Brian Freemantle - Madrigal for Charlie Muffin

‘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.

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 thought 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.’