Brian Freemantle - The Inscrutable Charlie Muffin

‘Why the hell not?’

‘Because there is no link. So I want to understand it, first.’

‘We haven’t the time,’ protested Willoughby.

‘How long?’

‘A week at the very outside,’ said the underwriter.

‘That’s not enough.’

‘It’ll have to be.’

‘Yes,’ accepted Charlie. ‘It’ll have to be.’

‘Have you seen Lu?’

‘Not yet.’

‘Surely he’s the one to challenge about the 12 per cent?’

‘Of course he is.’

‘Well?’

‘By itself, it’s not enough,’ Charlie insisted.

‘So what are you going to do?’

‘I don’t know,’ admitted Charlie.

‘That’s not very reassuring.’

‘I’m not trying to be reassuring. I’m being honest.’

‘I’d appreciate forty-eight-hour contact,’ said Willoughby.

And spend the intervening time working out figures on the backs of envelopes and praying, guessed Charlie.

‘I’ll keep in touch,’ he promised.

‘I’m relying on you,’ said Willoughby.

Charlie replaced the receiver, turning back upon it almost immediately.

‘Damn,’ he said. He’d forgotten to ask Willoughby to send a letter to Robert Nelson, assuring him of his job. Not that the promise would matter if he didn’t make better progress than he had so far. He’d still do it, though. The next call would be soon enough.

He was at the mobile bar, using it for the first time, when the bell sounded. Carrying his drink, he went to the door, concealing his reaction when he opened it.

‘I thought you’d be surprised,’ said Jenny Lin Lee, pouting feigned disappointment. Then she smiled, openly provocative, the hair which the previous night she had worn so discreetly at the nape of her neck loose now. She shook her head, a practised movement, so that it swirled about her like a curtain.

‘I am,’ said Charlie.

‘Then you’re good at hiding things,’ she said, moving past him into the suite without invitation.

‘Perhaps we both are,’ said Charlie.

Clarissa stood looking down at her husband expectantly when Willoughby put the phone down.

‘Nothing,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘Some inconsistencies, but nothing that positively helps.’

‘But the court murders?’

‘It doesn’t change anything, apparently.’

‘How good is this man you’ve got there, for Christ’s sake?’

The underwriter paused at the question. He knew little more than what he had heard from his father, he realised. Certainly the escape in which Charlie had involved him had been brilliantly organised. But then Charlie had been fighting for his own existence, not somebody else’s.

‘Very good, I understand,’ he said.

‘Little proof of it so far,’ complained the woman.

That was the trouble, thought Willoughby. Proof.

‘Give him time,’ he said unthinkingly.

‘I thought that was what we didn’t have.’

‘No,’ admitted the underwriter ‘We don’t.’

‘You won’t forgot, Rupert, will you?’

‘No,’ he promised. ‘I won’t forget.’

‘A week’s warning, at least.’

‘A week’s warning,’ he agreed. Why was it, he wondered, that he didn’t feel distaste for this woman?

Jenny Lin Lee had pulled her hair forward and because she sat with her legs folded beneath her it practically concealed her body. He was still able to see that beneath the white silk cheongsam she was naked.

She took the glass from him, making sure that their hands touched.

‘I got the impression last night that you didn’t drink,’ he said.

‘Robert needs a sober guardian.’

‘ Where is he now?’

‘At the weekly dinner of the businessmen’s club,’ said Jenny disdainfully. ‘One of the few places that will still let him in.’

Purposely she moved her hair aside, so that more of her body was visible. She looked very young, he thought.

‘There are some that don’t?’ he asked.

‘Apparently.’ She shrugged, an uncaring gesture.

‘Why?’

‘You mean he didn’t tell you?’ she demanded, revolving the glass so that the ice clattered against the sides.

‘Tell me what?’

‘The great embarrassment of Robert Nelson’s life,’ she intoned, deepening her voice to a mock announcement. ‘He’s in love with a Chinese whore.’

It was an interesting performance, thought Charlie. So it had been a professionalism he’d recognised the previous night. Why, he wondered, had it been so difficult for him to identify? He of all people. Not that he would have used the word to describe her. Because she wasn’t. Not like the girl in front of him.

‘ Say hello to your uncle, Charlie, there’s a good boy… what’s your name again, love? ’

But not a whore. Never have called her that. Not now. She hadn’t even taken money, not unless it was offered her. And only then if the rent were due or the corner store were refusing any more credit or some new school uniform were needed. And she would always describe it as a loan. Actually put scribbled IOUs in the coronation mug on the dresser. He’d found fifty there, when his mother had died. All carefully dated. And dozens more in the biscuit tin, the one in which she put the rent money and the hire purchase instalments. One of the names, he supposed, had been that of his father. She wouldn’t have known, of course. Not for certain. She would have been able to remember them all, though. Because to her they hadn’t been casual encounters. None of them.

He didn’t believe she’d wanted physical love. Not too much anyway. It was just that in her simple, haphazard way, she couldn’t think how else it would enter, except through the bedroom door.

She’d tried to explain, pleading with him. She’d been crying and he’d thought the mascara streaks had looked like Indian warpaint.

He’d been the National Service prodigy then. Transferred because of his brilliance as an aerial photographer from R.A.F. Intelligence to the department that Sir Archibald was creating.

And so very impressed with the accents and the attitudes of the university entrants. Impressed with everything, in fact. And so anxious to belong. He hadn’t challenged them, of course. Not yet. That had been the time when he was still trying to ape their talk and their habits, unaware of their amusement.

And been frightened that the sniffling, sobbing woman who didn’t even have the comfort now of any more uncles would endanger his selection because of the security screening he knew was taking place.

‘ Can’t you understand what it’s like to be lonely, Charlie… to want somebody you can depend on, who won’t notice when you’re getting old… ’

He’d grimaced at the mascara. And called her ugly. The one person who could have given her the friendship she’d wanted, he thought. And he hadn’t understood. Any more than he’d understood what Edith had wanted from him, until it was too late. Why had he never been able to dream Edith’s dreams?

How long, he wondered, would it take Robert Nelson?

‘Strayed outside the well-ordered system,’ he quoted.

She nodded.

‘The Eleventh Commandment,’ said Jenny. ‘Thou shalt fuck the natives but not be seen doing it.’

‘And you don’t love him?’

‘What’s love got to do with being a whore?’

‘Very little.’

‘He’s convenient,’ she said. ‘And the bed’s clean.’

‘Do you really despise him?’

‘I despise being paraded around, to garden parties where people won’t talk to me and to clubs where I’m ignored, so he can show me off like someone who’s recovered from a terminal illness.’

‘Why don’t you tell him that?’

‘I have. He says I’m imagining it and he wants me to be accepted.’