The Private Sector (A Peter Marlow spy thriller) by Joseph Hone

Author:Joseph Hone [Hone, Joseph]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
ISBN: 9780571315697
Publisher: Faber & Faber
Published: 2014-06-18T18:30:00+00:00

He poured a small glass of sherry for his mother. He couldn’t bear the stuff, even the smell of it; yet he’d liked it long ago. Something to do with his father? Another way of getting at him? The locked tantalus in the Thames Valley library; the butler had a second key and they’d taken gulps, at it together; another conspiracy, not long after the Russian doll. Or was it just that, with age, one required the ultimate refinement of the grape: fine, mellowed brandy? Williams amused himself with these sybaritic reflections on long-ago tastes and present passions—fiddling with memory, the panorama of his life, to no purpose—like an idle man on a pinball machine: dabbing in the shallows of thought.

He’d done his thinking for that day, he decided, come clear of the dangerous passages. Now it was time to merge into the background again. You had to know when to switch off. He’d have a drink round the corner in the Wellington: there was a new Guards battalion in town and rumour of two Swedish frigates on a courtesy visit just berthed below Tower Bridge …

The great thing to remember, he thought, if they were on to you, was to keep the pattern—exactly; no panic, do the things you’d always done, stick to type. That was what saved you. When the others lost their heads, broke faith and started running for the night ferry—you just carried on as you’d always done, doing the obvious thing. And then, if they were looking for you, they looked right through you. They never saw you at all.

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