Read Death on the Eleventh Hole for Free Online

your own perspective, it is. You must have thought about retirement.’
    ‘I have. Often.’
    ‘You’ve earned it.’
    ‘Thank you. I’m not sure I’m quite ready for it, but I’m sure I’ll adjust.’
    ‘You and me both, John. I’ve been wondering how I’ll cope with it, these last few years. They say you adjust to it more rapidly than you expect. That you wonder within a few months how you ever found time to go to work.’
    Lambert was suddenly resentful of the ubiquitous ‘they’, with their easy consolations and their vapid platitudes. He said with a doleful smile, ‘Well, at least I’ve got my rose beds going strong. The copper’s traditional retirement occupation.’ He loved his garden, yet its pleasures seemed to him now an evasion, a retreat from the harsh reality of the human scrapheap.
    Gibson said, ‘It’s the usual thing: a central directive that has to be implemented by everyone, whatever the individual circumstances. They won’t even look at special cases, with people who’ve already had extensions to their service.’
    ‘And I thought they were expanding the police service, taking on more people to combat the increase in crime.’ Lambert found himself quoting the government’s recent announcement, and hated himself for this first hint of bitterness.
    ‘They’re expanding the service all right. But they also want to improve the career prospects of those already in. Senior ranks over a certain age are being pushed out to make way for promotions.’
    Lambert managed a genuine grin at last. ‘It’s a reasonable enough policy. We’d both have been pushing for it thirty years ago.’
    ‘And the old farts would have been keeping us firmly in our places! Oh, you’re right, John, it’s a reasonable enough policy. But there should be room for exceptions, for a special case to be made out in particular circumstances.’
    ‘You know as well as I do that the policy would disappear under hundreds of applications, hundreds of “special cases”, if they allowed room for appeals.’ Lambert smiled, suddenly conscious of the irony in his arguing for the very axe which was cutting off his working head.
    Gibson stood up. He was genuinely sorry to lose this most successful of his policemen, but he was enough of a tactician to know when to call a halt. ‘I’m very sorry, John. You know it wasn’t my doing. If I can find any loophole in the directive, you know I will.’
    Lambert nodded, scarcely hearing him now, conscious only that he was being dismissed, that he wanted to get out of the room with whatever dignity he could summon. He turned at the door, not wanting to ask the question, but knowing that he must be certain of the details of this bombshell. ‘How long?’
    Douglas Gibson, who had been relaxing in the thought of an unpleasant task completed, looked apologetic again. ‘Your next birthday, I’m afraid. They won’t go beyond that. Everyone here will want to say goodbye to you, but we’ll talk about all that later.’
    Lambert nodded. ‘Three and a half months, then. Better go and get on with the job. Tidy things up for the new man!’
    He was immediately sorry for that cheap parting shot, felt himself diminished by it as he went carefully back down the familiar stairs. He stopped for a moment on a deserted corridor of the floor below, looking out over the lush green spring countryside of Gloucestershire beyond the stone buildings of the old market town. He felt like screaming at this cheerful, uncaring world, for its beauty and its strong new growth, as he had done when he heard of Christine’s cancer five years earlier; as he had done nearly thirty years ago, when they had lost one of their children in infancy.
    He had forgotten he had ever known that feeling until it renewed itself now. He told himself that he should be ashamed, that retirement was not to be compared with any sort of death. Yet it was for him, he was sure, a kind of bereavement.
    He went back into his office,