Research (16 page)

To be honest I’d never been completely satisfied at Colette’s explanation concerning Lev’s protracted absence. According to her, Lev was the kind of man who had a girl in every port and she was required to look after the apartment and him whenever he was in Monaco. But the telephone number she had for Lev in Moscow had been disconnected and the email address he had given her no longer functioned either. The service charge on the apartment in the Odéon was paid up until the end of the year, at which point it looked probable that she would have to leave Monaco and return to her family home in Marseille. I didn’t mind that Colette was obviously looking for someone to replace Lev and that I might be it. I’d already considered the possibility of renting her a small place in Beausoleil. What I did mind hugely was the idea that a Russian gangster might now have me in his sights.

For several minutes I wandered through my apartment in a cold sweat and trying to figure out what to do. I don’t mind telling you, I was sick with fear, old sport. I mean I actually vomited with fear. Since there was no sign of a break-in at my own apartment, it was clear that whoever had killed Orla must have had a key and that more than likely this was the key I had left on the hall table while I was fucking Colette.

Until now I don’t suppose I had even considered robbery as a motive, so I went to the safe and found everything there that should have been there: a couple of thousand euros, some chequebooks, and a few smaller pieces of Orla’s jewellery – all of the decent stuff was in a security box at Jacob Safra’s Bank. None of the pictures were missing. What kind of burglar was it who ignored a decent-sized Picasso on our living-room wall and yet was compelled to shoot a sleeping woman? There were no answers that came my way. Just more questions, and one thing was soon obvious: the only way I had a chance of answering any of them and clearing my name was not to contact the police. Whichever way I looked at it I was squarely in the frame for my wife’s murder, which bore all the hallmarks of a professional hit. For this reason it seemed to me that there was also a very real possibility that I was in danger myself. All of this meant I had to get out of Monaco, and fast.

I packed a bag, returned to Colette’s apartment and waited around in the hope she might come back; I even took a gun with me in case Lev showed up. But by midnight I was convinced that something must have happened to her, too, and the possibility that I might find myself incriminated in two murders seemed all too possible. Perhaps her body was already lying in a cabin in my boat and I’d be kneeling there on the floor holding her body in one hand and a knife in
the other like Roger Thornhill in
North by Northwest
when the cops showed up.

So I went down to the garage, where I got into my car and drove straight here.

Not exactly straight, no; the obvious route from Monaco to Geneva would have been on the A10, via Italy. Instead, I took a much longer route along the coast road west – there are lots of traffic cameras on the A8 out of Monaco – and then north, through the Écrins National Park, to avoid any toll roads. That’s another way they have of tracking you. I mean things have changed a bit since Tom Ripley went on the lam. Not that anyone was looking for me when I got here – and I figured I had seventy-two hours before the maid found Orla’s body – but Interpol can be quite tenacious when it sets its mind to catching someone. There was always a slim chance that the Monty cops would pay the French some serious cash to spend thousands of man-hours combing through CCTV footage of the roads in and out of the principality. Stranger things have happened. I recently read a couple of excellent thrillers by a fellow named Mark Russinovich –
Zero Day
and
Trojan Horse
 – that really made me think about digital forensics, old sport. Russinovich is a PhD computer scientist and Microsoft Technical Fellow and really knows his stuff. There’s not much the geeks can’t find out with their drones and their satellites and their ‘digital bloodhounds’. You should check him out before you write the next Jack Boardman. Some of that high-tech stuff
I put in the outline already looks like an old version of Windows.

Anyway, by the time poor Orla’s body was found in the Tour Odéon I was safely hidden here in Collonge-Bellerive, which really is one of the most private places in the world; forget South America – you could hide the whole of the ODESSA here, in Jerry uniform, too, and no one would be any the wiser. Bob Mechanic – the guy who owns this place – has lived in this house for five years and he’s never even seen his fucking neighbours. For all he knows he could be living next door to Joseph Kony and he wouldn’t have a clue. And he’s so bloody paranoid about being spied on he has his own pet geeks at the hedge fund’s office in Geneva block Google Earth street views; the image that’s on the site right now is at least a year or two old.

When the cleaner turns up I lurk down in Mechanic’s study where she’s forbidden to go in case she ever tries to dust his PC, which is on twenty-four hours a day, and Mechanic loses some important data. I think he must log into it remotely from an internet café on the Ross Ice Shelf to check his trades. Anyway, she’s also the one who fills the fridge, not me. Mechanic had a butler for a while. So, as you can see, this is an ideal place to hide when you’re a wanted man. It was an ideal place to write, too, which is why I came here in the first place. I just wish I’d stayed on to work through the summer instead of going back to Monty that weekend. I wouldn’t have gone at all, but it was our wedding anniversary – something the cops don’t seem to have noticed. I mean why would I have murdered Orla on her wedding anniversary? If I stayed on here in Switzerland then perhaps none of this would have happened. I wrote at least thirty thousand words of
The Geneva Convention
before Orla was murdered. Frankly, it’s the best work I’ve done in a long time.
Seriously, old sport, if you want to drive life and all its attendant cares into a remote corner, forget Walden Pond, this is it. This is what I call a writer’s retreat. You can really think in a place like this, which is all I’ve been doing, of course, since I left Monaco.

*

I paused and waited for Don to say something. His habitual demeanour is always pretty calm and unflappable, as befits a former army officer with two tours of Northern Ireland under his belt. Don’s more of a Guy Crouchback than a Christopher Tietjens, but he was looking even more composed and unemotional than was normal even for him. His fingers were laced and his thick forefingers were touching the end of his square jaw, like a man contemplating a chess move. To my surprise he was still wearing his wedding ring, although Jenny, his wife, gave him the heave-ho more than eighteen months ago. Found herself someone else, apparently – and of all people he was a High Court judge, with a title, so the former Mrs Irvine is now Lady Somebody with a nice house in Kensington and a holiday home in Fiesole. Frankly I think she did him a favour; Jenny was always a bit too fast for old Don. On one occasion she even made a pass at me.

‘I can imagine,’ was all he said.

I rather doubted that. Don was never all that imaginative. I sometimes think he and the others would never have managed to become writers at all if not for me. And too late I’d realized that was the real thing I’d taken away from them when I closed the
atelier
; it wasn’t the money they missed most, it was the delusion that any of them could hack it as proper writers. It’s one thing to take away a man’s livelihood; but it’s something else – something terrible – to take away his dreams.

‘At least say that you believe me, old sport.’

His cornflower-blue eyes narrowed; he tried a smile, then thought better of it, as if remembering that my wife was dead after all.

‘It’s not me you have to convince, John. It’s the police. Frankly, I really don’t give a damn if you killed her or not. I mean, it hardly matters between you and me. But if you’re suggesting that this Lev character killed your wife and framed you in revenge for shagging his girlfriend, I just don’t buy it. And for fuck’s sake, when will you learn not to shit on your own doorstep? Why fuck a girl who lives in your own building? It’s bloody madness. What on earth possessed you to do something so utterly crazy? Didn’t I always say that something like this would happen? That you would always be getting into scrapes so long as you believed that you did things to girls instead of with them? You were crazy to get involved with this woman.’

‘You have to be a bit crazy to fall in love with anyone, don’t you think?’

But Don wasn’t really listening. ‘No, the idea that Lev killed Orla simply because you were shagging some bimbo he doesn’t sound as though he cared two kopecks for makes no sense to me at all. It’s a serious crime for a pretty trivial motive, if you don’t mind me saying so. Not all Ivans are as crazy or as lethal as the ones Jack Boardman meets in your novels.’

Don shook his head and drank some wine. He was wearing his usual uniform: beige chinos, a plain white shirt, and a blue blazer. His brown brogue shoes were beginning to seem rather more venerable than sensible and the watch on his wrist looked like a knock-off. But he looked pretty fit, as always; every year he did a triathlon in the Cornish town
where he had a small holiday home; I looked it up online one year after he’d told me he’d finished near the back of the field and was surprised to discover he’d actually come third. That said something important about old Don. There was more to him than met the eye. It was easy to underestimate him.

‘Mind if I smoke?’ he said.

‘Go ahead.’

Don took out a silver cigarette case – he was the only person I knew who used one; he said it meant he could ration his day’s smoking – and lit one with a silver Dunhill I’d given him for his fortieth birthday; I was touched to see he was still using it. He puffed, licked his lips and continued speaking:

‘And forgive me, John, but it’s really not like he could have killed Orla without Colette’s help, is it? Think about it for a moment. Lev would have to have pinched your key while you were shagging her, nipped upstairs, shot Orla and the dogs, come back downstairs, returned your key without you noticing, and hidden somewhere until you’d gone home. And she helps him to do all this because what – she’s afraid of him? If any of that was true she could have told you and then dialled 112. It’s John Houston’s basic rule to writing a thriller, number one; the whole house of cards falls down if you can’t answer a simple question: why didn’t X or Y call the police? And here’s another thing: are you seriously suggesting that the first thing Lev does after killing Orla is open a bottle of Russian champagne? That doesn’t strike me as very likely either. It doesn’t matter who you kill, champagne – cheap or otherwise – is not and never has been a post-homicidal drink. You drink a scotch or a brandy, or maybe even vodka to calm your nerves but you don’t crack open a bottle of bubbles.’

I nodded. ‘Yes, you’re right, Don. None of it makes any sense when you think about it.’

‘Oh, I didn’t say it didn’t make any sense. I just don’t think it makes the sort of sense you think it does. I believe it’s quite possible that the champagne bottle was a message, for you. That maybe Colette meant you to see the bottle and to put two and two together and make
pyat
. A Russian code. A message from Otto Leipzig. Tell Max that our Russian friend is back in town.’

‘You mean, she meant me to think that Lev had returned to Monaco and was now on the scene with malice aforethought.’

‘Exactly. She would have known the effect that seeing something Russian like that bottle would have on you. Because it was her who gave you the legend about Lev in the first place – his connections to the mafia, the fact that he was a violent man, an oligarch with an attitude. And just to underline that she leaves an empty packet of Russian cigarettes in the wastepaper bin and a recent copy of
The Moscow Times
.’

‘But Colette couldn’t have killed Orla. Could she?’

Don shrugged and hurried some tobacco smoke down into his lungs. He wasn’t a heavy smoker so much as an enthusiastic one. He enjoyed smoking in the same way that I enjoy a plate of perfectly
baveuse
scrambled eggs.

‘I don’t know. You’re assuming Orla and the dogs were shot while you were shagging Colette. But she knew your habits and Orla’s too. Isn’t it possible that she might have carried out the shooting while you were working in your study? You said yourself that it’s a large apartment. My own recollection of being in the Tour Odéon is that the walls and doors are rather thick. I also seem to recall the research you
carried out for one of your early books –
The Lethal Companion
, was it? An experiment with a Walther nine-mill. You fired a whole clip of blanks from the Walther in the study of your old house in London while your ex-wife was serving Sunday lunch in the dining room upstairs; nobody heard a thing because nobody ever really expects to hear gunshots. And remember what happened in Truman Capote’s
In Cold Blood
. The hired hand didn’t hear the twelve-gauge that killed the Clutter family even though he lived fairly close by.’

‘Yes, that’s true,’ I said. ‘I remember that. There are lots of things you can mistake a gunshot for. A car backfiring; a balloon bursting; a door being slammed. And now I come to think of it, I always had a mid-morning nap on the day after I’d shagged Colette. Forty winks at eleven.’

‘Would she have known that, do you think?’

I nodded. ‘For sure. She used to make a joke about it. Jesus. She made a lot of jokes about my nap. At the time I thought they were affectionate but now I’m not so sure.’

‘You’re right not to be sure. Even if Colette didn’t pull the trigger it’s entirely conceivable she’s in this up to the neck of her womb. She could have had an accomplice who carried out the murder while you and she were on the job. It doesn’t have to be Lev who murdered Orla. In fact, I’m sure it wasn’t. She could have had a younger boyfriend who put her up to it.’

‘But why?’

‘She needed money, of course. You said yourself she was little better than a squatter in that apartment. What was going to happen to her when the service charge wasn’t paid at the end of the year? The building management would have kicked her out on her shell-like. And then what would have happened to her? No, wait, you were going to buy her an
apartment in Beausoleil. Jesus that’s generous of you, John.
Not
. From Monaco to Beausoleil – that’s a hell of a change in lifestyles. An eighteen-million-euro apartment swapped for something costing less than a tenth of that, I’ll bet. Fuck off. She knew you were loaded. I’ll bet she wanted a lot more than you were planning to give her.’