‘I’m sorry,’ apologised Willoughby. ‘I don’t remember meeting you with my father. But he didn’t take me into the office very often.’
‘No,’ agreed Charlie.
‘Do you know,’ continued Willoughby, leaning back in his chair and looking away from Charlie, ‘in the end those bastards Cuthbertson and Wilberforce actually tried to use something as ridiculous as that against him.’
‘What?’ demanded Charlie, very attentive. The continued openness was disconcerting; almost the professional use of honesty that he had employed to gain a person’s confidence.
‘His taking me into the office,’ explained the underwriter. ‘Claimed it was a breach of security.’
Charlie felt the tension recede. It would be wrong to formulate impressions too soon. But perhaps it hadn’t been a mistake to come, after all.
‘It’s the sort of thing they would have done,’ accepted Charlie. And been right, he thought honestly. But Sir Archibald had always made his own rules; that was one of the reasons why he and Charlie had established such a rapport. And why, in the end, Cuthbertson and Wilberforce had manoeuvred his replacement.
‘You realise he committed suicide, don’t you?’ said Willoughby.
Charlie shook his head.
‘No,’ he said. ‘I didn’t. I was away when he died. It was never directly mentioned, but I inferred it was natural causes …’
Charlie paused.
‘Well …’ he started again, but Willoughby talked over him.
‘Cirrhosis of the liver?’ anticipated the man. ‘Yes, that too. They made him into an alcoholic by the way they treated him. And when he realised what had happened to him, he hoarded some barbiturates and took the whole lot with a bottle of whisky.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Charlie began, then stopped, irritated by the emptiness of the expression. But he was sorry, he thought. There were few people to whom he had ever been close. And Sir Archibald had been one of them.
‘There was a note,’ continued Willoughby, appearing unaware of Charlie’s attempt at sympathy. ‘Several, in fact. The one he left for the police put the fear of Christ up everyone. Spelled everything out … not just what shits Cuthbert son and Wilberforce were in the way they got him fired, but the mistakes they had made as well. He did it quite deliberately because he believed that if they weren’t moved, they’d make a major, serious blunder.’
His feelings, remembered Charlie.
‘The department took the whole thing over,’ continued Willoughby. ‘They have the power, apparently, under the Official Secrets Act. Allows them to do practically anything, to protect the national interest. Squashed the inquest, everything. That’s how the natural causes account got spread about.’
Sir Archibald’s death could only have been a matter of weeks before he had exposed their stupidity and got them captured in Vienna by the Russian commandos, Charlie calculated. What, he wondered, had happened to Cuthbertson? Back where he belonged, probably, fighting long forgotten battles over the brandy and cigars at 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.