Research (26 page)

I used the Judas hole in Colette’s door to check that the corridor was empty and thinking the coast on floor twenty-nine was clear I went out of the apartment and closed the door behind me.

‘Hello at last,’ said an American voice.

I turned to see a smallish man in a grey suit with a Van Dyck beard, a paunch and an unlit Cohiba shuffling toward
me. He was perspiring heavily and in his other hand was a handkerchief as big as a flag of truce. He looked like a Confederate Army general.

‘You must be my Russian neighbour – Mr Kaganovich, isn’t it?’

I fixed a smile to my face and nodded, vaguely.

‘Colette – Miss Laurent has told me so much about you, but I was beginning to think you didn’t exist.’ He smiled. ‘Unless you’re a ghost.’

I smiled, enjoying the irony and said, ‘There are no ghosts in this building.’

‘I wouldn’t be too sure about that.’

He held out a hand that only just cleared the sleeve of his ill-fitting jacket. ‘Michael Twentyman. Originally from New York but now of no fixed abode. Hey, but we all are if we’re here in Monaco, right?’

‘Lev,’ I said, shaking Twentyman’s hand. ‘Originally from Smolensk, but now mostly travelling somewhere on business. Pleased to meet you.’

I’d always been quite good at imitating accents; back in my advertising days, I’d often voiced a radio commercial when the so-called acting talent couldn’t quite manage it to my high standard. Most of the actors who do voice-overs are drunken has-beens you haven’t seen for so long they look like Dorian Gray’s picture. In truth I’d never done a Russian accent, professionally, but seeing
The Hunt for Red October
on television as many times as I had, I figured I only had to be as good as – or no better than – Sean Connery or Sam Neill to persuade the American that I was the genuine article. With any accent, less is more.

I turned and walked toward the lift.

‘Not as pleased as I am,’ said Twentyman. ‘I’m having a
few friends over for Sunday night cocktails in my apartment tomorrow. And then we’re going to dinner at Joël Robuchon. My girlfriend is from Kharkov. So it’d be great if you could join us.’

It figured that someone like him would have had a Russian girlfriend and, for a brief second, I tried to picture her: blonde, blue-eyed, glass-cutting cheekbones, with hooks and gut-suckers like a liverfluke – which is a parasite in sheep almost impossible to be rid of. Russian girls in Monaco would have looked at Twentyman the way a wolf on the steppe might have seen a lost lamb.

‘I’d love to,’ I said. ‘But I’m on my way somewhere.’

‘Business or pleasure?’

‘Is there a difference?’

Twentyman laughed. ‘You’re right. Not in Monaco.’

The lift arrived and we stepped inside. I pressed the button to take us down to the Odéon garage.

‘I’m headed out myself.’

I nodded politely.

‘I assume you heard about our news,’ he said.

‘What news might that be?’

‘What news?’ Twentyman laughed. ‘My God, you have been away, haven’t you? Why our murder, of course. Mrs Houston. The actress. In one of the sky duplexes nearly two weeks ago. That’s why I mentioned ghosts.’

‘I did hear about that, yes. Terrible. I hadn’t met the poor lady myself. But it was my information that the husband did it. The writer. And that he’s still at liberty.’

‘He’s the number one suspect, yes. But that’s the French police for you. The husband is always the number one suspect, right? This is the home of
le crime passionnel
. But if you ask me, the culprit could be anyone in this building. The
first twenty floors are affordable housing. For Monégasques. Which means this place is hardly as exclusive as I’d hoped it might be when I bought it. All right, maybe the locals have a different elevator, but you wouldn’t ever get this kind of European social engineering in an apartment building on Park Avenue. It smacks of communism.’

‘You think it is one of them, perhaps? The locals?’

‘Why not?’

I shrugged. ‘Then perhaps it’s good that I have alibi. I was in Geneva when this happened. At least that’s what my wife thinks.’

Twentyman laughed. ‘Who knows? Maybe we’ll all need an alibi before this is over. It’s almost two weeks since it happened but the police are still here and no further forward with their inquiry. Asking questions and being a general pain in the ass. I mean you can’t blame them, they’re just doing their jobs. But I really hate cops. You don’t want to hear about that right now. Suffice to say that I’ve been thinking of getting out of town for a while. Until today there were television cameras outside the front of our building. And I just hate that.’

‘Me, too,’ I said. ‘If my wife saw me
here
she would also kill me.’

The lift door opened not in the garage but in the ground-floor lobby; with its geometric bronze wall patterns which might have signified some ancient hermetic meaning and enormous beige marble pillars, it resembled something from a big-budget sci-fi movie. Whenever I was in it I half expected to see Mr Spock standing on the polished floor; instead I caught sight of someone who was just as unwelcome as any extraterrestrial creature: it was Chief Inspector Amalric and he was talking to the concierge by the front desk.

‘That’s him there,’ said Twentyman. ‘The Chief Inspector of Police. His name is Amalric and he’s a suspicious son of a bitch. Shit. He’s seen me. Hell, now I really am going to be late.’

‘Monsieur Twentyman, hello.’

Amalric’s gravelly voice echoed through the lobby; he was wearing a little straw hat and holding a glass of water in his hand.

‘Chief Inspector,’ Twentyman said weakly. ‘How are you?’

I pressed myself into the side of the lift, hiding behind the side wall and control panel as the Monaco detective set out across the enormous floor toward us. I was pretty sure he hadn’t yet seen me but I figured it was only a matter of seconds before he did and Twentyman introduced me as his neighbour, Lev Kaganovich, which was going to be very hard to explain. I was surely the living proof of the old wives’ tale that murderers always return to the scene of the crime.

‘Good, thank you. Could I have a word with you, please?’

‘It’s a little inconvenient right now,’ he said. ‘I’m just on my way out somewhere.’

‘It won’t take a moment,’ insisted Amalric, nearer now. ‘I just have a few questions to ask you.’

I’d already pressed the close doors button, several times, and to my immense relief the doors started to slide shut.

‘
Attendez un moment
.’

Twentyman pushed his face close to the narrowing gap between the doors and called out ‘Perhaps later’ and ‘Sorry’ before they closed completely and the lift continued smoothly down to the Odéon garage.

‘That was fast work,’ said Twentyman and chuckled. ‘I can see you’re a good man in a tight spot, Lev, my friend. But for
your nifty work with those elevator buttons I’d have been stuck with that fucking nosy cop for twenty minutes.’

‘Why does he want to speak to you anyway? The twenty-ninth floor is a long way from those sky duplexes.’

‘Because I knew her. Mrs Houston was a fellow Tifosi – like me a keen supporter of the Scuderia Ferrari. We met in the Ferrari hospitality suite at the Hôtel de Paris during the last Grand Prix. I imagine the Chief Inspector thinks that I can shed some light on some of the people she knew here in Monte Carlo.’ He chuckled. ‘Even if I could, I’d rather not, if you know what I mean. One question leads to another and before you know it, you’re in handcuffs. I had a similar experience on Wall Street a few years ago. I went from witness to wanted in twenty-four hours. So fuck that, right?’

‘I just hope I haven’t got you into trouble.’

‘Hey, you’re not the only guy who can produce an alibi,’ said Twentyman as the car arrived in the garage. ‘It so happens I was in the library with Colonel Mustard at the time.’

I frowned as though not understanding what he’d said. ‘Please?’

‘American humour,’ said my putative neighbour. ‘Come to think of it, Chief Inspector Amalric didn’t see the joke either.’

‘French, Russian – cops are the same all over. The only jokes they like are the ones they make up themselves. In Russia we sometimes call these jokes “evidence”.’

Twentyman laughed again. ‘That’s very good. Are you sure you can’t come along tomorrow night? My girlfriend, Anastasia, would love to meet you. More importantly so would her friends.’

‘You’re forgetting about my wife. One murder in the Odéon is quite enough, don’t you think?’

Twentyman was still laughing as he walked toward a red Ferrari 599 GTO. ‘Knock me up next time you’re in town, as the actress said to the bishop.’

‘I will,’ I said.

‘Promise?’

‘Scout’s honour.’

I followed Twentyman’s Ferrari out of the garage and into the street, where it was as if his V12 engine was in competition with my W12 for the amount of high-performance noise they could both generate. The roundabout in front of the Odéon echoed with a din that was like a very small and exclusive Grand Prix.

I drove down Boulevard d’Italie in search of Il Giardino – the Italian restaurant where John was awaiting my return. I pulled up in front of a tall privet hedge that shielded the outside tables from the street and started to ring John’s mobile number, but he was already opening the Bentley’s door and dropping into the passenger seat. A strong smell of scotch came with him, not to mention an air of general grievance.

‘Where the fuck have you been?’ he said. ‘It’s nearly nine o’clock. I was beginning to think something had happened to you.’

‘Sorry about that,’ I said. ‘There wasn’t any mobile reception in the garage and then I’m afraid I just forgot about it.’

‘You forgot? Thanks, Don, and fuck you. I’ve been having bloody kittens since you left.’

‘I forgot because your building is still crawling with Monty cops,’ I said. ‘Oddly enough I was rather more concerned with avoiding arrest than with your fucking nerves.’

‘It’s me they want to fucking arrest,
old sport
,’ protested John. ‘In case you’d forgotten.’

‘Perhaps. But they would certainly want to know what
the fuck I was doing in the Odéon,
old sport
. With your girlfriend’s iPad tucked under my arm. You see, they’re the same cops I met in London. The ones who came to interview me.’

‘How do you know?’

‘Because I fucking saw them, you ungrateful cunt. In the lobby. And outside the entrance. I just hope to Christ they didn’t see me.’

‘Oh, Jesus, Don, I’m sorry. I thought they’d have cleared off by now.’

‘They haven’t. Then I got caught by one of Colette’s neighbours. Fellow named Michael Twentyman.’

‘What did you tell him?’

‘Don’t worry, he’s now under the impression that I’m her missing Russian lover, Lev Kaganovich.’

‘How does that happen?’

‘I did my impersonation of Uncle Vanya. Even though I say so myself it was worthy of an Emmy, or whatever it is they give those tossers for a bit of dressing up and make-believe.’

‘Yes. You always fancied yourself as a bit of an actor, didn’t you? When we were in advertising.’

‘Actually, my best performances were done in the army,’ I said, momentarily affecting a Northern Irish accent. ‘But that’s another story.’

John started to relax a little.

‘Michael Twentyman. I recognize that name. I never met him myself but I think Orla used to know him.’

‘Come on. Let’s get out of here before he sees us and invites us to a party.’

As I put the Bentley in gear and accelerated slowly away he found the other end of the Apple wire in Colette’s iPad that I’d positioned down the side of the passenger seat in its faux snakeskin cover.

‘Is this it? Is this her iPad?’

‘Yes.’

‘Thank God for that.’

He plugged it into a charging socket underneath the Bentley’s armrest and pressed the iPad’s home button to start it up, but for now there wasn’t enough power in the thing.

‘We can open that when we get to the hotel in Èze,’ I said. ‘It will give us something to talk about over dinner.’

‘I fucking hope so.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘She had a passcode on her iPad.’

‘Don’t you know the number?’

‘I thought I did. But now, I’m not so sure I haven’t forgotten it.’

‘This is a fine time to forget it given that I just risked my ass retrieving that piece of junk from under the noses of the Monty cops. Because that’s what it is if you can’t remember the goddamn number.’

‘Keep your hair on. I’m sure I’ll remember it.’

‘Let’s hope so. Otherwise this whole journey will have been a waste of time.’

John grunted. ‘Don’t I know it.’

We made our way up the hill into Beausoleil and out of Monaco.

I said, ‘But even if you don’t, it’s only four numbers. How difficult can that be to break?’

John made an error noise.

‘Clearly you know nothing about Apple. If you repeatedly enter the wrong passcode, it disables the iPad. The only way to unlock an iPad that has a passcode, other than by entering the correct passcode, is to restore it to the original factory
settings. And that deletes all of the data – which is the very thing we’re after.’

‘Everything?’

‘Everything.’

‘I see.’

‘Did you find her laptop?’ he asked. ‘It might be a different story if we had Colette’s laptop. We could plug the iPad into the computer and that would restore the data.’

‘No sign of that, I’m afraid. And believe me I looked everywhere. She must have taken it with her when she left Dodge. You’d better start trying to think of the right number. Or we’re fucked.’

‘Yes, you’ve made that abundantly clear already, old sport.’

As I steered the Bentley west – toward the small medieval village of Èze – John fell into sombre silence and I guessed he was trying to remember the iPad passcode. I already knew Colette’s passcode, but I was trying to work out how I was going to give him the correct four numbers without drawing suspicion on myself.

‘What are you doing?’

‘Pulling my cock out. I don’t want to come inside you.’