Free Comrade Charlie by Brian Freemantle

convinced. She said: ‘These were inspectors I had not seen before. But that has no significance. Quite often the people are different from those who have come before.’
    â€˜ Two inspectors!’ queried Charlie. ‘Does it always take two inspectors?’
    The woman’s colour began to rise. Again there was a hesitation. ‘No,’ she said. ‘It’s not usually two.’
    â€˜They carried identification, of course?’
    â€˜They telephoned several days in advance. That’s the normal procedure. Told me they were coming and why. And they quoted your mother’s National Insurance number, the one that’s on her pension book. No one else has access to details like that except people from the Ministry.’
    Was he overreacting, Charlie asked himself. Possibly. But Charlie frequently responded to the antennae of instinct and he thought there was a message here somewhere. He said: ‘Where do such inspectors come from when they carry out these checks? Towns, I mean?’
    â€˜It varies,’ said the woman. ‘Salisbury, Andover, Winchester…all over…’
    â€˜From what office did the two men come to see my mother?’
    The subsiding colour grew again. ‘They didn’t say.’
    â€˜No number? Nowhere you could contact them?’
    â€˜They said when they left that she didn’t qualify. That there’d be no need to talk about it again.’
    â€˜So that looks like the end of it,’ said Charlie with attempted finality.
    â€˜Did they upset her?’ asked the woman. ‘They said they’d like to see her, and she was so much better I thought it would be a treat for her. Visitors. It’s important to them, visitors. I knew they were wasting their time: of course I did. It was your mother I was thinking about, not them.’
    Poor woman, thought Charlie: poor innocent, compassionate, unknowing woman. He said: ‘I’m sure she enjoyed it.’ He didn’t think he’d get into cake with nuts. He added: ‘Did she sign anything?’
    â€˜Oh no!’ insisted the woman. ‘Your mother was on the verandah, just like today. And I was outside all the time they were with her. I would have seen.’
    â€˜Like I said,’ repeated Charlie. ‘I’m sure it’s all perfectly proper.’
    â€˜I know it is,’ insisted the woman.
    From his Vauxhall apartment, not from Westminster Bridge Road, Charlie contacted every regional and local pensions office remotely likely to have organized the visit to his mother. None had. He extended the check to the main department building in London and was once more assured there was neither interest in nor consideration of awarding his mother any supplementary pension allowance.
    There was the beginning of fury – but only briefly, because Charlie didn’t allow it. Fear had its benefits; released adrenaline and heightened senses. But not anger or fury. Neither. That sort of emotion was positively counter-productive: obscured the proper reasoning and the correct balances. This time, anyway, his feelings catapulted far beyond fury. Charlie was engulfed by an implacable, vindictive coldness. He’d chosen an existence of constant deceit and constant suspicion, a sinister shape to every shadow, a dangerous meaning to every word. That’s what he gave and that’s what he expected back. A fragile old lady with skin like paper wasn’t any part of that; a fragile old lady in whose twilight life long-ago lovers stayed on as names with indistinct faces, William who became John and who might not have been a real person at all. But they’d made her part of it: sullied her with it. His own people; he was convinced of it being his own people, directed by Harkness. Wrong to move prematurely, though: he had to establish it absolutely. And there was a way: a required, procedural way that would protect him if he were wrong – if he were the