Here Comes Charlie M

TWENTY-NINE

Apart from Ruttgers, oblivious in his private reverie, everyone sat silently awaiting Onslow Smith’s lead.

‘Damn,’ said the Director. ‘Damn, damn, damn.’

With the repetition of every word, he punched hard at the desk, needing physical movement to show his rage and there were isolated shifts of embarrassment from the men watching.

Since they’d arrived at the embassy, Smith had done little but vent his temper in irascible, theatrical gestures, his mind blocked by what had happened.

Apparently aware of the impression he was creating, the Director straightened.

‘Right,’ he said, as if calling a meeting to order.

The shuffling stopped.

‘You’re positive he hasn’t been identified?’ demanded Onslow Smith.

‘Of course I can’t be positive,’ said Braley, uncomfortable with the question he had already answered.

He’d been so near, thought Smith, in a sudden flush of remorse. So damn near. And then the fucking paranoid had to go and screw everything up. It would be wrong to let Washington know yet.

‘You must have some idea,’ he said irritably.

‘When we got to the layby,’ Braley continued, recounting the familiar story, ‘Mr Ruttgers was just sitting in the car …’

‘Just sitting?’

‘Yes, sir. Staring straight ahead and doing nothing, except smiling. The engine was still running. And the telephone he’d used to call you was hanging off the hook, where he’d let it drop.’

‘The engine still running and there hadn’t been a police check?’ queried the Director.

‘Cuckfield is quite a way from the shooting,’ said Braley. ‘But it only took us about fifteen minutes from the Crawley hotel.’

‘Where the hell was he trying to go?’ wondered Smith. He spoke to a bespectacled man on his right.

‘Probably never know that,’ replied the embassy doctor. ‘Perhaps back to the hotel … perhaps nowhere. Just the urge to get away.’

‘How long will he be like that?’ asked Smith, nodding towards the immobile figure of the former Director.

‘Not long, I shouldn’t imagine,’ said the doctor. ‘I don’t think it’s anything much more than shock. Could be over in a few hours.’

As if conscious of the attention, Ruttgers suddenly stirred into life, smiling over at Smith and leaning forward to reinforce the words.

‘Killed him,’ gloated Ruttgers. ‘Shot the bastard, like we should have done weeks ago. Saw him fall. Dead. Charlie Muffin is dead. No need to worry any more … dead …’

‘But …’ began Braley, who had already had an enquiry made to the police. Smith waved him to silence. Christ knows what mental switchback the correction would make, he thought.

‘It could be days before we’re able to establish definitely whether Mr Ruttgers was seen sufficiently to be identified,’ offered Braley. He’d impressed the Director on this job, he knew. And wanted to go on doing so.

‘And we don’t have days,’ said the Director distantly. But they still had luck, he decided. Only just. But enough to matter; enough to avoid a humiliation as embarrassing as Vienna. Providing he handled it properly. Thank God that even mentally confused, the bloody man had wanted to boast, to prove how much better he was than the rest of them. Without that wild, incoherent contact it wouldn’t have been possible to have snatched him off the streets and brought him back to the safety and security of Grosvenor Square.

So he still had the advantage, determined the Director.

Now he had to capitalise upon it. Which meant Ruttgers had to be got out, immediately. And then buried as deeply as possible within some psychiatric clinic.

Smith realised he himself would have to remain in England, and attempt to establish some sort of relationship with whoever was going to succeed George Wilberforce to agree an approach which would satisfy the civilian police.

There would be arguments, Smith anticipated. Bad ones. Maybe even a break between the two services as severe as that which followed the Vienna debacle. But whatever happened, it would be less embarrassing to America than having a former Director of the C.I.A. arraigned in a British court of law on a charge of murder. That’s all he had to consider; keeping America out of it.

He looked up at a movement in front of him and saw the doctor leaning forward, to take a smouldering cigarette from Ruttgers’ fingers before it burned low enough to blister him. Ruttgers stirred at the approach, looking around for a replacement. Gently the doctor lit one for him.

‘I did it,’ suddenly declared Ruttgers, with the bright pride of a child announcing a school prize. ‘Everyone else fouled it up, but I did it.’

‘Yes,’ soothed the doctor. ‘You did it.’

‘He couldn’t have managed it,’ said Ruttgers, pointing a nicotine-stained finger at Onslow Smith. ‘Not him.’

‘Can’t you shut him up?’ demanded the Director, exasperated.

The doctor turned to him, not bothering to disguise the criticism. ‘Is it really doing any harm?’ he said.

Smith snorted, twisting the question.

‘You wouldn’t believe it,’ he said, bitterly. ‘In a million years, you wouldn’t believe it.’

He turned back to Braley, positive again.

‘We’ve got blanket diplomatic clearance,’ he said. He indicated the former Director. ‘And his name was on the list approved by the Foreign Office. So he leaves. Tonight.’

Seeing the doctor move to speak, Smith hurried on: ‘There’s an aircraft already laid on … for me. He can go instead.’

‘I think he still might need some medical help,’ warned the doctor.

‘I’ll fix it with the ambassador for you to go as well,’ said Smith, anxious to move now he had reached a decision. He’d have to speak to the Secretary of State, he knew. Very soon.

‘You will go, of course,’ he ordered Braley.

The man nodded in immediate agreement. ‘Of course,’ he said.

‘By this time tomorrow I want nothing to associate us in any way with this,’ announced the Director.

‘Oh, Christ,’ said Braley, softly.

‘What’s the matter?’ demanded Smith, the alarm flaring.

‘The hotel at Crawley,’ remembered Braley. ‘The one in which we were waiting for Mr Ruttgers to return when you called us …’

‘What about it?’

‘The woman stayed there … and Mr Ruttgers is registered. With his luggage.’

Beneath the desk, where they couldn’t see the tension, Smith gripped and ungripped his hands, fighting against the desire to scream at them for their stupidity. They had had no idea two hours before why he was panicking them from the place and couldn’t then have anticipated the danger of not collecting the cases, he remembered. And he’d lost control in front of them sufficiently for one evening, he decided.

‘Get your asses back there,’ he said, his voice unnaturally soft in his anxiety to contain his anger. ‘Get down there and explain that Mr Ruttgers has had to leave, in a hurry. Pay his bill and collect his bags and then get out. And hurry. For God’s sake hurry.’

The police would unquestionably uncover the link, he accepted. But by then Ruttgers would be over three thousand miles away and he would have begun negotiations.

‘Can we get Ruttgers to London airport by ourselves?’ queried Smith, to the doctor.

The bespectacled man nodded, pausing at the doorway. The unexpected flight to Washington upset a lot of arrangements, he realised, annoyed.

‘You guys lead an ass-hole of a life, don’t you?’ he said.

‘Yes,’ agreed Smith dully. The hotel was an awkward complication, he thought.

‘Then why the hell do you do it?’ persisted the doctor.

The Director concentrated upon him, fully.

‘Sometimes,’ he said, ‘it seems important’

But this hadn’t been, he decided. Apart from a few inflated egos and a questionable argument about teaching the Russians a lesson, this hadn’t been important at all. Quite worthless, in fact.

‘How often do you get it right?’ asked the doctor.

‘Not often enough,’ admitted Smith honestly. Suddenly annoyed at the interrogation, he started up and said, curtly: ‘Let’s get Ruttgers to the airport, shall we?’

Road blocks would have been established within an hour of the murder, Charlie knew, sealing a wide area. It had meant he had had to drive in a circuitous route, impatient at the amount of time it was taking him to do all that was necessary.

Purposely he was crowding the thoughts into his mind, trying to blot out the memory of Edith’s collapsed, pulped body.

The Wimbledon house had seemed deserted, he decided. Where, he wondered, was John Packer? Certainly not arrested; the garden shed would have been empty after a police search.

The jewellery recovery had been publicised everywhere. Panicked then. Panicked and run. The word stayed in his mind, linking the next thought.

Perhaps, in their panic, they would forget Ruttgers’ luggage. No, he assured himself, in immediate contradiction. The connection was too important Braley wouldn’t overlook something as vital as that. And he’d certainly appeared in a position of authority at the airport, someone involved in the final planning. No, Braley would think of the luggage; it was that sort of professionalism that made him so good.

Charlie lost the fight against recollection and knuckled his eyes, trying to clear the blur.

‘Shouldn’t have been you, Edith,’ he said. ‘I won’t fail … even if this goes wrong, I won’t fail.’