The Inscrutable Charlie Muffin

by Brian Freemantle

  ‘You were lucky.’

  ‘Luckier than we thought. His lawyers are trying to do a deal now, to salvage something from the mess into which he talked himself.’

  ‘What sort of deal?’

  ‘His evidence against his father, together with all the details of the crime empire, in exchange for a guarantee against prosecution.’

  ‘Not very Chinese, son turning against father, is it?’

  Johnson laughed. The policeman was very happy with himself, thought Charlie.

  ‘I told you not to take any notice of that folklore rubbish,’ he said.

  ‘Yes,’ said Charlie. ‘You told me. Will you accept his offer?’

  ‘Make an unbreakable case.’

  The policeman sat forward as the thought came to him:

  ‘And it would be the end of any claim against you, if he’d agree to be a witness.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Charlie. ‘It would.’

  ‘He hated his father apparently,’ said Johnson.

  ‘Hated him?’

  ‘Always. Have you told your people in London?’

  Charlie nodded.

  ‘I telephoned before coming here,’ he said. Willoughby had almost sobbed with relief.

  ‘It’ll be a hell of a case when it finally comes to court.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Charlie. Johnson saw a lot of personal credit coming from it.

  ‘And not just because of Lu and who he is,’ continued Johnson. ‘You didn’t have any idea that Jones was an American Intelligence agent, did you?’

  ‘No,’ said Charlie. ‘No idea at all.’

  ‘He was,’ confided Johnson. ‘There’s an enormous diplomatic flap.’

  ‘I suppose there would be,’ said Charlie. He looked at his watch.

  ‘Coming to the remand hearing?’ Johnson invited him.

  ‘Yes,’ said Charlie, rising.

  It was difficult to keep in step with the large man and Charlie’s head began to hurt again.

  ‘I wondered if you would do me a favour,’ he said.

  Johnson slowed, looking sideways. ‘Of course.’

  Now the man was almost over-compensating in his friendliness, thought Charlie.

  ‘I want to find the woman,’ said Charlie.

  ‘Woman?’

  ‘Jenny Lin Lee, the woman who was with Nelson.’

  Johnson stopped completely, turning across the corridor towards Charlie.

  ‘She’s not at Nelson’s flat any longer,’ explained Charlie.

  ‘You think she’s gone back whoring?’

  Charlie knew he would never be able to think of that word as anything but offensive and ugly.

  ‘Yes,’ he said.

  ‘Shouldn’t be too difficult,’ promised Johnson, setting off towards the court again. ‘Call me tomorrow.’

  ‘I will,’ said Charlie. ‘Early.’

  He’d already booked his return flight to London. He was taking a risk even now. But there were other things to do.

  It was the same court as that in which the two Chinese shipyard workers had appeared and again there was a crush for admission. Because he was with Johnson, Charlie entered ahead of everyone else, with a choice of seats.

  ‘I gather Lu is flying lawyers in from London when the case opens,’ said Johnson.

  ‘When will that be?’

  ‘I shall apply for remands until we reach a decision with the son. But it shouldn’t take too long. I’ve got an unarguable case.’

  Just as he’d had with the fire and the poor sods who’d got killed, thought Charlie. How was it that people like Johnson got into positions of power? There was a great similarity between the police chief and the people who’d taken over the department after Sir Archibald’s death.

  ‘Unarguable,’ agreed Charlie.

  Johnson identified the sarcasm.

  ‘Surely you don’t think this is wrong?’ he demanded.

  Charlie hesitated, avoiding an immediate reply.

  ‘You’ve got a good case,’ he said finally.

  The ushers began to admit the public and Charlie moved away, towards the seat he had occupied when he and Nelson had been in court.

  He turned as Lu was brought in. The millionaire’s head was turbaned with bandages and a medical attendant was in the back of the dock, as well as the warders. Lu stared defiantly towards the magistrates’ bench, hands gripping the top of the dock.

  The court rose for the magistrates’ entry and immediately the clerk read out the charge of murder against Lu.

  Johnson rose as the man finished.

  ‘I would make a formal application for a week’s remand,’ he said officiously. ‘At which time I anticipate the police being in a position to indicate when they could proceed.’

  The local solicitor representing Lu until the arrival of the London counsel hurried to his feet. He was wearing an Eton tie, Charlie saw.

  ‘I would like it entered into the court records at this first hearing that my client utterly denies the preposterous charge against him,’ said the man. ‘Were it based on fact, there would be a producible defence against it. But it is not. I would therefore make application for bail, asking the court to consider my client’s position in this community. He would, of course, be prepared to surrender his passport.’

  ‘Having regard to the seriousness of the charge, together with other matters still under investigation, the police oppose bail most strongly,’ objected Johnson instantly.

  ‘Bail refused,’ declared the magistrate chairman. As the solicitor moved to speak, the man went on, ‘You have the right, of course, to apply to a judge in chambers.’

  ‘An application will be made,’ said the solicitor.

  ‘He won’t get it,’ Johnson said to Charlie, as the court cleared.

  ‘No,’ said Charlie, uninterested. It was almost time for his appointment.

  ‘Know what the defence is going to be?’

  Charlie paused at the court exit, turning back to the police chief.

  ‘What?’

  ‘That he knows nothing whatever about what happened to Harvey Jones …’

  Johnson laughed, inviting Charlie’s reaction.

  When Charlie said nothing, Johnson added, ‘Ridiculous, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes,’ agreed Charlie. ‘Ridiculous.’

  ‘No risk at all?’

  Willoughby nodded at his wife’s question.

  ‘No risk at all. Not any longer.’

  She came towards him, arms outstretched.

  ‘Why, darling, that’s wonderful.’

  He refused to bend towards her and because of his height, she wasn’t able to pull herself up to kiss him.

  ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Punishment?’

  ‘What did you expect?’

  ‘There’s no need to be … to be …’ she stumbled.

  ‘Uncivilised?’ he offered.

  ‘Or sarcastic.’

  He closed his eyes, helplessly. Why couldn’t he just tell her to get out? She’d been going, after all.

  ‘Do you still want me to leave?’

  ‘You know the answer to that.’

  ‘Do you still want me to leave?’ she persisted.

  ‘No,’ he conceded, his voice a whisper.

  ‘Then you mustn’t be cruel to me.’

  ‘You’re a cow,’ he said.

  ‘Which is a very rude and offensive word. But I’ve never pretended to be otherwise.’

  The usual defence, he thought.

  ‘What about this man who’s done it all …?’

  ‘Charlie?’

  ‘Charlie! What a delightfully coarse name! Is he coarse, darling?’

  ‘Strange, in many ways,’ allowed Willoughby.

  ‘I simply must meet him.’

  ‘Yes,’ agreed the underwriter. ‘You must.’

  ‘Very soon.’

  ‘All right. Very soon.’

  ‘Rupert.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Say you love me.’

  ‘I love you.’<
br />
  21

  Kuo Yuan-ching looked cautiously across the desk, head to one side in what Charlie had come to realise was an habitual pose.

  ‘I’m intrigued at your visit,’ said the Chinese.

  ‘You shouldn’t be,’ said Charlie. It would be wrong to let this man imagine any superiority.

  Kuo let an expression reach his face, but refused to respond directly to the remark. Instead he said, ‘Everything would seem to have been resolved far better than you had hoped.’

  ‘And you’ll get your court denunciation.’

  ‘It would seem likely,’ admitted Kuo.

  ‘It’s inevitable,’ predicted Charlie. ‘Especially now that John Lu wants to save himself by turning Queen’s evidence.’

  ‘Then we’re both satisfied.’

  ‘No,’ said Charlie. ‘I’m not satisfied at all.’

  ‘Not with having saved £6,000,000!’

  ‘That’s not what I meant.’

  ‘What, then?’

  ‘I know what happened,’ announced Charlie.

  Kuo remained expressionless, hands resting lightly on the table top.

  ‘Doesn’t everybody?’ he said.

  ‘No, Mr Kuo. Hardly anybody.’

  The man shook his head, raising his hands in a gesture of bewilderment.

  ‘You baffle me,’ he protested condescendingly.

  ‘For a long time, you baffled me,’ said Charlie. ‘And then I thought of the incredible help and all the concern about Lu being publicly denounced. And then I remembered what Mr Chiu told me, as we were going to Peking.’

  ‘What was that?’

  ‘“People who bring disgrace to China never go unpunished,”’ quoted Charlie.

  Kuo nodded, seriously.

  ‘That’s true,’ he agreed. ‘We’re sometimes a vindictive nation.’

  ‘I’ve often been accused of the same fault. Perhaps that’s how I finally realised the truth.’

  ‘Is vindictiveness necessarily a fault?’

  ‘It’s taken me a long time to recognise it,’ admitted Charlie. Too long, he thought.

  ‘I’m still waiting to be surprised,’ prompted Kuo.

  ‘Apart from the fact that I should have been wounded by the knife, the border attack was very convincing, even to the suits your people wore. Just like Lu’s men. But not to use the knife was a mistake …’

  ‘Our people!’ echoed Kuo.

  ‘Your people,’ insisted Charlie. ‘No one except the Chinese authorities knew when I would be returning across the border, with the statement implicating Lu. So it couldn’t have been anyone else, could it?’

  There was a disparaging expression upon Kuo’s face.

  ‘But why should we steal from you an affidavit we went to such enormous trouble to ensure you obtained?’ he said.

  ‘To guarantee, even if it meant murder, the public disgrace of Lu,’ said Charlie. ‘A disgrace that I couldn’t guarantee, not even with the statement.’

  ‘A very wild flight of fancy,’ said Kuo mildly.

  ‘No,’ argued Charlie. ‘Not wild at all. Just a sensible interpretation of Peking’s determination to maintain its rapport with America … a rapport important enough to risk the death of an American agent … an agent whom you took particular care to let know the facilities I’d been given and whom you knew would make an effort to retrieve incriminating evidence if enough people pointed him to it. And enough people did …’

  Charlie paused.

  ‘Which was why I wasn’t knifed,’ he accepted. ‘I had to set the bait, didn’t I?’

  Kuo pushed his chair slightly away from the table, making a small grating sound.

  ‘It actually removed the risk of having to snatch him off the streets, with all the problems of failure that that might have created, didn’t it? All you had to do was follow him, until he got to Lu’s house?’

  ‘People who know more about it than I said you were extremely clever, Mr Muffin,’ said Kuo conversationally. ‘But I don’t think any of us believed you’d work it out as far as you have. You really are a surprising man.’

  Charlie sat motionless, numbed by the identification.

  ‘Why bewilderment, Mr Muffin? You’d expect Peking to have extensive files on all American and British operatives, wouldn’t you?’ said Kuo, still casual. ‘Just as they have files about our people.’

  Charlie still couldn’t respond.

  ‘It was little more than a routine cross-reference with your picture, almost as soon as you arrived in the colony to question the fire, that gave us your identity,’ said the Chinese.

  He had assumed control, decided Charlie.

  ‘And you were right,’ continued Kuo. ‘We had far more reason than any British insurance company to expose Lu. So nothing could be left to chance.’

  The almost constant impression of surveillance, remembered Charlie. So his instinct wasn’t failing. He felt the relief of a man fearing blindness who is assured that all he needs are reading glasses.

  ‘Your coming really fascinated us,’ admitted Kuo. ‘Particularly as your file had you marked as dead.’

  He leaned forward across the desk.

  ‘And such an interesting file,’ he said. ‘We could easily appreciate why London and Washington would want you killed.’

  Russia would have leaked the humiliation of the British and the Americans, Charlie knew; they’d seen it from the beginning as a propaganda coup. He was not surprised that Peking knew the details.

  ‘You made very full use of me, didn’t you?’ he said, at last.

  ‘As much as we possibly could,’ conceded Kuo. ‘The arrival of the man Jones made it perfect for us.’

  ‘Otherwise mine would have been the body found in Lu’s lounge?’

  Kuo’s face opened with the obviousness of the answer.

  ‘It would have had to be, wouldn’t it?’ he said. ‘And you would have had as much reason to try to retrieve the document as the American. More maybe.’

  ‘But I’m not being allowed to escape, am I?’ guessed Charlie.

  ‘Escape?’

  ‘Within twenty-four hours this colony will be inundated with men from Washington, investigating the death of one of their operatives,’ predicted Charlie. ‘To point them towards me would round the whole thing off very neatly, wouldn’t it?’

  ‘You’re a very suspicious person, Mr Muffin.’

  ‘I have to be.’

  Kuo nodded.

  ‘Yes,’ he agreed. ‘Of course.’

  ‘Do you intend exposing me?’ demanded Charlie.

  Kuo sighed, a man facing an unpleasant duty.

  ‘It’s very unlikely that they’d see the flaw you recognised. No one was as completely involved as you, after all. But there’s always the outside possibility. And as I’ve said, we can’t leave anything to chance.’

  ‘So to be handed me might deflect their curiosity?’

  ‘You must admit,’ said Kuo, ‘Washington would be very interested.’

  Moving slowly, so the man would not misunderstand, Charlie put his hand into the inside pocket of his jacket and took out an envelope.

  ‘As interested, perhaps, as they would be in these?’ he said.

  Kuo’s control was very good, thought Charlie. There was not the slightest indication of emotion as the man went carefully through the photographs.

  The first showed quite clearly Harvey Jones bypassing the alarms at Lu’s house. There were more, of Chinese this time, at the same spot on the wall. The picture of the American’s apparently unconscious body being bundled into the lounge was slightly blurred because of the distance from which it had been taken, but Jones was still recognisable. There were several pictures of a car. with the number plate clearly identifiable.

  ‘The registration would prove it to be the vehicle assigned to this legation, wouldn’t it?’ asked Charlie.

  ‘Oh yes,’ agreed Kuo. He looked up. ‘Infra-red photography?’

  ‘I was professionally trained,’ said Cha
rlie. ‘I actually entered the department because of it.’

  ‘They’re very good,’ said Kuo, as if he were admiring holiday snapshots.

  ‘The only difficulty is the need to keep the film refrigerated until just before use and then getting it developed as soon as possible afterwards,’ said Charlie. ‘Fortunately in a place like Hong Kong I had no difficulty buying an 0.95 lens.’

  ‘The negatives and more prints are obviously in a safe place?’ said Kuo, bored with the phoney civility.

  ‘Obviously,’ agreed Charlie, unworried by the threat. He looked at his watch.

  ‘One set will almost be in London by now,’ he said. He was back in an environment he’d believed he’d left for ever. He felt very much at home.

  ‘With a complete account?’ queried Kuo.

  ‘Very full,’ confirmed Charlie.

  ‘You could have saved Jones,’ the Chinese accused him suddenly.

  ‘I tried,’ said Charlie. But only after he had guaranteed his own survival.

  ‘The telephone call to the police?’

  Charlie nodded.

  ‘But I was too late,’ he said. As always.

  ‘I wondered about the call,’ said Kuo. ‘It was much sooner than that which we had planned to make. We were almost caught.’

  ‘I know,’ said Charlie, taking more pictures from his pocket.

  Kuo was shown twice by the identifiable car.

  ‘Really very clever,’ he congratulated Charlie.

  ‘As I said, I have to be.’

  ‘Just as I had to be there,’ said the Chinese, in explanation. ‘We realised the risk, of course. But I had to see the affidavit was put in the right place. And guarantee the little, important things … like ensuring the firing traces would be found on Lu’s right and not left hand.’

  ‘Nothing could be left to chance,’ remembered Charlie.

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘Keep the photographs,’ offered Charlie. ‘I expect you’ll want other people to see them. Mr Chiu, for instance.’

  Kuo nodded, putting them into a drawer in the desk.

  ‘I congratulate you,’ said Kuo.

  Charlie didn’t feel any pride. Just relief. And regret. The regret of which Edith had never thought him capable.

  ‘It would seem,’ said Kuo, ‘that we will part in friendship.’

  ‘Not exactly friendship,’ qualified Charlie. ‘More in complete understanding.’