‘No,’ he replied. ‘I’m writing a book.’
‘A thesis that will become a book.’
‘No, just a book.’
I shook my head, desperately trying to understand. ‘A book about me, though, yes? For your father? At Random House?’
‘Oh yes,’ he said, nodding. ‘That’s true. It was his idea, actually. And I do want to be a literary biographer. I know I’m young, but what’s wrong with that? You were young when you published your first book. If this works out, and I think it will now, I’d say I have a great career ahead of me.’
‘So there’s no thesis then,’ I said, considering this. ‘Just a book.’ Well, that wasn’t so bad. It cut out the middle man, so to speak. ‘You’ve been writing a book about me all this time.’
He smiled and looked around the bar, the expression on his face suggesting that he couldn’t quite believe how slow I was.
‘You don’t get it, do you?’ he asked. ‘You’re not the subject of the book.’
‘I’m not?’
‘No.’
‘Then who is?’
‘You can’t guess?’
I thought about it but, no, I couldn’t. ‘Who?’ I asked again.
‘Don’t you remember when we first met? I told you that books had been my passion since I was a kid? And that my father worked in publishing but that his uncle used to write a little?’
I looked away. Did I remember this? Yes, I did, but I had focussed only on the fact that his father was an editor.
‘My great-uncle, that would be,’ he said. ‘He’s the subject. I’m writing about him.’
‘And not me?’
‘No.’
‘But I don’t understand,’ I said, placing both hands on the edge of the table before me, for I was beginning to feel faint. ‘I feel like I’m in a daze.’
‘How’s your German, Maurice?’ he asked.
‘Average, I suppose,’ I said. ‘Enough to get by on. Why?’
‘Theo Field,’ he said, very slowly, enunciating each syllable as he smiled at me.
‘I don’t …’ And then, like a door opening beneath my feet and sending me falling to the rocks below, I felt a sensation that I was no longer part of this world. ‘Field,’ I said. ‘Acker.’
‘Acker,’ he agreed with a nod.
‘Ackermann. You’re …’
‘My father is Georg Ackermann’s son. He was killed in a tram crash, remember? You told me so yourself. Erich’s younger brother.’
‘Erich was your uncle.’
‘Well, my great-uncle.’
I leaned forward and peered into his face. Did he look like Erich Ackermann? No, he looked like Daniel. He looked like my son.
‘I thought you would be more willing to confide in me if I shared some things in common with him,’ he said, sensing what I was thinking. ‘It wasn’t very difficult. There’s lots of pictures of him online, so I changed my hair colour to look like his. And he posted pictures on his Instagram account of his bedroom and I saw that band poster on the wall. So I bought a T-shirt to match.’
‘No,’ I said quietly.
‘And he wore a ring on the fourth finger of his right hand. So I got one of those too.’
‘Your glasses?’
‘There’s no prescription,’ he said, taking them off and handing them across to me. ‘Just frames with glass. The same ones that he wore.’
I put them on. I could see through them without any difficulty.
‘He posted videos on Facebook too. That’s where I noticed this.’ He started to tap his index finger against his thumb rapidly. ‘A nervous affliction, was it?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘He’d had it all his life. And your asthma?’ I asked.
He burst out laughing, reached into his satchel and removed his blue inhaler, handing it across.
‘Here,’ he said. ‘Try it.’
I put it in my mouth, pushed the button and breathed in quickly. Nothing. Just air. It was empty.
‘I don’t have asthma,’ he said. ‘I’ve never had asthma.’
‘The picture of Erich and me in Montmartre,’ I said. ‘You said that you were looking at old photos. I thought you had found it in a newspaper or a book.’
‘I never said that,’ he replied with a shrug. ‘I simply said that I was looking at it. You know that he was dead a week before they discovered the body?’
‘I heard that, yes,’ I said, looking down at the table. ‘Dash told me.’
‘He was holding the photograph in his hands when he was found. I suppose he still loved you, despite what you did to him. The coroner passed it on to my father.’
I stared at him. I said nothing for a very long time.
‘But why?’ I asked finally, when I found my voice again. ‘Why would you do this?’
‘Why did you do what you did to my great-uncle?’
‘Because I wanted to succeed,’ I replied, beginning to feel the shame of my actions at last.
‘For what it’s worth, you’ve given me more than I ever dreamed of,’ he said. ‘I don’t even know whether the book will be about him now or about you. Or about both of you. But I have a feeling that it’s going to be the best start to a literary career since …’ He broke into a wide smile. ‘Well, since yours, I suppose!’
‘But what have I given you?’ I asked, trying to recall each of the conversations we’d had and all the confidences I’d entrusted him with. Happy to oblige me, he counted them off on his fingers.
‘First, Dash. Then Erich. Storī, of course. The Tribesman, which you didn’t even write.’
‘I tidied it up.’
‘But you didn’t write it! Although all of that pales into insignificance compared to what you did to Edith and Daniel. Two murders, Maurice. Two murders. Four, if you count your responsibility for both Erich’s death and Dash’s.’
‘Edith fell,’ I said.
‘You pushed her.’
‘Daniel had an asthma attack.’
‘And you withheld his inhaler.’ He looked down at his phone, tapped it for a moment, and put it in his pocket before standing up. ‘It’s all here, Maurice. Every word.’
‘No,’ I said, shaking my head. ‘No, wait. Let’s have another drink.’
‘I’ve drunk enough with you. I’ll be happy if I never have another pint in my life.’
‘Please,’ I said, standing up, but he shook his head, lifted his drink from the table and swallowed what was left in one go.
‘I’ll be in touch, Maurice,’ he said.
‘Sit down, let me order you another one. Please.’
‘No.’
‘Surely after everything I’ve done for you—’
‘You haven’t done anything for me,’ he said, laughing. ‘You’ve bought me a few drinks, that’s all. Tried to use me to get what you want. You hoped my father would use his connections to get you a new book deal, right? Well, that’s not going to happen. I don’t owe you anything, Maurice.’