Old Flames by John Lawton Read Free Book Online Page B

saw Cobb’s eyes home in. He turned to see Milligan receiving the gorgon stare.
    ‘Shuttit, laddie. Just shuttit.’
    Cobb broke the stare. Looked at the roster in front of him.
    ‘As it happens,’ he said, reddening slightly, ‘it will be trench coats and bowler hats.’
    Troy knew he was grinning. Unless God spared him quickly, a grin would become a snigger and a snigger a laugh and he would have Cobb down on him like an irate schoolmaster, armed with a piece of
chalk. The thought of all those flatfoots swarming all over Claridge’s Hotel dressed up like pantomime policemen was too funny to resist.
    Cobb’s finger shot out, aiming towards Troy.
    ‘You! Stop bloody grinning!’
    Troy looked back and realised that Cobb was pointing at Clark. The fat little man was smirking with repressed laughter.
    ‘They’ll do the real work, and they’ll be recognisable. To everyone. But in the event of a real hoo-ha, there’s a routine to go through. First. The only time you do not
accompany Red Pig and Black Bear is when other security is provided, e.g., royal palaces, Downing Street. In all other places you stick to them like glue. No matter where. Nobody is exempt. If you
have to sit in on a cosy chat with the Archbishop of Canterbury, you do it. Second, you always go through doors ahead of them. Third, if any nutcase has a go at them, you get them out of the room
and you let my boys handle the assailant. You do not tackle anyone unless you’ve no choice.’
    Beynon’s hand shot up like an eager schoolboy.
    ‘Excuse me, sir. But have there been any actual threats?’
    ‘Threats?’ Cobb sneered. ‘Threats? Every bunch of cranks in Britain from the Empire Loyalists to the Last-of-the-Mosleyites has threatened ’em. They’re all nutters
and it doesn’t mean a damn. If we believed every crank who thought Khrushchev was the anti-Christ there’d not be a copper left on point duty from here to John O’Groats. All the
same, we play safe. Understood? And remember, the Russians wanted the KGB guarding their own blokes. We had quite a row convincing them we weren’t going to have armed Russian bully-boys
swanning around London. So—bear this in mind. If we fuck up, we’ll never hear the last of it.’
    Again he swept the room with a practised penetrating stare. Practised, no doubt, in front of a bathroom mirror from an early age. Cobb was, Troy decided, a brute of a man, but not the ugly brute
he had first supposed. The man’s waffle gave him time to look and appraise. The stare was disturbing, more than Cobb ever meant it to be. He meant merely to command, and he did it rather
well. But his eyes seemed asymmetrical. It was the cock-eyed, strabismic stare of a one-eyed man. But Cobb had two eyes. Then the penny dropped. It was the eyebrows. The left eyebrow drew all the
attention to the left eye. It was white in the middle. A one-inch strip of premature white hair, as startling to observe as Diaghilev’s two-tone coiffure or the hennaed halo of Quentin Crisp.
Troy remembered Cobb’s reputation at the Yard as a ladykiller. He was beginning to see why he had it. There was a slob side to him, that could appeal to the tidy instinct in a woman—a
man for whom the right woman could roll pairs of socks into balls ever after—but there was also a raffish, brutal handsomeness to the man. To Troy it bespoke the surly Special Branch bastard.
But, it was conceivable that to some young WPCs he was Mr Rochester of the Yard. Brown curls fell across his forehead, his mouth was wide, his jaw strong despite the extra chin—and he dressed
surprisingly well. The mackintosh was a Burberry; the neat, double-breasted, figure-flattering blue suit must have cost a packet. Troy was all but indifferent to clothes. He had his suits made in
Savile Row out of nothing more than habit. He dressed well only because money let him and tradition paved the way. Taste did not come into it. And a suit as sharp as Cobb’s he did not