Here Comes Charlie M

EIGHTEEN

Charlie knew he had registered at the hotel at exactly 3.45 in the afternoon. That concluding act of a flamboyant performance, using his real name, would have confused them sufficiently for at least a two-hour discussion, he estimated. Early evening then. And it would have taken more than twenty-four hours from the moment of decision, even if it had been made in the daytime when people were available, for the necessary warrants and authorisations and then the installation of engineers to put any listening device on the telephone in his hotel room.

Even so, he still went immediately after breakfast to the Savoy foyer to book the call to his Zurich apartment from the small exchange by the lounge stairs, then insisted on taking it in one of the booths from which he could watch the operator.

The first conversation with Edith was abrupt, lasting little more than a minute. Charlie allowed her half an hour to reach the Zurich telephone exchange. She was waiting by one of the incoming booths when he made the second call.

‘So you think the apartment here will be monitored?’ she said immediately.

‘Probably.’

‘The robbery wasn’t a coincidence, then?’

He smiled to himself at her insistence on an admission. She never liked losing arguments.

‘No,’ he said. ‘Of course not. I was trying to stop you becoming too frightened.’

‘You really thought that possible?’

He could detect how strident her voice was. He didn’t answer, refusing to argue.

‘What else happened?’ she demanded.

Briefly, Charlie outlined the details of the Russian robbery and the effect any settlement would have upon Willoughby’s firm.

‘They know everything about you, Charlie. Everything. You’re going to get killed.’

The assertion blurted from her and he heard her voice catch at the other end.

‘Edith,’ he said patiently, ‘I know a way out.’

‘There isn’t a way out, Charlie,’ she said. ‘Stop being such a bloody fool.’

He sighed, fighting against the irritation in his voice.

‘Did you call to say goodbye, just like you said goodbye to Sir Archibald before you left for Vienna to begin this fucking mess?’ she said desperately.

She’d been too long alone, Charlie realised. Now all the fears and doubts were firmly embedded in her mind and refusing to leave. And Edith shouldn’t swear, he thought. She paraded the words artificially, like a child trying to shock a new schoolteacher.

‘I called to say I loved you,’ said Charlie.

The tirade stopped, with the abruptness of a slammed door.

‘Oh, Christ, Charlie,’ she moaned.

He winced at the pain in her voice. She would be crying, he knew.

‘I mean it,’ he said.

‘I know you do.’

‘I love you and I’m going to get us out of all this. We’ll find another place …’

‘… to hide?’ she accused him.

‘Has it been that bad?’

‘It’s been terrible, Charlie. And you know it. And you’d never be able to make it any different, even if you got away from it now.’

He had no argument to put against that, Charlie realised.

‘You should have told me how you felt … before now,’ he said.

‘What good would it have done?’

None, he accepted. She was right. As she had been about the drinking and the damned cemetery and everything else.

‘I’m sorry, Edith,’ he said.

‘So am I, Charlie,’ she said, unhelpfully.

‘I need your help,’ said Charlie. At least, he thought, she’d have something more than fear to occupy her mind.

‘Of course,’ she said. Depression flattened her voice.

‘We’ll need the other passports,’ he said. ‘Now that they know our identity the ones we’ve got aren’t any good, not any more.’

He heard her laugh, an empty sound.

‘For when you’ve beaten them all, Charlie?’ she asked sadly.

‘We’re going to try, for God’s sake,’ he said. The shout would carry beyond the box, but he knew he had to break through the lassitude of defeat.

‘Yes,’ she agreed, trying to force a briskness into her voice. ‘At least we must try.’

The effort failed; she was convinced of failure, he realised.

‘Do you have a pen and paper?’

‘Of course.’

‘I want you to draw the passports from your bank and then travel, by ferry, to England.’

He paused.

‘Yes?’ she prompted. The dullness was still evident.

‘Hire a car,’ he continued. ‘Then set out at your own pace, touring around the countryside.’

‘Charlie …?’ she began, but he stopped her.

‘Wait,’ he said. ‘But I want you every third night to be at these hotels …’

Patiently he recited from an A.A. guide book the first listing and then the hotel once removed in case the initial choice was full in towns selected from a carefully calculated, sixty-mile radius of London. It took a long time because Charlie insisted she read them back to him, to ensure there was no mistake.

‘Start from Oxford,’ he concluded, ‘the day after tomorrow and go in order of the towns as I’ve given them to you.’

‘And just wait until you contact me at any one of the hotels, always on the third day?’ she anticipated.

‘That’s right.’

‘Sounds very simple,’ she said and he started to smile, hoping at last for a change in her attitude.

‘There’s just one thing, Charlie,’ she added.

‘Yes?’

‘What happens after a month, when I’ve gone around and around and you haven’t contacted me … haven’t contacted me because you’re lying dead in some ditch somewhere?’

Her voice switchbacked and she struggled to a halt.

‘I don’t expect to be lying dead somewhere,’ he said.

‘But what if you are?’ she insisted. ‘I’ve got to know, for Christ’s sake!’

Very soon she would be crying, he knew. He hoped she was in one of the end boxes at the Zurich exchange where there would be some concealment from the high wall.

‘Then it will be Rupert who calls you,’ he admitted, reluctantly.

For several minutes there was complete silence.

‘It would mean we’d never see each other again, Charlie.’

She was fighting against the emotion, he realised, carefully choosing the words before she spoke.

‘Yes,’ he said.

‘Funny, isn’t it,’ she went on, straining to keep her voice even. ‘That never really registered with me, the day you left to go to London. But that could be it; the last time. And you didn’t kiss me, when you left.’

‘I said I don’t expect to be lying dead somewhere,’ he repeated, desperately.

‘What would I do, Charlie?’ she pleaded. ‘I’ve always had you.’

Now it was his voice that was flat, without expression. It wouldn’t be the answer she wanted, he knew.

‘You haven’t done anything wrong,’ he said. ‘Not to them, I mean. So they wouldn’t try to hurt you.’

‘So I could come safely back here, to an apartment where you’d never be again and to a bed in which you’d never sleep or touch me and …’

Grief washed over the bitterness.

‘… and live happily ever after,’ she finished badly, through the sobs.

‘Please, Edith,’ he said.

He waited, wincing at her attempts to recover.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said, finally. ‘I can’t help blaming you and I know all the time that it’s not your fault … not in the beginning, anyway.’

‘We can still win,’ he insisted.

‘You really believe that, don’t you?’ she challenged. ‘You can’t lose that bloody conceit, no matter what happens to you.’

If I did, thought Charlie, then I’d be slumped weeping in a telephone box.

‘I mean it,’ he tried again, avoiding another confrontation.

‘I’ll be at Oxford,’ she sighed, resigned to the plan.

‘I love you, Edith,’ he said again.

‘Charlie.’

‘What?’

‘If … if you’re right … if you manage it … promise me something.’

‘What?’

‘You’ll tell me that more often.’

‘Every day,’ he said, too eagerly.

‘Not every day,’ she qualified. ‘Just more than you have in the past.’

The telephone operator looked up at him, eyebrows raised, when Charlie left the box. It had been very hot in the tiny cubicle, he realised. His shirt was wet against his back.

‘Thirty-five minutes,’ said the man. ‘It would have been far more comfortable in your room.’

‘Probably,’ agreed Charlie.

Edith wouldn’t have left the booth in Zurich yet, he knew. She’d be crying.

The pipe stem snapped, a sudden cracking sound in the silent room.

‘Sure?’ asked Cuthbertson.

‘Positive,’ said Wilberforce.

‘Why would the Americans impose their own surveillance?’

‘Because they don’t trust ours. Probably don’t trust us, either. No reason why they should.’

‘They won’t kill him?’ demanded Cuthbertson, worriedly.

‘No,’ Wilberforce assured him. ‘Not until they’ve found out why he’s doing these things.’

‘So what are we going to do?’

‘Nothing,’ said the British Director. ‘It might be a useful safeguard.’

The man was bewildered by Charlie Muffin’s attitude, Cuthbertson knew. Served him right; always had been too conceited by half. He coughed, clearing the permanently congested throat.

‘Not going quite as we expected,’ suggested Cuthbertson.

‘No,’ admitted Wilberforce.

Upon whom, wondered Cuthbertson, would the man try to put the responsibility this time?