The Inscrutable Charlie Muffin

by Brian Freemantle

  Another man, uniformed like his colleague on the ground floor, awaited Charlie when the lift doors opened.

  ‘Please,’ he said, inviting Charlie to follow.

  This time the photographs around the walls were of world leaders. Charlie identified the nearest as President Giscard d’Estaing and Pierre Trudeau. And on easels this time because the wall area was entirely glass, giving a 180 degree view of Hong Kong, Kowloon and the mainland beyond.

  There were uniformed and armed guards in the corridor and even in three outer offices through which they had to pass to reach the door to Lu’s personal suite. It would be virtually impossible to make an unauthorised entry, Charlie realised.

  Lu’s office was very large, created from the corner of the building with the views of Kowloon and the New Territories. Rotating smoked-glass slats running from floor to ceiling gave the room an unexpectedly subdued lighting compared to the brightness of the other rooms through which he had passed. And there was a further surprise. Here there were no photographs. A bookcase occupied one of the two unglassed walls, broken only by a doorway, and along the other were showcases containing models of boats.

  Lu rose as Charlie entered, hurrying around his desk, hand outstretched, teeth glinting.

  ‘Welcome,’ he said, the hiss in his voice only just evident. ‘Welcome indeed.’

  For how long? wondered Charlie.

  The millionaire personally led him to a couch away from the desk, then sat down in a matching easy chair. He was a puppy-dog fat, polished sort of person, thought Charlie. But it was only surface plumpness. Beneath it he recognised a very hard man.

  ‘Some refreshment?’

  ‘No thank you,’ said Charlie.

  ‘Nothing at all?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  Charlie looked around the office again.

  ‘What is it?’ asked Lu.

  ‘I was expecting your son to be present.’

  ‘John?’

  ‘You appear to spend a lot of time together.’

  ‘No father could ask for a more dutiful son,’ he said.

  ‘Isn’t son-to-father loyalty a Chinese tradition?’

  Lu paused.

  ‘Filial attachments are important in Asia,’ he agreed. ‘But unfortunately the ties appear to be becoming less important to the young of today.’

  ‘I’ve learned quite a lot of Chinese tradition since I’ve been here,’ said Charlie.

  ‘You’ve been here some days?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then I’m surprised.’

  ‘Surprised?’

  ‘That you haven’t called upon me sooner.’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ said Charlie.

  Lu made an expansive gesture.

  ‘Surely this meeting means that there is to be no unpleasantness between your company and myself.’

  ‘Unpleasantness?’

  ‘Over this business of the writs.’

  ‘I don’t think I can promise that,’ said Charlie, guardedly. The mechanical efficiency to which he’d so far been exposed probably meant that somewhere a tape recording was being made of the encounter. It was the sort of precaution he would have taken.

  Momentarily Lu’s smile dimmed.

  ‘That’s disappointing,’ he said.

  ‘But inevitable, I’m afraid.’

  ‘You haven’t come to agree settlement?’

  ‘No.’

  Lu was forcing the discussion, realised Charlie. To get the response he wanted from the man, he needed time to seed some uncertainty.

  ‘What then?’ demanded the millionaire.

  Shock him, decided Charlie.

  ‘To warn you that under no circumstances will my company consider paying out one cent of the claims you have filed against us,’ he declared.

  Lu settled back in the chair, shaking his head in apparent sadness. Not the reaction he had tried for, thought Charlie.

  ‘Do you know,’ said Lu, reflectively, ‘I really can’t remember when anyone had the temerity to warn me about anything.’

  ‘I gather you lead a fairly protected life,’ said Charlie, gesturing to the outer doors.

  Lu sighed, too obviously, at the intended sarcasm.

  ‘So very unfortunate,’ he said, still maintaining the smile.

  The sibilance was more noticeable, realised Charlie. So there was at least some slight annoyance. It wouldn’t be enough.

  ‘As unfortunate as the death of Robert Nelson?’

  Lu nodded.

  ‘I heard of the death of your man here,’ he said. ‘Such an able person … obtained more of my business than anyone else.’

  ‘Why, Mr Lu?’ said Charlie.

  The smile was finally extinguished.

  ‘Because I respected him and chose to give him the business.’

  ‘At 12 per cent, when the rest of the sealed bids quoted 10?’

  For a moment the millionaire faltered.

  ‘I can afford to give my business to whom I choose,’ he said.

  ‘That’s not business, Mr Lu. That’s charity. Or stupidity. Or an indication that you didn’t expect the money to be out of your hands for very long. Just long enough for it to be the bait for which it was intended?’

  ‘I’m really not accustomed to rudeness,’ said Lu threateningly.

  ‘I’m not being rude,’ said Charlie. ‘I’m asking a very pertinent question.’

  ‘After the sealed bid tenders had been taken up,’ said Lu, ‘we discovered that we were still uncovered to the extent of £6,000,000. Mr Nelson’s offer had not at that stage been accepted. Rather than reopen the other policies, which might have left us with even less cover dangerously near the sailing date from New York, I decided to give it to him. It was an oversight, really. It was all done at the very last moment.’

  ‘He told me about the rush,’ said Charlie. ‘And I think you are talking bullshit.’

  Lu winced at the crudeness. That hadn’t worked either, thought Charlie.

  ‘I’m not really concerned with what you will accept or not,’ said Lu. ‘I’m rich enough to do as I wish with my money.’

  ‘No one’s that rich.’

  ‘I am. And I’ll remind you that I’m used to being treated with proper respect, because of it.’

  ‘And I’ll remind you that I’m not being disrespectful,’ said Charlie. He was, he knew. Intentionally so. There had to be some way to penetrate the man’s control.

  ‘That’s for me to decide,’ said Lu.

  ‘There will be several things for you to decide today,’ agreed Charlie.

  ‘Don’t strain my patience,’ said Lu.

  ‘Now you’re issuing warnings,’ said Charlie.

  ‘With far more ability to enforce them,’ said Lu.

  ‘As you did with Robert Nelson?’

  Lu sat impassively, hands cupped in his lap. It wasn’t working, realised Charlie. Lu had sensed the manoeuvre and was refusing to react.

  ‘I know that Nelson was murdered,’ announced Charlie. ‘And I know why.’

  Do something, for Christ’s sake, he thought.

  ‘All of which,’ said Lu, ‘would I’m sure be of great interest to the police. My only concern is in the settlement of my claim for the destruction of my ship, sorry as I am about Mr Nelson’s death.’

  ‘You destroyed your own ship,’ declared Charlie. ‘And had Robert Nelson killed when he tried to establish the reasons being spread by your people among the Chinese community.’

  The patronising smile came back.

  ‘I’ve made a mistake,’ Lu said. ‘I’ve admitted a madman to my office. And I’m usually so careful.’

  ‘As careful as you were in having the shipyard workers killed, knowing they could never withstand any cross-examination in court.’

  ‘More than one murder!’ mocked Lu.

  There had always been a desperation about the bluff, accepted Charlie. But he’d expected to unsettle the man far more than he had done. He should have resisted Lu’s pace and p
rolonged the verbal fencing, he realised. It was his own fault that he’d hurried the confrontation. More than hurried. Panicked, in fact. Because of his nervousness of Harvey Jones. There had been a time when he wouldn’t have made such a mistake, no matter what the pressure.

  ‘You and perhaps more importantly your son have lost face once,’ persisted Charlie. ‘Try to press this claim in court and I’ll ensure you’ll be ridiculed not just in Asia but throughout the world. Are you prepared to risk that?’

  ‘I haven’t the remotest conception what you’re talking about,’ said Lu, shaking his head.

  ‘I will guarantee that in the English High Court my company will oppose your claim,’ said Charlie. ‘I’ll see to it that every suspicion comes out. We’ll label Robert Nelson’s death for what it was. We’ll demand to know in open court why you were prepared to pay 12 per cent on a £6,000,000 cover and get a better answer than the one you’ve given me. We’ll show the real reason … that your anti-communist campaign was always to be paid for by British insurance companies …’

  ‘Such nonsense,’ intruded Lu. ‘You’re talking absolute nonsense.’

  ‘But we won’t just stop there,’ carried on Charlie. ‘We’ll ask questions about the gambling. And the brothel-keeping. And the heroin factories that supply America and Europe.’

  ‘Is there no crime for which I’m not to be held responsible?’ sneered Lu. He infused boredom into his voice.

  ‘I don’t know of a man who uses publicity more effectively than you,’ said Charlie, ignoring Lu’s jibe. ‘Are you prepared to risk the loss of face that such a court hearing would cause?’

  Lu stood and for a moment Charlie thought he intended summoning the guards from the outer offices. Instead the man went to the desk, selected a cigar and returned to the chair, fumbling for the gold cutter on his watch chain.

  ‘I congratulate you,’ announced Lu unexpectedly.

  Charlie waited.

  ‘It really was a most effective attempt,’ continued the millionaire. ‘Almost deserved to succeed.’

  ‘Will succeed,’ Charlie corrected him, imagining a change of attitude at last.

  ‘Oh no,’ said Lu. ‘I’m no longer treating you as a fool and neither must you regard me as one.’

  The attitude had changed, realised Charlie. But not as he had hoped.

  ‘I’ve already told you,’ said Lu, ‘that I’m a very careful man. I begin nothing without the guarantee of success.’

  He stopped, waving a flame before his face. Charlie glanced towards the desk. He hadn’t seen Lu turn off any recording device. But that’s what the man had done, he was sure, under the guise of getting a cigar.

  ‘I’m not arguing you wouldn’t win judgment,’ said Charlie. ‘I’m saying it would be a court action that would destroy you and your reputation …’

  ‘And I asked you not to treat me like a fool,’ repeated Lu, sadly. ‘We both of us know there will never be a court hearing.’

  ‘You’ll withdraw the claim?’

  Lu laughed at him, in genuine amusement.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘I won’t withdraw the claim. I’ll press it, as hard as I am able. Because I know damned well that no lawyer, no matter how much filth or innuendo he hoped to smear, would risk fighting in court the case I am able to bring.’

  ‘I will …’ tried Charlie, but Lu raised his hand imperiously, halting him.

  ‘You need evidence,’ said Lu. ‘Better evidence than some doubt about a rich man’s foible in paying more than he should for a policy he needed in a hurry. You’d need witnesses prepared to give evidence about a planned crime. And if you had that, it wouldn’t be you sitting here. It would be the police.’

  Gently he tapped the ash from his cigar.

  ‘Your lawyers might listen to your romanticising,’ said the millionaire. ‘They might even be curious. But they’d never introduce it into a court hearing. Your company will settle. For the full amount. Because they have no option. My policy is legally incontestable. There’s never been any risk of my being humiliated. Nor will there be. Ever.’

  He’d lost, accepted Charlie. Completely. Another thought came, suddenly. Robert Nelson had died simply for attempting to establish the accusation at street level: he had actually challenged the man.

  ‘You checked up on me with my London office before agreeing to meet me?’ he said.

  Lu nodded:

  ‘I told you I leave nothing to chance.’

  ‘And they knew I was coming here today, to confront you with what I believed to be the truth.’

  Lu’s smile broadened.

  ‘You’re giving me another warning,’ he said.

  ‘Were anything to happen to me, so soon after Robert Nelson’s death and my visit here, the police might be forced into finding the proof that our lawyers might need to take the case to court.’

  It meant admitting defeat. But that had been established anyway. Now Charlie needed protection.

  ‘Yes,’ agreed Lu. ‘They just might. I’ll remember that.’

  At least, decided Charlie, rising and moving towards the door, for the moment he was safe. Safe, from Lu anyway. But there was still Harvey Jones.

  ‘You’ll recommend your company to drop their resistance and settle?’ said Lu expectantly.

  Charlie stopped, turning.

  ‘No,’ he said shortly.

  ‘You can’t win, you know.’

  ‘So people keep telling me.’

  ‘Perhaps you should listen to their advice.’

  ‘Perhaps.’

  ‘Don’t become an irritant, will you?’ Lu cautioned him.

  Maybe he hadn’t created as much protection as he had hoped, thought Charlie.

  ‘Unfortunately,’ he said from the door, ‘it seems to be a’ facility I have.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Lu, determined to master every exchange. ‘It could be unfortunate.’

  After Charlie had left the room the millionaire remained seated in the chair in which he had confronted him, and that was how John Lu found him when he entered from the adjoining office.

  ‘Well?’ asked the father.

  ‘Kill him,’ said the son immediately.

  Fool,’ snapped Lu. ‘You spend so much time with scum that you even think like them now.’

  ‘But he’s got it. He’s got it all.’

  The millionaire shook his head.

  ‘He’s got nothing. Not a shred of proof. And there’s nowhere he can get it.’

  ‘What about the woman?’

  ‘You chose badly there, didn’t you?’ demanded Lu, avoiding a direct answer.

  The younger man, who had remained standing, shuffled awkwardly.

  ‘She’d talk,’ he admitted.

  ‘About what?’ said the millionaire dismissively.

  ‘But she knows!’

  ‘And everything we’ve got is concealed by companies layered upon companies and by nominees operating through other nominees,’ reminded Lu. ‘There is nothing directly linking us to anything. Who’s going to start investigating us, on the word of a whore?’

  ‘She could still be a nuisance,’ said John, in rare defiance.

  ‘Oh, I think she should be punished,’ agreed Lu, as if correcting a misapprehension.

  The son smiled.

  ‘But properly this time,’ warned Lu.

  ‘Of course.’

  Jenny Lin Lee would want to know of the arrangements for the funeral, Charlie decided. There was no reply throughout the afternoon to his repeated telephone calls, so after the inquest at which he gave evidence of identification and which returned the verdict which Superintendent Johnson had anticipated, he went to Robert Nelson’s apartment.

  The doorbell echoed back hollowly to him.

  The caretaker was happy to open the door for fifty dollars and Charlie’s assurance that he represented the dead man’s company.

  Already the rooms had a stale, unlived-in smell. Expertly he went from room to room: nowhere was there a trace of the girl. Known
in all the bars, she’d said. Which ones? he wondered.

  As he turned to leave the apartment, his foot touched something, scuffing it along the carpet. Bending, he picked up a letter with a London postmark and the Willoughby company address embossed on the back, for return in case of non-delivery.

  Aware of its contents, he opened it anyway, reading it in seconds. Sighing, he put into his pocket the underwriter’s letter assuring Robert Nelson that his position would not be in any way affected by the Pride of America fire.

  ‘Not much,’ muttered Charlie savagely, closing the door.

  14

  Since the encounter with the American, Charlie had become over-conscious of the feeling of being watched, making sudden and too obvious checks, so that had he been under surveillance any observer could have easily avoided detection. Desperation. Like trying to bluff Lu. And this new idea. Further desperation, he recognised, forced upon him by the difference of the past from the present.

  Before, the only consideration had been Charlie’s rules. Now it was Judge’s Rules, the need not just to learn the truth and then act to his own satisfaction, but to that of barristers and law lords. It imposed a restriction to which he was unaccustomed: like trying to run with a shoelace undone. There seemed a very real possibility of falling flat on his face.

  People spilled from the pavement into Des Voeux Road, slowing the cars to a noisy, protesting crawl. Charlie used the movement of avoiding people to check around him, then abandoning the futile attempt, knowing that in such a throng any identification would be impossible.

  He had expected the legation of the People’s Republic of China to be an imposing building, perhaps even with a police guard. But so ordinary was it, slotted in among the shops and the cinema, that he was almost past before he realised he had found it.

  He pushed slowly forward through the milling Chinese, smiling at his first impression: it was just like a betting shop. Even to the counters round the sides, at which people were filling in not their horse selections but their applications to return to mainland China.

  He ignored the side benches, going straight to the reception desk. It was staffed by three men, dressed in identical black-grey tunics.