Desmond Bagley - Flyaway / Windfall

When I married Gloria I had not a bean to spare and, during my rise to the giddy heights of success, I had become aware of all the subtle variations in women’s knick-knackery from the cheap off-the-peg frock to the one-off Paris creation. Not that Gloria had spent much time in the lower reaches of the clothing spectrum – she developed a talent for spending money faster than I earned it, which was one of the points at issue between us. But I knew enough to know that Alix Aarvik was not dressing like an heiress.

I took the chair she offered, and said, ‘Now tell me about Paul.’

‘What do you want to know?’

‘You can start by telling me of his relationship with his father.’

She gave me a startled look. ‘You’ve got that far already?’

‘It wasn’t difficult.’

‘He hero-worshipped his father,’ she said. ‘Not that he ever knew him to remember. Peter Billson died when Paul was two years old. You know about the air crash?’

‘There seems to be a little doubt about that,’ I said.

Pain showed in her eyes. ‘You, too?’ She shook her head. ‘It was that uncertainty which preyed on Paul’s mind. He wanted his father to be dead – rather a dead hero than a living fraud. Do you understand what that means, Mr Stafford?’

‘You tell me.’

‘I arranged for Paul to have psychiatric treatment. The psychiatrist told me that it was this that was breaking Paul in two. It’s a dreadful thing to hero-worship a man – your father – and to wish him dead simultaneously.’

‘So he had a neurosis. What form did it take?’

‘Generally, he raged against injustice; the smart-aleck kind of injustice such as when someone takes credit for another’s achievement. He collected injustices. Wasn’t there a book called The Injustice Collector? That’s Paul.’

‘You say generally – how about specifically?’

‘As it related to his father, he thought Peter Billson had been treated unjustly – maligned in death. You know about the court case?’ I nodded, and she said, ‘He wanted to clear his father’s name.’

I said carefully, ‘Why do you talk about Paul in the past tense?’

Again she looked startled and turned pale. ‘I … I didn’t know …’ She intertwined her fingers and whispered, ‘I suppose I think he’s dead.’

‘Why should you think that?’

‘I don’t know. But I can’t think of any reason why he should disappear, either.’

‘This neurosis about injustice – did he apply it to himself? Did he think that he was treated unjustly?’

She looked straight at me and said firmly, ‘Never! He was always concerned about others. Look, Mr Stafford; I’ll come right out and say that Paul wasn’t –’ she caught herself – ‘isn’t too bright. Now you’re in security at Franklin Engineering and I’ll tell you that Paul isn’t a thief or anything like that. He may not be an entirely balanced man, but he’s honest.’

‘I have no doubt about it, Miss Aarvik,’ I said. ‘My enquiries are as much on behalf of Paul as they are for Franklin Engineering. The management of Franklin are very much concerned about what happens to their employees.’

That was pious piffle which I hoped she’d swallow. Neither Stewart nor Isaacson had shown a whit of concern.

She said, ‘Paul knew … knows he’ll never make his way in the world, but he never showed resentment. I knew he found it hard to make out on only two hundred a month, but he never complained.’

I opened my mouth to contradict her and then closed it firmly. I waited the space of ten heart beats before I said, ‘Is that all he got?’

‘£2400 a year – it was all he was worth,’ she said a little sadly. ‘But you must have checked.’

‘Yes,’ I said bemusedly. ‘The exact figure had slipped my memory.’

So Paul had been cheating on his sister. He had told her he earned £2400 a year when he got over three times as much, although according to Hoyland, and now his sister, that was probably as much as he was worth. You think you have a man taped, his life spread before you like a butterfly pinned in a showcase, and he surprises you with an inconsistency.

I said, ‘Did you ever help him financially?’

She hesitated. ‘Not directly.’

Slowly I coaxed the story from her. She had been supporting their mother in her last illness. Mrs Aarvik had been dying of cancer painfully and protractedly. Alix paid for a nurse and private hospital treatment and, towards the end, for the services of a specialist – all beyond the stark necessities of the National Health Service. It was very expensive and her savings ran out.

‘Then Paul needed treatment,’ she said. ‘The psychiatrist I told you about.’

The psychiatrist was also in private practice and also expensive. Miss Aarvik had an understanding bank manager who allowed her a sizeable overdraft in spite of the prevailing credit squeeze. ‘I’m paying it off as quickly as I can.’ She smiled ruefully. ‘That’s why I’m pleased about the Canadian job; it’s at a much higher salary.’

Paul Billson contributed nothing.

‘I knew he couldn’t save,’ she said. ‘So what else could I do?’

What else, indeed? I thought of the £12,000 tucked away in Paul’s deposit account and marvelled at the curious quirks of mankind. Here was a man whom everybody agreed to be a nonentity – a spineless, faceless creature hardly distinguishable from a jellyfish – and he was proving to be human, after all, just like the rest of us. Human enough to have an eye for the main chance and to batten mercilessly on his sister. Which may only go to show that my view of humanity is jaundiced, to say the least of it.

Anyway, it accounted for Miss Aarvik’s sparsely furnished flat and for her neat but somewhat aged dress. If she was paying off a big overdraft she wouldn’t be spending on luxurious fripperies. Which was a pity – she deserved better.

I said, ‘Did the treatment do Paul any good?’

‘I think so. He’s been much quieter of late, until …’

Until English wrote his poisonous article and Paul blew up, nerved himself to tackle a newspaper editor, and then vanished.

‘Think carefully,’ I said. ‘You probably know your brother better than anyone else. If he went off the rails for any reason, what would he be likely to do?’

‘I can’t think of anything. Unless …’ She shook her head. ‘No, that’s silly.’

‘It may not be,’ I said encouragingly.

‘Well, when he was a boy he used to dream of clearing his father’s name by finding the aeroplane; actually going out to Africa and looking for it. It was never found, you know. Not a very practicable dream, I’m afraid; but Paul was never a practicable man.’

I thought about it. Somewhere south of the Mediterranean and north of the Congo. The Sahara. Not at all practicable.

‘Of course, he gave up the idea long ago,’ she said. ‘Even Paul realized it was futile. It would need a lot of money, you see, and he never had the money.’

To tell her that her brother had his pockets stuffed with boodle would have been needlessly cruel. But now I had a lead, for what it was worth. ‘1936 is a long time ago,’ I said. ‘I doubt if there’d be anything to find now. What did your parents think of Paul’s obsession?’

‘My mother always said he’d grow out of it, but he never did. She lived with me and didn’t see very much of him. She didn’t like him talking so much about his father; she thought it was unhealthy. I suppose it was. He never knew his father, you see.’

‘And your father – what did he think?’

She gave a wry smile. ‘You must think we’re an odd family. I never knew my father, either. He died before I was born. My mother married him during the war and he was killed in action. He was Norwegian, you know.’