Death of a Nobody Read Online Free PDF Page A

indeed, the flat-owners were often pleased enough to slip Lewis a little something for his role as agent in securing this quiet and surprisingly effective little workman for them.
    And this work fitted in very well with the other activity which Charlie Pegg had developed to supplement his income. He found himself in and out of most of the flats in Old Mead Park from time to time. Word went round that he was honest and trustworthy, so that the busy residents often left Charlie in the flats alone. They relied on George Lewis to provide whatever supervision and information were necessary; after all, what was the point of paying the salary of a full-time porter in an impressive dark-green uniform if he was not to be useful on occasions like this?
    In one small way, Charlie Pegg was not as scrupulously honest as the occupants believed. Nothing was ever removed from these well-fitted homes. Nothing physical, that is: information was a different matter. It was surprising what letters and documents people left lying about. In time he extended that phrase to include unlocked drawers. Charlie read anything that he thought might be helpful to him, paying special attention to the increasing number of flats which had that intriguing modern phenomenon, the fax machine.
    Sometimes messages actually printed themselves out before his fascinated eyes in the deserted rooms; it seemed to him not only technological magic but an open invitation to someone with his lively interest in what was going on amongst the entrepreneurial fraternity. In the case of one or two residents who became of special interest to him, he even ran through the messages left on the telephone answering machines, taking care to leave the tape exactly where it had been before he began to listen. There was rarely anything damning there, but it was useful to know who had been trying to contact one or two of the residents. People like James Berridge, for instance.
    He did not tell Amy about this little adjunct to his working day. She might not have understood.
    Charlie Pegg’s squirrel-like and retentive mind stored away all he learned in Old Mead Park and all the other places he visited to deploy his carpenter’s skills. And he used it to supplement the information, gossip and rumour he picked up in the more obvious hunting grounds for one of his peculiar calling. In the less reputable pubs of Gloucester and the surrounding area, the little snout kept up his connections with the criminal world. Many of the petty criminals who were the only ones he spoke with thought that he was still involved with crime, and he fostered that impression. As he never went to prison again, they gradually came to think of him as a shrewd operator, who associated with the big boys in crimes that went unsolved.
    That irony appealed to Charlie Pegg, once he came belatedly to its recognition. He played up to his image a little; it was no more than an occasional knowing smile, never anything as blatant as a wink, but it was sufficient to convince the not very intelligent men with whom he conversed that Charlie Pegg moved with big fish and in deep and murky waters.
    As indeed he did; but not in the way they thought. In discreet meetings in obscure places, Charlie passed on what he learned to John Lambert, the man who had been promoted in the years of their association from detective inspector to chief detective inspector and on to superintendent. Charlie was but dimly aware of these gradations in rank, but he took an obscure pride in the rise of his only police contact, the man who had given him help in finding the employment which enabled him to go straight all those years ago. Charlie even cherished the speculation that this rise might have been due in some small measure to the intelligence brought to him at infrequent intervals by his faithful snout. It was an illusion which Lambert was careful never to destroy.
    Statistically, ten years is a long time for a grass to survive without broken bones or