Brian Freemantle: Here Comes Charlie M

The jet jumped and momentarily appeared to those watching on the ground to hang suspended. Then it sagged, where the explosion had shattered the fuselage in half and as the two sections fell away the full cargo of fuel erupted in a huge ball of yellow and blue flame.

Charlie was already out of the car park, needing the initial confusion to avoid detection from the people statued four hundred yards away, gazing open-mouthed into the sky.

The movement of the small car was quite undetected.

As he headed eastwards along the M-4 towards London, fire engines from Hounslow and Feltham blared in the opposite direction, sirens at full volume, blue lights flashing.

It was too much to think that Ruttgers might have looked into the bag, decided Charlie.

Superintendent Law had telephoned from London, so when he swept white-faced into the office, Hardiman had all the files from the Brighton robbery carefully parcelled and waiting on the tables against the wall.

The sergeant stood uncertainly, frowning at the men who followed the superintendent into the room.

‘There they are,’ said Law, sweeping his hand towards them.

‘What …?’ questioned Hardiman, but Law waved the hand again, stopping him.

The strangers began carrying the files from the office. They didn’t speak to each other and Superintendent Law didn’t speak to them. It took a very short time.

‘You’ll want a receipt?’ said one of the men.

‘Yes,’ said Law.

Quickly the man scribbled on to a pad and handed it over.

‘Thank you for your co-operation,’ he said.

Law did’t reply.

‘What the hell has happened?’ demanded the sergeant, as the room emptied.

Law slammed the door, turning to stand immediately in front of it.

‘That,’ he said, a vein throbbing at his temple in his anger, ‘was the beginning of the big cover-up.’

‘I don’t understand,’ said Hardiman.

‘Neither do I, not completely,’ admitted the superintendent. ‘Nor am I being allowed to.’

‘But what happened ?’ repeated Hardiman.

Law walked away from the door, seating himself with elaborate care behind the desk and then staring down at it, assembling the words.

‘In Whitehall,’ he started. ‘There were separate meetings. First the Chief Constables of Surrey, Sussex and Kent were taken into an office and addressed by God knows who. Then we were taken into another room and told that the whole thing had been taken over by a government department and that as far as we were concerned, the cases were closed.’

The vein increased its vibrations.

‘Cases?’

‘The Brighton robbery. And the shooting.’

‘But you can’t just close a million pounds robbery. And a murder,’ protested Hardiman. ‘That’s ridiculous.’

‘Yes,’ agreed Law. ‘It is, isn’t it? But you can, apparently, if it’s felt sufficiently important for national security. And that’s the bullshit we’ve been fed, all day … a question of national security and official secrets.’

‘But what about … what about the money?’ floundered the sergeant, with too many questions to ask.

‘Everyone who suffered a loss will be compensated by the Clearing Houses … who I suppose will receive their instructions like we received ours today.’

‘But how shall we mark the files?’

Law snorted, waving towards the door.

‘What files?’

‘I don’t believe it,’ said Hardiman, slumping down.

‘No,’ said Law. ‘Neither do I. Incidentally, because of your close involvement, you’re to see the Chief Constable at four this afternoon.’

‘What for?’

‘To be told, presumably, that if you disclose anything of what happened to anyone, you’ll be transgressing the Official Secrets Act.’

‘But what about that damned man’s passport … the one that was found with all that other stuff after the crash? It was a direct link. It was all tidied up: the robbery, the murder, the air crash …’

Law shook his head. ‘We are told that no explanation could be made, other than that it was part of an attempt … an attempt which failed … to discredit Britain. I don’t think that a complete account was even given to the Chief Constables.’

Hardiman laughed, suspiciously.

‘Attempt to discredit Britain by whom?’

Law made an irritable movement.

‘Ask the Chief Constable this afternoon, perhaps he knows.’

‘Does it mean the bloody man is dead?’

‘I presume so,’ said Law. ‘Perhaps he was being taken to America in the aircraft. I don’t really know. We weren’t allowed to ask questions.’

The superintendent’s annoyance thrust him from the chair and he began walking around the office without direction.

‘What are you going to do?’ asked Hardiman.

Law smiled at him, a crooked expression.

‘Resign, you mean?’ he queried. He shook his head. ‘In another two years I’ll have got my thirty in. Do you think I’m going to chuck up a pension, just for this?’

‘No,’ accepted Hardiman. ‘I suppose not.’

‘But I’d like to,’ added the superintendent, softly. ‘Christ, I’d like to. Can you imagine how frightened they’d be by that?’

He looked up at the sergeant, throwing his arms out helplessly.

‘The way they use people!’ he protested. ‘What gives them the right to use people like … like they didn’t matter?’

‘Power,’ said Hardiman, cynically. ‘Just power.’

‘Wouldn’t it be nice,’ reflected the detective, ‘to know that just occasionally it all gets cocked up?’

‘For them it never does,’ said Hardiman. ‘Not enough, anyway. There’s usually too many people between them and personal disaster.’

‘Yes,’ said Law. ‘People like us.’

‘So,’ said Hardiman, positively. ‘What do we do now?’

‘The official orders,’ recited the superintendent, ‘are to conclude the matter, bringing to an immediate close any outstanding parts of the investigation.’

The sergeant glanced over at the empty file tables.

‘Are there any outstanding parts?’

‘The underwriter, Willoughby, is probably wondering where his mysterious investor is … he’s obviously been used, like everybody else …’

He moved towards his coat.

‘And the journey will do me good. I don’t want to stay around a police station any more today. I might be reminded about justice and stupid things like that.’

‘What are you going to tell Willoughby?’

Law turned at the door.

‘The way I feel at the moment,’ he said, ‘I feel like telling him everything I know.’

‘But you won’t,’ anticipated the sergeant.

‘No,’ agreed Law. ‘I won’t. I’ll do what I’m told and wait another two years to collect a pension. Don’t forget that four o’clock appointment.’

The tiredness dragged at Smallwood’s face and occasionally the hand that lay along the arm of the chair gave a tiny, convulsive twitch.

‘Well?’ demanded the Foreign Secretary.

The Premier made a dismissive movement.

‘There’s an enormous amount of police annoyance,’ he said. ‘But that was to be expected.’

‘Will they obey the instructions?’

‘They’ll have to,’ said Smallwood. ‘The Official Secrets Act is a useful document. Thank God none of them knows the complete story.’

‘What about America?’

Smallwood shifted in his chair.

‘They made the bigger mistakes this time. We agreed to cover for them.’

‘So hopefully not too much damage has been caused?’ said Heyden.

‘Not too much,’ agreed Smallwood.

The grief would always be there, Willoughby knew. In time, he supposed, Charlie would learn to build a shell around it, a screen behind which he would be able completely to hide. It wouldn’t happen yet though. Not for months; maybe more. The amount of time, perhaps, that it would take his own feelings to subside.