Research (6 page)

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.’

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.