Here Comes Charlie M

by Brian Freemantle

  On the underground, the group changed at Monument station, caught a Northern line train and disembarked unhurriedly at Bank. According to the prearranged plan, they waited outside the underwriter’s office for the car. It took five minutes to arrive.

  ‘Let’s go inside, shall we?’ said Willoughby, to the three clerks.

  ‘So where’s the Fabergé collection?’ quietly complained one of the three men. ‘Lot of stupid bloody rubbish.’

  He’d missed the 6.30 to Sevenoaks and now his wife would be late for her pottery classes.

  ‘You got a new raincoat out of it,’ reminded the man next to him.

  ‘Bought one last week,’ said the clerk. ‘Sod it.’

  To the others in the room, it seemed like blind, irrational rage, but Wilberforce’s emotion was really fear, matched almost equally with self-pity. Now the Director sat hunched forward at his desk, even the pipes temporarily forgotten.

  ‘How could it have happened?’ he demanded, wearily. ‘How the hell could it have possibly happened?’

  A sob jerked his voice and he coughed quickly, to disguise it from the others in the room.

  ‘We never considered he would be able to get that much help,’ said Snare. ‘We just couldn’t adjust quickly enough.’

  ‘It was a brilliant manoeuvre,’ added Cuthbertson.

  ‘We should do something to Willoughby,’ said Snare vehemently.

  ‘What?’ demanded Wilberforce. ‘There’s no law against playing silly buggers on an underground train. And we’ve already ensured his firm is going to lose money.’

  ‘Frighten him, at least,’ maintained Snare.

  ‘Aren’t there more important things to worry about?’ asked Cuthbertson.

  ‘Christ,’ moaned Wilberforce, in another surge of self-pity. ‘Oh, Christ.’

  A secretary tried to announce the arrival of the Americans, but Smith and Ruttgers followed her almost immediately into the room. Braley’s entry was more apologetic.

  ‘Lost him!’ challenged the American Director. It was a prepared accusation, the outrage too false.

  ‘And what happened to your men?’ retorted Wilberforce instantly.

  Smith hesitated, disconcerted that his separate operation had been discovered.

  ‘Just a precaution,’ he tried to recover.

  ‘Which didn’t work. So it was a stupid waste of time and effort,’ said Wilberforce, refusing to be intimidated. ‘We’ve both made a mess of it and squabbling among ourselves isn’t going to help. Recovery is all that matters now.’

  ‘How, for God’s sake?’ asked Smith. ‘By now Charlie Muffin could be a million miles away.’

  ‘I had men at every port and airport within an hour,’ said Wilberforce, anxious to disclose some degree of expertise. ‘He’s still here, somewhere.’

  ‘But just where, exactly?’ asked Cuthbertson. The other man hadn’t offered any sympathy after the Vienna débâcle, remembered the ex-soldier. At one enquiry he’d even sat openly smiling.

  Wilberforce shook his head, impatient with the older man’s enjoyment of what was happening.

  ‘He’s shown us how,’ said Wilberforce, quietly. They could still recover, he determined. Recover and win.

  ‘You surely don’t mean …’ Snare began to protest, but the Director spoke over him.

  ‘He went into the bank with a document case,’ said Wilberforce. ‘And we know he opened a safe deposit because we’ve already checked.’

  ‘No,’ tried Snare again, anticipating his superior’s thoughts.

  ‘We haven’t got anything else,’ said the British Director.

  ‘We’ve carried out two robberies!’ protested Snare, looking to the others in the room for support. ‘We can’t risk another one. It’s ludicrous. We’re practically turning ourselves into a crime factory.’

  ‘What risk?’ argued Wilberforce. ‘You’ve gone in knowing the details of every alarm system and with every architect’s drawing. There’s never been any danger.’

  ‘We’re breaking the law … over and over again.’

  ‘For a justifiable reason,’ said Wilberforce, disconcerted by the strength of the other man’s argument.

  ‘I think it’s unnecessarily dangerous,’ said Snare, aware he had no support in the room. ‘What Charlie did was nothing more than an exercise to lose us … a trick to get us interested, like staying overnight in the Savoy – nothing more than that.’

  ‘But we’ve got to know,’ insisted Wilberforce.

  ‘Why can’t somebody else do it?’ asked Snare, truculently, looking at the Americans. He’d taken all the chances, he realised. It was somebody else’s turn.

  ‘How can it be someone else?’ replied Smith, impatiently. ‘You’re the only one who can operate with Packer.’

  ‘Too dangerous,’ repeated Snare, defeated.

  ‘It’s not the only lead,’ Ruttgers said quietly.

  Everyone turned to him, waiting.

  ‘You’ve forgotten the wife,’ continued the former Director. ‘Eventually he’ll establish contact with her … she’s the key.’

  Both Directors nodded. Cuthbertson shuffled through some papers, finally holding up that morning’s report from the Savoy Hotel.

  ‘There was a thirty-five minute telephone call to Zürich,’ he said.

  ‘To a number on the main exchange … a number upon which we could not have installed any device,’ enlarged Ruttgers.

  Wilberforce’s smile broadened and he reached out for an unfortunate pipe.

  ‘It’s getting better,’ he said.

  ‘I’ll go,’ said Ruttgers, quickly. ‘I went before … know the apartment and the woman.’

  He looked up, alert for any opposition.

  ‘All right,’ agreed Wilberforce immediately. He couldn’t remain in complete control any longer, he decided. Didn’t want to, either. Finding Charlie Muffin again was the only consideration now. That and spreading some of the blame if anything went wrong.

  ‘Yes,’ accepted Smith, doubtfully. It was going to be a difficult tightrope, he thought. So it was right that someone of Ruttger’s seniority should be in charge.

  The American Director looked back to Snare.

  ‘It’s still vital to find out what’s in that bank,’ he said. ‘Even though the idea of a third entry offends me as much as it does you.’

  ‘I’ve already got men obtaining detailed drawings of the houses on either side from the architects involved and all the protection systems from the insurance companies,’ said Wilberforce.

  So it had been a pointless objection anyway, Snare realised. They were bastards, all of them.

  ‘Could we be ready tomorrow night?’ asked Smith.

  ‘It would mean hurrying,’ said Wilberforce.

  The American looked at him, letting the criticism register.

  ‘Isn’t that exactly what it does mean?’ he said.

  When it became completely dark in the office garage, Charlie eased himself up gratefully from the floor, stretching out more comfortably on the back seat of the car. He catnapped for three hours, aware he would need the rest later, then finally got out, easing the cramp from his shoulders and legs. His chest hurt from being wedged so long over the transmission tunnel, he realised. And his new raincoat had become very creased. It seemed more comfortable that way.

  Using the key that Willoughby had given him that morning, he let himself cautiously out of the garage side door, standing for a long time in the deep shadows, seeking any movement. The city slept its midnight sleep.

  He walked quickly through the side-streets, always keeping near the buildings, where the concealment was better. He’d used the cover like this in the Friedrichstrasse and Leipzigerstrasse all those years ago, he remembered, when they’d tried to kill him before. They’d failed that time, too.

  The mini, with its smoked windows, was parked where Willoughby had guaranteed the chauffeur would leave it.

  The heater was operating by the time Charlie drove up the Strand. Gradu
ally he ceased shivering. It was 12.15 when Charlie positioned the car in the alley which made the private bank so attractive to his purpose, aware before he checked that it would be completely invisible to anyone in the main thoroughfare.

  Quietly he re-entered the vehicle, glad of its warmth. It probably wouldn’t be tonight, he accepted. But the watch was necessary. Would they be stupid? he wondered.

  ‘If they are, then it’ll be your game, Charlie,’ he said, quietly. ‘So be careful you don’t fuck it up, like you have everything else so far.’

  TWENTY

  Superintendent Law accepted completely the futility of the review when a detective sergeant from the Regional Crime Squad seriously suggested that the bank robbery had been Mafia inspired.

  He sighed, allowing the meeting that had already lasted two hours to extend for a further fifteen minutes and then rose, ending it. He thanked them for their attendance, promised another discussion if there had been no break in the case within a fortnight and walked out of the room with Sergeant Hardiman.

  ‘Waste of bloody time, that was,’ he said, back in his office.

  Hardiman waited at the door, accepting tea from the woman with the trolley.

  ‘Bread pudding or Dundee cake?’ asked the sergeant.

  ‘Neither,’ said Law.

  Hardiman came carefully into the room, his pudding balanced on top of one of the cups.

  ‘Mafia,’ he echoed. ‘Jesus Christ !’

  ‘Funny though,’ said Hardiman. He pushed an escaping crumb into his mouth.

  ‘What is?’

  ‘The dead end,’ said the sergeant. ‘We get the biggest job we’ve had in this manor for years. Indications of a professional safebreaker are everywhere and after almost a month, we’ve got nothing. No whispers, no gossip, no nothing.’

  ‘So it was someone from outside. We decided that days ago,’ Law reminded him. He had spoken too sharply, he realised.

  ‘So who?’ asked Hardiman, unoffended. ‘Who, a stranger to the area, could set up a job like this?’

  Law threw his hands up, wishing he’d accepted the bread pudding. It looked very good and he’d only had a pickled egg and a pork pie for lunch, he remembered.

  ‘It’s in there, somewhere,’ he said, gesturing towards the files stacked up against the wall. ‘All we’ve got to, do is find it.’

  Hardiman carefully wiped the sugar from his lips and hands.

  ‘That was nice; you should have had some,’ said the sergeant. He looked towards the manila folders. ‘It might be in there, but we’re going to need help to see it.’

  ‘One hundred and twenty boxes,’ reflected Law. ‘And carefully hidden in one of them was something that would make it all so clear to us.’

  ‘But which one?’ said Hardiman. ‘We’ve interviewed the owners and they’re all lying buggers.’

  ‘Crime is not solved by brilliant intuition or startling intellect,’ started Law, and Hardiman looked at him warily. The superintendent had a tendency to lecture, he thought.

  ‘… it’s solved by straightforward, routine police work,’ completed Law. He looked expectantly at the other man.

  When Hardiman said nothing, Law prompted. ‘And what, sergeant, is the basis of routine police work?’

  Hardiman still said nothing, aware of the other man’s unhappiness at the lack of progress and unwilling to increase his anger with the wrong answer.

  ‘Statements?’ he tried at last.

  Law smiled.

  ‘Statements,’ he agreed. ‘Good, old-fashioned, copper-on-a-bike statements.’

  Hardiman waited.

  ‘So,’ decided Law, ‘we will start all over again. We’ll turn out those bright sods who spend all their time watching television and admiring the Mafia and we’ll go to every box-holder and we’ll take a completely fresh statement, saying there are some additional points we want covered. And then we’ll practise straightforward, routine police work and compare everything they said first time with everything they say the second time. And where the difference is too great we’ll go back again and take a third statement and if necessary a fourth and we’ll keep on until we shake the bloody clue out of the woodwork.’

  ‘It’ll take a while,’ warned Hardiman, doubtfully. ‘That scruffy bloke with the home in Switzerland, for instance. The one we saw last? Telephoned yesterday to say he’d be in London for at least a week, on business.’

  ‘Don’t care how long it takes,’ said Law positively. ‘I want it done. If he’s not back in a week contact that firm he gave us and get him back. I want everyone seen again. Everyone.’

  ‘Right,’ said Hardiman, moving out of the room. Law called, stopping him at the door.

  ‘If you pass that tea-lady and she’s still got some of that bread pudding, send her back with some, will you?’

  ‘Certainly,’ said the sergeant. There wouldn’t be, he knew. He’d had the last piece. But the superintendent was annoyed enough as it was, so it was better not to tell him.

  Edith left the Zürich apartment early, changing trains at Berne to catch the express. She crossed from Calais to Dover and hired a Jaguar, deciding the need for comfort during the amount of driving she might have to do justified the expense.

  It was a bright, sharp day, the February sunshine too weak to take the overnight whiteness from the fields and hedges of Kent. She drove unhurriedly, cocooned in the warmth of the car, missing the worst of the traffic by skirting London to the west.

  She got a room without difficulty at the Randolph and by eight o’clock was in the bar, with a sherry she didn’t want, selecting a meal she knew she wouldn’t enjoy.

  ‘Scotch,’ ordered Ruttgers, at the other end of the bar. ‘Plenty of ice.’

  TWENTY-ONE

  The man was irritable, decided Johnny. And for the first time he did not appear completely sure of himself. Nervous, almost. The bigger surprise, determined the safebreaker. Because there definitely wasn’t any cause for uncertainty. It had all gone like clockwork, just like the other two. Easier, in fact. Far easier. No dusty, gritty air-conditioning tubes. Or shitty drains. Just a simple entry through the back of the adjoining premises, a quick walk through the antique furniture all marked up at three times its price for the oil-rich Arabs and a neat little hole by the fireplace to bring them right into the main working area.

  ‘Never been into a private bank before,’ said Johnny, chattily. ‘Very posh.’

  ‘Doesn’t seem as if they expected anyone to. Not at night, anyway,’ said Snare, straightening up from the alarm system. He hadn’t believed the plans Wilberforce had given him three hours before.

  ‘What do you mean?’ said Johnny.

  Snare reached into the bag, bringing up the aerosol tube of tile fixative and squirting it liberally into the control box, sealing the hammers of the alarms.

  ‘Must be fifteen years old,’ he judged. ‘They probably still count with an abacus.’

  ‘Probably,’ concurred Johnny, who didn’t know what an abacus was. The other man was definitely friendlier, he decided happily.

  They found a pressure pad beneath the carpet in the manager’s office, three more behind junior executive desks and an electrical eye circuit, triggered when the beam was interrupted, in front of the strongroom and the safety deposit vault.

  They were all governed by a control box it took them fifteen minutes to locate in the basement.

  ‘Kid’s stuff?’ ventured Johnny hopefully.

  ‘Kid’s stuff,’ agreed Snare.

  ‘Can’t beat a sock or a biscuit tin in the garden, can you?’ continued Johnny, as the man immobilised the second system.

  Snare grunted, without replying. He’d enjoy seeing this cocky little sod in the dock of the Old Bailey, he decided, trying to talk his way out of a fifteen-year sentence. Where, he wondered, would all the bombast and the boasting be then? Where his brains were, he decided. In his silk jockstrap, as useless as everything else.

  ‘At this rate,’ said Johnny, ‘we’ll be
able to retire by the end of the year.’

  ‘Maybe sooner,’ said Snare, with feeling. Whatever happened, he determined, positively, this would be the last time. No matter how easy they made it for him, with all the plans and wiring systems drawings, it was still dangerous. And he’d suffered enough. Too much. Didn’t he still need special pills, for the headaches? And they’d become more frequent in the last month. Like everything else, something that Wilberforce found easy to forget, in his anxiety to get his head off the block. He wasn’t any more considerate than Cuthbertson. Worse even.

  ‘Let’s get started,’ he said.

  It took Johnny longer than they expected to open the safe in the manager’s office and then Snare wasn’t satisfied with the list of safe deposit box numbers he got from the top shelf.

  ‘Nothing entered since last week,’ he said almost to himself.

  ‘What does that matter?’

  ‘Try the desk.’

  That was easier and it was there that Snare found the listing for Charlie.

  ‘Conceited bastard,’ he said, again a private remark. ‘The conceited bastard.’

  ‘What?’

  Things were very different tonight, decided Johnny. Odd, in fact. It was making him feel uncomfortable.

  ‘Nothing,’ said Snare. As he had at the Savoy, Charlie had opened an account under his own name.

  To get into the safety deposit vault, Johnny drilled out the lock on the protective gate and then filled three holes bored around the safe handle with P-4 to blow a hole big enough to reach inside and manually bring the time clock forward twelve hours, to open the door.