because neither she nor her readers have the wit or imagination to understand how parochial and mundane it all is. In Eastern Europe, on the other hand, you have the lingering spectre of Communism, lots of war, unpronounceable names, and grittily authentic characters who have not been spiritually disembowelled by the capitalist excesses of Western civilisation. It’s the perfect setting if you want to say anything relevant.
There is a pause. ‘So, go on then,’ prompts Anna. ‘About this guy Illic. Tell me more.’
‘Oh. Well, it’s difficult to explain. He’s a very complex character.’ As he would be, coming from Eastern Europe. ‘But at the moment he’s, er, subverting the author-character dialectic.’
Anna pulls a face. ‘Sounds serious.’
‘Oh, I’ll soon knock him into shape.’ There is a pause. I look at my wife anxiously. I decide to wait until after supper before I ask her about the cufflinks. ‘Hungry?’ I ask.
‘Ravenous. What are we having?’
‘Well, just for a change, I thought I might have a go at chicken.’
Anna gasps. ‘Chicken? Surely not.’
‘I’ll get started, then.’ I stand up.
Anna remains where she is, looking at the ashtray in front of her. ‘Matthew,’ she says after a moment, ‘I have some news.’
I am crouching in front of the open fridge, a blue polystyrene tray of chicken breasts in my hand. Slowly I stand and turn to face her.
‘News?’ I say uncertainly.
‘We need to talk,’ she says.
‘Talk?’
‘Something’s happened, Matthew. I’m leaving.’
I have misheard her. Surely.
‘What did you say?’ I breathe.
Anna sighs. ‘I have to go. I have no choice. I’m sorry.’
So this is it. A scythe of gut-wrenching nausea rips through me. I knew something was wrong, but I wasn’t expecting this. Anna is leaving me. Just like that. My head is filled with shrill panic. I realise that she is still speaking.
‘…until about the end of the week. Mind you, it could be worse.’
I stare at her.
Anna looks at me quizzically. ‘Is that OK? I know it’s not ideal, but I thought maybe you could do with some time to yourself. You can crack on with the book.’
I shake my head. ‘Sorry,’ I say. ‘Run it by me again.’ I put the tray of chicken breasts down on the kitchen table. My over-anxious thumb-print is clearly indented against the cool flesh of the meat.
Anna sighs. ‘Do you ever listen to me, Matthew? I have to go to Paris. On business. That pharmaceutical client I told you about.’
Paris. Business. I nod blindly. The edict has been handed down, gubernatorial discretion exercised. Clemency has been granted! I am escaping the noose, skipping away from the electric chair!
‘I have to leave tomorrow,’ continues Anna. ‘The deal should be done by the end of the week. Although you never know with the French.’
Ah, yes, the French.
Inevitably, the very mention of our garlic-chomping cousins from across the Channel sends me into a spin. The genesis of my neurosis was one Frenchman in particular, but as the years have passed my antipathy has spread to the whole lot of them.
I should explain.
A statistic that one hears from time to time on true-crime television shows is that in eighty per cent of all murder cases, the murderer and the victim know each other.
I sometimes wonder how police statisticians will categorise my crime, when I exact my longed-for revenge on Jean-Philippe Durand. Will they say we knew each other? I, the assassin, know the victim intimately. Too well. He has haunted my dreams for years. Conversely, when I step out of the shadows, my stiletto blade poised to be driven into his heart, he will look at me blankly. Which is a pity, really, because I won’t have time to explain to him exactly why it is that he must die.
Allow me to spool back fourteen years, or thereabouts:
October time. I had recently arrived at one of Oxford University’s less prestigious colleges, looking forward to an indolent three years of studying English. When I realised just how cheap the beer in the college bar was, I resolved to bluff my way through the entire syllabus. Within days of my arrival, unshakeable slothfulness had settled comfortably upon me like a high tog duvet. I spent the days eroding my paltry student grant twenty pence at a time, trying to beat the high score on the college pinball machine. I spent the evenings drinking with my friend Ian. We had met on the first day of term. Recognising in each other a shared depravity, we dispensed with the cautious friendliness that typified most new encounters in those first days of term. We didn’t bother with the usual preliminary small talk, timidly splashing around in the shallow end of the conversational swimming pool. Instead we dived right in to the heavy, do-or-die stuff, and it turned out that we both thought that ‘Too Drunk to Fuck’ by the Dead Kennedys was the best song ever. Suddenly we were best friends.
(Actually, I lied about the Dead Kennedys. At the time my favourite record was ‘Such Sweet Thunder’, Duke Ellington’s Shakespeare-inspired jazz suite, but I knew that there were occasions when honesty had to be sacrificed for expediency.)
The inevitable descent into puerile loutishness followed. We spent most evenings in the college bar, drinking ourselves stupid. We liked to sit near the door so that we could ogle at all the women who came in. After the barren hinterlands of Hertfordshire, I looked on, agog. The self-confidence, pulchritude and sheer numbers of the females on display left me breathless. One evening Ian and I were sitting in our usual spot when the door opened and a girl walked in.
Whatever it is that triggers the delicious chemical imbalance in our brains that makes us stupid with infatuation, it happened to me just then. Just like that, without warning. I fell in love on the spot. Literally. All of the other girls were instantly eclipsed, fading into lifeless daguerreotypes. In contrast, this girl shone in glorious, crisply focused Technicolor. As I stared at her, I could feel the fissure cracking deep within me as her face carved itself indelibly on to my consciousness. From then on I was branded, a marked man.
The girl wasn’t wearing any make-up. She didn’t need to: her face was radiant, even in the smoky penumbra of the subterranean bar. Looking at her, it was as if someone had opened a window and let the sunshine in.
She was wearing a pair of fantastically tight jeans and a pink twin-set affair which seemed impossibly classy amidst the surrounding sea of Next jumpers and Hard Rock Café T-shirts. She had, patently, the body of a goddess. Her hair was blonde and straight, cut to just below her shoulder. Her black boots emerged alluringly from the bottom of her jeans in an unspeakably erotic way. They tapered from her elegant ankles to mean-looking points. Those boots were foxy. They just looked like trouble.
My mouth hanging open, I watched the girl walk towards the bar until she disappeared into the scrum of bodies. Stunned, I turned to
