‘Mean bugger,’ judged Charlie.
He found the keys in the left-hand top drawer in which there was a partitioned shelf with small containers. Charlie stared down at them. A man as neat as Snare would arrange them in order of importance, he decided. There were duplicates of house, car and Automobile Association keys and in another tray were what appeared spare sets for luggage or a briefcase. That left four for which there was no obvious identification. They were in the first container.
Charlie quickly tried the remaining drawers, expecting to find at least one of them locked, but all opened smoothly to his touch.
Charlie left the room and started the search of the first floor. It was easier here, because there was less furniture. In two of the bedrooms, it was actually protected by dust-sheets. Snare’s bedroom was as neat as the study, the shoes not only in racks but enclosed in tiny plastic bags and the clothes carefully arranged in a wardrobe like a colour chart, running from pale, summer-weight material through to the darker, heavier suits.
‘Housemaster would be very proud of you,’ said Charlie.
He found the locked cupboard on the floor above and sighed, relieved. It was specially made, he saw, the doors flush and with two locks, top and bottom. He pulled at the handle. There was no movement. So it was rigid-frame, too. Probably steel.
It took less than a minute to return from the study with the unidentifiable keys. The second fitted the bottom lock and when he retried the first, the top clicked back into place.
Charlie edged away, pulling open the door, and then sighed in open astonishment.
‘Oh, the fools,’ he said. ‘The bloody fools.’
The Fabergé collection was laid out almost as if for inspection, arranged on three shelves. On the floor beneath were the plastic bags in which Snare and Johnny had carried it from the gallery.
The whole point of the entry had been to find something – anything – with which he might have been able to incriminate Snare; a plan of the Brighton bank, for instance. Or maybe some connection with the Tate. But not this. Not the single most damning thing there could possibly be.
Of course the proceeds of the robbery could not have been openly taken into the department, accepted Charlie. But Snare should and could have made his own security arrangements; he’d been inside enough banks in the last month to be a bloody expert. His judgment of those who had taken over the department from Sir Archibald and even survived the Kalenin affair wasn’t, as Edith suspected and of which she had accused him, the biased sniping of someone who had been dismissed as unnecessary, thought Charlie. They were amateurs, like the men who could not accept that Kim Philby was a spy because he’d been to the right school or that there was a risk in Guy Burgess, boozing and male-whoring in every embassy to which he’d been attached.
He packed the jewellery, relocked the cupboard and returned the keys to the desk. He spent fifteen minutes assuring himself that he had replaced everything in the position from which it had originally been moved, then a further ten in one of the spare, unused bedrooms.
Finally he went out the back door, quietly pulling it closed after him, climbed easily over the separating fence at the bottom of the garden and then out through the front gate of the neighbouring house on to the road parallel to that in which Snare lived.
The car was still warm from the drive back from Kent, he found, pausing gratefully before starting the engine.
‘You’re a lucky sod, Charlie,’ he told himself.
‘What about the safebreaker?’ suggested Cuthbertson, matching everyone else’s desperation. ‘Perhaps he followed Snare home?’
Onslow Smith sighed at the confusion that had grown in Wilberforce’s office since his entry.
‘Oh come on!’ he said, rejecting the idea. ‘This is stupid, panic thinking.’
And there was damned good reason to panic, he thought. If he weren’t very careful, this would make the Bay of Pigs and the Allende overthrow in Chile look like a training exercise for Boy Scouts. Which, upon examination, seemed about its right level.
‘It’s a possibility,’ Cuthbertson said defensively, his thick voice showing he knew it was nothing of the sort.
The American picked up the note that had been taken from the Mayfair bank.
‘That’s rubbish and you know it,’ he said, waving the paper towards the ex-Director. ‘We’ve been suckered. Well and truly suckered.’
‘Personal animosity isn’t going to help,’ said Wilberforce, trying to reduce the tension. It had been impossible to sleep after Snare’s visit the previous night and the hollow feeling that had gouged out his stomach at the man’s breakfast telephone call, reporting that the collection was missing, had developed into positive nausea. He’d even tried to be sick, thrusting his finger down his throat in the bathroom adjoining his office, and merely made himself feel worse.
‘I don’t know what will,’ said Smith. ‘I can’t believe it. I just can’t believe that you didn’t take any precautions. Jesus!’
‘Would you have stored it in the American embassy?’ threw back Wilberforce.
‘No,’ admitted Smith immediately. ‘I’d have certainly put it in Snare’s house. And then I’d have made damned sure that there were so many people watching that house that a kitchen mouse couldn’t have taken a pee without someone knowing it.’
He was going to get out, decided Smith, suddenly. He was going to withdraw all his men and get to hell out of it, before the smell really started to rise. From now on, Wilberforce was where he’d always wanted to be. On his own.
‘I made a mistake,’ conceded Wilberforce, reluctantly. ‘I’m very sorry.’
The other Director looked crushed, thought Smith, without any pity.
‘Does anyone in your government know what’s been going on?’ he asked.
‘No,’ said Wilberforce. ‘And yours?’
‘No.’
‘It’ll be a miracle if it remains a secret,’ said Wilberforce.
‘It is quite obvious that Charlie has taken it,’ said Braley.
‘To return to the insurers?’ queried Cuthbertson.
Wilberforce nodded at the question. ‘Equally obvious,’ he said. ‘It’s the only way he could ensure that Rupert Willoughby wouldn’t be damaged by association. Don’t forget how close he was to Sir Archibald.’
Wilberforce laid aside his worry pipe, looking across the desk encouragingly.
‘The Fabergé collection was always intended to be returned to the Russians, which is now what will undoubtedly happen. So the damage at the moment is still minimal.’
‘But we don’t know where the hell Charlie Muffin is,’ said Snare.
‘But we know how to re-locate him,’ said Wilberforce. ‘There’s got to be some sort of pattern in the woman’s tour. The moment there is any contact, we’ll have him again.’
Smith decided he’d wait until he organised the removal of his own men before letting Wilberforce know what he was doing. Then the son of a bitch could do what he wanted about watching Edith.
‘I’d like to think so,’ said Snare. He felt revulsed that Charlie Muffin had entered his home and actually touched things that he owned. Quite often, he recalled, the man hadn’t bathed every day.
‘Where’s the flaw?’ demanded Wilberforce. No one guessed the depths of his uncertainty, he knew.
Smith shook his head at the other man’s stupidity.
‘The flaw,’ he said, patiently, ‘is what it’s always been – Charlie Muffin.’
TWENTY-FOUR
Quite irrationally, which she even recognised but still could not prevent, Edith had developed a conviction that despite the lengthy list of cities and hotels that Charlie had given, he would have contacted her almost immediately.
She’d actually invoked ridiculous, childlike rituals. If the waiter at dinner were Spanish, then Charlie would telephone before midnight. If the winter coldness broke, turning to rain, then that would be the day she would walk into the car park and find Charlie waiting for her.
The desperation had grown with each day until that morning, just before leaving her Cambridge hotel and starting the drive southward to Crawley, the next town designated, she had had to hold herself rigidly at the bedroom door, fighting against the overwhelming impulse to cry.
That it should happen there, today, was understandable, she supposed. She had read history at Girton and the memories had soaked through her. She had driven along the Huntingdon Road and gazed in, trying to locate her old room. And walked past King’s Chapel, so that she could stand on the tiny, humped bridge to stare down into the icy water of the Backs, too cold even for the ducks, and remember the summer punting of so long ago. And smiled reminiscently at the couples, encompassed in their scarves and undergraduate romances, and envied them their happiness.
And now she was going back to Sussex, which she had already come to hate, even before Charlie had made the drunken mistake there that had begun all the agony. Then again, she thought, her mind slipping away on a familiar path, perhaps it was an omen; perhaps it would be here that it would end, where it had begun. That was it; had to be. Charlie would appear today, with the shy yet cocky I-told-you-so smile that always came when he’d proved himself right, and explain how he’d fooled everyone and they could clear out forever, burying themselves in Switzerland again.
She felt the panic building up and gripped the wheel. Just like the Spanish waiters and the weather, she thought, angrily. Damned ridiculous. Why couldn’t she accept it? Charlie wouldn’t come. Today. Or any other day. It would be a month of aimless journeyings to towns she didn’t want to see until one day there would be a telephone call from Rupert Willoughby, a man she’d never met and probably never would, trying to infuse the proper melancholy into his voice to tell her that Charlie, who had forgotten to kiss her when he left that day in Zürich, hadn’t been clever enough this time and was dead.
She pulled the car into a layby, trying to blink the emotion away. She had to stop it, she knew. She was collapsing under the weight of her own self-induced fear. And Charlie wanted her help, not her collapse. She found it so difficult.
Recovered, she felt her way back into the traffic and reached the timbered George Hotel just before lunch. Despite the determination in the layby, she still searched hopefully around the car park as she pulled in, then again in the foyer as she registered. With difficulty, she focused on the receptionist, realising the girl was repeating a question.
‘I wondered if you would want lunch?’
‘No,’ said Edith, too sharply. ‘No thank you,’ she repeated, embarrassed at her own rudeness.
‘Is anything the matter, madam?’
‘Long drive,’ stumbled Edith. ‘Rather tired.’
She didn’t bother to unpack the suitcases. Instead she stood at the window of her room, staring down unseeingly into Crawley High Street.
‘Hurry up, Charlie,’ she said softly. ‘I need you so very much.’
In the lobby below, the polite receptionist was dealing with an unexpected influx of guests. It was fortunate, she thought, that it was so early in the season, otherwise she would have had difficulty in finding accommodation for them all. There were no wives, so it must be a business conference, she decided. Unusual that she hadn’t heard about it. Probably in Brighton.
And in that town, just twenty miles to the south, Superintendent Law was summoning the sergeant for the second conference of the day.
‘Well?’ demanded the superintendent.
Hardiman shook his head, indicating the files banked up against the wall.
‘Still got about twenty more statements to repeat,’ he said. ‘But so far there’s nothing.’
‘It must be there somewhere,’ said Law, refusing to admit his idea was wrong.
Then you’re the best bugger to find it, thought the sergeant.
‘Odd overnight report,’ he said, trying to move the superintendent past his fixation with the statements.
‘What?’
‘You know we asked the uniformed branch to keep an eye on that financier’s house?’
Law nodded.
‘Copper on last night hadn’t done it before,’ continued Hardiman. ‘Got the impression that there was some sort of separate observation being carried out … mentioned it to his superintendent in case there had been some confusion and we were duplicating …’
‘What about the other policemen, before him?’ demanded Law instantly.
‘I’ve checked,’ said the sergeant, glad he’d anticipated the request. ‘Two others got the same impression. Didn’t mention it because they thought we were doubling up.’
‘Stupid bastards,’ said Law. ‘Have we interviewed him again?’
Hardiman shook his head.
‘Away on business,’ he reminded him. ‘Took the trouble to telephone us.’
He picked up Charlie’s file and the superintendent took it from him, staring down as if he expected a clue he hadn’t appreciated from the statement suddenly to present itself.
‘It’s not much,’ said the sergeant, concerned at the other man’s interest. He hoped Law wouldn’t get too worked up. The constable’s report hadn’t been made overnight. It had been lying around for two days, but Hardiman had forgotten to mention it.
‘Willoughby, Price and Rowledge,’ Law read from the file.
‘They’ve confirmed his association with them,’ said Hardiman. ‘Shall I contact them again?’
Hurriedly Law shook his head.
‘Mustn’t frighten the rabbit,’ he said.
‘What then?’ asked Hardiman. It was almost impossible to guess which way the superintendent’s mind would jump, he thought, annoyed.
‘Let’s try to find out a bit more about him first,’ suggested Law. He paused and the sergeant waited, knowing he hadn’t finished.
‘Remember what he said that first night, when we went to his house?’ prompted Law.
Hardiman looked doubtful.
‘Made some remark about being a financier, even though his passport described him as a clerk.’
‘Why should that be odd?’ asked Hardiman.
‘I don’t know, laddie. I don’t know,’ said the superintendent, patronisingly. ‘Why don’t we check the passport office, to discover if it is?’
Why did Law have to conduct everything like it was a sodding quiz game? wondered Hardiman, walking towards his own office. Sometimes the man really pissed him off.
Involvement had been thrust upon Willoughby and Charlie had anticipated the reluctance that was becoming obvious. He hadn’t expected the underwriter’s argument against the stupidity of vindictiveness. That had surprised him.
To Willoughby, of course, the two were so interlinked as to be practically the same. But to Charlie, they were quite separate. To beat them, as he knew he now had, as well as surviving, had more than justified any risk. And there hadn’t been any; not much, anyway. Almost like rigged roulette, again. Now it was over. And he’d got away with it.
Momentarily he looked away from his search for the turning off Wimbledon Hill Road that Willoughby had named during their argumentative conversation, checking the time. Almost midnight; everything would have happened by this time tomorrow, he thought.
He’d been very fortunate, Charlie thought. The confidence bubbled up. But he’d been clever enough to seize that good fortune and utilise it. Christ, how he’d utilised it.
Despite the force of a Lloyd’s insurers behind it, he had still been surprised at the speed with which Willoughby had obtained John Packer’s address from the car registration. The house was at the bottom of a cul-de-sac, a horseshoe indentation between two major roads. Charlie didn’t stop, driving out on to the avenue that backed on to Packer’s property, counting along until he isolated the house between him and the one he was seeking. He parked the car, entered through a tree-lined drive, skirted the darkened building and then smiled, with growing awareness, at the lowness of the fence between it and Packer’s home. The separation between the other adjoining prop
erty, from which it would be possible to reach the alternative main road, would be similarly low, he guessed.
Charlie realised almost immediately that he would not be able easily to enter the house. Inside each of the lower windows there was actually a reinforced mesh clamped into a separate frame to form a positive barrier, in addition to the special window locks and the small steel bolts that had been fitted in each corner. With such precautions, it was pointless trying the doors, Charlie decided.
‘Pity a few other people hadn’t been as cautious as you, Mr Packer,’ muttered Charlie.
At first Charlie thought the shed might have been built over an old coal-chute, by which he might still have been able to get in, through the cellar. Obedient to his training, he remained unmoving immediately inside the door, first feeling out for any obstruction and then, careful to avoid the reflection showing through the side windows, probing with the pencil-beam torch.
It wasn’t until he’d shifted the sodium chlorate aside, thinking first of its gardening use, and discovered what lay behind that he appreciated its proper significance, squatting before it and all the other explosives, then moving up to the shelves to feel through the detonators and fuses and finally examining the box containing the timing and pressure devices. There were even clocks, to activate them.
‘A regular little bomb factory,’ mused Charlie. ‘So you’re the professional, Mr Packer? The one who’s necessary to make it look right.’
It was the confirmation of the impression that had come to him climbing over the garden fence; the house was ideally positioned, with three easy escape routes against arrest.
Charlie extinguished the torch, re-locked the outhouse and left the garden by the route he had entered. The man had been manipulated enough, he decided.
TWENTY-FIVE
The arrests on the day that George Wilberforce was later to regard as the worst in his life should have been perfectly coordinated, but inevitably there was a mistake.
The information had identified the Kent house and the assumption of the Flying Squad and the Regional Crime Squad was that Wilberforce would be there as well. But it was a week-day and so he was staying in the Eaton Square apartment.
Here Comes Charlie M Page 14
