See Charlie Run
Brian Freemantle
William Shakespeare.
‘A defection!’ Her astonishment was complete.
‘I can’t go on like this,’ he said.
‘I just didn’t expect a defection.’
‘It will be difficult. But I can do it.’
‘What about the danger?’ Her surprise became worry now.
‘It would be worth it.’
‘There’s no other way?’
He shook his head. ‘Not that would work completely.’
‘I’m scared,’ she admitted.
‘There won’t be any risk to you,’ he promised.
‘Scared for you, I meant.’
‘I said I could do it.’
‘We’d lose everything, with just one mistake.’
‘I’ll be very careful.’
She lay very quietly beside him in the bed, her body still wet from their lovemaking, head cradled against his chest. When she didn’t speak for a long time, he said: ‘Well?’
‘You know I’ll do anything you want.’
‘I’ll need your help,’ he said.
‘I said I’d do anything.’
‘But there’ll be no risk,’ he promised again.
She moved her head against his chest, a dismissive gesture at the reassurance. ‘I love you so much,’ she said.
‘And I love you,’ he said.
‘It
‘Worth everything,’ he said.
Charlie Muffin, who without conceit considered himself a master of survival, came carefully awake and wondered if he were going to survive this one. With his eyes determinedly closed and with the wiseness of an expert in such things refusing to shift his head, one way or the other, it was still awful: bloody awful. The pie, he decided. Bloody stupid to have eaten that plastic-wrapped meat pie out of that pub microwave just before the final drink. Had to be the pie. Nothing else it could be. Islay single malt didn’t make anyone feel like this. Not him, anyway. Sodding pie. Probably hanging around for days in that display counter with shit-footed flies route marching all over it, left right, left right, let’s give the silly bugger who buys this the worst hangover of his life. Not a hangover, though. Didn’t suffer from hangovers. This was food poisoning; headaching, sweat-making, stomach churning food poisoning. Sodding pub with the sodding pie deserved to be reported to the health authorities. Public menace, to old and young. Christ, he felt awful!
Charlie carefully opened his eyes, wincing protectively. The stab of pain impaled him against the pillow: been worse if the curtains hadn’t been pulled against the half-light of seven thirty. It was difficult to imagine anything worse, at that precise moment. There was something approaching it: he was dying for a pee. Couldn’t blame that on the pie: at that moment he could have found good use for the dish, though. Probably how it had been used before he’d eaten out of it, the previous night. Experimentally Charlie moved his head from side to side, the slowest denial in the world. More arrows thudded painfully into his skull. More than likely it hadn’t really been Islay malt! The doubt hardened in Charlie’s pain-racked mind, developing conviction. A right little salmonella factory, in the basement of that pub: Sweeney Todd’s pie shop on one side and bathtub whisky on the other, brewing rotgut to be sold to unsuspecting and innocent blokes like himself.
Charlie moved with the slowness of someone testing broken limbs, easing his feet and then his legs over the bed-edge and elbowing himself up into some resemblance of sitting, hunched forward over his knees. He blinked, testing the pain of the light, and saw that he was still wearing a sock on his left foot; blue, with a triangular pattern. And a hole not on the big toe where it normally formed but in the middle. Charlie, who suffered from his feet and therefore devoted much attention to them, decided that his left foot wouldn’t have been cold if his right one hadn’t: must have forgotten to take it off then. Funny place for a hole to be. Couldn’t blame that on the pie, either. He moved his feet, rippling his toes; one of the few parts of his body that didn’t hurt at the moment. They would, soon enough. Except that he wasn’t using his feet much. Which was the problem, Charlie recognized. He was streetwise – the snide majority in the department thought gutter-wise more accurate – but wasn’t being allowed out in the street. Bloody clerk, instead. So there’d been a defection, and when a defection occurred it was necessary to review for damage assessment everything in which the traitorous bastard had ever been involved. But Charlie didn’t go for all that crap about his being the most experienced man in the department, better able than most to spot the difficulties that a younger man might have missed. He was being pigeon-holed, he decided: stuck in a fucking filing cabinet along with all those dust-smelling documents made out in triplicate and forgotten about. The snide majority found that easy to rationalize: considered it sensible even. Who better to know how a traitor operates than someone who’d been one? Except that he hadn’t been, ever: just sacrificed the sacrificers. A lot of people still distrusted him for it, though. So what? They could all go to hell. Charlie stood, groaning: at the moment he knew what hell was like.
He made the bathroom, dealt with his most urgent need and then supported himself against the sink, grimacing at his image in the mirror. Little short of a medical miracle to look like he did and still be alive. He proceeded slowly, even when cleaning his teeth, knowing from long experience that any abrupt movement was
