Wilberforce had kept appearing, as if he’d realised the danger.
Even on an open road and as confused as Charlie expected him to be, Snare wasn’t exceeding fifty miles an hour. A fact to remember, decided Charlie. Timing the other man was going to be important tonight.
Because Snare was establishing the speed, it took them almost two hours to reach the Kent village. Impatient now and quite sure of the other man’s destination, Charlie didn’t bother to see him actually enter the drive of Wilberforce’s house.
Instead he made a wide loop at the crossroads, hurrying through the gears to pick up speed and rejoin the road to London.
Three hours to achieve what he wanted, Charlie estimated, smiling at the burbling of the widened exhaust. Sounded like Cuthbertson, he thought, just before one of those filthy coughs he was always making. Charlie laughed aloud, extending the thought. Christ, how Cuthbertson would have choked if he had been in a position to know what was going to happen.
Ruttgers sprawled full length on the coverlet of the hotel bedroom, telephone cupped loosely to his ear, enjoying the admission from the man who had replaced him.
‘Quite obvious,’ Onslow Smith repeated. ‘A meeting between them can be the only point.’
‘And we’re handling it this time,’ Ruttgers reminded him. ‘No more foul-ups by the British.’
He’d made a dirty mark on the counterpane, he saw; he should have taken his shoes off.
‘I’m thinking of discussing the whole thing with the Secretary of State,’ announced Smith.
‘He won’t like it.’
‘He’ll like it less if something happens and he’s not been warned.’
‘Why not wait? We could have the whole thing buttoned up in a day or two.’
‘Maybe,’ conceded Smith. Thank God he had his own people in Ruttger’s support team, to warn him the moment there was any sign of Charlie Muffin. Increasingly Smith was coming to think that Ruttgers saw the whole thing as a personal vendetta, like some Western shoot-out at high noon. He suspected the man didn’t give a damn about the Agency any more.
‘I want you to be careful, Garson,’ he warned. ‘Very careful indeed.’
‘I will be.’
It was too quick, judged Smith. Dismissive almost.
‘I mean it,’ insisted the Director. ‘There must be no chance of our being identified.’
‘Don’t worry,’ said Ruttgers.
‘I
‘I’ll keep in touch,’ promised Ruttgers, swinging his legs off the bed to search for a replacement cigarette. ‘Nothing will go wrong.’
‘That’s what Wilberforce was saying, a week ago.’
‘What was in the private bank, by the way?’ enquired Ruttgers, locating a fresh pack of cigarettes.
‘Snare only went in tonight,’ Smith replied. ‘I haven’t heard yet.’
Wilberforce’s dressing gown was very long and full-skirted and made swishing sounds as he strode about the study. Snare sat uneasily on the edge of the chair by the desk, eager for some guidance from his superior.
‘I thought you should see it, right away,’ he said, almost in apology.
‘Quite right,’ said Wilberforce absently. ‘Quite right.’
He paused before a small side table on which drinks were arranged, then appeared to change his mind, returning to the desk.
‘What does it mean?’ asked Snare.
Wilberforce picked up a piece of paper that Snare had taken from the Mayfair safe deposit box and stared down at it, shaking his head.
‘God knows,’ he said. Concern was marked in his voice.
He threw it aside, and Snare retrieved it, examining it with the same intensity as the other man. ‘… “Clap hands, here comes Charlie”’ he recited. He looked back to Wilberforce.
‘It’s like some sort of challenge, isn’t it?’ he said.
‘Yes,’ agreed Wilberforce miserably, ‘it’s a challenge.’
At that moment, fifty miles farther north, Charlie Muffin eased a plastic credit card through a basement window, prodded the catch up and two minutes later was standing in the darkened kitchen of Snare’s Pimlico home. Funny, decided Charlie, after all that Snare had been up to in the last few weeks and there wasn’t the slightest attempt at security in his own house. Still, he reflected, the attitude was typical. People always expected misfortune to occur to someone else, never themselves. Carefully he refastened the window and began walking towards the stairs leading upwards. He sniffed, appreciatively. Remains of the last meal still smelt good. Curry, he decided. He wouldn’t have imagined Snare had had time to cook. Probably out of a packet. Remarkable, the value available in supermarkets these days.
TWENTY-THREE
Charlie worked expertly and very quickly. He had been diligently trained by a housebreaker who earned the wartime amnesty for past misdeeds by being parachuted on three separate occasions into Nazi-occupied France and Holland and then stayed on Home Office attachment in peacetime, lecturing on the finer points of his craft to police forces throughout the country.
On the ground floor he moved immediately to the rear, ‘where a door opened on to a small, paved patio and the darkened garden beyond. He opened it, testing to ensure it would not close by its own weight. Satisfied that he had an escape route if the need suddenly arose, he went back into the house, swiftly checking each room in turn, then slowly climbed the stairs, listening for any faint sound of occupation and more carefully now examined the bedrooms. Each was empty. From his examination of the outside, while he had been waiting for Snare earlier in the evening, he knew there was a third storey. He located the stairway at the back of the house and carried out the same precautions in the rooms there. Empty again.
‘Charlie,’ he said, ‘the stars shine upon you.’
And it was about bloody time, he thought.
On the ground floor he began making a detailed search of every room. It was a neat, antiseptically clean house, the furniture and pictures and ornaments arranged more as if for a photograph in a good housekeeping magazine than for living amongst and enjoying. Making constant reference to the time and alert for any sound outside the house that might warn of Snare’s return, Charlie still handled everything cautiously, returning every picture and the contents of every drawer or cupboard to exactly the position he had found it, so his entry would not be instantly apparent.
The study was at the back of the house, overlooking the patio, and Charlie checked all the pictures or wall- covering pieces of furniture intently, seeking the safe. After fifteen minutes, he perched contemplatively on the edge of the desk, frowning. Surely Snare would have a safe? Perhaps the stars weren’t as bright as he had imagined. He rechecked, still found nothing, and even probed beneath the carpet, in case it were floor mounted.
Finally accepting there was no such installation in the room, Charlie turned to the desk. The working place of an orderly, rules-and-regulations man, Charlie decided. The bills in the top drawer were arranged and catalogued for dates of payment. Letters awaiting reply were in the drawer below, also catalogued, and those answered filed with their carbon copies in the one below that. The files were in the deepest shelf, at the very bottom. Charlie started expectantly, but immediately realised there were just household records; Snare actually kept a detailed account book for the car, he saw. Even the amount spent on petrol was carefully listed.
‘Mean bugger,’ judged Charlie.
He found the keys in the left-hand top drawer in which there was a partitioned shelf with small containers. Charlie stared down at them. A man as neat as Snare would arrange them in order of importance, he decided. There were duplicates of house, car and Automobile Association keys and in another tray were what appeared spare sets for luggage or a briefcase. That left four for which there was no obvious identification. They were in the first container.
Charlie quickly tried the remaining drawers, expecting to find at least one of them locked, but all opened smoothly to his touch.
