The Liar [calibre]

You're ahead of the game. Give your winnings to us like a good boy and expect a knighthood by return of post. Failing that, shove it on the open market and make yourself a millionaire.

But don't fucking horse around with us. We're busy men. You follow me?'

'Now why should you think that I have only the one half of Mendax?'

'Donny dear, you just said, did you not, that the knife artist got to Pollux before you? I take it he didn't kill him just for the fun of it - saving your grief, young Stefan.'

'No, as it happens you are right.' Trefusis picked up the medicine bottle from the table and unscrewed the lid. 'The lining of Martin's coat had been ripped open. I am forced to assume that something was taken.'

'There you are then, so why don't you . . . what the Nigel Christ?'

Trefusis was pouring the purple contents of the bottle into the waste-paper bin on the table in front of him.

'A little prestidigitation to entertain you,' said Trefusis. He struck a match and dropped it into the bin. A great ball of blue and green flame blossomed upwards up for an instant and then shrank away into thick smoke.

'And so we say farewell to Bela's Mendax papers,' said Trefusis.

'You great flapping clitoris,' said Sir David. 'You pointless, fatuous, drivelling old man. What the hell do you think you're playing at?'

'I know what's worrying you, David, but you may rest easy.

The smoke alarm has been disconnected. I saw to it earlier this evening.'

'Of course you realise now that you can kiss goodbye to any chance you ever had of getting onto the BBC Board of Governors, don't you?'

'I had no idea I was in the running.'

'All you're in the running for now, matey, is ten years of tax inspectors waking you up at dawn twice a week and policemen stopping your car four times for every two miles you drive.'

'Don't be dismal, David,' said Trefusis. 'I have merely eliminated the vigorish. The game is now even. I have one half of Mendax, while the killer would appear to have the other.'

'Damn you to Hull and all points north.'

'Well, possibly. For the meantime, however, perhaps young Simon can help us out with the identity of this knife artist, if that really is the current jargon. Who is the Hungarians' best assassin, Simon? Not your desk I know, but you've worked there.'

'The artist they like to use is actually a German, sir. Sets up his stall under the name of Alberich Golka.'

'I see. And is this man, I wonder, fat at all?'

'Very fat, sir. That's about the only thing we know about him. He's fat, he's German and he's very expensive.'

'So this costly, full-figured Teuton was employed by the Hungarians to intercept Mendax and, it seems, to kill anyone remotely connected with it. I return to my original question.

Why? Why kill Moltaj?'

'Well, sir, it's what killers do. They kill.'

'Only to order. Why order this Golka to kill an innocent violinist?'

Simon shrugged politely; Humphrey and Lady Helen shifted themselves into a more upright position, like churchgoers demonstrating their attentiveness to a sermon; Sir David Pearce yawned; Stefan gazed forlornly out of the window and Dickon Lister continued to bar the door. Adrian wondered when attention was going to be paid to him.

'I ask myself,' said Trefusis, 'why people are ever murdered.

They are murdered for reasons of revenge, retribution and rage.

They are murdered as a means of winning secrecy and silence, they are murdered to satiate a psychotic lust and/or to achieve a material gain. None of these grounds satisfactorily explains the immense expenditure of monies and risk that was involved in putting a period to the existence of a harmless Hungarian fiddler. Consider too the manner of the murder. So grisly, so public, so violent, so uncomely.'

'Perhaps the killer didn't like his face,' suggested Pearce.

'Oh, but it was a lovely face. No, there is only one motive that strikes me as necessary and sufficient. Moltaj's murder was directed at/we.'

'Golka mistook him for you, sir? That's hardly . . .'

'No, no, Simon. I meant precisely what I said. Moltaj was murdered at me, to frighten me.'

Sir David rose, stretched and made his way to the sideboard.

'More of this wine anyone?' he called out to no one in particular.

'Yes please,' said Adrian.

Sir David ignored him, poured himself a glass and resumed his seat. Adrian flushed and scrutinised his shoe-laces.

'I believe,' continued Trefusis, 'that the killing of Moltaj was designed to impress upon me the savage and remorseless lengths to which the Hungarians were prepared to go in order to acquire Mendax. If they mean to kill for it, I was supposed to say to myself, then I had better let them have it at once. But what a footling statagem! I am not, I hope, so old and feeble an old quiz as all that. If I was truly scared - and I must pause here to assure you that indeed I was as pitifully afraid as ever I have been - then surely the natural course of action for me to have taken would have been to deliver the Mendax papers to Sir David and to rely on his department for protection. The Hungarians are not the kind to set murderers on one's tail simply to exact revenge. They are not MI5, for heaven's sake.

Then again, nor are they such idiots as to imagine that they could ever panic me into giving Mendax to them, they could only panic me into giving it to my own people. That is when I realised, of course, that this is precisely what was intended. I was meant to be cowed into presenting Mendax not to the Hungarians, but to Sir David Pearce. Sir David Pearce had been running Golka. Sir David Pearce had ordered the death of Moltaj as a means of frightening me out of the game and Sir David Pearce had ordered the identical death of Martin Szabo that he might maintain his fiction of bloodthirsty Hungarians running riot throughout Salzburg.'

Til call for a nurse,' said Sir David. 'You lot keep him talking.

And for God's sake humour the poor bastard before he turns violent.'

Trefusis dipped his head sorrowfully. 'No, David, I don't think anyone will be calling for nurses. Not just now.'

Sir David met the stares of the others in silence and then burst into laughter.

'Oh for God's sake, look at you all! You can't possibly be serious! The man's babbling and you know it.'

'Perhaps we should ask Golka,' said Trefusis.

'Ooh, yes, what a good idea. Let's ask Golka. Or Florence Nightingale perhaps, or the Nabob of Bhandipur.'

'Well, Golka?' said Trefusis. 'You are the one who did the killing. Perhaps you could tell us on whose orders?'

Lister did not alter his expression at all. He shifted his weight from his right to his left leg and remained silent.

Adrian felt his gut churning. Ten minutes ago he had not imagined getting out of this session with his integrity unscathed, now he was beginning to doubt that he would get out of it alive.

Simon Hesketh-Harvey coughed and raised a tentative hand.

'Um, excuse me, sir. I hate to seem dim, but are you suggesting that Lister is Golka?'

'Oh, there can be no doubt of that. I recognise him, you see.'

'Mm. He's... not very fat though, is he, sir?'

'Well of course not. Such a noticeable thing to be, isn't it, fat?

Far from ideal, one might therefore think, for the successful pursuit of the dreadful trade Golka has chosen. But you see, while a fat man can never make himself thin, a thin man may easily make himself fat.'

'Padding, do you mean, sir?'

'Quite. His face might not properly match the corpulence of his body, but it is not uncommon, after all, to see men who are fatter in frame than in feature. Is that not right, Mr Lister?'