Madrigal for Charlie Muffin (13 page)

‘Sorry to disturb you,’ Harkness said.

‘What is it?’

‘I asked for a deep investigation, beyond what we already had,’ said the deputy. ‘We’ve just had a response from Australia. It seems for a brief period Jill Walsingham was a member of the Communist party there.’

There was a short silence. Then Wilson demanded, ‘Why’s it taken so long to find out?’

‘It was brief, like I said. Just three months, during her last year at university. Then she resigned.’

‘Which is the first thing she would have been told to do, if she was going underground,’ said Wilson. ‘Did she know Walsingham then?’

‘Not for another two years. They met when he was attached to Canberra.’

‘So she could have sought him out, under instructions?’

‘Yes.’

‘So now the Walsinghams are more likely candidates than Semingford,’ said the director.

During the night, he’d turned away from her. Charlie eased himself around to avoid disturbing her. If she awoke she would want to make love and Charlie still had the ache of the previous night. The light was pale, hardly enough at first to create more than a silhouette. Clarissa slept on her back, with her mouth slightly parted. She was snoring, faint bubbly snores, and as he watched her face twitched, first into a frown and moments later into a smile. He wanted to reach out and touch her but held back.

What was he going to do about her?

There’d been affairs before, when Edith was alive, and she’d always been the excuse to end them, the person he’d gratefully returned home to. But now Edith was dead, so he didn’t have his excuse. And he didn’t know if he wanted one anyway.

Clarissa wore floppy hats to the Royal Enclosures at Ascot and crewed yachts during Cowes Week and ate from Fortnum and Mason hampers from the back of Rolls Royces at Glyndebourne. And he was Charlie Muffin, who had never got closer to Ascot than the betting shop in Dean Street, thought ocean racer was the name of a greyhound and had never known the difference between an aria and an intermezzo. No matter what she said to romanticize her adventure, it
was
a novelty – fun. It would be wrong to let his loneliness make it into anything more.

The telephone interrupted his thoughts. Charlie jumped, fumbling it from the rest to avoid awakening Clarissa. There was the echoing delay of an overseas connection and then the sound of Rupert Willoughby’s voice.

Charlie hunched forward at the edge of the bed, his entire concentration upon what he was being told and its implications. He turned to see Clarissa blinking at him.

‘What is it?’ she said.

‘There’s been a robbery at the Billington villa,’ said Charlie flatly. ‘Everything’s gone.’

She jerked up, so the bedclothes fell away from her. ‘But that’s …’

‘… just too much of a coincidence,’ completed Charlie.

‘What are you talking about?’ she said.

‘I don’t know,’ said Charlie. ‘Not yet.’

In London Rupert Willoughby stared down at the telephone and at the preliminary report of the inquiry agent which was alongside. He felt disgusted. At Clarissa. At Charlie. And at himself.

14

Early in his intelligence career Charlie Muffin developed an instinct, a personal antenna for danger. It had been instinct that turned him from the East Berlin border to hand the keys of the marked Volkswagen to a student to drive into a hail of machine-gun fire instead of an escape to the West. And it was the same instinct that gripped him now, as he went towards the villa at Ostia. He wasn’t a clerk any more, making ticks against a piece of paper. He was Charlie Muffin, a renegade operative who had spent seven years hiding from any sort of authority, being forced to confront God knows how many police and a security system of a British embassy. And he
was
being forced. His initial thought in the Rome hotel room had been to run. But if he ran, less than twenty-four hours after completing an insurance survey during which he’d learned the security and opened the safe, he’d be the obvious suspect. And get no further than the first check at any airport he attempted to escape from. So there was only one thing he could do. Continue under the guise of insurance assessor and try to recover every scrap of the expertise he’d once had to avoid detection. It would be like trying to cross a fraying tightrope without a safety net; he never had liked circuses.

There was a police roadblock a mile from the villa, officialdom showing its stable-door mentality, but Charlie had taken the precaution of telephoning ahead, and after a radio check he was waved through. From the vantage point of the approaching hill the villa looked as if it were under siege by blue-uniformed carabinieri. They encircled the outside wall, apparently prodding through undergrowth for clues, and Charlie saw more moving in similar head-bent fashion throughout the stepped gardens. There were police everywhere. Rooflights flickered red, and from other cars came a distorted crackle of radios.

The gate check was more stringent than the one on the road and Charlie tensed at the scrutiny of his photograph against the Willoughby insurance authority and the recording of the hire-car number. The fear became a positive numbness, permeating his body. But they were all Italians here, so there was little risk of their identifying him. And it was still fifty-fifty with any of the embassy staff. If he were recognized at ground level he could give the same story he’d used with Willoughby: premature retirement because of policy changes. And hope to Christ no one was efficient enough to query it with London.

Before he was released at the gate, permission was sought by telephone from the main house in a babble of Italian and for some reason a policeman got into the passenger seat for the short journey to the villa. There were white sweat rings under the arms of his uniform and he had a machine pistol looped over his shoulder. The muzzle nudged against Charlie’s leg when the man settled himself and Charlie waved it away. The man eyed him insolently but shifted slightly. He muttered something in Italian and Charlie said, ‘Fuck you too.’

Nearer the house a concentration of uniformed and plain-clothes people were gathered by a wooden cradle, like the sort used on office blocks by window cleaners. It was slung over the cliff edge and men in overalls were strapped into it. They appeared to be examining a metal protection device shaped in a half circle.

Jane Williams was waiting for him. This time there was no offered hand.

‘This is a terrible business,’ she said.

‘Yes,’ said Charlie. Trouble always seemed to bring out the cliché in people.

‘The ambassador is in his study.’

More men in uniform were assembled in some sort of guard outside the house, and as they went in Charlie saw plainclothes technicians working at a window area in one of the rooms off the central corridor.

‘Who discovered it?’ said Charlie.

‘The ambassador.’

‘How?’

‘He went to the safe to replace some jewellery Lady Billington wore last night. And found it empty.’

‘Any signs of entry?’

‘Through one of the French windows back there.’

She stopped outside a door and said, ‘Sir Hector’s in there.’

The ambassador stood up at Charlie’s entry, coming grave-faced towards him. He was a large man, tall and heavily built. His hair was cultivated long, for a patrician appearance, and if it hadn’t been for the tan Charlie guessed he would be florid-faced. He must have modelled for the upstairs sculpture several years before. Billington wore white pumps, white trousers, and a silk cravat was immaculately knotted beneath a blue silk blazer. Charlie thought he looked ready to walk onto the set of one of those Fellini films he’d counted the minutes through in his early, conformist days in the department.

‘Willoughby promised to contact you,’ said the ambassador.

‘Did he say why?’

‘No,’ said the ambassador. ‘Have you met the police yet?’

‘I wanted to see you first.’

Billington showed Charlie to a chair and sat himself behind a pristinely neat desk.

‘Willoughby tells me everything has gone,’ said Charlie.

‘All except what my wife wore last night.’

‘Why’s that?’

‘We’d been to a reception at the German embassy,’ said Billington. ‘Everything was intact when we left, at seven, because my wife had the safe open to choose what to wear. When I went to put it back this morning, it was empty. Everything gone.’

‘How many staff have you got?’

‘I’ve already told the police.’

‘I’d like you to tell me,’ pressed Charlie.

Billington hesitated and said, ‘Nine.’

‘They heard nothing?’

‘Not a thing.’

‘How was the safe opened?’

‘It was opened!’ said the ambassador, as if the question were ridiculous.

‘By explosives? Or combination?’ said Charlie patiently.

‘Combination,’ said Billington. ‘The police say it was extremely professional.’

‘Must have been,’ said Charlie. ‘I went through the whole system two days ago. Who had the combination?’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ The ambassador bristled.

‘It’s supposed to mean I’m investigating the theft of a million and a half pounds’ worth of jewellery,’ said Charlie.

Billington coloured. ‘Are you suggesting some member of my staff isn’t trustworthy?’

‘I’m suggesting that no thief is professional enough to bypass the security I saw, locate an unusually concealed safe and pick a combination lock like the one upstairs without some sort of help,’ said Charlie. ‘So who had the combination?’

‘I did,’ said Billington stiffly. ‘My wife. The secretary. The embassy security man. There’s a record of it in the security vault at the embassy. And my solicitor, of course, in London.’

‘That’s a lot of people,’ said Charlie.

‘All trustworthy.’

‘Did anything happen which now seems to have been at all unusual, either here or at the embassy, immediately prior to the robbery?’

‘Like what?’

‘Anything you can think of.’

‘No.’ The response was categoric.

‘What about afterwards? This morning for instance.’

‘Why are you asking me this?’ said Billington irritably.

‘The jewellery is useless for any sort of normal disposal.’

‘So what’s the point of stealing it?’

‘Resale to the insurers,’ said Charlie. ‘That’s why Willoughby was so anxious to stop me leaving Rome. He wants me to be here on the spot, ready to negotiate.’

Billington smiled for the first time, showing cosmetically even teeth. ‘I suppose it’s obvious,’ he said. ‘It’s been such a confused morning it hadn’t occurred to me.’ He thought for a moment, then said, ‘These negotiations you talk of, would they be independent of the police?’

‘I doubt if they’d accept it,’ said Charlie. ‘Their interest is in an arrest.’

Billington looked doubtful. ‘I’m not sure I could agree to bypass the authorities.’

‘We’re talking about jewellery you estimate to be worth two million pounds.’

‘Which is adequately covered by an insurance policy that doesn’t expire for another month,’ reminded the ambassador. ‘Obviously I’d like it back intact: some of the pieces are irreplaceable. And it would take years to build up a collection again.…’

Charlie hadn’t anticipated Billington’s opposition. ‘I’d like you to think about it,’ he said.

‘One doesn’t cooperate with criminals,’ said Billington firmly.

‘You wouldn’t be,’ said Charlie. ‘I would.’

‘I think you’d better tell Willoughby I’d like a settlement.’

‘It’s not as easy as that.’

‘Why not?’

‘Before we could consider any sort of settlement we would have to be absolutely satisfied about the circumstances of the robbery. And that there was no possibility of any of the articles being recovered,’ said Charlie formally. He thought it sounded quite convincing.

‘I’m not sure if I fully understand what you’re implying,’ said the ambassador.

‘I’m not implying,’ said Charlie. ‘I am ensuring that you appreciate the terms of the policy.’

‘I left that to my solicitor to negotiate,’ said Billington.

‘Then he should have made it clear that replacement is only considered when the police indicate there’s no chance of recovery,’ exaggerated Charlie. He supposed Billington could check with the lawyer but it was a chance he had to take.

‘How long could that be?’

‘I imagine the political embarrassment would prevent such an admission for a long time.’

‘This is preposterous,’ said Billington tightly. ‘You’re telling me I’ve virtually no cover!’

‘Your cover is absolute and assured,’ insisted Charlie. ‘I’ve just set out the two ways it could be resolved, one quick, one protracted.’

‘I’ll have to give it some consideration.’

‘Usually there isn’t much delay in making an approach.’

‘I’d be assured of your discretion?’

‘Absolutely.’ It was like gradually tiring a hooked fish, thought Charlie.

‘It’s not a situation I enjoy.’

‘Who does?’ said Charlie. ‘But there are occasions when one has to be practical.’

‘It
would
be a tragedy to lose some of the older pieces,’ said Billington reflectively. ‘They’ve been in the family for generations.’

‘If there’s an approach and we don’t respond, it’ll be broken down and sold piecemeal … lost for ever.’ Billington had almost given up fighting; it was time to slip the net beneath him and haul him in. There was a sudden knock at the door, and the chance was lost. Charlie looked up irritably. There was a man behind Jane Williams, dwarfing her with his bulk.

‘Inspector Guilio Moro,’ she said.

‘Do you want to see me?’ inquired Billington, rising to his feet.

‘No,’ said the policeman, pointing at Charlie. ‘Him!’

The robbery report had come in less than an hour after the Australian information about Jill Walsingham. This time the duty officer awakened Sir Alistair Wilson and then sent a car, so the director arrived on the south side of the river earlier than normal. Harkness was already waiting when he got there.

‘There’s to be a meeting in Downing Street,’ said the deputy. ‘You’re expected at eleven o’clock.’

Wilson had anticipated the summons. ‘What do we know so far?’