The Liar [calibre]

'I'll kill you! Kill you! I'll kill you!'

He felt the sharp profile of the gun against his stomach, and pressure upwards as Lister's gun hand tried to free itself from the weight of Adrian's body.

Through the background clamour of upraised voices, Adrian thought he heard Simon Hesketh-Harvey shout, 'Pull him off!'

Hands pulled roughly at his shoulders, trying to tug him away. Why the hell didn't they run? Why couldn't they leave him be? What was the point of sacrificing yourself like this if your allies stayed around to watch? This was their chance to flee. Did they want to be killed?

Adrian kicked his knee into Lister's stomach and the gun exploded with a dull boom.

For a second Lister and Adrian stared at each other. Someone, it could have been Uncle David, said, rather impatiently, 'Oh for heaven's sake!'

Adrian felt hot blood surge against his stomach like a.discharge of semen and wondered whether it was his or Lister's.

'Oh shit,' he said as Lister rolled away. 'It's mine.'

'It's not my fault!' someone close to him cried. 'He just . . .'

Adrian's eyeballs slid upwards and he fell forward. 'I'm so sorry,' he said.

As he fell into unconsciousness he thought he heard the voice of Bob, the landlord of the Shoulder of Lamb.

'You silly arse, sir. I had him covered all the time.'

But as Adrian slipped away, Bob's voice, if it had ever been there, tapered and dissolved into the only sound that accompanied Adrian into the darkness, the sound of Trefusis wailing.

Thirteen

Professor Donald Lister's face hung above Adrian like a great white balloon. Adrian forced his eyes wider open and tried to remember who Professor Donald Lister, could be. He had not realised that such a person was.

The balloon moved away and split itself into two, like the dividing of a gigantic cell.

'You should sleep, my boy,' said Trefusis.

'Sleep,' echoed Dickon Lister.

The two new balloons separated and disappeared from Adrian's line of vision.

A little while later he opened his eyes again to find Istvan Moltaj and Martin Szabo gazing down upon him. Their throats were pure and unscarred, their brown eyes round with compassion.

'Very pale, Helen. Is it right he should be so pale?'

'Only to be expected,' said the voice of Lady Helen Biffen.

Adrian smiled. 'Thank you for welcoming me here,' he said.

'I had always known that death would never be the finish. I hope we can stay friends throughout eternity.'

He realised with a flick of annoyance that although he had uttered the words quite plainly they had sounded only inside his head. His lips had not moved nor had his larynx stirred.

Perhaps there was a special technique up here that he would have to master in order to be able to communicate. He dwelt on the possibility for a while and contemplated with drowsy satisfaction the prospect of the infinite time now available to him.

Adrian awoke from his dreams in some discomfort. The bedrom was very familiar. The dressing table at the end of the bed he had seen before only recently. He hauled himself up onto his elbows to get a better view, then yelped in agony as a sharp pain shot through his stomach. Footsteps hurried towards him from a connecting room. As he sank back, spent, the thought came to him that he was in the same suite of the Hotel Osterreichischer Hof that Martin Szabo had stayed in, that he was lying on the very bed that Martin Szabo had sat on when his throat had been cut.

'Adrian, you shouldn't try to move,' said Trefusis.

'No,' said Adrian. 'Sorry.' He closed his eyes in order to concentrate on framing a question but the question eluded him and he fell asleep.

He came round a little later to find Trefusis sitting by his bed.

'Morning, Donald. If it is morning.'

'Yes,' said Trefusis. 'It is morning.'

'I'm alive then?'

'I think we can go that far.'

'What day is it?'

'Wednesday.'

'Wednesday. How long have I been here?'

'No more than a few hours.'

'That's all?' Adrian was surprised. 'They got the bullet out, did they?'

'Bullet? There was no bullet.'

'But I was shot.'

'Yes, you were shot, but there was no bullet.'

Adrian pondered this.

'What's hurting me then?'

'You lost some blood. I should imagine your stomach will be a little sore for a while. The plaster from your dressing will be pulling at your skin.'

'I'm quite hungry.'

'Rudi will bring you something.'

'Good-o,' said Adrian and fell asleep again.

Two days later Adrian sat at the piano in the Franz-Josef Suite and picked his way through Beethoven's Minuet in G. There was a plate of sandwiches and a glass of beer in front of him. His suitcases were assembled in the middle of the room ready to be taken down to reception. He had felt fully fit enough to bear Donald company for the long drive home in the Wolseley but Trefusis had insisted he go by air.

Adrian's stomach was healing very well, the raw little eruptions where the embedded wadding had been picked out with tweezers were capped with fresh scar tissue and he could now touch the long soft tongue of burn-tissue on his left side without wincing.

He closed the piano lid and straightened himself. It was a companionable kind of pain, clean and sharp as Pilsner; a better pain than the crushing leaden ache of guilt he had carried around with him for as long as he could remember.

There was a hearty knock at the door and Simon Hesketh-Harvey came in, followed by a beaming Dickon.

'Grüß Gott,' said Adrian.

'And how's the lad?'

'The lad's fine thank you, Dickon,' said Adrian. 'And looking forward to going home.'

'That's the ticket,' said Simon.

'No,' said Adrian, pulling a travel wallet from his jacket pocket, 'this is.'

A long table had been prepared in the upstairs room of the Shoulder of Lamb. Nigel the barman was serving soup under the vigilant eye of Bob, the landlord. Trefusis sat at one end, with Adrian at his left hand side and Lady Helen Biffen on his right. Martin and Stefan Szabo, Humphrey Biffen, Dickon Lister, Istvan Moltaj and Simon and Nancy Hesketh-Harvey were all present, chattering and laughing with the hysterical bonhomie of businessmen at a Christmas party. There was one empty chair halfway down the table on Lady Helen's side.

'But why did you have to go to such lengths?' Adrian was asking Trefusis. 'I mean why couldn't you just tell me what was going on?'

'It was very necessary, I am afraid, that you acted in complete ignorance of the whole affair. David Pearce was paying you to spy on me after all. You believed you were acting in the interests of his department. That was how it had to remain. We knew he wanted Mendax for himself, not for his country but for his own enrichment. It was expedient that you should be unaware of this.'

'What about Lister? Is he really Golka?'

'Lister used to work as a junior official at the British Council in Bonn. Simon found out that Pearce had inexplicably seconded him to the Consulate in Salzburg. This puzzled Simon.

He picked Lister up and questioned him with some force. Lister is indeed Golka - between ourselves,' said Trefusis, lowering his voice, 'not a very pleasant man, I'm afraid. It became apparent that Sir David was quite prepared to kill for Mendax.

This was wholly unacceptable to us. We made Lister an offer.

He was to keep us informed of Pearce's plans, much as you were keeping Pearce informed of ours, and we would arrange that he need only pretend to kill Moltaj and Martin.'

'As long as I witnessed these killings?'

'Oh yes, that was very necessary. Your description of them to your Uncle David would be of the utmost importance. It had to seem to him that, although he had just failed to get hold of the Mendax papers, he had at least succeeded in getting hold of one half of the device itself. When he knew that I had the rest he would come out into the open and reveal his true motives.'