told you, I was trying to make a few contacts.’
‘No. You weren’t. You got sucked in like a mug. Because you have a weakness. Just like your father …’
‘That isn’t fair. He was a bookmaker.’
‘He shot himself, Ward. Because he lost all his money.’
‘That’s cheap. Very cheap,’ Max had said, watching the seagulls float on the air above the Thames. He hadn’t known whether to smack Corbett in the face or just walk away. A seagull had perched on the railings a couple of feet away from them.
‘They have a knowing look, don’t you think?’ Max had asked, buying time to compose himself.
‘Fuck the seagull. Do you actually want this job? According to Nash, not that much.’
Max had paused, as if making up his mind. In truth, he was trying to control his anger.
‘My father made a big sacrifice to send me to Eton. I wish he hadn’t, because it killed him, one way or another.’ Max’s voice had wavered. ‘So of course I want this job. Otherwise it was all for nothing. This bloody job is all I have to show for his sacrifice.’
Corbett’s face had betrayed his relief. It was exactly what he’d needed to hear. Passion. And maybe the beginnings of regret. If he was to justify hanging on to him, he needed to believe that was what Max was feeling.
‘You’re going to have a couple of very boring years riding a desk. Step inside a casino and all bets are off.’
Max turned away from the casino and crossed the road to admire the fountain. Not just any fountain, either. Anish Kapoor’s Sky Mirror.
His mind flickered to the dacha outside Moscow. Corbett being shot in cold blood. If nothing else, this mission could at least destroy Pallesson.
Wrestling his thoughts back to the present, Max admired the way the mirror reflected both the sky and the casino. As he watched his own reflection, he noticed someone standing on the steps behind him. When he turned around, the guy walked off towards the harbour. He didn’t look back.
Max loved the adrenalin of being out in the field; loved the feeling of being on his toes. Being alert. Ready to react to anything. All the more so because it was such a rare occurrence these days, though he was certain nothing would happen in Monte Carlo. Or at least nothing he couldn’t cope with.
He walked around to the other side of the square. There was a policeman standing in the middle of the road doing nothing, as far as Max could see. Nice work if you can get it. The policeman took a long look at him, as if he’d read his thoughts.
Max glanced at the clientele of the Café de Paris as they sipped their coffees. A man on his own with a newspaper open on the table seemed to be looking at him. Or was he looking at the leather document holder?
Finally, Max left the square and headed downhill towards his destination. He stopped just around the corner by the Zegg & Cerlati watch shop to see if anyone was following him. The watches were mesmerizing: Zenith, Jaeger-LeCoultre, Breitling, Franck Muller, Patek Philippe. They were all stunning. But one particular watch by Vacheron Constantin caught his eye. The 1907 Chronomètre Royal was a watch that Max had always thought was perfectly him. It looked classic, unembellished, but distinguished. He loved the eleven Arabic numerals in black enamel and the burgundy-red twelve, all set against a white face inside rose-gold casing. And definitely a brown strap, not black. Max looked at the price. Thirty-five thousand euros. That was about right.
After a while, Max realized that he was being scrutinized by a woman inside the shop. She beckoned for him to enter. He still had time to kill, so he went inside.
Gemma arrived at the end of the long, empty white marble tunnel. Instead of turning left into the hotel spa, she turned right, out into the street, and set off down the hill towards the harbour. She pulled up the hood of her coat, but resisted the urge to look back towards the hotel. Max would be long gone by now.
After fifty metres she walked past the Théâtre Princesse Grace. At the bottom of the hill she took the first steps on her left towards the water, then doubled back on herself along the seafront. All the big fuck-off yachts were moored next to each other along the harbour wall. Gemma was familiar with a few of them. There were a couple belonging to the Formula 1 crowd, a medium-size vessel from an oligarch’s ever-growing fleet, plus the flagship of a minor Saudi prince, which she’d been aboard more than once.
Gemma walked past Clementine, Paloma and Lady Nag Nag – a joke, the cost of which didn’t make it any funnier. The yachts were registered in Georgetown, the Cayman Islands, Monaco and Douglas, though the one she was heading for was registered in Montenegro.
Two crew members in immaculate white shirts and blue shorts were waiting for her at the end of the walkway. Gemma knew the form. She handed her shoes to one of them before she boarded. A third member of staff offered her a hot hand towel. Not for her own comfort, she suspected, but more in deference to her host’s OCD.
He was waiting for her beyond a large set of double glass doors. It was a bit too cool for sitting around on deck.
‘Gemma.’ Alessandro Marchant beamed gushingly. ‘Great to see you. Like the refurb? My new designer helped me.’
Gemma was relieved to see there were crew everywhere. At least he wouldn’t be able to try it on, as he had done when her husband Casper and she had been staying with him in Corsica.
The ‘refurb’ had obviously cost a fortune, and had clearly been done by someone who’d had a taste bypass. They’d had one idea in their mind and stuck with it. Gold.
‘My chef is cooking lobster for lunch.’
My this, my that … He hadn’t changed.
Gemma was disgusted by her husband’s craven submission to Alessandro Marchant and, even worse, the creepy Pallesson. So dark and vile was Pallesson that no one even applied a first name to him. And when he said jump, Casper leapt.
After they first got married, when she’d challenged Casper about it, he got very agitated and ranted that he would have no hedge fund, and she would be living in a council house, if it wasn’t for Pallesson and Marchant. Now the whole subject had become off limits.
When she drank too much, she invariably brought the subject up. And threw in the likelihood that any money Casper was handling for them would almost certainly be bent. If he’d had too much – which increasingly seemed to be the case – he became abusive. Their marriage was falling apart. It was hardly surprising that she needed Max.
‘Champagne?’ Marchant asked expansively.
‘Coffee.’ It was a statement, not a question. She had to toe the line with Alessandro, but only up to a point.
‘So what else brings you down here, Gemma?’ Alessandro asked as he lay back on a sofa that had been made all but uninhabitable by a plague of cushions. He knew there would be a cover for her bringing him the memory stick.
‘I’m here with a girlfriend. We’re looking at an interior design job. It’s going to be amazing.’ At least, that was what she’d told Casper.
‘You should use my girl,’ Alessandro interrupted. ‘She did all this.’
‘Yes,’ Gemma replied, with the minimal amount of appreciation. ‘Probably not quite what we’re looking for though.’
‘You must both come and have dinner tonight.’
Gemma’s stomach tightened. Monaco was too small for her layers of deceit.
‘We can’t, sadly. Hooked up with our client, I’m afraid. Obviously not allowed to say who. Oh, before I forget, your memory stick. Casper said he’d kill me if I lost it.’