The Enemy Within Read Online Free PDF Page A

with a full shift still to come that wasn’t really an option.
    They had headed thirty miles out of their way, to a pub west of Buxton, to find a location where no one would pay them any attention. Here it was all ploughman’s lunches and the local darts league. If you ignored the television in the corner, you could almost imagine you were back in the 1950s, in that fictitious England of warm beer, buxom wenches and fair play that the dullest politicians tried to invoke when they went whoring for votes at election time.
    What a load of old bollocks.
    Charlie’s idea of a pub was more the kind of place his dad had made him stand outside as a kid in the Gorbals – Goldie’s had sawdust on the floor, spittoons by the bar and absolutely no women anywhere in sight. The memory made him smile. He could still remember the first time he’d been allowed inside, a month before his thirteenth birthday. His old man, a welder at Yarrows, bought him a half pint of Tennent’s, which he struggled through, despite hating the taste.
    Goldie’s, that was a proper bar, not this kind of poncey southern shit hole. Breaking out of his reverie, he looked around. The place was empty, apart from the landlord and a couple of old-timers, who were sitting at a table in the back nursing half pints of Brown Ale. Looking out of the window, across rolling fields and the Peak District National Park beyond, Ross felt a strange mixture of peace and unease. The picket lines and murdered old ladies seemed a million miles away. But they were real, nevertheless. This, on the other hand, was not. Two coppers and a trainee spook sitting in a pub discussing murder and God knows what else?
    What the hell were they playing at? His father, a dyed-in-the-wool socialist, would have been deeply unimpressed by these cloak and dagger games. Mercifully, however, the old man had died more than a decade ago. Times changed. Industries died. The shipyards had learned that harsh lesson in the 1970s. Now it was the turn of the miners.
    Despite being on the right side of history, the grizzled sergeant was already regretting doing a favour for his old colleague, Rob Holt. And if he’d known MI5 was involved, he would have refused, point blank.
    Looking up from his whisky, he gestured at the young man sitting next to Holt. Happily munching on a packet of ready-salted Tudor crisps with a glass of Coke on the table in front of him, Martin Palmer looked less like a spy and more like a minor character out of a P. G. Wodehouse story.
    ‘What I don’t understand is why he is still here,’ Ross grumbled.
    ‘There’s no need to be so chippy, Charlie.’ Rob Holt carefully placed his pint of Burton Ale on the table and gave the youngster a pat on the shoulder. ‘Martin here is only doing his job. What happened is rather . . . unfortunate, certainly. But it is hardly his fault.’
    Sticking another crisp in his gob, Palmer gave an apologetic shrug.
    The sergeant tossed back his whisky and slapped the glass on the table. ‘It’s a right fucking mess.’
    ‘You worry too much, Charlie.’ Holt smiled reassuringly. ‘It’s just a coincidence.’
    ‘Is that right?’
    ‘Come on, sergeant,’ Palmer trilled. ‘Do you think we go around knocking off old ladies?’
    I think a genius like you is capable of doing just about anything, Ross thought sourly, as long as it’s stupid enough.
    A couple of walkers appeared through the doorway, looked around and began making their way to the bar. Palmer leaned across the table and lowered his voice. ‘I had nothing to do with the death of poor Mrs Slater,’ he hissed.
    ‘Is that right?’
    ‘Yes, it is,’ said Palmer indignantly. Waving a hand in the air, he hit his glass, which had to be rescued by Holt before it fell over.
    Charlie Ross shook his head. On the bright side, at least the kid didn’t look capable of killing anyone, even a granny.
    ‘All I did,’ Palmer explained, ‘was go and pay Mrs Slater a visit.’
    ‘Just before