The Run Around

‘It’s customary – indeed, it’s a bank regulation – for overdrafts to be secured,’ lectured Roberts.

‘The company scheme is index-linked, to allow for inflation,’ offered Charlie, hopefully.

‘What exactly do you want an overdraft for?’ asked the man.

There was a major reason and a lot of small ones. Harkness putting him back on the expenses stop list for not having identifiable meal receipts for one. And because taxis were safer but more expensive after the pubs and the drinking clubs closed and all the street lights blurred together in a linked line. And then there was the fact he had not had a winner in weeks and the bookmaker was jumping up and down. And because he’d already tried to get cards from American Express and Diners and Access and Mastercharge and they’d all turned him down. Searching for an acceptable reason, Charlie said: ‘I thought about a small car. Second-hand, of course. Maybe a new refrigerator.’

‘Perhaps some clothes?’ suggested the man.

Cheeky bugger, thought Charlie. He’d had the suit cleaned and worked for a good thirty minutes with one of those wire brush things buffing the Hush Puppies to look better than they had for years. He knew he looked better than he had for years! Christ that pin was making his neck sore. Eager to please, he said: ‘That sounds like a good idea.’

‘I’ll need a reference, of course.’

Of course you will, sunshine, thought Charlie. The procedure automatically meant Harkness learning about it. He offered the security-screened address and the supposed works number that routed any correspondence involving him to the Westminster Bridge Road headquarters and said: ‘There are a lot of divisions in the department, of course. This is the address you’ll want for me.’

‘Thank you,’ said the bank manager. ‘I’ve enjoyed our meeting; I always like to try to establish some sort of personal relationship with my clients.’

What about establishing it with a glass of sherry then! Charlie said: ‘How long will it take, for the overdraft to be arranged?’

The manager held up his hand in a halting gesture: ‘It would be wrong to anticipate any agreement, Mr Muffin. First we’ll need a lot of supporting documentation from your department.’

Harkness was bound to jump backwards through the hoop, thought Charlie. He said: ‘So I haven’t got it yet?’

‘There’s a long way to go,’ said the man.

There always seemed a long way to go, reflected Charlie, outside the bank. He undid his collar and with difficulty extracted the pin, sighing with relief. He explored his neck with his finger and then examined it, glad the damned thing hadn’t actually made him bleed, to stain the collar. Stiff new shirt like this was good for at least two wearings, three if he were careful and rolled the cuffs back when he got to the office. Charlie sighed again, with resignation this time, at the prospect of returning there. He supposed he would have to confront Harkness and put up some cock-and-bull story about the expenses not having enough supporting bills, which they would both know to be precisely that, a load of bullshit, and sit straight-faced through the familiar lecture on financial honesty. What place did honesty – financial or otherwise – have in the world in which they existed? About as much as a condom dispenser in a convent lavatory.

Charlie was conscious of the security guard’s awareness of what was for him an unusual appearance as he went through the regulation scrutiny check at the Westminster Bridge Road building. As the man handed him back the pass, nodding him through, he said: ‘Hope it was a wedding and not a funeral.’

‘More like a trial,’ said Charlie. With a verdict that was going to be announced later. Charlie wondered how long it would take.

Charlie’s office was at the rear of the building, overlooking a dusty neglected courtyard to which there appeared no obvious access and which was gradually filling, like a medieval rubbish pit, with the detritus from the dozen anonymous, curtained and unidentified cubicles which surrounded it. Where the wrappers and newspapers and plastic cups were most deeply piled was a pair of running shoes, arranged neatly side-by-side although upside down, which Charlie could not remember being there the previous day. He wondered if they were still attached to the feet of someone who’d made a suicide dive, unable any longer to stand the boredom of Whitehall bureaucracy: certainly they looked in too good a condition to have been discarded. Hardly worn in, not like his Hush Puppies were worn in. Mindful of how easily his feet became discomforted, Charlie eased them from his shoes to allow them the freedom they demanded. The socks were new, like the shirt: he’d made a bloody great effort and wanted very much to know it was going to be successful.

Charlie unnecessarily consulted his diary, blank as it had been for the past month, from the moment of his expenses suspension, and then looked through the opaque glass of his office door in the direction of Hubert Witherspoon’s matching office. Witherspoon was Charlie’s nemesis, the starch-knickered university entrant who knew by heart and obeyed by the letter all the regulations Charlie dismissed as irksome, particularly when he was reminded of them by the man, which he was constantly. Witherspoon’s office had been empty for a month and Charlie wondered if his were the feet in the upside down training shoes. Unlikely. If Witherspoon decided upon suicide he’d probably choose to fall on his own knitting needles, Roman-style. At Cambridge the idiot had ponced about in a toga to attend some exclusive luncheon club: there was actually a photograph of the prick dressed like that at some graduation meal, on the man’s desk. Nothing changed, thought Charlie: always boys trying to be men being boys.

He looked again at the diary, reluctantly accepting that unless he came up with some sort of story and bit the bullet with Harkness he was going to be kept in limbo for the foreseeable future. The spy who was kept on ice, he thought. He tried to remember the name of an espionage novel with a title something like that but couldn’t: he’d enjoyed the book though.

Charlie imposed his own delay, confirming the Deputy Director’s internal extension although he already knew it and was actually stretching out for the red telephone when it rang anyway.

‘You’re on,’ said a voice he recognized at once to be that of the Director’s secretary. Her name was Alison Bing and at the last Christmas party she’d said she thought he was cute in the public school tone he’d heard used to describe garden gnomes. He’d had an affair with a Director’s secretary once, recalled Charlie. And not primarily for the sex, although that had been something of a revelation, in every meaning of the word. He’d correctly guessed he was being set up as a sacrifice and had needed the protection of an inside source. So he’d got what he wanted and she’d got what she wanted, a bit of rough. He strained to remember her name, but couldn’t. It seemed impolite, not being able to remember the name of a girl he’d screwed, even though they’d both been objective about the relationship.

‘I’m on suspension,’ said Charlie.

‘Not any more you’re not.’

‘There hasn’t been a memorandum, rescinding it.’

‘Since when have you been concerned with memoranda?’

Since not wanting to drop any deeper in the shit than I already am, thought Charlie. He said: ‘Does Harkness know?’

‘He’s with the Director now.’

Charlie beamed to himself, alone in his office. So Harkness was being overruled; the day was improving by the minute. At once came the balancing caution: Sir Alistair Wilson would not be taking him off suspension to supervise the controlled crossing at the diplomatic school, would he? So what the hell was it this time?

Sir Alistair Wilson obviously had the best office in the building, high and on the outside, but the view was still that of the asshole of Lambeth. Wilson’s fanatical hobby was growing roses at his Hampshire home and so at least their perfume pervaded the room: there were bowls of delicate Pink Parfait on a side table and the drop front of a bookcase and a vase of deep red Lilli Marlene on the desk. Wilson stood as Charlie entered, because a permanently stiffened leg from a polo accident made it uncomfortable for him to sit for any period. He wedged himself against a windowsill shiny from his use, nodding Charlie towards a chair already set beside the desk. Richard Harkness sat in another, directly opposite, a fussily neat, striped-suited man, pearl-coloured pocket handkerchief matching his pearl-coloured tie, pastel-pink socks co-ordinated with his pastel-pink shirt. Charlie was prepared to bet that Harkness could have negotiated a ?10,000 overdraft in about five minutes flat. But not in the office of a manager who didn’t serve even cheap sherry. Harkness’s scene would have been the panelled dining room or library of one of those clubs in Pall Mall or St James’s where all the servants were at least a hundred years old and your father put your name down for membership before announcing the birth in The Times.