Desmond Bagley - Flyaway / Windfall

I sighed. ‘You can do better than that, Charlie. If you have to make jokes they’d better be good. How’s business?’

‘We’re coping. How long do you think you’ll be laid up?’

‘Nobody tells me anything – you know what hospitals are like. From the way I feel now it’ll be about six months, but I’ll probably be back in a couple of weeks.’

‘Take your time,’ Charlie advised. ‘Jack Ellis is trying on your shoes to see if they fit.’

‘Good – but that will teach me to prophesy.’ Charlie raised an eyebrow and I explained. ‘I told Joyce that Jack was to take some of my work load. When she queried it I said that if I got knocked down in the street he’d have to take the lot. But this wasn’t the sort of knocking down I had in mind.’ I thought about Jack Ellis, then said, ‘It’s about time we made him a director, anyway. He’s become very good and we don’t want to lose him.’

‘I agree,’ said Charlie. ‘And I think old Brinton will. Max, when did you last take a holiday?’

I grinned. ‘That’s a funny-sounding word. Maybe two years ago.’

‘It’s been four years,’ he said positively. ‘You’ve been knocking yourself out. My advice is to take some time off right now while you have a good enough excuse to fool your subconscious. Take a trip to the Caribbean and soak up some sun for a couple of months.’

I looked out of the window at the slanting rain. ‘Sounds good.’

Charlie smiled. ‘The truth is I don’t want you around while Jack is finding his feet in a top job. You can be a pretty alarming bastard at times and it might be a bit inhibiting for him.’

That made sense, and the more I thought about it the better it became. Gloria and I could go away and perhaps we could paper over some of the cracks in our marriage. I knew that, when a marriage is at breaking-point, the fault is rarely solely on one side, and my drive to set up the firm had certainly been a contributing factor. Perhaps I could do something to stick things together again.

‘I’ll think about it,’ I said. ‘But I’d better see Jack. There are one or two things he ought to know before he gets his feet wet.’

Charlie’s face cracked into a pleased smile which faded as he said, ‘Who assaulted you, Max?’

We kicked the Billson case around for a while and got nowhere. So Charlie left, promising to send Jack Ellis to see me.

The really surprising visitor was Alix Aarvik.

I gaped as she came in and then said, ‘Sit down, Miss Aarvik – you’ll excuse me if I don’t stand. I thought you were in Canada.’

She sat in the leather club chair which Brinton had had installed for his own benefit. ‘I changed my mind,’ she said. ‘I turned down the job.’

‘Oh! Why?’

She inspected me. ‘I’m sorry about what happened to you, Mr Stafford.’

I laughed. By this time I was able to laugh without my ribs grinding together. ‘An occupational hazard.’

Her face was serious. ‘Was it because of your enquiries about Paul?’

‘I can’t see how it could be.’

‘The police came to see me again. And some others who … weren’t ordinary police.’

‘Special Branch. Paul did work in a defence industry.’

‘I didn’t know what to think. They were so uncommunicative.’

I nodded. ‘Their job is to ask questions, not to give answers. Besides, they revel in an aura of mystery. May I ask why you turned down the Canadian job?’

She hesitated. ‘About a quarter of an hour after you left my flat I went out to post a letter. There was an ambulance not far from the street door and you were being put into it.’ She moistened her lips. ‘I thought you were dead.’

I said slowly, ‘It must have given you a shock. I’m sorry.’

There was a rigidity about her which betrayed extreme tension. She opened her mouth and swallowed as though the words would not come, then she made another attempt and said, ‘Did you see who attacked you?’

The penny dropped. ‘It wasn’t your brother, if that’s what you mean.’

She gave a long sigh and relaxed visibly. ‘I had to know,’ she said. ‘I couldn’t leave without knowing, and the police wouldn’t tell me anything.’

I looked at her thoughtfully. ‘If you thought your brother might attack anyone homicidally you should have warned me.’

‘But I didn’t think that,’ she cried. ‘Not when we talked together. It was only afterwards, when I saw you in the ambulance, that it occurred to me.’

I said, ‘I want the truth. Have you seen Paul since he disappeared?’

‘No, I haven’t – I haven’t.’ Her face was aflame with her vehemence.

I said gently, ‘I believe you.’

She was suddenly in tears. ‘What’s happened to Paul, Mr Stafford? What is he doing ?’

‘I don’t know. Honestly, I don’t know.’ It took me some time to quieten her, and lying flat on my back didn’t help. In order to divert her I said, ‘You were being transferred to Canada. Will the fact that you turned down the offer affect your present job?’

‘I don’t think so,’ she said. ‘Sir Andrew was very good about it.’

A frisson ran down my back. ‘Sir Andrew?’

‘Sir Andrew McGovern. I’m his secretary.’

‘You do mean the Chairman of the Whensley Group?’

‘That’s right. Do you know him?’

‘I haven’t had that pleasure. How did you come to work for him, Miss Aarvik?’

‘I started work at Franklin Engineering eight years ago.’ She smiled. ‘In the typing pool. I like to think I’m good at my job – anyway I didn’t stay long in the typing pool, and four years ago I was transferred to Group Head Office in London – that’s Whensley Holdings Ltd.’

‘I know,’ I said. ‘We handle the security.’ But not for long I thought.

‘Oh! You mean you employ the men who come around and make sure I’ve destroyed the executive typewriter ribbons?’

‘Sort of. What made you start with Franklin Engineering? How did you get the job?’

‘I was with a firm which went bust,’ she said. ‘I needed another job so Paul suggested Franklin. He’d been working there for quite a while and he said it was a good firm.’

So it was – for Paul Billson. Seeing that I’d started to open the can of worms it seemed a good idea to take the top right off. For instance, was Miss Aarvik’s salary as inflated as her brother’s? ‘Do you mind telling me your present salary, Miss Aarvik?’

She looked at me with some surprise. ‘I don’t think so. I get £4200 a year – before tax.’

I sighed. That was fairly standard for a top secretary; certainly nothing out of the ordinary. And it was the most natural thing in the world to be introduced into the firm by Paul. ‘Why the Canadian transfer?’ I asked. ‘Isn’t it a bit odd for the secretary of the boss to be asked to move to another country? Or were you going with Sir Andrew?’

She shook her head. ‘The way Sir Andrew put it, I was doing him a favour. The company I was going to – Kisko Nickel – is undergoing reorganization. I was to organize the office procedures, but only on loan for a year.’

‘You must have been pleased about that. Wasn’t it a step up? From secretarial to executive?’

‘I was bucked about it,’ she admitted. ‘But then Paul …’ Her voice tailed away.

‘When were you offered the job?’

‘It came up rather suddenly – last Monday.’

I wrinkled my brow. That was the day Hoyland rang to tell me of Billson’s disappearance. There was something bloody funny going on but, for the life of me, I couldn’t see how it hung together.

I smiled at her. ‘Well, you see that I am very much alive. In the opinion of the police and of my associates at Stafford Security the attack on me had nothing to do with your brother.’