The Liar [calibre]

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?'

'Osterreichischer 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! T 'Sir?'

'Get on to Dun woody at Vienna. Tell him to fix the Salzburg Polizei soon, sooner, soonest. Pollux has been bollocksed in the Osterreichischer 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.'

Twelve

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?'

'Ice vine?'

'Eiswein, yes.' Adrian watched with amusement the light of lecture come into Trefusis's eyes as he backed Lister into a corner and began to preach. 'They allow, you know, the full effects of the pourriture noble, or Edelfaule as they call it here, to take effect on the grape, such that the fruit simply glistens with rot and sugar. They then take the most audacious risk. They leave the grape on the vine and await the first frost. Sometimes, of course, the frost comes too late arid the fruit has withered; sometimes too early - before it is yet fully purulent with botrytis. But when, as in this vintage, the conditions concatenate ideally, the result is - I'm sure you'll agree - vivid and appealing. One's sweet tooth returns with age, you know.'

Lister sipped his wine with every evidence of appreciation.

Trefusis poured a glass for Sir David and one for Adrian. The overpowering bouquet of thick, honeyed grape almost made Adrian, his head still buzzing from the blow he had received from Uncle David, his mind still dizzy with apprehension, swoon. As he blinked and steadied himself, his focusing eyes met the sad, solemn gaze of Humphrey Biffen who smiled sweetly from the corner and looked away.

'Hum ho,' said Trefusis. 'I am supposing that we had better proceed. Adrian, I wonder if you wouldn't mind accompanying me to the dais?'

Adrian drained his wine-glass, handed it with what he hoped was a flourish to Dickon Lister and followed Trefusis to the platform. He could not rid himself of the suspicion that this whole charade had been rigged to expose him. But exposure as what, to whom or to what end, he could not for the life of him figure out.

'If you would sit here,' said Trefusis indicating the single chair. 'I think we might be ready to bully off.'

Facing his audience like a conjuror's stooge, with Trefusis behind him at his prop-table, Adrian looked down at his shoes to avoid the stare of expectant faces that were turned towards him. Enticing sounds floated up through the window from the central courtyard bar below; the prattle of drinkers; tinkles of ice and glasses and laughter; a horn concerto by that same Mozart who was born three and half centuries after this hotel had been built and almost exactly two centuries before Adrian had gulped his first lungful of air. The funeral march of Siegfried would have suited his mood better than this foolishly exuberant gallop.