The Good Liar

by Nicholas Searle

  nostalgia. There was rather more to it. It was a matter of proof.

  Gerald’s a rather fussy man and, like you, wanted everything to be

  conclusive. And DNA testing’s a marvel. You left us plenty of sam-

  ples in the house while you lived here and it was simply a matter of sending them off to a lab together with the hair from the locket and waiting for the results. I rather think you’ve caught up with me now, more or less.’

  4

  ‘It was a long time ago, Betty,’ he says wearily. ‘What should I call you? Betty or Lili?’

  ‘Elisabeth is my given name. I prefer it spelled and pronounced

  the German way. One of my idiosyncrasies.’

  ‘But . . .’

  ‘They’re just diminutives of the same name. Tut- tut. Keep up.

  Still, here we are. Yes, it’s been a long time. I’m not quite sure what that’s meant to signify. The distance of time doesn’t seem to me to erase the facts.’

  ‘Why I’m in the skin of Roy Courtnay is complicated.’

  ‘Actually, to be precise, you’re not in the skin of Roy Courtnay,’

  she interrupts. ‘Rather the reverse.’

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  ‘I stand corrected. So exact. Originally it was a series of misun-

  derstandings. Roy died a horrible death and I was badly injured. I

  was unconscious and the Russians were in a rush to get us back to

  the British sector. They confused the two of us and it snowballed

  from there. It got out of control.’

  She looks at him sceptically.

  ‘I took advantage, I’ll freely admit. But I had little choice. I was only a translator. I had no guarantee of employment. I’d have had

  no military pension.’

  ‘Your English must have been good, even back then. It was quite

  a chance you were taking.’

  ‘I’d spent four years in England, three of them at school. I’m

  good at languages. You know me. I’ll chance my arm at anything. It

  was a calculated risk.’

  ‘You didn’t even think of Roy’s family.’

  ‘Well, no. You forget, Lili, those were tough times . . .’

  ‘I don’t forget, Hans.’

  ‘No. Of course not. You know all too well. You know what it is to

  have to survive. That’s all I was doing. Surviving. And nothing was going to bring Captain Courtnay back. Lili, I’m so glad you came

  through. I always hoped you would.’

  She regards him steadily. ‘I really would prefer you to call me

  Elisabeth. Or should I call you Hansi?’

  He looks down at his clasped hands. ‘It was an insane time. The

  world went mad for a few years. But your family’s incarceration had little to do with me. The Gestapo pressured me. They put words

  into my mouth.’

  ‘That’s not quite what the record indicates. The East Germans

  had pretty comprehensive records.’

  ‘They tricked me, Elisabeth. You have to believe that.’

  ‘Do I really?’ she asks. ‘And what do I have to believe about what

  you did to me?’

  ‘When?’

  ‘When you assaulted me.’

  ‘Assaulted you?’

  ‘Shall I be more specific? In my bedroom the night of the

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  Christmas party. When your father was talking with mine. When

  you probed me with your brutish fingers. When you showed me

  how inhumane human beings can be. Perhaps I should have been

  grateful for the insight into inhumanity. It came in handy.’

  ‘I don’t recall any of it. You’re imagining –’

  ‘What? That it happened? That it was you?’

  She speaks evenly and he listens without comment. He raises his

  eyelids for a flash of a contemptuous look towards her, but he can-

  not sustain her gaze.

  ‘It’s funny. The most vivid memory is of you sniffing your fingers

  afterwards. You seemed so casually disappointed by the whole

  thing.’

  He draws a breath. ‘What is it you want, then?’

  ‘You wish to cut to the chase. There’s always a deal to be cut. So

  let’s get to the nub of it and work out the details.’

  ‘Well then?’ He raises the courage to look at her. ‘What do you

  want?’

  ‘It’s a very good question. But let me ask you: did you ever

  imagine the consequences of what you did?’

  ‘Not fully. I suppose I understood your parents would be in some

  kind of trouble.’

  ‘Hmm. Why did you do it, then? Had I so disappointed you by

  not responding to you in the way you desired?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he says. ‘Your sisters were unpleasant to me. I was upset. My father was such a fool. I was angry with him. My parents

  were idiots. I saw them being imprisoned and dragging me down

  with them. This was a way of solving that problem, temporarily at

  least.’

  ‘And solving the problem of the happy, prosperous Schröders too.’

  ‘I don’t know.’ He shrugs his shoulders, the sullen fourteen- year-old again.

  ‘What made you make those allegations? Just petty spite?’

  ‘Our fathers were talking about sabotaging the war effort.’

  ‘And our so- called Jewish heritage?’

  ‘I thought it was more or less what the Gestapo man wanted to

  hear. It was a means of getting where I needed to be.’

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  ‘It was a lie. We weren’t a Jewish family.’

  He looks at her and says, ‘I didn’t know whether or not there was

  Jewish blood in your family. I suppose I shouldn’t have done it. It was just . . . necessary. He insisted I say it.’

  ‘That’s not the point. Whether or not we were Jewish. I’d be

  happy to be thought of as Jewish, even though I’m not. I’m proud

  to be associated with that suffering. I feel proud of this.’ Since moving to Britain she has been careful to wear long- sleeved clothes, and especially so since living in the same house as him, but now she

  pulls up her sleeve and thrusts her forearm towards him, showing

  the number with the triangle. He is expressionless. ‘The point is

  that your saying anything at all was wrong. It made no difference

  whether or not we were Jews. Whatever excuses you may prepare

  about your immaturity, you were responsible for what you said.’

  He looks at her as if he cannot comprehend what she has said. ‘It

  wouldn’t have made any difference if I’d said nothing.’

  ‘But you didn’t say nothing.’

  ‘Your father and my father were conspiring against the state. I

  told no lies about that.’

  ‘They were conspiring against evil. You chose to conspire

  with it.’

  ‘I was fourteen years old, for God’s sake. How was I to calculate

  all these things?’

  Just for a few moments neither of them speaks. It seems that

  Elisabeth is spent. But she finds her voice again.

  ‘I’m curious. You don’t feel guilt?’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘Any of it. Me, my family. Your parents. Roy Courtnay. Bob

  Mannion.’

  ‘Guilt. That’s a very difficult emotion. No.’

  ‘No. You don’t, do you?’

  ‘It was . . .’

 
‘Expedient?’

  ‘That’s rather harsh. It was what I had to do. I had no options. Or I thought I didn’t. I had to do it to survive. You know all about that.’

  ‘And afterwards?’

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  ‘Afterwards. Then it was in the past. It couldn’t be undone. I

  hadn’t made any of it happen. I had just . . . I had just . . .’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Taken the opportunities that presented themselves. That’s not

  so terrible, is it?’

  ‘And now?’

  ‘I’m an old man. What’s done is done. I can’t put things right.

  What point would there have been in torturing myself with guilt?’

  ‘I didn’t realize that to feel guilt was an elective decision.’

  ‘What is it you want from me? Money? I don’t understand.’

  She is calmer now, calibrating her voice to a lower pitch and speaking with deliberation. ‘I know. You fail to understand a great deal.

  You fail to understand that I may not want anything at all from you.

  That there may be no bargain to be struck. There may be no price to pay. I’ve had a change of plan too. Let me tell you something.’

  He looks at her but does not speak.

  ‘When my husband died, I was lost. I’ve no way of judging

  whether I was more desolate than any other widow who’s just lost

  her husband, but in my mind I went straight back to the end of the

  war. You might imagine that liberation was a happy moment, but it

  gave me a sense of my fragility and impermanence. An empty vista

  of fear. When Alasdair died I had the same fear. I had to discover

  meaning. I wasn’t about to find it in religion – I think we can both agree on that. So it had to be something else. Finally I thought I’d found it. The search for the truth, and a reckoning of sorts.’

  ‘Which is why we’re here,’ he says quietly.

  ‘Yes. Quite comical in a way,’ she says, ‘two ancient turkeys, their necks creased and wobbling, jabbering away about things that are

  all but forgotten. The lessons at least. Scratching for meaning. It rather underlines our irrelevance, wouldn’t you say?’

  His eyes flare. ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘Where were we? Yes, what do I want? It rather evolved, I should

  say, as we began to make headway. First of all I simply wanted to

  know, then we discovered more or less the truth of that. We knew

  it had been you, Hans, and no one else. The challenge then was to

  follow your trail. You’re an elusive man.’

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  He musters a wry smile and says, ‘Story of my life.’

  ‘Indeed,’ she says sardonically. ‘It wasn’t so difficult. I won’t take you through it all. But I think we managed to cover most of your

  escapades and scrapes. Do you have any mock modesty to dis-

  play now?’

  He shakes his head.

  ‘I thought not. Our little search obtained a life of its own as it

  gathered momentum. Gerald in particular was like a dog with a

  bone. He can be a vindictive man. Most surprising for such a mild

  person. Not one to cross. And finally there you were, clear as day.

  Roy Courtnay. Vincent was most helpful filling in the details we’d

  missed.’

  ‘Vincent?’ he says in surprise.

  ‘Yes. Our private detective chappy tracked him down quite easily

  once we’d met him. We wondered whether it was worth trying to

  have a quiet word with him. Certainly, once we’d established his

  antecedents. Did you know his grandfather was a Jewish émigré

  from Poland just before the Second World War? Probably not. Ste-

  phen did an excellent job of chatting him up and he was more than

  happy to oblige. It’s been a bit of a redemption for him. He filled in several of the gaps.’

  Hans slumps but looks defiantly at her.

  ‘We’d found you and we were stuck as mere historians. So we

  employed our private detective, a nice young man from Chingford.

  He managed to root out all kinds of stuff. Quite remarkable. You

  hardly left your flat, but you were heavily involved in internet dating. You can see the direction in which we’re heading. There was a

  big, how shall we put it, throughput. Our chap diligently located

  many of the prospective partners you’d met and later discarded, and interviewed them. Did you know you once got through five in a single month? I’m actually quite surprised there’s such a large supply line of lonely old women.’

  Roy grimaces as Elisabeth continues cheerily.

  ‘You’ll be familiar with the picture that emerged. Most ladies you

  rejected after the first meeting. The ones you met for a second time were of interest. You wanted to advance the relationship very

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  rapidly and were fascinated by their financial positions. Nicely

  dressed up as due diligence before you committed yourself. Each

  time it seemed that either the lady didn’t meet your criteria or she somehow felt uneasy about you. That was the basis of the plan we

  formulated. I was keen to come into direct contact with you again,

  but at that point lacked that total certainty, despite all the evidence, that you were Hans Taub. So the solution was quite simple.’

  ‘Meet me through internet dating.’

  ‘Exactly. Quite neat, don’t you agree? We mapped out a basic

  plan. I rented this little cottage on a long- term lease and moved in, ready to see how it went. And I think hook, line and sinker is the

  right expression, don’t you? Gerald later came up with the idea of

  playing what I think is known as the three- card trick. I would allow you seemingly to fleece me when all the time that was what was

  happening to you. We had all the equipment. Stephen is a whizz on

  the IT, though we did leave some things to chance. The beauty of it was that I didn’t actually need your money, so we could just abandon the idea if it all became too difficult. But we were rather good, weren’t we?’

  He does not respond to her eager look.

  ‘Gerald played my son, Michael, in the little piece of theatre that we thought necessary for credibility. His wife was his real wife, his daughter was one of the earlier researchers who returned for a

  guest appearance and Stephen of course was Stephen. Who’s clearly

  not my grandson at all. Didn’t we all do splendidly? Stephen in particular? We all breathed a sigh of relief when you turned down the

  invitation for us to spend Christmas with them. I knew you would.

  And of course I didn’t get the tests done.’

  ‘Tests?’

  ‘I’m rather all over the place, aren’t I?’ she says gaily. ‘The DNA tests. I didn’t go to the house, though it was lovely to picture myself doing so. It was a nice story, wasn’t it? You’d have been proud of it.

  I didn’t get the locket. I doubt it’s still there. Even if it were, could we have tested the hair? Would that have proved anything? Gerald’s

  very keen on all this technology. Thought it the only way to find

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  to be so literal and that we’d find a way somehow. And we have,

  haven’t we?’

  ‘And your point?’

  ‘Point?’

  ‘Where are
we going with this? Apart from demonstrating how

  stupid I am? Am I to understand that you’ve taken all my money?’

  ‘Ah yes. The money. That really is the important thing for you,

  isn’t it? Or is it the sense of victory versus defeat? It doesn’t really matter. To take your money was the plan. It satisfied Gerald’s rather atavistic revenge instincts. Stephen seemed rather keen on the

  notion too, particularly once he’d met you. But really it was my

  decision. I thought that this might be the way to put you behind me.

  And we all rather enjoyed the journey.’

  He stares at her.

  ‘Don’t look so scared. Change of plan, remember? It’d been nag-

  ging for some time, but it was only on the way home yesterday that

  I really thought better of it. I decided it wasn’t right. I didn’t want to be like you. The note too. Not good form. I rather owed it to you to say what I had to say directly to you.’

  ‘Owed it to yourself, you mean.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘So you could get the satisfaction of seeing me squirm.’

  ‘Hans, you do judge everyone as if they think the same way as

  you. I was dreading this conversation in fact. Besides, you don’t

  exactly strike me as the squirming type. I simply thought it was

  fairer to see you once more.’

  He looks at her and laughs caustically. To her, he is that bitter,

  contemptuous fourteen- year- old boy again, standing over her.

  Momentarily, she teeters and swoons, then regains her balance.

  ‘So far as your money goes, you may have it back. I’ve prepared a

  cheque.’

  She reaches into her handbag and produces a piece of paper,

  which she proffers to him. With trembling hand, he reaches out and

  snatches it from her. He makes to tear the cheque.

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  pique. You always were so impetuous and moody. I won’t trouble

  myself to write out another cheque if you change your mind.’

  His arms are still outstretched, holding the cheque between his

  fingers. He gives himself time to think as his arms shake with

  infirmity. Finally he lowers them and places the cheque neatly in his wallet, glaring steadily at her all the while. Those eyes, she thinks.

  But everything passes, in time.