The Secret Knowledge (12 page)

She goes past him to answer the door, hurriedly drying her eyes. “We’ll say you just arrived.”

“It’s the truth.”

Klauer hears him enter, Jessie rapidly explaining to him the situation, but as soon as John comes into the sitting room there are other matters to discuss.

“So the strike’s definite?”

“I expect at least a hundred of us at the picket line, John. But we need more.”

“From the works?”

“Anywhere, it’s a general stoppage.” Pierre claps his friend’s shoulder as if trying to rouse him from sleep. “This is what you’ve been wanting, isn’t it?”

John’s dazed expression is not because of the strike; he’s wondering exactly how long Pierre has been here, what the two of them have been saying about him. He sits to collect his thoughts.

“If it’s a hundred on the first day it’ll be everyone on the second,” Pierre tells him. “By the end of the week the whole country will be in the grip of the workers. This is the moment of revolution.”

A frown crosses John’s childlike face. “This is about jobs for heroes, not revolt.”

“Call it whatever you wish,” says Pierre. “It’s out of our hands now, you can’t stop history. You’re not scared, are you?”

John shoots him an angry look. “Of course not.”

Jessie goes to her brother. “If there’s any sign of trouble, John, you keep clear of it, do you hear me?”

“Oh, there’ll be trouble,” Pierre assures her.

“Then leave John out of this. He has nothing to do with Russell, why should he picket?”

Both of them are talking over his head, John says nothing, until finally Pierre stares down at him. “Your father’s right, this is only a game to you.”

“Go to hell.”

In an instant the scene erupts; Pierre has grasped the other man round the neck, locking him where he sits, Jessie screams but her voice becomes strangled by terror, the gun has been pulled out and is held against John’s head, he pants with fear. Jessie manages to speak through the pain she feels. “It’s not loaded, John, he doesn’t mean it, for the love of God, Pierre, stop this madness.”

Pierre’s eyes are like lead. “It’s loaded, Jessie.”

“Have mercy!” John pleads, and at last Pierre frees him, slumped and weeping in his sister’s arms. Looking proudly at them both, Pierre raises the gun to his own head and defiantly squeezes the trigger, creating nothing but a snap of metal, a brief interruption to the others’ anguished moans. Then without a word he leaves them both.

It is some hours later when there is a knock at the door; Jessie’s eyes are still red from crying and she takes a moment to arrange herself in front of the mirror before opening, expecting a request for the doctor who is nevertheless still out. Instead it’s a policeman and a large, grim-faced man she recognises, Mr Scobie from the Russell factory. They tell her they’ve come about Klauer.

“A friend of the family, I understand,” the constable says, coming inside.

“Not any more.”

The men exchange a glance; John comes to see what’s amiss.

“I knew from the outset he was no good,” says Scobie. “This latest only confirms it. He’s been passing himself off with forged papers.”

“What do you mean?” Jessie asks.

The policeman explains. “I’ve checked the records and can’t find a trace of him anywhere. The man’s an impostor, a fraud. Whoever the devil he is, you can be sure he’s not Pierre Klauer.”

In face of the dictatorship of banality the choice becomes inescapable between conformism or resistance. Conroy is at home practising
The Secret Knowledge
when it occurs to him that he forgot to ask Paige what she thinks of that dickhead charlatan Paul Morrow.

Klauer’s music encapsulates the fraught opposition between autonomy and commodification that is the essence of bourgeois art. Already while Conroy plays, the programme note is writing itself inside his head, he can almost hear the flutter of its page from a distracted audience member at the concert premiere. What the crowd comes to worship is not music, but the money spent on admission. Hard to sustain a performing career with that sort of attitude, though. Conroy takes a break.

He tries to remember what exactly was Adorno’s phrase; not dictatorship of banality, he thinks, but banality of perfection, the demand that every musician become the flawless imitation of a recording. He’s about to go and look it up when he hears the doorbell, goes to answer and sees what appears to be a tradesman soliciting work. Strongly-built, closely cropped reddish-brown hair, casually dressed in a zippered black leather jacket and holding up some kind of identity card. It’s only when Conroy hears the word “police” that the interruption to his day makes sense. “You came about Laura?”

“Mind if I step inside?”

Conroy takes the plainclothes officer to the music room and invites him to sit on the couch. The policeman – Conroy didn’t catch his name – looks admiringly at the grand piano.

“You’re a teacher?”

“Concert performer. I also do some college teaching.”

Inspector something, Conroy thinks, this is what he mentally calls the tall man looking hunched and slightly crumpled on the sofa that seems rather too small for him. Conroy wonders if he should offer the inspector some tea but senses the need to go straight to the issue. “She simply vanished, took away everything that’s hers. I said it all on the phone, don’t know how much they told you…”

The police officer makes a cordial but dismissive gesture that silences Conroy. “I’m here about something else. There was some suspicious activity in the street last night. A resident saw two youths loitering, thought they might be trying to break into a house. She phoned and a patrol car came round but they’d gone. Turns out a gentleman at the end of the street has had his car vandalised. Did you hear any disturbance last night? See anything unusual? Lady reckons it must have been around one o’clock in the morning.”

Conroy would have been awake but remembers nothing, he’d had too much whisky by then. “I called yesterday about my partner Laura.”

“I know.”

“Shouldn’t we be discussing that?”

“It’s not really a police matter.”

“But she’s disappeared completely, took everything. Clothes, books, photos…”

“Then it was her own choice.”

“Her phone number’s no longer recognised. And strangest of all is the internet, not a sign of her. She’s a freelance journalist, it shouldn’t be hard to find someone like that, even if she’s closed down her online accounts.”

The officer looks penetratingly at Conroy. “Has it occurred to you that she might have decided to take anti-stalking measures?”

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.