Charlie M by Brian Freemantle Read Free Book Online Page B

observation. Or stay, because they detest me. So I’m faced with working for the next fifteen years as a poxy clerk.’
    â€˜You couldn’t stand that, Charlie.’
    â€˜I’ve got no bloody choice, have I? I’ve devoted my life to the service. I love it. There’s not another sodding thing I could do, even if they’d let me.’
    He did love the life, he decided, adding to both their glasses. Because he was so good at it.
    It had been wonderful before Cuthbertson and the army mafia had arrived, when his ability had been properly recognised.
    The Director had been Sir Archibald Willoughby, who’d led paratroopers into Amhem with his batman carrying a £20 hamper from Fortnum & Mason, and Venetian goblets for the claret in special leather cases. He was cultivating Queen Elizabeth and Montana Star roses in Rye now, hating every moment of it. There’d been two written invitations to visit him since his summary retirement, but so far Charlie had avoided it. They’d drink to much whisky and become maudlin about previous operations, he knew. And there was no way they could have kept the conversation off Bill Elliot.
    On the day of the purge, Elliot had been sent home early because Cuthbertson, who read spy novels, imagined he would find evidence of a traitor if he turned out every desk and safe in the department.
    So the second-in-command had arrived in Pulborough three hours earlier than usual for a Tuesday to find his wife in bed with her brother.
    Elliot had walked from the room without a word, gone directly to the hide at the bottom of the garden from which he had earned the reputation of one of Britain’s leading amateur ornithologists and blown the top of his head away with an army-issue Webley fired through the mouth. He had been crying and he’d made a muck of it, so it had taken two days for him to die.
    The suicide had slotted neatly into Cuthbertson’s ‘who’s to blame’ mentality, despite the wife’s unashamed account to the police, and Elliot had been labelled responsible for the Warsaw and Prague débâcles. It would be nice, reflected Charlie, to prove Cuthbertson wrong about that. Like everything else.
    â€˜Sure they wouldn’t let you retire, prematurely?’ asked Janet, breaking Charlie’s silent reminiscence.
    â€˜Positive,’ asserted Charlie. ‘And I don’t think I’d want to. At least rotting as a clerk would mean a salary of some sort. I wouldn’t live off a reduced pension.’
    â€˜I thought Edith had money.’
    â€˜She’s loaded,’ confirmed Charlie. ‘But my wife is tighter than a seal’s ass-hole.’
    She smiled, nodding. It really was the sort of language she expected, Charlie realised.
    â€˜Do you know there are receipted bills at home dating back ten years. And if you asked her the amount, she could remember,’ he added.
    â€˜Why not leave her?’
    â€˜What for?’ challenged Charlie. ‘Would you have me move in here, a worn-out old bugger of forty-one without a bank account of his own who can only afford Spanish plonk.’
    She reached across, squeezing his hand.
    â€˜From the performance so far, you’re hardly worn out,’ contradicted Janet. ‘But no, Charlie. I wouldn’t.’
    â€˜So I’ve got to stay, haven’t I? – tethered to a job that doesn’t want me. And at home, to a wife who’s not very interested.’
    â€˜Poor Charlie,’ she said. She didn’t sound sad, he thought.
    He gestured round the apartment, then nodded towards her.
    â€˜All this will end, when I’m transferred, won’t it?’
    â€˜I expect so,’ she said, always honest, looking straight at him.
    â€˜Pity.’
    â€˜It’s been fun,’ she said. She made it sound like a skiing lesson or a day out at Ascot when she’d picked a winner.
    â€˜Shall we go to bed?’ he