“Might be,” the officer says. “Though you can see that I wouldn’t be able to comment on it. I honestly don’t know what’s gone on in this instance, but it seems your ex has taken extreme steps to tell you it’s finished and you shouldn’t try finding her. Best leave it at that.” His eyes show a glimmer of pity. “Always hard when things break down. Just have to move on.” He gets to his feet, Conroy thinks he’s about to leave, but instead the policeman walks over to the grand piano and looks at the pages of the Klauer score. “My wife plays a bit. Nothing like this I expect. Doesn’t mean a thing to me, might as well be some sort of secret formula. You practise a lot?”
“Every day,” Conroy says to the back of his head, while the officer continues his dumb admiration of the musical notation until the fingers of his left hand idly move down to the keys and strike a random discord, clumsy and intrusive. Conroy wants him to go now but the inspector still hasn’t finished, he turns to look at framed photographs on the wall.
“This you, Mr Conroy?”
“I won a prize.”
“You seem very young.”
“It was a long time ago.” Better take down those old pictures, Conroy thinks. Burn them all. Move on.
“And you’re sure you didn’t hear anything at all last night?”
“I must have been asleep.”
“Lady who phoned, I don’t want to worry you, she said she thought they were lurking round your house. I had a look at your front door before I came in and couldn’t see anything untoward, but I think we should perhaps check in case there’s been any attempted entry.” The officer goes to the window, peers around the frame, then comes back past Conroy who follows him into the kitchen where the policeman makes the same quick assessment. It seems he wants to view the whole house, even asking if he might look upstairs. Conroy assents with a shrug and leaves him to get on with it, choosing to return to the music room where he sits on the piano stool hearing creaks and footsteps above as the survey continues.
After a few minutes the officer comes back to join him. “All looks fine,” he says, returning to his place on the sofa, still not ready to leave. “Certainly no indication that anyone might have tried breaking in.”
“I would have heard if they did.”
“Not necessarily. Did you have any visitors last night?”
“No.”
“The youths the lady saw might have come out of your house. She could have got the wrong idea.”
“I didn’t have any visitors.”
“Can you remind me roughly what time you phoned yesterday about your partner?”
“Early evening.”
It was after Conroy got back from college, he listened to some music, had a drink, went on the internet and did what he’d been resisting, he searched for Laura, even if it was only to see her face again. But she wasn’t there, he panicked, and at some point decided to phone the police, though he couldn’t recall exactly when, or what he might have said.
The officer makes a suggestion. “Six or seven o’clock, perhaps?”
“Probably later.”
“Before nine? I can check, of course.”
“You’d better do that. I was busy, I easily lose track of time.”
“We all know the feeling,” the policeman says with a smile that soon fades. “I couldn’t help noticing the empty bottles in the kitchen. I know this must be a rough time for you. What I’m saying is that if you need some kind of help…”
“I don’t need that kind.”
“People phone the police for all sorts of reasons.”
“It seemed sinister, like she’d been rubbed out.”
“And now? Doesn’t look that way, does it? Only reason I came here is because of those youths seen hanging about, and I’m quite prepared to believe there’s an innocent explanation for that too. Can you remember what time you made your second call last night?”
“Second?”
“You phoned twice. I haven’t seen the record but from what I hear, you were a bit lippy next time round.” Waiting for a response that Conroy is unable to make, the officer has the emotionless face of someone who has seen every kind of human distress, someone for whom this is the smallest of routine occurrences. “People often get impatient, it’s natural. They think there’s an emergency and they want sirens to come blazing round the corner as soon as they’ve put the phone down. You’ve done nothing wrong, Mr Conroy, you’re in a bad place at the moment, I know it must be hard.”
“I called only once.”
The policeman shakes his head. “We can all be forgetful after a drink or two. Especially if we’re not having the best of times. And your private life is no business of mine, but if you think you know who those two lads could have been you might as well tell me. As far as I can see this whole thing’s about nothing more than a snapped wing mirror, possibly not even that.”
“I had no visitors.”
He stands up. “That’s all, then, Mr Conroy. Thanks for your time. You won’t phone again about your ex, will you? And I really don’t think you should try finding her. Do what you want on the internet but don’t take it any further. Otherwise you could wind up with a court order and you wouldn’t want that.”
Conroy stares in helpless fury and humiliation. “You think I’m dangerous? Violent?”
“Your second call last night was well out of order and I don’t want it happening again. I know it was the drink talking but we don’t stand for that sort of behaviour. Take my advice, get some help if you need it, move on with your life.” He glances at the piano again. “Don’t let your talent go to waste.” Then he makes his way out, followed by Conroy who closes the door on him with a sense of disbelief.
There was no second call, the idiot got his facts wrong and only need check the record. Conroy’s tempted to phone and complain but it might simply encourage further harassment. Instead he goes back to the piano to resume playing and attacks the keyboard with full strength. Anger gives a satisfying edge to his fortissimo. How could anyone possibly think he would stalk her? He wanted it to end, his secret death-wish for a relationship that had long been in a state of half-life.
In everything there is a latent inconsistency awaiting realisation. Klauer’s music: beautiful and hideous. Laura: generous and cruel. Story she was chasing about a big multinational, something like that. His fingers stumble, he stops playing then repeats the problem passage. He should take it all more carefully, do what he tells his own students, never try to cover up technical weakness but instead work to find the source of the problem then eliminate it. So many hidden cracks.
Genius or fraud, the programme note might pose the question regarding Klauer but could equally apply to Conroy himself. When he told the policeman he was a concert performer he could feel his throat tightening; a description of what he once was, nowadays he’s not sure. In a world as sick as ours only liars and cheats can profit, commodified con-artists like Morrow. He’ll go back to the difficult passage later, meanwhile he carries on with the movement, bringing himself back to speed and wondering why the policeman needed to take so long to give him a ticking off over a pissed phone call.
And suddenly it hits him. The policeman was a fake. He leaps up from the piano stool as if struck by an electric shock. That man, whoever he was, wandered round the house unattended, he could have helped himself to anything. Conroy runs upstairs and inspects each room, looking in drawers, checking on items of value. He never leaves money lying around, the only jewellery was Laura’s, but in the bedroom he conducts a meticulous search for his own property and any sign of intrusion. He has nothing worth stealing, nothing the man could have hidden inside his zippered jacket, but the thought nags him that he may have been duped. The clock on the bedside table, has its position altered? He slides it back and forth, seeking evidence in dust but without conclusion. Even if it was moved, was it done by the visitor or else last night by Conroy himself, too drunk to notice? Sitting on the edge of the bed that sags wearily beneath him, he puts his head in his hands. There is no truth, no answer. Except that there was no second phone call, and if the bastard said otherwise then that proves him a fake.