Madrigal for Charlie Muffin cm-5

by Brian Freemantle

  It was a woman and she was naked, the evening gown crumpled in her hand. She tossed it onto the couch on her way to the dressing table. Not completely naked, he corrected; there were still the rings and the ruby choker and the matching earrings. She began leisurely to unfasten them, concentrating not upon what she was doing but upon her body. About forty-five, estimated Fantani with professional expertise. But she’d taken care. There was hardly any droop to her ass and she’d retained the muscle control of her stomach, so that there was no unsightly bulge when she relaxed. She tossed one earring onto the table in front of her and cupped a full breast in either hand, lifting them, so the nipples rose like the noses of inquiring puppies.

  ‘Hector!’ she called.

  ‘What?’ came a muffled voice.

  ‘I’m sure that woman with the German ambassador has had her breasts lifted.’

  ‘It was his wife.’

  ‘What’s that got to do with it?’

  ‘Didn’t think you knew who she was.’

  ‘Of course I knew who she was. Do you think she has?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Had her breasts lifted?’

  ‘I didn’t look.’

  ‘With a dress like that it was hardly necessary. I wonder if it hurts?’

  Fantani heard but didn’t see the other door open into the room. ‘How should I know?’

  The man came into view; he was wearing a robe but his socks were still supported by old fashioned suspenders, secured in an elasticized band just beneath the knee.

  ‘I sag,’ complained the woman. ‘Do you think I sag?’

  ‘Let go.’

  She lowered her hands and her breasts slumped.

  ‘They’re fine.’

  ‘Sometimes dresses are better without a bra.’

  ‘Middle-aged wives of ambassadors don’t walk about with their nipples sticking out. And they don’t stay so close to the cocktail waiter.’

  She unfastened the other earring, then the necklace, and began creaming the make-up from her face. ‘I’ve never let you down.’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘Frightened that I might?’

  ‘I just wish you’d cut it down a little.’

  Fantani’s body began to ache with the effort of holding himself away from the blinds and his legs began to shake. Get out, he prayed, desperately; in the name of Jesus and Mary, get out!

  ‘You’re not worried about something, are you?’ he said.

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘I’d like you to be careful over the next few weeks,’ said Billington. ‘We’re going to be under the microscope, because of this damned Summit.’

  ‘Will we have to stay at the official residence in Rome?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I don’t like it there.’

  ‘It’s only for a short while.’

  ‘Those receptions and banquets and dinners are so boring; how the hell do you expect me not to drink?’

  He moved, so that he was between her and the mirror. ‘I expect you to support me, as a wife,’ he said.

  She put down a mascara-stained ball of cotton wool.

  ‘Haven’t I always?’

  ‘You have and I’m grateful,’ said Billington. ‘I just don’t want there to be any mistakes. It’s important.’

  ‘For promotion, you mean?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I won’t do anything to hurt you,’ she said solemnly.

  ‘I love you,’ he said.

  ‘I love you too.’

  ‘I’m sorry you’re not happy.’ The ambassador moved away from Fantani’s view.

  ‘What about the jewellery?’ she called after him. ‘Shouldn’t it be put away?’

  Fantani winced. Distantly the man’s voice said, ‘In the morning.’

  ‘Goodnight then,’ she called.

  ‘Goodnight.’

  The light in the dressing room went out as abruptly as it had come on and Fantani tottered forward against the back of the couch to take the strain from his legs. He was thoroughly cramped, like he’d been sometimes as a child when the snows came to Calabria and the cold had eaten into his body, numbing him so badly it was difficult to walk. Still nervously alert for any sound, he lowered himself into a kneeling position, as if he were praying. He swallowed hard to prevent the sob, clamping his lips between his teeth against any breakdown. Gradually the spasms eased and he rolled over to rest his back against the rear of the couch.

  It was two hours before Fantani considered it safe to move. He was fully recovered by then, as careful as he had been when he first entered. The ambassador had left the dressing-room door open. Fantani waited until he had located the man’s slow, easy breathing and then padded swiftly across to the outer door. Soundlessly he tiptoed down the marble staircase and, when he got to the drawing-room windows, his hinged entry spots were as he had left them. In the garden he stopped, dragging the cold air into his lungs. Almost done it, he thought: almost but not quite. He found the cypress grove, and slipped swiftly down the utterly black avenue to the wall. At the cliff face he turned his back to the sea and paced five steps inland. Having established his marker he turned to the wall, cupped the silk bag in his hand and, like a basketball player going for a goal, hefted the jewellery high over the electrified barrier. With a sense of relief he heard it crunch on the other side.

  Getting back was not going to be easy. The villa lights had been dimmed. There was no moon and, although he was close enough to reach out to feel its attachment to the wall, he had to peer out to locate the blacker outline arching over the cliff. At least the breeze had dropped. Fantani breathed in deeply, tensed and threw himself into the blackness. He didn’t land flat, as he had before, but instead jarred into the web with the left side of his body. He failed to get a foothold and for a second hung only by his left hand. He felt the grip being torn away by the weight of his body and swung his right hand around desperately for support.

  And impaled his hand upon one of the spear heads.

  He gasped at the pain, feeling the metal drive into his flesh. He pulled away, conscious of the skin ripping and managed to crook his almost numbed fingers around a spoke. His body hung suspended at the furthest point of the half-web and directly over the drop. He could feel the blood running back along his arm. He twitched his feet in tiny sideways movements to get a foothold. With his left foot he managed to lever himself up, sticking both arms through the bars and then curving them, so one hand was free to discover how badly hurt he was. The point had driven through the gloves, almost at the centre of the palm, like one of the sacrificial wounds in the church models of Jesus that his mother had made him pray before when he went to confession. He clamped his mouth shut against the moan. Dear God, it hurt; it hurt more than anything he’d ever known before. He was bleeding heavily and the fingers were stiffening. There was hardly any grip in his right hand, so he had to press his body tight against the sharpened tips. They scraped his face and he felt the cotton of his windcheater split. He made the turn and stopped again, his arms holding him. He couldn’t manage it much longer: the numbness was spreading from his hand, into his wrist. He crabbed towards the cliff but pushed his body first this time. He got as far as his waist when his foot slipped and his legs slipped away from the metalwork, dangling over the edge. Fantani snatched out with his uninjured hand, locking his fingers into a bracken outcrop. He heaved up and, wedging his elbows beneath his body, dragged the rest of his body to safety.

  He rolled away from the rim and lay on his back. He was crying at the effort, tears mixing with the sweat and itching his face. He let the emotion flood out, needing the release. He got up at last, pulling awkwardly with his left hand at the jacket zip and slotting his right arm into it, to create a makeshift sling. Reluctantly he went to the edge, paced in five steps and stopped, putting his good hand over the wet grass. He quickly located the jewellery and wedged it beneath his left arm.

  The lightness of dawn was already showing to the east as he took the car
along the Ostia road and then turned inland towards Rome. The feeling had practically gone from his hand and the lightheadedness he knew from marijuana and cocaine made him giggle aloud, careless at the closeness of hysteria. He’d done it!

  The night-duty man contacted Harkness at home and the deputy decided the importance justified the use of an insecure line, telephoning the director in Hampshire. Wilson answered on the second ring.

  ‘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 cliche 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 tho
ught 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.