The Inscrutable Charlie Muffin cm-3

by Brian Freemantle

  ‘And you want to avoid paying out?’

  Willoughby stared across the desk. His hand was twitching, Charlie saw.

  ‘It might be difficult,’ said the underwriter hurriedly. The admission embarrassed him and he actually blushed.

  ‘You haven’t got your share?’ demanded Charlie.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Christ.’

  ‘It’s only temporary,’ said Willoughby defensively. ‘We’ve had a very bad two years… whole series of setbacks.’

  ‘But why take the risk in the first place?’

  ‘I had to,’ insisted Willoughby. ‘A firm can be wiped out in a creditors’ rush by no more than a City rumour that it’s in financial difficulties. Besides which, there seemed no risk.’

  ‘You’re a bloody fool,’ said Charlie.

  ‘That knowledge doesn’t help either,’ said Willoughby.

  ‘Your father left a fortune,’ remembered Charlie.

  ‘Already gone.’

  ‘Loans then.’

  ‘There’s hardly a bank where I don’t have an overdraft. And where I haven’t gone over the limit.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So unless there’s a near-miracle, there’s nothing that can stop me being drummed out of the Exchange.’

  ‘Nobody knows?’

  ‘Nobody. Yet. But it won’t take long. This sort of news never does.’

  ‘What’s the legal opinion of Lu’s claim?’

  ‘We are completely liable,’ said Willoughby.

  ‘No room for manoeuvre?’

  Willoughby shook his head. ‘We might have had a chance had we included a political sabotage clause, the sort of thing that’s been introduced into aircraft cover since hijacking started.’

  ‘Why didn’t you?’

  ‘Because it’s not normal, in case of ship cover… and I was in too much of a hurry to sign the policy.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Nelson managed to negotiate a 12 per cent premium. For Lloyd’s, that’s very high. I needed the liquidity.’

  ‘Who’s Nelson?’

  ‘Our Hong Kong agent.’

  ‘Good?’

  ‘He got more of the cover than anyone else when it was put on the Hong Kong market.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Why what?’

  ‘Why more than anybody else, and at such a good premium?’

  ‘Because he’s better, I suppose. Or because he tried harder.’

  ‘What’s he like?’

  ‘Unusual chap,’ remembered the underwriter. ‘I’ve only met him three times. Colonial through and through. Born in India, father a governor of a minor state there before independence. Only time spent in England was at school, Eton and then Cambridge. He’s so out of place here that two years ago he cut short the paid home leave that we allow our overseas men. Made some excuse about the climate’

  ‘Reliable?’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  ‘What does he say?’

  Willoughby paused at the staccato questioning.

  ‘It’s so straightforward that he doesn’t even see the need for an investigation,’ he said.

  ‘But you do?’

  Willoughby leaned towards him.

  ‘I’ve got to try,’ he said. ‘I’ve got to try anything.’

  The soul-baring would be difficult for the man, Charlie knew. He’d hate admitting to being anything less than his father had been.

  ‘How long before you’ve got to pay?’ asked Charlie.

  Willoughby made a movement of uncertainty.

  ‘Lu’s lawyers have already filed an intention to claim. We could probably delay until the two men who have been arrested are found guilty, but even to attempt that might create a dispute. I gather they’ve made a full admission.’

  ‘So you haven’t much time.’

  ‘I haven’t much of anything,’ said Willoughby. ‘Time least of all.’

  ‘The last resort,’ repeated Charlie. There was no point in buggering about. And Willoughby appeared to appreciate honesty anyway.

  ‘Yes,’ agreed the underwriter.

  ‘Would you have avoided contacting me, if you could?’

  Willoughby paused. Then he admitted, ‘Yes. If I had had a choice, I wouldn’t have made the call.’

  Most people would have lied, recognised Charlie, unoffended. The man was trying to retain his integrity, anxious though he was.

  ‘Well?’ said Willoughby. He couldn’t keep the plea out of his voice.

  So much of his life had been spent getting hold of the shitty end of the stick that nobody else wanted to touch, reflected Charlie. How he wished the approach had come through friendship, reminiscent of the man’s father, rather than desperation.

  ‘Why should I?’ he said.

  ‘ Why make people crawl, Charlie… why bully? ’

  The part of him that had always embarrassed Edith most, he remembered. The part his wife didn’t like and was always trying to correct.

  Willoughby winced, imagining a refusal.

  ‘No reason,’ he accepted. ‘The sort of things you once did…’

  He paused, recalling what Charlie had done.

  ‘It was silly of me,’ he said. ‘I should have realised you couldn’t do it, that it would be too dangerous for you because of what happened.’

  ‘You expect me to… because of my relationship with your father?’

  ‘I hoped you’d try to help.’

  ‘As the last resort.’

  ‘Please,’ said Willoughby.

  Charlie stopped, suddenly angry with himself. He shouldn’t do it, certainly not to a man whose father had befriended him to the degree that Sir Archibald had.

  ‘ Inverted snobbery…’

  Another of Edith’s accusations. Almost correct, too. Sir Archibald had recognised it properly. Warned him about it, even.

  ‘ Inferiority complex, Charlie… not the confidence everyone imagines. Why, Charlie? ’

  And Charlie couldn’t answer because he hadn’t known himself. Not then. Not until it was too late.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said.

  ‘You’ve a right to be offended,’ Willoughby accepted. ‘It was madness of me to think of you, after all you’ve been through.’

  ‘Not really,’ said Charlie. ‘You didn’t put up barriers when I asked you for help once.’

  That had been after Charlie was stupid enough to make a pilgrimage to Sir Archibald’s grave. British Intelligence had picked him up there and started the pursuit. What logic said it had been all right for them to set him up to be killed in East Berlin, then label him a renegade, to be hunted and assassinated because he had fought back and exposed them for their stupidity? Only Willoughby had understood, because the same men had caused his father’s suicide. So only Willoughby had helped. Not true, he corrected himself. Edith had helped, as she had always done. And now Edith was dead.

  Believing he had been rejected, Willoughby said, ‘I’d appreciate your not mentioning this to anyone.’

  ‘I haven’t said I won’t help,’ said Charlie.

  Willoughby blinked, his eagerness almost childishly obvious in his face.

  ‘You could get to Hong Kong?’ he asked hurriedly. ‘I mean, there wouldn’t be any difficulty with… about your identity?’

  Charlie smiled at the other man’s renewed embarrassment.

  ‘The passport is genuine enough,’ he said. ‘It was the documents that obtained it that were phoney.’

  Work again, thought Charlie. Different from what he’d been used to, but still work. It would be good to get back. And to end those aimless Sunday drives.

  ‘I’d need the full authority of your company,’ said Charlie. ‘I’d never get official help without it.’

  ‘Of course,’ Willoughby assured him. ‘And I’ll let Nelson know you’re coming… ask him to give you every assistance.’

  Charlie stood.

  ‘And thank you,’ said Willoughby.

  ‘There’s no guarantee that I’ll fin
d anything to help you,’ warned Charlie. ‘It seems as straightforward as Nelson has said.’

  ‘But you might,’ said the underwriter.

  The man was more desperate than he had imagined, thought Charlie, as he emerged into the secretary’s office. The summer rain suddenly burst against the window and he remembered the split sole.

  ‘Where’s the nearest shoe shop?’ he said.

  The girl looked up at Charlie in hostile bewilderment.

  ‘A what?’

  ‘Shoe shop,’ repeated Charlie. Supporting himself against her desk, he raised his feet, so she could see the gap.

  ‘Need a new pair,’ he said unnecessarily.

  The girl pressed back against her chair, face frozen in contempt.

  ‘I’m sure I really have no idea,’ she said.

  Charlie lowered his foot but remained leaning on her desk.

  ‘Never make a Girl Guide,’ he said.

  ‘And you’ll never make a comedian.’

  It would have to stop. Now he was trying to score off secretaries, just because they had posh accents. And losing.

  At first Robert Nelson had tolerated Jenny’s insistence, regarding it more as something like a secret intimacy between them. But as the months had passed and she had maintained the demand, he had come to regard it as a humiliation to them both.

  She sat waiting on the opposite side of the table. Beside her lay the wallet, various pouches unzipped and ready.

  ‘Housekeeping,’ he said, counting out the money.

  He watched her put it carefully into the top section of her wallet, sipping from his drink. He’d managed at last to persuade her there was no need for written details of the household accounts, so perhaps the other thing wouldn’t be difficult.

  ‘Dress allowance,’ he said.

  She nodded, smiling.

  He took another drink, both hands clasped around his glass.

  She sat, waiting.

  ‘Please, Robert,’ she said, frowning.

  ‘Why, for God’s sake!’

  His annoyance broke through, so that he spoke louder than he had intended.

  ‘Please,’ she said again.

  He put the glass aside, determined against another outburst, spacing his words in an effort to convince her.

  ‘Apart from a stupid piece of paper, you are my wife,’ he said gently. ‘I love you and want you to stay with me. Always.’

  ‘I know,’ she said.

  ‘Then why?’

  ‘Because it’s always been… since I was young…’

  ‘It’s… it’s obscene,’ he protested, realising he had failed again.

  ‘Please,’ she persisted.

  Angrily he pushed into his pocket, bringing out more notes and thrusting them on to the table.

  ‘“I love you” money.’

  ‘Thank you,’ she said, putting the money into a waiting pouch.

  How long would it take, wondered Nelson, for her to forget what she had once been?

  5

  It was the tie that registered with Charlie, long before Robert Nelson got near enough for a formal greeting. So long ago, thought Charlie. Yet so easily recalled. Blue stripes upon blue, at an angle.

  The two men who had set him up to be killed on the East Berlin border had been to Eton. And like Robert Nelson had always worn their ties, no matter the colour of their suits. An identification symbol; like road signs, something to be recognised by everyone.

  They’d mocked his grammar school accent. And the way he’d dressed. So they’d underestimated him, dismissing him as an anachronism: a perfect sacrifice. And been so disastrously wrong. Only one of them had survived. And that one had been disgraced. Twice. But he would still be wearing the tie, wherever he was, Charlie knew.

  ‘I’ve kept you waiting,’ apologised Nelson, reaching him at last through the airport crowd.

  ‘I’ve only just cleared customs,’ Charlie assured him, immediately conscious of the swirl of harassed agitation in which the insurance broker moved.

  A strangely pale, almost flaky-skinned man, Robert Nelson was sweating, despite the thin suit and the partial airconditioning, so that the wisped, receding hair was smeared over his forehead, accentuating the pallor.

  Even before their handshake had ended, he was gesturing impatiently to porters whom Charlie had already engaged, sighing with frustration at people who had innocently intruded themselves between the luggage and twice muttering ‘Sorry, so very sorry,’ to Charlie, in regret for some imagined hindrance.

  The air-conditioning was better within the confined space of the waiting car and Nelson mopped his face and hands with an already damp handkerchief, smiling across the vehicle. It was an apprehensive expression, decided Charlie. Why? he wondered.

  ‘I knew there would be an investigation,’ announced Nelson, as if confirming an earlier discussion. ‘Just knew it.’

  ‘Routine, surely?’ said Charlie. He looked at his watch. Whisky-breathed at ten in the morning?

  ‘But you’re not one of the normal investigators. Director level, Willoughby said.’

  ‘No,’ said Charlie. ‘Not a normal investigator.’

  Despite his assurances to Willoughby, there was still a risk that someone would discover just how different, he knew. His hand still had the slight shake that had started when he had approached the passport and immigration desks at the airport.

  Nelson appeared to be expecting more but when Charlie didn’t continue, he pointed through the window.

  ‘You can just see the Pride of America,’ he said.

  Charlie gazed out into the bay, getting a brief view of the hull before the car dipped into the tunnel that would take them beneath the harbour to Hong Kong island.

  ‘Looks a very dead ship,’ said Charlie.

  ‘It is.’

  ‘Any scrap value?’

  ‘Less than a million, I would estimate. I believe the Japanese are already interested.’

  ‘Quite a difference from $20,000,000.’

  ‘Yes,’ agreed Nelson, as if appreciating some hidden point. ‘Quite a difference.’

  The vehicle emerged from the tunnel and turned along the Connaught Road towards the Mandarin Hotel. To the right, towards Kowloon, the seemingly disordered slick of sampans and junks locked one to another and stretched far out into the bay from the harbour edge. So tight was the jam that it was impossible to identify occupant with craft and the impression was of constant, heaving movement, like a water-borne anthill.

  ‘They’re called the floating people,’ said Nelson. ‘It’s said that some are born, live and die without ever coming ashore.’

  Charlie turned to his left, looking inland. A mile away, first the Middle Level, then the Heights jutted upwards to the Peak, the apartment blocks and villas glued against the rock edges.

  ‘Easy to judge the wealth here,’ said Nelson, nodding in the direction in which Charlie was looking. ‘The higher you live, the richer you are.’

  ‘What about Lu?’

  ‘One of the richest taipans in the entire colony,’ said Nelson. ‘He’s got a villa on the other side of the Peak, at Shousan Hill. Like a fortress.’

  ‘Why a fortress?’

  ‘Ensure his privacy.’

  ‘I thought Lu enjoyed exposure and publicity.’

  ‘Exactly,’ said Nelson. ‘It makes him an obvious target for every crank and crook in Asia.’

  Nelson flustered around the arrival at the hotel, urging bellboys over the bags and actually cupping Charlie’s elbow to guide him into the hotel.

  The broker hovered beside him while he registered, instantly chiding the porters when they turned from the reception desk. Charlie sighed. Nelson’s attitude could very easily become a pain in the ass, he thought.

  It was the briefest of impressions as they waited for the elevator, but Charlie had been trained to react to such feelings and he twisted abruptly, examining the foyer.

  ‘What is it?’ demanded Nelson, conscious of the sudden movement.
>
  ‘Nothing,’ said Charlie.

  He’d always had an instinct about surveillance. But this time he had to be wrong. How could he be so quickly under observation? And from whom? There was no reason. He was jet-lagged and irritated by Nelson’s constant attention, that was it.

  The lift arrived and Charlie started to enter, then hesitated. He’d survived by responding to impressions as fleeting as this. And while he’d changed vocations, the need for survival remained. More so. Now that he’d come out of hiding.

  ‘Sure there’s nothing wrong?’ said Nelson.

  Charlie stared back into the bustling foyer.

  ‘Quite sure,’ he said, still uncertain.

  Nelson had reserved him a suite and Charlie examined it appreciatively.

  ‘Never got this on Civil Service Grade IV allowance,’ he muttered. Self-conversation was a habit he never bothered to curb. It usually became more pronounced when he was worried.

  ‘What?’ asked Nelson.

  ‘Thinking aloud,’ said Charlie. Obviously Robert Nelson had no idea of his company’s financial difficulties.

  ‘I had a bar installed,’ pointed out Nelson hopefully.

  ‘Help yourself,’ Charlie invited him.

  ‘You?’

  ‘Too tired after the flight,’ said Charlie, watching the other man reach for the whisky.

  Islay malt, he saw. Sir Archibald had been drinking that, when he’d gone to his retirement home in Sussex the day before setting off to entrap the bastards who had taken over the department and reduced it to an apology of what it had once been.

  There’d been bottles of it, in a sitting-room cupboard. The poor old sod had fallen into a drunken sleep and not been aware when he had left. According to the inquest report, Sir Archibald had even swilled the barbiturates down with it.

  ‘I specified a room with a view of the harbour. And Kowloon,’ said Nelson, by the window.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Charlie. ‘The ship, too.’

  ‘Yes,’ agreed Nelson. ‘Everywhere I look I’m reminded of that damned ship.’

  Charlie turned, curious at the bitterness.

  ‘And beyond the New Territories is China,’ continued Nelson, with his back to the room.