Madrigal for Charlie Muffin (3 page)

‘Discretion,’ announced the civil servant.

‘What?’

‘It’s to be handled with discretion: absolute and utter discretion. No scandal whatsoever.’

‘We haven’t got him yet,’ said Wilson.

‘There can’t be any embarrassment,’ insisted Naire-Hamilton.

Conservative parties, Labour parties and even Social Democratic parties might fight elections and dream of power, but people like Naire-Hamilton regarded the changes like a bus driver allocated a temporary inspector: there might be occasional changes of route, but they were always in the driving seat.

Wilson straightened in his chair and the leather elbow patches squeaked against the seat. ‘Are you telling me you don’t want a trial?’

Naire-Hamilton sucked at his breath, noisily. ‘Just giving general guidance, my dear fellow. More tea perhaps?’

Wilson wished the other man wouldn’t keep calling him a dear fellow. He shook his head against the offer. ‘If there were an accident, you wouldn’t regret not being able formally to endorse the file closed?’

‘Admirably put,’ congratulated the other man. ‘And another thing.…’

‘What?’

‘I think it would be best if you remained in personal charge. Confusions always arise if things as important as this get delegated.’

‘I hadn’t any intention of delegating anything,’ said Wilson.

‘Glad to hear it, dear fellow,’ said Naire-Hamilton. He raised his ever-moving hands against his forehead in a measuring gesture. ‘Up to here with traitors and super-spies,’ he said.

For some inexplicable reason, the Ministry of Works, which was responsible for government decoration, considered buildings south of the river to be modern, for which Wilson was grateful. There was the obligatory bookcase, with its stuck-together tomes, but otherwise he was spared Naire-Hamilton’s working conditions. There were even two Dora Carrington pictures on the wall. The window view of the river included St Paul’s and the furniture was sufficiently contemporary not to make the television set, on which Wilson sometimes watched afternoon horse racing, appear obtrusive. Since the Calcutta accident, racing was the nearest he got to horses: once they’d been a hobby, like roses.

Peter Harkness was waiting when Wilson returned from his Whitehall meeting. The deputy intelligence director was an undemonstrative man whose initial training had been as an accountant and who still worried about money. He lived separately but beneath the same Bayswater roof with a wife to whom he had been married for twenty years and wouldn’t consider divorcing because both were practising Catholics. Apart from church on Sundays, when he carried her missal, they were never seen together. She went to old-time dancing Wednesdays and Fridays, and at weekends, apart from church. Harkness sailed his radio-controlled model of the
Cutty Sark
on the Round Pond in Kensington Gardens. Even then he wore a hard-collared shirt and a waistcoat.

‘What was the reaction?’ asked Harkness.

‘What I expected,’ said Wilson. ‘The instruction is absolute discretion.’

‘I thought that went with the job.’

‘No arrest or trial.’

‘Oh,’ said Harkness heavily.

‘It makes good political sense,’

‘What about moral sense?’

‘Naire-Hamilton’s morals are political.’

Harkness appeared about to challenge the assertion, but swallowed it back. ‘We’ve still got a lot of phoney messages to go. Shall I withdraw them?’

‘No,’ said Wilson at once. ‘People had to be involved at the Foreign Office: if we stop, they’ll know we’ve got a lead. They might even identify it, by a process of elimination. I’m not risking another Philby situation, a protector back here at base.’

‘All the Rome personnel files will be processed by tomorrow,’ promised Harkness.

‘We might get a lead,’ said Wilson doubtfully. ‘What about the embassy itself?’

‘Completely isolated from anything sensitive.’

Wilson leaned back reflectively in his chair; again the leather patches squeaked rudely. ‘We’ve got an advantage there,’ he said.

‘What?’

‘The Summit,’ said the director. ‘We can move a squad into the embassy, as supposed security for the meeting.’

‘Any specific instructions?’

‘Not yet. It’s isolated, as you say. So there’s no danger any more. The only risk is that our man might get nervous and run; a defection could create the sort of embarrassment Naire-Hamilton is frightened of.’ Wilson swivelled his chair towards the window. Outside, a stacked jet, waiting for Heathrow landing permission, appeared to hover over the Houses of Parliament. ‘What about Hotovy?’ said the director suddenly.

‘His two boys are here, in London. But his wife is undergoing some sort of medical treatment in Brno.’

‘He won’t cross without her?’

‘No.’

‘Damn!’

‘He’s been as exposed as hell for six months.’

‘How long before she gets back?’

‘A week he thinks.’

‘There wasn’t another way.’

‘I know.’

‘If his wife’s back within the week, he’s still got a chance.’

‘Just a chance,’ agreed Harkness.

3

Charlie Muffin took the better of his two suits from the cleaner’s bag and laid it on the bed for comparison with the new shirt and tie; the trousers were still a bit shiny at the seat and there was a small fray at the turn-up on the left leg, but overall it was good enough. Poncy bugger, he thought, self-critically, conscious of the effort to impress. There hadn’t been many times when he’d bothered. Marks and Spencer, 1959, he supposed. Trainee manager, £3 a week, subsidized canteen, two weeks’ holiday a year and a guaranteed pension: his mother had a thing about pensions, just like she had about wearing clean underpants every day in case he was ever knocked down in the street. And the wedding, to Edith. Except that he hadn’t managed it then. He’d meant to, like he’d meant all the promises he’d made to her. Just slipped his mind, in the pub. So he’d arrived at the registry office with the jacket of the new suit still damp from sponging away the spilled vindaloo of the previous night’s stag party curry, a hangover that would have felled a bear, and had had to excuse himself halfway through the register signing to throw up in the vestry lavatory. Hadn’t done that successfully either, so he’d reappeared with fresh sponge marks on the suit. Edith hadn’t been lucky from the very beginning.

Charlie took the new suede brush and carried into the kitchen the Hush Puppies that age had moulded into some sort of comfort for his feet, buffing hard to bring up a better nap. He’d worn new shoes for the job interview and the wedding, but he couldn’t now. Charlie Muffin had problem feet. Some days were worse than others. Today was bad. They were not misshapen or deformed or calloused: they just ached most of the time. He’d placed them – cautiously- into the hands of chiropodists and specialists who recommended supports, arches, built-up heels, shaved-away soles, and finished up where he’d started, with aching feet.

Charlie thought he should have received a pension. They were awarded for hernias and other army disabilities. And he was bloody sure that’s what he had – a provable disability from stamping around national service parade grounds in boots weighing a ton and over which they’d made him crouch, day after day, burning out the toecap lumps with a hot spoon and then polishing and spitting and polishing and spitting, to get a shine.

It was to escape from the parade ground that he’d sat the examination for the intelligence corps, competing with the Sandhurst failures who gargled their words and had MG sports cars to take advantage of the weekend passes they always seemed able to get. And beaten the bloody lot, with a 98 per cent pass mark, straight into a warm office and a comfortable chair. Which was all, initially, he’d considered it – a place to rest his feet and escape the stupidity of scrubbing coal bunkers with toothbrushes and soaping the inside of his trouser creases to keep them in shape for colonel’s inspection.

It had come as a surprise to find that he liked it. And was good at it. Where two other investigations had failed, he’d managed the arrest in Vienna of a cipher clerk dealing directly with the Russians and been promoted sergeant, but even then it hadn’t occurred to him that it might become permanent. After demob there was still Marks and Spencer and the guarantee of pension rights.

Three months before demob he’d been told, without explanation, to present himself to Whitehall, so he’d polished the boots and soaped the creases and gone anticipating some escort duty. And instead found himself in a high-vaulted, cavernous room confronting a committee of men who moved and spoke quietly, because things echoed and they seemed frightened of the noise disturbing the people next door.

They’d known everything about him. Not just what he’d done in the army, which would have been easy enough from records, but before. They had the headmaster’s reference and the Marks and Spencer personnel file; they actually knew what his mother had earned, charring, to keep him at grammar school in Manchester. He supposed they knew about the other thing too, the blank space on the birth certificate where his father’s name should have been recorded. Cheeky buggers. He’d thought so at the time but said nothing. What they were offering appealed more than being a trainee manager and the pension terms had been better, so his mother was happy enough.

Life would have been a damned sight easier if he’d remained a disciple of St Michael, thought Charlie, going into the bathroom.

Charlie shaved delicately, to avoid cutting himself, not wanting to meet Rupert Willoughby with tiny flags of toilet paper all over his face. He wetted his hair to keep it in place, but used too much water and knew that when it dried it would stick up. It usually did, so there wasn’t much he could do about it. Ready long before it was time to leave, he surveyed the completed impression, standing sideways and holding in his breath and stomach to hide the bulge. Dissatisfied, he turned full frontal, squaring his shoulders and stiffening his neck, as he had on the long-ago parade grounds.

‘Christ!’ he said.

Willoughby’s office was close to the main Lloyds building in Lime Street. It was the sort of place that never changed. There was the same rickety, stubborn lift, models of boats in glass cases, scrolls of honour commemorating past chairmen and employees who had died in both wars, lots of dark wood everywhere and the smell of polish. Rich and enduring, thought Charlie; a million miles from a Battersea tenement where the kids thought aerosol sprays had been invented to write ‘Fuck’ on the walls. If they had to do it at all, it was better than ‘Nigger’, he supposed.

Charlie made his way along the familiar corridors to the receptionist, who smiled and said he was expected. Charlie tightened his stomach, secured the buttons of his crisply cleaned suit and pressed his hands over the straying hair; it was sticking up, like he’d feared it would.

‘Good to see you again, Charlie,’ said Willoughby. The underwriter, who was a tall man, and uncomfortable because of it, unfolded rather than stood from behind his desk.

The office was fittingly traditional. There was heavy panelling, again the pungent smell of polish, the model of a paddle steamer in a case and an almost soundless tape machine, spewing a tiny stream of information neatly into a special container.

‘Good to see you too,’ said Charlie. Guessing the reason for the frown that momentarily crossed the other man’s face, Charlie added, ‘Had a bad night.’

Willoughby thought it looked as if there had been a lot more than one. Charlie had always been unkempt but never careless. Willoughby suspected that the shabby suede shoes and department-store suits, pockets bulged with mysteries, had always been a contrived camouflage of anonymity behind which the man operated, using the condescension of others to his own advantage. The underwriter had never seen Charlie Muffin in a pressed suit or crisp shirt. There was an obvious inference and Willoughby was glad of it; if Charlie hadn’t wanted employment, it might have been difficult.

‘Sorry I didn’t return your call earlier,’ apologized the underwriter. ‘I was out of town.’

‘Thought it was time to make contact again,’ said Charlie.

‘Why did it take you so long?’

Because I screwed your wife in America and knew it would continue if I kept in touch, thought Charlie. He was sure, after so long, that Clarissa wouldn’t be a problem anymore. He said, ‘Busy, with one thing and another.’

‘That’s good,’ said Willoughby. He was a sparse, hesitant man of half-completed, hurried movements. Every few moments he brushed back from his forehead an imaginary flop of hair.

‘I’m not any more,’ said Charlie quickly.

The secretary came in, carrying a silver coffee tray, fully laid; even the coffee pot and the jugs were silver. If Willoughby had had a po under his bed, that would have been silver too, thought Charlie.

Willoughby poured. Offhandedly he said, ‘Thought about you a lot: Clarissa often asks after you.’

Charlie remained impassive. ‘How is she?’

The underwriter settled back in his chair. ‘Fine,’ he said.

Charlie decided that Willoughby was nervous and wondered why.

‘After what you did, it was
me
who should have called you,’ said Willoughby abruptly. There was a surge of guilt and Willoughby reflected that it was a pretty shabby way of repaying someone who had prevented his going bankrupt over a phoney liner fire in Hong Kong or on the loss of a Russian stamp collection during the American exhibition. But then, if Charlie had done what he suspected, that was pretty shabby too.

‘You talked of a problem on the telephone.’ Charlie wanted to get to the purpose of the visit.

‘Ever heard of Lady Norah Billington?’

‘No.’

Willoughby was genuinely surprised. ‘She’s always in the newspapers,’ he said.

‘Not on the racing pages.’

‘She’s the Mendale heiress. There’s an estate in Yorkshire, a villa in Jamaica, as well as Rome and a flat here in London, near us in Eaton Square.’

‘What about her?’

‘Her husband’s got a lawyer’s mind and reads the small print. A year ago I underwrote a replacement cover policy on her jewellery. It’s coming up for renewal. First time value was one and a half million, but the indexed rise will bring it up to two million. I’ve got to agree the adjustment in writing and he’s asked that I do so.’