Death of a Nobody Read Online Free PDF

worse retribution. Charlie Pegg had already beaten the odds. Lambert knew just how heavy those odds were against his man, but he was careful not to remind him of them. A snout whose cover has been blown can never again be of any use to the forces of crime detection.
    Charlie Pegg put together what he learned in his legitimate work with what he heard from his promptings during his evening visits to the pubs. He found it an interesting combination: each area tended to make more sense of the other, so that what might have remained obscure hardened into fact in his experienced hands. His income from informing had gone up steadily over the years, as his information had proved reliable and a steady stream of small crimes had been brought to court.
    Now he was near to a big one. What he hoped to confirm in the next few days would be worth at least a grand, perhaps more. And he had read in the paper that some grasses might soon be put on a regular salary from the police budget. That would be respectability indeed, and a nice little earner on top of his regular work. Charlie Pegg, who was not given to flights of imagination, dreamed a little about the future.
    For a little while, he forgot how dangerous an activity snouting could be.

 
    5
     
    Gabrielle Berridge would have been surprised to learn that Charles Pegg knew anything at all about her affairs.
    When she spoke of him at all, it was to recommend his standard of work. Charlie had fitted a new waste disposal unit in her sink when she finally lost patience with the one originally fitted by the builders. She liked the kitchen to function as it should, though God knows she gave it little enough to do; the Berridges had no children and rarely ate in the flat together. And Charlie had made a good job of the cupboard which housed the water softener she had insisted on installing. James had been quite annoyed when she put Pegg into his study to build a cabinet for all the papers he left about, but she did not mind annoying James nowadays; sometimes she positively enjoyed it.
    As far as Gabrielle was concerned, Pegg had been entirely satisfactory, not least because she had scarcely been aware of him. She arranged things so that he should do his work when she was out of the place, and thus cause as little disturbance as possible to her smooth routine of life.
    This had been for years a rather sterile order, but now it had acquired a glamour, an unpredictability, even an occasional coarseness which she found unexpectedly exciting. These things came to her in the form of Ian Faraday. She would have thought at one time that she could never become an adultress; that was just another proof that you should never become too set in your ideas. As Ian had repeatedly emphasized to her.
    She watched his broad back with a secret indulgent smile as he sat up in bed and looked at his watch. It’s time we were moving,’ he said.
    He did not sound at all convinced, and she liked that. Firm in getting her into bed, firm in bed, infirm about getting out, she had said to him an hour earlier. He encouraged her to talk dirty, and she was getting better at it. She would have been appalled to know that quiet little Charlie Pegg had heard some of the phone messages to which she had in due course responded.
    She ran her index finger lightly up the undulations of his spine, then turned it so that her nail dug in lightly on the return journey. ‘You don’t mean you’re not up to it any more, do you?’ she said. ‘Shot your bolt already, have you, big boy?’
    She stretched her lithe form suggestively beneath the hotel sheet, making sure at the same time that the silk still covered her. When you passed forty, it was safer for the curves to be felt than studied. Especially when you were fortunate enough to have a younger lover.
    Ian Faraday sighed deeply, pretending reluctance, then drew in the sustenance of an enormous breath. ‘Oh, all right, then! You talked me into it, you shameless, demanding woman.’