Here Comes Charlie M

by Brian Freemantle

She came towards him, arms thrown out pleadingly and it was the movement that completely alerted him. She was staring beyond him, eyes bulged, Charlie realised. He turned back towards the hotel as the woman reached him and saw perfectly in the brighter light Garson Ruttgers spread over the bonnet of the car, his whole body supported, arms triangled out in the officially taught shooting position, left hand clamped against the right wrist to minimise the recoil from the gun.

  It took seconds but seemed to unfold in an agonisingly slow motion. The need to snatch up Edith and run fixed itself firmly in his mind and stayed there, isolated, and he wondered why he couldn’t react and do such a simple thing.

  Then Edith collided with him from behind and he reached out to support her, recognising as he did so that Ruttgers was going to shoot.

  The lined, sharp face that Charlie remembered so well from the Kalenin affair tightened against the expected noise and the gun moved up slightly and Charlie even identified it as a heavy weapon, a .375 Magnum.

  The explosion and the shock of the impact appeared simultaneous and almost immediately there was the roar of a second shot. Charlie tried to breathe, but couldn’t because of the biting pain which numbed his lungs from smashing backwards against the bordering stones of the forecourt. Edith was lying on top of him and he didn’t see Ruttgers move. He heard the sound of the car engine, though, and tried to get out from beneath the woman’s body and it was then he realised that she was quite motionless and stopped pushing at her.

  The crushed breath groaned into him and then wailed up into an anguished moan. The action of supporting Edith had pulled her between them at the moment that Ruttgers had fired and she had taken the full impact of both shots and when Charlie felt up he discovered she didn’t have a back any more.

  He rolled her away, very gently, crouching over her. The horror had gone from her face. Instead, in death, there was a pleading look, the sort of expression she had had asking him not to go to the cemetery, all those weeks ago.

  ‘Not you, Edith,’ he sobbed. ‘‘It shouldn’t have been you.’

  A shoe had fallen half off her foot, he saw. As if it were important, he reached down and replaced it. And then tried to wipe away a smudge of dirt that had somehow got on to her cheek.

  A scream came from the hotel, breaking through to him. He cradled her head against him, very quickly, then carefully lowered her to the ground.

  ‘I’ve got to run, Edith,’ he said. ‘Now I’ve got to.’

  Largely governed by instinct, he went low to the car, doubled against recognition. He held the door shut, to avoid any noise, and as he started the engine, he saw just one man walking hesitantly towards the woman’s body.

  He kept the lights off, so the registration would not be visible, accelerating the car out on to the road in a scurry of gravel. It was difficult to be sure because of the darkened windows of the vehicle, but the man’s reactions had been too slow to get anything more than a vague description, Charlie decided.

  Which way, he wondered, had Edith’s killer gone? It hardly mattered. Ruttgers would have been part of the Crawley hotel surveillance. The part, in his carelessness, he had missed. He’d need a weapon, he decided. It was fortunate he had bothered to examine John Packer’s house. Why, he wondered, in the first flood of self-pity, hadn’t he shown such detailed caution about everything?

  Twenty miles away, on the outskirts of the Sussex village of Cuckfield, Garson Ruttgers stared curiously at the Magnum revolver lying beside him on the passenger seat, then blinked out of the car. Condensation from the exhaust billowed whitely around him, making it difficult to see. A layby, he realised. With a telephone. That was it, a telephone; that’s why he’d stopped. He looked back to the gun. He’d done it. Now he had to let those bastards in London know. They’d have to admit he was right, decided Ruttgers, getting unsteadily from the vehicle. Succeeded where Onslow Smith and his team had failed. Get the Directorship back, after this, he thought Be good, hearing everyone admit how wrong they’d been.

  Superintendent Law answered the telephone on the third ring, stretching the sleep from his eyes. Beside him his wife tugged at the bedclothes, showing her annoyance. Irritable cow, he thought.

  ‘Knew you’d want to be told immediately,’ said the equally tired voice of Hardiman.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Woman’s been shot outside of an hotel on the outskirts of Guildford … same name as our financier …’

  ‘Dead?’

  ‘Dead.’

  Law swung out of bed, ignoring the growing protests of his wife.

  ‘I’ll be waiting when you get here,’ said the detective.

  ‘I won’t be able to sleep again now, not without a pill,’ complained the woman, but Law had already closed the bathroom door.

  ‘Damn it,’ she said, miserably, dragging the covers over her.

  TWENTY-NINE

  Apart from Ruttgers, oblivious in his private reverie, everyone sat silently awaiting Onslow Smith’s lead.

  ‘Damn,’ said the Director. ‘Damn, damn, damn.’

  With the repetition of every word, he punched hard at the desk, needing physical movement to show his rage and there were isolated shifts of embarrassment from the men watching.

  Since they’d arrived at the embassy, Smith had done little but vent his temper in irascible, theatrical gestures, his mind blocked by what had happened.

  Apparently aware of the impression he was creating, the Director straightened.

  ‘Right,’ he said, as if calling a meeting to order.

  The shuffling stopped.

  ‘You’re positive he hasn’t been identified?’ demanded Onslow Smith.

  ‘Of course I can’t be positive,’ said Braley, uncomfortable with the question he had already answered.

  He’d been so near, thought Smith, in a sudden flush of remorse. So damn near. And then the fucking paranoid had to go and screw everything up. It would be wrong to let Washington know yet.

  ‘You must have some idea,’ he said irritably.

  ‘When we got to the layby,’ Braley continued, recounting the familiar story, ‘Mr Ruttgers was just sitting in the car …’

  ‘Just sitting?’

  ‘Yes, sir. Staring straight ahead and doing nothing, except smiling. The engine was still running. And the telephone he’d used to call you was hanging off the hook, where he’d let it drop.’

  ‘The engine still running and there hadn’t been a police check?’ queried the Director.

  ‘Cuckfield is quite a way from the shooting,’ said Braley. ‘But it only took us about fifteen minutes from the Crawley hotel.’

  ‘Where the hell was he trying to go?’ wondered Smith. He spoke to a bespectacled man on his right.

  ‘Probably never know that,’ replied the embassy doctor. ‘Perhaps back to the hotel … perhaps nowhere. Just the urge to get away.’

  ‘How long will he be like that?’ asked Smith, nodding towards the immobile figure of the former Director.

  ‘Not long, I shouldn’t imagine,’ said the doctor. ‘I don’t think it’s anything much more than shock. Could be over in a few hours.’

  As if conscious of the attention, Ruttgers suddenly stirred into life, smiling over at Smith and leaning forward to reinforce the words.

  ‘Killed him,’ gloated Ruttgers. ‘Shot the bastard, like we should have done weeks ago. Saw him fall. Dead. Charlie Muffin is dead. No need to worry any more … dead …’

  ‘But …’ began Braley, who had already had an enquiry made to the police. Smith waved him to silence. Christ knows what mental switchback the correction would make, he thought.

  ‘It could be days before we’re able to establish definitely whether Mr Ruttgers was seen sufficiently to be identified,’ offered Braley. He’d impressed the Director on this job, he knew. And wanted to go on doing so.

  ‘And we don’t have days,’ said the Director distantly. But they still had luck, he decided. Only just. But enough to matter; enough to avoid a humiliation as e
mbarrassing as Vienna. Providing he handled it properly. Thank God that even mentally confused, the bloody man had wanted to boast, to prove how much better he was than the rest of them. Without that wild, incoherent contact it wouldn’t have been possible to have snatched him off the streets and brought him back to the safety and security of Grosvenor Square.

  So he still had the advantage, determined the Director.

  Now he had to capitalise upon it. Which meant Ruttgers had to be got out, immediately. And then buried as deeply as possible within some psychiatric clinic.

  Smith realised he himself would have to remain in England, and attempt to establish some sort of relationship with whoever was going to succeed George Wilberforce to agree an approach which would satisfy the civilian police.

  There would be arguments, Smith anticipated. Bad ones. Maybe even a break between the two services as severe as that which followed the Vienna débâcle. But whatever happened, it would be less embarrassing to America than having a former Director of the C.I.A. arraigned in a British court of law on a charge of murder. That’s all he had to consider; keeping America out of it.

  He looked up at a movement in front of him and saw the doctor leaning forward, to take a smouldering cigarette from Ruttgers’ fingers before it burned low enough to blister him. Ruttgers stirred at the approach, looking around for a replacement. Gently the doctor lit one for him.

  ‘I did it,’ suddenly declared Ruttgers, with the bright pride of a child announcing a school prize. ‘Everyone else fouled it up, but I did it.’

  ‘Yes,’ soothed the doctor. ‘You did it.’

  ‘He couldn’t have managed it,’ said Ruttgers, pointing a nicotine-stained finger at Onslow Smith. ‘Not him.’

  ‘Can’t you shut him up?’ demanded the Director, exasperated.

  The doctor turned to him, not bothering to disguise the criticism. ‘Is it really doing any harm?’ he said.

  Smith snorted, twisting the question.

  ‘You wouldn’t believe it,’ he said, bitterly. ‘In a million years, you wouldn’t believe it.’

  He turned back to Braley, positive again.

  ‘We’ve got blanket diplomatic clearance,’ he said. He indicated the former Director. ‘And his name was on the list approved by the Foreign Office. So he leaves. Tonight.’

  Seeing the doctor move to speak, Smith hurried on: ‘There’s an aircraft already laid on … for me. He can go instead.’

  ‘I think he still might need some medical help,’ warned the doctor.

  ‘I’ll fix it with the ambassador for you to go as well,’ said Smith, anxious to move now he had reached a decision. He’d have to speak to the Secretary of State, he knew. Very soon.

  ‘You will go, of course,’ he ordered Braley.

  The man nodded in immediate agreement. ‘Of course,’ he said.

  ‘By this time tomorrow I want nothing to associate us in any way with this,’ announced the Director.

  ‘Oh, Christ,’ said Braley, softly.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ demanded Smith, the alarm flaring.

  ‘The hotel at Crawley,’ remembered Braley. ‘The one in which we were waiting for Mr Ruttgers to return when you called us …’

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘The woman stayed there … and Mr Ruttgers is registered. With his luggage.’

  Beneath the desk, where they couldn’t see the tension, Smith gripped and ungripped his hands, fighting against the desire to scream at them for their stupidity. They had had no idea two hours before why he was panicking them from the place and couldn’t then have anticipated the danger of not collecting the cases, he remembered. And he’d lost control in front of them sufficiently for one evening, he decided.

  ‘Get your asses back there,’ he said, his voice unnaturally soft in his anxiety to contain his anger. ‘Get down there and explain that Mr Ruttgers has had to leave, in a hurry. Pay his bill and collect his bags and then get out. And hurry. For God’s sake hurry.’

  The police would unquestionably uncover the link, he accepted. But by then Ruttgers would be over three thousand miles away and he would have begun negotiations.

  ‘Can we get Ruttgers to London airport by ourselves?’ queried Smith, to the doctor.

  The bespectacled man nodded, pausing at the doorway. The unexpected flight to Washington upset a lot of arrangements, he realised, annoyed.

  ‘You guys lead an ass-hole of a life, don’t you?’ he said.

  ‘Yes,’ agreed Smith dully. The hotel was an awkward complication, he thought.

  ‘Then why the hell do you do it?’ persisted the doctor.

  The Director concentrated upon him, fully.

  ‘Sometimes,’ he said, ‘it seems important’

  But this hadn’t been, he decided. Apart from a few inflated egos and a questionable argument about teaching the Russians a lesson, this hadn’t been important at all. Quite worthless, in fact.

  ‘How often do you get it right?’ asked the doctor.

  ‘Not often enough,’ admitted Smith honestly. Suddenly annoyed at the interrogation, he started up and said, curtly: ‘Let’s get Ruttgers to the airport, shall we?’

  Road blocks would have been established within an hour of the murder, Charlie knew, sealing a wide area. It had meant he had had to drive in a circuitous route, impatient at the amount of time it was taking him to do all that was necessary.

  Purposely he was crowding the thoughts into his mind, trying to blot out the memory of Edith’s collapsed, pulped body.

  The Wimbledon house had seemed deserted, he decided. Where, he wondered, was John Packer? Certainly not arrested; the garden shed would have been empty after a police search.

  The jewellery recovery had been publicised everywhere. Panicked then. Panicked and run. The word stayed in his mind, linking the next thought.

  Perhaps, in their panic, they would forget Ruttgers’ luggage. No, he assured himself, in immediate contradiction. The connection was too important Braley wouldn’t overlook something as vital as that. And he’d certainly appeared in a position of authority at the airport, someone involved in the final planning. No, Braley would think of the luggage; it was that sort of professionalism that made him so good.

  Charlie lost the fight against recollection and knuckled his eyes, trying to clear the blur.

  ‘Shouldn’t have been you, Edith,’ he said. ‘I won’t fail … even if this goes wrong, I won’t fail.’

  THIRTY

  The improvement in Garson Ruttgers’ condition began almost immediately they left the American embassy and started through the quiet, early dawn streets of London. By the time they had cleared the city, he was lighting his own cigarettes and as they neared the airport, he turned to the doctor and asked, quite rationally, if they were going back to America.

  When he nodded, Ruttgers turned to Onslow Smith.

  ‘You coming?’

  The Director shook his head.

  ‘Then I’ll let them know how well it all went,’ said Ruttgers.

  Smith looked sharply at the man but was stopped by the doctor’s warning look.

  ‘Sure,’ he said, dismissively. ‘You tell them.’

  It would take seven hours for the aircraft to reach Washington, calculated Smith. Sufficient time for him to sleep away the fatigue that was gripping his body, before attempting to meet with British officials. It wouldn’t be easy, now Wilberforce was gone. Perhaps, he thought, it would be better to arrange through the American ambassador an appointment with somebody in the government. Perhaps, he thought, the Secretary of State would insist upon taking control. There’d be a lot of anxiety in Washington when he told them.

  He swayed at the sudden movement of the car and realised they had turned off the motorway.

  ‘I hardly think there’s any need for me to go,’ said the doctor, in hopeful protest.

  Smith looked at Ruttgers before replying.

  ‘I think there is,’ he insisted. ‘It’s a long flight.’

  The int
ernal injury would be intensive, Smith knew. And he was going to make damned sure that he closed every avenue of criticism that he could, even down to something as minor as having the man accompanied back to Washington by a physician.

  ‘I really don’t think there’s much wrong with him,’ said the doctor.

  ‘You can be back here by tomorrow,’ said Smith, closing the conversation. He had more to worry about than the feelings of an embassy doctor, decided Smith. It was his future career he was trying to save.

  They looped off before the tunnel, taking the peripheral road to the private section. Soon, thought Onslow Smith It would all be over very soon.

  Because of the twenty-four-hour activity at the airport, there were several cars in the staff park and the darkened mini was quite inconspicuous as the limousine swept by.

  Despite the growing daylight, lights still held the building in a yellow glow. The driver had already spoken into the radio and as they pulled in front of the embarkation lounge, marines and airport security men moved out into a prearranged position, closing off the area. Others arranged themselves loosely around the aircraft, an inner protection for the people boarding.

  ‘I missed the announcement,’ said the doctor, uncaring now in his anger. ‘What time did the war start?’

  Smith looked at him, shaking his head.

  The chauffeur opened the door and Smith got out, leaving the doctor to help Ruttgers.

  ‘Anything more?’ enquired the driver.

  ‘Wait for me,’ instructed Smith. ‘We’ll see the plane away.’

  The chauffeur re-entered the car, moving it to the designated parking area alongside the buildings and Smith smiled mechanically at the customs and immigration officials who approached.

  Smith had arranged the papers in his briefcase during the journey and produced the authorisations as they were requested.

  ‘Seems a lot of activity,’ suggested the customs officer.

  ‘Yes,’ agreed Smith.

  ‘No need for me to see anything, is there?’ asked the man.

  ‘No,’ agreed Smith. ‘No need at all. Just personal belongings, nothing more.’