The Secret Knowledge

by Andrew Crumey

  Conroy’s stunned. “I’m not a stalker, I’m her partner.”

  “Not any more.”

  “But how could she erase herself so quickly? Surely she’d need help…” Then, seeing the officer’s impassive expression, Conroy asks incredulously, “Would the police be involved in that?”

  “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.

  He’s too disconcerted to continue practising, he feels stifled and needs to go outside. He’s in the park later when his mobile rings, it’s his agent, Michael. They haven’t spoken for a while. Conroy initially keeps walking, almost fooling himself with an air of importance as they discuss business, then feels the need to sit down and finds a vacant bench.

  “I’m afraid they’ve cancelled, David.” It was to be a festival appearance in France; Conroy was looking forward to it.

  “Then there’s nothing in the diary for next season.”

  “That’s how it looks. I’ll keep trying. Might need to widen the net a bit.”

  Conroy knows his agent means: you might need to lower your expectations even further. “I’m working on an interesting new piece,” Conroy tells him, wondering how much to say about Klauer, hoping to generate a sense of mystery and anticipation. The gambit fails.

  “Let’s hope you get a chance to perform it,” is all Michael can offer. “Times are hard. There are always new names coming through.”

  “Like Paul Morrow, for instance.”

  “I’d hardly call him new.”

  A boy of three or four has stopped to stare at Conroy, face of ice-cream-smeared innocence. Poor bastard, Conroy thinks, you don’t know what’s in store. The mother comes and bundles her child to safety.

  “I saw Morrow at Tune Inn,” says Conroy.

  “I saw him last week. Looking a bit podgy, I thought. Don’t reckon he’ll be able to do the enfant terrible thing much longer.”

  “How about the recording idea we discussed?”

  “Forget it. You know what downloads have done to the market. Look at the pop acts, even they’ve gone back to touring, only way they can make money. We need to get you on the road again, David. If the South Bank won’t have you there’s always plan B.”

  “I thought we were already further down the alphabet than that.”

  The agent’s professional chirpiness suddenly acquires a tone of genuine humanity. “Don’t lose hope, David.”

  In the evening he’s got the Klemperer Missa Solemnis on the stereo but can’t concentrate on the music, he feels uneasy, a stranger in his own home. All the doors and windows are locked, he went round and checked, yet he’s still nervous, and every so often pulls at the curtain to see who might be roaming in the darkness outside: the mysterious youths or the confidence trickster who invented them. He’s startled by the ringing of his landline, wonders if it’s his agent again bringing better news, but it’s Claude Verrier who can hear the background music and asks if it’s a bad time. Conroy says no and silences Beethoven with a turn of the control.

  “I’m just back from Paris,” Verrier says brightly, he’s been doing business there, makes many such trips. “How’s Klauer? Ready for performance?”

  “Getting there.” Once Conroy has retrieved the slow movement from his student he’ll still need a few more weeks to practise and memorise it all, but he knows he’ll get them anyway.

  “And what do you think? Have you worked out its secret?”

  Conroy perceives a note of irony; Verrier is sufficiently sophisticated to know that music, if it is of any worth at all, is not the bearer of a discoverable message. “The first movement is best,” he declares flatly.

  “And the finale?” asks Verrier. “Still a danse macabre, a black joke?”

  “People can interpret it how they like, I don’t care for biographical analysis. Too much room for error.”

  At Verrier’s end the sound of a station or air terminal, place of perpetual motion. Then the man’s voice. “He really died, though.”

  “What?”

  “I’ve seen the death certificate. Klauer’s buried in Père Lachaise, I went and looked, a very fine headstone though I don’t suppose many tourists have noticed it.”

  A new twist, the latest enharmonic modulation. “What about the newspaper report you showed me, the public meeting in Scotland?”

  “What do you think?”

  “A coincidence… an impostor.”

  “The latter more likely. But still not an answer.”

  Conroy’s being teased, manipulated. The possibility occurs to him: all is fake, Verrier is another fraud.

  “I’ve been finding out more about him,” says the dealer. “And about the company he kept. Seems Klauer was associated with followers of some obscure philosopher.”

  “Where have you found this information?”

  “They believed in a sort of multiple reality. I don’t understand the details, nonsense anyway I expect, though apparently there are physicists nowadays who reckon there may be something in it.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “He died. And did not die.”

  “That’s ridiculous.”

  “There’s evidence of both.”

  “The authorities could dig up that grave in Père Lachaise and find an empty box…”

  “Or one full of bones,” Verrier says calmly, untroubled by the tannoy announcement that almost drowns his voice. “In any case, there’s other evidence. I managed to locate a photograph of Klauer, I’ll e-mail it to you. Quite a dashing figure, jet-black hair, fine moustache, a studio portrait, background’s meant to be trees, I think. He’s standing proudly in a white suit with his hat under his arm, could almost be a character out of Proust.”

  “You said there was other evidence.”

  “And you didn’t let me finish,” Verrier says with relaxed firmness. “I also followed up the story of the meeting in Scotland. There was a big political protest at the time about working hours, culminated in a rally in Glasgow that turned into a riot, some historians have called it the closest that Britain came to a communist revolution.”

  “I’ve never heard of this.”

  “Battle of George Square, 1919, look it up for yourself. Klauer was there.”

  “How can you say that?”

  “I found a photo showing a group of protesters, he’s in it. I’ll send you that, too.”

  “Then he didn’t die.”

  “The Paris police saw his body, his family identified it. He died.”

  “This is madness.”

  “Who cares, think of the interest it’ll generate. Possibly with a bit more digging we’d find the truth. One truth. But does it matter? Each story works: the tragic composer killing himself and having his identity stolen by a fraudster. Or Klauer the fraudster, discarding his old life to start anew. Let the audience believe both or neither. They want music, not fact.”

  Conroy should say he will have nothing more to do with this, yet knows it may be the last chance to redeem his career. A choice between two kinds of futility, two forms of weightless oblivion. Klauer dared to have both, to leap and live. “All right,” he says. “What happens next?”

  1940

  Spain

  The dignified couple arriving for dinner at the Hotel de Francia are greeted by a low bow from the proprietor and the stern approval of the Generalissimo whose hand-tinted photograph glowers from the wall behind. “Good evening once again,” Senor Suner says to his clients with unctuous cordiality, adopting imperfectly but adequately their native French. “Would monsieur and madame care for their usual table?” It has been theirs only twice before but that is enough to establish a tradition; with a snap of his fingers, Senor Suner summons Pablo, the waiter, and tells him in Spanish to prepare for the two guests in the dining room.

  “We will be joined by others,” the grey-haired Frenchman breaks in, a man imposing in both manner and dress, with the air of a businessman and a wif
e of comparable age whose mature beauty owes itself not entirely to good connections with the black market in cosmetics.

  Suner, pleasantly surprised at the prospect of further distinguished custom, holds Pablo in check. “A second couple?” he inquires.

  “We shall see,” the Frenchman replies cryptically, then to his wife says, “Yvette, would you mind if I have a word with our host?” She follows Pablo to the dining room, the swinging open of the curtained glass door briefly releasing the impertinent crackle of a gramophone; then when it is closed, Monsieur Carreau says quietly to Suner, “A group of refugees left Banyuls this morning, intending to cross the border.”

  “Jews?”

  “Mostly, yes; also some agitators. The French police know about them. They don’t have exit visas.”

  Suner follows it all perfectly well, given that the scenario is an everyday occurrence, yet rubs his chin at his guest’s last remark. “The police let them go up the mountain, though they lack visas?”

  Carreau nods. “The civil guard on this side have also been informed. The refugees will be brought to your hotel to stay overnight, then returned.”

  This is unexpected news. Suner had immediately known, when Monsieur Carreau spoke the other night about “shipping interests”, exactly what was meant by the term, the present major item of cross-border trade being people, usually on their way through Spain to Lisbon and then America. The restaurant of his small hotel, in a fishing town notable only for its strategic location, is the regular haunt of under-cover Gestapo men, informers and fugitives, all offered a warm welcome and a hearty meal as long as they can pay for it. But Suner is not used to having his establishment serve as a detention centre. “Who’ll pay the bill?” he asks bluntly.

  “They are persons of means,” Carreau assures him, unable to conceal a note of disgust at such plebeian concerns. “You will not be left out of pocket.”

  “Then I shall assist the authorities in whatever way I can,” Suner avers, touching his moustache where a bead of sweat has lodged, and bowing once again when monsieur moves towards the dining-room door. “Pablo will be pleased to tell you about tonight’s dishes, and may I cordially recommend the sea bass.”