Here Comes Charlie M

TWENTY-FOUR

Quite irrationally, which she even recognised but still could not prevent, Edith had developed a conviction that despite the lengthy list of cities and hotels that Charlie had given, he would have contacted her almost immediately.

She’d actually invoked ridiculous, childlike rituals. If the waiter at dinner were Spanish, then Charlie would telephone before midnight. If the winter coldness broke, turning to rain, then that would be the day she would walk into the car park and find Charlie waiting for her.

The desperation had grown with each day until that morning, just before leaving her Cambridge hotel and starting the drive southward to Crawley, the next town designated, she had had to hold herself rigidly at the bedroom door, fighting against the overwhelming impulse to cry.

That it should happen there, today, was understandable, she supposed. She had read history at Girton and the memories had soaked through her. She had driven along the Huntingdon Road and gazed in, trying to locate her old room. And walked past King’s Chapel, so that she could stand on the tiny, humped bridge to stare down into the icy water of the Backs, too cold even for the ducks, and remember the summer punting of so long ago. And smiled reminiscently at the couples, encompassed in their scarves and undergraduate romances, and envied them their happiness.

And now she was going back to Sussex, which she had already come to hate, even before Charlie had made the drunken mistake there that had begun all the agony. Then again, she thought, her mind slipping away on a familiar path, perhaps it was an omen; perhaps it would be here that it would end, where it had begun. That was it; had to be. Charlie would appear today, with the shy yet cocky I-told-you-so smile that always came when he’d proved himself right, and explain how he’d fooled everyone and they could clear out forever, burying themselves in Switzerland again.

She felt the panic building up and gripped the wheel. Just like the Spanish waiters and the weather, she thought, angrily. Damned ridiculous. Why couldn’t she accept it? Charlie wouldn’t come. Today. Or any other day. It would be a month of aimless journeyings to towns she didn’t want to see until one day there would be a telephone call from Rupert Willoughby, a man she’d never met and probably never would, trying to infuse the proper melancholy into his voice to tell her that Charlie, who had forgotten to kiss her when he left that day in Zurich, hadn’t been clever enough this time and was dead.

She pulled the car into a layby, trying to blink the emotion away. She had to stop it, she knew. She was collapsing under the weight of her own self-induced fear. And Charlie wanted her help, not her collapse. She found it so difficult.

Recovered, she felt her way back into the traffic and reached the timbered George Hotel just before lunch. Despite the determination in the layby, she still searched hopefully around the car park as she pulled in, then again in the foyer as she registered. With difficulty, she focused on the receptionist, realising the girl was repeating a question.

‘I wondered if you would want lunch?’

‘No,’ said Edith, too sharply. ‘No thank you,’ she repeated, embarrassed at her own rudeness.

‘Is anything the matter, madam?’

‘Long drive,’ stumbled Edith. ‘Rather tired.’

She didn’t bother to unpack the suitcases. Instead she stood at the window of her room, staring down unseeingly into Crawley High Street.

‘Hurry up, Charlie,’ she said softly. ‘I need you so very much.’

In the lobby below, the polite receptionist was dealing with an unexpected influx of guests. It was fortunate, she thought, that it was so early in the season, otherwise she would have had difficulty in finding accommodation for them all. There were no wives, so it must be a business conference, she decided. Unusual that she hadn’t heard about it. Probably in Brighton.

And in that town, just twenty miles to the south, Superintendent Law was summoning the sergeant for the second conference of the day.

‘Well?’ demanded the superintendent.

Hardiman shook his head, indicating the files banked up against the wall.

‘Still got about twenty more statements to repeat,’ he said. ‘But so far there’s nothing.’

‘It must be there somewhere,’ said Law, refusing to admit his idea was wrong.

Then you’re the best bugger to find it, thought the sergeant.

‘Odd overnight report,’ he said, trying to move the superintendent past his fixation with the statements.

‘What?’

‘You know we asked the uniformed branch to keep an eye on that financier’s house?’

Law nodded.

‘Copper on last night hadn’t done it before,’ continued Hardiman. ‘Got the impression that there was some sort of separate observation being carried out … mentioned it to his superintendent in case there had been some confusion and we were duplicating …’

‘What about the other policemen, before him?’ demanded Law instantly.

‘I’ve checked,’ said the sergeant, glad he’d anticipated the request. ‘Two others got the same impression. Didn’t mention it because they thought we were doubling up.’

‘Stupid bastards,’ said Law. ‘Have we interviewed him again?’

Hardiman shook his head.

‘Away on business,’ he reminded him. ‘Took the trouble to telephone us.’

He picked up Charlie’s file and the superintendent took it from him, staring down as if he expected a clue he hadn’t appreciated from the statement suddenly to present itself.

‘It’s not much,’ said the sergeant, concerned at the other man’s interest. He hoped Law wouldn’t get too worked up. The constable’s report hadn’t been made overnight. It had been lying around for two days, but Hardiman had forgotten to mention it.

‘Willoughby, Price and Rowledge,’ Law read from the file.

‘They’ve confirmed his association with them,’ said Hardiman. ‘Shall I contact them again?’

Hurriedly Law shook his head.

‘Mustn’t frighten the rabbit,’ he said.

‘What then?’ asked Hardiman. It was almost impossible to guess which way the superintendent’s mind would jump, he thought, annoyed.

‘Let’s try to find out a bit more about him first,’ suggested Law. He paused and the sergeant waited, knowing he hadn’t finished.

‘Remember what he said that first night, when we went to his house?’ prompted Law.

Hardiman looked doubtful.

‘Made some remark about being a financier, even though his passport described him as a clerk.’

‘Why should that be odd?’ asked Hardiman.

‘I don’t know, laddie. I don’t know,’ said the superintendent, patronisingly. ‘Why don’t we check the passport office, to discover if it is?’

Why did Law have to conduct everything like it was a sodding quiz game? wondered Hardiman, walking towards his own office. Sometimes the man really pissed him off.

Involvement had been thrust upon Willoughby and Charlie had anticipated the reluctance that was becoming obvious. He hadn’t expected the underwriter’s argument against the stupidity of vindictiveness. That had surprised him.

To Willoughby, of course, the two were so interlinked as to be practically the same. But to Charlie, they were quite separate. To beat them, as he knew he now had, as well as surviving, had more than justified any risk. And there hadn’t been any; not much, anyway. Almost like rigged roulette, again. Now it was over. And he’d got away with it.

Momentarily he looked away from his search for the turning off Wimbledon Hill Road that Willoughby had named during their argumentative conversation, checking the time. Almost midnight; everything would have happened by this time tomorrow, he thought.

He’d been very fortunate, Charlie thought. The confidence bubbled up. But he’d been clever enough to seize that good fortune and utilise it. Christ, how he’d utilised it.

Despite the force of a Lloyd’s insurers behind it, he had still been surprised at the speed with which Willoughby had obtained John Packer’s address from the car registration. The house was at the bottom of a cul-de-sac, a horseshoe indentation between two major roads. Charlie didn’t stop, driving out on to the avenue that backed on to Packer’s property, counting along until he isolated the house between him and the one he was seeking. He parked the car, entered through a tree-lined drive, skirted the darkened building and then smiled, with growing awareness, at the lowness of the fence between it and Packer’s home. The separation between the other adjoining property, from which it would be possible to reach the alternative main road, would be similarly low, he guessed.

Charlie realised almost immediately that he would not be able easily to enter the house. Inside each of the lower windows there was actually a reinforced mesh clamped into a separate frame to form a positive barrier, in addition to the special window locks and the small steel bolts that had been fitted in each corner. With such precautions, it was pointless trying the doors, Charlie decided.

‘Pity a few other people hadn’t been as cautious as you, Mr Packer,’ muttered Charlie.

At first Charlie thought the shed might have been built over an old coal-chute, by which he might still have been able to get in, through the cellar. Obedient to his training, he remained unmoving immediately inside the door, first feeling out for any obstruction and then, careful to avoid the reflection showing through the side windows, probing with the pencil-beam torch.

It wasn’t until he’d shifted the sodium chlorate aside, thinking first of its gardening use, and discovered what lay behind that he appreciated its proper significance, squatting before it and all the other explosives, then moving up to the shelves to feel through the detonators and fuses and finally examining the box containing the timing and pressure devices. There were even clocks, to activate them.

‘A regular little bomb factory,’ mused Charlie. ‘So you’re the professional, Mr Packer? The one who’s necessary to make it look right.’

It was the confirmation of the impression that had come to him climbing over the garden fence; the house was ideally positioned, with three easy escape routes against arrest.

Charlie extinguished the torch, re-locked the outhouse and left the garden by the route he had entered. The man had been manipulated enough, he decided.