Here Comes Charlie M Read online

  ‘I’ve got to.’

  ‘They couldn’t find us now.’

  He didn’t reply and she demanded urgently, ‘Could they?’

  ‘If I don’t meet Rupert Willoughby, he might contact the department,’ he said. ‘Don’t forget how closely his father involved him … he wouldn’t have the hesitation of anyone else. And if he were to telephone them, he’d give them the lead they need.’

  ‘You said it was safe here,’ she accused him. ‘We moved back the same day, for heaven’s sake.’

  ‘I overlooked it,’ he admitted. Like so many other things, he thought.

  ‘You could be exposing yourself completely,’ she warned, frowning at the repetition of a previous argument.

  ‘I’ll be careful,’ he said. ‘Very careful.’

  ‘Will you bother about the money?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  So he did think he had been identified. If she hadn’t kept on about quitting England completely, they wouldn’t have gone back for the confounded money, she thought bitterly. The fact that she was a rich woman had always been a barrier between them.

  Frightened that he might detect her tears in the growing half-light, Edith turned towards the window. Lake Zürich was already visible, dull and flat like a thrown-away silver dish.

  ‘What happens if he has contacted them?’ she asked, bringing the fear into the open. ‘It would be a trap.’

  Again there was a pause. Then he said: ‘I won’t know. Not until I get there.’

  They’d move on, she knew. Again. Away from the hide-out where she felt most safe, just five minutes’ walk from the Swiss Bank Corporation building in the Paradeplatz where her money was held in its numbered account, together with the false passports and forged documents, another identity to be donned, like new clothes, if that under which they had existed for the past two years were discovered because of that bloody graveyard idiocy.

  Move on to where? At least not back to the small, greasy apartment in the Pigalle area of Paris, she thought gratefully; smelly and anonymous rooms among the no-questions-asked hotels in which the transient workers from North Africa and Turkey lived out their frightened existence, without the proper entry or work permits. So where? God knows.

  ‘I wish you hadn’t done it, Charlie.’

  ‘I’ve apologised, haven’t I? Don’t you think I regret it, every bit as much as you?’

  She held back the response, recognising the defiance in his voice. She wouldn’t argue, she determined. There was no purpose in holding an inquest. She gnawed at the inside of her cheek, caught by the word. Inquests were for people who had died. Usually violently.

  ‘I’ll go by myself, of course,’ he said.

  ‘Of course,’ she agreed. Quickly, the feeling clogging her voice, Edith added: ‘Be careful.’

  He laughed.

  ‘I’m a survivor, remember?’

  ‘I’m very frightened, Charlie. It’s different now. You’re completely on your own. And everything seems to be going wrong.’

  ‘That’s how I’ve always been, on my own.’

  She moved her head, a rustling gesture of rejection against the pillow.

  ‘I love you, Charlie,’ she said. ‘I couldn’t bear to live without you.’

  ‘You won’t have to.’

  ‘I wish I could believe that.’

  She waited for the reassurance to be repeated, but Charlie said nothing. The tears she had so far managed to hold back began feeling their way across her face and she turned farther towards the window, away from him.

  ‘You haven’t said you loved me for a long time,’ he remarked and she started crying even more.

  In Moscow, the British ambassador, Sir Robert Black, accepted the sheaf of papers from the Soviet Minister of Culture and affixed his signature. The signing of the outline agreement completed, both men rose from the table. Immediately the waiters approached with the trays of drinks for the regulation toasts. Despite the regeneration of the British economy, it was sherry, not champagne. The Russian, Boris Navetsky, hesitated, looking disdainfully at the amber liquid. Bloody mean, he thought.

  ‘My country is eagerly looking forward to the exhibition,’ said the ambassador.

  Navetsky nodded.

  ‘A pity, perhaps,’ ventured the Briton, ‘that it was not possible for the actual Romanov jewellery to be displayed.’

  ‘It is only the Fabergé replicas that have ever been allowed to leave the country on exhibition,’ Navetsky reminded him stiffly. He’d refuse a second drink, he decided.

  ‘Surely you don’t imagine my country would expose such works of art to any risk?’ said the ambassador.

  ‘Of course not,’ Navetsky assured him.

  In London, a report on the exhibition of the Russian royal jewellery was despatched, as a matter of routine, from the Foreign Office to Wilberforce. It was to be several days before he read it.

  The protection would never be necessary, Johnny Packer knew. But like Herbie Pie had said, he was a craftsman. And craftsmen always did things properly. So at the back of the shed, where the more volatile explosives were stored, Johnny had constructed a double-thickness brick wall, to cushion any accidental blast. Each was housed in its carefully partitioned section, with metal sheets forming an inner lining. The P-4 plastic, the easiest and least dangerous to use, was most readily to hand. Then the cordite, which he disliked because of the difficulty of control in certain circumstances. And in front of it all, the sacks of sodium chlorate, to be mixed with the sugar in the kitchen if the sudden need arose. Which he hoped it wouldn’t. Sodium chlorate and sugar was all right for the killers of Belfast, but Johnny Packer was a craftsman.

  Away from the explosive material but still within the reinforced area the fuses and detonators were packed carefully into their boxes and in a third case were the clocks and pressure mechanisms.

  He locked the shed and began walking round to the house. With equipment like that, there wasn’t an explosive device he couldn’t construct, decided Johnny. But when? Six weeks and there’d been nothing. It was a test, Johnny knew. The trade … the real, no-fucking-about trade … had to be sure he’d learned his lesson. Trouble was, the only way to prove that was to do a job. And without help, how the hell was he going to do that?

  EIGHT

  Charlie had allowed himself three days before the London meeting. The first two had been taken up travelling to England by as confused a route as possible, going by train from Zürich to Lyons, from there to Paris, backtracking to Auxerre and then returning to Paris to catch the night sleeper to Victoria.

  The remaining day had been devoted entirely to watching Rupert Willoughby, following him from his house off Sloane Street to his City office, occupying the secluded table at Sweetings during the man’s business lunch, checking his firm to uncover any possible links to dummy or cover companies the names and addresses of which he might have recognised and then, finally, trailing him in his trendy, smoked-glass mini back from the City to Knightsbridge in the evening. Just like old times, reflected Charlie, welcoming the activity.

  It would have needed a team of men to have established absolutely that the man was not under deep surveillance, Charlie accepted. And as Edith had warned, now he was completely on his own.

  And so he would always be now, he reflected, content with the protection of the rush-hour crowd in the middle of which he spilled from the Bank underground station on the morning of the appointment.

  ‘So far, so good,’ he assured himself.

  ‘Yes,’ agreed a commuter beside him. ‘Much better this morning, wasn’t it? Extra trains at London Bridge, you know.’

  ‘About time,’ answered Charlie. He’d have to control the habit, he decided. It was embarrassing.

  The office of the Lloyd’s underwriters of which, from enquiries he’d already made through the Company Register, Charlie knew Willoughby to be the senior partner, was off Leadenhall Street, high in a converted block with a view of the Bank of England.
r />   Willoughby was already standing when Charlie entered the spacious, oak-panelled office. Immediately he came forward, hands held out like that Sunday in the churchyard. Remarkably like his father, decided Charlie. Even more so than he had realised from their initial encounter.

  ‘At last,’ greeted the underwriter, leading Charlie to a leather, button-backed chair immediately alongside the desk.

  ‘At last?’

  Willoughby smiled at the quickness of the question, looking down at the man. Thinning, strawish hair, perhaps a hint of blood pressure or even alcohol from the slight purpling around the face and nose and a hunched, maybe apprehensive way of sitting. A very ordinary sort of man; the 8 a.m. traveller on every bus and train. Which proved, decided Willoughby, how deceptive appearances could be.

  ‘I always hoped you would make contact,’ he said. ‘If you could, that was. My father did, too.’

  Very direct, assessed Charlie. Almost as if the man had some knowledge of what had happened.

  ‘I’ve cancelled everything for today,’ said Willoughby. ‘There’ll be no interruptions.’

  Charlie remained silent, sitting forward in the chair. How could Willoughby know? It was impossible. Unless he were involved in the pursuit. And if he were involved, then he wouldn’t be so direct, arousing suspicion. It was a circle of doubt, Charlie recognised, without a beginning or an end.

  ‘So we finally meet,’ said Willoughby again, as if he couldn’t believe it.

  ‘There was a previous occasion,’ Charlie reminded him. Willoughby had been at Cambridge, Charlie recalled. Sir Archibald had brought him into the Whitehall office on his way for his first visit to the House of Commons. The boy had acne and seemed disappointed nobody carried a gun.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ apologised Willoughby. ‘I don’t remember meeting you with my father. But he didn’t take me into the office very often.’

  ‘No,’ agreed Charlie.

  ‘Do you know,’ continued Willoughby, leaning back in his chair and looking away from Charlie, ‘in the end those bastards Cuthbertson and Wilberforce actually tried to use something as ridiculous as that against him.’

  ‘What?’ demanded Charlie, very attentive. The continued openness was disconcerting; almost the professional use of honesty that he had employed to gain a person’s confidence.

  ‘His taking me into the office,’ explained the underwriter. ‘Claimed it was a breach of security.’

  Charlie felt the tension recede. It would be wrong to formulate impressions too soon. But perhaps it hadn’t been a mistake to come, after all.

  ‘It’s the sort of thing they would have done,’ accepted Charlie. And been right, he thought honestly. But Sir Archibald had always made his own rules; that was one of the reasons why he and Charlie had established such a rapport. And why, in the end, Cuthbertson and Wilberforce had manoeuvred his replacement.

  ‘You realise he committed suicide, don’t you?’ said Willoughby.

  Charlie shook his head.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘I didn’t. I was away when he died. It was never directly mentioned, but I inferred it was natural causes …’

  Charlie paused.

  ‘Well …’ he started again, but Willoughby talked over him.

  ‘Cirrhosis of the liver?’ anticipated the man. ‘Yes, that too. They made him into an alcoholic by the way they treated him. And when he realised what had happened to him, he hoarded some barbiturates and took the whole lot with a bottle of whisky.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Charlie began, then stopped, irritated by the emptiness of the expression. But he was sorry, he thought. There were few people to whom he had ever been close. And Sir Archibald had been one of them.

  ‘There was a note,’ continued Willoughby, appearing unaware of Charlie’s attempt at sympathy. ‘Several, in fact. The one he left for the police put the fear of Christ up everyone. Spelled everything out … not just what shits Cuthbert son and Wilberforce were in the way they got him fired, but the mistakes they had made as well. He did it quite deliberately because he believed that if they weren’t moved, they’d make a major, serious blunder.’

  His feelings, remembered Charlie.

  ‘The department took the whole thing over,’ continued Willoughby. ‘They have the power, apparently, under the Official Secrets Act. Allows them to do practically anything, to protect the national interest. Squashed the inquest, everything. That’s how the natural causes account got spread about.’

  Sir Archibald’s death could only have been a matter of weeks before he had exposed their stupidity and got them captured in Vienna by the Russian commandos, Charlie calculated. What, he wondered, had happened to Cuthbertson? Back where he belonged, probably, fighting long forgotten battles over the brandy and cigars at Boodles. Wilberforce would have survived, he guessed. Wilberforce, with his poofy socks and shirts and that daft habit of breaking pipes into little pieces. Always had been a sneaky bugger, even under Sir Archibald’s control. Yes, he would certainly have hung on, shifting all the blame on to Cuthbertson. Would he still be the second-in-command? Or had he finally got the Directorship for which he had schemed for so long? Always an ambitious man: but without the ability to go with it. If he had remained, then the danger of which Sir Archibald had warned still existed.

  ‘He asked me to tell you the truth, if ever you contacted me,’ said Willoughby.

  ‘I don’t …’ frowned Charlie.

  ‘I told you he wrote several letters. To avoid them being seized by the police, he posted them, on the night he killed himself. He really planned it very carefully. The one to me talked about his fears for the department … he felt very strongly about it, after all those years, and didn’t want it destroyed because incapable men had managed to reach positions of power. And another was devoted almost entirely to you.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘He told me you’d visited him … just before going away to do something about which you were frightened.’

  So he’d realised it, thought Charlie. He’d imagined Sir Archibald too drunk that day he had gone down to Rye and sat in the darkened room and felt the sadness lump in his throat at the collapse of the old man.

  ‘He appreciated it very much … the fact that you regarded him as a friend.’

  It was true, reflected Charlie. That was always how he’d thought of the man under whom he had spent all his operational life.

  ‘He often talked about you when … when he was Director and we were living together, in London. Boasted about you, in fact. Said you were the best operative he had ever created … that there was practically nothing you couldn’t do …’

  The man’s forthrightness was not assumed, decided Charlie, unembarrassed at the flattery. Willoughby would have made a mistake by now, had he had to force the effect. ‘There were times when I was almost jealous of you.’ Willoughby added.

  ‘I don’t think he’d be very proud now,’ said Charlie, regretting the admission as he spoke. Carelessness again.

  Willougby raised his hands in a halting movement.

  ‘I don’t think I should know,’ he said, quickly. He paused, then added bluntly: ‘The guilt was pretty obvious in the cemetery.’

  Justified criticism, accepted Charlie. He wouldn’t have stood a chance if the graveyard had been covered that day.

  ‘I’ve known for a long time they’ve been looking for you,’ announced Willoughby.

  Charlie came forward on his seat again and Willoughby tried to reduce the sudden awkwardness by smiling and leaning back in his own chair.

  ‘You’ve no need to be concerned,’ he said. He dropped the smile, reinforcing the assurance.

  ‘How?’ asked Charlie. His feet were beneath the chair, ready to take the weight when he jerked up.

  ‘They remembered the relationship between you and my father,’ recounted Willoughby. ‘I had several visits from their people, about four months after he died …’

  ‘They would have asked you to have told them, if ever I made contact with you,’
predicted Charlie, the apprehension growing.

  ‘That’s right,’ agreed Willoughby. ‘They did.’

  ‘Well?’ Charlie demanded. He’d buggered it, he thought immediately. Edith had been right: he was wrong again.

  ‘Charlie,’ said Willoughby, coming forward again so that there was less than a yard between them. ‘They reduced my father into a shambling, disgusting old drunk who went to sleep every night puddled in his own urine. And then, effectively, they killed him. I don’t know what you did, but I know it hurt. Is it likely I’m going to turn in someone who did what I’d have given my eye-teeth to have done?’

  Charlie was hunched in the chair, still uncertain.

  ‘It’s been five weeks since your telephone call,’ Willoughby reminded him, realising Charlie’s doubt. He waved his hand towards the window.

  ‘In five weeks,’ said the underwriter, ‘they would have made plans that guaranteed that once inside this office you’d never be able to get out again. Go on, look out of the window. By now the roads would have been sealed and all the traffic halted.’

  Willoughby was right, Charlie realised. He got up, going behind the other man’s chair. Far below, the street was thronged with people and cars.

  ‘The outer office would have been cleared, too,’ invited the underwriter.

  Without replying, Charlie opened the door. The secretary who had greeted him looked up, enquiringly, then smiled.

  ‘Satisfied?’ asked Willoughby.

  Charlie nodded.

  ‘Tell me something,’ said Willoughby, in sudden curiosity. ‘What would you have done if it had been a trap?’

  ‘Probably tried to kill you,’ said Charlie. And more than likely failed, he added to himself, remembering his hesitation at personal violence in the cemetery.

  Willoughby pulled his lips over his teeth, a nervous gesture.

  ‘What good would that have done, if you’d been bottled up here?’

  ‘Kept me alive,’ suggested Charlie. ‘They couldn’t have eliminated me, if I’d committed a public murder.’

  Why, wondered Charlie, was he talking like this? It was ridiculous. He waited for the other man to laugh at him.