Standing by the Wall by Mick Herron EPUB & PDF – Details Online
- Author: Mick Herron
- Genre: International Mystery & Crime, Espionage Thrillers
- Publish Date: 1 November 2022
- Size: 4 MB
- Format: PDF / EPUB
- Status: Avail for Download
- Price: Free
Those who knew him said it was how he’d have wanted to go. Dieter
Hess died in his armchair, surrounded by his books; a half-full glass of 2008
Burgundy at his elbow, a half-smoked Montecristo in the ashtray on the floor.
In his lap, Yeats’s Collected—the yellow-jacketed Macmillan edition—and
in the CD tray Pärt’s Für Alina, long hushed by the time Bachelor found the
body, but its lingering silences implicit in the air, settling like dust on faded
surfaces. Those who knew him said it was how he’d have wanted to go, but
John Bachelor suspected Dieter would sooner have drunk more wine, read a
little longer, and finished his cigar.
Dieter had been sick, but he hadn’t been
tired of life. Out of respect, or possibly mild superstition, Bachelor waited a
while in that quiet room, thinking about their relationship—professional but
friendly—before nodding to himself, as if satisfied Dieter had cleared the
finishing line, and calling Regent’s Park. Dieter was long retired from the
world of spooks, but there were protocols to be observed. When a spy passes,
his cupboards need clearing out.
There was a wake, though nobody called it that. Most of the attendees had
never known Dieter Hess, or the world he’d moved in as an Active; they rode
desks at Regent’s Park, and his death was simply an excuse for a drink and a
little stress relief. If they had to come over pious at the name of a dead
German who’d fed them titbits in the Old Days—which were either Good or
Bad, depending on the speaker—that was fine.
So as the evening wore on the
gathering split into two, the larger group issuing regular gales of laughter and
ordering ever more idiosyncratic rounds of drinks, and the smaller huddling
in a nook off the main bar and talking about Dieter, and other Actives now
defunct, and quietly pickling itself in its past.
The pub was off Great Portland Street; nicely traditional-looking from the
road, and not too buggered about inside. John Bachelor had never been here
before—for reasons that probably don’t need spelling out, Regent’s Park had
never settled on a local—but had developed affection for it over the previous
two and a quarter hours. Dieter too had faded into a warm memory. In life,
like many of Bachelor’s charges, the old man could be prickly and
demanding, but now that his complaints of not enough money and too little
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