Brian Freemantle: The Run Around

He pulled the air into himself, panting, the effort burning his throat, grunting as he stumbled and collided with undergrowth that threatened to pull him down and tree branches which whipped his body and stung his face. The wetness, the torrential downpour, seemed to make it worse, which didn’t make sense because it should actually have helped, but in his terror it was difficult to think properly about anything. Only one important thought: keep running. Had to keep running: stay ahead of them all the time. Not get caught. Terrible if he got caught. Rather be killed than be caught. He’d do that, instead of being captured: refuse to stop when they shouted the order, so that they’d shoot. What if the bullets didn’t kill, only wounded? Unlikely. He knew, like he knew so much else, that the border guards carried machine pistols so it wouldn’t be a single shot. A sprayed burst. People rarely survived a sprayed burst: weren’t intended to. Definitely wouldn’t stop, not if they got close enough positively to challenge him. Far better to be killed. Why the hell couldn’t it have gone as he’d planned? Dignified. Not like this. Not running like some common criminal through some forest he didn’t know towards some people he didn’t know. Would he already have been listed as a criminal? That was how they’d regard him. Worse than a criminal; far worse. That’s why he couldn’t allow himself to be caught. He stopped, needing the wet-slimed support of a tree to stay upright, legs trembling from the unaccustomed running. The rain slapped and hissed into other trees all around him but beyond he could hear the other noises, the shouts of those pursuing him, calling to maintain contact with each other. And — worse — the barking and baying of their dogs. Thank God for the storm: the wet would confuse his scent. He was terrified of dogs. What if they didn’t shoot when he refused to stop? Set the dogs on to him instead, to bring him down? He openly whimpered at the uncertainty, pushing himself away from the tree, staggering on. Not much further: it couldn’t be. Two miles, according to the map. He must have already run more than two miles. It felt like a hundred. Time was more important than distance, though. Ten o’clock: with fifteen minutes as an emergency margin. Ten-fifteen then, before they drove off. He stopped again, holding his watch close to his face but it was too dark. Dear God, please don’t let it be ten o’clock yet: don’t let them go and leave me. And then he saw it, the briefest on-off signal of the car headlights, away to his left. He jerked towards it, aware his strength was nearly gone and almost at once tripped over a tree root, crashing full length into bracken and other roots and driving what little breath was left from his body. The dogs sounded much nearer now, their movement as well as their barking, as if they’d been released. He crawled forward, on his hands and knees, unable immediately to stand. The lights came again and he clawed upright against another tree, fleeing headlong towards it in a final desperate effort, knowing if he fell again he would not be able to get up, hands outstretched more in plea than for protection. The vehicle’s shape formed before him and he tried to shout but it emerged only as a strained croak, so he was practically upon them before they saw him. Two men thrust from the car, to catch him as he fell, with the same movement bundling him roughly into the rear seat.

It was a long time before he could speak. When he could he said, croaking still: ‘Safe? Am I safe?’

‘You’re safe,’ assured a third man, who was sitting beside the driver. ‘Welcome to the West, Comrade Novikov.’

He’d missed a pin. Charlie Muffin had been sure he’d got every one as he unpacked the new shirt but now he knew he hadn’t because something sharp and pointed kept jabbing into his neck, particularly if he swallowed heavily. And he’d done that a few times since entering the bank manager’s office.

‘An overdraft?’ echoed the man. His name was Roberts and he was newly appointed, so it was the first time they’d met.

‘Just the facility,’ said Charlie. The pin didn’t hurt so much if he kept his head twisted to one side but if he did that it appeared he was furtively trying to avoid the man’s eyes.

The bank manager, who was bespectacled and sparse haired, gazed down at some papers on his desk, running a pen down several lines of figures. It seemed a long time before he looked up. There was no expression on his face. He said: ‘There were numerous occasions under my predecessor when you went into overdraft without any formal arrangement having been agreed.’

‘Never a lot,’ said Charlie, defensively.

‘Two hundred pounds, last November,’ said Roberts.

The last time Harkness put him on suspension for fiddling his expenses, remembered Charlie. Why were accountants and bank managers always the same, parsimonious buggers acting as if the money they handled was personally theirs. He said: ‘There was a delay, in the accounts department. Industrial action.’

The man frowned down at Charlie’s file and then up again, failing to find what he was seeking. He said: ‘What exactly is it that you do, Mr Muffin?’

I’m an agent who spends too much time getting my balls caught in the vice while you go safely home every night on the six-ten, thought Charlie. Slipping easily into the prepared legend, he said: ‘I work for the government.’

‘Doing what?’ persisted Roberts.

‘Department of Health and Social Security,’ said Charlie. ‘Personnel.’ It even sounded like the lie it was.

‘I suppose that could be regarded as protected employment,’ said the bank manager, in apparent concession.

‘Very safe,’ assured Charlie. There had to be six occasions when he’d almost been killed, once when his own people had set him up. And then there’d been two years in jail and the time in Russia, when he’d been bait, hooked by his own side again. Bastards.

‘How much?’ demanded Roberts.

‘Ten thousand would be nice,’ suggested Charlie.

The other man stared in continued blankness across the desk. There was complete silence in the room, apart from the sound of the London traffic muted by the double glazing. At last Roberts said: ‘Ten thousand pounds is always nice, Mr Muffin.’

Awkward sod, judged Charlie. If he’d called himself the chairman of some hole-in-the wall company with a posh name and asked for ten million there would have been lunches at the Savoy and hospitality marquees at Henley and Wimbledon. So far he hadn’t even been offered a glass of supermarket sherry and didn’t reckon he was going to be. ‘Just the facility, like I said,’ he reminded. ‘I doubt it would ever go that high.’

Roberts made another unsuccessful search of Charlie’s file and then said: ‘I don’t see anything here about your owning your own house?’

‘I live in a rented flat,’ said Charlie. Box would be a better description: poxy box at that.

‘Insurance policies?’

It would be easier to get cover on the life of a depressed kamikaze pilot with a death wish than upon himself, Charlie guessed. He said: ‘There’s a department scheme.’

‘It’s customary — indeed, it’s a bank regulation — for overdrafts to be secured,’ lectured Roberts.

‘The company scheme is index-linked, to allow for inflation,’ offered Charlie, hopefully.

‘What exactly do you want an overdraft for?’ asked the man.

There was a major reason and a lot of small ones. Harkness putting him back on the expenses stop list for not having identifiable meal receipts for one. And because taxis were safer but more expensive after the pubs and the drinking clubs closed and all the street lights blurred together in a linked line. And then there was the fact he had not had a winner in weeks and the bookmaker was jumping up and down. And because he’d already tried to get cards from American Express and Diners and Access and Mastercharge and they’d all turned him down. Searching for an acceptable reason, Charlie said: ‘I thought about a small car. Second-hand, of course. Maybe a new refrigerator.’