Desmond Bagley - Flyaway / Windfall

‘A touch of something. I was told the name of a man this morning and I didn’t know he worked for us. That’s bad.’

He smiled. ‘This business is getting bigger than both of us. The penalty of success.’

I nodded. ‘I’m chained to my damned desk seven hours out of eight. Sometimes I wish we were back in the bad old days when we did our own legwork. Now I’m shuffling too many bloody papers around.’

‘And a lot of those are crisp, crackling fivers.’ Charlie waved at the view – the City of London in all its majesty. ‘Don’t knock success on this hallowed ground – it’s immoral.’ The telephone rang and he picked it up, then held it out to me.

It was Joyce. ‘Mr Hoyland wants to speak to you.’

‘Put him on.’ I covered the mouthpiece and said to Charlie, ‘You might like to listen to this one. It’s about time you administrative types knew what goes on at the sharp end of the business.’

The telephone clicked and clattered. ‘Mr Stafford?’

‘Max Stafford here.’

‘This is Hoyland from …’

‘I know who you are, Mr Hoyland,’ I said, feeling like a con man. ‘What’s your trouble?’

‘I’ve come up against a funny one, sir,’ he said. ‘A man called Billson vanished a week ago and I’ve run into a blank wall.’

‘How critical is Billson?’

‘He’s not on the technical side; he’s in the accounts office. But …’

‘Have you checked the books?’

‘They balance to a penny,’ said Hoyland. ‘It’s not that, sir; it’s the attitude of the company. I’m getting no cooperation at all.’

‘Expand on that.’

‘Well, Billson is a bit of a dumb bunny and he’s getting paid a lot more than he’s worth. He’s on £8000 a year and doing the work of an office boy. When I asked Isaacson why, I got a bloody dusty answer. He said the salary structure is no concern of security.’

Hoyland was annoyed, and rightly so. I was annoyed myself because when we took on a contract it was stipulated that everything was the concern of security. ‘He said that, did he? Who is Isaacson?’

‘Chief Accountant,’ said Hoyland. ‘Can you get on the blower and straighten him out? He’s not taking much notice of me.’

‘He’ll get straightened out,’ I said grimly. ‘Let’s get back to Billson – what do you mean when you say he’s vanished?’

‘He didn’t turn up last week and he sent in no word. When we made enquiries we found he’d left his digs without explanation.’ Hoyland paused. ‘That’s no crime, Mr Stafford.’

‘Not unless he took something with him. You say he isn’t critical?’

‘Definitely not. He’s been a fixture in the accounting department for fifteen years. No access to anything that matters.’

‘Not that we know of.’ I thought about it for a few moments. ‘All right, Mr Hoyland; I’ll have a word with Isaacson. In the meantime check back on Billson; you never know what you might find.’

‘I’ll do that, Mr Stafford.’ Hoyland seemed relieved. Bucking top management was something he’d rather not do himself.

I put down the telephone and grinned at Charlie. ‘See what I mean. How would you handle a thing like that?’

‘Franklin Engineering,’ he said reflectively. ‘Defence contractors, aren’t they?’

‘They do a bit for the army. Suspension systems for tanks – nothing serious.’

‘What are you going to do about it?’

‘I’m going to blow hell out of this joker, Isaacson. No money-pusher is going to tell one of my security officers what concerns security and what doesn’t.’

Charlie tilted back his chair and regarded me speculatively. ‘Why don’t you do it personally – face to face? You’ve been complaining about being tied to your desk, so why don’t you pop over to Luton and do some legwork? You can easily get back in time for the board meeting. Get out of the office, Max; it might take that sour look off your face.’

‘Is it as bad as that?’ But the idea was attractive, all the same. ‘All right, Charlie; to hell with the desk!’ I rang Joyce. ‘Get on to Hoyland at Franklin Engineering – tell him I’m on my way to Luton and to hold himself available.’ I cut off her wail of protest. ‘Yes, I know the state of the intray – it’ll get done tomorrow.’

As I put down the telephone Charlie said, ‘I don’t suppose it is really important.’

‘I shouldn’t think so. The man’s either gone on a toot or been knocked down by a car or something like that. No, Charlie; this is a day’s holiday, expenses paid by the firm.’

I should have remembered Hoyland’s name because I remembered his competent, square face when I saw it. He was a reliable type and an ex-copper like so many of our security officers. He was surprised to see me; it wasn’t often that the top brass of Stafford Security appeared in the front line, more’s the pity.

His surprise was mingled with nervousness as he tried to assess why I had come personally. ‘Nothing to worry about,’ I assured him. ‘Only too glad to get away from the desk. Tell me about Billson.’

Hoyland rubbed his chin. ‘I don’t know much about him. You know I’ve only been here three months; I was transferred here when Laird retired.’

I didn’t know – there was too damned much about my own firm I didn’t know. It had grown too big and depersonalized. ‘Yes,’ I said.

‘I took over Laird’s files and checked his gradings. Billson came well into the green scale – as safe as houses. He was at the bottom of my priorities.’

‘But you’ve rechecked since he disappeared?’

Hoyland nodded. ‘Forty-four years old, worked here fifteen years. As much personality as a castrated rabbit. Lodges with a Mrs Harrison in the town. She’s a widow.’

‘Anything between him and Mrs Harrison?’

Hoyland grinned. ‘She’s seventy.’

That didn’t mean much; Ninon de L’Enclos was a whore at eighty. ‘What about girl-friends?’

‘Not Billson – the girls didn’t go for him from what I’ve heard.’

‘All right – boy-friends?’

‘Not that, either. I don’t think he was the type.’

‘He doesn’t seem much of anything,’ I said caustically.

‘And that’s a fact,’ said Hoyland. ‘He’s so insignificant he hardly exists. You’d walk past him and not know he was there.’

‘The original invisible man,’ I commented. ‘All the qualifications for a sleeper.’

‘Isn’t fifteen years too long?’ queried Hoyland. ‘Besides, he left everything in order.’

‘As far as we know, that’s all. Do the Special Branch boys know about this?’

‘They’ve been poking around and come to the same conclusion as me.’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Billson is probably in some hospital, having lost his means of identification. But there is a mystery; why was he overpaid and why is management being coy about it?’

Hoyland nodded. ‘I talked to Stewart about it first – he’s Billson’s immediate boss – and he pushed me on to Isaacson. I got nowhere with him.’

‘I’ll see what I can do,’ I said, and went to find Stewart, who proved to be a sandy Scotsman, one of the new breed of bookkeepers. No dusty ledgers for him; figures were something which danced electronically in the guts of a computer.

No, he had no idea where Billson might have gone. In fact, he knew nothing about Billson, full stop.

‘Isn’t that a little odd for a department head? Surely you know something about your subordinates?’

‘He’s a very strange man,’ said Stewart. ‘Reserved most of the time but capable of the most frantic outbursts occasionally. Sometimes he can be very difficult.’

‘In what way?’