‘Oh? And what are they?’
‘As a matter of fact that’s what I want to talk to you about. Why I came up here on my own tonight.’
‘You want to smoke a joint while we talk about it?’
‘No thanks. I’ll stick to cigarettes if you don’t mind. For what I’ve got to say I need a clear head.’
‘Sounds ominous.’
I sat down, opened my cigarette case and laid it open on the table like a little jewellery box before taking one and lighting it. I sat back and smoked it as if I had all the time in the world to get to the point.
‘There’s nothing I like more than smoking a cigarette on a terrace in the south of France,’ I said. ‘Unless it’s fucking someone on a terrace in the south of France. But at my age it looks as if I’ll have to settle for the cigarettes, I think.’ I shrugged. ‘Then again, maybe there’s an alternative. Which is what I want to talk to you about.’
Philip French sat down opposite me and started to make another joint. ‘So what is it?’
‘First, the twenty grand you were demanding from John; to stop you going to the police and informing on him — and by extension me.’ I reached into the Tumi bag and tossed the money onto the table between us. ‘There it is. Paid in full.’
‘Thanks.’
I shrugged. ‘Of course, another twenty grand is nothing beside what you could get for that watch if you had the box and all the papers that came with it when John bought it. Without any of that you’ll be lucky to raise a hundred grand, compared with maybe four times as much if you had everything you need to make the thing look kosher.’ I took another drag on the cigarette. ‘But I can get you all that. The box and the papers are in the safe at the atelier in Paris and I still have the key and the combination. The cops are probably keeping an eye on the place, so there’s a risk factor involved. Which means it’s going to cost you, Phil.’
‘How much?’
‘Twenty grand.’
‘Oh, I see. I take the blame with John and you take the cash.’
‘A bargain considering you might raise four hundred grand.’
He smiled.
‘Did I say something funny?’
‘Just that there was I feeling like a fucking criminal and now here you are dealing off the bottom. We make quite a pair.’
‘That’s why I’m here.’
‘Wait. Why aren’t you asking for half of what I can get for the watch?’
‘Because I already have the Bentley.’
‘What? He said it belongs to someone else.’
‘It does. Only I have a buyer who’ll give me fifty grand for it, no questions asked. You get the watch and the box and I get the car and twenty grand. That makes seventy grand for me.’
‘Seventy versus four hundred. It still sounds to me as if you’re coming up short, Don.’
‘Perhaps. You can call it a sign of good faith, if you like.’
‘In what?’
‘First things first: do we have a deal about the money?’
‘Sure. Keep it. If you can get the box and make the watch squeaky clean, so much the better. But don’t take any unnecessary risks.’
‘Okay.’ I put the money back in the black bag. ‘Thanks.’
‘But I still think you’re selling yourself short.’
‘And like I said, that’s a sign of good faith.’
Phil opened his hand as if expecting me to put something other than money in it. ‘In what?’ he repeated. ‘Don’t make me strip naked for it.’
‘In you, Phil. In you. You see I’ve got a nice proposition for you that can make us both much wealthier than a few hundred grand a piece. Enough for you to pay off your wife and to keep this place, if that’s what you want to do.’
‘What kind of proposition? And don’t say a novel, or a script, or I’ll laugh. It’s only the people who’ve got almost nothing to say who are being paid the big money to say it in print: cooks and fucking footballers and national treasure actresses with backsides almost as big as their books. These days the Christmas bestsellers look like they were published by Hello! magazine.’
‘Just hear me out. If you were describing my idea as a plot for a book, you would call it a simple reversal of fortune plot. You know? The Prisoner of Zenda. We put John Houston to work. For us.’
‘And how would that work? He’s a wanted man.’
‘In a way, that’s not true. John Houston no longer exists. John is using a false passport. That’s how we’re getting around without any trouble. At the moment he’s someone called Charles Hanway.’
‘I might have known he’d have done something like that. Yes, I remember him getting that passport for research when he wrote whichever fucking book it was. And he employed the Forsyth method to get it. So that’s how he’s managed to evade capture. He’s nothing if not resourceful, is our John.’
‘My plan is this: we get Charles back to England and we put him up at my place in Cornwall. It’s so out of the way that everything but the rain avoids the fucking place. John keeps that beard going until he looks like all of the other hobbits who live down there. He’d be like the man in the iron mask. He stays there and continues to do what he does best, which is to write story outlines for us. And then we write the actual books. Simple as that. Just like before. Only this time it will be us who reap the benefits. We’ll pay him what he used to pay us. Just enough to enable him to live, reasonably, in Cornwall. Which is to say not very much. Meanwhile you and I will become Philip Irvine — a pseudonym for our writing partnership. I would say Don French, but there’s Dawn French, of course. And we wouldn’t want to be confused with her. Not to mention another pseudonymous writing partnership called French: Nicci French.’
‘Sean French and Nicci Gerrard. Yes, that’s right.’
‘So Philip Irvine it has to be. At least until we can come up with something better. We can write alternate chapters, like they do. It will take a few books and a couple of years to get ourselves properly established, but I reckon if we stick closely to the old Houston formula Hereward can make a deal with VVL. In less than ten years I see no reason why we shouldn’t be as rich as John.’
‘You’re joking, aren’t you?’
‘No, I’m not. I’m perfectly serious. This can really work, Phil. I’m absolutely certain of it.’
‘Suppose we get caught? Christ, Don, we’d go to prison. They’d give us five years for something like this. And the prisons down here are exactly what they say on the tin. There’s none of that open-prison shit you get back home. You serve hard time in the south of France. There’s no telly in a cell, just some jihadi with a hard-on and a welcoming smile.’
‘There’s a book in that, too, I shouldn’t wonder. But I really don’t see how we’d get caught. Like I say, Polruan — that’s where I live in Cornwall — it’s so quiet and out of the way that you could be living next door to Lord Lucan and have no idea.’
‘Have you talked about this with John?’
‘Not yet. I’m waiting for him to get really desperate before I broach the subject. Which he will when we travel to Marseille and fail to find the woman he’s relying on to give him an alibi for where he was and what he was doing on the night Orla was murdered. That’s where he’ll have his meltdown and I point out the many advantages of living in Cornwall.’
‘Suppose he says no?’
‘Frankly, if it’s a choice between a prison cell in Monaco and a life of freedom in Cornwall then Cornwall edges it.’ I laughed. ‘But only just. Seriously though. What would you choose? It’s an offer he can’t refuse.’
French nodded. ‘That’s quite a plot you’ve got there. Although a little far-fetched, perhaps.’
‘It will work.’
He stood up. ‘Come with me, Don. I want to show you something.’
I got up and followed him, pausing only to go back and fetch John’s bag.
‘It’ll be all right there,’ he said.
‘With twenty grand in there, it doesn’t leave my sight,’ I said.