Brian Freemantle: Madrigal for Charlie Muffin

Something pricked at Charlie’s memory and he groped for it, like a man trying to distinguish a half-formed shape in a fog.

‘Quite obviously it was planted there,’ said Charlie.

‘Walsingham knew you.’

‘He didn’t know me until we met at the villa.’

‘There’d been a previous time, in Washington.’

‘Bullshit.’

‘You’d been identified to him, for the Washington meeting.’

‘The meeting!’ Charlie shouted the words. ‘That’s where it went wrong.’

‘What are you talking about?’ said Wilson.

Charlie didn’t respond at once. Then the answers came like a flood that follows the initial trickle through the dam wall. It had taken him a bloody long time; it wouldn’t have done once.

‘Four days ago I made contact with the man who robbed Billington’s safe,’ said Charlie. ‘The man I found dead at the apartment.’

‘Emilio Fantani,’ said Wilson.

‘I never knew his name. I recognized him then from the hand injury the police talked about. It was in Harry’s Bar on the Via Veneto. The staff there can confirm it. It’ll be independent corroboration.’

‘Of what?’

‘That a meeting took place.’

‘It had to,’ said Wilson. ‘Your instructions were to silence Walsingham. And Fantani was the link.’

‘What was the only thing that would have mattered to Fantani?’

Wilson considered the question. ‘The pay-off, I suppose. That’s what he’d been promised by Walsingham, according to the message from Moscow.’

‘The pay-off,’ agreed Charlie. ‘The pay-off figure was wrong.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You believe Walsingham staged the robbery on his own initiative?’

Wilson was beginning to feel slightly uneasy.

‘The insurance was for one and a half million pounds,’ said Charlie. ‘Fantani demanded a ransom of twenty-five per cent.’

‘Well?’

‘What’s twenty-five per cent of one and a half million?’

‘Three hundred and seventy-five thousand,’ said Wilson.

‘But Fantani asked for five hundred thousand,’ said Charlie. ‘You’ve recovered the money. Count it yourself.’

‘What’s the significance?’

‘Fantani knew the policy was a replacement one, with adjustments for the increased value of the jewellery that took its cost up to two million. And he couldn’t have learned that from Walsingham, because Walsingham couldn’t have known those details.’

‘ You did.’

‘But I wasn’t working with him, according to you!’

Wilson and Naire-Hamilton exchanged worried looks. In the pause the final piece of the puzzle fitted into place, ‘The timing,’ said Charlie, more to himself than his interrogators. ‘Walsingham was at the Via Salaria earlier than I said.’

‘What are you saying?’ demanded Wilson.

‘You’re going to kill me, aren’t you?’

Naire-Hamilton twitched nervously towards the turning tapes and then back to Charlie. He didn’t speak. Neither did Wilson.

‘I know who did it,’ said Charlie. ‘I know who your spy is.’

‘Who?’

‘A deal,’ said Charlie. ‘My life for the name of the spy. If not, you can go to hell.’

Willoughby and Clarissa were put aboard the same RAF plane that had brought the underwriter to Rome and seated next to each other. It occurred to neither of them to object, which they could have done because Clarissa was not under any detention. The aircraft had been flying for almost an hour before Willoughby spoke.

‘I know what happened in Rome.’

She glanced at him but said nothing.

‘I trapped you,’ he said with bitter triumph. ‘I could have got anyone to do the security check but I knew he was desperate and so I tricked him into coming. I guessed what had happened in New York and I knew you’d come rutting after him instead of going to Menton. You were watched the whole time.’

‘You needn’t have wasted your money,’ she said wearily. ‘All you had to do was ask.’

‘You’re a whore,’ he said.

‘Haven’t we had these recriminations before?’

‘I’m divorcing you.’

‘You’ve said that before too.’

‘How could you!’ said Willoughby. ‘With him! Even before you knew the sort of man he is.’

Clarissa smiled wanly. ‘Actually it wasn’t easy,’ she said. ‘He didn’t want to at first. Said it would be letting you down.’

‘You mean you seduced him?’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I suppose I did. It was a joke at first.’

‘It means nothing to you, does it?’

‘No,’ she agreed. ‘Not normally.’

He looked at her disbelievingly. ‘Surely you don’t think that you love him!’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I think I do. Insane, isn’t it?’

Wilson was seated in the small office that had been allocated to them in the embassy. Naire-Hamilton was still striding about the room, the more nervous of the two. His hands twitched about him.

‘Do you realize the risk you’re taking?’

‘Do you realize what it is if I don’t?’

‘What authority have you got for giving in to his demand?’

‘None,’ admitted the intelligence director. ‘If I hadn’t given it he wouldn’t have told us.’

‘Bloody guttersnipe!’

‘What if he’s right?’

There was a knock at the door. ‘Mrs Walsingham is here,’ said Jackson.

At first Igor Solomatin remained stiffly to attention but Kalenin seated him and watched him gradually relax under the congratulations.

‘You made no contact afterwards with the embassy?’ asked Kalenin.

‘I considered it safer not to.’

‘Quite right.’

‘There’s little doubt that it worked, though,’ said Solomatin hurriedly. ‘There would have been news of an arrest if it hadn’t.’

Seeing the man’s anxiety, Kalenin said, ‘It was a brilliant operation.’

‘Thank you.’ Solomatin was visibly relieved.

‘There is a vacancy upon my staff of deputies,’ said Kalenin. ‘I’d like you to take it. You’d be responsible for initiating clandestine activities: precisely the sort of thing you’ve just done.’

‘I’m honoured, Comrade General,’ said Solomatin.

Kalenin knew his turn was coming. The Politburo meeting was only two days away.

Sir Hector Billington came hesitantly into the basement. A chair had been set on the side opposite the recording table and the Permanent Under Secretary showed him to it.

‘We appreciate your coming,’ said Naire-Hamilton.

‘Are you sure this is necessary?’

‘Essential,’ said Wilson.

‘How can I help you?’ asked Billington.

‘On some points he has raised,’ said Naire-Hamilton, nodding towards Charlie.

Billington regarded Charlie with undisguised contempt. ‘I’m to be questioned by him!’

‘It won’t take long.’

‘I sincerely hope not.’

‘Proceed,’ Wilson said to Charlie.

‘You telephoned me at the hotel to tell me where to meet Fantani?’ Charlie couldn’t afford to make one mistake.

Billington appeared embarrassed at the reminder of co-operation. ‘Yes,’ he said.

‘Where was the meeting?’

‘I think it was Harry’s Bar.’

‘At the villa the day after the robbery the police decided to limit the information publicly released. And the value was put at the original assessment, one and a half million pounds.’

Billington looked annoyed. ‘What is the purpose of this?’

‘Establishing guilt,’ said the Permanent Under Secretary.

Billington returned to Charlie. ‘Go on,’ he said, stiffly.

‘When I met Fantani, he demanded twenty-five per cent of the insurance value, and put it at five hundred thousand. And that was the new, not the old, valuation.’