Nicholas Searle - The Good Liar

course. There’ll be no problems.’

He gave the manservant careful instructions. He must wait two

hours before travelling to Orly in the car that had been ordered. He must take His Lordship’s luggage with him.

The manservant remained in the room. Roy led Stanbrook down

the corridor to the waiting lift. They each carried a suitcase, for show. The manager was inside with the attendant.

‘You are leaving very early,’ said the manager, addressing Roy.

Stanbrook stood at the back of the lift, looking dazedly into the

mirror.

‘I want to complete the formalities at Orly well before time. I’d

like to avoid any misunderstandings.’

The lift took them to the sub- basement and the shabby underpin-

nings beneath the shiny carapace. The shattering of glamorous

illusions did not matter in the circumstances. The manager led them though long corridors lit by bare light bulbs strung along the centre of the roughly plastered ceiling.

Roy took a brief, anxious glance from side to side outside the

trade entrance before ushering Charles quickly into the car. He did not trust the manager.

There were a couple of moments to take stock once the driver

had clanked the vehicle into gear and pulled away, the transmission whining like a reluctant child.

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Thank goodness last night he’d seen what was happening before

it really got out of hand and been able to drag Charles away. Thank goodness they’d told everyone they were staying at the Crillon.

Thank goodness he’d had the foresight to pack Charles’s civvy

passport. He checked again that it was safely in his inside pocket, together with his own. He had his small attaché case on his lap with the rest of their documents and the all- important cash. Charles

seemed to be holding up. He was looking distantly through the side

window of the car, but at least the tearfulness had dried up.

They sped towards Orly and sunlight skidded off the windows.

Through the corroded transmission tunnel of the old Citroën Roy

could see the tarmacadam flash by beneath their feet.

Now was the moment. In his passable French Roy told the driver

that they had changed their minds and required a different destin-

ation. He waved a wad of notes in the old man’s face and directed

him to drive to Calais, telling him that if he arrived there in time for the three o’clock sailing the fare would be doubled. Absurd: that

amount of money would have been sufficient to buy the old crate

outright, and a tankful of petrol into the bargain. The driver grunted with a sour expression that Roy took to be acquiescence. For good

measure, he reminded the driver that he knew these streets and

would detect immediately if he took an unusual route. Pure bluff,

of course. The driver grunted once more. A sidelong glare was all it took to elicit an acceptable if not enthusiastic apology from the

driver.

Roy turned to look in the back. Charles had fallen asleep, lost and vulnerable. The poor sod must be exhausted. Roy, however, needed

to remain alert as the car raced through the northern French coun-

tryside, the smell of hot leather and male sweat rising. He looked

impatiently left and right at the unremitting flatness as they made their way up the route nationale . Three hundred kilometres or there-abouts. The driver would have to go some if he was to make it.

At Calais they alighted at the port. The driver had earned his

bonus and sped away. Roy smelt salt and thought of England, and

safety. They smoked a cigarette by the harbour wall while Roy

watched for unusual activity that might suggest their imminent

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detention. Satisfied, he strolled to the office, engaged his winning smile and bought a pair of foot passenger tickets from the pretty

girl there. Foot passengers who turned up at the port without tick-

ets would, he guessed, be relatively rare. They would be noticed,

but this was a risk that had to be taken. It should not matter given the genial mien he deployed.

They delayed until the final moment before running for the boat,

sprinting through concrete concourses and submitting briefly to a

passport check. Roy half feared an officious check here, just to spite perfidious Albion, but all that was required was more charm, a

ready smile and the use of rather more fluent French than had been

deployed with the railway official to compliment France’s wonder-

ful capital city, its efficient rail network and its friendly natives.

It was not until they had disembarked at Dover that Charles Stan-

brook uttered his first words since leaving the George V.

‘Where’s the bloody car, then?’ he asked.

‘I couldn’t ring ahead from the hotel. That manager would have

been listening to every word.’

‘So how do we get back?’

‘The train, like everyone else. Ticket office is over there.’

‘Fuck,’ said Charles, before melting back into a sullen silence. He allowed Roy to guide him by the elbow.

At Victoria they took a cab to the London residence. As they

crossed the threshold Roy made the usual transition from directing

Charles, his unruly charge, to being Lord Stanbrook’s faithful

employee.

2

He liked this job. He had fallen on his feet almost ten years before when the post came up. Opened up invitingly in front of him, more

like.

After the incident back in ’46 he’d been put on light duties for

some time. He hadn’t been sent back to his home unit, which in any

case was in the process of being disbanded. They hadn’t really

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known what to do with him. First he flew a desk in an office in Brussels, working on what would later be known as the Treaty of

Brussels. A very small cog in a very large machine, and floundering in the sea of words. Not his thing at all. Oh no. Then he was shipped off to Vienna to deal with transport dockets for the British occupying force.

It was there that he had met Major Stanbrook of the Intelligence

Corps. They took to each other instantly and Stanbrook had fina-

gled Roy on to his staff. When Stanbrook decided to take up his

place in the Lords, he asked Roy to become an unofficial aide. Roy

had jumped at the chance.

In the days after coming back from France Lord Stanbrook

regained his characteristic ebullience. Almost immediately, Roy set off once more for Paris to iron out the unfortunate misunderstandings that had occurred. Claude at the George V was more obliging,

no longer faced with the imminent end of his career. Claude had

successfully managed matters with the police, deploying an expres-

sion of wounded ignorance, and gave Roy the name of the inspector

who was dealing with the case.

At the police station Roy received a polite welcome. Monsieur

l’Inspecteur was intrigued to learn what had actually occurred. It

shook him to discover that the truth was somewhat different from

what he had heard from various of the club staff and the alleged

victim himself. Roy explained the unfortunate circumstances of the

skirmish and subsequent accident that had led to the man’s two

broken arms and insisted that any allegations regarding His Lord-

ship were both groundless and maliciously motivated. The man

himself had since admitted that he had misunderstood Lord Stan-

brook’s intentions towards the young woman he had been

accompanying. The inspector shook his head with a weary know-