Siege at the Villa Lipp

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Carlo’s house smells like a handkerchief out of an old drawer. Even when it was newly built one had been aware of a certain mustiness. Carlo had attributed it then to the brackish water used in mixing the concrete and said that it would gradually go away. It never has gone away; instead, it has ripened. That verbena-scented anti-mildew spray which Melanie gets at the general store on the Out Island only makes it worse.

She does the trip on our boat, with Jake to navigate and nurse the engine, every week; and, every week, she returns with our mail and our groceries and our drinks and a denunciation of the Out Island hairdresser. Every week, too, she says that that is the last time and that next week, no matter what the risk, she is leaving for Nassau or Miami and the joys of Elizabeth Arden. She adds that bad food can kill you just as surely as ‘plastiqué’.

She has my sympathy. Tonight, though, when I’ve thought everything through again and treble-checked it, it is possible that I may at last have an escape plan to submit to her.

Yesterday, the mail brought back with her consisted of two letters.

One was from a real-estate agent in Kingston, and it was to tell me that my asking price for the island was a bit too high. We get lots of letters like that. I mention it only to explain how we’ve been operating. Just in case somebody working for Mat and Frank somehow, somewhere, accidentally got on to the fact that I had access, as one of Carlo’s trustees, to a Caribbean island, we have an early-warning system. There are hundreds of small island properties around here; and, since the real-estate people know more than the government records office about who really owns what, they’re the ones who always know first if anyone starts making enquiries. Who but a prospective buyer would make enquiries? So, although I haven’t the slightest right to be, I am a prospective seller. In that way, I get the benefit of the real-estate agents’ intelligence network. Thus far, only one prospective buyer has actually reached our dreamy lagoon. After a lunch prepared by Carlo’s cook — getting a little old now but still resolutely awful — he left and we heard no more.

We have been reasonably secure against everything except excruciating boredom, malnutrition and the possibility of those conditions becoming permanent features of what’s left of our lives.

That’s why the second letter was so important.

It was from the man who has helped me prepare this account of the ‘siege of the Villa Lipp’ for publication.

I had sought him out because I had liked something he had written and deduced from it that he was a person who would be unlikely to strike high-minded or other tedious attitudes. My approach was made by sending him a copy of Krom’s book and a commentary I had written on the original New Sociologist piece. At the same time I had him vetted as a security risk.

At our first meeting on the Out Island we reached an understanding. Neither of us, I am happy to say, has since had reason to remind the other of the terms of it. Our relationship has developed remarkably. From being my amanuensis, he has become my literary mentor, then a business intermediary dealing on my behalf with publishers, and finally, my trusted legal adviser.

He anticipated that final role on several occasions during the writing of the book by sending me warnings — ‘You can’t say things like that,’ or ‘Nobody’s going to stand for this’ — that I had simply ignored. Then, when the first English language text was submitted to our publisher, the blow fell. The publisher made his acceptance conditional on legal waivers being obtained from those persons whom his lawyers said were libelled in the book as it stood; namely, Connell, Henson, Langridge, Williamson, Yamatoku, Symposia SA and, of course, Krom.

For me, that could have finished it. I was tired and unusually depressed. Indeed, at a gloomy last meeting on the Out Island with my adviser, I told him to have all those expensive typescripts — expensive because they had been done on that special paper that goes black if anyone tries to photograph or photocopy it — retrieved and destroyed.

He persuaded me not to be hasty. Let the publisher, who was willing to persevere with the book, try to get the waivers. If massive deletions or other vital changes were required, we could decide then whether or not they were acceptable. Possibly some name changes would be sufficient. There was nothing to be lost by finding out.

I told him to go ahead and see what happened. He gets a percentage of any royalties that the book may earn, so I could see his point of view. Mine was that, providing the book wasn’t totally emasculated, he and the publisher had better be left to do the best they could for what they have been polite enough to refer to as my Cause.

The first reaction we had was encouraging though somewhat surprising. It was from Connell and said simply: ‘Publish and be damned.’

An accompanying letter from my adviser explained that Dr Connell was now teaching in a different university and also being divorced by his second wife. However, the lawyer seemed to think that his brief note constituted a waiver.

Dr Henson’s reply puzzled me.

‘Publish by all means,’ she wrote, ‘recent school-leavers and college drop-outs should find some passages in the book heartening as well as instructive. Funnier than Smiles’s Self help and likely to be preferred by modern teenage readers. Probation officers everywhere will love it.’

I wondered if she had been sent the wrong book, but was assured that she hadn’t. It was thought that her reply may have been designed to cause annoyance to the head of her department.

He objected strongly to the use of his name and the attribution to him of certain statements. His name was changed to ‘Langridge’ and some deletions of references to British security service personnel were made.

The response from Mat was most strange. I was sent a photocopy.

The letter came, beautifully typed, on paper with the heading, GOVERNMENT HOUSE, PLACID ISLAND, in discreet capitals. It was signed by a Personal Assistant.

‘I am directed by His Excellency Mathew Tuakana to present his compliments. He has read the manuscript of the book described as the edited recollections of Mr Paul Firman. It may, he agrees, be of some sociological interest to specialists, particularly in the field of psychiatric social work. It is not a field with which His Excellency has had occasion to become familiar. On Placid Island psychiatric illness, even in its milder forms, is virtually unknown. Mr Firman’s account of a western criminal sub-culture seems, possibly for that reason, as far fetched as the one he would like to give of Placid and its people. It is to be hoped that his recollections of the former are as unreliably based on hearsay as his speculations about the latter.

‘Since His Excellency could not conceivably be the Mr Williamson described in this book, he feels unable to comment at greater length. I am instructed to add for your information that there are no less than twenty families named Williamson with Placid Island nationality. If the author, or Mr Firman himself, cares to communicate direct with our Office of Information, it may be possible to clear up any confusion existing in Mr Firman’s mind, at least on that point.

‘I am further instructed to say that the only Mr Yamatoku who could be described as being in His Excellency’s employ, is financial counsellor to the Placid Island mission at the United Nations. Counsellor Yamatoku is presently stationed in New York.’

My adviser thought the letter quaint; but said that my credibility had suffered a set-back. Twenty Williamson families on Placid? Hadn’t I known that?

I explained the joke Mat had once explained to me. On Placid, changing family names was a popular sport, far more popular than the European political sport of street-name changing. In 1946 there had had to be a bye-law passed declaring a moratorium on name changing for two years. That was because every family name on Placid was suddenly MacArthur. All those Williamsons simply meant that Mat was becoming a potent cult figure.

And I don’t consider that communication in the least quaint. I think it plainly serves notice on me that, book or no book, I’m still on the run; and that if at any time I should feel disposed to think otherwise, I can put my belief to the test by writing direct to Mat’s Office of Information.

Well, I may now decide to do that.

The only reply from Symposia SA was a form letter from an official in a tribunal of commerce. It stated that Symposia was in voluntary liquidation and that any claim against it must be made by such-and-such a date. Very sad; but, as my adviser pointed out with unfeeling satisfaction, you can’t in Anglo-Saxon law libel the dead.

That left Professor Krom.

He was in no hurry to reply; and, after some weeks of silence, it was feared that he did not intend to do so. Enquiries established, however, that he had been in the United States attending another of his international police conferences, and also absent on vacation.

His reply has now been received. A copy of it was attached to the letter that arrived yesterday.

What I had expected, at best, was a tongue-lashing and a stern demand for the deletion of all references to himself and his work that he considered disrespectful. What I have received instead is — well, I haven’t yet quite made up my mind.

The waiver he gives is a conditional one, and my adviser seems to find it in some way entertaining. The conditions the Professor lays down are that, along with my account, there must be published in the same volume and as a postscript or appendix, his own brief Commentary on it. The Commentary must be published exactly as written, in full and as an uninterrupted whole. Furthermore, I may not change or modify it, as a result of anything he has had to say about it or for any other reason. ‘All those false hopes, doomed expectations, demonstrable lies and unintentional errors must remain in their original state, unspoilt and undisguised by the scratchings-over of hindsight.’ If these conditions are accepted, he will waive any objections he might have had to the submitted text.

There is a supplementary condition. While Professor Krom has the greatest respect for the publishers concerned, of whose reputation for integrity he is well aware, he must still insist upon receiving a final corrected proof of the book before it goes to press. He will wish to see for himself that the nominal price he has asked for his blessing has been fully and properly paid.

The publishers tell me, with evident satisfaction, that the Professor’s conditions are entirely acceptable to them.

They assume that his conditions will also be acceptable to me.

Well, of course they are acceptable. They must be. If I want my voice to be heard at all, I obviously have no choice in the matter.

The Professor’s Commentary is translated from the original Dutch.

I have read the edited version of Paul Firman’s book [he writes] with the keenest pleasure, the liveliest professional interest and yes, a good deal of wry amusement too. It has in it so much of what I always felt was there but failed completely to bring out myself. The reasons for my failure are plain. When the investigator-subject relationship is clouded by a basic personality conflict, the best that can be hoped for is that the investigator will ultimately succeed in functioning as a catalyst. To that modest extent, at least, I may claim success. My colleagues, Henson and Connell, both thought this subject exceptionally difficult, the latter going as far as to say, with defences arrayed in such depth, one had to ask oneself not simply what was behind them, but whether there would be room enough for a recognizable fellow creature. The simile he offered, that of a battle tank with armour so thick that it could accommodate a crew consisting only of trained mice, did not seem fanciful.

Well, Mr Firman has now set our minds at rest. The defences are formidable, yes, but there is a human being inside them. What kind of human being still remains, I think, to be seen; but we have available now a much clearer view of him. A self-serving effusion such as this, written by a delinquent of Mr Firman’s rare calibre, will always reveal more about its author’s internal world than the attempt at self-appraisal of an equally complex but less irresponsible mind. The scatological excesses of a Genet tell us more than the managed insights of a Gide.

Let us take a closer look at the material of Firman’s outer defences. At the Villa Lipp, I compared his clouds of verbiage with octopus ink, a comparison which the octopus himself faithfully reports. It is surprising, however, to find the comparison holding good for his written word. Any spoken one — its meaning so easily changed by the voice and body-language of its speaker at the moment — lends itself naturally to deception. Comedians, evangelists, fortune-tellers, demagogues, all who traffic in the human personality, know and depend upon the fact. The written word is usually less obliging. It can be examined more than once. It can be analysed and parsed. Doubters suspecting soft spots may prod and poke at it. Only those accustomed to appealing to the semi-literate, or those as full of bile and adverbs as Mr Firman, can make the mistake of believing that, if a statement is made with sufficient vehemence and a neat turn of phrase, the conviction it seems to carry will always be unquestioned.

At one point in the book, Mr Firman has much to say about the technique of the ‘smear’. By no means all of it was said, as he claims at the Villa Lipp, but no matter. To anything Mr Firman has to say about ways of smearing an adversary, I am prepared to listen. He is an expert on the subject.

Consider, for a moment, his descriptions of me and the way that I behave, socially as well as professionally.

Few men are without their vanities, idiosyncrasies and petty weaknesses. Many, I among them, possess visible physical peculiarities as well, although I am in no way abnormally handicapped. About his appearance, a sensible man of my age will have only vestigial illusions; and, if he has been much photographed at conferences and heard his platform voice coming back at him through television and radio, he will probably have dispensed with even those vestiges.

I have a prognathous upper jaw and what are commonly called ‘buck’ teeth. Because they are so prominent I try always to keep them very clean. I express disgust or disbelief by making a hawking sound in the throat. When we were young, my wife tried unsuccessfully to cure me of the habit which she thought unbecoming, and at times offensive. I also suffer from an arthritic condition of the spine that my doctor calls ‘parrot’s beak’ and is properly known as spondylitis. If afflicts many other people my age, causing discomfort or inconvenience in varying amounts. Long, hot journeys made in small, nervous cars on mountain roads are bad for parrot’s beak. In my case, such a journey will result in muscle spasm and lower back pain; and, until I can take recuperative rest, my gait will be affected.

What does Mr Firman make of all this?

A monster, naturally; a staring blue-eyed monster with gleaming white fangs and circumflected lip, a monster who slobbers down all that lovely wine as if it were water, sprays his flinching companions cheerfully with gobbets of saliva, insults the food and then reels away, supporting himself with practised ease on the furniture as he goes, to sleep it off. The monster does not speak, he only yelps, yaps and blares. The monster does not take a bath, as Dr Henson does for the benefit of the eavesdropping microphones, he only breaks wind.

As the monster’s creator himself would say, ‘And so on.’ Mr Firman must be taken with many grains of salt.

Where then, I may be asked, is the human being we were promised? Is there truth at all here? Is this merely dreamstuff, clinical casebook material that will only become useful when it has been processed and interpreted?

By no means. As Mr Firman admits, indeed claims, many of the conversations. he reports are transcribed from the tapes he took with him from the villa. I have consulted my colleagues, Henson and Connell, on the point and both agree with me. As long as one disregards Firman’s interpolated comments, though some of them have evidential merit of their own, his accounts of what was said are in the main accurate.

When he is reporting from memory, however, we have to be very much more careful.

The recollections of his adolescence have yet to be checked. The passages concerning his war experiences have been read by a German scholar, a friend of mine who served as an infantry soldier in the Italian theatre from 1943 to 1945. He reports one error. The only German army pistols he can remember as having been issued were the Walther and the Sauer. However, while a prisoner of the Americans, he had heard German pistols referred to as ‘Lugers’ as if the word were a generic term for every type of German automatic hand-gun. Firman’s reference to ‘Lugers or Walthers’ may be dismissed then as a mistake belonging to another time and place. It is not his memory that is at fault.

The same cannot be said of his mistakes over certain vital dates. All of a sudden he is grossly unreliable. He cannot even place correctly the year of my identification of him in Zürich!

Was the blunder intentional? I really don’t think it can have been. Firstly, because I had already published the correct date in my Notes for a Case-study, and I can’t see him passing up an opportunity to pour scorn on any factual statement: of mine with which he disagreed. Secondly, because Mr Firman is far too astute to make mistakes that lock as if they could have been intentional, unless he wished for some reason to draw special attention to them. But why should he? The Zürich date, for one, is among the ‘neutral’ facts that nobody disputes. A secretarial error then? No, because the rest of his typescript is singularly free of error. The editorial assistant must have accepted those wrong dates too, so presumably they were given him by Mr Firman.

I shall return to this problem. It touches one of Mr Firman’s basic contentions concerning the guilt of the man he calls ‘Williamson’. Among the charges levelled against me — other than those involving my teeth, my drunkenness, ray timidity under fire or my stubborn refusals to concede that black is white — is a list of some of my sins of omission.

In one case, his complaint is certainly justified.

Unfortunately, I did not hear about the murder of Yves Boularis until several months after the event. It was not, I understand, reported outside France. Dr Henson came across a reference to it in a French medico-legal journal that I normally only read in précis. She wrote to me drawing attention both to the oddity of the method employed and to the timing of the murder.

Was it possible after all that the Villa Lipp had really been besieged? And could there really be a wicked Mr Williamson? The political leader who, having gained power and been proclaimed his people’s saviour, wishes to obliterate all traces of his corrupt or criminal past is a familiar figure in the history of nations.

The possibility of my having done Mr Firman even a minor injustice was troubling. The true identity of the speaker whom he addresses as ‘Mat’ in the cassette of the telephone conversation that I took with me from the villa that night proved impossible to establish. I made every effort I could.

Through friends in London, I was able to obtain a copy of a BBC sound archive recording of Mathew Tuakana’s voice. It was part of an address of homage and welcome to Chief Tebuke on the occasion of the Chiefs inauguration as head of state at the Placid Island independence ceremony. It was in the Placid Island language.

A colleague who specializes in the techniques of ‘voice-print’ comparison reported to me on the two voices. He identified the man speaking with Firman on the cassette as being British from the English Midlands. Dr Henson had thought Coventry or Birmingham. The Tuakana recording, however, presented difficulties. This wasn’t because he couldn’t understand the language, but because it couldn’t be used for the purposes of comparison. It is the sounds of the voice specimens that are analysed and compared. These two lots of sounds were of two completely different orders: one for the most part labial and nasal, the other wholly glottal. One cannot compare a fingerprint with a palm print, even when they have been made by the same hand. There was no available and authenticated recording of Mr Tuakana speaking English or any other phonetically comparable language.

The doubt nagged at me, however, and, after the San Francisco conference two months ago, my wife agreed to my suggestion that we might spend the vacation due to me in seeing something of the South Pacific. We obtained a visa for Placid in Fiji, and went there, along with some cargo, on one of the biweekly island-hopping planes.

A hotel is nearly completed, but not yet in business. The old rest-house is primitive, but our reception there was warm.

As an outspoken critic of what Mr Firman calls the ‘tax-haven business,’ I am fairly well known by name among those who earn their livings in it. It did not at all surprise me that the Canadian lawyer, who acts as Placid vice-consul in Suva, and who issued our visas, had sent advance warning of our visit. Letters from Mr Tuakana and from a daughter of Chief Tebuke awaited us on arrival. Both were invitations to lunch the following day. My wife’s hostess would be the Principal of the Island’s new high school for girls. Mr Tuakana looked forward to meeting me for an informal discussion of matters of mutual interest to us. He hoped to prevail upon me and Krom to attend a reception by Chief Tebuke later in the week. Meanwhile, lunch at Government House would be à deux. A car and driver would be at my disposal during our stay.

Government House consists of one two-storey house and four bungalows, the accommodation used by the British Resident Commissioner and his senior officials in colonial days. Mr Tuakana, as Chief Minister, occupies the largest bungalow and has his offices in it as well as his private quarters. His domestic staff, I noted, seem to be exceptionally well-trained.

In studying Mr Firman’s book, I have tried from the start to remain objective, and to remind myself at regular intervals that all statements in it must be presumed false until there is evidence to the contrary. When I say, then, that the Firman description of Mat Williamson fits Mathew Tuakana like a glove, I mean that the description is not only visually correct — there may be two names but there is only one man — but that it also gives an impression I found recognizable, that of a man somewhat too well aware of his ability to deal with subordinates.

The way in which he introduced himself, however, had little of the charm Firman’s account had led me to expect.

‘I am the Tuakana whose baptismal name is Mathew Williamson,’ he said. ‘I am not the Williamson in this man Firman’s book, any more than you, I imagine, consider yourself to be the Professor Krom he caricatures. As long as that is clearly understood, I see no reason why we shouldn’t talk fairly freely and frankly.’ He rang a small glass bell standing on the table beside him. ‘What would you like to drink? Schnapps?’

‘No, thank you, Minister.’

When the servant appeared he ordered iced water. I should record that his voice was quite unlike that on the cassette. I can usually tell the difference between American and British spoken English. His sounded more American, but I really don’t know. Firman’s assertion that the man is a clever mimic was obviously uncheckable.

After ascertaining that the rest-house had made us comfortable, he went on: ‘Professor, tell me something. You and your wife went for a drive this morning. You saw mainly the port and the old phosphate-company workings. What did you think of the little you were able to see of us?’

‘Somewhere in our friend’s book this place is described as like a lunar landscape. That seemed a fair description of the mining area. Though I also saw what looked like efforts being made to improve things. Are they yours?’

His fleeting smile of satisfaction suggested that what I had seen had been a show put on for my benefit, and that our driver had been briefed. ‘Not mine alone, Professor, As helpers I have a number of those persons of whom you so steadfastly disapprove.’ He poured me a glass of water from the jug that had been brought. ‘I mean the ones you call tax-dodgers.’

I was willfully dense. ‘The men operating the earth-moving equipment looked like Islanders to me.’

‘They were. But do you know the procedures for registering a corporation or creating a trust on Placid?’

‘I could recite the exempt company and trust laws of half a dozen of your competitors in the field, Minister. I would be surprised if yours were much different.’

‘Not much different, no, but a little. Part of our corporation and trust registration fees must be paid in kind.’

‘A nice gimmick. Plant and machinery?’

‘Topsoil. Most of Placid’s was stripped away and lost by the mining company. A delivery of five thousand metric tons of good, black topsoil ensures the best of everything here for a newly arrived corporation. In subsequent years we’ll take a thousand tons annually as long as the quality remains good. I’ll take no sub-soil fill. The only clock we mean to put back here is the ecological one. And I think we have just enough time in which to do it.’

‘You have a deadline, Minister?’

I received a cool look. ‘People who think as you do are our deadline, Professor. There is writing on the wall. Tax authorities everywhere, especially in the high-tax jurisdictions, are getting tougher every day. And the writing is not only on walls. In the European Common Market Official Journal, the sin we are committing, the crime you so deplore has been given a name of its own — Incitement to Anti-Social Tax-Avoidance! Doesn’t that sound wicked? Ten years from now we’ll have been legislated out of our economic existence if a career of crime is the only one we’re trained to follow. We have no illusions, I can assure you. If the western powers prefer to have us as neo-colonial Third World pensioners rather than as self-respecting exporters of fiscal services, we must look elsewhere for salvation. But where? Yes, we could sell our port facilities to the highest bidder and become somebody’s nuclear naval base. Or we could lease ourselves as sites for missile-tracking or microwave stations. Fates worse than death, I’m afraid. No! With sufficient topsoil and a well-researched development programme, surely we can use our sinful tax-avoidance years to purchase a better future. What do you think, Professor?’

‘There’s a lot in what you say, Minister.’

The arrogance of his answering smile was insufferable. I made a decision. If he could test Firman’s verdict on me by making impertinent offerings of schnapps, I could test Firman’s gossip about him by asking impertinent questions.

‘How active is the Boy Scout movement here on Placid, Minister?’

Not an eyelid flickered. ‘There is no Boy Scout movement here as yet. The Legislative Assembly has been asked to authorize the establishment of the movement here. The new Protestant chaplain is interested, I’m told, but we have more important things to do with our time at present.’

Over lunch — canned ham, salad, instant coffee — he told me about the public-works programmes he had scheduled and the problems of getting low-interest loans.

I asked if Mr Yamatoku advised him at all on such matters.

He looked mystified. ‘Mr Yamatoku is with our mission at the UN in New York.’

‘Minister, I shall be returning home via New York. Would it be possible for me to meet Mr Yamatoku?’

‘If you were to call his secretary, I dare say he would try to make time to see you. He is a busy man of course.’

My patience ran out there. I made detailed notes on the conversation that follows as soon as I returned to the rest-house.

‘But not as busy as you, Minister, I’m sure. Where and when did you first meet Mr Firman?’

He stared over my right shoulder for a moment in a way that nearly had me turning to see who might be there. Such well-worn interviewing tricks sit oddly on so pretentious a man. When he saw that I wasn’t going to respond, he played at folding his napkin carefully as he answered.

‘The place of meeting was the one he gives,’ he said. ‘Port Vila in the New Hebrides. He was calling himself Perry Smythson. Almost everything else he says is, either wholly or in part, a pack of lies. If it were not we wouldn’t be talking. I’m quite sure you don’t believe that we are sitting here privately like this because I am eager to hear your views on the methodology of international tax planning.’

‘No, Minister, but you might be curious about my intentions where Firman’s book is concerned. I am naturally curious about yours. I’m hoping that they may help me to make up my mind. For a man in your position, public controversy of the kind that libel actions can generate is a thing to be avoided I imagine.’

‘Avoided like the plague, Professor. The same goes for book-banning by injunction, or censorship through legal blackmail. My intention is to do nothing, and I will tell you why. After reading the Firman script, I sent off at once both for your book and the New Sociologist essay. The German of the book was a little beyond my understanding, but the essay fascinated me. Yes, fascinated! It confirmed something that I had long suspected.’

‘Essays that do that are always fascinating.’

I earned only a fleeting smile. ‘Tell me something, Professor. Firman quotes a definition of the able criminal which he says is yours. Is it?’

‘It’s the simplified, lecture-platform definition I normally give.’

‘Then I’m afraid it can’t be applied to Smythson-Oberholzer.’

‘Shall we just call him Firman, Minister?’

‘By all means. He’s had too many aliases, I agree. But, whatever name you use, you can’t call him the well-adjusted emotionally stable man of your definition. That, Firman certainly is not. It was one of the first things I came to understand about him.’

‘Could you be specific?’

‘Certainly. The death of Carlo Lech was a great blow to him, I know, because I was with him when he heard the news.’ He held up a defensive hand as if I had started to interrupt him. ‘Bear with me, please. Lech was never the father-figure whom Firman portrays. There, I’m completely with you. But, Firman always chose to believe that he was. The child blames a suitable alter ego for its own misdeeds. That is natural. The neurotic adult, the boy who will never grow up, continues to project, but he does so on a different scale and uses different mechanisms. One such mechanism is called role-reversal, I believe.’

‘Please go on, Minister.’ The amateur psychiatrist is rarely as dangerous as he is often made out to be. As long as he has no patients, the injuries he inflicts are usually more painful than serious, like blows on the elbow. The kind of rubbish he talks, however, can tell you a lot about him.

‘The Lech you dismiss, rightly, as a figment of the imagination was desperately real to Firman. Is that your emotionally stable, well-adjusted man, Professor?’

‘It doesn’t sound like him, no. Have you any other examples of this instability?’

‘There are other examples staring at us from the pages of his book. He quotes you as saying that Lech had died five years previously. Wrong. He himself says that you saw him at the Zürich funeral five years previously. Wrong again. But why?’

‘Those dating mistakes puzzled me too, Minister. Lech had died seven years previously, not five. I identified Firman in Zürich eight months before Lech’s death. Those facts have never been in dispute. What was so special about the number five? Why the mistake?’

‘Shall we call them Freudian slips, Professor?’

‘Unintentional mistakes can be made by a copy typist who needs new glasses or an editorial adviser who can’t be bothered with details.’

‘But not these mistakes, Professor.’ He was glad of my stuffiness; it made me a better audience. ‘I know for a fact that the five-years-ago we are talking about now was of deep psychological significance to him. I’m no coffee-house analyst, Professor, and I only know what I’ve read about abnormal behaviour. But no one could have made a mistake about Mr Paul Firman then. It’s not the sort of thing you forget. He went nowhere near Zürich or anywhere else in Europe. He spent the year shuttling between Singapore, Sydney and Hong Kong. That was the year his own mysterious Mat Williamson, the man on the telephone speaking with a Birmingham accent, seems to be talking about. He refers to a moment of personal loss and sadness, or sadness and loss. I made a note somewhere. It’s on page. .’

‘Thank you, Minister. I know the place you mean. How did you come to see so much of him that year? Was that when your partnership began?’

‘Partnership?’ He didn’t like the word. It occurred to me suddenly that Mr Tuakana was in a position to have me arrested, jailed and charged with insulting his government if he felt like it. ‘That’s what he calls it now. I was working for him as what he called a talent-spotter. I had no money worth talking about, and lobbying a company like Anglo-Anzac into facing the inevitable, even in a place like this, takes plenty. Firman paid me well, but I had to work for it. He had a short list of companies, corporations, that interested him. Usually they were in trouble. I investigated them for him. He was what some people call an operator. Quickly in, quickly out. Sometimes there were assets to be stripped. Sometimes there was a loss position to be parlayed. Sometimes there were other things. Partnership? I never saw it in that light. I was his hot-shot auditor. We never got around to discussing any of my long-term plans. That was the year of his crack-up.’

‘A physical crack-up or a mental one, Minister?’

He placed his smoothed and folded napkin neatly beside his plate.

The hand that had held it twitched for a moment and then was still. He may have decided against rapping the table in time with the words.

‘Professor, surely we can see now. Isn’t it plain enough how those date mistakes came to be made? Five was the evil-magic number because five years before had been the evil-magic time. That was the year of the most terrible death and of the catastrophic disaster. As a result, it ends up as the year of all death and all disaster — Lech’s death, the Kramer folly, the encounter with you, the exile from Europe, everything. The year of ultimate misfortune! And, by the way, that was the year he got himself into trouble with the New South Wales police. In Sydney, at one point, there was serious talk of starting extradition proceedings to winkle him out of Hong Kong.’

‘Do you know what for, Minister?’

‘Indeed I do. You asked for other examples of his instability. I can given you a perfect one. It’s another of his role-switching ploys. Do you remember the long lecture he says he gave to that mythical Mr Williamson? Remember, Professor? The one about the perils of international fraud and the terrible fate that awaited those who didn’t obey the laws?’

‘I remember.’

‘Professor, that was a lecture I gave him.’

He paused, shrugged slightly and then gazed into my eyes with the peculiar look of engaging frankness that I have learned to associate with guilt sure of its defences and completely at its ease.

‘My job,’ he went on, ‘was investigation and I could see the overall picture. Some corners of it were pretty murky, believe me. What provoked the lecture was a kind of multinational thimble-rigging scheme he had going. This was a chain of twenty different corporations, all having what looked like serious assets — mining properties, real estate, palm-nut plantations — and all making paper profits. That chain was just the debris left from his asset-stripping deals. So, he’s given the mess a coat of paint. Why? Well, it seems he’s acquired this little ex-British insurance company registered in ex-British Singapore and still operating under the old British free-for-all rules. That means minimal regulation by American standards. Most of its business is done in Malaysia and the Islands and it has a cosy Chinese name that means ‘faithful tiger’. So guess who ends up owning all those paper corporations. Yes, the faithful tiger, only now he’s called Fidelity Lion and does his investigating through nominees. The only mistake Firman made there was to let that mangy lion write annuity business in Australia. He’ll never go back there again. They don’t like insurance grifters, especially when they can’t pin anything on them.’

‘No country likes them. But you spoke of a terrible death and a catastrophic disaster, Minister. Was that what you meant? The collapse of a fraudulent insurance scheme?’

‘Oh no. His Chinese directors nearly had him in trouble, but he moved fast enough to get out from under that. It was the business of his son that hit him so hard.’

‘He mentioned a child by his second marriage.’

‘That was a daughter. The son was by his first wife. Brilliant boy, handsome, great charmer. Snapped up by one of the Ivy League colleges. Firman doted. Terribly proud of him. Actually used to carry a photograph of the lad in his wallet.’

‘What happened?’

‘He died suddenly. All very unfortunate it was.’

‘Drugs? Alcohol? A car crash?’

‘Nothing as simple. The boy committed suicide, hanged himself. It destroyed Firman completely for a while. I’ve never seen a crack-up like it. Almost total withdrawal. He’d just sit.’

‘Was there any explanation?’

‘Of the suicide? The college had one. Overwork, examination pressures, unjustified fears of not meeting the high expectations of others. Most of these places must have a form letter they send out. But Firman thought that he’d been the only one at fault. When he spoke at all then it was always to say the same thing. ‘I seem to have made a habit of failing the people who love me.’ No arguing with him. I for one would never be surprised if Firman decided to kill himself. There’s a suicidal streak somewhere there.’

He stood up. It was time for me to leave. I asked if I could have copies of some of his speeches. A Personal Assistant was instructed to take me to the Office of Information.

I asked for tapes.

Later that day two envelopes were delivered to the rest-house. In one there was a number of Mr Tuakana’s speeches translated into English. A covering note from the Information Officer explained that there were no taped recordings of the speeches available in a language I would understand.

The second envelope contained the promised invitations to a reception by Chief Tebuke later in the week.

I had nothing more to do on Placid. There was a plane leaving the following day. With my wife’s agreement, I answered the invitation with an apologetic letter explaining that we were expected back in Suva and much regretted our inability to attend the reception.

Firman’s Mr Williamson cannot, in my opinion, be described as able.

He is not even a good liar.

Melanie finished reading the Commentary in a state of high excitement.

‘If you still have those company accounts,’ she said, ‘this is a wonderful gift that Krom has sent you.’

Bedtime on the Island had usually been nine-thirty; but that night, with Melanie smoking to keep the insects at bay, we sat up later.

‘It’s not only a gift,’ I said, ‘it’s a gift horse with a mouth I’m looking into. Oh yes, I have those company accounts all right. I had them all microfilmed in Hong Kong at the time. Mat’s accounts were very good, but not to anyone who’d been trained to read figures by Carlo. The only thing I could never discover was the name of the suckers using his nominees. Now, we have the name — Fidelity Lion. No wonder the Australians were treading on Mat’s tail.’

Doubts assailed her. ‘It’s several years ago now. What about statutes of limitations?’

‘With our knowledge we could get him in trouble any time we wanted, and he’ll know it.’

‘The uncrowned king of Placid?’

‘Especially the uncrowned King of Placid. He’s totally vulnerable. There’d be no more topsoil for a man suspected of fraud. No more anything else. All we do is what Professor Krom did in Brussels. We leave copies of all the evidence in sealed envelopes to be opened in case of either of our sudden deaths, particularly if my sudden death looked like a suicide. Then, we just tell Mat. Perfect!’

‘If it’s perfect, why aren’t you happier?’

‘Because along with the gift, there comes a disturbing message. Krom has finally confirmed beyond doubt the truth of something that I have resolutely denied. He is telling me again that I have been Number One all the time. The Number One anarchist!’

‘Why should that disturb you?’

‘It’s a lie.’

‘You’ve had too much to drink, Paul.’

‘Very likely. They say there’s no taste in vodka. There is in this vodka. There’s a taste of scorched paint.’

She filled her own glass again. ‘Bid you really say it?’

‘What?’

‘That thing about always failing the people who loved you.’

‘I may have said something to that effect. I was wallowing in self-pity at the time. Even so, Mat’s version sounds a bit mawkish to me.’

When Melanie thinks hard, her lower jaw droops a little, giving her a hangdog look. She had it now.

‘Failing people who loved me is something I have never done,’ she said after a while.

‘Good for you.’

‘Not good at all.’ Her mouth resumed its normal shape. ‘I have always been the one who loved.’

‘Oh.’

She disposed of the subject firmly. ‘Food, that’s the important thing.’ She emptied her glass again and banged it down on the table. ‘I must tell you, Paul, that I shall think a lot tonight about food. About the good food I’m going to have away from here.’

‘Yes. Yes, so shall I..’

I did.

I thought of good food, cold days and decent glasses of wine.