The Good Liar

by Nicholas Searle

  ‘Where’s Roy?’ interrupted Bernie when Vincent sought to com-

  mence proceedings.

  ‘I’ll come on to that in a moment,’ replied Vincent calmly. ‘But

  first a situation report on the deal. I wanted to reassure you all that everything’s on track. There’ve been no hiccups and it’s simply a

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  question of waiting out the agreed period before we access the

  account and distribute the profits.’

  There was a palpable easing of tension in the room. Shoulders

  relaxed and the darting glances between the principals ceased.

  Bernie took a sip of his coffee.

  ‘So?’ said Bryn.

  ‘So,’ said Vincent, taking his time and looking down at the green

  blotter on the table in front of him. ‘So, there is a reason nonetheless for gathering you all together for this meeting. I’m afraid I have some bad news regarding Roy.’

  He paused for effect.

  ‘I’ve pieced most of this together speaking to his wife recently.’

  ‘His wife?’ asked Dave.

  ‘Yes. I received a call from her recently. Apparently she found my

  mobile number among Roy’s things. I’ve had a few conversations

  with her over the past few days. It seems Roy hadn’t been feeling

  too well in recent weeks. She said she’d been trying to get him to go to the doctor’s but he hated anything to do with the medical profession. Besides, he said he was too busy. It must have been the period when we were finalizing the deal.’

  They knew what was coming.

  ‘It seems that Roy had a prostate scare in his fifties. He was eventually given the all clear but warned that it required monitoring.

  Which is why his wife was so insistent on his seeing a doctor when

  it flared up again. But anyway. One evening – I think it must have been the day we finished the deal – he simply didn’t come home.’

  ‘He was complaining about his prostate,’ said Dave.

  ‘Was he really?’ said Vincent. ‘Anyway, she rang round all the Lon-

  don hospitals and apparently he had been admitted to St Thomas’.

  She didn’t get to see him before he died.’

  ‘You sure he’s not just done a runner?’ asked Bryn.

  ‘Well,’ said Vincent drily, ‘there is the small matter of the body.

  His wife identified him. He couldn’t have done a flit from the Grim Reaper. And what would be the point anyway? The way we’re positioned now, he’d have a lot more to lose than gain.’

  ‘Where does this leave us?’ asked Martin.

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  ‘Nothing changes,’ said Vincent. ‘Apart, that is, from what to do

  with Roy’s share of the proceeds. His wife, of course . . .’

  They considered for a moment.

  ‘It’s our choice entirely,’ added Vincent. ‘The money still belongs legally to the company and hasn’t been paid over to individuals.

  There’s nothing in the contracts to indicate an obligation to pay

  over to the estate in the event of a death. But we may feel some

  moral obligation . . .’

  There was a pause for reflection.

  ‘Perhaps not,’ said Martin. ‘It could complicate matters for her.’

  ‘Yes,’ agreed Bryn. ‘How would we explain it all to her? Let alone

  to the solicitors dealing with the estate?’

  ‘Way too complicated,’ added Bernie.

  ‘Knowing Roy, he’ll have left her well provided for,’ said Dave.

  It was settled.

  ‘Well then,’ said Vincent, ‘we just wait the prescribed time and

  meet up again. In the City, I’d suggest, at the branch where the

  account is held. Any two of you can authorize the transfer. As you’ll recall, I can’t be one of the two. If you’re happy I’ll tee it up with the bank in a couple of weeks’ time. I have the list of your nominated

  accounts. Let me know if anything changes.’

  They agreed the plan.

  ‘Fine man, Roy,’ said Martin. ‘He was good to do business with

  and fun to be around. I owed him a lot. At least he went out on a

  high.’

  ‘A diamond,’ agreed Dave. ‘Always brought his mates in on a

  piece of business. We’ll miss him.’

  ‘Sound as a pound,’ murmured Bernie in approbation, his mind

  apparently on other matters.

  Bryn and Vincent did not contribute to the eulogy. Vincent was

  drily businesslike.

  ‘The funeral is on Thursday apparently. Short service in Leyton-

  stone, cremation at Wanstead and then drinks at his home. I haven’t got the details yet. His wife and her daughter are trying to piece it all together. She’s promised to ring me tonight. Give me a call

  tomorrow or the day after if you’d like to show your respects.’

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  They replied, almost in mumbling choral unison, in the affirma-

  tive. Vincent knew none of them would call. Like to be there, each

  would reason to himself, but it’d just confuse matters. Better to

  leave Roy in peace and his family to grieve privately.

  He knew that this would be the last time he saw these men.

  5

  One final conference was required between Vincent and Roy before

  it was all wrapped up. They met in St Albans of all places, in the

  lobby of an august old hotel.

  Roy had rented a car from a limousine service to take him from

  his flat. The driver waited outside in the car.

  Roy was content with his new apartment but felt it was not yet

  home. Accustomed since childhood to a peripatetic existence, he

  did not crave a sense of belonging or even, particularly, connection.

  But a feeling of familiarity short of contempt would, he hoped,

  come, and be pleasant. After all, he had to accustom himself to a

  different life.

  ‘Retirement seems to suit you,’ said Vincent once they had

  greeted each other.

  Vincent was not one normally given to compliments. Roy looked

  back at him in initial bewilderment, but then smiled. They went to

  the bar, which was dark and overdue a refurbishment and smelt of

  the sour beer of several decades.

  They took their coffees, which had the unusual distinction of

  being at the same time bitter and insipid, to a corner booth. They

  were brisk in their dealings. They would shortly attend the central London bank branch where their joint account was held. They

  would authorize the transfer of the money to their respective per-

  sonal accounts. The appointment had been confirmed. Roy would

  book his car service once more for the dash into London, have his

  driver wait outside for the five minutes or so it would take. Then it would be in the car and back to Surrey. Dear old London, he would

  think. His London, which had sustained him for all those years,

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  even when he was away, waiting for him like a faithful but still glamorous girl. Even before he first came here. Little had he known that his fate would be determined mainly in this great city with its glis-tering silver artery, the Thames.

  In the meantime Vincent would sign the letters that they had

  drafted carefully months ago and send them to their post office

  boxes, those grenades that
would explode on the breakfast tables of Bernie, Dave, Martin and Bryn.

  I’m sorry to inform you, they began. Sadly our Russian clients

  appear to have been not entirely what they claimed . . . Unfortunate that we failed to discover this earlier . . . Have been confidentially informed of an Interpol investigation into their activities . . . Bank accounts being monitored, according to my sources . . . None of us

  would want any involvement with criminality or anything remotely

  improper . . . Our bank will remain rock solid in respect of client confidentiality . . . However, I suggest it would be prudent at present to remain well clear of the joint trading account . . . Need to maintain a low profile for a short period while the dust settles . . .

  Took the unusual step of writing rather than ringing as thought this was the safest option in the circumstances . . . Probably sensible also not to retain this letter . . . Will call in the next couple of days, however, to confirm receipt . . . Love and kisses, V. Or words to that effect.

  Roy and Vincent knew what would happen. Vincent, for form,

  would call each of their numbers, his script before him. Each of the mobile telephones would have been cut off, the instruments

  dropped as if on fire, as quickly as the post office box accounts

  would have been closed. Each would be sitting in his luxury

  detached, contemplating proceedings and a potential jail sentence.

  The imperative would be to cut losses, not maximize profits or seek revenge. None would give the others a second thought but would

  seethe at the loss of his nest egg and his impotence to do anything about it. These were not organized criminals but a bunch of

  second- rate chancers with hardly an idea between them and no

  resort to investigative or retributive resources. Their collective

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  competence had resided in Roy alone. They might suspect Roy was

  not dead, but even if they did there was little they could do. They had no networks other than their pals at their golf clubs or at the Rotary Club and still less could they approach the authorities.

  Chapter over, thought Roy as he climbed into his car. Book

  closed.

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  Chapter Four

  Academic Integrity

  1

  Stephen says, ‘It’s the proximity I find difficult.’

  Gerald purses his lips and steeples his fingers. There is an audible intake of breath as he makes to speak but thinks better of it. He

  must, Stephen supposes, be trying to find a softer way of saying it.

  Most unlike Gerald, with all his affected asceticism, particularly

  when both know, more or less, the thrust of what he will say next.

  ‘Proximity. What, precisely, do you mean by the word proxim-

  ity?’ asks Gerald eventually, with evident difficulty.

  Oh well, thinks Stephen, that’s as good as emollience from Ger-

  ald: postponement.

  ‘It’s the getting so close,’ he says.

  ‘Hmm,’ says Gerald, and Stephen can see his impatience grow.

  ‘I’m not sure I needed a dictionary definition, however inexact.’

  Stephen grins ruefully; he cannot help it, though he knows it will

  irritate Gerald further. ‘I’m not explaining myself very well, am I?’

  he says.

  ‘Not particularly, no. But carry on.’

  ‘What I mean is the process of finding out absolutely everything

  about him. It’s the logging and the noting with painstaking care.

  This is the first time I’ve ever been involved in such an extensive project about one person. So intense and detailed, getting so close in.’

  ‘The proximity. Yes, I believe you mentioned,’ says Gerald drily.

  ‘It’s the methodical nature of it. Dissecting him into his constituent parts and laying them out neatly under the lights on the

  examining table, all stainless steel and clean. They don’t seem to fit together. They don’t seem to be part of him.’

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  ‘That, though, is the job of the researcher. You must surely real-

  ize that? Not to rely on assumptions or theories or accepted truths.

  To go back to original sources and to come up with an amalgam of

  the facts that better approximates the truth.’

  Stephen notes the steel in Gerald’s eyes, the sense of purpose

  that could have seen him, with different choices, as a captain of

  industry or a prominent politician rather than what he is. He recognizes that he possesses none of that backbone. It is backbone that

  the subject of his research also possesses in abundance. He perse-

  veres for the moment, however.

  ‘But it seems the closer I get and the more detail I gather, the less I know.’

  ‘Isn’t that rather, if I may say so, a rather workaday observation?’

  says Gerald, striving, it seems, for equanimity. ‘The myopia that

  closeness can induce, the lack of perspective. Isn’t it just part of the job to alternate between the microscopic and the strategic?’

  Part of my job, that’s what you mean, thinks Stephen, and he can

  see Gerald’s rising annoyance.

  Gerald wraps a delicate hand around the cafetière, flexing his

  long fingers, and evidently finds the coffee is still warm enough to pour himself a second cup.

  ‘Of course,’ he says eventually with a small smile, ‘this could

  simply be a rather unsubtle ruse on your part to divert our session and disguise a certain lack of progress.’ And, more gently: ‘Let’s just see what you have laid out on your examining table so far and

  whether we will be able to make something coherent from its parts.

  We did, after all, start out with rather a lot of material. What form will Frankenstein’s monster take?’

  They sit together at the large table in Gerald’s study, illuminated by strategically placed lamps. A masculine room, thinks Stephen,

  though designed with an aesthetic touch. Gerald is keen to project

  the face of the high- minded academic, but Stephen knows he cares

  for appearance and impression.

  Stephen lays out his papers carefully, the bundles from his

  briefcase transforming them into little piles of facsimiles of ori-

  ginal documents, printed commentaries, typescript and his latest

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  handwritten rushes. The piles represent decades of his subject’s life, an existence desiccated into dead words on cheap paper. Dotted

  around the table, they form an irregular oblong; and in the centre, on the polished rosewood, is where Stephen looks in vain for the

  sum of the parts. Where is he? he thinks. He eludes me still.

  ‘Now then,’ says Gerald not unkindly, ‘where shall we begin?’

  Stephen is mildly irritated at Gerald’s didactic tone but says

  self- deprecatingly, ‘I find it confusing. He seems all things to all men at different times; and at the same time several different people in one soul.’

  ‘Aren’t we all? Is any of us the epitome of consistency, exactitude and disclosure? Don’t worry about the jaggedness. It’s in the cracks that we’ll find something original to say. Just focus on following

  your man, capturing him in the net of your mind and pinning him.’

  ‘Like a butterfly on a board?’

  ‘Exactly. That is what we’re attempting to achieve, after all, is it not? Now, what do we have here?’

  They pore
over the documents together. Stephen is aware that he

  has not come as well prepared as he might have. Gerald sighs and

  looks at the small pile of images that Stephen has been attempting

  to verify.

  ‘This is from when?’ he asks, extracting one carefully.

  ‘That one’s verified. He’s in his mid- thirties, nothing more spe-

  cific than that,’ replies Stephen. ‘I think it was in Edinburgh.’ He picks up another picture, like the rest a poor- quality reproduction.

  ‘We have others spanning the period of his twenties to early forties.

  They’re mostly verified. As sure as I can be, they’re all of him. Then we have these other five that I’ve yet to confirm. They include possible pictures of him as a boy and a young man.’

  Stephen studies the photocopied sheets again. To him the images

  look as if they are of the same individual. The face that stares out has the same features that will later in life mark him out as handsome. More strikingly, he can see in the boy the same superiority

  and disdain. But he must be cautious, as he knows that it was the

  convention of the age to produce pictures that both idealized the

  subject and emphasized his arrogant seriousness. Innocent smiles

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  would not have been customary, even for a child. He looks at the

  eyes, pixelated crudely, and can derive no meaning.

  ‘Now, what are your largest gaps?’ asks Gerald.

  ‘Predictably, his mid- to late twenties. He spent some time in the Low Countries and also in France, with the army. Things are sketchy during this period and it’s difficult to keep track.’

  ‘All right. I do think you need to bring more structure to this. I’d like you to take each decade, as represented by these piles, and draw together a series of narratives, each with a summary and of course

  referenced footnotes. Leave out commentary, emphases and con-

  clusions for the moment. And don’t worry about style. Once you’ve

  assembled your facts you’ll see your whole individual and have to

  rely less on hunches.’

  Stephen accepts the rebuke, delivered drily and with neither sym-

  pathy nor annoyance. He knows what Gerald says is true: academic

  research is about methodical plodding and not intellectual bril-

  liance. Until perhaps, like Gerald, you have served your time and