Len Deighton - Spy Hook

'We have to move with the times, Bernard.' Dicky looked down at the appointments book that his secretary had left open for him. 'Oh, by the bye,' he said casually. Too casually. 'You keep mentioning that fellow Prettyman…'

'I don't keep mentioning him,' I said. 'I mentioned him once. You said you didn't remember him.'

'I don't want to quibble,' said Dicky. 'The point is that his wife has been making a nuisance of herself lately. She cornered Morgan when he was in die FO the other day. Started on about a pension and all that kind of stuff.'

'His widow,' I said.

'Verily! Widow. I said widow.'

'You said wife.'

'Wife. Widow. What damned difference does it make.'

'It makes a difference to Jim Prettyman,' I said. 'It makes him dead.'

'Whatever she is, I don't want anyone encouraging her.'

'Encouraging her to do what?'

'I wish you wouldn't be so otiose,' said Dicky. He'd been reading Vocabulary Means Power again, I noticed that it was missing from the shelf behind his desk. 'She shouldn't be button-holing senior staff. It would serve her right if Morgan made an official complaint about her.'

'She wields a lot of clout over there,' I reminded him. 'I wouldn't advise Morgan to make an enemy of her. He might end up on his arse.'

Dicky wet his thin lips and nodded. 'Yes. Well. You're right. Morgan knows that. Far better that we all close ranks and ignore her.'

'Jim Prettyman was one of us,' I said. 'He worked downstairs.'

'That was a long time ago. No one told him to go and work in Washington DC. What a place that is! My God, that town has some of the worst crime figures in the whole of North America.' So Dicky had been doing his homework.

I said, This is not official then? This… this not encouraging Prettyman's widow?"

He looked at me and then looked out of the window. 'It's not official,' he said with measured care. 'It's good advice. It's advice that might save someone a lot of trouble and grief.'

'That's what I wanted to know,' I said. 'Shall we get the heading for the D-G's report?'

'Very well,' said Dicky. He looked at me and nodded again. I wondered if he knew that Cindy Matthews – one-time Mrs Prettyman – had invited me to a dinner party that evening.

'And by the way, Dicky,' I said. That lion looks very good on the floor in here.'

Mrs Cindy Matthews, as she styled herself, lived in considerable comfort. There was new Italian furniture, old French wine, a Swiss dishwasher and the sort of Japanese hi-fi that comes with a thick instruction manual. They'd never faced the expense that children bring of course, and I suppose the rise in London house prices had provided them with a fat profit on the big house they'd been buying in Edgware. Now she lived in a tiny house off the King's Road, a thoroughfare noted for its punks, pubs and exotic boutiques. It was no more than four small rooms placed one upon the other, with the lowest one – a kitchen and dining room – below street level. But it was a fashionable choice: the sort of house that estate agents called 'bijou' and newly divorced advertising men hankered after.

There were candles and pink roses on the dining table, and solid silver cutlery, and more drinking glasses than I could count. Through the front window we could see the ankles of people walking past the house, and they could see what we were eating. Which is perhaps why we had the sort of meal that women's magazines photograph from above. Three paper-thin slices of avocado arranged alongside a tiny puddle of tomato sauce and a slice of kiwi fruit. The second course was three thin slices of duck breast with a segment of mango and a lettuce leaf. We ended with a thin slice of Cindy's delicious home-made chocolate roulade. I ate a lot of bread and cheese.

Cindy was a small pale-faced young woman with pointed nose and little cupid's bow mouth. She had her wavy brunette hair cut short. I suppose it was easier to arrange and more suited to her senior position. Her dress was equally severe: plain brown wool and simply cut. She'd always been brimful of nervous energy, and arranging this dinner party had not lessened her restless anxiety. Now she fussed about the table, asking everyone whether they wanted more champagne, Perrier or Chablis, wholemeal or white rolls, and making sure that everyone had a table napkin. There was a tacit sigh of relief when she finally sat down.

It was a planned evening. Cindy always planned everything in advance. The food was measured, the cooking times synchronized, the white wines were chilled and reds at the right temperature. The rolls were warmed, the butter soft, the guests carefully prompted and the conversation predictable. It wasn't one of those evenings when you can hardly squeeze a word into the gabble, the guests stay too late, drink too much and lurch out of the house excitedly scribbling each other's phone numbers into their Filofax notebooks. It was dull.

Perhaps it was a tribute to Cindy's planning that she'd invited me on an evening when Gloria did a class in mathematics, part of her determination to do well at university, and so I went along to dinner on my own.

The evening started off very sedately, as evenings were likely to do when Sir Giles Streeply-Cox was the guest of honour. A muscular old man with bushy white Pickwickian sideburns and a florid complexion, 'Creepy-Pox', had been the scourge of the Foreign Office in his day. Ministers and Ambassadors went in terror of him. Since retirement he lived in Suffolk and grew roses while his wife made picture frames for all the local watercolour artists. But the old man was still attending enough committees to get his fares and expenses paid when he came to London.

It was the first time I'd ever seen the fearful Creepy close-to, but this evening he was on his best behaviour. Cindy knew exactly how to handle him. She let him play the part of the charming old great man of Whitehall. He slipped into this role effortlessly but there was no mistaking the ogre that lurked behind the smiles and self-deprecating asides. Lady Streeply-Cox said little. She was of a generation that was taught not to mention the food or the table arrangements, and talking about her husband's work was as bad as talking about TV. So she sat and smiled at her husband's jokes, which meant she didn't have much to do all evening.

There were two Diplomatic Corps people. Harry Baxter, a middle-aged second secretary from our embassy in Berne, and his wife Pat. She had a heavy gold necklace, pink-tinted hair and told old jokes – with punch-lines in schweizer-deutsch – about bankers with unpronounceable names.

When Cindy asked Baxter what exciting things had been happening in Berne lately, old Streeply-Cox answered for him by saying the only exciting thing that happened to the diplomatic staff in Berne was losing their bread crusts in the fondue. At which both Streeply-Coxes laughed shrilly.

There was a young couple too. Simon was a shy young chap in his early twenties who'd been teaching English in a private school in Bavaria. It was not an experience he'd enjoyed. 'You see these mean little German kids and you understand why the Germans have started so many wars,' he said. 'And you see those teachers and you know why the Germans lost them.' Now Simon had become a theatre critic on a giveaway magazine and achieved a reputation as a perfectionist and connoisseur by condemning everything he wrote about. With him there was a quiet girl with smudged lipstick. She was wearing a man's tweed jacket many sizes too big for her. They smiled at each other all through dinner and left early.

After dinner we all went upstairs and had coffee and drinks in a room with an elaborate gas fire that hissed loudly. Creepy had one demi-tasse of decaffeinated coffee and a chocolate mint, then his wife swigged down two large brandies and drove him home.