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 drove back down the hill to the port, which was still busy with small boats coming and going under the early-evening moon like bees collecting pollen. I parked the car near the harbor and walked up the slope of the esplanade toward the hotel entrance with the airline bag slung over my shoulder and the gun tucked underneath the waistband of my trousers. If anything was going to go wrong, I thought it best my car was elsewhere when it happened. The bell tower at the little church was marking eight o’clock as if time on the Cap was important. For anyone but me it probably wasn’t. Red and pink people who looked as if they’d had too much sun were coming ashore and heading to the many restaurants in search of a good dinner, but it didn’t matter at what hour they ate and really there was only one good restaurant and that was at La Voile d’Or. Although it was, perhaps, a little too formal for most tourists, which is probably why I liked it in the first place.
My first thought as I went through the front door of the hotel was not about Hebel or the money in the bag I was carrying, but of poor Spinola and how he and I were never going to sit down in the bar again and talk about nothing much before a friendly game of cards. I always felt alone, but suddenly the realization that I’d lost my one remaining friend hit me as hard as if I’d lost an arm or a leg. I liked Anne French, but I wasn’t in any doubt that she was hardly a friend; she was just using me to get close to Somerset Maugham. I didn’t mind that. People do what they have to do and what they think they have to do, and mostly there’s no way around that. It certainly makes life interesting, if perhaps a little less enjoyable. I sighed as I realized I was probably going to have to tell the Roses that Spinola was dead and that our bridge evenings were at an end; and then I considered that I could ask Anne French to be my partner instead. She’d like that. Not as much as if I’d asked her to come and make up a four with Somerset Maugham, but then, she had to start somewhere.