Chapters (38)
- Cover
- Also by Philip Kerr
- Dedication
- Epigraph
- ONE
- TWO
- THREE
- FOUR
- FIVE
- SIX
- SEVEN
- EIGHT
- NINE
- TEN
- ELEVEN
- TWELVE
- THIRTEEN
- FOURTEEN
- FIFTEEN
- SIXTEEN
- SEVENTEEN
- EIGHTEEN
- NINETEEN
- TWENTY
- TWENTY-ONE
- TWENTY-TWO
- TWENTY-THREE
- TWENTY-FOUR
- TWENTY-FIVE
- TWENTY-SIX
- TWENTY-SEVEN
- TWENTY-EIGHT
- TWENTY-NINE
- THIRTY
- THIRTY-ONE
- THIRTY-TWO
- THIRTY-THREE
- AUTHOR’S NOTE
I made a fist and bit my knuckle; it felt a little kinder than punching my own thick head. “Then I guess my usefulness is at an end,” I said. “Yes, I can see how that might work.”
“It wasn’t like that.”
“No?”
“No.”
“If you say so.” I paused, trying to shepherd my thoughts, but it was no good, they were now scattered like so many lost sheep across the barren hillside I called my life.
“Yes?”
“Forgive me, but it’s a little hard to talk right now with all my teeth kicked out.”
“I’m sorry. Really I am.”
“Do you want me to go?”
“I think it might be best, don’t you? To avoid any awkward scenes in the morning.”
“No, we certainly wouldn’t want that.” I smiled as gamely as I could manage. “Especially not after the awkward scene we’ve had tonight. You know, you should have telephoned the Villa Mauresque, left a message, and saved me the journey up here. I know you’ve got the number. I saw it on one of those neat files of yours in the office. Then again, maybe you thought it was kinder to do it in person, to spare my feelings.”
I went downstairs and walked through the lush garden back to the car in a silence that was already roaring in my ears like the sea hitting the beach on the Cap. In a way I’d seen it coming and been stupid enough to ignore what my keener senses had already told me. Not that it really counted for very much in the scheme of things. It was nothing more than just another tragedy, in a long line of tragedies of the kind Bernie Gunther was already well used to. If anyone had the constitution to take it on the chin, that person was him, I told myself. Maybe that’s what all ordinary human life amounts to. One tragedy heaped on top of another like sharp gray layers of shale. What did it matter anymore than the death of the lobster I’d eaten for supper or the leaf of tobacco now burning in my cigarette? Not a damn thing. If ever you stopped to think of just how much pain there was in any one life it would surely kill you, just as surely as if someone had put a bullet through your heart at close range with a little automatic.