The Endings Man Read Online Free PDF

felt as if at any moment he might be charged as an impostor and the wine taken from his hand. I’ll finish it, he thought, and then I’ll get out of here. Even when the murmur of voices stilled and someone began to make a speech, he stayed with his back to the room, for some reason unable to bring himself to turn round. Staring out at the night shapes below, he made out how good the cause was and twice heard the name of Brian Todd, once to applause.
    As the speech ended, a voice at his side said, ‘It’s Barclay Curle, isn’t it?’
    A portly man with a high colour and thinning white hair smiled down at him. He felt his usual surprise and unease at being recognised.
    ‘We met once before,’ the man said. ‘It was an event at the Book Festival. I’d published a memoir that year. I remember we became involved in a conversation about crime. You made the point that we both owed our livelihood to it.’
    A memory stirred. ‘The bench a more elevated one than the pen?’ And with a bloody pension. A High Court judge. McNaughtan, was it?
    The judge nodded at the window. ‘I never tire of that view. Even at night.’
    ‘It’s a fine view,’ said Curle neutrally, unlikely to tire of it since he wasn’t a member of the Club.
    ‘Were you at the inaugural meeting?’
    Meeting? Curle looked at him blankly. Of course, of the good cause. ‘Brian Todd asked me along this evening.’
    ‘Ah, Brian. Well, he’s been the moving spirit. Or his firm has. But he’s been the one who’s taken to do with it. He’s been a tower of strength from what I’m told.’
    ‘…He always had plenty of energy.’
    The judge cocked his head shrewdly. ‘Have you known him for long?’
    ‘I wouldn’t claim to know him well. We were at school together.’
    ‘That’s a claim in itself. We unpack ourselves to one another at school. The masks haven’t formed yet.’
    Curle shook his head. ‘People change. Don’t you think people change?’
    ‘Fundamentally? I doubt it. You know what the Jesuits say about seven-year-olds?’
    Fortunately, they were interrupted before Curle could speculate: yum, yum?
    ‘The very man,’ the judge exclaimed. ‘I was just hearing that you two were at school together.’
    ‘A long time ago,’ Brian Todd said. ‘When we met the other evening, Barclay didn’t recognise me.’
    ‘But you recognised him?’
    ‘Oh, yes.’
    ‘You must have changed more than he has then,’ the judge offered. ‘Either that or he left more of an impression on you than you did on him.’
    ‘He left an impression,’ Barclay Curle said.
    There must have been something in his tone that made the judge narrow those shrewd eyes.
    Todd laughed. ‘Some people,’ he said, ‘manage to keep their boyish looks.’
    In a moment, with a parting pleasantry, he drew Barclay away from the judge. The affair was winding down but still it took ten minutes to get out of the room as the accountant ran a gauntlet of well-wishers. In a quiet room on the first floor, they sat over coffee and looked at one another in silence.
    Curle, who didn’t take sugar, found himself spooning it in and stirring the cup for something to do.
    ‘You’re not in the phone book,’ Todd said.
    ‘No. We’re ex-directory.’
    ‘Too many fans calling you?’
    ‘No. It’s a long story.’
    ‘Aren’t stories your thing?’
    ‘I don’t feel like telling this one.’
    Todd leaned forward. ‘I do like your books,’ he said, ‘but that wasn’t the only reason for wanting to talk, of course. I heard that interview on the radio. Where you talked about being bullied at school.’
    ‘If you’re wondering, was I talking about you, the answer’s yes.’
    Todd blinked and sat back. ‘You can’t still be angry with me? I thought in that interview you were just talking for effect. You’d said something of the same sort before. About being bullied at school. In an article in a magazine. My wife read it to me.’
    ‘You’d talked to her about me?’
    ‘No,