Research (35 page)

‘It taught me one thing,’ I said. ‘Dentistry, I mean. Not the army. That didn’t teach me anything. Dentistry taught me that there’s so much physiological health that relates to the state of our oral hygiene. Did you know that a lot of heart disease is caused by dental caries? It’s true. Simple flossing is a much more effective way of preventing a heart attack than cutting down on cholesterol. So, if I were you I’d get that swelling seen to as soon as possible, mate. If that’s what it is. I can’t be entirely sure from where I’m sitting.’

Philip French was exploring the state of his gums with his tongue.

‘Look, forget I said anything. It’s probably nothing at all. These things usually are.’

‘Would you take a quick look before you go?’

I shrugged. ‘Really, I’m not qualified, Phil. You should see
a professional. If there is the beginning of an abscess you’ll need it properly drained and you’ll need an antibiotic. To stop an infection. Amoxicillin is generally prescribed and is very effective. But if it starts to become painful Nurofen is probably best.’

I knew all this because I’d already endured treatment for a dental abscess the previous summer. As John used to say, in preparing one of his story outlines, ‘There’s no research quite as effective as something you’ve experienced yourself.’

‘Just humour me, Don, please. Just take a quick look and see what you think.’

‘All right. But let me fetch a flashlight from my bag so I can see what’s what.’ I frowned. ‘Have you got any mouthwash?’

‘There’s this,’ he said and held up a bottle of scotch.

‘That’ll have to do.’

We both took a swig and I collected the Tumi bag off the floor.

‘Just lean back on the recliner,’ I said. ‘Now then, open wide and let me take a look.’

He leaned back and opened his mouth.

‘Wider.’

Behind my back I thumbed down the hammer on John’s Walther .22 and slipped off the safety catch. I knew there was already one in the chamber because I’d seen him lock and load the gun when we were on the autoroute. Obviously I’d have preferred a 38 – or better still Hemingway’s twelve-gauge – to shoot a man in the head; and I certainly wouldn’t have trusted a .22 to trepan a male skull; but the soft palate at the back of his mouth was a different story: that was just muscle fibres sheathed in mucus membrane, after which the next stop was a really thin piece of bone the name of
which I couldn’t remember, and then the hypothalamus. A lot depends on the ammunition of course; but for what I had in mind the .22 would do just fine.

‘Wider.’

I put the muzzle inside Philip’s mouth – he probably thought it was a flashlight – and quickly squeezed the trigger, shooting him, Hitler style, like he’d actually meant to commit suicide. His body went into spasm for a moment as if the neurons that controlled his nerves had been fried with electricity; his eyes filled with blood and other stuff, and his legs twitched violently for several seconds – so violently that I was obliged to hold them down for fear that he might fall off the recliner and ruin the death scene I’d so carefully contrived. Then his head rolled slowly to one side. After another moment or two his breathing became laboured and messy as blood and cerebrospinal fluid started to drain through the open wound in the palate of his mouth, straight down his throat and into his lungs. A pink bubble formed on his lips and began to enlarge as if it was being inflated by some hidden pump. His chest was struggling to get a hold on the atmosphere. I stood back and waited for the bubble to burst and for him to drown.

As always when I kill someone I felt a tremendous sense of cosmic connection to the world, as vivid and sharply defined as if I had touched the forefinger of my maker. A
South Bank Show
moment. I don’t normally believe in God, but it’s at moments like these that I do experience a timeless force in the world that is Life itself. You only have to see a human life ebbing away in front of you to feel a tremendous relationship with all of nature, not just the omnipresent cicadas and the strong smell of violets in the air, but the shimmering leaves on the olive trees and the stars in the sky. It is as if life is
enhanced and amplified to an almost deafening maximum by the witnessing of its departure. Human existence asserts itself most vigorously in the face of death. I expect that’s why men and women used to attend public executions – as if, in an uncertain world, it was only by seeing someone put to death that they themselves could feel the truly fantastic sensation that is life itself. It is the most beautiful and shattering experience to find yourself so strongly underlined like a great passage of writing in a book that otherwise can sometimes feel just a little ordinary. That’s a shocking admission, I know; but I feel true clarity most when I have a smoking gun in my hand. I’ve noticed how people in movies always do it with a long face and then beat themselves up about it afterward; that’s not how it is at all. From everything I’ve read, most people get off on killing someone. Me, I was grinning like a loon. So much so I felt obliged to offer some sort of explanation to someone I’d known for more than a decade.

‘Sorry, Phil. If you can still hear anything then I just want to say that I didn’t want this at all. You do see that, don’t you? Really. It was a genuine offer I made to you earlier this evening. I’d have much preferred having you as a writing partner, buddy. As it happens I think you were right about that and I was wrong. Now I come to think about it, you were written out. That last novel you wrote for John wasn’t very good. I thought it was just a blip, but John recognized that something more fundamental had happened. So, it looks like I’m going to have to do this by myself, as I don’t much like the idea of sharing anything with Mike Munns. I don’t know about Peter Stakenborg. I’ll have to think about him. He’s harder to control. And I don’t want to do this with anyone I can’t control. That would defeat the whole object of the exercise.’

A sound like the drain in a sink – or perhaps a coffee machine – emanated from the depths of his throat and lasted for almost a minute before, like him, it died. I felt for a pulse, and not finding one I now considered the forensic picture I wanted to paint for the local police, much as I would have done if I’d been writing a novel. The difference was that this was real, although I have usually found that the best way to achieve realism within a text is to imagine oneself carrying out a crime, much like a method actor might have done; in other words, I have always tried to feel what it would be like to have done some dreadful thing in a novel, so much so that I sometimes have trouble separating those people I really killed from those I think I’ve only killed within the context of a story. So I finished my wine, and then began work.

Gunshot residue – GSR – is the burnt and unburnt particles of primer and propellant that are left on a gunman’s hand after a shot has been fired: it’s one of the first things scenes of crime officers look for in determining whether or not someone took their own life with a firearm. So I put the still-cocked automatic in Phil’s right hand and fired the gun out of the open door and into the olive grove. Then I let his arm fall with the gun still in his hand; to my great satisfaction, with his finger hooked through the trigger guard the gun remained firmly in his grip.

Next, I searched carefully for both brass cartridges: two would have made the police suspicious. I didn’t find two, but I found one and pocketed it carefully before seating myself in front of his iMac and typing a few extra lines onto the maudlin and self-pitying email he’d written to his wife Caroline. I added some stuff about John Houston that held him responsible for the things that had gone wrong in Philip’s life; I drew back from a full murder confession, of course.
That would have been too much. Then I pressed send.

I wiped the Apple keyboard with some cyber-cleaning compound I found in his desk drawer and then, still carrying my wine glass – which was covered with fingerprints – I went back to the Bentley and dropped the glass into the boot, from where I now retrieved my backpack.

Back on the terrace I retrieved the butt of my cigarette from his ashtray and lit another to help me concentrate. I had all the time in the world, of course. Everything was quiet. The nearest neighbour must have been at least half a kilometre away. There was just the incessant noise of the cicadas and a dog barking in the distance to disturb the peace of the countryside.

Back in the house I placed Colette’s car and door keys in the drawer of a fitted closet in a bedroom upstairs. In another drawer I left her laptop, but not before wiping it carefully, of course. I put her hairbrush beside the sink in the bathroom and one of her lipsticks in the bathroom cabinet. In the kitchen bin I placed the ticket for the parking lot at Terminal 2 of Nice Airport where I had left the Audi and her dead body.

I was on my way out to the garage to add the Tour Odéon in Monaco to the list of favourites on the satnav in Phil’s car when I saw a copy of that day’s
Riviera Times
on a pile of newspapers by the kitchen door, and I remembered the story about the unidentified body found in the ashes of the forest fire in the
forêt de l’Albaréa
, near Sospel.

Rereading the story I found that the police thought it unlikely the body would ever be identified, as it was so badly consumed by the enormous heat generated by the fire. This was very much to my advantage. So when I went into the garage to program the satnav I also added the coordinates
of Sospel to make it seem as though Phil had visited both of these places. Then I circled the story in the paper and left it where I had found it, on a pile of old newspapers in the kitchen.

It was all circumstantial stuff but, in my experience of dealing with the police – and in particular, the RUC – the circumstances of collecting evidence are such that, short of a full confession on the part of a suspect, there’s seldom any one thing that stands out to the exclusion of everything else. Most cops will tell you that circumstantial evidence will usually do very nicely thank you, and I’d left enough of it scattered around poor Philip’s house to convince Henry Fonda and a whole room full of angry men. As soon as the police located Colette’s body they would conclude that she and French had been co-conspirators; and if I got really lucky they might even conclude that they had killed John and dumped his body in the
forêt de l’Albaréa
, which was perhaps an hour’s drive north of Monaco.

I went back into Philip’s study to double-check that he was dead. There’s an easy way to do this and it isn’t a pulse. You just put your mobile phone under the victim’s nostrils and then check to see if there’s any condensation on the glass. There wasn’t. He was as dead as the net book agreement.

I pocketed the twenty thousand euros but I left John’s Tumi bag on the floor beside the desk; Tumi luggage and bags all have metal plates containing twenty-digit numbers permanently affixed to a pocket inside so that it’s easy to trace them if they get lost. John’s bag in Philip French’s possession would be another piece of important evidence that he was dead. I’d been with him when he’d bought it in the Hôtel Métropole shopping centre in Monaco.

Another excellent piece of evidence was the million-dollar
watch that French had extorted from John; with any luck someone at the Château Saint-Martin or in Tourrettessur-Loup might have seen him actually wearing it. Anyone disposing of John Houston’s body would surely have taken an expensive watch like the Hublot Black Caviar.

But perhaps the best evidence of course was the murder weapon now in Philip’s hand – the same make and calibre of pistol that had been used to murder Colette, not to mention the same ammunition: I’d been quite careful about that.

I walked around the villa trying to think of anything I’d forgotten; but the more I thought about it the more inclined I was to the conclusion that even Inspector Clouseau could have made a good case against Philip French with the picture I’d painted for the local police.

I was about to get back in the car and leave Philip’s villa when my mobile started ringing. To my horror the caller ID said it was Chief Inspector Amalric. I thought about not answering it but then he’d have only rung again; besides, as Michael Corleone once said, ‘Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer.’

‘Chief Inspector,’ I said. ‘I’m so sorry. I was going to call you, wasn’t I? I completely forgot. I’m afraid it’s been one of those days.’

‘That’s quite all right, monsieur. Geneva must be a lot more interesting on a Sunday than I remember it.’

‘Not nearly as interesting as Monaco. As a matter of fact I’m going back to London, on Tuesday. It would be difficult to meet on Wednesday, but I could meet you any day after that, if you’re still planning on going to London yourself.’

‘Why don’t I call you as soon as I get to Claridge’s and we can arrange a dinner. Thursday perhaps.’

‘I’m always delighted to have dinner at Claridge’s. I take it that you haven’t yet caught up with him, then. With John Houston.’

‘I regret not. But there’s someone else I’m seeing first thing tomorrow who might be able to help me catch up with
Mr Houston, as you say. Someone I haven’t managed to speak to before.’

‘Oh? Who’s that?’

‘Your old friend and fellow writer in Houston’s
atelier
, Philip French. I have an appointment with him at ten o’clock.’

‘You’re going to Tourrettes-sur-Loup?’

‘Yes. As a matter of fact I’m there right now. You see, I used to live in Tourrettes. My sister still lives here and I’m staying with her tonight. It’s quite like old times.’

‘Oh, I see.’ I swallowed so hard I wondered if he heard it.

‘Before I see him tomorrow, I wanted to ask you a little about him. What’s he like?’

‘I’ve known him for more than ten years. He’s solid. Reliable.’

‘Did you know that he’s working as a waiter? At a hotel in Vence?’

‘No, I didn’t. I knew that since John wound up the
atelier
money has been tight for him. But I didn’t know things were that bad.’

‘Did you know that he owes the bank a lot of money?’