The Inscrutable Charlie Muffin Read online

  Jones eased into a facing chair, halted by the announcement.

  Again leaving out the girl’s attempted seduction, Charlie recounted the story. He was getting very adept at it, he thought. To tell Jones could be another lure, rather than a mistake. The man’s reaction would be a further confirmation. Not that he really needed it.

  ‘Jesus!’ said Jones.

  ‘Clever, isn’t it?’ said Charlie.

  ‘But how the hell can you prove it?’

  The man had failed, thought Charlie. If Jones really had represented the U.S. Maritime Authority, he’d have been as interested in proving it as Charlie. And accepted it as a joint operation. Jones would realise the mistake and recover quickly, he guessed.

  ‘I can’t prove it,’ admitted Charlie.

  ‘Johnson isn’t interested?’

  ‘Called it preposterous.’

  ‘Which it is.’

  Clever, assessed Charlie. Now he was forced to talk further, always with the risk of a slip.

  ‘But it fits better with opium-smoking illiterates,’ he pointed out.

  ‘That really was damned smart of you,’ repeated Jones.

  The American was still manipulating the conversation.

  ‘It seems obvious,’ Charlie said uneasily.

  ‘Not to Johnson, who’s supposed to be the expert.’

  ‘He’s got a policeman’s mind … trained only to accept fact.’

  ‘What are you trained in?’ demanded Jones openly.

  ‘Trying to avoid £6,000,000 settlements,’ said Charlie.

  Jones smiled.

  Amusement? wondered Charlie. Or admiration at escaping again? There was as much danger in showing himself an expert in this type of interrogation as there was in a misplaced word.

  The American rose, to pace the room again.

  He went towards the bar and Charlie said, ‘Would you like a drink?’

  ‘Never touch it.’

  Because it might blur his faculties, no matter how slightly, guessed Charlie. And he judged Jones to be the sort of man who didn’t like to lose control of anything, most of all himself. About him there was an overwhelming impression of care. It was most obvious in the pressed and matched clothes, but extended to the manicured hands and close-cropped hair and even to the choice of cologne that retained his just-out-of-the-bathroom freshness.

  ‘Can I help you to one?’ offered the American.

  ‘No,’ said Charlie. Jones didn’t want to impair his thinking, he reflected. And he couldn’t afford to.

  ‘Thought about asking for an independent autopsy?’ asked Jones. ‘If you could discover any injury to Nelson inconsistent with his being drowned it would be something upon which Johnson would have to act.’

  An invitation to reveal his expertise, saw Charlie, the apprehension tightening within him.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘I hadn’t thought of that.’

  ‘Might be an idea,’ said Jones.

  ‘Yes,’ agreed Charlie. ‘It might.’

  ‘How much time do you think you have, now that Lu’s issued writs?’ asked Jones, nodding to Willoughby’s telex message that lay between them on the table.

  He’d endangered the underwriter by letting the American read the cable as they had travelled up in the lift, Charlie realised belatedly. It had been a panicked reaction, to gain time. Now, unless he allayed the uncertainties, it would be automatic for Jones to have their London bureau check Willoughby. And in his present state, the underwriter wouldn’t be able to satisfy any enquiry.

  ‘Not much,’ said Charlie. ‘Our lawyers will want to begin preparing an answer to Lu’s claim almost immediately. And they won’t be able to do that on what I’ve got available.’

  ‘So you’re in trouble?’

  But just how much? wondered Charlie.

  ‘Looks like it,’ he said.

  ‘I’ll be intrigued to see what you do,’ said Jones.

  ‘What would you do?’ demanded Charlie, turning the question.

  Jones made an uncertain movement.

  ‘I’m in a more fortunate position than you,’ he said. ‘There’s no money riding on what I do.’

  ‘What, then?’ insisted Charlie.

  Jones was at the window. He turned at the open question.

  ‘Just a group of government officials who want to know if Peking put a match to a liner hardly out of American ownership.’

  Now Jones was making mistakes, thought Charlie, as the different confirmation came of his earlier assessment. Or was he? Perhaps it was an invitation to Charlie to become more careless.

  ‘Why should that interest them?’ he pressed. ‘The sale had gone through, after all.’

  ‘But only just,’ said Jones. ‘Hardly be a friendly act towards America, would it?’

  ‘And that worries a shipping authority sufficiently to send you all the way here?’

  ‘You’d better believe it,’ said Jones glibly.

  But I don’t, thought Charlie. It would be wrong to let the disbelief be too obvious.

  ‘So what are you going to do?’ he repeated. It was time to attempt some insurance of his own. Or at least as much protection as possible.

  Jones returned to his chair, apparently realising the failure of his wanderings to irritate Charlie.

  ‘Like you, I’m stuck with the official version,’ said the American.

  ‘But I don’t accept it. What about you?’

  ‘I like your story better than Johnson’s,’ conceded Jones.

  ‘Why not ask Johnson’s help?’ suggested Charlie. ‘He might change his mind if he got a second request so quickly.’

  Jones made a dismissive gesture with his well-kept hands.

  ‘He’d know it originated from you. And he didn’t strike me as a man prepared to change his mind very often.’

  ‘Perhaps you’re right,’ said Charlie. About now, he decided.

  ‘We could work together,’ said Jones, promptly on cue.

  Charlie maintained his relaxed pose, smiling across at the other man. Jones had realised his earlier mistake.

  ‘You’re welcome to anything I learn,’ promised Charlie. ‘And if you come up with anything, I’d like to know about it.’

  ‘I was actually thinking of something closer,’ said Jones.

  I know you were, thought Charlie. Aloud, he said, ‘I was never much for teamwork.’

  ‘We could both benefit,’ Jones argued.

  He already had, Charlie decided. Having led Jones into making the suggestion, then rejecting it, he would know from the closeness of the man’s attention just how strong Jones’s uncertainty of him remained. Which was the maximum insurance for which he could hope.

  ‘Or get in each other’s way,’ said Charlie. ‘I think it’s better we work independently. But perhaps exchange what we come up with.’

  ‘So you’re a loner?’

  ‘Every time.’

  ‘How many times have there been?’

  ‘What?’ said Charlie, momentarily confused by the question.

  ‘How long have you worked for insurance companies?’

  ‘Must be twenty years,’ assured Charlie, wanting to change position in the chair but knowing the other man would recognise the nervousness it would betray.

  ‘Long as that?’

  ‘Hardly entrust a £6,000,000 investigation to a newcomer, would they?’

  ‘Not unless he had particular qualities … like being able to see something that the police don’t regard as unusual.’

  ‘Seemed obvious, like I told you.’

  ‘Sure,’ agreed Jones. ‘You told me.’

  Charlie waited, but the American didn’t continue. The man was letting the silence build up, trying to disturb him as he had attempted with the pointless meandering around the suite.

  Remembering the way the encounter had been forced upon him, to become annoyed would be entirely natural, realised Charlie, just in time.

  ‘Right,’ he said positively, standing up. ‘If there’s noth
ing more with which I can help you at the moment …’

  ‘If you’re quite sure there isn’t?’ interrupted Jones, making his most direct approach since they had begun talking.

  ‘And I have a funeral to arrange,’ continued Charlie, refusing to respond to the innuendo.

  Once more Jones stood, accepting his dismissal.

  ‘Kind of you to let me barge in like this.’

  ‘No trouble at all,’ said Charlie.

  ‘We’ll keep in touch.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘I’m at the Peninsula.’

  ‘I’ll remember that.’

  ‘Damned clever of you, seeing the flaw in Johnson’s case,’ reiterated Jones, shaking his head in feigned admiration and wanting to prolong the meeting as much as possible.

  Now it was Charlie’s turn to use silence.

  ‘I’ll get along then,’ said Jones finally.

  ‘Yes,’ Charlie encouraged him.

  Charlie stood unmoving for several moments after the door had closed behind the American. Then he went to the bar. The bottle vibrated against the glass edge as he splashed the whisky out, drank it in one gulp, then poured a second.

  Good, he judged. But good enough? There was no way he could be sure. Certainly Jones had been pressing until the very end. But it would be wrong to read too much into that. It was basic procedure: the sort of persistence he would have shown himself in the same circumstances.

  He paused at the thought. As frightened as he had been, there had been something enervating about the confrontation. Perhaps the feeling of a matador facing an insufficiently weakened bull and knowing it could kill him. Charlie snorted, disgusted with himself. That was melodramatic bullshit, he thought; the sort of posturing of which he knew he had been guilty in the past.

  He was not fighting bulls. He was fighting for his life. Again.

  He wanted to run. The awareness came suddenly, surprising him. He was no more prepared to die now than he had been on the East Berlin border or during the pursuit by the Americans or the British or during any of the missions upon which he’d been sent by the underwriter’s father.

  A man who relied so much upon instinct, Charlie recognised his determination to survive as the strongest force within him.

  So how could he survive? Certainly not by running. That would provide whatever confirmation Jones needed and start the chase all over again. Resolve everything quickly then. Far quicker than Willoughby was demanding. But how, against Johnson’s official refusal to reopen the case?

  ‘You’re fucked, Charlie,’ he told himself. ‘Without even being kissed.’

  He booked the call to London, stared at his glass considering another drink and then rejected the idea. It never helped.

  Willoughby’s response was immediate. The man must spend all his time waiting by the telephone.

  ‘Nelson’s dead,’ announced Charlie, quietening a flurry of questions from the underwriter.

  ‘Oh God,’ said Willoughby.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What happened?’

  It took Charlie only a few moments to tell the underwriter. Hardly long enough, he thought. A man’s life, dismissed in a minute or two.

  ‘And Johnson still won’t help?’ demanded Willoughby, when Charlie had finished.

  ‘Not upon anything. And to be fair to the man, I don’t suppose there’s any logical, police reason why he should.’

  ‘But you said …’

  ‘That I didn’t have any proof,’ Charlie reminded him. If Harvey Jones instituted any investigation in London, Willoughby would collapse, thought Charlie again.

  ‘I haven’t much more time,’ said the underwriter, defeat etched into his voice. ‘I’ll have to make an announcement soon.’

  Perhaps neither of us has got much more time, thought Charlie.

  ‘I realise that,’ he said.

  ‘What about Nelson trying to prove the girl’s story,’ said Willoughby desperately. ‘That’s a motive. Cause enough for some sort of police investigation. That and the premium …?’

  ‘But there’s no evidence of what Nelson was trying to do … apart from my word. Death was by drowning. And he’d been drinking.’

  ‘So there’s still nothing with which we can dispute the writs?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘I was very hopeful.’

  ‘I warned you not to be.’

  ‘It just seemed so good …’

  The broker’s death registered fully for the first time.

  ‘Poor Robert,’ said Willoughby. ‘Christ, what a disaster.’

  ‘There’s something else,’ said Charlie.

  He had to warn Willoughby of the danger of Harvey Jones, he knew.

  Charlie had expected alarm but it was more hopeless resignation in the underwriter’s voice when he had finished telling of the American’s visit.

  ‘You could be wrong,’ said Willoughby. ‘He really could be employed by the maritime agency.’

  ‘No chance,’ said Charlie, refusing Willoughby any false reassurance, despite his awareness of the man’s need. ‘I’ve spent all my life seeing people like Harvey Jones for what they really are.’

  ‘And he suspects you?’

  ‘Of course not. At the moment he’s just curious.’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘He’s trained to spot inconsistencies. And he saw it straight away in the official account, just like I did. It’s only natural he should wonder about someone who thinks like he does.’

  ‘What the hell are we going to do, Charlie?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Get out,’ insisted Willoughby suddenly. ‘The only thing you can do is run.’

  ‘I’ve already thought of that,’ admitted Charlie. ‘It would be the worst thing I could do.’

  ‘What then?’

  The idea was only half formed in Charlie’s mind, but at least it indicated some intention.

  ‘I think it’s time that I saw Lucky Lu.’

  ‘I’m not sure that’s strictly legal, now that he’s issued writs.’

  It probably wasn’t, thought Charlie. But being strictly legal had never been a consideration in the past.

  ‘We don’t have time to worry about legal niceties,’ said Charlie.

  ‘Be careful then. Be bloody careful.’

  Charlie hesitated at the words.

  ‘I will,’ he promised. Or dead, he thought.

  It would have helped, decided Harvey Jones, had he had someone with whom he could have discussed the meeting. But the instructions had been explicit. So he had to reach a judgment by himself. The man was unusual, certainly. But was he any more than that? The apparent awareness of interrogation techniques was intriguing. But there were many sorts of people who might have experience of that. Lawyers, for instance. And insurance investigators would have had a lot of contact with the law. A smart lawyer would have spotted the inconsistency about the Chinese dockyard workers, too. Or again, someone who spent a lot of time involved with them.

  Specially chosen: to prove himself. That’s what the deputy director had said.

  And he didn’t want to prove himself an idiot by suggesting British Intelligence were in some way interested, with a cover as good as his own.

  He’d wait, he decided. Until he was sure. And only when he was convinced would he cable Langley and get them to run a check in London, so that there could be some official instruction for them to work together. Ridiculous to operate separately, after all.

  Jones smoothed the robe around him, looking across to where his suit hung crisp and fresh after its return from the hotel valet.

  That was another thing he’d found difficult to accept about the man. For someone important enough to be investigating a £6,000,000 insurance claim, he was a scruffy son of a bitch.

  Meant one thing, though. With a description like that, it wouldn’t take the computer long to come up with the man’s proper name. So they could even approach London with an identity, in case the bastards trie
d to deny their interest.

  13

  The reception area was enormous and everywhere there were pictures of L. W. Lu.

  Charlie examined them with the professionalism of his teenage training, appreciating the care that had gone into their taking and selection. The biggest, a gigantic enlargement occupying nearly the whole wall behind the desk of identically uniformed girls, showed the millionaire with two American Presidents and another, only slightly smaller, with Henry Kissinger. Along another wall were a series showing Lu individually and then in groups with all the British Commonwealth leaders during the Singapore conference. And the area to the left was given over to a pictorial history of Lu’s charity work, showing him at the two orphanages he had established for Vietnamese refugees after the fall of Saigon and touring wards of the hospitals which were maintained entirely by the charitable trust he had created.

  ‘Christ,’ said Charlie mockingly, moving forward and looking for the lift he had been told would bypass the other eighteen floors of the skyscraper block from which Lu Industries were controlled and take him direct to the penthouse office.

  He located it by the guards. Both were armed, he saw. A separate receptionist, male this time, sat behind them at a small desk.

  ‘You have an appointment for eleven o’clock with Mr Lu?’ he said, before Charlie could speak.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘We were told to expect you.’

  The lift door opened by some control which the man obviously operated but which Charlie could not see. As he entered, he saw the man reach for a telephone to announce his arrival above. Predictably, there were more photographs lining the lift panels, this time showing Lu at the launchings of his various tankers and passenger ships. The facing wall had pictures of the Pride of America leaving New York, another of its Hong Kong arrival and a third showing Lu in a small boat alongside the destroyed hull. John Lu really did resemble his father, thought Charlie, studying the photographs. Except for the smile. The younger man was a miserable-looking sod. Charlie paused, considering the judgment. Not really miserable, more apprehensive.

  Despite the obvious entry he could have expected from the Willoughby company name and the warning from the increasingly distracted underwriter in a hurried telephone call earlier that morning that Lu’s London office had made contact to establish he had directorial authority, Charlie had still been intrigued at the speed with which the millionaire had agreed to see him. He’d anticipated a delay of several days instead of the instantaneous agreement.