‘No money, though, is there?’
‘Not a lot.’
‘That’s why you’re a bloody tramp!’ she said, triumphantly.
‘Yes, mum.’ It was an accusation made on average at least once during every visit. His mother had always been extremely clothes-conscious. Ironically, considering his constant concern for his painful feet, her particular delight had been shoes: he could vaguely remember the floor of a bedroom closet completely covered with pairs that overflowed from a shoe-rack. He hadn’t expected Julia to notice the effort he’d made, with new shoes. They were settling in now but they really had hurt like hell at first.
‘No wonder you never got married.’
‘No, mum.’ She’d forgotten Edith and there seemed no purpose in reminding her. Charlie wondered what Julia was preparing for that evening: she’d invited him to eat in her house for the first time.
‘Your dad was a smart man.’
‘I’m sure he was.’
‘Give me my handbag! There! Under the cabinet.’
Charlie did as he was told, watching her fumble with veined hands through a bag crammed with long-ago letters, most still in their tattered envelopes.
‘There!’ she said, in further triumph. ‘There’s your dad. Officer in the navy: lieutenant or something. Always smart, he was.’
Charlie took the picture. It had to be the sixth she had produced of a man she claimed to be his father. He had not seen this one before. It was of a stiffly upright, unsmiling officer in an army uniform. He wondered where she got them all from: he supposed they had all been men whom he’d been told to call uncle when he was young. He definitely couldn’t remember this one. ‘Good-looking man,’ he agreed.
‘Name was George. He could have got you into the navy, if you’d wanted. Had a lot of influence. Knew admirals.’
It was almost time to go. ‘Everything all right? Nothing you want?’
‘They’ve stopped my Guinness,’ complained the old woman. ‘Won’t let me have any now. Used to, but not any longer.’
‘Why not?’
‘Don’t like me.’
‘I’ll fix it,’ promised Charlie.
‘It’s the matron: she’s the one.’
‘I’ll talk to her. I have to go now.’
She hardly seemed to notice when Charlie kissed her goodbye. He stopped at the matron’s office on the way out, gently asking if there was a problem over Guinness, and was told by Mrs Hewlett that the nightly allowance for those who wanted it was two bottles but his mother was demanding more, which they didn’t think was good for her. Charlie said he was sure they knew best.
He was glad to get back into the hire car, with the prospect of a two-hour, solitary journey ahead of him in which to think. But think about what, any differently or any better than he’d already examined the question from each and every side? There was not the slightest doubt that his only course was to report the hostile Regent’s Park surveillance upon the Director-General and Patricia Elder. It was his duty, in fact, enshrined in all the regulations and conditions under which he was supposed to work.
Which would destroy them both. There’d be an internal investigation, admissions demanded, discreet and accepted resignations hurried through, damage limitation at its very British best.
But what damage limitation was there for Charles Edward Muffin? None, he acknowledged, miserably. As there never seemed to be. If he did what he should do and alerted internal security and counter-intelligence and Christ knows who else that Peter Miller and Patricia Elder were being targeted, the first and most obvious demand would be how the hell he knew. And to answer that honestly – to say that for weeks he had been unofficially and privately targeting them himself – would bring in roughly three seconds the most inglorious end it was possible to imagine to an inglorious career. In fact his ever-painful feet – or his ass – wouldn’t even touch the ground on his way out.
So what was more important, the security of a service to which he remained genuinely dedicated? Or the security of his ass, to which he was equally if not more devoted? An impossible dilemma, decided Charlie. Which was what he’d decided every time he’d thought about it since watching the silly buggers parade for the benefit of a Russian camera with a long-focus lens.
They were silly buggers, Charlie determined, contemptuous at them and himself and at everything. Deserved whatever happened to them. Which was not really the consideration. What happened to them was immaterial. It was the blackmail danger that existed to the organization they jointly controlled.
The fast dual carriageway from Stockbridge joins the motorway at Basingstoke, and Charlie picked up the dark grey Ford behind him about a mile from the junction, automatically connecting the vehicle with that in which the two Russians had sat that day, taking their photographs. Black then though, not grey. He slowed, concentrating. The following car dropped back, keeping the same distance behind him, about fifty yards, with two other vehicles, a red van and an open sports car, in between. Had the Ford been behind him since he’d left the nursing home? He didn’t think so, but he wasn’t sure. No cause for an over-reaction, simply because his mind was locked on surveillance conducted from the same make of car. He kept to the inside lane to join the motorway. So did the other vehicle and the intervening van; the sports car burst by in a blast of exhaust noise. Charlie ignored the first turn-off but took the second, without any indication, stopping unnecessarily at the roundabout below. Nothing followed him. He still made the full circle, very slowly, before going back up the link to rejoin the motorway. Far better to have been safe than sorry, he reassured himself.
Would Miller and the woman be destroyed if he reported what he’d seen? Not necessarily: there was an escape. He knew, because he’d seen it. But what proof did he have, of anything; of hanky-panky in a millionaire penthouse or that it was known about by a foreign country whose operatives still appeared to wear the black hats supposedly no longer in fashion? None, he recognized: not a fucking thing. So if they didn’t admit an affair – and Charlie was prepared to bet a pound to a pitch of shit they wouldn’t admit anything – where was he? Figuratively twisting in the wind with piano wire around a very tender part of his anatomy, displayed for the crows to feast, a disgruntled, cast-aside officer making entirely unfounded and libellous accusations about superiors against whom he had a grudge for prematurely ending his career. Justifiably ending his career, if he was prepared to make unsupportable accusations like that.
Not an immediate decision to agonize over any longer, although he knew he would. There was nothing he could do, in any practical sense.
There was another Ford behind him. Grey, like the last one. Or was it the same one? He’d been passing the Fleet service station, concentration on two levels, and become instantly aware of it emerging from the filter road to come in behind him. Had it been waiting? It looked the same as the first car. But then any grey Ford would look the same as the first car, sitting as it was still fifty yards behind him. He should have pulled into a layby before the earlier avoidance, to get the registration number as it went by. Still time. He saw the emergency telephone that would provide the excuse well over two hundred yards in front. He slowed, getting closer, but without using the brakes that would have flared the stop-lights. He only did that at the very last moment, uncaring of the blast of protest from the immediately following car, remembering how it had happened to Gower. There was only one man in the Ford that passed: he was balding and wore a sports shirt and went by apparently quite unaware of Charlie, who had the pencil and paper below the window level to note the number.
He stopped after counting ten grey, black or brown Ford cars on the rest of the journey, although he allowed every one to go by him. Charlie snake-looped into London, turning off at Acton, going sideways to Hammersmith and on into Fulham before switching northwards again, but going right through the centre of London, where the traffic was heaviest and most concealing and where he was able to judge his crossing of two intersections on amber, so all the following traffic had to stop at red. The hire car return was in Wandsworth: Charlie changed subway trains three times to reach his station. He had the Duty Room at Westminster Bridge Road run a trace on the Ford number: it was registered against the car pool of a fish processing plant in Hull. They confirmed the Hull outlet genuinely existed, although an examination of the British Company Register revealed it to be a subsidiary of a Belgian conglomerate headquartered in Bruges. Charlie thanked the Duty Officer and said he didn’t want them to go to the trouble of taking it any further, in Belgium.