Talking to Strange Men by Ruth Rendell Read Free Book Online Page A

Stern.
    â€˜They don’t know the meaning of speed,’ Fergus Cameron had said. The family were all at lunch, Fergus and Lucy, Angus, Mungo, and Ian just home from medical school for the Easter break. ‘Those representatives of the planning committee came to see the place two days after the monthly meeting. Which means we have twenty-four days to wait for a decision. And in the meantime I could lose that other property.’
    The other property was a much more modern building at the western end of Ruxeter Road. Fergus could get it comparatively cheaply if he bought it now but would very likely lose it if he waited three weeks. And suppose the planning committee’s decision went against him?
    â€˜There’s absolutely nothing to be done, darling,’ said Lucy, eating salad with a fork and reading the
Lancet
. She was a large placid woman of perfectly even temper who had sat – and passed – her examination for membership of the Royal College of Physicians when nine months pregnant, answered the final question, laid down her pen and gone into labour. Ian was born five hours later. She turned the page. ‘It’s all in the lap of the gods.’
    Mungo wasn’t too sure of this. It might be in his lap. That was why he had gone straight upstairs really, apart from taking comfort from the ‘most secret’ document. Today was25 March. Only six more days’ use to be got out of the current code, after which he’d have to start a new one. Might use Stern’s
Childers
which would be rather amusing. But now for his father’s planning application. The difficulty wouldn’t so much be in acquiring the advance information as in convincing his father that the advance information he had was accurate. Deal with that when the time comes, thought Mungo. He’d use the drop under the flyover. Instructions alone wouldn’t be sufficient, there would have to be a meeting. In the safe house possibly and it shouldn’t be postponed. Monday at the latest. He looked about him but couldn’t see the book anywhere.
    That Ian, he thought. The minute he’s home he’s on the nick. Nothing’s sacred. The first thing he heard when he opened the door was a girl laughing. lan’s girlfriend Gail that would be. Mungo went downstairs and saw them all in Angus’s room, Angus showing off the computer, Gail pressing one of the keys and making a picture of an explosion come up with ‘ka-boom’ printed in the middle of it.
    â€˜You’ve got my Albeury,’ Mungo said.
    Ian grinned at him. ‘Have a heart. I’ve nothing to read.’
    â€˜You can’t have that. Not till next Thursday anyway. You can have the latest Yugall if you like.’
    â€˜That’s very handsome of you, Bean.’
    Mungo wondered why Angus was looking at him like that, half-smiling and yet as if he were somehow sorry for him. He didn’t like it much and it made him feel a certain regret that he was too old to go and trip his brother up and stick his tongue out at him.

6
    FERGUS CAMERON WAS as nervous as his wife was placid. He worried about everything. He worried about his wife and his sons and his home and about money, though as he very wellknew none of these people or these matters afforded genuine cause for anxiety. Not of the stuff of which general practitioners are ideally made, he was nevertheless enormously popular with his patients. There was nothing godlike about him. When they told him they were worried or depressed he said he understood and he commiserated with them. They could tell he was sincere. When they came to him worried that they might have cancer or muscular dystrophy or heart disease he said that he worried about those things too, even though he had no more cause than they. Because he did not know he had anything to feel superior about, he chatted to them as might their next-door neighbours and as often as not told them of his own worries. As