Brian Freemantle - Charlie Muffin U.S.A.

‘Told me she’s thinking of coming down to Florida as well.’

Charlie frowned. Why had she told the American that?

‘Got some friends at Lyford Cay and wants to combine a visit,’ added Pendlebury.

‘She hasn’t mentioned it,’ said Charlie. ‘No reason why she should.’

Pendlebury lowered himself into a viewing chair adjoining Charlie’s. ‘Going to watch it through a second time?’ he asked.

‘I don’t think so.’

‘One of us might see something the other misses.’

‘We can compare later,’ said Charlie, rising.

‘See you at the exhibition then.’ Pendlebury consulted his watch again. ‘They’ll be ready now,’ he said.

‘Ready?’

‘The photographs you asked for. They were being developed as I came in.’

Pendlebury was looking at him with his face absolutely blank. Charlie returned the look without any expression. ‘Thanks,’ he said. He began walking towards the door, but Pendlebury called out, stopping him.

‘You will tell me, if there’s anything I should know, won’t you?’

‘Of course,’ said Charlie. ‘Will you tell me?’

‘Naturally,’ said the American. ‘We’re working towards the same purpose, aren’t we?’

‘I hope so,’ said Charlie.

‘Me too,’ said Pendlebury. ‘I hope so very much.’

The photographs had been developed, as Pendlebury had promised. Charlie paused on the pavement outside, searching for a taxi. He had decided to try to identify the group at the exhibition with the help of the social directors of either the Waldorf Astoria or the Pierre Hotel. If that failed, then he would approach one of the society column photographers. It would probably take a long time and in the end be completely without point. But then again, it might not.

There was no possibility of his being criticised by anyone in the organisation about his New York visit, but Giuseppe Terrilli was a careful man and so he arranged two business meetings involving his shipping division while he was in the city. It meant staying over an extra day, but he did not again go anywhere near the Romanov Collection. He ordered his aircraft to be prepared for the morning of the third day and booked out of the Waldorf without even looking in the direction of the exhibition room.

He was smiling when he settled into the back of the limousine for the ride to La Guardia. It was very much the look of a child who has probed the cupboards in November and discovered what it is going to receive on Christmas morning.

With the resources Charlie had once had at his disposal, it would not have taken more than a few hours to identify the people in the photograph. By himself it took almost two days. But then he had had to create a diversion, expecting Pendlebury to check up on the photographs he had obtained. For most of the first day he had sought the names of people on the other freeze frames, coming to those he wanted last.

The husband and wife team were first. The Waldorf social director recognised the man as a junior Canadian minister attached to the United Nations, which explained Cosgrove’s greeting. The Waldorf man gave a lead to the masculine woman, too, and by the afternoon Charlie had her named as a fashion designer as interested in taking clothes off women as in putting them on. Charlie idly wondered in which capacity Sally Cosgrove knew her.

The sun-tanned man remained a problem, apparently known by no one. Charlie tried the New York Times photographic library, but was told it was not open to the public and then, in increasing desperation, looked up the philatelic magazines in the Yellow Pages and touted the picture – cut away now from the people who had stood momentarily at the door of the exhibition hall – around every office listed. A photographer at the last one thought he knew the man, but couldn’t identify him by name. He believed him to be an industrialist, however.

With that slender lead, Charlie went to the Wall Street Journal and by noon of the second day knew the picture to be that of a millionaire named Giuseppe Terrilli.

Alone in his hotel room, Charlie spread the pictures and information he had been able to gather across his bed and stared down.

‘Waste of time,’ he told himself, having gone from each picture to his fact sheet, repeating the process several times. A diplomat free-loading off champagne and caviar, a lesbian choosing the best social event of the night, and a rich man interested in stamps attending an unusual philatelic exhibition. Yet there had to be something. Charlie’s instinct told him so, and he placed great reliance upon instinct. It had been nothing more than instinct, eight years before, that had initially made him suspect that he was being set up up as a disposable sacrifice by the American and British Intelligence Services. Later he’d stood in a darkened East Berlin doorway and seen the car that he should have been driving engulfed in flames and rifle fire.

He felt that instinct awakening now. Something about the four people at whose pictures he was gazing had brought a reaction from Pendlebury, and a peculiar one too. Until their entry, the man hadn’t drunk. As soon as they had come into the room, he’d taken a glass from a passing tray and hadn’t stopped from then on. Until their arrival, he hadn’t looked away from the door. Once they had passed through it, he had hardly looked in that direction again. He had relaxed, in fact. Entrusted with the safety of stamps worth?3,000,000, why would a man relax when display cases were opening and closing like a cuckoo’s mouth and the room was jammed with people, creating the best conditions for a robbery?

And the relaxation had continued. Pendlebury hadn’t neglected the job; he was far too professional for that. But there had been a sureness about him, as if he were confident the exhibition was safe. Yet at their first meeting, he had said a theft was always possible.

‘ If it’s too quiet, make a noise. ’

Another dictum from Sir Archibald. But not as easily put into practice as it had once been. What could he do to put Pendlebury to the test and see if, for once, his instinct had failed?

Slowly he put the photograph into his briefcase, sighing as the answer came to him. Could she do it, without cocking it up? There would always be the risk, but he needed a third party and she was the only one available.

He picked up the telephone, dialling her suite number hopefully. He was at the point of replacing the receiver when Clarissa answered, thick with sleep.

‘You all right?’ he asked.

She recognised his voice. ‘Perfect,’ she said. ‘Except that I always wake up with these strange urges.’

‘It’s five o’clock in the afternoon.’

‘Afternoons are dreary. It’s nights that are fun.’

‘I want to talk to you.’

‘Come up for breakfast.’

Charlie hesitated; at least whores got paid for it, even the male ones.

‘I don’t like orange juice,’ he said. ‘Make it apple.’

By the time he got to her suite, Clarissa had combed her hair but she hadn’t bothered about make-up. Despite the life she had led, her face remained remarkably unlined. Charlie wondered if she had undergone much cosmetic surgery; certainly no one outside a comic or a beauty surgery had breasts like that.

‘I’ve just spoken to Rupert,’ she said. ‘I told him we were going to have breakfast together and he sends his love.’

‘Oh,’ said Charlie.

‘He also asked if you were enjoying yourself and I said I didn’t think so, not very much.’

‘Pendlebury told me you’d said you were going to Florida,’ said Charlie.

‘I thought I might. I’ve friends on an island. Sally is going down.’

‘Will you go straight there?’