The Liar (32 page)

So he was German, this man. But the voice. The voice was …

Rudi pointed to the bedroom.

‘
Da drinnen sitzt ein Mann!
’

‘Is there something wrong with him, Donald?’

‘
Er ist tot!
’

‘Oh dear,’ said Trefusis, hurrying forwards. ‘Please not. Please not!’

Adrian followed him into the bedroom.

‘… I will let you know, those of you who are interested, of course, the others will simply have to guess. Meanwhile if you have been, then continue to and don’t even think of stopping.’

‘Well, as the Professor has just told us, that was the last of the current series of
Wireless Essays from the Desk of Donald Trefusis
. Half an hour of World News in a moment, followed by
Meridian
. BBC World Service. This is Lond –’

Adrian switched off the radio and brought his gaze to bear upon the young man on the bed.

His throat had been cut in a wide crescent from one ear to the other. It was as if a second mouth had been cut beneath the chin. Even the lining of the poor man’s jacket had been ripped open. As with Moltaj the previous year, the flap of skin had a gruesomely false, plastic, made-up appearance. Adrian supposed that just as genuine gunfire was said not to sound realistic, so genuine death had a falser air than the gore of the movies.

Rudi gestured towards the radio: ‘
Das waren Sie, nicht wahr?
’

Trefusis nodded vaguely. ‘
Jawohl, das war ich
.’

‘
Sind Sie Österreicher oder Deutscher?
’

‘
Engländer
.’

‘
Echt?
’

‘Echt,’ said Trefusis. ‘
Hast du die Polizei schon telefoniert?
’

‘
Nein … ich bin nur zwei Minuten da
…’

‘
Also
.’

Trefusis crossed over to the writing table and picked up the radio.

‘
Und bast du jemanden gesehen?
’

‘
Nein … nie – Moment! Ja, ein dicker Mann … sehr dick
…’

‘
Mit kleinem Kopf and schlichten Haaren?
’

‘
Ganz genau!
’

‘This young gentleman and I will await the police, Adrian.’

Adrian nodded. He felt sick, deeply sick. Sicker than when he had witnessed the death of Moltaj in Mozart’s house, sicker than he had ever felt in his life. It was his fault. It was all his fault. From liar to murderer, like in the Æsop fable.

Trefusis had sat at the table and was scribbling on a sheet of hotel writing-paper. Adrian steeled himself to turn and look at the dead man again. The torn throat and the blood soaking into the sheets were disgusting enough, but somehow the savage shredding of the viscose lining of the jacket seemed a world more obscene. It revealed a wanton animal fury that struck fear into Adrian’s soul.

‘Adrian, I want you to deliver this note to the British Consulate,’ said Trefusis. ‘It is to be placed into the hands of the addressee himself. None other.’

Adrian looked at the name written on the envelope.

‘Are you sure, Donald?’

‘Quite sure, thank you. The Consulate is situated in number four Alter Markt. This has all gone quite far enough.’

II

Adrian made his way across the Makart Steg bridge that connected the Österreichischer Hof with the old town. The Salzach flowed beneath him, traffic flowed past him on the Staatsbrücke, crowds of holiday-makers flowed around him and dark, dreadful thoughts flowed within him.

Some of the shops on the Franz-Josef Kai had begun to place posters in their windows of the conductors and soloists due to appear in the Festival. An umbrella and luggage shop by the taxi-rank where Adrian waited was tricolated in the yellow and black livery of the Deutsche Gramophon Gesellschaft. A huge photograph of von Karajan glowered out at him, distrust apparent in the deep frown and clenched brows, contempt all too clear in the upward thrust of the chin and the sour wrinkle about the mouth. Two-horse fiacres flicked past him, bearing tourists and Festival-goers along the Müllner Hauptstraße. A bruised sky bore down. Adrian saw an image of the whole scene through a camera that was zooming outwards and outwards with himself in the centre diminishing and diminishing until he was a frozen part of a postcard pinned to a cork noticeboard in a warm suburban kitchen in England, eternally trapped, blessedly unable to move forwards or backwards in time or space.

At last, after twenty minutes, just as he was preparing to go in the shop and ask about buses, a Mercedes taxi drew up into the empty rank beside him.

‘
Britisches Konsulat, bitte. Alter Markt vier
.’

‘
Aber man kann es in zwei Minuten spazieren
.’

‘
Scheiße
. Never mind.
Das macht nichts
. Take me there anyway.
Es sieht nach Regen aus
.’

Indeed, as Adrian spoke, the first drops began to fall, and by the time the cab drew up outside the Alter Markt, which would indeed have taken only a few minutes to reach on foot, the rain was pouring heavily. The taxi had not been able to go right to the door of the Consulate, so Adrian had to thread his way through the market itself, where people were gathering for shelter under a stall that sold artificial flowers. Number four itself was a small doorway next to the Oberbank a few doors down from Holzermayer’s, which sold the
Mozartkugeln
, small chocolate marzipans wrapped in silver-foil portraits of Salzburg’s most famous son. Adrian had bought a box for his mother there the previous summer.

‘Sir David who?’

The woman at the desk was not helpful.

‘Pearce. I know he’s here, could you just tell him that … hang on.’ Adrian took a Festival brochure from a pile on the desk and wrote in a white space on the back. ‘Just show him that. I’m sure he’ll see me.’

‘Well I’m sorry, Mr … Telemackles, does it say?’

‘Telemachus.’

‘No one called Sir David anything at the Consulate. Never has been.’

‘He’s here. He must be here.’

‘You’re in trouble, I suppose? Want to borrow money?’

‘No, no, no. Look, could you call the Consul and tell him that Telemachus insists on seeing Sir David Pearce. Just tell him that.’

‘I’ll try his secretary,’ she said, with a sniff.

Adrian tapped the desk with his fingers.

‘Hello, Mitzi? It’s Dinah at the front desk. Have a young gentleman here who says he wants to see a Sir David Pearce. I told him we … oh … I’ll ask him.’

The receptionist favoured Adrian with a combative scowl.

‘What was that name again, please?’

‘Oh, Healey. Adrian Healey.’

‘That’s not what you said.’

‘Never mind, just say Adrian Healey.’

‘Mitzi? He says Adrian Healey … yes, I’ll hold.’

She turned to Adrian again. ‘Could you not do that?’

Adrian smiled. His fingers stopped tapping against the desk.

‘Yes, dear? All right. You’ll send someone down will you?’

‘Everything all right?’ Adrian asked.

‘You’re to wait. Chair over there.’

The words had hardly left her lips before Adrian heard a door closing upstairs and footsteps descending the stairs. A greasy-haired man in a powder-blue safari suit bounded towards him with hand outstretched.

‘Adrian Healey?’

‘We’ve met before, I think,’ Adrian said. ‘On the Stuttgart to Karlsruhe Autobahn.’

‘Dickon Lister. Simply delighted. Come on up, why don’t you?’

Adrian followed Lister up the central staircase and into a vast reception room. Sitting on a sofa, hunched over a small radio set, an earpiece plugged into his left ear, was a man in a Savile Row suit and St Matthew’s College tie. Dickon Lister winked at Adrian and left the room.

‘Hello, Uncle David.’

‘It’s unbelievable, Adrian, simply unbelievable!’

‘I really don’t see how …’

Uncle David waved him to silence.

‘That’s it! That must be it. Lillee has gone, that
must
be it.’

‘What …’

‘Haven’t you heard?
Headingley
, man! Botham and Dilley put on one hundred and seventeen for the eighth wicket yesterday. Simply unbelievable. And now …’ He clapped his thighs ecstatically. ‘You won’t believe this, Adrian, but Australia needed only one hundred and thirty to win today and they went from fifty-six for one to seventy-five for eight. Willis has run through them like a tornado. What? No … Chilly, you
cunt!
’

‘What is it?’

‘Chris Old has just dropped Bright. Wake up man!’ he boomed at the radio. ‘It was five hundred to one against an England victory in the betting tent today, can you credit it? And if it wasn’t for you and your bloody Trefusis I’d be up there now watching the most exciting Test Match in history. But oh no …’

He relapsed into silence again, wincing and grimacing at the radio.

Adrian settled himself on the edge of the sofa and stared into the empty fireplace. He could hear a faint hiss from Uncle David’s earpiece. A clock ticked slowly on the mantelpiece. Adrian felt the same molten surge of guilt in his stomach he had felt so often in the past. He could not for anything imagine the outcome of the next twenty-four hours, but he knew that it would be dreadful. Simply dreadful.

Finally Uncle David let out a great roar.

‘That’s it, that’s it! Willis has taken eight for forty-three! England have won! Ha, ha! Come on, my boy, cheer up! Let’s get Dickon to bring us in some champagne, what do you say?’

‘I think you should read this first.’

‘What is it?’ Uncle David took the envelope. ‘A demand for more money, Ade?’

Adrian watched Uncle David’s face, as he read the letter through, change from benign indifference to irritation, anxiety and anger.

‘Damn him! Damn him to Spitzburg in a cork-bottomed raft. Where is he now?’

‘Österreichischer Hof.’

‘With Pollux?’

‘No,’ said Adrian. ‘The thing is Pollux was dead when we got there. His throat had been … you know … like Moltaj.’

‘Shitty damn. Police?’

‘Not yet. There was a waiter though, so I suppose …’

‘Doublefuck, hell and arse-tits.
Lister!
Where the hell is that man when you need him?
Lister!!
’

‘Sir?’

‘Get on to Dunwoody at Vienna. Tell him to fix the Salzburg Polizei soon, sooner, soonest. Pollux has been bollocksed in the Österreichischer Hof. Suite?’ He clicked his fingers at Adrian. ‘Come on boy! Suite? Room number!’

‘Franz-Josef it was called, I think,’ said Adrian. And don’t call me sweet, he added to himself.

‘You
think?
Was it or wasn’t it?’ Uncle David shook him by the shoulders.

‘Yes!’ shouted Adrian. ‘The Franz-Josef.’

‘Got that Lister? Full diplo tarpaulin over the whole farting mess. And a car for me and laughing boy here to be at the Goldener Hirsch by six o’clock this pip emma. You’d better come along as well.’

‘Armed?’

‘No,’ said Adrian.

Uncle David’s right hand slammed lazily into the side of Adrian’s face.

‘Don’t give orders to my men, Ade, there’s a dear.’

‘Right,’ said Adrian, sitting down on the edge of the sofa. ‘I’m sorry.’ Uncle David’s signet-ring had caught the flesh above his left eyebrow and he blinked as a drop of blood oozed into his eye. The blinking only caused the blood to sting his eyes more, so tears sprang up to wash it away.

Uncle David nodded to Lister.

‘Armed,’ he said,’ and ever so slightly dangerous.’

12

AT ONE END
of the Schubert Banqueting Room at the Goldener Hirsch Hotel a small platform had been arranged on which stood a chair and a table. On the table were set a gavel, a medicine bottle of purple liquid, a metal waste-paper bin, a box of matches, two small radio sets and a pair of headphones. The chair was set to one side, facing out into the rest of the room. Behind the stage a grey curtain obscured the back wall, trimly pleated like a schoolgirl’s skirt. The impression given might have been that of a village hall in Kent preparing to host a Women’s Institute lecture. Only the tondo portrait of Franz Schubert who gazed down at the room over round spectacles with an affable, academic and Pickwickian air and the collection of antlers distributed on the walls betrayed the Austrian bloodlines of the setting.

A cluster of people stood against the tall window at one side and twittered quietly to each other like shy early arrivals at a suburban orgy. Humphrey Biffen, white-haired and awkwardly tall, stooped like an attentive stork to hear his son-in-law Simon Hesketh-Harvey relate the details of the extraordinary cricket match that had taken place earlier that day in Yorkshire. Lady Helen Biffen was clucking sympathetically at a pale young man with red-rimmed eyes. Amidst them bustled Trefusis with a bottle of Eiswein.

At precisely the moment a gilt and porcelain clock on a plaster corbel by the window chimed six o’clock with dainty Austrian insistence, Sir David Pearce strode in, followed by a smiling Dickon Lister and an ovine Adrian.

Pearce looked about him, failing quite to conceal his satisfaction at the silence his arrival had caused to descend on the room. His manufactured angry glance flashed across at Biffen and his son-in-law, then back to Trefusis who was hurrying forward with three glasses and a bottle.

‘Donald, you old barrel of piss!’ barked Sir David. ‘What are you doing with my man Hesketh-Harvey?’

‘Ah, David. Prompt almost to the second! So grateful, so grateful.’

Trefusis proffered Lister a glass, blinking up at him.

‘Have we …?’

‘Lister, Professor. How do you do?’

‘If you take hold of these two glasses, Adrian, then I can pour.’

Trefusis looked enquiringly at the swelling over Adrian’s eye. Adrian inclined his head minimally towards Pearce and twisted his own ring-finger to indicate the cause of the cut. Trefusis bobbed with comprehension and began gingerly to pour the wine.

‘I think you’ll like this, Mr Lister … oh dear. “Mr Lister”! How inelegant of me. That’s worse than “Lord Claude” isn’t it? Or “Professor Lesser”, come to that. This is called Eiswein, by the way. Are you familiar with it?’