Free The Inscrutable Charlie Muffin by Brian Freemantle

said Charlie. ‘There is one thing.’
    ‘What?’
    ‘Lu agreed to pay you a 12 per cent premium …’
    ‘I told you that.’
    ‘I know. What’s your feeling at learning everyone else only got 10 per cent?’
    There was no immediate response from the underwriter.
    ‘That doesn’t make sense,’ he said at last. ‘We were the biggest insurers, after all.’
    ‘Exactly.’
    ‘So there is something more than impressions?’ said Willoughby eagerly. Again the hope was evident.
    ‘It’s not grounds for refusing to pay,’ insisted Charlie.
    ‘But what about the court deaths?’
    ‘The police chief is convinced he’s solved that … and that it doesn’t alter anything.’
    ‘What about the 12 per cent, linked with the deaths?’
    ‘I didn’t tell him about the premiums,’ admitted Charlie.
    ‘Why the hell not?’
    ‘Because there is no link. So I want to understand it, first.’
    ‘We haven’t the time,’ protested Willoughby.
    ‘How long?’
    ‘A week at the very outside,’ said the underwriter.
    ‘That’s not enough.’
    ‘It’ll have to be.’
    ‘Yes,’ accepted Charlie. ‘It’ll have to be.’
    ‘Have you seen Lu?’
    ‘Not yet.’
    ‘Surely he’s the one to challenge about the 12 per cent?’
    ‘Of course he is.’
    ‘Well?’
    ‘By itself, it’s not enough,’ Charlie insisted.
    ‘So what are you going to do?’
    ‘I don’t know,’ admitted Charlie.
    ‘That’s not very reassuring.’
    ‘I’m not trying to be reassuring. I’m being honest.’
    ‘I’d appreciate forty-eight-hour contact,’ said Willoughby.
    And spend the intervening time working out figures on the backs of envelopes and praying, guessed Charlie.
    ‘I’ll keep in touch,’ he promised.
    ‘I’m relying on you,’ said Willoughby.
    Charlie replaced the receiver, turning back upon it almost immediately.
    ‘Damn,’ he said. He’d forgotten to ask Willoughby to send a letter to Robert Nelson, assuring him of his job. Not that the promise would matter if he didn’t make better progress than he had so far. He’d still do it, though. The next call would be soon enough.
    He was at the mobile bar, using it for the first time, when the bell sounded. Carrying his drink, he went to the door, concealing his reaction when he opened it.
    ‘I thought you’d be surprised,’ said Jenny Lin Lee, pouting feigned disappointment. Then she smiled, openly provocative, the hair which the previous night she had worn so discreetly at the nape of her neck loose now. She shook her head, a practised movement, so that it swirled about her like a curtain.
    ‘I am,’ said Charlie.
    ‘Then you’re good at hiding things,’ she said, moving past him into the suite without invitation.
    ‘Perhaps we both are,’ said Charlie.
    Clarissa stood looking down at her husband expectantly when Willoughby put the phone down.
    ‘Nothing,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘Some inconsistencies, but nothing that positively helps.’
    ‘But the court murders?’
    ‘It doesn’t change anything, apparently.’
    ‘How good is this man you’ve got there, for Christ’s sake?’
    The underwriter paused at the question. He knew little more than what he had heard from his father, he realised. Certainly the escape in which Charlie had involved him had been brilliantly organised. But then Charlie had been fighting for his own existence, not somebody else’s.
    ‘Very good, I understand,’ he said.
    ‘Little proof of it so far,’ complained the woman.
    That was the trouble, thought Willoughby. Proof.
    ‘Give him time,’ he said unthinkingly.
    ‘I thought that was what we didn’t have.’
    ‘No,’ admitted the underwriter ‘We don’t.’
    ‘You won’t forgot, Rupert, will you?’
    ‘No,’ he promised. ‘I won’t forget.’
    ‘A week’s warning, at least.’
    ‘A week’s warning,’ he agreed. Why was it, he wondered, that he didn’t feel distaste for this woman?

10
    Jenny Lin Lee had pulled her hair forward and because she