Nicholas Searle - The Good Liar

silence, before Müller ran from the room.

He sat, bleeding profusely from a wound in his upper arm. Blood

seeped through the grey fabric of the suit, darkening it like ink on a 161

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blotter. He would live, unlike his unfortunate comrade. The shots

had been fired from beneath his jaw as he struggled with Müller, the weapon close between them against their chests. They had taken

clean half his face off, leaving an angry mess of red flesh, cords and blood, garish muscle and white bone. Grey brain matter had spilled

negligently on to the floor. An eyeball stared madly, freed of its

socket but connected to the optic chiasm by the fragile membra-

nous wet skein of the optic nerve.

He collected his breath. He felt cold. He did not, yet, feel pain.

Perhaps he was dying after all. But no, he would not die. He looked again at the mess that had been the face. He crawled over to the

body and checked the carotid artery for a pulse. There was none, so far as he could establish in his own weak state. Absurd, he thought, just going through the motions. He reached under the shirt for a

name tag. There was none. It must, like his own, have been left with their uniforms at the Berlin barracks.

He left the gun on the floor and stood, uncertain on his feet. He

vomited profusely on the floor. It did not purge him. The image of

the face would not leave him. He staggered along the narrow corri-

dor of the apartment, in part to seek warmth, in part just to get

away from there. Finding the bed, he pulled on the greatcoat and sat again, shivering uncontrollably. He heard the sound of boots clattering on the stairs before he passed out.

5

He was taken to a Russian military hospital and swiftly transferred to the British sector. He later learned that this was on the orders of Karovsky, who did not want the complications of explaining the

incident to his superiors. In the British hospital they cut the suit from his body. He noticed irrelevantly in the haze of pain that its right arm was now black with blood that obliterated the pale stripes of the cheap suit. They tended to the incision that had cut neatly

into both the deltoid and the biceps muscles. He was told that his

injuries were serious but not life- threatening. The sharpness of the 162

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knife had done him a favour. In time the chances were that he would regain full mobility in his right arm, but there would be a lengthy period of convalescence.

A captain from the military police came to interview him two

days later.

‘Courtnay,’ he said pleasantly, ‘I’m Craig. I need to interview you about this little incident. Bad luck all round, if you ask me.’

‘Yes?’ he said blankly.

‘There are added complications when dealing across the sectors.

So as neat and tidy as possible, eh?’

He nodded.

‘What I propose is that I take you through what happened and

you confirm whether or not my version is accurate. That all right

with you?’

‘Fine.’

‘Wonderful.’

Craig described, step by step, the events of two days previously.

He read out the order issued by the Control Council. He ran through the conversation with Karovsky and his offer of support. He confirmed that three Red Army soldiers had been deputed to assist

them.

‘Those boys will get a roasting for going AWOL. In our internal

report at least. Not that we’d think of sharing our criticisms with the Russians. Things are quite difficult enough as it is. Now, time is pressing so can we move to the critical part, please?’

Craig consulted a report he held in his hand, prepared, he said, by the Russian military police. The British had been given access to

neither the scene nor the Russian investigators.

‘Now, they list the weapons found at the apartment. I’ve pieced

most of it together, but do correct me if I’m wrong about the

sequence of events. This Müller chappie sees you outside and invites you into the house. You assume he’s the owner. König, I believe.

Quite naturally. You weren’t to know. You go into the apartment

and he goes into the kitchen. You chaps follow him. He pulls a carving knife from a drawer and threatens you both. You attempt to

dispossess him but he manages to slash you. You’re out of action.

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The knife clatters away somewhere and your colleague Hans goes

in search of it. But our Mr Müller makes a dash for his bag and lo

and behold pulls out a pistol. Your interpreter, brave man that he

was, though perhaps foolish, grapples with him and the blighter

shoots him, drops the gun and runs off. Does that sound about

right?’

‘Almost. It’s just the gun –’

‘Yes, the gun. We’ve looked into that. Service- issue Webley. Our

records show it was issued in 1942 to a private in the Yorkshire Regiment. Reported lost in Bielefeld in April 1945, probably stolen during the final push. Or at least that’s what our records show now, and

that’s what we’re telling the Russkies. All right with that, are we?’

‘Yes,’ he said weakly.

‘Well, that’s all tickety- boo, then. Sorry about your pal. Rather it were a Kraut interpreter than a British officer, though, eh?’

6

He attended the funeral, this dry ritual the only testament to the

death aside from the desultory investigation. Their unit had been

broken up and the others sent back to Aldershot. He liked to think

they would have attended if it had been possible. Evidently the

major had better things to do. The padre had not researched any of

the records, so it was a short service. It seemed that in death Hans Taub was an embarrassment all round.

He had asked whether he would be sent back to England. If he

particularly requested it, it might be organized, they said. There

was a convalescent facility near Bad Oeynhausen, the headquarters

of the British Army of the Rhine. No, don’t worry, he’d said: HQ

BAOR would be fine. He’d be back to full fitness before too long.

At the convalescent centre he was reunited with his belongings.

In the battered suitcase he found some chocolate saved for a rainy

day. This was some rainy day. He ate three bars in quick succession, then had to rush to the heads to throw up.

There was confusion over his medical records. They had been

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lost in transit at some point in the war. He was chided by the physician appointed to his case for having left his dog tag with his

uniform, but later a medical orderly told him it had the wrong blood group anyway. ‘Happens all the time,’ said the orderly cheerfully.

The days passed in a familiar routine that bred in him contempt. In the mornings he had physiotherapy to attempt to bring life back to

his arm. By and by, it began to work. Lunch was at twelve sharp. In the afternoons, if the weather was fine, those patients who were

mobile would generally be encouraged to go for a health- giving

stroll. If it was raining there was a library of dog- eared books. In the evenings there were organized indoor games: bridge or quoits or,

worse still, charades. He avoided them assiduously.

He had no visitors. He received a letter from one of his staff, who wrote from Aldershot. He did not reply. His senior officers had better things to do than to visit and be connected with an invalid, a

failure.

Periodically he saw an army psychologist. They, whoever they