Charlie M Read Free Page A

refusal.
    â€˜You’re dead,’ insisted Snare, finally. ‘We saw it happen.’
    And stayed quite unmoved, guessed Charlie. They really had tried to set him up.
    â€˜Brandy,’ he ordered, ignoring the two men. He made a measure between finger and thumb, indicating the large size to the barman.
    Snare and Harrison really weren’t good operatives, decided Charlie. No matter what the circumstances, they shouldn’t have permitted such reaction.
    â€˜So you’re having a wake for me,’ he suggested, sarcastically, nodding towards the drinks. He raised his own glass. ‘To my continued good health.’
    Both grabbed for their glasses, joining in the toast. Like hopefuls in a school play, thought Charlie, watching the performance.
    They were losing their surprise now, recognising the stupidity of their response and embarrassed by it.
    â€˜Charles,’ said Snare. This is fantastic! Absolutely fantastic!’
    â€˜I thought you’d be pleased,’ goaded Charlie. ‘Booked a table for the celebration?’
    â€˜But we thought you’d been killed,’ said Harrison, speaking at last. He was a heavy, ponderous man, with a face that flushed easily beneath a disordered scrub of red hair and with thick, butcher’s fingers. A genetic throw-back, Charlie guessed, to a dalliance with a tradeswoman by one of his beknighted ancestors.
    â€˜Better fix it then, hadn’t you?’ replied Charlie.
    â€˜Of course,’ agreed Harrison, flustered more than Snare by the reappearance. He gestured to the barman to inform the restaurant.
    â€˜How did you do it, Charles?’ asked Snare. He was fully recovered now, Charlie saw. They’d have already informed London of his death, Charlie knew. That had been the main reason for delaying his entry into the bar, to enable them to make every mistake. Cuthbertson would have told the Minister: the two would get a terrible bollicking.
    Charlie waited until they had been ushered into the rebooked table and had ordered before replying.
    â€˜A bit of luck,’ he said, purposely deepening his accent. He paused, then made the decision.
    â€˜â€¦ There was this mate …’
    â€˜â€¦ who …?’ broke off Harrison, stupidly.
    Charlie considered the interruption for several minutes, robbed of the annoyance he had hoped to cause the other two men.
    â€˜His name was Bayer,’ he said, seriously. ‘Günther Bayer.’
    The waiter began serving the oysters, breaking the conversation again. Charlie gazed out of the restaurant window at the necklace of lights around the city. Somewhere out there, he thought, was a girl called Gretel. She wouldn’t know yet, he realised. She’d still be preparing her own celebration meal.
    â€˜Tabasco?’ enquired the waiter.
    â€˜No,’ answered Charlie, smiling. ‘Just lemon.’

(2)
    The grilled, narrow windows of the special interview room at Wormwood Scrubs were set high into the wall, making it impossible to see anything but a rectangle of grey sky.
    Charlie gazed up, trying to determine whether it had started raining. He could feel the edge of the matting through the sole of his left shoe; if the weather broke, he’d get wet going back to Whitehall.
    He turned back into the room, studying it expertly. The camera was set into the ventilation grid behind him, he knew. Then there’d be a microphone in the light socket. And another concealed in the over-large locking mechanism on the door. And it would be easy to have inserted another monitor in the edging around the table at which they would sit. Cuthbertson would have had it done, he guessed. The man liked electronic gadgetry.
    Welcome the invention of the tape recorder, mused Charlie, his interest waning. He could still remember the days of silent note-takers and the irritable disagreements after a six-hour debriefing between operatives trying to remember precisely what had been