Brian Freemantle - Madrigal for Charlie Muffin

Lady Billington treated the business with the same casual detachment. After an hour she said, ‘When Hector said this was legally necessary I thought it was a good idea. Now I’m not so sure.’

‘It’s best to be careful,’ said Charlie. She stretched her legs out along the chaise longue, so he eased himself onto the dressing-table stool, flexing the cramp from his legs. Pieces of fluff from the carpet speckled his trousers.

‘Quite frankly I couldn’t give a damn,’ she said. ‘Surprised?’

‘Yes,’ said Charlie.

‘Right that you should be,’ she said. ‘Just as I should be surprised at the poor little rich girl feeling.’

The confessional of gin, thought Charlie. It was tenuous but Charlie decided there was a similarity between this woman and the one he had left in bed at the hotel. Lady Billington sought her escape in a bottle and Clarissa in bed. He felt a twitch of anger towards both of them.

Lady Billington stirred a box with her feet; a rope of pearls, Charlie knew.

‘Know what I think sometimes when I’m putting these things on?’

‘What?’

‘How many empty bellies they could fill.’

She was draining bottles and putting messages inside, he thought. ‘Why don’t you give them away then? Save this sort of thing every year.’

She smiled wearily. ‘All the old stuff is in family trust anyway,’ she said. ‘And there is already a charity established: something to do with bringing Africans to England to train them to be agronomists. My father set it up.’

‘Aren’t there organizations you could become involved with?’

‘International committees flying first class to New York or Geneva and eating six-course banquets and agreeing how beastly it is for people to starve.’

He’d been wrong about Lady Billington. She was a woman brim full of sadness. ‘It’s an uneven world,’ agreed Charlie.

‘That’s trite,’ she said.

‘But true.’

Lady Billington added unsteadily to her glass, spilling some onto the cloth so that a damp grey stain spread across it. ‘“From each according to his abilities… to each according to his needs,”’ she quoted indistinctly.

‘Is that the Karl Marx original or the Oxford Book of Quotations ?’

‘Political science. Girton. A poor Second.’

Charlie indicated the boxes and then spread his hands to include the villa. ‘Do you need all this?’

‘Truth is I’m not sure,’ she admitted. ‘Couldn’t give a damn about the jewellery. But I don’t think I want to get rid of everything…’ She smiled wearily again. ‘Am I making sense?’

‘Vaguely.’

‘I shouldn’t drink so much.’

‘It’s an easy habit to get into,’ said Charlie with feeling. ‘Shouldn’t we get on?’

‘How’s your drink?’

‘All right, thank you.’

‘Don’t suppose I should,’ she said reluctantly.

It took a further hour to complete the jewellery inventory. They finished with Lady Billington’s engagement ring, which was the only piece she hadn’t returned to the safe in preparation for his visit.

‘One for the road,’ she insisted.

‘A small one.’

She looked at him curiously. ‘You’ve got bits all over your clothes.’

Charlie made an ineffective attempt to sweep away the carpet debris. Lady Billington gazed vaguely around the dressing room. ‘Suppose there should be a brush somewhere.’

‘Don’t bother.’

‘Do you need to see my husband for anything?’ she said. ‘If you do, it’ll have to be at the embassy.’

Charlie shook his head in instant rejection. ‘No,’ he said. The whole business had been remarkably straightforward. How easy would it be to persuade Willoughby to employ him more regularly? The idea settled and he decided it was a good one: anything was better than the state into which he had been crumbling. Charlie’s mind blocked at the thought. What about Clarissa?

They left through the ambassador’s bedroom and Lady Billington stopped near the oar-blade display. ‘Have you seen these?’ she said, the pride obvious.

Charlie went alongside her. Lady Billington’s finger traced a line along the photographs of her husband in the university rowing team. ‘He was almost chosen for the Olympics,’ she said.

Although he’d looked at them before, Charlie politely studied the pictures again. All assured, confident, good-looking young men, their places in life guaranteed by name and influence. Lucky buggers.

They left the bedroom and Lady Billington walked with him down the marbled staircase and along the corridor to the door. ‘Forgive the maudlin,’ she said.

‘Thanks for the drink.’

‘Drive carefully.’

‘Don’t worry.’

Charlie was an intuitive man, reacting to feelings and to impressions. And the feeling at the moment was uncertainty. As he took the hire car down the tree-lined driveway he tried to find a reason for it. He’d avoided absolutely any contact with the embassy and the security check had been what he had anticipated in Willoughby’s office, a job for a clerk. So why the unease? On the return to Rome Charlie maintained a regular speed and constantly checked his rear-view mirror; today there was no obvious pursuit. He must have imagined the blue Lancia, like everything else. It had to be Clarissa.

She was already in the hotel room when he got there, surrounded by packages and parcels, like a child who’d found its way into Santa’s storeroom.

‘I’ve had a fantastic time,’ she said. ‘My American Express card is like a piece of rubber.’

‘I felt like that this morning,’ said Charlie.

‘I can fix that.’

‘Won’t Rupert wonder at purchases in Rome when you’re supposed to be off the coast of France on a yacht?’

‘Oh, bugger Rupert,’ she said carelessly. ‘He never notices anything anyway.’

In the foyer downstairs, a patient man in a grey suit carefully folded the newspaper he couldn’t read because it was in Italian, and made another precise entry in a notebook. Already the list was extensive.

Henry Jackson was a large, soft-fleshed man who would have looked the part astride a policeman’s bicycle on an English country beat. It was an impression he purposely conveyed because it made people careless. He was, in fact, extremely astute and even, when the occasion demanded, physically quick, which was why Harkness had chosen him to supervise the British field team in Rome. Henry Walsingham greeted him with the withdrawn friendliness of an out-of-town representative undergoing an annual visit from head office. Jackson emphasized plodding officialdom. He insisted upon a complete tour of every department, hoping to gauge the required degree of efficiency from the behaviour of the staff and the material on their desks. In one office overlooking the Via Settembre he identified Richard Semingford. The Second Secretary looked up in mild interest at the intrusion and then returned to his work. There were marines on guard in the cipher and vault room and every check and identification was observed. Jackson remained for some time in the cipher room, stressing its importance for the forthcoming Summit for direct communication between the Premier and his ministers in Italy with the cabinet in London. It would be necessary for him to instal someone over a longer period, but Jackson’s initial impression was that the security was being maintained at the proper level. Back in Walsingham’s office, he allowed himself to be taken through the list of every official and unofficial function in which the British party would be involved. Indexed against each function were details of the security provisions made by the Italian government.

‘There’s extensive use of helicopters.’

‘So I see.’

‘The whole thing is an obvious target for the Red Brigade,’ said the embassy security man. Even when he was supposedly relaxed there was a military uprightness about him.