Brian Freemantle - Charlie Muffin U.S.A.

Charlie recognised the surveillance almost as soon as it was imposed. Relief came with the identification, because since Clarissa’s supposed indiscretion Charlie had been tensed for some response and would have been more alarmed had there not been one.

Charlie was confident that his training and past experience still gave him an advantage. It enabled him to think like Pendlebury, which was of primary importance. And now that he was aware of being watched, it meant he could, without Pendlebury suspecting it, influence the man’s responses.

‘ A clever animal, knowing it is being pursued, can always lead its hunters to disaster.’

That had been another of Sir Archibald’s catch-phrases and Charlie had used it before when an operation had temporarily slipped out of control.

He left the Breakers, pausing at the end of the drive to check his watch and then began pacing along South County Road, a man establishing a time schedule. At Bethesda, Pendleton Avenue and Barton Avenue he consulted his watch again, then turned left, to bring himself out to Ocean Boulevard. At the entrance to the private road to Terrilli’s house, he hesitated, looking once more at his watch, continued for about a hundred yards and then retraced his steps. As he passed the private road, he allowed another pause and glanced in towards the unseen, castellated mansion. Despite the heat, which made him sweat, Charlie returned to the Breakers at the same brisk pace. Twice during the journey he checked the time.

Inside the hotel, he queued at the cashier’s for change, then entered one of the public telephone boxes, from which it would be impossible for anyone to establish from the hotel switchboard with whom he made contact. Shuddering slightly as the air conditioning cooled the perspiration upon him, Charlie went through a fifteen-minute charade of making long distance calls, in fact dialling for the time, the weather information, the small-advertisement department of the Palm Beach Daily News to ask about small-ad rates, and the airport to enquire about services to Miami, New Orleans and New York.

He created a satisfied expression on his face before leaving the kiosk and went immediately to the Alcazar, where he had arranged to meet Clarissa.

She was already waiting. She wore a crisp white dress, with little jewellery, hardly any make-up and her hair was tied back in the way he had told her he liked.

He waved exuberantly at her, kissed her cheek as he got to the table and then gestured extravagantly at a waiter, announcing as he looked back to Clarissa, ‘We’ll celebrate.’

‘What?’ she asked, frowning slightly at Charlie’s performance.

‘It’s a game,’ he said, more quietly. ‘I’m trying to worry people.’

‘Do I need to know the rules?’

‘No. Just follow along,’ said Charlie. Once, he thought, she would have turned the remark into some sort of sexual innuendo. Her attitude was a pleasant improvement.

‘Where have you been?’ she said.

Raising his voice, Charlie said, ‘Taking an important walk.’

Clarissa grimaced through the window, towards the sun-whitened sand.

‘It’s too damned hot for walking,’ she said.

‘Not for the sort of walking I did,’ said Charlie.

‘You seem very pleased with yourself.’

‘People seem to be responding in the way I want.’

‘When am I going to know the secret?’

‘As soon as I do,’ said Charlie seriously and more softly.

‘More puzzles?’

‘But we’ve got a lot more of the pieces fitted together than we had a few days ago.’

‘Has Pendlebury approached you yet?’

‘Not yet.’

‘Isn’t that odd?’ said Clarissa. ‘Surely as the man in charge of security, he should have contacted you immediately, after what I told him.’

‘Yes,’ agreed Charlie. ‘That’s what he should have done. But he isn’t thinking properly.’ He raised his drink to her and said, loudly again, ‘To the success of the operation.’

She drank, disguising her bewilderment.

In a corner of the room but with a better view of the ocean, Robert Chambine sat unaware of the couple, Coca Cola before him and a copy of the Miami Herald discarded beside it. He was looking towards the door when Leonard Saxby and Peter Boella entered. There was not the slightest indication of any recognition between them. The two men went immediately to the bar, gossiping about that morning’s golf score.

‘I had a call from Lyford Cay this morning,’ announced Clarissa. ‘They want to know when I’m going down.’

She had been looking away from him but now she stared directly into his face.

‘How much longer would you like me to stay?’ she said.

There was none of the imperious demand that had been in her voice in New York. And she didn’t speak in italics any more, Charlie realised. She’d performed the function for which he had asked her to come to Palm Beach. But was proving additionally useful for this charade.

Charlie suddenly became aware of the intensity of her expression and his mind was thrown, with frightening clarity, to his earlier thoughts in the hotel suite and then through the years to an argument he had had with Edith, soon after they had gone on the run and he had explained fully to her what he had done and the people he had deceived to make it possible.

‘There’s a cruelty about you, Charlie,’ she had said accusingly, ‘a cruelty that sees nothing wrong in using any-one, even me ‘

He had denied it, of course. And four years later he had stared down at the pulped body of the only woman he had ever loved and whom he had constantly cheated, and he had known that he would never lose the guilt of using her.

‘I’d stay if you want me to,’ said Clarissa. She hesitated, a smile trying hopefully at the edges of her mouth. Then she added, ‘I’d like to, really…’

‘No,’ he interrupted, ‘it’s better you go.’

‘Please…’ she tried, but Charlie shook his head at her again.

‘I told you it would be dangerous,’ he said. ‘And it might be.’

‘You’re just saying that… an excuse,’ she said.

‘I’m not,’ said Charlie sincerely. ‘I promised Rupert there wouldn’t be any danger.’

‘Hardly kept your promise, did you?’ she demanded, turning the words back upon him and reminding him of the other guilt.

Charlie frowned, nervous of the direction of the conversation.

‘Let’s not be stupid, Clarissa.’

‘Never that,’ she said. ‘The society butterfly, that’s me.’

It was her first attempt at brittleness for a long time and it failed, and they both knew it.

He moved to speak, but she burst out ahead of him. ‘Don’t tell me how much older you are than me.’

‘I am.’

‘That’s a cop-out,’ she said. ‘Like married men always try to end an affair by saying their responsibility to their children is too great.’

‘I wasn’t going to talk about age,’ said Charlie.

‘What then?’

‘You’d become bored… honestly you would.’

‘I wouldn’t,’ she said defiantly.

‘It’s like -’ he stopped, searching for the expression ‘- like a holiday romance,’ he resumed, badly. ‘There wouldn’t be any novelty left, back in England.’

‘I wasn’t thinking of it as novelty.’

‘Think about it,’ he said. ‘That’s all it is, really.’

To cover the sigh, he brought the glass to his lips. The conversation had disconcerted him. Mixed with surprise was irritation; this was creating a situation he didn’t want, taking his mind from Pendlebury and Terrilli and the Russian stamps.

Behind him and therefore unseen, Saxby and Boella finished their drinks and left the Alcazar, wandering out into the car park alongside the exhibition room, apparently needing to check something in their golf equipment in the boot of their car.