Queen Camilla Read Online Free PDF

rookie an idiot? ‘The new satellites can see inside a fucking mountain! They can pick up a whisper. They’re listening to us now.’
    ‘Who is?’ asked Dwayne.
    Lancer activated the camera at the bottom of Prince Charles’s garden and watched Charles pleading with his hens to give him an occasional egg. He said, ‘The Yanks. The Chinese. The Russians. The French. The Arabs. The World.’
    ‘And are we listening to them?’
    ‘Of course we are,’ said Lancer.
    Dwayne wouldn’t let it go. ‘So everybody knows everything?’ he asked.
    Lancer watched Charles walk discontentedly up the garden path and go into his kitchen and said, ‘We have to work on that premise, lad, yes.’
    ‘So what’s the point?’
    ‘Ah, now that I can’t tell you, Dwayne. As an employee of a public–private partnership I’m subject to commercial confidentiality.’
    Dwayne Lockhart was a local man who had made good. Unable to read at the age of eleven, he had transferred to the Arthur Grice Academy and been taught the basics of reading and writing by Mr Nutting, a shambolic eccentric English teacher who made the children laugh and kept order in the classroom by raising an eyebrow. To Dwayne’s distress, Mr Nutting was sacked for ‘failing to adhere to the national curriculum’. Before he left he told his classes that they must read at least one book a week. ‘Books should be as vital to you as food, water and oxygen,’ he said.
    He had given them all a sheet of paper on which was written a list of the books he wanted them to read.Dwayne still kept the paper inside his wallet. He had read all of the books on the list, but he kept the paper because Mr Nutting had scrawled on the bottom of his booklist: ‘Dwayne, nobody can choose the family they are born into. Both of my parents were alcoholics. You are an intelligent lad. Don’t waste your life. Yours, Simon Nutting.’
    Dwayne had told nobody else in the class that Mr Nutting’s parents were alkies or that Mr Nutting had put it down in writing that he, Dwayne Lockhart, was intelligent, but he read the words to himself when his own parents were drunk and fighting in the street, when they called him a fucking gay boff because he was always reading.
    When Dwayne and Peter Penny were alone in front of a bank of cameras in the surveillance room, Peter said, ‘What are we looking for?’
    Remembering Inspector Lancer’s mini-lecture on surveillance, Dwayne said, ‘Unusual or suspicious behaviour.’
    Peter said, ‘But everybody on the screen looks suspicious.’
    Dwayne agreed, he was looking at the on-screen image of Charles and Camilla’s living room. Charles was writing at a small bureau. Camilla was talking to one tall and two small dogs as if they were not only human beings but had valid opinions. ‘So you think I should have my highlights done, do you, Leo?’
    Dwayne could not resist zooming in on the journal Charles was writing.
    September 25th
    Still no eggs. iam at my wits' end. What more can I do? I have provided the hens with a decent diet and a splendid coop. I lavish attention on them, but nothing back – they barely acknowledge my existence. I am utterly crushed by their ingratitude.
    Camilla and I had an extremely distressing row earlier. I was left trembling and near to tears. God knows, I am the most tolerant of men, but I am finding her inability to stop smoking increasingly irritating. The sight of Eccles, one of God's innocent creatures, with a cigarette hanging from her beak caused me intolerable pain.
    Camilla and i are now reconciled, although I notice it was not me she consulted about the advisability of highlights, but Leo – who is ill-qualified to give advice on hair. His own coat is permanently bedraggled however much i brush it.
    Dwayne wondered if somebody, somewhere had watched him struggling to write poetry in his bedroom or playing air guitar in front of the mirrored wardrobe door. He blushed at the thought of what else they might have