles in Milton, old sport. Shakespeare, no. Don’t waste your time looking for a title in fucking Shakespeare. He’s been raped more than a Berlin housewife. But Milton’s great. Nobody reads Milton these days.’

‘Congratulations,’ I said, inspecting the signature and the dedication in his novel. ‘I understand it’s already a bestseller.’

‘True. But it’s America where I want to make it big, not here. In publishing terms this country is a sideshow with goldfish.’

‘Easier said than done.’

‘Not really. Whatever it is you’re writing my advice is to make the thing American-centric, if you’ll pardon that word. Get yourself an American hero and you’re halfway to the big money, old sport.’

Old sport. He used to say that a lot; and since John’s favourite book is The Great Gatsby and ‘old sport’ seems to be Jay Gatsby’s favourite phrase, I sometimes wonder how much of Gatsby there is in John. He is as he would tell you himself, entirely self-invented: describing his own humble Yorkshire origins he used to say, ‘It doesn’t matter where the fuck you come from; what matters is where you’re going.’ And that is John’s whole philosophy, in a nutshell.

‘I just happen to be English, old sport. But that’s not who I am or who I want to be. Yorkshire is a dump. I hate the place. Never want to see it again. Cold. Miserable. Men in flat caps with pigeons and racing dogs and ill-fitting false teeth and homespun philosophy that all sounds like a Hovis commercial. The only people who care about it are the poor bastards who have to live there. Not me. I can’t wait to live somewhere else. Tuscany. Provence. The Bahamas. To live somewhere else and be someone else. That’s the great thing about being a writer, Don. You have a perfect excuse not just to make up the story that’s in the fucking novel but your own story, too. You can invent yourself at the same time as you create the novel. It’s wonderfully liberating to become someone else. You haven’t asked my advice but I’m going to give it to you anyway. Make yourself more American, yes, even to the extent of using American spelling. After all, it’s America where a publishing fortune is still to be made. Which is why I’ve already mortgaged my house to pay for the advertising campaign that will accompany the book’s publication in the US.’

‘Jesus, John, is that wise?’

‘Probably not. But I don’t think that making big money has very much to do with wisdom, do you? It’s about having the balls to take a risk. History shows that all great fortunes are based on taking risk. What is it that T. S. Eliot says? Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go. I truly believe that, Don. The greatest danger would be not to take a risk at all. Of course, the ad spend would be doubly effective if I had a paperback and a hardback out at the same time. I mean you can always sell the paperback on the tail of the hardback. So it’s a bit unfortunate that the money I’m spending will be only half as effective as it might have been. That’s my one regret about all this: that I didn’t have two products ready when I made the publishing deals.’

John sighed and lit a cigarette and stared across the yard because it was a nice day and we were sitting at the three or four tables that were grouped outside Ormond’s’ front door. His use of the word ‘products’ was telling. John has never quite lost the adman’s phraseology; even today when you meet him — twenty years after he left Masius — it’s more like talking to David Ogilvy than David Cornwell. Some writers talk about metafiction and genre and romans à clef and unreliable narrators, but John talks about the USP and the brand and focus groups and distribution and point-of-sale.

‘So what is it that you want, John? You’ve dug your tunnel out of the advertising Stalag. You’re out and you’re as free as Steve McQueen on a motorcycle and yet you don’t really seem like you’re happy although there is any number of copywriters who would love to change places with you. Even the ones who are gods at trendier ad agencies like GGT and AMV. To me who’s going back to write a couple of shitty radio commercials this afternoon for Ribena it seems like you have it all, pal: a three-book deal, plenty of money, some social significance, no boss, no nine-to-five, no Monday morning client meetings at fucking Perivale.’

Perivale in West London was where another dull-as-ditchwater Masius client was to be found: Hoover.

‘I could go on with that list but I would only depress myself so much that I’d feel obliged to fall on my Mont Blanc.’

John shrugged. ‘I want what anyone in this business wants, old sport: success, money, and then lashings more of both. I want the same thing that Ken Follett, Jeffrey Archer, Stephen King want when they sit down in front of the word-processor: one international bestseller followed quickly by another. My only regret right now is that I can’t write these books any faster. I mean, I’ve got this three-book deal that’s worth a million bucks if you add together the Yanks and the Brits and the Japs and the Krauts. But at the rate it takes to write a book I’m going to need at least another eighteen months to write the next two because quite frankly the actual writing part leaves me cold. I’m someone who needs a damn sight more than a room with a fucking view to make me write five hundred words a day. I mean I’m only human, right? Of course, I figure there will be some royalties by then; even so, the big money — the fuck-off money, which is a really substantial advance against future royalties — is still a way off. Meanwhile I’ve got all these ideas for half a dozen other books down the road. No, really, I’ve got files full of ideas. Sometimes it seems there are just not enough days in the week.’ He grinned. ‘Sorry, old sport. I know that’s not what you want to hear when you’re trying to finish and publish your own book. But that’s just the way it is right now. I’m older than you by a decade, which means that I’m a man in a hurry. I want a taste of that outrageous Stephen Sheppard type money while I’m still young enough to enjoy it.’

Stephen Sheppard was a British novelist who wrote a novel called The Four Hundred that, back in 1976, Ed Victor, the literary agent, had famously — every newspaper in Britain had covered the story — sold for one million pounds.

I thought for a minute. ‘There is a solution, perhaps.’ I said. ‘Albeit an unorthodox one in the ascetic, left-liberal world of publishing.’

‘Oh? I’d like to hear it.’

‘At the English bar there exists a practice called devilling, when a junior barrister undertakes paid written work on behalf of a more senior barrister. The instructing solicitor is not informed of the arrangement and the junior barrister is paid by the senior barrister out of his own fee, as a private arrangement between the two. It’s a way older barristers have of making themselves even richer than ought to be possible. So, why not something similar for you? In other words you could pay me a fee to write one of your books. You give me the plot in as much detail as you can manage and then I do the hard slog of knocking out one hundred thousand words; I give it back to you six months later and you edit the manuscript I’ve provided to your own satisfaction — putting in a few stylistic flourishes to make it truly yours. Or taking a few out, as the case may be. It’d be like what Adam Smith says regarding the division of labour in the manufacture of pins. It strikes me that you’ve always been the one with a powerful — not to say overactive — imagination and that you’re better at creating stories than you are at writing them. Which is where I might come in. In a sense you would just carry on being the creative director, so to speak, and no one need ever know. I can even sign some sort of non-disclosure agreement. Meanwhile, you write the other book; then you hand both books to your publisher in quick succession and claim the balance of the advance.’

‘Go on.’

I didn’t know that I could say very much more about this, but now that I’d mentioned it I rather liked the idea of quitting my job and using John’s publishing windfall — what was left of it — to stay at home and subsidize my own writing; so I was selling it now and selling it with more than a hint of flattery.

‘After all, you wouldn’t be the first to pull a stroke like this. Shakespeare may have had a similar arrangement with Thomas Nashe when he wrote Henry VI, Part One. Or with George Wilkins when he wrote Pericles. And with Thomas Middleton when he wrote — something else.’ I shrugged. ‘Don’t ask me what. But I rather think Elizabethan theatre was a bit like the modern film industry. With one writer replaced by another at a moment’s notice. Or writers stepping into the breach to help someone out with a first act, or a quick polish. That kind of thing.’

‘You know, that’s not a bad idea, old sport.’ John deliberated for a moment. ‘That’s not a bad idea at all. A bit like Andy Warhol’s factory, in New York.’

‘Precisely. I suppose you might even argue that the Apple Macintosh is the modern equivalent of the silkscreen printing process. A technology that makes for the rapid reproduction and alteration of the basic creative idea.’

Back in the 1980s — and following the famous Ridley Scott 1984 television commercial — every writer coveted a Macintosh computer. John actually owned one; whereas I was making do with a cheaper and certainly inferior Amstrad; but even that seemed a vast improvement on the IBM Selectric typewriter which is what they gave us to use at work.

‘How much would you want? To do what you’ve just described.’

‘Let’s see now.’ I shook my head. ‘Naturally, I’d have to give up work. I mean, to write a whole book in six months — I couldn’t do that and continue to be a copywriter. I mean, we’re talking nine to five here to produce that many words in that amount of time. So it would have to be enough money to allow that to happen.’

‘You were on twenty grand a year when I left.’

‘Twenty-five, now. They gave me an extra five to make up your workload after you left. I’d be taking a risk, of course. Giving up work like that. To do something as chancy as this. If it doesn’t work out then I’m out of a job without the means to pay the mortgage.’

‘You’d really give it up? Come on, Don. You love it. All those nice dolly birds to shag. I sometimes think that’s why you came into advertising, old sport. For the birds.’

I shook my head. ‘That’s bollocks and you know it. I’m fed up with it. Just like you were, John. If I have to write another telly commercial for Brooke Bond Red Mountain coffee I think I will scream. Besides I’ve already shagged all the birds I’m ever going to shag at Masius. They’re wise to my act. I need to move on. But no one at another agency is ever going to take on a copywriter from Masius. We’re like lepers. So, this might just be my ticket out of St James’s Square. I can subsidize my own novel with what I make from writing yours.’

‘I’d have to see a few specimen chapters.’

‘You mean my novel?’

‘I don’t mean your advertising copy. I know how crap you are writing that. David Abbott you’re not, old sport.’

I shrugged. ‘As if I ever gave a damn about writing copy. Look, you don’t need to see my novel. You know I can fucking write. I had that story in Granta, remember?’

‘Oh, yes. I’d forgotten about that.’

‘Unless that is you’re not serious. Because I am.’

‘Of course I’m serious. Writing all day and every day like Henry fucking James is a royal pain in the ass, Don. No wonder authors all look like swots. Did you see that picture of those Best of Young British Novelists? Christ, if that’s what the young ones look like ... No, it’s putting the plot together that I enjoy, not typing all day and night like some tragic bespectacled cunt.’

‘I really don’t mind it at all,’ I confessed. ‘I feel like my life has some meaning when I’m in front of the keyboard.’

‘I don’t know how you have the patience.’

‘That’s what Northern Ireland teaches you, John: patience and an appreciation for the quiet life. Whenever I sit down at the typewriter I tell myself, “Count yourself lucky; it’s not the Falls Road.”’

‘So, how much?’ he repeated. ‘That’s the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question. Or not, since I’m not about to pay you anything like that.’

‘Twenty-five grand.’

‘Fuck off. Ten.’

‘I can’t do it for ten. I can’t take the risk. Twenty.’

‘Twelve and a half.’

I shook my head. ‘Fifteen. And with a bonus if the book is a bestseller.’

I could see John doing the maths in his head. ‘Agreed.’

We shook on it and then continued with the minutiae of further negotiations for a while — delivery dates, penalties for failing to meet John’s deadline, bonus payments; then John said, ‘You know if I can make this arrangement with you, Don, there’s no reason I couldn’t make it with someone else.’

‘I’m sure you could find someone cheaper than me, John. Perhaps if you were to put a small ad in the back of Books and Bookmen. Or The Literary Review. Writer in a Hurry Seeks Amanuensis. Must be able to spell “amanuensis” and write bestselling novel to order. Thomas Pynchon need not apply.’

‘No, I didn’t mean that. What I mean is that if I can make this deal with one writer then why not with two? That way I could have two novels being written while I research another story. That’s what I’m good at.’

I shrugged. ‘Why not? Like you said, it’s what Warhol does. I could be your Gerard Malanga.’

‘The question is, who? Who else is there who can write that’s as desperate as you, old sport?’

‘You mean at Masius?’

‘Why not? Everyone who’s any good wants out of St James’s Square one way or the other.’

‘What about Sally?’

‘One of the many pleasures I have enjoyed in leaving Masius is that I will never again have to see or hear Sally van Leeuwenhoek. Or try to spell her fucking name.’

‘Might be useful to have a woman on your team.’

‘No, I disagree. You see, I know my market, old sport, because I’ve researched it very carefully. And before you ask, yes, I paid for a proper research company to carry out some market research and make a report. I’m writing for men; men who want to read books about solidly heterosexual men who think the female eunuch is a fucking mare with a horn on its forehead; who think a problem shared is a fist-fight in a bar. Blokes who grew up thinking that Ian Fleming is a better writer than Christopher Isherwood. Anyway, I never met a woman yet who could write like a man. Did you read The Sea, The Sea by Iris Murdoch? The narrator of that novel is supposed to be a man, but he’s a man who’s interested in curtain fabrics and hence not a real man at all but some daft old bat’s idea of what a man sounds like. Hence he sounds like a complete fucking poof. No, this is a good idea we’ve had here today but no fish, old sport. Besides, I have an idea that we’ll have a lot more fun if we keep this a purely stag do.’

‘All right. How about Paul Cliveden?’

John thought for a moment and then shook his head. ‘He’s queer and therefore similarly disqualified from writing about heterosexual men.’

‘Yes, I’d forgotten about that.’

‘You worry me, sometimes, old sport. How anyone could forget that Paul Cliveden is queer, I have no idea. He makes Quentin Crisp look like Burt Reynolds.’

I thought for another moment. ‘How about Peter Stakenborg?’

‘He failed the copy test, didn’t he?’

‘Yes, although I think it’s to his credit that you thought he wasn’t suitable copywriter material. As I recall it was you who told him there was no shame in not being able to think at the elevated intellectual level required to write a Ribena commercial featuring a talking blackcurrant bubble.’

‘True.’

‘Besides, he got a degree in English at Oxford. Not only that but I happen to know he’s just started to write his second novel.’

‘The first one having been rejected all round. Yes, that’s right. It was about advertising, wasn’t it? I remember him boring me about it during the D and AD dinner last year. I don’t know why people should think a story about the sad hucksters who work in advertising should be interesting to anyone. The adman as a sort of modern class warrior was already dead and buried when Michael Winner made that crappy film about the business back in the Sixties. What was it called?’

‘I’ll Never Forget What’s’isname.’

‘So what’s the new one about?’

‘He said that it was a comic novel about what it was like growing up in Malawi. It sounds like another Good Man in Africa, I think.’

‘Jesus. I bet Jonathan Cape is just gagging for that. Still, Stakenborg has been absolutely everywhere. Mostly to the sort of fly-blown countries I wouldn’t ever want to go myself. Kashmir, Afghanistan. It might be handy to have someone who knows what some of these ghastly places are actually like. It would save me from having to go. And you’re right. He can write. He wrote those press ads for American Express when Vic Cassel was too pissed to write them himself.’

‘They won an award, didn’t they?’

‘That’s what encouraged him to think he could become a copywriter in the first place.’ John nodded. ‘Okay, okay. Talk to him. See if he’s interested in my idea.’

I smiled and did not try to correct him, which I ought to have done, but back then it didn’t really seem to matter whose idea it was, as neither of us had any idea that a convenient working arrangement between two advertising copywriters for one or two books would result in more than thirty New York Times bestsellers and sales of more than 175 million books. Only James Patterson and J. K. Rowling sell more. These days, whenever the subject of his squad of co-writers comes up in an interview, John always claims that the idea of employing a back-room of ghost-writers was his and his alone; perhaps it’s what C. P. Snow describes in his novel The Sleep of Reason as ‘the hallucinations of fact’. More likely it’s just John being his usual selfish self.

The following week I gave in my notice at Masius, and four weeks later I started work on the storyline provided by John for a novel that was published the following year as The Golden Key is Death — the first of five novels featuring Dougal Haddon, an ex-SAS officer turned trouble-shooter and mercenary. For a long time I couldn’t believe my own good luck: to get paid to stay at home all morning and write a book, and still have time and energy enough to spend the afternoon writing my own. Pigs in shit do not feel as good about themselves as I did.

Even before it was published it was clear that John’s new book was destined to be a bestseller — as things turned out it was his first New York Times number one — and almost immediately it was finished I started work on the next plot-driven title. I was already making more money than I would have done if I’d been a going-nowhere copywriter at an agency that was held to be the civil service of advertising. For the first time in a long time I was smiling when I got up in the morning.

Meanwhile, Peter Stakenborg joined John’s new team of writers, followed by a third writer — another ex-copywriter from Ogilvy & Mather called Brian Callaghan — and then a fourth named Philip French, a freelance journalist. Within three years of that lunch at Ormond’s Yard, John Houston employed a team of five writers and was worth more than twenty million pounds. After that John moved first to Jersey for tax reasons — where he met and divorced his second wife, Susan — and then, briefly, to Switzerland, where I believe he still has a house.

In truth, more or less anyone could write the books, so long as they understood a little about pace and structure, and how to write reasonable dialogue; but only John could edit them so they all read the same, uncomplicated way. It’s not what’s written that makes the difference in John’s books, it’s what doesn’t get written. I quickly learned that the writing is just the connective tissue for John’s stories. He’s very well-read and extremely literate and he can write beautifully constructed prose when he wants to, but there’s a simplicity about his books that reminds me of Picasso; you see, before Picasso, artists painted exactly what they saw, but it was Picasso’s genius to know exactly what you could leave out of a picture; it’s the same with John. Knowing what you can leave out of a book is one reason why he’s so successful and why I have such admiration for what he does.

While I think I’m a much better writer than John I have never been particularly good at devising a good story, and in the current publishing market it’s story not fine writing that sells. This is the other reason John is so successful at what he does: he’s the most story-led person I’ve ever met. John once told me that he never goes looking for new plots because they always seem to find him; to that extent they’re like orphans, he says, looking for a good home, or perhaps electrons looking to attach themselves to a vulnerable nucleus. For this reason he never goes anywhere without one of his little Smythson notebooks in which he is forever jotting ideas down — the notebooks even have the word GENIUS printed on the covers in gold letters, and he’s got a whole boxful of them; sometimes he just jots down some things a character might say, or plot-points, but just as often a plot will come to him wholly formed, as if a stork had delivered them to his desk like Dumbo the elephant. John is the kind of person who could find you a good plot from the in-flight magazine on the plane and famously did with one of his earlier novels, The Liberty to Know; incidentally, the film rights on that one were bought by Jerry Bruckheimer for two million dollars.

When she divorced him, John’s second wife alleged that his constant note-taking was a kind of obsessive compulsive disorder; she even alleged that he had stolen some of her own ideas and passed these off as his own intellectual property; but that’s another story.

Somewhere along the line I published my own first novel — Dreams of Heaven on the Falls Road — which limped into print and was quickly remaindered, then forgotten. Which is the fate of most novels, of course, and the normal condition for any writer is to be rejected or to be out of print; this is what I tell myself — that being a published writer is a bit like what Schopenhauer says about life itself: non-existence is our natural condition. Unless, of course, you’re John Houston. Because make no mistake about it, what John Houston does is very rare indeed; to make money by your writing is incredibly difficult. To that extent John Houston is truly one of the greats and the living embodiment of what Andy Warhol meant when he said that good business is the best art.

When John read my novel and noted my disappointment at its cool reception he gave me his own critical reaction, which was a little less F. R. Leavis and a bit more Jack Regan:

‘Forget about it, old sport — that’s my advice. Forget about this and write another; that’s what separates the men from the boys; any dumb fuck can start writing a novel — and they frequently do — but very few can finish writing one; and there are even fewer who can put that novel behind them and start another. The important thing is to learn from your mistakes. My opinion is that your novel is beautifully written and very atmospheric but too often you seem like you’re peeking across your shoulder to see if any of those bloody clever writers you say you admire are paying attention to your nice, pretty sentences. The Martins and the Julians and the Salmans. The trouble is your story doesn’t stay afloat. About halfway through it’s as if you forgot where you put it. It’s almost like you were shagging some bird and even while you were doing it you decided you didn’t want to shag her any more. With your next one you’ve got to work out the story and everything about the story and nothing but the fucking story before you start writing a goddamn word, after which everything becomes subordinate to that. More importantly you have got to learn to tell Martin and Julian and Salman to go and fuck themselves.’

Someone’s mobile was ringing out a tune — a piece of tinny piano music I vaguely recognized. Sergeant Savigny got up from the table and left the half-empty restaurant to answer his portable. I tasted the wine and then frowned, trying to place the clunking melody.

‘You don’t like the wine?’

‘The wine is excellent. No, it’s the ringtone that’s perplexing me.’

‘Irritating, isn’t it?’ said Amalric. ‘It’s the theme from Betty Blue. The sergeant has a thing for Béatrice Dalle.’

I shrugged. ‘That’s easy to understand. She was very beautiful. Whatever happened to her, anyway?’

‘Like all beautiful women, monsieur, she got older. Savigny keeps a copy of the DVD in his suitcase. Always.’

‘That and a novel by John Houston. But then with 140 million books sold, I guess that’s a little less unusual. Statistically speaking. It’s said that one in every thirty books being bought in the world right now is likely to be written by John Houston. Did you know that? And your sergeant certainly fits the standard profile of a John Houston reader.’

‘Is there such a thing?’

‘Oh yes. Every so often Houston commissions a piece of market research into who is reading his books. Impact — that’s the name of the research company that John used — they carry out focus groups and sometimes John insists that the writing team come along and watch what the groups are saying, through a two-way mirror. Which is the way these things are done in an advertising agency. He’ll end up with a report that describes socio-economic profiles of readership, buying habits, income — in the exactly same way that Heinz will try to find out who is buying what soup and why. John has never quite stopped being a successful advertising man. Having read several of those research reports I can probably tell you quite a lot about your sergeant. What is he — thirty-five?’

Amalric nodded. ‘This is fascinating. Please go on.’

‘All right. He buys no more than two or three books a year and rarely ever reads a newspaper, unless it’s free. The chances are that in all the years you’ve known him you’ve never seen him read anything you’d like to read yourself. The one time you looked at the book he was reading you were a bit shocked at how simplistic it was, how short the chapters seemed to be, how small the sentences were. Mostly the sergeant doesn’t have time to read because he thinks of himself as a busy sort of guy — if that’s even possible in a place like Monaco. One time he bought the same book he bought the last time and read half of it before he realized he’d read it already.’

Amalric tried to conceal a smile, which only encouraged me to show off a little.

‘Voltaire and Molière, he couldn’t get on with them at school, and as for history, he probably thinks Philippe Pétain was a male prostitute, or even something you say when you get cross. He’s easily amused with quite a short attention span so he reads in short intense bursts — maybe ten or fifteen minutes at a time, with a very furrowed brow, as if he’s actually doing something quite difficult, almost like he’s trying to solve a puzzle. He doesn’t read in the bath because he prefers a shower. He always rolls a book like a magazine, which probably irritates you; no one who loves books could ever treat a book the way he treats them. But then you probably don’t know that for this same reason all of Houston’s books are printed in a B or C format, with stitched binding which is more durable than just glue, so they don’t fall apart when you treat them like a football programme. He watches a lot of television — football, mostly — and he has an Xbox or a PlayStation at home, and there are certainly more than a few games he keeps on that iPhone of his: Temple Run, Extreme Road Trip — something like that. He lives out of the microwave and his favourite actors are Tom Cruise, Matt Damon and Brad Pitt. He prefers beach holidays to doing anything cultural. He never goes to art galleries or museums. He likes fast cars, big yachts, sleazy-looking women, but these are more of an aspiration than a reflection of his own life. He has a tattoo, smokes too much but still keeps himself fit. He doesn’t drink much and he’s certainly not interested in fine wine like you. His spelling and grammar leave a little to be desired. He never questions your orders or comes up with suggestions of his own, but he’s a useful man to have along in the same way that another policeman might bring a dog; after all, someone has to do the paperwork.’

‘Not bad. Not bad at all. But I doubt you got all of that from Houston’s research.’

‘Not all of it, perhaps; but most of it.’

‘He’s a good man. Policemen are like engineers, monsieur; sometimes you need a very small screwdriver and sometimes you need a wrench. Savigny is very good at applying torque to a problem.’

‘I don’t doubt it.’

‘It’s true, he did once buy the same book he read last year. And it was by John Houston. But instead of learning something from this experience, he continues to be one of Houston’s loyal readers. Which I have to say, strikes me as absurd. I confess I don’t understand why it is that Houston sells so many. The plots are all over the place and have no real point to them. The characters are one-dimensional and the dialogue absurd. To me they seem like books for people who have never read a book before.’

‘That’s right. That’s exactly what they are. It’s like what H. L. Mencken said: No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public.’

Amalric nodded wearily. ‘I fear you’re right. But it’s the same with the French-speaking public. People seem more stupid than I remember.’ He shrugged. ‘In twenty years you wrote how many of his books?’

‘Almost thirty. One every nine months. Like giving birth you might say.’ I shrugged. ‘That’s what writing a book is like. A child to which you give birth. And like a child, some of them are more popular than others. I know I have a few favourites. The first one, most of all, I suppose.’

‘Didn’t it ever bother you?’ asked Savigny. ‘That Houston got the fame, the money and the kudos? By comparison with him you’re a failure, aren’t you?’

‘“What I aspired to be, And was not, comforts me: A brute I might have been, but would not sink i’ the scale.”’ I shrugged. ‘Robert Browning.’

‘But what about the money? The jet-set life in Monaco?’

‘Perhaps not all the money. I’ve been very well paid. In twenty years I’ve made almost two million pounds, before tax. True that’s not a fortune. In fact it’s chump change by Houston’s own elevated standard. But then again it’s more than I would ever have made as a copywriter. Plus, toward the end of my relationship with John I was also receiving a credit — an acknowledgement of my assistance, albeit in very small letters somewhere near the name of the cover designer and the name of the printer. And along the way I published a few more of my own novels. One or two of them were actually quite well reviewed. Working for John, I thought of it as a bit like an Arts Council grant; but for what he paid me I would have been obliged to go back to advertising and do a proper job writing commercials for toilet paper and lager. If you can call that a proper job. Oh, there are worse jobs than being an advertising copywriter, Chief Inspector; but I much prefer working from home. The commute is so much easier. And at least I had the illusion of being my own boss.’

Savigny returned to the table and for a moment he and Amalric spoke in French. It seemed that there were still no clues as to Houston’s whereabouts. The sergeant’s accent was warmer and friendlier than Amalric’s and I guessed he was from Marseille and that Amalric might originally hail from Paris.

I shrugged. ‘Like I said. If he doesn’t want to be found.’

‘You speak French?’ For a moment Amalric looked positively vulpine.

‘Yes.’

‘You didn’t say.’

‘You never asked. Besides, I think your English is better than my French.’

‘Thank you. I spent six months working with the FBI in Washington.’

‘How did that work out?’

‘Fascinating. I liked Washington. I like Americans. It’s the food I had a problem with. There’s so much of it. And so very little that’s any good. I must be one of the few people ever to live in the United States who ended up losing weight.’

I smiled. ‘They do like their chow.’

‘Your arrangement with Houston? How did that work?’

‘You might say that I was John’s maître d’. The head writer. I helped to manage the atelier. That’s what John called us — the people who worked in his ship’s boiler room — although I usually thought of it as a bit like the Pequod, because we were such a pagan bunch of misfits. At its peak we were producing four or five new books a year. And John was making between eighty and a hundred million dollars per annum.’

‘That much?’ Savigny whistled quietly. ‘Just from writing books?’

I nodded.

‘Incredible; perhaps I should write a novel about the Sûreté Publique,’ said Savigny. ‘In Monaco.’

‘I think an Italian author already did,’ I said. ‘Not that something like that should ever stop you, Sergeant. Lots of cops become writers: Joseph Wambaugh for one. And some of the most successful writers steal their best ideas from other writers. The book world calls that kind of thing an hommage. But mostly it’s downright theft. It happens every day and no one ever goes to prison for it.’

‘Je prends mon propre partout où je trouve,’ said Amalric.

‘I believe you’ve already met John’s agent, Hereward Jones. A year or so ago he negotiated a fifteen-book, world English rights deal with VVL — that’s John’s US publishers, Veni, Vidi, Legi — which the Wall Street Journal reported was worth $170 million. It’s a little hard to connect this with how things were in publishing twenty years ago. When John told his then UK publishers what he was planning to do — write and publish more than one new book a year — they were appalled. It’s said they actually thought of ending his contract there and then. At least they did until they saw the sales of his first book. Before that moment they had been living in a little Bloomsbury bubble with writers who were rather unworldly Angus Wilson types who smoked pipes, and wore tweedy jackets with leather elbows. They turned out a book every couple of years and generally did what they were told. Yes, there were a few writers like Jeffrey Archer and Dick Francis who were a bit more commercially minded than the rest of the field, but John Houston was really the first writer to come along and tell them that he was first and foremost a businessman whose business was writing and selling books.

‘He came up with the stories, and we, his collaborators, wrote the books. He preferred having English writers. For one thing he said we were cheaper than Americans. And for another he said he didn’t have to explain his jokes to us. For all of John’s love affair with America he thought the English easier to edit and more in awe of his power and wealth, he’d say, in a way that Americans never are. Over the years the ghost-writers came and went, with some working out more successfully than the others. One or two went on to be quite successful in their own right: C. Boxer Revell, for one and Thomas Chenevix for another — although Chenevix himself denies he was ever contracted to write one of Houston’s books and is inclined to sue anyone who says he did. They hate each other and famously came to blows in a London club called The Groucho with John punching Tom Chenevix down a flight of stairs; the police were called and both men were cautioned.’

‘What was the fight about? And when?’

‘Four years ago? Five? John rejected Chenevix’s manuscript. You see the way John usually works is that he sees material every four weeks. Like maybe ten or fifteen chapters. Chenevix had missed one of those meetings and had eight weeks’ worth of work that John rejected out of hand, which Chenevix — who has a very high opinion of his writing — took very personally. He called John all sorts of names and took a swing at him. More than one if the reports are correct. Pissed probably — Chenevix, I mean. John never drank very much. I’ve never seen him drunk, at any rate.’

‘This man, Chenevix. I should like to speak to him.’

‘I believe he lives in France. Somewhere in Provence. But I couldn’t tell you where. You could ask his publishers — HarperCollins. They’d probably know.’ I shrugged. ‘That was probably the last time John came to London to meet someone from the team. Soon after that he moved to Monaco and opened the Houston office in Paris. That’s what he called it. In fact, it wasn’t an office but a rented house in the western suburbs of Neuilly-sur-Seine — a pretty fabulous sort of place. Exquisitely furnished. Beautiful pictures.’ I frowned. ‘With one insightful exception.’

‘Yes?’

‘In the conference room where we had our meetings there was a large framed photograph of lots of chimpanzees in a library; all of the chimps were seated at desktop computers, as if they were writing something. John had seen the original — which was by a photographer called Louis Psihoyos — in National Geographic magazine, as the illustration for a feature about the information revolution. One or two of us thought it was insulting but John thought it was very funny. I think he meant that it should remind those of us who were part of the atelier of our true status in the Houston publishing empire. And it did. Certainly he used to think of us like his children and, in the case of some of his writers, that wasn’t so very wide of the mark. Some of these characters need careful handling. But John was good at that. It was only Chenevix who fell out with him badly. And perhaps Mike Munns, who also hit him.’

‘This was at the Houston office?’

‘Yes. Me, I’d have fired him. But Houston showed great restraint and kept him on. He said that writers are passionate and that sometimes you have to respect that.’

I paused and drank some more of the excellent Burgundy. The bottle was empty and Amalric was already beckoning another from the sommelier. I had to hand it to Amalric, he was very different from the kind of policemen we were used to in London. It’s not many cops who have a taste for Vosne-Romanée and Hermès ties, and who can quote Molière and Voltaire.

‘Tell me more about the Houston office,’ he said.

‘You mean before he closed it down?’

Amalric nodded; Savigny checked the Marantz recorder and then replaced it on the table.

‘At the Houston office he employed a couple of secretaries — both English and rather fetching — and a couple of webmasters, who were Dutch. They did all the things that VVL didn’t do for John; which isn’t much. But he liked to keep a close eye on his public image. Whenever John wanted a meeting with one of the writers, which was probably once a fortnight, we would get the Eurostar to Paris — standard-class, John could be a tightwad with the expenses like that — and meet him there; he would drive up from Monaco, or from some location where he’d been doing research for a book, in his latest supercar. A Lamborghini. A Ferrari. An Aston Martin. You name it, John drove it. Usually he drove back to Monaco in a different car from the one he’d arrived in. That was part of the fun. John liked to have fun. And he loved that drive. He used to see how fast he could do it, of course, and try to beat his previous record. I think eight hours was about the record. I did that drive with him a couple of times and it scared the shit out of me. He tended to use the plane only to fly straight to London, or to Corfu where he had a place. Anyway, we would meet him — sometimes there were two or three of us there at the one time. He would read through what we’d written, making notes, and we’d wait for his comments, a little anxiously. It was like being back at Cambridge, for your supervisor’s assessment of an essay you’d written. If he was pleased with your progress he would take you out to lunch or dinner. Somewhere expensive. La Grande Cascade, Lapérouse, Alain Ducasse, La Tour d’Argent. John liked his food almost as much as he liked his fast cars. You could always tell just how much he liked what you’d written by the price of the wine he ordered.

‘At other times, when he was too busy to come to Paris, or had used up his tax-free visits — John was very scrupulous like that — I, or one of the others, would fly to Nice, hire a car and drive to Monaco for a meeting there.’

‘Which is why you had to stay in Beausoleil.’

I nodded. ‘Sometimes he went to London from Paris, on the Eurostar. To see his children. He was close to them. Tried his very best for them. But quite frankly, they’re a shiftless, idle lot. Sometimes I look at them and think how lucky I am that I don’t have any kids myself. John’s children have always got their hands out for something. The ex-wives aren’t much better. I once heard John lament that he had brought up the largest family with the smallest disposition for doing anything for themselves. In that respect at least he’s rather like Charles Dickens, whose sons all inherited their grandfather’s Micawberish trouble in handling their finances. But John has always tried his best for them. They all had trusts and flats and cars, and a few had expensive drug habits, too. For example, his eldest son, Travis, got a place to study history at Queens’ College, Cambridge; but after a failed career as a rock star he’s now in rehab at some place on the island of Antigua founded by Eric Clapton that costs $24,000 a month. He’s been there for a while now. All paid for by his pa.’

‘So, what went wrong?’ asked Savigny. ‘Why did he decide to stop writing books?’

‘He didn’t,’ I said. ‘He just decided to stop producing as many. To change his whole modus operandi.’

‘All right,’ said Savigny. ‘Why did he do that? Give up on the big money. His agent said Houston just walked away from being the richest writer in the world. He said he thought that Monsieur Houston had suffered a midlife crisis, perhaps.’

I laughed. ‘I’m afraid John was a little too old for one of those. If it comes to that, so am I.’

‘Or a nervous breakdown,’ suggested the sergeant.

I shook my head. ‘That’s another cute explanation. People like the easy explanations that you can fit into a magazine headline. It restores a sense of order in the universe to think that things can be so easily explained philosophically, I tend to adhere to the A. A. Milne explanation of the universe which goes something like this: “Rabbit’s clever,” said Pooh thoughtfully. “Yes,” said Piglet, “Rabbit’s clever.” “And he has a brain.” “Yes,” said Piglet. “Rabbit has a brain.” There was a long silence. “I suppose,” said Pooh, “that that’s why he never understands anything.”’

Savigny was looking blank but Amalric was smiling. ‘That’s wonderful,’ he said.

‘With all due respect to Hereward Jones, it’s more complicated than a midlife crisis or a nervous breakdown.’ I shrugged. ‘John is a complicated man. And you might say that it was an existential choice, although I hesitate to argue such a thing before two Frenchmen.’

‘What do you mean by that?’ asked Savigny.

‘I have to go to the bathroom, first.’

On my way to the men’s room in Claridge’s I checked my phone for text messages and thought a little about what I had just said and tried to remember exactly what John had told me before telling everyone else that he was closing the atelier. I wanted to get it right for the cops; as Raymond Chandler might have said in The Long Goodbye — more realistically, perhaps — it’s advisable not to invent too much when you are talking to them.

I drank some water from the tap — quite a lot — to help keep my head clear; I wouldn’t have put it past the wily Chief Inspector to try to loosen my tongue with fine wine. A mixture of Louis Roederer and Vosne-Romanée was an excellent way of doing it, too; what writer could ever have resisted something as subtle as that? And looking like a fox as much as he did, I didn’t doubt that Chief Inspector Amalric could probably smell a lie with almost as much certainty as he would recognize the bouquet of a good red. Two bottles of hundred-quid Burgundy were probably a much more cost-effective means of conducting an interview than paying someone to operate a polygraph machine.

I drank some more water and then washed my face.

It wasn’t that I was lying — not exactly — but then I’d hardly been honest either because, in spite of what I had told the Chief Inspector, there wasn’t a doubt in my mind that before very long John Houston would telephone me; nor did I have any doubt that I would never have betrayed him to the Monty cops.

I went back to the table, where I found Savigny had gone and my glass had been refilled with wine. For a moment I left it alone and waited to resume my story.

‘Where’s the sergeant?’

‘He’s gone outside for a cigarette.’

‘Shall I wait for him?’

‘No. Besides, it will be his job to transcribe what’s on the tape. I mean the digital recorder. He will hear everything you say again soon enough. That’s another reason I brought him to London. Savigny’s English is almost as good as mine. His mother is Canadian. From Quebec City.’

‘I thought they spoke French in Quebec.’

‘Oh, they do. But Didier’s mother was raised to be bilingual. And so was he. So, I think you were about to tell us about John Houston’s existential choice.’

‘I was only going to say that money gave John an enormous amount of freedom. He was free to behave like a fool. Free to marry, several times. Free to have many homes, and fast cars, and even faster mistresses. He was free to be his own boss, to say yes, to say no — free to be and to do whatever he liked. And yet, in the end he wasn’t free at all. I think it was the fifteen-book contract with VVL that did it. One morning John woke up with the idea that he was a prisoner not just of that but everything else too. It was the responsibility of his position as an employer and the sense that so much was riding on him that began to weigh on him.’

‘Noblesse oblige,’ said Amalric.

‘Perhaps. At least that’s what he told me. As a matter of fact I think it was me he told before anyone else.’

‘Told you when? How?’

‘We were on the autoroute, driving to Paris from Monaco early one morning about three months ago in an Aston Martin Vantage, ostensibly to discuss a book I was writing for him called Dead Red. But he’d been quiet and I could sense that something was bothering him, not least because he was driving below the speed limit. I thought it might have something to do with what I’d written and asked him about that, but he said it wasn’t, and finally he told me what was on his mind:

‘It seems only fitting that you should be the first to know, old sport.’

‘First to know what, John? Are you ill?’

‘No, but thanks for asking, Don. You were always the one who I could talk to like a friend. It’s just that I’ve had enough of all this — I’ve had enough of producing six books a year. I’ve had enough of overseeing websites, supervising blogs about my wonderful life and my books, employing all these fucking people, the marketing meetings in London and New York with VVL. I’ve had enough of agents, fucking agents. Did you know that Hereward drives a fucking Rolls-Royce? The other day I read an interview with him in The Times, and there he was pictured sitting astride the bonnet like he was Tom fucking Jones. The self-importance of the man staggered me; he talked like everything he’d achieved was by his own hard work; and like somehow I owe everything to him. He went on and on about his legendary New Year’s Eve parties at his legendary Windsor house with his smart lefty fucking friends. I thought, “What a cunt”, and “That cunt is your agent”; and then I thought, “Let’s see what happens to your legendary Windsor house and your smart Rolls-Royce and your legendary party when I’m not around to generate the ten per cent that pays for it, you cunt.” Did you know he didn’t invite me to his last party?’

‘He probably thought that living in Monaco, you wouldn’t come.’

‘Bollocks. It’s because he and his lefty friends all read the Guardian and the book world still regards me as a kind of literary pariah. That’s why he didn’t invite me. I vote Conservative. I don’t pay UK taxes. I’m his guilty little secret.’

‘Perhaps the invitation got lost in the Christmas post. I’m sure he didn’t mean to upset you.’ I shrugged. ‘But he didn’t invite me either, if that’s any consolation.’

‘So, I’ve had enough of all that,’ said John, ignoring me. ‘And I’ve certainly had enough of living in Monaco. It’s a dump. A housing estate for billionaires. A traffic jam. I’ve had enough of the travel. The tax-exile thing. The IRS and the Inland Revenue. The meetings with financial advisers. The accountants. The lawyers. The hedgies selling their funds. The boats. The plane. The cars. Do you know I rent a garage in Monaco with my own personal mechanic just to look after all the cars? It’s ridiculous. Who needs all these fucking cars, anyway? I mean some of them are just more trouble than they are worth. The Ferraris especially. The other day I spent a thousand euros just to have the wheels aligned on the F12. A thousand euros. I told them — I’m not Fernando Alonso, you thieving bastards. And as for the houses. Jesus, the fucking houses with their caretakers and gardiens. Whenever we go to our house in Courchevel we spend a whole morning listening to the gardien’s problems: the roof has a leak, his child was sick, the gardener is unreliable, the sauna still isn’t fixed; could I have a cheque for this, and one for that? It’s the same everywhere else. Bastards moaning that you don’t pay them enough or stealing from you when you do. I think I know how God feels on a Sunday. All of these fucking people complaining about this and that must drive him mad; no wonder he sent a flood to destroy the world and drown everyone. I’d have done the same, just to get some peace and quiet. Several times over, probably. No, I’ve had enough of it, old sport.

‘Lately it’s all begun to weigh on me rather. When I was taken ill a few years ago, remember? And I was only able to produce three books in one year instead of five? I never told you this, but VVL’s share price actually fell by five per cent when that happened and so VVL’s publishing director — Bat Anderton — had to go to Wall Street to explain why VVL’s profits were going to be down on the previous year. And while he was there I had to do a conference call from my sickbed to reassure a load of wankers I’d never seen that my output would soon be back to normal. Then there’s the fact that VVL have employed a whole department of copy-editors and publicity people to look after my output.’

‘They are trying to keep you happy, that’s all.’

‘Oh, I understand why they’re doing it, old sport. I get it, all right. But it’s started to annoy me that I am personally responsible not just for the shares in some tosspot institutional investor’s pension fund but also the livelihoods of as many as forty people. And for what? So that my wife can blow it on fucking handbags and hats. Orla’s got more hats than Ascot races.’

‘Handbags and hats don’t sound so bad, John, in the scheme of things. It could be cocaine. Or American miniature horses, like your last missus.’

‘True. True. And as for my kids. They’re useless, one and all. Stephen has given up his legal studies at Bristol and decided he wants to go to film school, in L.A. While Heddy wants to open a shop in Chelsea selling her ghastly fucking jewellery. You know, the rough diamond stuff she designs herself that was inspired by her gap year in Thailand?’

I smiled; Heddy Houston’s jewellery designs — ‘every bracelet tells a story’ — were beloved of magazine editors and fashion mavens everywhere, but to me they looked childlike and naïve, and I guessed that like me John was a man who liked a diamond ring to look like a diamond ring and not a half-eaten boiled sweet.

But my smile lasted only as long as it took for it to dawn on me that I was probably out of work.

‘Let me get this straight,’ I said. ‘You’re saying that you want to wind the whole thing up. The atelier — everything?’

‘That’s right, old sport. The whole shooting match. Everything. I’ve bought a house in Chelsea — in St Leonard’s Terrace. As soon as the builders have finished with it I’m going to sell the penthouse in Monaco and move back to London. And to hell with the income tax. I want to go to the Garrick Club on a Friday, walk down the King’s Road on a Saturday, and see Chelsea play football on a Sunday. I want to watch the BBC and ITV and eat fish and chips in the Ivy and have Christmas with all the trimmings. And I’m going to spend the rest of the week writing a book — I mean not just the plot, but the whole thing, the way I did when I first started writing. I’ve got an idea that I might have one good book in me — the sort of book that might last a bit longer than the glue on the spine, if you know what I mean. I think perhaps that if I go back to basics, so to speak, I might even win one of those smaller awards — a dagger, or an Edgar. Maybe something better. Fuck knows.’

‘But what about your fifteen-book contract with VVL?’

‘To hell with it. And to hell with them, too. I’ll just have to pay them back the twenty million dollars advance.’

‘Just like that?’

‘Just like that.’ John grinned. ‘Yes.’

‘But what about Dead Red?’

‘Don’t worry, you can finish Dead Red and get paid just like we agreed, old sport; for that matter all of you guys can finish whatever it is you’re writing now. That should also help to soften the blow for VVL. Naturally I’ll try to cushion the blow for you and everyone else in the atelier with some sort of severance package. Which, of course, will be rather more generous in your own case, Don, since you’ve been with me the longest. Fifty thousand quid. How does that sound?’

‘Very generous,’ I said, although I could have pointed out that in any normal year this was only half of what I made from writing John Houston books.

‘And I certainly haven’t forgotten my promise — to try to find you a decent outline for a bestseller of your own, old sport.’

I felt my heart skip a beat; this was something much more worrying than a catastrophic reduction in my earnings.

‘Holy shit, John. You goddamned asshole.’

‘What?’

‘What do you mean “try”? You already said you were going to give me the outline of The Geneva Convention.’

As a reward for twenty years of loyal service, John had previously promised to ‘donate’ me the very much-needed plot for a book I was going to write myself, just as soon as I’d finished writing Dead Red. This was to be a stand-alone thriller about a Geneva-based hedge fund called The Geneva Convention and John had said it was one of the best outlines he’d written in a long time; when I read it I knew he wasn’t wrong, and I had no doubt that provided I observed all of the lessons I had learned while writing thrillers for John then The Geneva Convention might actually make me a small fortune. Perhaps even a large one. My own agent, Craig Conrad, had listened to my description of John’s outline and assured me he could probably sell it to someone at Random House for at least fifty grand; all that I had to do was write the damn thing.

‘I think I said that it was probably the best outline I could give you. Which, to be fair, is not quite the same thing as actually agreeing to give it to you, old sport. Or even saying that I was going to give it to you. I hate to split grammatical hairs here, but I really don’t think what you’re saying truly reflects our conversations about this idea.’

‘Come on, John. You certainly led me to believe that this was the outline you were going to give me.’

‘No, you led yourself to believe it, Don. I think that’s more accurate. And it’s not like I gave you the finished article, is it? Bound in leather, with gold letters on the cover, like we normally do? With a contract? No. Look, don’t worry about it. I told you, I’ll try to give you something else. Something just as good, I promise. But it so happens that The Geneva Convention is the book I’m going to write myself. The whole damn thing. After all, it is my story to do with as I like. I don’t know why I feel I have to justify this to you. It’s not as if you’ve ever had anything to do with writing the outlines, old sport. Besides, this book needs to be a little different from what we’ve been writing up until now. This book is going to need more atmosphere. More detail. Closer observation. Which is precisely why I want to write it myself.’

‘Sure, John, sure. It’s your damned outline to do whatever you like with.’

We were both silent for about thirty or forty miles of auto-route. I stared out of the Aston’s passenger window as we hurtled through the French countryside. Outside, the car’s V12 engine sounded like some wild beast in distress; but cocooned inside, the quiet was a little unnerving and the silence nothing short of awkward. John felt it, too; and after a while he said, ‘Tell you what, old sport. I’ve had a great idea. You can write the next Jack Boardman book.’

‘What do you mean, the next? I already wrote the last six, remember?’

‘What I mean is, why don’t you take him over? With your name on the jacket, and only your name. I’ll give him to you. The character. Yours to do with as you like. Book six sold a million and a half copies, right?’

‘Yes, but book five sold twice as many, which is why you decided not to pursue book seven, remember?’

‘Maybe so. But it’s still a valuable franchise, Don. And I do have a finished outline for book seven which I will gladly give you as my parting gift. There’s absolutely no reason why you shouldn’t squeeze another three books out of that character. Maybe five, which could be worth millions; I bet VVL would go for it, too. Especially now that they know I won’t be writing any more of those books myself. There are plenty of precedents for doing that sort of thing: Kingsley Amis, John Gardner and Sebastian Faulks with James Bond. The Faulks book Devil May Care was actually very successful. Good title, too. I had plans to use that title myself. And of course you wouldn’t have to cut me in for a percentage the way Faulks was obliged to do with Ian Fleming’s estate. Whatever money the book made would be yours and yours alone.’

I bit my lip and grunted as if I was thinking about it. I hadn’t in the least enjoyed writing the sixth Jack Boardman book; after six I was heartily sick of him — as sick of him as Ian Fleming had been of James Bond, perhaps — and I’d hoped never to write another one again, but, all the same, I didn’t want to say no; an outline for another of Boardman’s adventures was still a valuable property, John was right about that much.

‘At least say you’ll think about it, old sport. Look, I’ll even mention it to Anderton when I see him to tell him I’m through with all this.’

‘All right. I’ll think about it.’ I thought for a moment. ‘Are you planning to tell the rest of the guys when we get to the atelier in Paris?’

‘That’s right, I am. And then I’m going to catch the Euro-star to London and tell Anderton and everyone at VVL and then Hereward. I can’t wait to see his fucking beard turn fifty shades of grey.’

‘You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?’

John grinned and pressed his foot down on the accelerator as if he was anxious to get to Paris so that he could action his new plan as soon as possible.

‘I have to confess I am a little. You know, part of being a winner, old sport, is knowing when enough is enough. When it’s time to give up the fight and walk away and find something new. Like J. K. Rowling. I mean, good for her, I thought. Knowing when to quit is the essence of real creativity, wouldn’t you say?’

‘I don’t know. I’m just glad I chose not to buy any of VVL’s shares when they came on the market. You do know that Bat Anderton is going to have a heart attack.’

John laughed. ‘He’ll survive. And so will VVL. Bloomsbury survived after Harry Potter, didn’t they?’

‘Yes, but their shares halved after the series came to an end. They had to invest heavily in the German publishing market. They bought Berlin Verlag.’

‘Then VVL will have to do something similar, won’t they? Besides, it’s not like they won’t get Dead Red and the three books that Munns and Stakenborg and Philip French are writing right now. And The Geneva Convention.’

I shrugged and drank some wine. ‘When we got to Paris, Houston told everyone he was ending our arrangement, like he said he would, and then he went on to London where he did the same. We’ve spoken on the telephone since then but I think that might have been the last time I saw him, Chief Inspector.’

‘How did they take it? Your fellow writers?’

‘Not well. Philip French had just bought a house in the south of France — in Tourrettes-sur-Loup — and I think he’d been counting on continuing his working association with John in order to pay for it. Things have been difficult for him ever since. Peter Stakenborg was predictably underwhelmed by the news. Nothing ever surprises Peter. I think he even said he’d seen it coming. Mike Munns probably received the news with the least amount of good grace — which is because he hadn’t much grace to start with. Myself — I was a bit shocked at first. But it wasn’t like John just cast us all adrift. He did pay us off very handsomely. As he promised he would.’

‘And did he give you the outline for a seventh Jack Boardman book? Like he said?’

‘Yes. He did. Although as yet I’ve not been able to work up any great enthusiasm to write it. To be quite frank I was burned out on that series long before book six. John knew that, which is another reason why we didn’t write any more. That’s how it goes, you see. After a while a series character becomes the creature to the writer’s Victor Frankenstein; he’s a hideous monster that you’re obliged to spend time with but who you would happily see destroyed. Right now I could no more sit down and write another Jack Boardman book than I could go back in the army. He was a two-dimensional character, Chief Inspector, and without depth to a character about whom you’re writing, it’s just typing. I mean check out the reviews for those books on Amazon and you’ll see what I’m talking about. It is soon plain that the people who enjoy these books and give them five stars aren’t what you and I would call readers. A typical Amazon review for a Jack Boardman book reads something like “Houston’s books are easy to read and the ideal choice if you are unable to read for very long at a time”. The true readers, the real readers — readers like you and me, Chief Inspector — these are the people who give those books one-star reviews.’

I smiled and shook my head.

‘What?’ asked Amalric.

‘It’s just that John — always sales-led — was never ever bothered by those one-star reviews. Most writers — me included — get very hung up by what’s written in the Amazon reviews. But John said that if you actually read the one-star reviews they’re almost always better written than the five-star reviews, and that these always reveal readers who were never the true target market for John’s books in the first place. He used to call this kind of reader a “mal-purchase”. His real market he insisted was the authors of the illiterate, badly spelt five-star reviews, which is of course a much larger number of people than the authors of the better-written ones.’

‘Interesting,’ said Amalric.

‘Perhaps. Anyway, I can’t quite bring myself to get down to that sort of level again — the reader as lowest common denominator. I expect I will do, eventually, when I need the money. But right now I’m just ploughing my own little furrow and telling myself that a book which makes nothing but money is a poor book.’

This was another lie, of course; but writers lie for a living; at least, that’s a truth I’ve always believed.

‘How did Anderton take the news? And Hereward Jones?’

‘Badly. VVL’s shares nosedived on the news, as I expect you know. Lots of editors and marketing people lost their jobs. There was talk of a lawsuit against VVL and their bank by shareholders who felt that VVL had misled investors about John Houston’s future sales. There are still three more Houston books for them to publish, so I expect this year’s sales figures will hold up. But they can forget next year being any good. Especially now that John won’t be delivering The Geneva Convention. Or at least I assume he won’t be delivering it now that he’s suspected of murdering his wife. When I checked Bloomberg this afternoon I noticed that VVL shares had been marked down again.

‘As for Hereward, I imagine his situation is even bleaker. As someone who was earning between eight and ten million dollars a year in commission, he’ll be lucky if he makes a tenth of that now. I believe he’s had to sell his beautiful house in Ascot. Not to mention his famous Rolls-Royce.’

‘When Mr Houston told you that he was terminating the atelier and moving back to London, did he lead you to suppose he’d discussed it with his wife?’

‘It was all “I am going to do this” and “I am going to do that”. I don’t recall him mentioning Orla at all, except to make a disparaging remark about her hat-buying habit.’

‘You’re sure about that?’

‘Oh yes. He said, “I’ve bought a house in St Leonard’s Terrace”, not “We’ve bought one”, which would have been rather more uxorious.’

Uxorious: a word forbidden in John’s lexicon of banned words.

‘“We” is what a good husband would have said. On the other hand John always bought just what he wanted. He was quite impulsive when it came to spending. Recently he paid a million dollars for a watch. You probably read that in yesterday’s Daily Mail.’

‘Yes, an Hublot Black Caviar Bang, wasn’t it?’ said Amalric.

‘A million dollars for a watch,’ breathed Savigny.

‘Ridiculous, isn’t it?’ I said, but I could see Savigny didn’t agree and I knew I was looking at another man who would love to have owned a million-dollar watch. ‘He bought it with the film rights money for The Prisoner of Kandahar. At least that’s what he told the Wall Street Journal when they interviewed him.’

‘This was the novel which caused all the WikiLeaks fuss, wasn’t it?’ said Savigny. ‘With the coalition forces in Afghanistan.’

I nodded. ‘According to WikiLeaks the CIA used John’s book as the model for a Taliban prisoner swap in 2013. In John’s plot, the CIA is looking for a way to close Guantánamo without losing face; so they persuade an American sergeant to let himself be captured in Afghanistan in order that they can swap him for several top Taliban prisoners in Gitmo. Your guess is as good as mine just how much truth there was in that rumour. But he himself never commented on it. Like I say, he could be quite secretive about some things. Except with his accountants, of course. You might ask them some questions. Citroen Wells, in Devonshire Street, London. I believe they handle a lot of top writers.’

‘Do you think he might have been planning to return to London alone?’

‘That’s hard to say. I can’t imagine for a moment that Orla would have wanted to go along to Stamford Bridge with John — to see Chelsea Football Club. She hated football. Or to Lord’s to see the cricket. Not her scene at all. It was all too English for her. Even so, he never mentioned that he was unhappy with her. And she was a very beautiful woman after all.’

‘What about other women?’

‘Now you’re asking. John was always a busy man in the ladies’ department. He told me a joke once which I didn’t think was particularly funny since I was happily married at the time. If you’re married it’s a very subversive sort of joke. He said, “What do you call a man who is always faithful to his wife? Gay.” John thought that was very funny. But I think he really believes that. I’m certain he has girlfriends in places other than Monaco. There was a girl in New York I think he used to see when he was there; but I couldn’t give you a name, or an address. Probably one in Paris, too, but again I have no firm information about who she was or where she lived. I think I saw him with another woman in London, once. But he denied it afterward. John is highly compartmentalized. Which is entirely typical of the writer of course. I’ve yet to hear a better description of what it means to be a writer than the lyric from the song in the Bond movie of the same name: “You only live twice; once in your dreams and once in real life”. Works rather better than Bond’s failed attempt at a Basho-like haiku that’s in Fleming’s book, I think. And it’s a more or less perfect description of John Houston: a man who wrote one life and lived another — perhaps several others. I guess you’ll find out how many when you catch up with him. If you catch up with him.’

‘What about her?’ he asked. ‘Do you think she might have played around like he did?’

‘I really couldn’t say. She always struck me as a bit of an ice-maiden. You know, cold. I couldn’t ever imagine her flirting with anyone. But even if I could it’s my impression that the smallest country in the world would be a poor place to conduct a secret affair.’

‘Not the smallest,’ said Amalric, correcting me. ‘The Vatican City is smaller. And I don’t think that size ever stopped scandal there. Do you?’

I chuckled. ‘Maybe not.’

Sergeant Savigny came back to the table and sat down, smelling strongly of French cigarettes, which only made me want one; but I have a rule about smoking: unless in a situation of stress I only smoke when I am writing and only then when I am stuck. I don’t like my habits to become too much like a habit.

Amalric sat back in his chair and tugged at the end of his little beard.

‘It’s said that God never takes away something,’ he said after a moment or two, ‘without giving something better in its place. But not in this case. When Houston put an end to the atelier it seems everyone was a loser by his decision. Even him, perhaps, since he was obliged to hand back a cheque for twenty million. You, your fellow writers, the people at Veni, Vidi, Legi, the Houston office staff, shareholders, the publisher Mr Anderton, Mr Houston’s literary agent Here-ward Jones. Some of these people lost only their jobs; but some lost a great deal of money — or at least they didn’t make the money that they were quite sure they were going to make until Houston’s bombshell announcement. Which is almost the same thing. Of course, no one lost their life, unlike Mrs Houston; but I can’t help but feel her murder is connected with everything you have told me, Monsieur Irvine. As a policeman I’ve come to the conclusion that the Bible is wrong; it’s the lack of money that’s the root of all evil.’ He shrugged. ‘Perhaps Mrs Houston didn’t want to accompany her husband back to London. Perhaps she liked living in Monaco.’

‘Anything is possible, I suppose.’

‘Perhaps that’s why he killed her,’ said Savigny.

‘Maybe.’

‘Was he a jealous man?’ Savigny was warming to his line of questioning.

‘John? No. Not at all. I have the impression that if he’d found out she was fucking someone else, he’d have been pleased.’

‘Pleased?’ Savigny was frowning. ‘How?’

‘It would have let him off the hook, that’s how. And of course he’d have forgiven her because, in his own way, he loved her. Love will hide a multitude of sins.’

‘Talking of which,’ said Amalric, ‘would it surprise you to know that the contact list on Orla Houston’s iPhone included a number of sinners in the persons of several prominent Irish republicans? Two of whom — according to an officer we spoke to today at Scotland Yard — served long sentences at Portlaoise Prison for arms smuggling?’

‘Does that surprise me? No. As a matter of fact I believe those two guys you mentioned helped John with the research for one of his books. Ten Soldiers Wisely Led. That was the last book I wrote for John. Before Dead Red, I mean.’

Savigny nodded thoughtfully. ‘Dix Soldats Sagement Conduits. That’s the follow-up book to Le Prisonnier de Kandahar, isn’t it? One of my favourite books, sir.’

‘Is it?’ said Amalric.

‘There’s this guy who wears diamond-encrusted shoes. An arms dealer. Fantastic.’

‘The title comes from Euripides,’ I added helpfully. ‘Ten soldiers wisely led will beat a hundred without a head. I always thought it was Orla’s brother who put John in contact with those two characters. But it could just as easily have been her. John always suspected she was giving money to Sinn Féin. His money. I know they argued about it. John did not approve.’

I don’t know why, but I mentioned the incident at Orla’s wedding to John when Colm Mac Curtain had tried to pick a fight with me.

‘They sound like quite a family,’ observed Amalric.

‘They are.’

‘Is it possible that perhaps she might have offended someone in those circles?’ asked Savigny. ‘According to Scotland Yard, some of these people are still active and violent.’

‘You mean Irish nationalist paramilitaries?’ I smiled. ‘I’m a writer, Sergeant. It’s my job to make you believe that anything is possible.’ I shrugged. ‘With a sound-suppressor on a gun, it just might be, I suppose. John slips out of the Odéon Tower — for whatever reason — and comes back to find that his wife has been murdered by the Real IRA. I like that story better than him shooting his own wife in cold blood. But frankly I think I’ve got too much imagination to be a cop, don’t you?’

I tried and failed to suppress a yawn, and then glanced at my watch, which wasn’t an Hublot but a hundred-and-fifty-pound Bulova that was a poor imitation of the rather more expensive Rolex Sea Dweller. ‘But even my imagination is a getting a little dull. And my throat a little dry. I’m not used to talking as much as this. So perhaps you’ll excuse me.’ I took out my wallet.

‘No, no, monsieur,’ said Amalric. ‘You were our guest.’

‘Thank you, very much.’

‘No, thank you, monsieur.’

I allowed him to carry on thinking that I might actually have offered to pay my share while, from my wallet, I took out the two business cards I’d been reaching for all along. I handed one to Amalric and the other to Sergeant Savigny, who was standing up to say goodbye.

‘I enjoyed it very much,’ I said. ‘Especially the wine.’

Amalric was nodding circumspectly, which excited my curiosity. ‘What did you think of the restaurant?’ I asked him.

‘It’s trying hard to be something it’s not,’ he said. ‘But then again, isn’t everyone?’

‘Don’t hesitate to call or email if you have any more questions,’ I said. Then we all shook hands and I left.

It was a warm, clear Monday evening in London. From Claridge’s I walked up to Oxford Circus where I caught a Central Line train west to Notting Hill Gate, and then the District Line south to Putney. I walked onto the bridge and about halfway across stopped and stared across the river, hoping that the air would help to clear my head. Putney looked better at night when it was almost as glamorous-looking as Monaco; almost, but not quite. Saint Mary the Virgin Church, immediately to the east of the bridge, was bathed in sharp white light like a ghost ship. Next to the church, the blue lights from Putney Wharf Tower — a rather smarter, more expensive apartment building than my own — reflected on the metallic surface of the water in a way that made the river seem almost benign when it was anything but that. Strong currents and whirlpools made the Thames much too dangerous for swimming while the tide — which was now at its highest — was playing its usual game of trying to catch out the motorists who had unwisely parked along the Embankment to the west of Putney Bridge. It was not uncommon to return from dinner at one of Putney’s many inexpensive restaurants to find your car filled up to the roof with Thames water. This was certainly an entertaining spectacle to watch from the safety of an upper window in a pub, and the customers drinking at The Star and Garter often did just that.

There’s nothing that seems to give people more pleasure in Britain than watching a disaster happening to someone else in slow motion. Except perhaps what George Orwell would have called ‘a perfect murder’, which is to say a murder involving money and celebrities, of the kind that encourages not just extensive write-ups in the Sunday newspapers but also lots of books and melodramas — in short, the kind of murder that had befallen Edmond Safra and now Orla Mac Curtain. Her death really did seem to have all of the qualities that Orwell required to make a murder memorable. If Dominick Dunne had been alive he’d certainly have been on the next available plane to the Côte d’Azur. But if the Monty cops working the Edmond Safra case had screwed up — as the Vanity Fair journalist had implied — they didn’t look like they were about to make any of the same mistakes again. I might not have learned anything from Chief Inspector Amalric and Sergeant Savigny that made me change my mind about what had happened in Monaco, but I had certainly revised my opinion concerning the efficiency of the Monty cops. Amalric had been especially impressive and served to remind me that a well-read cop is like a supermarket steak: not as thick as you might hope.

Back in the flat I took off my one good suit and wearing just my underpants and a T-shirt I checked my emails and decided to finally open the one headed ‘News about your ticket’ from the National Lottery; I’d been delaying this in order that I might enjoy the property pornographic fantasy of just what I’d do if I won a rollover jackpot of eight million pounds and I felt absurdly deflated — as if I really could have bought that seven-bedroom manor house in Bouches du Rhône — when I discovered I’d won only ten quid.

I was about to log off for the day when the Skype ringtone came through the desktop speakers with a sound effect that was like a robot farting in a paddling pool. I almost fell off my Herman Miller with surprise. John Houston was the only person who ever called me on Skype and thus my only Skype contact; his Skype Name was Colonneh. This wasn’t because John cared about the cost of international telephone calls but because he had a thing about privacy and security and, while researching one of his meticulous outlines, he’d learned from the FBI that because Skype was what they call ‘peer to peer’ there was no way that anyone — the Feds included — could eavesdrop on your conversation. I suppose this was something else I had neglected to mention to Chief Inspector Amalric.

I clicked the mouse to answer the call and a second later I was staring at a very different-looking John from the man I had last seen in a car on the French autoroute. For one thing he was now wearing a short grey beard and had lost a little weight, which rather suited him. What with the salt-and-pepper beard and the way his head was leaning on his hand he reminded me more than a little of Thomas Carlyle or perhaps John Fowles. But I could see nothing particularly desperate about the figure on the screen. His shirt collar was clean and the million-dollar Hublot watch was clearly visible on his thick, tanned wrist. The room behind him had lots of bookshelves and a high ceiling. He might have been about to give an online interview to a creative-writing class.

‘John. How the hell are you?’

He gave a wry sort of smile.

‘Aside from being a fugitive from justice and wanted for my wife’s murder, I’m fine, old sport.’

‘As a matter of fact I just had dinner with the Monty cops.’

‘They’re in London already? Jesus.’

‘Two of them are.’

‘Where’d they take you?’

I smiled. It was a question that only John would have asked in these circumstances.

‘Claridge’s. That’s where they’re staying.’

‘Fucking hell. They must really like me for this one. Claridge’s.’

‘You’re the obvious suspect, all things considered.’

‘And that’s precisely why I left. Because I looked so bang to rights for it. I figured my best chance was to get out of Dodge and try to clear myself from outside the principality. Unpleasant things in Monty have a habit of getting tidied away rather too quickly.’

‘That comes of there not being much room for anything — the place being smaller than a pimple on France’s arse.’

‘Maybe. Or just lazy cops.’

‘I don’t know, John, the two detectives I met tonight seemed quite equal to the task of tracking you down.’

‘What did you tell them?’

‘The truth. What else could I tell them? John, I don’t know anything. I told them about the last time I spoke to you. I told them what we talked about. But if you’re asking me if I told them I thought you were guilty, no, I didn’t tell him that, because I don’t.’

‘Thanks, old sport. I appreciate it. And for what it’s worth, I really didn’t kill her. What does everyone else think?’

‘Peter and Mike think you’re probably guilty as charged. I don’t know about Bat and Hereward. I’m seeing them tomorrow, at their offices in Eastbourne Terrace. They asked me to come in and see them.’

‘I see.’

‘So what did happen?’

‘I’ve been framed, that’s what happened.’

‘Then why don’t you tell that to the cops? On Skype, I mean. I could set it up. You could talk to them like you’re doing with me now. Put your end of the story to them from wherever it is you are and you’d still be safe. Without having you in their custody they’d have no option but to check out your side of the story.’

‘I already considered that, and the answer is no.’

‘Why not?’

‘Look, Don, I don’t want to go into any details right now. What I want to say is this: I know you might think I let you down and maybe I did and I’m sorry about it. But you’re the only one who can help me. You’re the only person I can trust, old sport. I need a favour. A big favour. And it’s the kind of favour you simply won’t be able to do if you set up a Skype call between me and those two Monty cops, because if that happens then it stands to reason the British police will start watching you in the hope you’ll lead them to me.’

‘I get it. I’m to come and see you, is that it? Sure. Just tell me where you are and I’m there.’

‘Look, I know this is asking a lot. You’ll be aiding and abetting a serious crime and subject to prosecution. If you were found guilty you could go to prison, Don.’

‘What am I, Forrest Gump? John, I trained to be a lawyer, remember? Say what you want me to do and then you can read me the Miranda.’

‘There’s a sort of box containing some stuff which I’d like you to pick up and bring to me here.’

‘You mean like a safety deposit box?’

John laughed. ‘Jesus, Don, that stuff is strictly for the Ludlum movies. Nobody bothers with safety deposit boxes these days. At least no one who wants to keep things secret. For one thing you can’t trust any of the fucking banks to keep their mouths shut — least of all the Swiss ones. And for another I happen to know of at least two Liechtenstein banks that are under constant surveillance by the CIA — I mean you walk out of some of these places it’s like the red fucking carpet. You might as well pause and smile and tell the folks watching back home that Domenico Vacca made your fucking tuxedo. No, if you really want to keep your stuff safe and secret you use a self-storage facility. And it’s a hell of a lot cheaper than a fucking bank, too. UK has eight hundred self-storage facilities — more than the rest of Europe put together. It’s a 350 million pound a year industry in Great Britain alone and there’s no way that any law enforcement agencies can keep eyes on them. Al-Qaeda probably has shares in these companies.’

I laughed. The way John talked sometimes, it was like reading one of his novels.

‘So, here’s what you do,’ he said. ‘You drive to Big Yellow Self Storage on Townmead Road in Fulham. Next to the Harbour Club where I used to be a member.’

‘I know it.’

‘I rent twenty-five square feet of storage space on the first floor. Number F14. And that’s where you’ll find this box. The pin number to get in the place is 1746, Battle of Culloden, so a Jock like you shouldn’t have any trouble remembering it. And there’s free parking so it won’t cost you a penny either. There’s a combination padlock on the door. It’s another Scottish defeat. Flodden Field, 1513. Anyone asks you — not that they will — then the space is rented to a Mr Hanway. You’ll see that your name is also on the system. A little precaution I took at the time. In the storage space you’ll find a box. Really, it’s more of a foot locker. Or a small trunk. The combination on that lock is Bannockburn. 1314.’

‘So what’s in the box?’

‘You could call it research, I suppose. You know how I always tried to get things right — how far I would go. Yes, of course you do. Sometimes a little too far, right? I got myself a fake British passport and driver’s licence, sourced an illegal handgun, and bought some of the last US Treasury bearer bonds. I broke a few laws in the cause of checking out what was actually possible, sure. But that’s what made the books work; because the stories were watertight. I always figured that if I got caught doing any of that shit I’d deploy the Forsyth defence. I’d get my lawyer to say that I was merely practising the same research techniques used in undercover journalism — in the same way that Freddie did when he wrote The Day of the Jackal. Of course, I never did get caught; and I held on to the stuff for what you might call romantic reasons. I mean I suppose I always rather fancied myself as Jason Bourne. Anyway, that’s what’s in the box, old sport. A thriller writer’s career contraband. Look, bring the cash and the documents — in fact bring everything except the gun and the bonds. Yes, you’d best toss the gun in the river. But inside a Mont Blanc Meisterstück pen you’ll find there are some conflict diamonds, so for Christ’s sake don’t try to use it to sign anything.’

‘How much cash?’

‘There’s about a hundred grand in euros.’

‘Suppose they see it on the X-ray?’

‘They won’t. It’s all new 500-euro notes. So, you buy a copy of a nice big history book. Something thick and very worthy-looking by Max Hastings or Antony Beevor. One banknote between two pages. Simple as that. Besides, the law says that you can actually move as much cash as you like around the EU. You only need a cash declaration form if you’re leaving or entering the EU and it’s more than ten thousand euros. But even so, you wouldn’t want to have to explain it to them because then the Revenue would want to know where you got a hundred K. So best use the book.’

‘Okay, I get your box. Then what do I do?’

‘Wait for the Monty cops to fly home, just in case they have any more questions for you; and then come and see me here. Use some of the cash to pay your expenses. Air fare. Car hire at the airport. Just make sure you’re not followed.’

‘Where?’

‘Geneva.’

‘Hang on, that isn’t actually in the EU.’

‘Depends what exit you choose at Geneva airport, doesn’t it? There’s a Swiss side and there’s a French side. Look, the worst that can happen is that they’ll confiscate the money. Which isn’t yours anyway. So don’t worry about it.’

‘All right.’

John gave me the address and phone number. ‘I’ve been staying here on and off since I closed the atelier. To write my book. The place belongs to a hedgie I know. I keep a few million in his fund so he’s cool about me being here. He’s in the Antarctic, right now. On some charity expedition to drive across the continent. At one stage I was going to go with him. I wish to Christ I had. Anyway, he won’t be back for months.’

‘I should have guessed you were there.’

‘Look, call me when you get to Geneva. It’s about a thirty-minute drive to the house from the airport.’

‘Okay.’

John nodded silently. For a moment he looked overcome; then he said, ‘Don. Thanks, old sport. I really appreciate this.’

‘I doubt that. I really do, John. But you can rely on me. I’ll be there.’

I clicked the mouse and ended the Skype call while he was still staring sincerely into the camera on his laptop and trying to look properly grateful but not bringing it off.

Chapter 5

A few days later I took the 14.00 British Airways flight to Geneva. For a change I flew Business Class. I figured John could afford it. As well as five stones in his Mont Blanc that were each about a carat in size and probably worth at least thirty thousand pounds, the box at the lock-up in Townmead Road had contained 100,000 euros in cash. At Cointrin Airport I breathed a sigh of relief that I had arrived ‘without let or hindrance’ as a British passport has it. I called John on a payphone to let him know I’d landed and then went to the Avis desk to rent a car. I had to use my own credit card for that, so I chose something small — a VW Golf — just in case I ended up doing more driving than I anticipated. But in the car I helped myself to a generous amount of John’s folding to cover a week’s car hire and petrol and then keyed the address he’d given me on the phone into the satnav. The highlighted route away from the airport took me east onto Lake Geneva and then north along the Quai de Coligny.

I’ve never liked Geneva that much. Before going up to Cambridge I went to summer school at the University of Geneva for six weeks to improve my French, fell in love with a peach of a girl from Italy called Ernestina who wasn’t in love with me, and had a thoroughly miserable time. And when I was still in advertising I went to the Geneva Motor Show with some suits from the agency to view a range of shitty French cars before we pitched for the manufacturer’s account; we didn’t get it. These days I associate Geneva with EasyJet flight delays at the end of ski holidays that had already proved disappointing, or ludicrously expensive, or both. It’s hard to feel enthusiastic about a city that was once home to a bigot like John Calvin and which in le jet d’eau has a landmark that resembles nothing so much as a giant stream of piss.

Twenty-eight minutes from the airport (Rolex time), the village of Collonge-Bellerive is one of the most exclusive places to live in the world, not just Geneva. Houses on the lakeshore cost anything up to sixty million euros. I knew that because I’d been on a website called The Leading Properties of the World and I’d also explored the area a bit on Google Maps. From the air the house where John was holed up, on Chemin Armand Dufaux, was surrounded with trees and looked like a small hunting lodge, but only if you were the Crown Prince of Austria. With its own jetty and boat house, a box-hedge maze, and a drive longer than the Hadron Collider, the red-roofed manor house was as cosy and private as a ruby ring in a green velvet box; Martin Bormann could have been living there and no one would have known, or cared. The Swiss are like that. It doesn’t matter who you are or what you did somewhere else just as long as you wipe your shoes and wash your hands before you walk off the plane.

I pulled up in front of an impressive-looking gate, leaned out of the car window, tapped the number John had given me into the security keypad and waited to be admitted. A camera moved, the lens twisting as it focused on my face.

‘It’s me,’ I said. ‘Don Irvine.’

Minutes later I was approaching the house.

‘Jesus,’ I exclaimed as the real scale of the place became more apparent to me. ‘What is this place? East Egg?’

In front of the house was a courtyard that lacked only Captain Dreyfus and a full court martial while the enormous, dihedral roof properly belonged on the massif of a small Alpine range. As I stepped out of the car the front door opened to reveal not a count or a baron, nor for that matter a cadaverous butler, but John Houston wearing a tweed suit and a big smile, and looking more than a little like Toad of Toad Hall. He tap-danced his way down the stone steps to the door of my car and shook me firmly by the hand.

‘Don,’ he said, fondly. ‘I appreciate you coming all this way to help me try to unfuck my life.’

‘That’s okay, Mr Hanway,’ I said, pointedly. ‘And it makes a pleasant change for me to try and unfuck someone’s life.’

‘You brought my passport and driving licence?’

‘Of course. I was wondering why you picked that name.’

‘Charles Hanway?’ He shrugged. ‘I didn’t pick it. Not exactly. That’s not how it works, old sport. You have to find some poor bastard about the same age who died young. And apply for a new birth certificate in his name. So you can then apply for the passport. The police do it themselves when they want to go and work undercover. At least, that’s what The Guardian says.’

‘Only you picked someone who was a bit younger, I see.’

‘Why not? Applying for a false passport is an excellent way of knocking a few years off your mug. Cheaper than surgery. You know, there’s a small part of me that’s going to enjoy being someone else for a while. Come in and have a drink and I’ll show you around Xanadu.’

‘Who owns this place?’

‘A fellow named Bob Mechanic. He runs a hedge fund in Geneva called The Mechanism. It’s one of those funds run by a series of algorithms that no one understands which adds up to a licence to print money. Last time I looked in Forbes he was worth about two billion dollars.’

‘Two billion’s a figure I can understand. He’s the guy driving across Antarctica, right?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Sounds like a useful friend to have.’

John led me into a large hallway which was dominated by the sculpture — if that’s the right word — of a seated golden nude woman with several hundred surgical syringes instead of hair.

‘That’s quite a conversation piece,’ I said.

‘It’s by Mauro Perucchetti,’ said John. ‘Bob is quite a collector. This house is full of modern art. Some of it is worth a small fortune.’

‘This one looks like a bad trip to the hairdressers.’

John laughed and pointed at the large stairway on the opposite side of the hall. ‘She gave me quite a start the other night when I came down here in the dark. Her body is made of Swarovski crystal which was catching the moonlight through the window and makes her look rather ghostly. For a moment I thought it was Orla. I nearly had a heart attack.’

‘Sounds like a guilty conscience. You sure you didn’t shoot her?’

‘Funny, but not funny.’

He led me into a kitchen which could have served a good restaurant and poured me a glass of cold wine from a bottle of Corton-Charlemagne that was cooling in a refrigerator as big as a bank vault. The kitchen was immaculately clean and it was hard to imagine that anyone was actually living here. Even the stainless steel sink was gleaming like a suit of armour at Windsor Castle.

‘Cheers.’ He raised his glass and I caught sight of the massive Hublot on his wrist; it looked like a Range Rover parked on a beach towel.

I drank some of the wine and nodded appreciatively.

‘It’s the ’85,’ he said.

‘I think that being a fugitive has some very obvious advantages if this is what you’re drinking.’

‘There are worse places to go into hiding,’ he admitted. ‘Bob keeps a superb cellar here. I’ll say that for him.’

He was leaning nonchalantly against a white marble worktop except that the nonchalance never lasted for longer than a few seconds. He was too restless to quite pull that off. There was always an oven clock to adjust, a glass to top up, a mark on the marble to wipe, a shirt cuff to correct, and once a handful of vitamins to swallow.

‘I’m taking these because I need to stay sharp,’ he explained. ‘Three times a day. The stress I’ve been under, I haven’t been eating very much.’

‘That would explain why the kitchen is so neat,’ I said. ‘I thought you’d lost a few pounds. It suits you. Unlike that suit.’

‘What’s wrong with it?’

‘Nothing. I’m sure they wear that kind of thing at Bal-moral all the time.’

‘I had to leave Monaco in a bit of a hurry. I was stuck with the winter wardrobe I’d already brought here on a previous trip.’

‘That’s what it looks like.’

He was looking at my cabin luggage.

‘It’s all in there? In that toilet bag you call a suitcase?’

‘Everything except the gun. I chucked that off Putney Bridge. Not that it would have worked anyway.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Your nice Brocock Magnum with the inox finish. It had been deactivated.’

‘What? I paid two grand for that off some natty dredd on the Barking Road.’

‘You were done. He saw you coming. He sold you a weapon that was perfectly legal. You’d have needed someone with a lathe and the curiosity of a dead cat to make that thing fire again.’

I laughed and so did John.

‘You’re right. I was so fucking nervous when I bought it that I didn’t think to actually test-fire the thing.’

‘That’s not so easy to do, even in Newham.’

‘So why did you chuck it if it didn’t work?’

‘Because these days the Met is very trigger-happy. They shoot you dead when you’re only carrying a table leg. It’s best not to have anything that even looks like a gun. They shot a blind man the other day because he was carrying a white stick.’

‘Buying a gun is so much easier in Monaco.’

‘Evidently. Or we wouldn’t be talking like this now.’

‘Point taken.’

I put my hand in my jacket and brought out my passport-wallet, from which I withdrew John’s passport and then his driving licence. He frowned.

‘You brought it through customs like that?’

I shrugged. ‘Of course. Best place for a passport, wouldn’t you say? A passport-holder.’

‘But where’s your own passport?’

‘In my other pocket. They make you take it out of the holder when they look at it anyway. So what the fuck? I figured no one is going to look in the passport-holder if they’re already holding your passport.’ I shrugged. ‘That’s just the Father Brown principle of concealment. G. K. Chesterton? The Innocence of Father Brown?’

John started to nod. ‘Where does a wise man hide a leaf? Sure. I remember.’

He looked at the picture in his false passport and nodded. ‘It’s lucky I wore my glasses and grew a beard for my passport picture.’

‘Yes, it is.’

‘Not that I’ve ever dared use this, you know. I mean, I stuck to the Jackal’s recipe, for how to get one. PO Box and everything. I mean it ought to be kosher enough. But I really don’t know for sure.’

‘You could try to assassinate the President of France. That’s one way of finding out if it works like a passport should.’

‘The way things are going there right now, they’d probably give me the Légion d’honneur.’

‘Or you could go back to the UK, like any other British passport holder. That’s probably the best road test you could give it. On the other hand if you want to use it without anyone actually looking at it, then Corfu is your best bet. No one ever looks at your passport when you fly there. The Greeks are glad to see anyone who’s going to spend some money. Robert Mugabe could fly into Corfu without a problem.’

John didn’t answer and I wondered where he was thinking of going. South Africa? Colombia? New Zealand? What was the destination of choice these days for people who wanted to do a Lord Lucan?

I put the Mont Blanc on the worktop and lifted my case onto the kitchen table. I unzipped the case and placed Charles Moore’s biography of Margaret Thatcher in his hands.

‘What’s this? A joke? You know I couldn’t stand that woman.’

‘Oh, I think you’ll like this book, John. In fact, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if that’s the most absorbing biography you’ll read all year. Especially chapters ten to thirty.’

‘Ah.’ He flicked open the book and tugged out one new 500-euro bill. ‘Yes, I see what you mean. God bless Mrs T. Thanks, Don. Without a credit card I’ve been paying for nearly everything with Bitcoin until now.’

‘Where do you get a hundred thousand euros in new bills anyway?’

‘You remember that trip I made to the Lahore Literary Festival? The French DGSE got me to do a job for them while I was there.’ He shrugged. ‘Can’t say any more than that.’ John grinned. His grin got even wider when he unscrewed the pen and emptied the five stones onto the marble worktop. ‘Thanks again, old sport.’

‘And the diamonds?’

‘I bought them in Amsterdam. I was going to have them set in a necklace for someone.’

‘For Orla?’

‘No,’ he said, quietly.

‘So,’ I said. ‘What happened to her? And don’t tell me you were cleaning the gun and it went off. Cleaning the kitchen I might believe, but not a 22 automatic. According to the cops she got it right between the eyes and probably while she was asleep. I’ve seen the pictures.’

‘Look, I’ll tell you the truth. About everything, Don, I promise. And then I’m going to ask you another big favour. But why don’t I show you around first? Take you to your room and let you unpack. You can see some of Bob Mechanic’s art collection. Then we’ll order in some sushi from Uchitomi. It’s Geneva’s number one Japanese takeout. And the best part is, it’s on Bob’s account. Now that you’re here at last I’m starting to feel hungry again.’

‘All right.’

I shrugged. I’ve never cared very much for modern art, by which I mean the sort of crap that wins the Turner Prize. The last twentieth-century artist I had any time for was David Hockney.

John walked me through some other rooms with modern art installations and pictures until we came into an otherwise empty conservatory that was dominated by a female version of Michelangelo’s greatest sculpture, David.

‘Who’s this? Davina, I suppose.’

‘This is another Perucchetti,’ explained John. ‘It’s half size and made of the same Carrera marble as the original.’

‘I always wondered who buys this kind of shit,’ I said. ‘I guess now I know.’

‘You don’t like it?’

‘On the whole I prefer something with a little less novelty and a bit more original thought. You know — stuff that doesn’t need a whole catalogue and Waldemar Januszczak to explain it.’

‘Hmm. You could be right.’

The drawing room was dominated by a huge blue chandelier that looked like a sort of amoebic creature from a Men in Black movie. I had to admit that this was impressive, but couldn’t help but add that I wouldn’t care to try and dust it.

‘You know, I’d forgotten what a fucking philistine you are, old sport,’ said John.

‘That’s what I am, I guess. But then again, isn’t that why you used to pay me to write your books?’

‘Oh, I see.’ John grinned, patiently. ‘Now that I’m a wanted man you figure you can insult me with impunity, is that it?’

‘You’ve been doing it to me for years. And you’re going to have to get used to me telling you what a cunt you are, John. At the very least you’ll have to put up with it until you’ve explained what the fuck happened in Monaco. So why don’t you skip the Jay Jopling, White Cube tour of this absurdly impressive house and try to take this situation a bit more seriously? Out of respect for the person who just brought thirty grand’s worth of diamonds through customs for you. I’ve been very patient, John. But as you yourself pointed out on Skype I’m running quite a risk in helping you here. And I certainly didn’t come all this way to Geneva just to see Michelangelo’s David missing a dick and wearing a nice pair of tits. So let’s hear it: the undisputed truth or I swear I am leaving on a jetplane.’

‘You’re right, Don, I’m sorry. I’m afraid I just don’t know how to behave in this situation. I suppose I was trying to put on a brave face; to play the good host and make you feel welcome after coming all this way. Especially after the way things ended between us. Really, I’m so grateful you came. But I don’t know how to be myself. I’ve got quite a lot on my mind, old sport. It’s not easy to talk about any of this. Not easy at all. You hear me chattering away about fucking art but inside I’m mute with horror at what’s happened.’ He tapped his diaphragm and swallowed uncomfortably. ‘I have this persistent feeling of indigestion. Look, sit down. I’ll fetch another bottle and we’ll talk. I’ll talk. The fact is I haven’t talked to anyone since it happened. Since I arrived here in Geneva.’ He shook his head. ‘I’ve just sat around in silence and stared at the walls, wondering what the fuck to do. I’m like a monk in this place.’

I sat down on a large cream sofa and raised my glass. ‘At least it’s a nice monastery.’

John went away to fetch a second bottle and I stood up and walked around the room. Photographs of Bob Mechanic and his family were arranged along the broad white piste that was the mantelpiece; in pride of place was what looked like a Grayson Perry vase featuring a series of obscene cuddly toys that resembled the children in the photographs. Grey-coloured faux fur throws were arranged neatly on a crescent of cream sofas, only they weren’t faux, they were real; the silver foxes who had worked closely with the interior decorator were doubtless glad to have given their lives to keep such a nice family warm on colder Geneva nights. In the centre of the crescent was a coffee table on which you could have dried a year’s entire crop of arabica beans.

How the other half live or, to be more accurate, the other 0.001 per cent. Were the rest of the Mechanic family crossing the Antarctic continent, too? If so it probably made a stimulating change from a summer in the Hamptons. It certainly made a change from Switzerland. Outside the window a lawn as big as a polo field led down to the lakeside and a stone quay. An American flag hung limply on a tall pole and a couple of swans were dozing in the sun. There wasn’t much happening on the shores of Lake Geneva, either. Then again that was why you lived on the shores of Lake Geneva. That was probably why they had built le jet d’eau; so something harmless could happen in Geneva, even if it was just a few people enduring the momentary discomfort of getting hit with the spray.

John came back in the room bearing another bottle of liquid gold.

‘“Things fall apart,”’ I said. ‘“The centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, the blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity.”’ I smiled and came back to the coffee table. ‘Although not in Switzerland.’

‘What’s that?’

‘With apologies to William Butler Yeats.’

‘I think I’d forgotten what a fucking lefty you are. Cheers.’

‘I’m only a lefty by your rough, bestial standards, John.’

He arranged fresh glasses on the table and poured the wine.

‘Old sport, I have the strangest feeling that any minute now, you’re going to give me a lecture about brotherly love and the cuckoo clock. Are you?’

‘I’m not the one the police are looking for, Mr Lime. Cheers.’

‘Is that really how you see me?’

‘Why not? You’ve always reminded me a little of Orson Welles.’

‘Don’t be so melodramatic. We’re friends, you and I. We’ve always done everything together. And when all this is over, when I’ve cleared my name, it will be just like it was before. Maybe not exactly like it was before. Orla won’t be there of course, and that’s a tragedy. She had her whole life before her, poor girl. Oh, I know you and she didn’t get on and I always regretted that. But she was a great woman and a wonderful wife and I really did love her, Don. In my own way. You mentioned Yeats and I suppose you could say she was my Maud Gonne. It’s true, I have a bad conscience about some things that happened between us — times when I didn’t behave as I ought to have done, that’s the real pain; then again, my conscience is not so bad, in the great scheme of things. I remember the first time I saw her. She was the centrefold in a magazine. I can’t remember the one but it might have been Playboy. As soon as I saw her picture I promised myself that I was going to marry her and I did.’

He paused for a moment as something welled up from deep inside him and then two tears that were full of white wine and self-pity trickled down the sides of his broad nose, and his big shoulders started to shake as if there was something almost seismic about what was happening to him; it was nothing less than a tsunami of grief.

For a moment he wept without a sound, his face a grey, Guernican rictus of agony and bereavement which reminded me of Michael Corleone’s silent scream of agony at the end of Godfather 3 when he has seen his beloved daughter Mary murdered on the steps of the Palermo Opera House. It was painful to watch, much more painful than I might have expected.

There’s something about another man’s tears that’s more awful than a woman’s. In Northern Ireland there had been several occasions when I’d seen the boys from my platoon crying — I wept myself after the Warrenpoint ambush. Nothing wrong with that. No one is unmanned by tears. Mostly you just sat it out in the Bulldog, waited for them to finish — if there was time — and then never mentioned it again. Not ever. That was it, done, and it was all right. This was all right, too — it was all right because as I watched John weep his heart out in front of me I knew he couldn’t have murdered his wife. Not him. Not in a thousand years.