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‘And Paul?’
‘There’s nothing you can do about Paul, as I said before. He’ll be found, but it’s better for you to leave it to the professionals. I’ll write to you in Canada.’
She nodded. ‘Perhaps that would be the best thing to do.’
‘One thing—I wouldn’t mention to Sir Andrew that this is my advice, or that you’ve even seen me. My firm and Sir Andrew aren’t on very good terms right now; he’s fired Stafford Security and is setting up his own security organization for the Whensley Group, so I think any mention of me would be tactless, to say the least.’
Her eyes widened. ‘Was this because of Paul?’
‘Not at all. It happened before…’ I stopped short. It hadn’t happened before I knew about Billson. Brinton had sprung it on us at the board meeting on the afternoon when I had just returned from Franklin Engineering. I picked up quickly. ‘Nothing to do with your brother at all, Miss Aarvik.’
When she had gone I stared at the ceiling for a long time. Then I opened the bedside cupboard, stripped the lead foil from Brinton’s bottle of scotch, and poured myself three fingers. Brinton may have been right about it tasting better with Malvern water, but it tasted even better neat. I suddenly really needed that drink.
EIGHT (#ulink_07be7564-2248-591c-a10b-956a2ecdc344)
I soon became very damned tired of that hospital and especially of the food. I had just been served a so-called lunch which began with a watery soup which looked like old dishwater and ended with an equally watery custard which resembled nothing on God’s earth when my doctor walked in, full of that synthetic bonhomie which is taught in medical schools as the bedside manner.
I thrust the tray under his nose. ‘Would you eat that?’
He inspected it, his nose wrinkling fastidiously. ‘What’s wrong with it?’
‘That wasn’t the question,’ I snarled.
His eyes twinkled. ‘Well, possibly not,’ he conceded.
‘That’s good enough for me,’ I said. ‘I’m discharging myself.’
‘But you’re not ready.’
‘And I never will be if I have to eat this slop. I’m going home to get some decent food in my belly.’ For all Gloria’s faults she wasn’t a half-way bad cook when she wanted to be.
‘The food can’t be all that bad if you’re beginning to feel your oats.’ I glared at him and he shrugged. ‘All right, but the prescribed regimen is another week’s rest and then I want you back here for inspection.’
I said, ‘Where are my bloody trousers?’
So I went home by taxi and found Gloria in bed with a man. They were both naked and he was a stranger—I’d never seen him before to my knowledge but Gloria had a lot of odd friends. There weren’t any fireworks; I just jerked my thumb at the bedroom door and said, ‘Out!’ He grabbed his clothes and disappeared, looking like a skinned rabbit.
In silence I looked at the heap of tousled bedclothes into which Gloria had vanished. Presently the front door slammed and Gloria emerged, looking aggrieved and a little scared. ‘But the hospital said…’
‘Shut up!’
She was stupid enough to ignore me. She informed me at length about the kind of man I was or, rather, the kind of man I wasn’t. She embroidered her diatribe with all the shortcomings she could find in me, culled from seven years of married life, and then informed me that her bedfriend hadn’t been the first by a long shot, and whose fault was that? In short, she tried to work up the familiar instant Stafford row to the nth degree.
I didn’t argue with her—I just hit her. The first time I had ever hit a woman in my life. An open palm to the side of her jaw with plenty of muscle behind it. It knocked her clean out of bed so that she lay sprawling in a tangle of sheets by the dressing-table. She was still for a few moments and then shook her head muzzily as she pushed against the floor to raise herself up. She opened her mouth and closed it again as she caught my eye. Her fingers stroked the dull red blotch on her face and she looked at me unbelievingly.
I ignored her and walked to the wardrobe from which I took a suitcase from the top shelf and began to pack. Presently I broke the silence. ‘You’ll be hearing from my solicitor. Until then you can have the house.’
‘Where are you going?’ Her voice was soft and quiet.
‘Do you care?’
She had nothing to say to that so I picked up the suitcase and left the bedroom. I went downstairs to my study and unlocked the bureau. As I took out my passport I was aware of Gloria standing by the door. ‘You can’t leave me,’ she said desolately.
I turned my head and looked at her. ‘For God’s sake, go and put on some clothes,’ I said. ‘You’ll die of pneumonia.’
When I put the passport and a few other papers into my pocket and walked into the hall she was trudging disconsolately up the stairs. As I walked towards the front door she screamed, ‘Come back, Max!’
I shut the door gently on her shout, closing an era of my life. Sic transit Gloria mundi. A lousy pun but a true one.
NINE (#ulink_7b5f6a18-e843-5f6e-b3f6-27f09fcea21a)
I suppose if I hadn’t left Gloria I wouldn’t have gone on with the Billson case. Billson himself had ceased to be a security matter and was merely a half-way maniac gone on an ancestor-worshipping bender. He was of no concern to anyone but himself and, possibly, Alix Aarvik.
But I had left Gloria, which put me in a somewhat ambiguous position. It had already been agreed that I would take a holiday, partly for my own benefit and partly to give free rein to Jack Ellis. The trouble was that I didn’t feel like a holiday; I couldn’t see myself toasting on the sands of Montego Bay, as Charlie had suggested. And so the devil found work for idle hands.
Besides, I had been assaulted, and if nothing else demanded that something should be done, company policy did.
So I asked Jack Ellis to come and see me at my club. Ellis had joined us four years earlier—young, bright and eager to learn. He was still young, but that didn’t worry me; Napoleon was only twenty-six when he was General of the French Army in Italy and licked hell out of the Austrians. Jack Ellis was twenty-seven, something that might hinder him when negotiating with some of the stuffier chairmen of companies, but time would cure that. In the meantime he was very good and getting better.
I took him aside into the cardroom which was empty in the afternoon. For a while we talked about his job and then I brought him up-to-date on the Billson story. He was puzzled as anyone about the whole affair.
‘Jack,’ I said. ‘I want you to find Billson.’
He gave me an old-fashioned look. ‘But he’s not our pigeon any more. Apart from the fact that Whensley are running their own show now, Billson is out of it.’
I said, ‘When this firm was started certain rules were laid down. Do you remember Westlake, the security guard we had at Clennel Enterprises?’
Ellis’s face was grave. ‘I remember. It happened just after I joined the firm. Shot in the leg during a pay-roll snatch. He had to have it amputated.’
‘But do you remember what happened to the man who shot him? We got to him before the coppers did. We handed him to the law intact, although I’d have dearly loved to break his leg. We also made sure that the story got around. And that’s the rule, Jack—we look after our own. If any gun-happy bandit hurts one of our men he knows he has to cope with the police and our boys. And to coin a phrase—“we try harder”. Got the picture?’
He smiled faintly and nodded. ‘In this business it makes sense,’ he acknowledged.
‘The top-ranking coppers aren’t too happy about it,’ I said, ‘because they don’t like private armies. But we rub along with the middle level very nicely. Anyway, a member of Stafford Security Consultants Ltd has been assaulted, and the fact it was the boss makes no difference to the principle. I’m not on a personal vendetta but I want those boys nailed.’
‘Okay—but Billson!’
‘He’s got to be connected somehow, so dig into him. The police aren’t doing much because it’s no crime to leave a job. They’ve got him on a list and if they come across him they’ll ask him a few polite questions. I can’t wait that long. All the villains in London know I’ve been done over, and they’re laughing their heads off.’
‘We should be able to get a line on Billson,’ said Jack. ‘It’s not easy for a man to disappear into thin air.’
‘Another thing; no one is to know any of this except me, you and the man you put on the job.’
‘Not even Charlie Malleson?’
‘Not even him. I suspect jiggery-pokery at high levels.’ I saw the expression on Ellis’s face, and said irascibly, ‘Not Charlie, for God’s sake! But I want to cut out even the possibility of a leak. Some of our top industrialists are doing some queer things—Sir Andrew McGovern for one. Now, I want a thorough rundown on him; particularly a survey of any relationship he might have had with Paul Billson and with his secretary, Alix Aarvik.’
‘Okay,’ said Jack. ‘I’ll get it started right away.’
I pondered for a moment. ‘Open a routine file on this. Your clients are Michelmore, Veasey and Templeton; send them the bills in the normal way.’ As he raised his eyebrows I said shortly, ‘They’re my solicitors.’
‘Right.’
‘And good luck with the new job.’ It wouldn’t be fair to Jack if he got the idea that when I came back everything would be as it was before, so I said, ‘If you don’t drop too many clangers it’s yours for good. I’m destined for higher things, such as busting into Europe.’
He went away a very happy man.
It’s not easy for a man to disappear into thin air.
Those praiseworthy citizens who form and join societies dedicated to the preservation of civil liberties are quite right in their concern about the ‘data bank’ society. At Stafford Security we weren’t a whit concerned about civil liberties; what we were doing was preserving the industrial secrecy of our clients, which doesn’t amount to the same thing at all. As a corollary, because we protected against snooping we understood it, and were well equipped to do some snooping ourselves should the mood take us.
The bloodhounds were turned on to Paul Billson. No man living in a so-called civilized society can escape documentation. His name, and sometimes a number attached to his name, is listed on forms without end—driving licence, radio and TV licence, dog licence, income tax return, insurance applications, telephone accounts, gas and electricity accounts, passport applications, visa applications, hire purchase agreements, birth certificate, marriage certificate, death certificate. It seems that half the population is pushing around pieces of paper concerning the other half—and vice versa.
It takes a trained man with a hazy sense of ethics to ferret out another man’s life from the confusion but it can be done, given the time and the money—the less time the more money it takes, that’s all. Jack Ellis hoisted Michelmore, Veasey and Templeton’s bill a few notches and the information started to come in.
Paul Billson applied for a passport the day after he disappeared, appearing in person at the London Passport Office to fill in the form. The same day he applied for an international driving licence. The following day he bought a Land—Rover off the shelf at the main London showroom, paid cash on the barrel and drove it away.
We lost him for a couple of weeks until he picked up his passport, then a quick tour of the consulates by a smooth operator revealed that he had applied for and been granted visas for Niger, Mali, Chad and Libya. That led to the question of what he was doing with the Land—Rover. He had got his green insurance card for foreign travel but a run around the shipping companies found nothing at all. Then our man at Heathrow turned up an invoice which told that a Mr Billson had air-freighted a Land-Rover to Algiers.
Whatever had happened to Paul had blown him wide open. After a lifetime of inactive griping about injustice, of cold internal anger, of ineffectual mumblings, he had suddenly erupted and was spending money as though he had a private mint. Air freight isn’t cheap.
What Jack had dug up about Billson’s finances was fantastic. The £12,000 in Paul’s deposit account was but the tip of an iceberg, and he had nearly £65,000 to play around with. ‘I don’t know where the hell he got it,’ said Jack.
‘I do,’ I said. ‘He saved it. When he vanished he was on £8000 a year and spending about £2500. You do that for enough years and are careful with your investments and you’ll soon rack up £65,000.’
Jack said, ‘I’ll tell you something, Max; someone else is looking for Billson. We’ve been crossing their tracks.’
‘The police?’
‘I don’t think so. Not their style.’
‘The Special Branch, then?’
‘Could be. They move in mysterious ways their wonders to perform.’
I stretched out an arm for the telephone. ‘I’ll ask.’
Because some of our clients, such as Franklin Engineering, were into defence work, contact with the Special Branch was inevitable for Stafford Security. It was an uneasy relationship and we were tolerated only because we could take off them some of their work load. If, for example, we saw signs of subversion we tipped them off and were rewarded by being left alone. A strictly confidential relationship, of course; the trades unions would have raised hell had they known.
The man I rang was politely amused. ‘Billson is no concern of ours. We checked back on what you told us; we even interviewed that bloody journalist—now there’s a slimy bit of work. As far as we’re concerned, Billson is a semi-paranoiac who has gone off the rails a bit. He might interest a psychiatrist, but he doesn’t interest us.’
‘Thanks.’ I put down the telephone and said to Jack, ‘He says they aren’t interested, but would he tell me the truth?’ I frowned as I turned the pages of the report ‘Algiers! Why didn’t Billson apply for an Algerian visa?’
‘He didn’t need to. British citizens don’t need visas for Algeria.’ Jack produced another thin file. ‘About Sir Andrew McGovern. Relationship with Billson—apart from the fact that they’re remotely linked through Franklin Engineering—nil. Relationship with Alix Aarvik—nil. It’s a straight master-and-servant deal—they’re not even “just good friends”. The Kisko Nickel Corporation is undergoing an internal reorganization due to a merger which McGovern engineered. But Alix Aarvik didn’t go to Canada; she’s still operating as McGovern’s secretary.’
I shrugged. ‘As I once said to Brinton, the best thing about advice is that you needn’t take it.’ I smiled sourly. ‘It turned out that his advice was good, but that’s no reason for Alix Aarvik to take mine.’
‘Apart from that there’s not much to get hold of in McGovern,’ said Jack. ‘He does seem to live in Brinton’s pocket.’
‘Not quite,’ I said absently. ‘Brinton has been having trouble with him. That’s why we lost the Whensley account.’ I was thinking of the Sahara; of how big and empty it was.
Jack sniffed. ‘If they have quarrelled no one would notice it. McGovern entertained Brinton at his home two days ago.’
I said, ‘If Brinton pats Andrew McGovern on the back it’s just to find a good spot to stick the knife. Thanks, Jack; you’ve done a good job. I’ll take it from here.’
When he had gone I rang Whensley Holdings and asked for Miss Aarvik. When she came on the line I said, ‘Max Stafford here. So you didn’t go to Canada, after all.’
‘Sir Andrew changed his mind.’
‘Did he? Miss Aarvik, I have some information about your brother which I think you ought to know. Will you have dinner with me tonight?’
She hesitated, then said, ‘Very well. Thank you for your continued interest in my brother, Mr Stafford.’
‘I’ll call for you at your flat at seven-thirty,’ I said.
After that I went down to the club library, took down The Times Atlas, and studied a map of the Sahara for a long time. It didn’t take me as long as that to find out that the idea burgeoning in my mind was totally fantastic, utterly irresponsible and probably bloody impossible.
TEN (#ulink_18e43f6f-61a1-5bda-92c0-0e66fcda4233)
I picked up Alix Aarvik that evening and took her to a French restaurant, an unpretentious place with good food. It was only after we had chosen from the menu that I opened the subject over a couple of sherries. I told her where Paul Billson was.
‘So he is trying to find the plane,’ she said. ‘But it’s totally impossible. He’s not the man to…’ She stopped suddenly. ‘How can he afford to do that?’
I sighed. Alix Aarvik was due to receive a shock. ‘He’s been holding out on you. Probably for a long time, judging by the cash he squirrelled away. He was getting £8000 a year from Franklin Engineering.’
It took a while for it to sink in, but as it did her face went pale and pink spots appeared in her cheeks. ‘He could do that!’ she whispered. ‘He could let me pay his bills and not put up a penny for Mother’s support.’
She was becoming very angry. I liked that; it was time someone got mad at Paul Billson. I wasn’t so cool about him myself. I said, ‘I’m sorry to have administered the shock, but I thought you ought to know.’
She was silent for a while, looking down into her glass and aimlessly rotating the stem between her fingers. At last she said, ‘I just don’t understand him.’
‘It seems he didn’t abandon his boyhood dream. He saved up his money to fulfil it.’
‘At my expense,’ she snapped. She gave a shaky laugh. ‘But you must be wrong, Mr Stafford. I know what Paul was doing at Franklin Engineering. They wouldn’t pay him that much.’
‘That’s another mystery. It seems they did. Your brother had damn near £60,000 to his name when he pushed off—and he turned it all into hard cash. If he’s taken it with him to Algiers he’s put a hell of a crimp into the currency regulations. I think Paul is now a law-breaker.’
‘But this is ridiculous.’
‘I agree—but it’s also true; Paul has gone to look for his father’s plane. I can’t think of any other reason why he should shoot off to Algiers with a Land-Rover. He’s looking for a plane which crashed over forty years ago and that’s a hell of a long time. I was looking at a map this afternoon. Do you know how big the Sahara is?’ She shook her head and I said grimly, ‘Three million square miles—just about the same size as the United States but a hell of a lot emptier. It’ll be like searching the proverbial haystack for the needle, with the difference that the needle might not be there.’
‘What do you mean by that?’
‘Suppose Hendrik van Niekirk really did see Peter Billson in Durban after he was supposed to have crashed. You can lay ten to one that Billson wouldn’t have left that plane lying around for anyone to find. If he was a faker after that insurance money my guess is that he’d ditch off-shore in the Mediterranean. He’d row himself ashore in a collapsible dinghy—they had those in 1936, I’ve checked—and get himself lost. So Paul might be looking for something in the desert that’s not there.’
‘I don’t like that,’ she said coldly. ‘You’re implying that my mother was party to a fraud.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I don’t like it much myself, but it’s a possibility that has to be considered. I do it all the time in my business, Miss Aarvik.’
