The Inscrutable Charlie Muffin cm-3

by Brian Freemantle

There were nods and mutterings of agreement.

  ‘Even the New Territories, as well as Kowloon and Hong Kong,’ he emphasised.

  ‘We understand,’ said the man in the front.

  ‘Everyone must know,’ insisted the millionaire’s son. That was as important as the tradition of making the announcement.

  ‘They will,’ promised the man who had spoken earlier.

  9

  Charlie had expected his appointment to be cancelled after the court deaths of the two Chinese, but when he telephoned for confirmation Superintendent Johnson’s secretary assured him he was still expected.

  Unable to lose the feeling that he was being watched, Charlie walked to police headquarters by a circuitous route, frequently leaving the wider highways to thread through the shop-cluttered alleyways, their incense sticks smouldering against the evil spirits, all the while checking behind and around him, irritated when he located nothing and growing convinced, yet again, that his instinct had become blunted.

  There was another feeling, even stronger than annoyance. He’d always thought of his ability to survive as instinctive, too. It was an attribute he couldn’t afford to lose.

  ‘Perhaps I should bum incense,’ he muttered, recognising the indication of fear.

  The police headquarters were as ordered and regimented as the man who commanded them, the regulation-spaced desks of the head-bent clerks tidy and unlittered, the offices padded with an almost church-like hush.

  Johnson’s office was the model for those outside. Never, decided Charlie as he entered, would it achieve the effect of being occupied and worked in; it was more like an exhibition case.

  Even seated behind the predictably imposing desk, Johnson had perfected the stretched-upright gaze of intimidation. The police chief indicated a chair to the left of the desk and Charlie sat, waiting in anticipation.

  Almost immediately Johnson looked at his watch, for Charlie to know the pressure upon his time.

  ‘Appointment in thirty minutes,’ he warned.

  ‘It was good of you to see me so promptly,’ Charlie thanked him. ‘Especially after what happened in court.’

  Such men always responded to deference, Charlie knew.

  ‘Murder,’ confirmed Johnson.

  ‘Murder?’

  Johnson would need very little encouragement, guessed Charlie.

  ‘Post-mortem examinations proved they both died from a venom-based poison… created involuntary lung-muscle spasms. Cause of death was asphyxiation.’

  Charlie said nothing, remembering the strangled breathing.

  ‘The Chinese farm snakes, you know. For food.’

  ‘I know,’ said Charlie.

  ‘So venom is freely available in the colony. Chinese doctors even use it in some cases as a health remedy. It’ll take more tests, but we think it was either from a Banded Krait or a Coral Snake.’

  ‘You said murder,’ Charlie reminded him.

  Johnson leaned back in the chair, refusing to be hurried despite his own restriction upon time.

  ‘Know what solves crime?’ he demanded.

  ‘What?’ asked Charlie. Had Johnson always been as overbearing as this? Or had he developed the attitude since he arrived in the colony?

  ‘Routine. Just simple routine. Finding those responsible for the fire was merely a matter of gradually working through those Chinese employed on the refit, matching the fingerprints to those we found all over the sprinkler systems and the incendiary devices and then confronting them with the evidence. Simple, logical routine.’

  ‘And now you’ve made an arrest for their murder?’ said Charlie.

  Johnson shifted, off-balanced by the question.

  ‘Employing the same principle, we’ve satisfied ourselves we know the man responsible. We’ve eliminated every person who had contact with the dead men except one.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘A prison cook. Ideally placed to introduce the poison. His name is Fan Yung-ching.’

  ‘But you haven’t made an arrest?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘Because he’s returned to mainland China?’ suggested Charlie.

  Johnson frowned at the anticipation.

  ‘That’s what we strongly suspect,’ admitted the police chief. ‘We’ve established that he disappeared from his lodgings and that his family have always lived in Hunan, on the mainland. Apparently he crossed about six months ago.’

  ‘I’m surprised how easy it appears to be to go back and forth over the border,’ said Charlie.

  The superintendent leaned forward on his desk, always alert for criticism.

  Basically unsure of himself, judged Charlie.

  ‘It’s virtually impossible for us to control or even estimate the number that cross each year,’ conceded the police chief. ‘At least five thousand come in without Chinese permission, swimming across the bay. Double that number must enter with official approval.’

  ‘Ten thousand!’ said Charlie.

  ‘Would it frighten you to know that the majority of Chinese crews on British warships and naval support vessels come from communist China, with merely accommodation addresses here to satisfy the regulations about their being Hong Kong Chinese?’

  ‘Yes,’ admitted Charlie. ‘It probably would.’

  ‘It’s a fact,’ insisted Johnson. ‘And it frightens the Americans, too. Particularly during joint NATO exercises.’

  ‘So you’re convinced that the men who destroyed the Pride of America were infiltrated into the colony. Then killed by another Chinese agent?’

  Johnson nodded, tapping another file neatly contained in red binding at the corner of his desk. The word ‘closed’ was stencilled on it, Charlie saw.

  ‘To save the embarrassment that might have been caused by the trial,’ the policeman confirmed.

  Johnson had a pigeon-hole mind, decided Charlie.

  ‘Once we confronted the two with the evidence of the fingerprints and the incendiary devices, they made full statements,’ continued Johnson. ‘Admitted they were told to cross, then wait until they were contacted… what espionage people call being…’

  He hesitated, losing the expression.

  Sleepers, you bloody fool, thought Charlie. He said nothing. His feet were beginning to hurt and he wriggled his toes, trying to become more comfortable.

  ‘I forget the term,’ dismissed Johnson. ‘Anyway, they were eventually contacted, given the materials to cause the fire and did what they were told.’

  ‘Just as you think the prison cook did?’

  Again Johnson looked curiously at the doubt in Charlie’s voice.

  ‘From other people at the man’s lodging house, we know that the night before the remand hearing another Chinese came to see him, that he handed the cook a package and that afterwards the man seemed agitated and frightened. We’ve got fingerprints from his room which match those on the rice bowls from which the men ate before they came to court…’

  ‘And that, together with his mainland background, fits neatly into the pattern?’

  ‘I’ve considered all the evidence,’ Johnson defended himself.

  ‘I’ve seen most of it,’ Charlie reminded him.

  ‘And mine is the proper conclusion on the facts available’

  ‘But doesn’t it seem just a little clumsy?’ asked Charlie.

  ‘Clumsy?’

  ‘The two who fired the liner were opium smokers, weren’t they?’ asked Charlie, recalling the indications at the court hearing.

  ‘There was medical evidence to that effect,’ admitted Johnson. ‘Many Chinese are.’

  ‘And almost illiterate?’ pressed Charlie.

  ‘There was no education, no,’ conceded Johnson.

  ‘What about the cook?’

  ‘Apparently he smoked, too. We haven’t been able to establish his literacy, obviously.’

  ‘Then to use your guidelines, it’s not logical, is it?’ said Charlie. ‘Or even sensible?’

  ‘What?’ demanded Johnson, resenting
the argument.

  ‘In a fanfare of publicity,’ said Charlie, ‘one of the world’s most famous passenger liners is brought here and a man renowned for years of anti-communist preaching announces that it’s to become a prestige university at which he’s going permanently to lecture against the Peking regime…’

  ‘I’m aware of the facts,’ interrupted Johnson.

  ‘Then don’t you think it’s odd,’ broke in Charlie, ‘that a country which decides to stifle that criticism – a country which according to you can without the risk of interception move ten thousand people into this colony and therefore, presumably, include in that figure the most expert sabotage agents in any of its armed forces – should select for the task three near-illiterate, drug-taking Chinese whose capture or discovery was practically a foregone conclusion? And by so doing guarantee worse publicity than if they’d let the damned ship remain?’

  Johnson laughed, a dismissive sound.

  ‘A logical argument… ‘he began.

  ‘Routine logic,’ interposed Charlie.

  ‘Which regrettably doesn’t fit the facts,’ concluded Johnson. ‘You must defer to my having a great deal more knowledge of these matters than you.’

  ‘But they just wouldn’t do it, would they?’ insisted Charlie, cautious of any mention of his earlier life.

  ‘Give me an alternative suggestion,’ said Johnson.

  ‘At the moment I don’t have one,’ said Charlie. ‘But I’m going to keep my mind a great deal more open than yours until I’ve better proof.’

  ‘And you think you’re going to get that in Hong Kong?’ sneered Johnson, carelessly patronising.

  ‘I’m going to try.’

  The large man rose from his desk, staring towards the window.

  ‘You’re a Westerner,’ he said, turning back into the room after a few moments. ‘A round-eye… even if there were anything more to discover, which I don’t believe there is, you wouldn’t stand a cat in hell’s chance of penetrating this society.’

  The second time he’d had that warning in forty-eight hours, thought Charlie. It was becoming boring.

  ‘And if I can?’

  Johnson shook his head at the strange conceit in the unkempt man sitting before him.

  ‘Come back to me with just one piece of producible evidence that would give me legal cause to reopen the case and I’ll do it,’ he promised. ‘Just one piece.’

  He hesitated.

  ‘But I tell you again,’ he added, ‘you’re wasting your time.’

  The 12 per cent premium on its own wasn’t evidence. Not without the reason to support it. It could wait until another meeting. And Charlie was sure that there would be one.

  ‘Have you asked the Chinese authorities for any assistance in locating the cook?’ asked Charlie.

  ‘There’s been a formal application,’ said Johnson. ‘But we don’t expect any assistance. There never is.’

  ‘So what will happen?’

  ‘We’ll issue an arrest warrant. And perhaps a statement.’

  ‘And there the matter will lie… still a communist-inspired fire?’

  Johnson smiled, condescending again.

  ‘Until we receive your surprise revelation, there the matter will lie,’ he agreed. ‘Irrefutably supported by the facts. There’s no way you can avoid a settlement with Mr Lu.’

  On the evidence available, decided Charlie, the policeman was right. Poor Willoughby.

  He saw Johnson look again at his watch and anticipated the dismissal, rising from his chair.

  ‘Thank you again,’ he said.

  ‘Any further help,’ said Johnson, over-generous in his confidence. ‘Don’t hesitate to call.’

  ‘I won’t,’ promised Charlie.

  Superintendent Johnson’s next appointment was approaching along the corridor as Charlie left. Politely, Charlie nodded.

  Harvey Jones returned the greeting.

  Neither man spoke.

  The telex message awaiting Charlie at the hotel said contact was urgent, so although he knew it would be five o’clock in the morning he booked the telephone call to Rupert Willoughby’s home. The underwriter answered immediately, with no sleep in his voice.

  ‘Well?’ he said. The anxiety was very obvious.

  ‘It doesn’t feel right,’ said Charlie.

  ‘So we can fight?’

  The hope flared in the man’s voice.

  ‘Impressions,’ qualified Charlie. ‘Not facts.’

  ‘I can’t contest a court hearing on impressions,’ said Willoughby, immediately deflated. ‘And according to our lawyers that’s what we could be facing if we prolong settlement.’

  ‘I know that,’ said Charlie. ‘There is one thing.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Lu agreed to pay you a 12 per cent premium…’

  ‘I told you that.’

  ‘I know. What’s your feeling at learning everyone else only got 10 per cent?’

  There was no immediate response from the underwriter.

  ‘That doesn’t make sense,’ he said at last. ‘We were the biggest insurers, after all.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘So there is something more than impressions?’ said Willoughby eagerly. Again the hope was evident.

  ‘It’s not grounds for refusing to pay,’ insisted Charlie.

  ‘But what about the court deaths?’

  ‘The police chief is convinced he’s solved that… and that it doesn’t alter anything.’

  ‘What about the 12 per cent, linked with the deaths?’

  ‘I didn’t tell him about the premiums,’ admitted Charlie.

  ‘Why the hell not?’

  ‘Because there is no link. So I want to understand it, first.’

  ‘We haven’t the time,’ protested Willoughby.

  ‘How long?’

  ‘A week at the very outside,’ said the underwriter.

  ‘That’s not enough.’

  ‘It’ll have to be.’

  ‘Yes,’ accepted Charlie. ‘It’ll have to be.’

  ‘Have you seen Lu?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘Surely he’s the one to challenge about the 12 per cent?’

  ‘Of course he is.’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘By itself, it’s not enough,’ Charlie insisted.

  ‘So what are you going to do?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ admitted Charlie.

  ‘That’s not very reassuring.’

  ‘I’m not trying to be reassuring. I’m being honest.’

  ‘I’d appreciate forty-eight-hour contact,’ said Willoughby.

  And spend the intervening time working out figures on the backs of envelopes and praying, guessed Charlie.

  ‘I’ll keep in touch,’ he promised.

  ‘I’m relying on you,’ said Willoughby.

  Charlie replaced the receiver, turning back upon it almost immediately.

  ‘Damn,’ he said. He’d forgotten to ask Willoughby to send a letter to Robert Nelson, assuring him of his job. Not that the promise would matter if he didn’t make better progress than he had so far. He’d still do it, though. The next call would be soon enough.

  He was at the mobile bar, using it for the first time, when the bell sounded. Carrying his drink, he went to the door, concealing his reaction when he opened it.

  ‘I thought you’d be surprised,’ said Jenny Lin Lee, pouting feigned disappointment. Then she smiled, openly provocative, the hair which the previous night she had worn so discreetly at the nape of her neck loose now. She shook her head, a practised movement, so that it swirled about her like a curtain.

  ‘I am,’ said Charlie.

  ‘Then you’re good at hiding things,’ she said, moving past him into the suite without invitation.

  ‘Perhaps we both are,’ said Charlie.

  Clarissa stood looking down at her husband expectantly when Willoughby put the phone down.

  ‘Nothing,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘Some inconsistencies, but
nothing that positively helps.’

  ‘But the court murders?’

  ‘It doesn’t change anything, apparently.’

  ‘How good is this man you’ve got there, for Christ’s sake?’

  The underwriter paused at the question. He knew little more than what he had heard from his father, he realised. Certainly the escape in which Charlie had involved him had been brilliantly organised. But then Charlie had been fighting for his own existence, not somebody else’s.

  ‘Very good, I understand,’ he said.

  ‘Little proof of it so far,’ complained the woman.

  That was the trouble, thought Willoughby. Proof.

  ‘Give him time,’ he said unthinkingly.

  ‘I thought that was what we didn’t have.’

  ‘No,’ admitted the underwriter ‘We don’t.’

  ‘You won’t forgot, Rupert, will you?’

  ‘No,’ he promised. ‘I won’t forget.’

  ‘A week’s warning, at least.’

  ‘A week’s warning,’ he agreed. Why was it, he wondered, that he didn’t feel distaste for this woman?

  10

  Jenny Lin Lee had pulled her hair forward and because she sat with her legs folded beneath her it practically concealed her body. He was still able to see that beneath the white silk cheongsam she was naked.

  She took the glass from him, making sure that their hands touched.

  ‘I got the impression last night that you didn’t drink,’ he said.

  ‘Robert needs a sober guardian.’

  ‘ Where is he now?’

  ‘At the weekly dinner of the businessmen’s club,’ said Jenny disdainfully. ‘One of the few places that will still let him in.’

  Purposely she moved her hair aside, so that more of her body was visible. She looked very young, he thought.

  ‘There are some that don’t?’ he asked.

  ‘Apparently.’ She shrugged, an uncaring gesture.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘You mean he didn’t tell you?’ she demanded, revolving the glass so that the ice clattered against the sides.

  ‘Tell me what?’

  ‘The great embarrassment of Robert Nelson’s life,’ she intoned, deepening her voice to a mock announcement. ‘He’s in love with a Chinese whore.’

  It was an interesting performance, thought Charlie. So it had been a professionalism he’d recognised the previous night. Why, he wondered, had it been so difficult for him to identify? He of all people. Not that he would have used the word to describe her. Because she wasn’t. Not like the girl in front of him.