Flyaway / Windfall. Desmond Bagley

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       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 СКАЧАТЬ