Flyaway

'Lash is the man who hired the men who beat me up,' I said deliberately. 'Lash is the man who hired Kissack to k-'

Brinton held up his hand abruptly. 'I can't stay here all day. I have things to do at my place. You can come with me and get rid of this nonsense there.' He got to his feet creakily.

I cheered internally. I had the old bastard by the short hairs, and he knew it. He went ahead of me and I paused at the door and looked back at Charlie. 'You louse!' I said. 'I'll deal with you later.'

I went with Brinton to the basement and we solemnly drove two blocks to the basement of another building and ascended to his penthouse where the coal fire still blazed cheerfully. All the time he didn't say a thing, but once on his own ground, he said, 'Stafford, you'd better be careful with your statements or I'll have your balls!'

I grinned, walked past him and sat in an armchair by the fire, and put down my briefcase. He didn't like that; he didn't like not being in control, and that meant he'd have to follow me. He sank into an opposing chair. 'Well, what is it?'

'I'd like to tell you a story about a bright, ambitious young engineer who married a woman who had just come into money. She hadn't won the pools or anything like that, but the life of her previous husband had been insured for a hundred thousand pounds. This was in 1937, so that's a lot more money than it sounds like now — maybe half a million in our terms.'

I stopped but Brinton made no comment. He merely stared at me with cold eyes. 'But what this woman didn't know was that this bright young engineer who, incidentally, was Canadian like yourself, had murdered her husband. His name was John Grenville Anderson, but he was commonly known as Jock. He was born in 1898 which, by another coincidence, would make him exactly as old as you.'

Brinton whispered, 'If you repeat those words in public I'll take you to court and strip you naked.'

'It was the name that foxed me,' I said. 'We've had quite a few Canadian peers but none of them have tried to hide behind a name. Beaverbrook was obviously Canadian; Thomson of Fleet not only retained his own name but advertised his newspaper connection. But Brinton doesn't mean a damned thing, either here or in Canada. There's a little place called Brinton in Norfolk but you've never been near it to my knowledge.'

I leaned down and opened the briefcase. 'Exhibit One — a photocopy of a page from Whitaker's Almanack.' I read the relevant line.' "Created 1947, Brinton (1st) John Grenville Anderson, born 1898." A most anonymous title, don't you think?'

'Get on with this preposterous nonsense.'

'Exhibit Two — a copy of your marriage lines to Helen Bill-son early in 1937. You didn't stick with her long, did you, Jock? Just long enough to part her from her money. A hundred thousand quid was just what a man like you needed to start a good little engineering company. Then the war came, and Lord, how the money rolled in! You were in aircraft manufacture, of course, on cost plus a percentage until your compatriot, Beaverbrook, put a stop to that. But by the end of the war you'd built up your nest-egg to a couple of millions, plus the grateful thanks of your sovereign who ennobled you for contributing funds to the right political party. And not just a tatty old life peerage like we have now. Not that that made any difference — you had no legitimate children.'

His lips compressed. 'I'm being very patient.'

'So you are. You ought to have me thrown out neck and crop. Why don't you?'

His eyes flickered. 'You amuse me. I'd like to hear the end of this fairy story.'

'No one can say I'm not obliging,' I said. 'All right; by 1946 you'd just got started. You discovered you had a flair for finance; in the property boom of the fifties you made millions — you're still making millions because money makes money. And it all came out of the murder of Peter Billson whose widow you married.'

'And how am I supposed to have murdered Billson?'

'You were his mechanic in the London to Cape Town Air Race of 1936. In Algiers you delayed him so he'd have to fly to Kano at night. Then you gimmicked his compass so that he flew off course.'

'You can never prove that. You're getting into dangerous waters, Stafford.'

'Exhibit Three — an eight-by-ten colour photograph of Flyaway, Billson's aircraft, taken by myself less than two weeks ago. Note how intact it is. Exhibit Four — an affidavit witnessed by a notary public and signed by myself and the man who took out the compass and tested it.'

Brinton studied the photograph, then read the document. I said, 'By the way, that's also a photocopy — all these papers are. Those that are a matter of public record are in the appropriate place, and the others are in the vaults of my bank. My solicitor knows what to do with them should anything happen to me.'

He grunted. 'Who is Lucas Byrne?'

'An aeronautical engineer,' I said, stretching a point. 'You'll note he mentions a substance found in the main fuel tank. Here's a report by a chemist who analysed the stun'. He says he found mostly hydrocarbons of petroleum derivation.'

'Naturally,' sneered Brinton.

'He said mostly,' I pointed out. 'He also found other hydrocarbons — disaccharides, D-glucopyranose, D-fructopyranose and others. Translated into English it means that you'd put sugar into the fuel tank, and when Billson switched over from the auxiliary his engine froze solid,' I sat back. 'But let's come to modern times.'

Brinton stretched out his hand and dropped Byrne's statement on to the fire. I laughed. 'Plenty more where that came from.'

'What about modern times?'

'You became really worried about Paul Billson, didn't you, when you found he was practically insane about his father? He was the one man who had the incentive and the obsessive-ness to go out to find Flyaway in order to clear his father's name. You weren't as worried about Alix Aarvik but you really anchored Paul. I had a long chat with Andrew McGovern about that the other day.'

Brinton's head came up with a jerk. 'You've seen McGovern?'

'Yes — didn't he tell you? I suppose I must have thrown a bit of a scare into him. He had no objection to employing Paul because you were paying all of Paul's inflated salary. He jumped to the natural conclusion: that Paul was one of your byblows, a souvenir of your misspent youth whom you were tactfully looking after. And so you tethered Paul for fifteen years by giving him a salary that he knew he wasn't worth. It's ironic that it was you who financed his trip to the Sahara when he blew up. I dare say the payments you made through the Whensley Group can be traced.' His lips twisted. 'I doubt it.'

'McGovern told me something else. He didn't want Stafford Security pulled out of the Whensley Group — it was your idea. You twisted his arm. I don't know what hold you have on McGovern, but whatever it is you used it. That was to stop me carrying on the investigation into Paul Billson. You also got McGovern to send Alix Aarvik to Canada but that didn't work out, did it? Because I got to her first. So you had Lash have me beaten up. I don't think McGovern likes you any more. I suppose that's why he didn't report back to you that he'd seen me — that and the fact that I told him he'd better keep his nose clean.'

Brinton dismissed McGovern with a twitch of a finger. 'You said Lash isn't corning back. What happened to him?'

'Two bullets through his lungs, one through the belly, and another through the head at close range — that's what happened to Lash. There are three dead men out there, and another with an amputated foot, and all because of you, Jock. All because you were so scared of what Paul Billson might find that you put out a contract on him.' I tapped my arm in its sling. 'Not Gstaad, Jock; the Tassili. You owe me something for this.'

'I owe you nothing,' he said contemptuously.

Then we come to a man called Torstein Aarvik who married Helen Billson.' I drew a photocopy of the marriage certificate from my briefcase. 'This really shook me when I saw it because legally she was Anderson, wasn't she? Helen had lost sight of you so she took a chance. She married Aarvik as the widow Billson without divorcing you. It was wartime and things were pretty free and easy and, besides, she wasn't too bright — I have Alix Aarvik's word for that. But you knew where she was because you'd been keeping tabs on her. I don't know how you separated her from her money in the first place but you used her bigamous marriage to keep her quiet for the rest of her life. She couldn't fight you, could she? And maybe she wasn't bright but perhaps she was decent enough to prevent Alix knowing that she's a bastard. Now who's the bastard here, you son of a bitch?'