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 -1 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.
CHAPTER NINE
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 Army of 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.'
1, 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 Bill-son 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.