Brian Freemantle - The Inscrutable Charlie Muffin

Here all the ornaments and decorations had been swept aside in the struggle and more blood smeared the walls. A delicate Chinese brushworked painting that had concealed the wall safe hung lopsided, the hook almost torn from the wall. The safe gaped open and inside Johnson had the briefest impression of bundles of money banded together in tight blocks.

But he wasn’t interested so much in the safe.

At its foot, his body wedged in a strange awkwardness against the skirting board, lay Harvey Jones. The man’s leg was twisted beneath him: he’d broken it when he fell, thought Johnson, his mind registering the details with a clinical, later-to-be-produced-in-court accuracy.

Near the man’s outstretched left hand was a tall pedestal ornament, its heavy base messily blood-stained. There was a matching ornament on the other side of the fireplace, Johnson saw, cracked where it had fallen to the ground.

He knelt, to get closer to the body. Jones’s eyes were still open, in a shocked expression of death, and the police chief could just see the bullet entries. One, high in the left shoulder, was little more than a flesh wound, but there was another, lower in the chest. And from the amount of blood it was clear there was a third that he couldn’t immediately see.

Johnson had begun to straighten before he noticed the document. He crouched again, trying to read it without displacing it before the photographs were taken. There was a slight splash of blood on one corner. And the man’s arm obscured the beginning. But it was quite easy for Johnson to read at least a third and identify the signature of Geoffrey Hodgson alongside the seal of the British embassy in Peking.

He stood, slowly. So he wouldn’t have to await the arrival of the diplomatic bag.

‘Here,’ called the inspector.

The Chinese millionaire lay so that his crumpled body was almost completely concealed by the desk. From it came the snorted breathing of someone deeply unconscious and by moving around behind him Johnson could see the deep triangular gash at the side of Lu’s head.

The police chief looked across at the ornament by Jones’s outstretched hand. The base could have created just such a wound.

Facts, he recognised contentedly. Presentable, unarguable facts. Soon it would be time to bring the photographers and scientists in, to commence the simple, logical routine.

‘Quite a fight,’ suggested the inspector.

Drawers had been jerked from their runners and in two places Johnson could see where the locks had been forced, crudely jemmied open by some strong leverage. The contents were strewn haphazardly over the desk, as if someone had been looking for something particular and discarded what he didn’t want without caring where it landed.

Again Johnson crouched, grunting with the difficulty of getting his large body beneath the narrow leg-space of the desk. About six inches from Lu’s right hand lay a pistol. Johnson lowered himself to it, sniffing, immediately twitching his nose at the smell of cordite.

‘Czech,’ commented the inspector. ‘M-27.’

‘Rough-looking weapon,’ said Johnson, rising.

‘But could be fitted with a silencer,’ said the inspector, indicating the attachment.

There was movement at the door and Johnson turned.

‘The ambulance is here,’ reported the guarding policeman.

‘Let them come in,’ said Johnson. ‘And forensic and photographic, too.’

The experts entered in a bunch.

‘Photographs first,’ stipulated Johnson, sure of his case and therefore sure of himself.

The white-coated ambulance men entered with their stretcher.

‘The man’s here,’ said Johnson. ‘But before he’s moved I want a paraffin test on his hands, to establish that he’s recently fired a gun.’

Immediately one of the plain-clothes men opened a bag and began walking towards the desk.

‘Superintendent Johnson.’

The police chief turned at the inspector’s summons.

‘This would seem to be the point of entry,’ said the officer.

A neat semi-circle had been cut from the glass near the interior catch of the ceiling-to-floor window.

‘That’s it,’ agreed Johnson.

‘Not difficult to see what happened.’

‘Quite obvious,’ agreed Johnson. ‘Intruder surprised by the householder in the middle of a robbery, is shot but manages to bludgeon the man to the ground, then dies of his injuries as he tries to retrieve from the safe what he’s looking for.’

‘Looking for?’

‘Something I thought was going to create the most difficult case I’d ever been called upon to handle,’ admitted the police chief. ‘But now it looks like one of the easiest.’

The inspector pointed towards the dead man at the far side of the room.

‘Quite an expert, wasn’t he?’

‘Oh, he was an expert right enough,’ said Johnson.

The inspector turned at the confidence in his superior’s voice.

‘Did you know him?’

Johnson smiled.

‘He worked for the American government,’ he disclosed. ‘The Central Intelligence Agency.’

‘Oh,’ said the inspector doubtfully. ‘That could cause some problems, couldn’t it?’

‘I don’t see why,’ said Johnson.

The facts were there after all. No one could argue with them. Plain as the fingers on his hand.

Charlie Muffin was finally sick. He stood sweating over the lavatory bowl, agonised by the head pain that came with each stomach-stretching retch. When he could finally leave the bathroom it was difficult to see and for a moment he thought he was suffering from the double vision with which he’d awakened in hospital.

He sat quietly on the edge of the bed, blinking the wetness from his eyes. He was limp with perspiration. And smelt. Like the confused old man in the Peking interview room.

Charlie reached out for the pills the doctor had given him, concerned at how few remained in the bottle. It would be sensible to go back to hospital. Sensible. But impossible.

He undressed carelessly, leaving his clothes puddled on the floor. He didn’t bother to get beneath the bed covering, because he knew he wouldn’t sleep.

It was going to be a long time until the morning, he thought.

Johnson took the document from Charlie, nodding with satisfaction at another established fact.

‘No doubt at all?’

‘No,’ said Charlie. ‘That’s definitely the statement I took from the cook in Peking.’

‘And the one that was stolen from you at the border?’

‘Yes.’

‘And this is the photograph, identifying John Lu?’

‘Yes.’

The police chief sat back expansively. ‘That’s it then. Everything explained.’

‘It would seem so,’ agreed Charlie. There was no pain now, but if he moved his head quickly he still felt a slight dizziness. It had all been brilliantly conceived, he thought. Which meant he was still in great danger.

‘ You’ll always have to run, Charlie, always… ’

‘Be a defence to the killing, of course,’ said Johnson. ‘Reduced to manslaughter or even, with a good counsel, justifiable homicide in the protection of his property.’

‘Yes.’

‘In fact Jones’s killing is unimportant compared to the door it opened.’

The fitting epitaph, thought Charlie sadly. ‘Here lies Harvey Jones, whose death served a purpose.’

‘It would seem I owe you an apology,’ conceded Johnson unexpectedly. ‘You were right.’

‘It would have been difficult to prove,’ he admitted, indicating the statement. ‘Even with that.’

‘But not now,’ said the police chief.

‘No,’ said Charlie. ‘Not now. What about John Lu?’

‘The widest open door of them all.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘He was among those detained at the house last night. So he couldn’t run. And so he panicked. Started making admissions before we even asked the questions.’