The Edge Read Online Free Page B

prevented it, it’s almost impossible to stop a determined suicide, you can’t force people to go on living. Short of imprisonment, of course. Anyway, if she was any sort of a hostage, she didn’t know it. It wasn’t that sort of guilt.’
    I offered him one of my so far uneaten sandwiches. He took one absentmindedly and began to chew, and I ate one myself. The problem of what to do about Filmer lay in morose wrinkles across his brow and I’d heard he considered the collapse of the conspiracy trial a personal failure.
    ‘I went to see Ezra Gideon myself after you and John Millington flushed out Welfram,’ he said. ‘I showed Ezra your photograph of Welfram. I thought he would faint, he went so white, but he still wouldn’t speak. And now, God damn it, in one day we’ve lost both contacts. We don’t know who Filmer will get to next, or if he’s already active again, and we’ll have the devil’s own job spotting another frightener.’
    ‘He won’t have found one himself yet, I shouldn’t think,’ I said. ‘Certainly not one as effective. They aren’t that common, are they?’
    ‘The police say they’re getting younger.’
    He looked unusually discouraged for someone whose success rate in all other fields was impressive. The lost battle rankled: the victories had been shrugged off. I drank some wine and waited for the commandingofficer to emerge from the worried man, waited for him to unfold the plan of campaign.
    He surprised me, however, by saying, ‘I didn’t think you’d stick this job this long.’
    ‘Why not?’
    ‘You know damn well why not. You’re not dim. Clement told me the pile your father left you simply multiplied itself for twenty years, growing like a mushroom. And still does. Like a whole field of mushrooms. Why aren’t you out there picking them?’
    I sat back in my chair wondering what to say. I knew very well why I didn’t pick them, but I wasn’t sure it would sound sensible.
    ‘Go on,’ he said. ‘I need to know.’
    I glanced at his intent eyes and sensed his concentration, and realised suddenly that he might mean in some obscure way to base the future plan on my answer.
    ‘It isn’t so easy,’ I said slowly, ‘and don’t laugh, it really isn’t so easy to be able to afford anything you want. Short of the Crown Jewels and trifles like that. Well … I don’t find it easy. I’m like a child loose in a sweet shop. I could eat and eat … and make myself sick … and greedy … and a jellyfish. So I keep my hands off the sweets and occupy my time following crooks. Is that any sort of answer?’
    He grunted noncommittally. ‘How strong is the temptation?’
    ‘On freezing cold days in sleet and wind at say Doncaster races, very strong indeed. At Ascot in the sunshine I don’t feel it.’
    ‘Be serious,’ he said. ‘Put it another way. How strong is your commitment to the Security Service?’
    ‘They’re really two different things,’ I said. ‘I don’t pick too many mushrooms because I want to retain order … to keep my feet well planted. Mushrooms can be hallucinogenic, after all. I work for you, for the Service, rather than in banking or farming and so on, because I like it and I’m not all that bad at what I do, really, and it’s useful, and I’m not terribly good at twiddling my thumbs. I don’t know that I’d die for you. Is that what you want?’
    His lips twitched. He said, ‘Fair enough. How do you feel about danger nowadays? I know you did risky enough things on your travels.’
    After a brief pause, I said, ‘What sort of danger?’
    ‘Physical, I suppose.’ He rubbed a thumb and forefinger down his nose and looked at me with steady eyes. ‘Perhaps.’
    ‘What do you want me to do?’
    We had come to the point of the meeting, but he backed away from it still.
    I knew in a way that it was because of what he’d called the mushrooms that he’d grown into the way of speaking to me as he did, proposing but seldom giving straight orders. He