Free Death of a Nobody by J. M. Gregson Page A

too — more than you could possibly realize.’
    There was such feeling on the last phrase that this time Lambert did not let it go. ‘Perhaps you should tell me about that. I go back quite a long way with Charlie myself.’
    Lewis said, ‘I know. Charlie told me how you helped to get him going with a job when he came out of the nick.’ But not, presumably, that he had acted for ten years as a snout: Lewis would surely have mentioned that relationship, had he known of it. Tut I knew him much longer than that. As I said, we were in the army together, for National Service.’
    Lambert smiled. ‘They caught me for that, too. It seems a vanished world, now.’
    ‘It is, more’s the pity.’ Lewis frowned, and Lambert thought he was about to go into the ritual denunciation of the lack of discipline among the present generation of adolescents. Instead, he said unexpectedly, ‘But National Service was a waste of time, for most of the two years. Taught a lot of people how to skive, even if their boots shone.’
    Lewis seemed about to develop a philosophical strain which would have been just as much of a diversion as the calls for square-bashing and blind obedience which the superintendent had been expecting, so he tried a little desperately to bring the conversation back towards the dead man. ‘Did you get abroad, or were you stuck in barracks here?’
    Lewis looked at him as if he were grateful for the correction. He took a reminiscent pull at his mug of tea, for all the world as if he had been relaxing in some far-off NAAFI. ‘We were in Cyprus, Charlie and I. He was a good lad. Younger than me, but he knew what was what.’
    There was plainly more to come. Lambert sought for a phrase to grease the machinery of articulation. ‘That would be during the troubles in Cyprus, I suppose.’
    ‘Not ‘arf. Makarios was making more trouble every week with the politicians, and Colonel bloody Grivas was organizing EOKA to gun down the troops.’ The old names, half-forgotten even by Lambert, sprang to his lips with the freshness of a grievance remembered. He pushed the biscuit tin at Lambert, scarcely noticed his refusal, and said quietly, ‘He saved my life, you know, did Charlie.’
    It was so unexpected, and the dead Pegg was so much the opposite of a heroic figure in his appearance and bearing, that Lambert must have shown his surprise. Lewis banged the tin back on to the top of its cupboard with a clang of irritation and said, ‘I’m not exaggerating. It’s no more and no less than the truth. We were different then, you know, all of us.’
    It was the perennial appeal of ageing men to be remembered in the pride of their youth. This time Lambert responded immediately. ‘We were indeed, George. Tell me about it, then.’
    ‘We ended up on patrols in the hills, looking for the terrorists who were waging the war the politicians weren’t allowing us to fight. I know not very many were killed overall: the brasshats kept telling us that. But those who were killed were shot in the back. Those EOKA buggers knew their way round those hills and we didn’t — we were sitting ducks, looking round the rocks and trying not to shit ourselves.’ Lewis, carried back to the attitudes of over thirty years before, did not even notice phrases he had long since abandoned in his present life.
    ‘And they nearly knocked you off?’
    ‘Knocked me off. Not Charlie. Yes, the buggers nearly got me. I was the lancejack in charge — there were only four of us; we’d started off as just a roadblock. But there was activity in the foothills just above the road, and we were ordered in by radio. As the NCO, I was at the front of the four, waving my rifle and trying to look like John Wayne. We were about to turn back and report that we’d found nothing when the incident occurred.’
    He had fallen back into the military phrase he had thought long forgotten, and Lambert responded in kind. ‘You came under fire?’
    ‘Yes. But there were no