Boodles. Wilberforce would have survived, he guessed. Wilberforce, with his poofy socks and shirts and that daft habit of breaking pipes into little pieces. Always had been a sneaky bugger, even under Sir Archibald’s control. Yes, he would certainly have hung on, shifting all the blame on to Cuthbertson. Would he still be the second-in- command? Or had he finally got the Directorship for which he had schemed for so long? Always an ambitious man: but without the ability to go with it. If he had remained, then the danger of which Sir Archibald had warned still existed.
‘He asked me to tell you the truth, if ever you contacted me,’ said Willoughby.
‘I don’t …’ frowned Charlie.
‘I told you he wrote several letters. To avoid them being seized by the police, he posted them, on the night he killed himself. He really planned it very carefully. The one to me talked about his fears for the department … he felt very strongly about it, after all those years, and didn’t want it destroyed because incapable men had managed to reach positions of power. And another was devoted almost entirely to you.’
‘Oh.’
‘He told me you’d visited him … just before going away to do something about which you were frightened.’
So he’d realised it, thought Charlie. He’d imagined Sir Archibald too drunk that day he had gone down to Rye and sat in the darkened room and felt the sadness lump in his throat at the collapse of the old man.
‘He appreciated it very much … the fact that you regarded him as a friend.’
It was true, reflected Charlie. That was always how he’d thought of the man under whom he had spent all his operational life.
‘He often talked about you when … when he was Director and we were living together, in London. Boasted about you, in fact. Said you were the best operative he had ever created … that there was practically nothing you couldn’t do …’
The man’s forthrightness was not assumed, decided Charlie, unembarrassed at the flattery. Willoughby would have made a mistake by now, had he had to force the effect. ‘There were times when I was almost jealous of you.’ Willoughby added.
‘I don’t think he’d be very proud now,’ said Charlie, regretting the admission as he spoke. Carelessness again.
Willougby raised his hands in a halting movement.
‘I don’t think I should know,’ he said, quickly. He paused, then added bluntly: ‘The guilt was pretty obvious in the cemetery.’
Justified criticism, accepted Charlie. He wouldn’t have stood a chance if the graveyard had been covered that day.
‘I’ve known for a long time they’ve been looking for you,’ announced Willoughby.
Charlie came forward on his seat again and Willoughby tried to reduce the sudden awkwardness by smiling and leaning back in his own chair.
‘You’ve no need to be concerned,’ he said. He dropped the smile, reinforcing the assurance.
‘How?’ asked Charlie. His feet were beneath the chair, ready to take the weight when he jerked up.
‘They remembered the relationship between you and my father,’ recounted Willoughby. ‘I had several visits from their people, about four months after he died …’
‘They would have asked you to have told them, if ever I made contact with you,’ predicted Charlie, the apprehension growing.
‘That’s right,’ agreed Willoughby. ‘They did.’
‘Well?’ Charlie demanded. He’d buggered it, he thought immediately. Edith had been right: he was wrong again.
‘Charlie,’ said Willoughby, coming forward again so that there was less than a yard between them. ‘They reduced my father into a shambling, disgusting old drunk who went to sleep every night puddled in his own urine. And then, effectively, they killed him. I don’t know what you did, but I know it hurt. Is it likely I’m going to turn in someone who did what I’d have given my eye-teeth to have done?’
Charlie was hunched in the chair, still uncertain.
‘It’s been five weeks since your telephone call,’ Willoughby reminded him, realising Charlie’s doubt. He waved his hand towards the window.
‘In five weeks,’ said the underwriter, ‘they would have made plans that guaranteed that once inside this office you’d never be able to get out again. Go on, look out of the window. By now the roads would have been sealed and all the traffic halted.’
Willoughby was right, Charlie realised. He got up, going behind the other man’s chair. Far below, the street was thronged with people and cars.
‘The outer office would have been cleared, too,’ invited the underwriter.
Without replying, Charlie opened the door. The secretary who had greeted him looked up, enquiringly, then smiled.
‘Satisfied?’ asked Willoughby.
Charlie nodded.
‘Tell me something,’ said Willoughby, in sudden curiosity. ‘What would you have done if it had been a trap?’
‘Probably tried to kill you,’ said Charlie. And more than likely failed, he added to himself, remembering his hesitation at personal violence in the cemetery.
Willoughby pulled his lips over his teeth, a nervous gesture.
‘What good would that have done, if you’d been bottled up here?’
‘Kept me alive,’ suggested Charlie. ‘They couldn’t have eliminated me, if I’d committed a public murder.’
Why, wondered Charlie, was he talking like this? It was ridiculous. He waited for the other man to laugh at him.
Willoughby remained blank-faced.
‘And do they want to eliminate you?’
‘I would imagine so.’
Willoughby shook his head in distaste.
‘God, it’s obscene,’ he said.
Charlie frowned. That wasn’t a sincere remark, he judged. The man still thought of it as he had as a boy that day in the office, a sort of game for grown-ups.
‘Consider it,’ Willoughby went on. ‘Two men, sitting here in the middle of London, calmly using words like eliminate instead of planned, premeditated murder.’
‘Yes,’ agreed Charlie. ‘Sometimes it has to happen. Though not as much as you might think …’
He looked at the other man, to see if he were appreciating the words.
‘… thank God,’ he concluded.
‘That was one thing about the service over which my father could never lose his disgust,’ recalled Willoughby. ‘He talked to me a great deal …’
He smiled over the hesitation. ‘Cuthbertson and Wilberforce would say too much – another breach of security. My father believed very strongly in what he did … the need for such a department. But he was always horrified that people occasionally had to die.’
‘I know,’ said Charlie. The remaining doubts were being swept away by the reminiscence. Willoughby would have had to be very close to his father – as close as he had been to him in the department – to know so well the old man’s feelings.
Willoughby sighed, shedding the past.
‘And now I know about you,’ he said, gravely. ‘Whether I wanted to or not.’
‘Only their possible verdict,’ qualified Charlie. ‘Not the cause.’
‘It must have been serious?’
‘It was.’
For a moment, neither spoke. Then Willoughby said: ‘My father often remarked about your honesty. Considered it unusual, in a business so involved in deceit.’
‘You seem to have the same tendency.’
