Читать книгу The Account - Roderick Mann - Страница 12

Every Wednesday for almost twenty years Paul Eberhardt had lunched with his lawyer, Maître Claude Bertrand, at the Club des Terrasses, the private Geneva club belonging to the Groupement.

Over their favourite dish, friture de perchettes – fried fillets of small lake perch – and with a bottle of wine between them, they would bring each other up to date with events. Eberhardt considered Bertrand his best friend as well as his trusted lawyer. On this occasion, he decided, it would be prudent to bring up the subject of di Marco.

‘I am concerned about him,’ he said. ‘He’s disappeared. He has not been at the bank this week.’

‘He may be ill. You’ve called his home?’

‘Of course. He’s gone.’

Bertrand frowned. ‘Gone where?’

‘I don’t know. He called me last Friday night, late. Something about a family emergency …’

‘I didn’t know he had a family.’

‘A sister. In Zurich. I’ve called there. She hasn’t seen him in months.’

‘How very odd.’

‘Do you think I should report it to the police?’

Bertrand reached for another roll. ‘I should wait until the end of the week. You don’t want to look foolish, Paul. He’s probably just taken a few days off.’

‘Without telling me?’

‘Old men do strange things.’ Bertrand chuckled. ‘Perhaps he’s gone off with some woman?’

‘Be serious, Claude. He’s seventy-nine years old.’

‘What of it? You’re seventy-seven and still quite vigorous.’ Bertrand smiled slyly. ‘How are things at Madame Valdoni’s, by the way?’

Eberhardt glanced around the club. ‘Keep your voice down, for God’s sake.’

Bertrand poured them both another glass of wine. ‘Take my advice. Wait until Friday.’

‘If you think so,’ Eberhardt said.

Around 8 a.m. on a chill Monday morning, a small boy throwing stones at what he took to be a log floating in Lake Geneva was horrified to discover that it was a man’s body. When the police arrived from nearby Montreux they found sodden cards on the corpse identifying him as Georges di Marco, Vice President of the Banque Eberhardt in Geneva.

Contacted by the police, Paul Eberhardt drove immediately to the morgue at Montreux to identify the banker whose body lay on a gurney between two other cadavers. Eberhardt appeared stricken at the sight and for a moment it was thought he might break down. After a brandy in the police lieutenant’s office he recovered. Could he think of any reason why di Marco should have drowned himself, he was asked. He could not. Di Marco had been due to retire shortly and was looking forward to it. When last seen at the bank he had been in good spirits.

‘We were great friends,’ Eberhardt added. ‘He was with me almost from the beginning. I cannot imagine what drove him to do this terrible thing.’

The lieutenant nodded understandingly. You could never know, he reassured Eberhardt, what went on in people’s minds.

At the funeral in Geneva two days later, attended by both Eberhardt and Claude Bertrand, there was only one relative of di Marco’s present among the mourners – his distraught elderly sister. Eberhardt, his arm around her frail shoulders, told her he had arranged for her to stay on for a few days at the Richemond Hotel. All the bills were to go to him.