‘He took not the slightest notice. I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t bring myself to touch him. To try and coax him out of his chair and through the front door. And I certainly wasn’t going to leave him there. I decided to call a cab, thinking if I said he’d been taken ill the driver might help me shift him. But when I picked up the phone Gerald leapt up, ran across the room and snatched at the receiver. He cried out, “Don’t send me away”, burst into a positive avalanche of tears and fell to the carpet grasping me round the knees and practically knocking me over. It was ludicrous and pathetic and also a bit unnerving. I mean, he was a big bloke.
‘I said fatuous things like, “Come on now, Gerald” and, “Pull yourself together” - all the while trying to walk away with him bumping on his knees after me. Then he seized my hand and when he did that everything changed. Because there was nothing even remotely sexual about it. It was simply desperate, like someone hanging from their fingertips to the edge of a cliff. I stopped feeling threatened and helped him to his feet. We went into the kitchen, where I sat him down and made some coffee. Before he had a chance to launch into any sort of declaration I made it plain that the idea of being loved by another man was wholly repugnant to me. And that if he spoke a single word along those lines I would have nothing more to do with him. Of course this was my intention anyway but I could see he’d never go if I said as much.
‘Once I’d made the decision to give this bizarre and rather unpleasant incident as much time as it took to sort it out and clear it permanently away the whole atmosphere lightened. Gerald became more relaxed, if still very anxious. He was by then extremely drunk. If he hadn’t been I doubt very much if what followed would have taken place.’
‘And what was that, Mr Jennings?’ asked Barnaby.
‘He told me all about himself,’ said Max Jennings. ‘But this time it was the truth.’
At this point in Max Jennings’ revelations the tape ran out, illustrating, as he himself was the first to remark, a grasp of narrative technique that many a human storyteller might envy.
Barnaby inserted the new one in a highly ambivalent state of mind. He found it difficult to take Jennings’ measure. The man seemed to be talking freely enough, but was that only because he had been pushed, almost threatened, into doing so? And although what had been said so far sounded convincing it had to be remembered that Jennings told convincing lies for a living.
Even so the chief inspector could not deny a slightly queasy frisson of expectation at the thought that the true life story of Gerald Hadleigh was (perhaps) about to be unrolled before him. He girded his attention and marshalled his wits. Concentrated listening, especially to an extended monologue, is a tiring business. The chief inspector was surprised to find he still felt quite crisp and wondered briefly if this could in any way be connected to his spartan diet.
As he started the tape, giving the date and time of the interview and listing those present, Barnaby watched Jennings closely. He had once more shifted to the edge of his seat, where he perched trembling slightly. His shoulders were hunched and his hands, fingers loosely meshed, lay motionless in his lap. There was no attempt to re-establish the previous ‘candid’ eye contact. This time, as he began to speak, he stared fixedly at the floor.
‘The Gerald Hadleigh who came to my party was an invention. Even the name was false. He was born Liam Hanlon in Southern Ireland. The only child of a poor family. Literally a potato patch, a pig and a shotgun for the rabbits. His father was a monstrous man, a drunkard who beat his wife half to death on more than one occasion and the child too if he got in the way. As you can imagine, during this wretchedly cruel existence the boy and his mother grew very close, though they were careful never to show affection for each other in front of her husband. Somehow they both survived. The neighbours, such as they were, for it was a scattered community, knew what was going on but didn’t interfere. If a man’s fist sometimes slipped - well, that was between him and his wife. The priest, the Garda, all knew and did nothing.
‘There was a single bright spot in Liam’s miserable life. He had a friend. An older boy, Conor Neilson, who lived on a farm a few miles away. Hanlon would drag his son over there when animals were being slaughtered, not all that humanely by all accounts. This was supposedly in order to “make a man of him”. Of course it was just sadism. Once Liam cried when a lamb was killed and his father emptied a bucket of blood and intestines over the boy’s head.’
‘Bastard!’ Troy was compelled into expectorating speech. He did not apologise for the irrelevant interruption, but compounded his felony by adding, ‘I’d string the bugger up.’