She laughed in genuine amusement. ‘Christ, you’re odd,’ she said. ‘You really fascinate me.’
She put her champagne glass down, pouring coffee instead.
‘I went a bit over the top with that, didn’t I?’ she said.
‘Just a bit,’ agreed Charlie.
‘Now I’ve got indigestion.’ She belched, very slightly.
‘It’s the bubbles,’ said Charlie.
The woman crumpled a croissant into crumbs without bothering to eat any of it.
‘I’m supposed to be going out tonight,’ she said. ‘Same crowd, same places.’
Charlie was curious at the boredom she injected into her voice.
She stared at him. ‘You know what I’d really like to do instead?’
‘What?’
‘Go back to bed. With you. And spend the rest of the day there watching television when we feel like it and not watching it when we don’t.’
He had expected to pay a price, remembered Charlie. And his feet were painful after all the walking he’d done to identify the people in the photographs.
‘Will you come to Palm Beach?’ he demanded, wanting the bargain agreed.
‘Yes,’ she promised.
‘Do you want to call them, to say you won’t be coming?’
She shook her head. ‘They won’t really miss me.’
‘Not even Sally Cosgrove?’
‘She’ll manage. She doesn’t like you very much.’
‘I know.’
‘Says you weren’t very respectful to her husband.’
‘He wasn’t very respectful to me.’
‘You’re an inverted snob,’ she accused.
‘Yes,’ agreed Charlie, readily. ‘I probably am.’
It had been an occasional complaint from Edith, remembered Charlie. Particularly after Sir Archibald had been removed and the new regime had taken over, demoting him from his special position within the Department. He suspected she had regarded it as the jealousy of a grammar school boy for university graduates, but it really hadn’t been. They had been bloody fools, all of them.
‘I told her she was wrong,’ said Clarissa.
‘Thanks a lot,’ said Charlie.
‘Don’t be flip,’ she said. ‘I don’t want either of us to be flip.’
Was it a performance to fit the circumstances, wondered Charlie, or genuine?
‘I don’t like being a cow to Rupert,’ she said, suddenly. ‘I really don’t.’
‘Why are you then?’
She shrugged. ‘I don’t seem able to help it. It’s despicable, I know. But I really can’t help it.’
He’d known another woman just like Clarissa. She’d been secretary to the ex-army general who had replaced Sir Archibald. Like Clarissa, she had screwed him for the novelty, and he had screwed her to find out what was going on behind his back. Then, like now, it had seemed a perfect equation. He hoped it worked as well with Clarissa as it had with the other girl.
‘We could be missing a good programme,’ she said, rising. She was already in bed, the television page of the Daily News in her hands, when he entered the adjoining room.
She cradled into his arms the moment he got into bed. He sat against the bedhead, supporting her.
‘Tell me what you want me to do in Palm Beach.’
‘Later,’ said Charlie. He wondered how Pendlebury would react when Clarissa let drop that Charlie expected a robbery in Florida. If he were wrong about the American and Pendlebury panicked to the local police, he would look a complete idiot.
He took the newspaper from the woman.
‘A Western, a quiz programme or a Clark Gable nostalgia film?’ he asked.
‘Clark Gable nostalgia,’ she said immediately.
‘That doesn’t start for another hour.’
‘I know.’
‘I’m not convinced that we’re doing the right thing about this damned insurance man,’ said Warburger.
‘Neither am I,’ added Bowler loyally.
‘He’s not done anything we can’t handle so far,’ said Pendlebury defensively.
‘He’s got a freeze frame of Terrilli,’ Warburger reminded him.
‘And four other sets of photographs of different people,’ said Pendlebury. ‘The Terrilli photograph is no more important to him at the moment than those twelve other people.’
‘So why did he have them made?’ demanded the Director. ‘Why Terrilli? Why any of them?’
‘Because he’s good, like I said,’ insisted Pendlebury. He was aware of the looks which passed between the Director and his deputy.
‘You’re not seeing this as some sort of personal challenge, are you?’ demanded the Director.
‘I would have hoped you would have known me better than that,’ said Pendlebury.
‘You’ve had a watch kept on him?’ Bowler asked.
‘Constantly,’ said Pendlebury.
‘What’s he done?’
‘Gone around trying to get the pictures identified.’
‘Nothing else?’
‘Screwed the boss’s wife.’
‘So do half the men in America,’ said Warburger. ‘It’s the other thing I’m worried about.’
‘Trust me,’ pleaded Pendlebury. ‘I know it’s going to turn out all right.’
‘For a little longer,’ conceded Warburger. ‘But I still might pull the rug from under him, despite what you say.’
Bowler was escorting Pendlebury from the building when he suddenly stopped, reminded of something.
‘Practice,’ he said.
‘What?’ asked Pendlebury.
‘There was a memo on my desk yesterday. Apparently you’re overdue for pistol practice.’
‘Surely you don’t expect me to break away from what I’m doing just to keep within the rules?’ said Pendlebury, whose ears always ached from the explosions, even though he wore ear mufflers.
‘I suppose not,’ admitted Bowler, to whom regulations were important.
‘You could grant me exemption,’ prompted Pendlebury.
‘Just this once,’ agreed Bowler, ‘but there’s no way you can be excused again. It’s clearly stated.’
‘I know,’ said Pendlebury, relieved. ‘I know.’
‘Another thing,’ continued Bowler. ‘Your expenses are very high.’
‘It’s a very important job,’ said Pendlebury. ‘And there are a lot of receipts.’
‘Don’t get greedy,’ warned the Deputy Director.
9
Charlie never despised good luck, any more than he liked doubting instinct. Sometimes his good fortune had not been immediately obvious, but at others it had shown itself as clearly as the hangover the morning after Hogmanay. His arrival in Florida was like several New Year celebrations rolled into one. It might never have happened had he flown into Miami, which had been his original intention. But Clarissa, who knew about such things because her comfort was very dear to her, had asked him just before he left New York why he was bothering with an hour’s car journey up the coast when there was a perfectly good airport at Palm Beach itself. And so he had flown there instead, and as the aircraft circled for landing, he had seen the name TERRILLI written on a hangar roof and several other buildings, which he presumed were administrative, and felt the sort of happiness that comes to a jig-saw aficionado when he finds the first bit that fits from a three-thousand-piece puzzle.
Having come to appreciate the advantage of Clarissa’s accommodation in New York, Charlie had taken a suite at the Breakers. Without bothering to unpack, he settled at the sitting-room coffee table and spread again the information and pictures he had obtained in New York, this time concentrating only upon Giuseppe Terrilli. His first reaction was one of annoyance, because the location of Terrilli’s businesses in Florida had been mentioned in two of the newspaper cuttings he had photocopied in the Wall Street Journal office and he had missed the significance, which showed a carelessness of which he was not normally guilty.
‘But is it the link?’ he demanded of himself. If it were, then it was tenuous. There could be a dozen perfectly logical, understandable explanations why a man interested in stamps should choose to see the exhibition in New York rather than wait for it to reach the State in which he lived. Nevertheless, it was a coincidence and coincidence, like instinct, was always worth consideration. Reacting to his training, he reached sideways to the telephone table and took up the Palm Beach directory. The airport numbers were in heavier type and then came G. Terrilli’s, against an address off Ocean Boulevard. From the map he had already studied in the foyer, Charlie estimated Terrilli’s home to be a five-minute fast walk from the hotel. He replaced the book, sighing contentedly: still a puzzle without even the edges completed, but surely he was beginning to recognise the colours.