Hardiman laughed, suspiciously.
‘Attempt to discredit Britain by whom?’
Law made an irritable movement.
‘Ask the Chief Constable this afternoon, perhaps he knows.’
‘Does it mean the bloody man is dead?’
‘I presume so,’ said Law. ‘Perhaps he was being taken to America in the aircraft. I don’t really know. We weren’t allowed to ask questions.’
The superintendent’s annoyance thrust him from the chair and he began walking around the office without direction.
‘What are you going to do?’ asked Hardiman.
Law smiled at him, a crooked expression.
‘Resign, you mean?’ he queried. He shook his head. ‘In another two years I’ll have got my thirty in. Do you think I’m going to chuck up a pension, just for this?’
‘No,’ accepted Hardiman. ‘I suppose not.’
‘But I’d like to,’ added the superintendent, softly. ‘Christ, I’d like to. Can you imagine how frightened they’d be by that?’
He looked up at the sergeant, throwing his arms out helplessly.
‘The way they use people!’ he protested. ‘What gives them the right to use people like … like they didn’t matter?’
‘Power,’ said Hardiman, cynically. ‘Just power.’
‘Wouldn’t it be nice,’ reflected the detective, ‘to know that just occasionally it all gets cocked up?’
‘For them it never does,’ said Hardiman. ‘Not enough, anyway. There’s usually too many people between them and personal disaster.’
‘Yes,’ said Law. ‘People like us.’
‘So,’ said Hardiman, positively. ‘What do we do now?’
‘The official orders,’ recited the superintendent, ‘are to conclude the matter, bringing to an immediate close any outstanding parts of the investigation.’
The sergeant glanced over at the empty file tables.
‘Are there any outstanding parts?’
‘The underwriter, Willoughby, is probably wondering where his mysterious investor is … he’s obviously been used, like everybody else …’
He moved towards his coat.
‘And the journey will do me good. I don’t want to stay around a police station any more today. I might be reminded about justice and stupid things like that.’
‘What are you going to tell Willoughby?’
Law turned at the door.
‘The way I feel at the moment,’ he said, ‘I feel like telling him everything I know.’
‘But you won’t,’ anticipated the sergeant.
‘No,’ agreed Law. ‘I won’t. I’ll do what I’m told and wait another two years to collect a pension. Don’t forget that four o’clock appointment.’
The tiredness dragged at Smallwood’s face and occasionally the hand that lay along the arm of the chair gave a tiny, convulsive twitch.
‘Well?’ demanded the Foreign Secretary.
The Premier made a dismissive movement.
‘There’s an enormous amount of police annoyance,’ he said. ‘But that was to be expected.’
‘Will they obey the instructions?’
‘They’ll have to,’ said Smallwood. ‘The Official Secrets Act is a useful document. Thank God none of them knows the complete story.’
‘What about America?’
Smallwood shifted in his chair.
‘They made the bigger mistakes this time. We agreed to cover for them.’
‘So hopefully not too much damage has been caused?’ said Heyden.
‘Not too much,’ agreed Smallwood.
THIRTY-TWO
The grief would always be there, Willoughby knew. In time, he supposed, Charlie would learn to build a shell around it, a screen behind which he would be able completely to hide. It wouldn’t happen yet though. Not for months; maybe more. The amount of time, perhaps, that it would take his own feelings to subside.
‘I was wrong,’ announced the underwriter. It seemed so long, he thought, since had had practised the honesty upon which Charlie had once commented.
Charlie looked up, the concentration obviously difficult.
‘In thinking I would do anything to help you,’ expanded Willoughby. ‘Even though we talked about it, on that first day here in this office. I still didn’t believe it would result in that sort of slaughter.’
When Charlie said nothing, the underwriter demanded; ‘Do you realise there were twelve people on that plane … a total of twelve people killed?’
‘Thirteen,’ reminded Charlie. ‘Don’t forget Edith died.’
‘An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth,’ quoted Willoughby. ‘I can’t accept that biblical equation, Charlie. Can you?’
‘Yes,’ said Charlie, simply. ‘I can. I don’t expect you to. But I can.’
‘With no regrets at all?’
William Braley had been on the plane, remembered Charlie.
‘I would have preferred to kill just one man … the man responsible,’ he said. ‘But that wasn’t possible.’
He straightened, sloughing off the apathy.
‘Your father disliked killing, too,’ he went on, staring directly at Willoughby. ‘And avoided it, whenever it was possible, just as he taught me to avoid it. But sometimes it isn’t possible. We didn’t make the rules …’
‘Rules!’ exclaimed Willoughby, infusing the word with disgust and refusing Charlie’s defence. ‘Is that what it was, Charlie? Some sort of obscene game? Do you imagine Edith would have wanted that sort of revenge?
Charlie looked evenly across the desk at the outraged man. It was proper that Willoughby should feel like this, he decided. There was no point in trying to convince him. At least he fully understood it now.
‘No,’ he replied softly, abandoning the explanation. ‘Edith wouldn’t have wanted it. But I did.’
Willoughby shook his head, exasperated.
‘The police found your passport, you know. Just slightly charred. Superintendent Law told me. They’ve closed the case, incidentally. I inferred the civil police believe you were on board … you’re probably freer now than you’ve been since Vienna.’
‘Oh,’ said Charlie, uninterested.
‘Why did you do that?’ asked Willoughby. ‘If they’d found your passport, in a bag that shouldn’t have been aboard, then Ruttgers would have lived.’
‘No,’ said Charlie, definitely. ‘That’s why the passport and Edith’s bag were important.’
Willoughby sat, waiting. It would only increase the man’s disgust, realised Charlie. It didn’t seem to matter.
Sighing, he went on: ‘The bomb that destroyed the aircraft wasn’t in Edith’s bag. There were two other bombs, both in separate pieces of Ruttger’s own luggage. I wasn’t able to get near enough to the aircraft to see what sort of baggage checks were being conducted. So I had to create a dummy … something that could have been discarded, if there had been any sort of examination. In fact, there wasn’t.’
‘That’s horrifying,’ said Willoughby. He seemed to have difficulty in continuing, then said at last: ‘Did my father teach you to think like that, as well?’
‘Yes,’ confirmed Charlie simply.
‘And I thought I knew him,’ said Willoughby sadly.
‘I’m sorry that you became so deeply involved,’ Charlie apologised. ‘It was wrong of me to endanger you as much as I did.’
‘I would have refused, had I known it was going to turn out like this,’ said the underwriter.
‘Of course you would,’ said Charlie.
‘What are you going to do now?’
‘It’s over a month since the headstone went up on Edith’s grave,’ he said. ‘Those laburnum trees are very near and they stain …’
‘I didn’t mean that,’ corrected Willoughby.
‘I know,’ said Charlie. ‘But that’s as far ahead as I want to think, at the moment.’