Sample

PROLOGUE

AUGUST 1963

In August 1963 I was in the South of France. I'd done a job earlier in the year which had paid me well and I had time and money to burn. And in those days the Riviera was a good place to do that. I'd been down there about a month, bumming around. I'd spent some time in Menton and some more in Le Lavendou which at that time was little more than a fishing village - pathetic when you think about it. I'd arrived in Cannes about a week previously. I'd left London with a girl called Gina, a long blonde-haired debby type - one of the new breed of debs that were going for a new breed of debs delights. We'd driven down in her Morgan taking the N6 and the N7, the ‘Murderess’ as it was called in those days. Fontainebleau, Sens, Chalon Sur Saone - the Cote d'Or, luscious and rich in the evening sun, like syrup; Valence, the beginnings of the South, a hot sticky city with the wires of trams high above the streets and the smell of the Midi in the air - Avignon and on to the South. I'd amused myself doing the Jean-Paul Belmondo bit: light grey corduroy suit and tennis shoes, chain smoking, cooling it at the petrol filling stations while the attendant put in the gas and she lay back all long legs, long hair and shades. We'd begun to get pissed off with each other pretty quickly.

When we arrived at Cannes we got in with a British set who were crewing for some of the miscellaneous millionaires who had yachts in the harbour. We took the opportunity to split and I found myself in the company of a kid called Samantha. In 1963 Samantha didn't sound corny; more like super-cool. Every time she opened her mouth pound notes came out in the form of a Roedean accent and descriptions of a brief life packed full of decadent leisure. She was seventeen and had close-cropped hair. I've always had this irrational insecurity about girls with close-cropped hair. To me it says promiscuity and a series of previous liaisons with handsome, rich lovers.  Anyway that's incidental, suffice to say I got this irrational insecurity with Samantha. But it was OK. It was no earth-shattering relationship but, for two weeks in a hot summer climate, it was good.

One day we'd been on a yacht in the harbour. The owner was away and we'd drunk a lot of wine and sunbathed and drunk some more wine and then tried to crack Linear B, and by the time evening came we were feeling a bit hungry and not feeling very much like cooking anything, which wasn't an unusual feeling. So we set off to a cheap restaurant we knew. I remember that evening so well. I was walking along in my flip-flops, bleached blue jeans and white T-shirt. My hair had that feel you get when you swim every day. When I saw myself in mirrors my eyes seemed to glint, highlighted by my suntan. We turned a corner and came into an open square fronting on to the sea where the latest news was flashed across the top of a building in moving neon letters. It was all part of the trendy Cannes scene. I glanced up for no good reason for I didn't care twopence what was going on in the world. I read the message: “…..ANGLETERRE.....CHRISTOPHER BRYANT S'EST SUICIDÉ EN PRISON…” 

I felt dizzy... ‘My Blood Ran Cold’..... I had to sit down. All the physical sensations that accompany intense shock hit me simultaneously. Suddenly I was back in London.

View Synopsis View Information Purchase Options