ONE

      We live in the era of instancy. The clever chemists have invented instant coffee; demonstrating students cry in infantile voices, ‘We want the world, and we want it now!’ and the Staffords have contrived the instant flaming row, a violent quarrel without origin or cause.

      Our marriage was breaking up and we both knew it. The heat engendered by friction was rapidly becoming unsupportable. On this particular Monday morning a mild enquiry into Gloria’s doings over the weekend was wantonly interpreted as meddlesome interference into her private affairs. One thing led to another and I arrived at the office rather frayed at the edges.

      Joyce Godwin, my secretary, looked up as I walked in and said brightly, ‘Good morning, Mr Stafford.’

      ‘Morning,’ I said curtly, and slammed the door of my own office behind me. Once inside I felt a bit ashamed. It’s a bad boss who expends his temper on the staff and Joyce didn’t deserve it. I snapped down the intercom switch. ‘Will you come in, Joyce?’

      She entered armed with the secretarial weapons—stenographic pad and sharpened pencil. I said, ‘Sorry about that; I’m not feeling too well this morning.’

      Her lips twitched in a faint smile. ‘Hangover?’

      ‘Something like that,’ I agreed. The seven year hangover. ‘What’s on the boil this morning?’

      ‘Mr Malleson wants to see you about the board meeting this afternoon.’

      I nodded. The AGM of Stafford Security Consultants Ltd was a legal formality; three men sitting in a City penthouse cutting up the profits between them. A financial joke. ‘Anything else?’

      ‘Mr Hoyland rang up. He wants to talk to you.’

      ‘Hoyland? Who’s he?’

      ‘Chief Security Officer at Franklin Engineering in Luton.’

      There was once a time when I knew every employee by his given name; now I couldn’t even remember the surnames of the line staff. It was a bad situation and would have to be rectified when I had the time. ‘Why me?’

      ‘He wanted Mr Ellis, but he’s in Manchester until Wednesday; and Mr Daniels is still away with ‘flu.’

      I grinned. ‘So he picked me as third choice. Was it anything important?’

      The expression on Joyce’s face told me that she thought my hangover was getting the better of me. A Chief Security Officer was expected to handle his job and if he rang the boss it had better be about something bloody important. ‘He said he’d ring back,’ she said drily.

      ‘Anything else?’

      Wordlessly she pointed to my overflowing in-tray. I looked at it distastefully. ‘You’re a slave-driver. If Hoyland rings I’ll be in Mr Malleson’s office.’

      ‘But Mr Fergus wants the Electronomics contract signed today,’ she wailed.

      ‘Mr Fergus is an old fuddy-duddy,’ I said. ‘I want to talk to Mr Malleson about it. It won’t hurt Electronomics to wait another half-hour.’ I picked up the Electronomics file and left, feeling Joyce’s disapproving eye boring into my back.

      Charlie Malleson was evidently feeling more like work than I—his in-tray was almost half empty. I perched my rump on the edge of his desk and dropped the file in front of him. ‘I don’t like this one.’

      He looked up and sighed. ‘What’s wrong with it, Max?’

      ‘They want guard dogs without handlers. That’s against the rules.’

      He raised his eyebrows. ‘I didn’t catch that.’

      ‘Neither did Fergus and he should have. You know what I think about it. You can build defences around a factory like the Berlin Wall but some bright kid is going to get through at night just for the devil of it. Then he runs up against a dog on the loose and gets mauled—or killed.’ Charlie opened the file. ‘See Clause 28.’

      He checked it. ‘That wasn’t in the contract I vetted. It must have been slipped in at the last moment.’

      ‘Then it gets slipped out fast or Electronomics can take their business elsewhere. You wanted to see me about the board meeting?’

      ‘His Lordship will be at home at four this afternoon.’

      His Lordship was Lord Brinton who owned twenty-five per cent of Stafford Security Consultants Ltd. I got up and went to the window and stared at the tower of the Inter-City Building—Brinton’s lair. From the penthouse he overlooked the City, emerging from time to time to gobble up a company here and arrange a profitable merger there. ‘Four o’clock is all right; I’ll tell Joyce. Is everything in order?’

      ‘As smooth as silk.’ Charlie eyed me appraisingly. ‘You don’t look too good. Got a touch of ‘flu coming on?’

      ‘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