Flyaway / Windfall

‘I told you – Max Stafford.’

‘That means nothing.’

‘If I said that I was responsible for security at Franklin Engineering would that mean anything?’

He looked up. ‘For God’s sake! You mean you’ve chased all the way out here because I left Franklin’s in a hurry?’

‘Not entirely – but you get the drift. There’s a lot you can tell me.’

He looked around. We were camped on the lee side of a ridge almost at the top. I had queried that when Byrne picked the spot; camping on the flats at the bottom of the ridge would have been better, in my opinion. Byrne had shaken his head. ‘Never camp on low ground. More men die of drowning in the Sahara than die of thirst.’ When I expressed incredulity he pointed to mountains in the northeast. ‘You could have a thunderstorm there and not know it. But a flash flood sweeping through the wadis could come right through here.’ I conceded his point.

Billson said, ‘Where are we?’

‘About fifty miles south-east of Tammanrasset.’

‘Where are we going?’

‘Niger. We’re getting you out of Algeria; the police are looking for you. You bent the rules.’

‘Why are you doing this for me?’

I put the last knot in the bandage and snipped off the loose ends. ‘Damned if I know,’ I said. ‘You’ve certainly proved to be a bloody nuisance. Niger is probably the last place in the world I want to go to.’

He shook his head. ‘I still don’t understand.’

‘Have you remembered anything about the man who shot you?’

‘A bit,’ said Billson. ‘I stopped because one of the tyres was going soft and I thought I might have to change a wheel. I was looking at it when this other car came along.’

‘Car or truck?’ A car seemed improbable in Koudia.

‘A Range-Rover. I thought he might help me so I waved. He came up and stopped about ten yards away – then he shot me.’

‘Just like that?’

‘Just like that. I felt this blow in my shoulder – it knocked me down. It didn’t hurt; not then.’

I looked at Billson speculatively. This sounded an improbable story, but then, Billson collected improbabilities about him as another man might collect postage stamps. And I never forgot for one moment that I had been badly beaten up in a quiet street in Kensington.

‘Did you see the man?’

‘Yes. He – they chased me.’

‘How many?’

‘Two of them.’

‘Were they locals? I mean, were they Arabs or Tuareg?’

‘No, they were white men, like you and me.’

‘Didn’t he say anything before he shot you?’

‘No. As I said, the car just stopped and he shot me.’

I sighed. ‘So what happened then?’

‘Well, when I fell down they couldn’t see me because I was behind the Land-Rover. Close by there was a gap between two rocks and I nipped in there. I heard them getting out of their car so I went between the rocks and up a sort of cleft and ran for it.’

He fell silent so I prompted him. ‘And they chased you. Did they shoot at you again?’

He nodded. ‘Just the one man. He didn’t hit me.’ He touched his shoulder. ‘Then this started to hurt and I became dizzy. I don’t remember any more.’

He had collapsed and fortunately fallen out of sight down a cleft in the rocks. The men had probably searched for him and missed him, not too difficult in Koudia. But burning his Land-Rover was another way of killing him; I couldn’t imagine a man with a gunshot wound and no water walking out of Koudia.

‘How did you find me?’ he asked.

‘We were looking for you.’

He stared at me. ‘Impossible. Nobody knew where I’d gone.’

‘Paul, you left a trail as wide as an eight-lane motorway,’ I said. ‘It wasn’t difficult for me, nor for someone else, evidently. Do you have any enemies? Anyone who hates you badly enough to kill you? So badly that they’d follow you to the middle of the Sahara to do it?’

‘You’re mad,’ he said.

‘Someone is,’ I observed. ‘But it’s not me. Does the name of Kissack mean anything to you?’

‘Not a thing.’ He brooded a moment. ‘What happened to my Land-Rover? Where is it?’

‘They burned it.’

He looked stricken. ‘They burned it!’ he whispered. ‘But what about …’ He stopped suddenly.

‘How much money did you have in those suitcases?’ I asked softly. He didn’t answer, so I said, ‘My assessment is about £56,000.’

He nodded dully.

‘Whether they searched those cases before dousing them with petrol or not doesn’t matter. You’ve lost it.’ I stood up and looked down at him. ‘You’re a great big law-breaker, Paul. The British can nail you for breaking currency regulations, and now the Algerians are looking for you. If they find you with a bullet hole in you that’ll bring more grief to someone. Jesus, you’re a walking disaster.’

‘Sorry to have been the cause of trouble,’ he mumbled. His hand twitched, the fingers plucking at his jacket.

I contemplated that piece of understatement with quiet fury. I bent down and stuck my finger under his nose. ‘Paul, from now on you don’t do a single thing – not a single bloody thing, understand, even if it’s only unzipping your fly – without consulting either me or Byrne.’

His head jerked towards Byrne. ‘Is that him?’

‘That’s Byrne. And walk carefully around him. He’s as mad at you as I am.’

They had finished putting up the tents and Mokhtar had a fire going. I told Byrne what I had got from Billson, and he said contemplatively, ‘Two Europeans in a Range-Rover. They shouldn’t be hard to trace. And they shot him just like that? Without even passing the time of day?’

‘According to Paul – just like that.’

‘Seems hard to believe. Who’d want to shoot a guy like that?’

I said tiredly, ‘He was driving around with 56,000 quid in British bank notes packed in his suitcase. I shouldn’t think it went up in flames in the Land-Rover. He probably opened his mouth too wide somewhere along the line, and someone got greedy.’

‘Yeah, you could be right. But that doesn’t explain Kissack.’

‘I don’t believe he exists.’

‘If Hesther says he was looking for Paul Billson, then he exists,’ said Byrne firmly. ‘Hesther don’t make mistakes.’

We had mutton that night because Mokhtar had bought a sheep that morning from a passing Targui at Abalessa. He grilled some of it kebab-style over the fire and we ate it with our fingers. It was quite tasty. Byrne pressed Billson to eat. ‘I’m trying to fatten you up,’ he said. ‘When we get to Fort Flatters you’ve got to walk some more.’

‘How much more?’ asked Billson.

‘Quite a piece – maybe thirty kilometres. We’ve got to get you round the Algerian border post.’ He turned to me. ‘You’ll have a walk, too; around the Niger border post.’

I didn’t look forward to it.

The next night I tackled Paul again, this time not about what he’d been up to in North Africa, but about the puzzling circumstances of his life in England. I could have questioned him as we drove but I didn’t want to do it in front of Byrne. Paul might unburden himself to a single interrogator but he might not before an audience.

I dressed his wound again. It was much better. As I rewrapped the bandage I said, ‘How much did you earn at Franklin Engineering, Paul?’

‘£200 a month.’

‘You’re a damned liar,’ I said without heat. ‘But you always have been, haven’t you? You were on £8000 a year – that’s nearly four times as much. Now, tell me again – how much did you earn?’ He stayed sullenly silent, and I said, ‘Tell me, Paul; I want to hear it from you.’

‘All right. It was £8000 a year.’

‘Now, here comes the £8000 question,’ I said. ‘Do you consider that you were worth it to Franklin Engineering?’

‘Yes – or they wouldn’t have paid it to me.’

‘You don’t really believe that, do you?’ Again he maintained silence. ‘Do you know that Mr Isaacson wanted to fire you ten years ago, but the managing director wouldn’t agree?’

‘No.’

‘Do you know that Mr Stewart wanted to fire you when he arrived from Glasgow to reorganize the accounts office, and again the managing director wouldn’t have it?’

‘No.’

‘Who is your guardian angel, Paul?’

‘I don’t know what you mean.’

‘For God’s sake!’ I said. ‘You were doing work that any sixteen-year-old office boy could do. Do you think that was worth eight thousand quid a year?’

He avoided my eye. ‘Maybe not,’ he muttered.

‘Then how come you were paid it? There must have been some reason. Who were you blackmailing?’

That got him angry. ‘That’s a damnable thing to say,’ he spluttered. ‘You’ve no right …’

I cut in. ‘How did you get the job?’

‘It was offered to me. I got a letter.’

‘When was this? How long ago?’

Billson frowned in thought, then said, ‘Must have been 1963.’

‘Who sent the letter?’

‘A man called McGovern. He was managing director of Franklin.’

McGovern! Then managing director of Franklin Engineering, later Chairman of the Board, now Chairman of the entire Whensley Group and knighted for his services to industry. Sir Andrew McGovern, who ran like a thread through Billson’s life and who wanted to run his own security operation as soon as Billson disappeared.

I said, ‘What was in the letter?’

‘McGovern offered me a post at £2000 a year.’ Billson looked up. ‘I grabbed it.’

He would! £2000 wasn’t a bad salary back in 1963 when the average pay was considerably less than £1000. ‘Didn’t you wonder why McGovern was offering that?’

‘Of course I did.’ Billson stared at me. ‘But what did you expect me to say? I wasn’t going to turn it down because it was too much.’

I had to smile at that. Billson might be stupid, but not stupid enough to say, ‘But, Mr McGovern; I’m not worth half that.’ I said, ‘So you just took the money and kept your mouth shut.’

‘That’s right. I thought it was all right at first – that I’d have to earn it. It worried me because I didn’t know if I could hold down that sort of job. But then I found the job was simple.’

‘And not worth £2000 then or £8000 now,’ I commented. ‘Now tell me; why was McGovern grossly overpaying you?’

‘I don’t know.’ Billson shrugged and said again, almost angrily, ‘I tell you – I don’t know. I’ve thought about it for years and come to no answer.’ He glowered at me. ‘But I wasn’t going to ask McGovern.’

No, he wouldn’t; he’d be frightened of killing the goose that laid the golden eggs. I laid that aspect aside and turned to something else. ‘How did Alix come to work for Franklin Engineering?’

‘There was a vacancy in the typing pool,’ said Billson. ‘I told her about it and she applied. She got the job but she wasn’t in the typing pool long. She became McGovern’s secretary and he took her with him when he moved to London. Alix is a clever girl – she has brains.’

‘Did McGovern know she’s your half-sister?’

‘I don’t know. I didn’t tell him.’ He gave a deep sigh. ‘Look, it was like this. I hardly saw McGovern. I wasn’t in the kind of job where you hob-nob with the managing director. During the first six years I don’t think I saw McGovern as many times, and I haven’t seen him at all since. That’s when he moved to London.’

Very curious indeed! I said, ‘Now, it’s a fact that you kept your enhanced pay a secret from your sister. Why did you do that?’

‘Oh, hell!’ Billson suddenly grabbed a handful of sand. ‘I’ve just told you – Alix is smart. If she knew she’d ask me why – and I couldn’t tell her. Then she’d dig into it and perhaps find out.’ He wagged his head. ‘I didn’t want to know.’

He was afraid that Alix would shake all the leaves off the money tree. Billson might be a stupid man in many ways but he had cunning. Before he started work for Franklin Engineering he had already lived for many years at low pay and was quite content to continue to do while he amassed a small fortune. But to what end?

‘You’ve acted the bastard towards Alix, haven’t you, Paul?’ I said. ‘You must have known she was in financial difficulties and had to borrow money from the bank. And it was to help you, damn it!’

He said nothing. All he did was to pour fine sand from one hand to the other. I suppose a psychologist would call that a displacement activity.

‘But the psychiatrist didn’t help much, did he? You had a sudden brainstorm.’

‘What the hell do you know about it?’ he said petulantly. ‘You don’t know why I’m here. No one does.’

‘Do you think I’m a damned fool?’ I demanded. ‘You’ve come out here to find your father’s aeroplane.’

His jaw dropped. ‘How do you know that? You couldn’t … no one could.’

‘Jesus, Paul; you’re as transparent as a window-pane. You read that article by Michael English in the Sunday supplement and it sent you off your rocker. I talked to English and he told me what happened in the editor’s office.’

‘You’ve seen English?’ He dropped the sand and dusted off his hands. ‘Why have you been following me? Why come out here?’

It was a good question. My original idea had just been to ask a few questions in Algiers and let it go at that. I certainly hadn’t expected to be on my way to Niger in the company of one Targui, one pseudo-Targui and one man who was half way round the bend. It had been a chain of circumstances, each link not very important in itself, excepting perhaps when we found Billson half dead.

I said wearily, ‘Let’s say it’s for Alix and leave it at that, shall we?’ It was the truth, perhaps, but only a fraction of it. ‘She worries about you, and I’m damned if you deserve it.’

‘If I hadn’t been shot I’d have found it,’ he said. ‘The plane, I mean. I was within a few miles of it.’ He drove his fist into the sand. ‘And now I’m going in the opposite direction,’ he said exasperatedly.

‘You’re wrong,’ I said flatly. ‘That crashed aircraft in Koudia is French. Byrne knows all about it. Ask him. You went at that in the way you go about everything – at half-cock. Will you, for once in your life, for God’s sake, stop and think before you take action? You’ve been nothing but a packet of trouble ever since you left Franklin.’

I didn’t wait for an answer but got up and left him and, for once, I didn’t confide my findings to Byrne. This bit really had nothing to do with him; he knew nothing of England or of London and could contribute nothing.

I walked out of camp a couple of hundred yards and sat down to think about it. I believed Billson – that was the devil of it. I had told him that he was as transparent as glass, and it was true. Which brought me to McGovern.

I thought about that pillar of British industry for a long time and got precisely nowhere.

EIGHTEEN

And so we travelled south.

At the Algerian border post Mokhtar guided Billson on foot around it while Byrne and I went through. There were more fiches to fill in – in triplicate, but we didn’t get the full treatment we had had at the police post outside Tammanrasset. We went on and waited for Billson in the no-man’s-land between the Algerian post and Fort Flatters in Niger, then it was my turn to walk, and Mokhtar took me on a long and circuitous route around the fort. If the two border posts compared notes, which Byrne doubted they would, then two men would have gone through both.

When Mokhtar and I rejoined the truck beyond Fort Flatters Byrne seemed considerably more cheerful. I was footsore and leg-stretched and was glad to ease myself down creakily into the seat next to him. As he let out the clutch he said gaily, ‘Nice to be home.’

We were eighty miles into Niger when we camped that night and the country hadn’t changed enough to justify Byrne’s cheeriness, but thereafter it became better. There was more vegetation – thorn trees, it’s true – but there was also more grass as we penetrated the mountains, and I saw my first running water, a brook about a foot across. According to Byrne, we had left the desert but, as I have said, these things are relative and this was still a wilderness to the untutored eye.

‘The Aïr is an intrusion of the Sahel into the desert,’ said Byrne.

‘You’ve lost me,’ I said. ‘What’s the Sahel?’

‘The savannah land between the desert and the forest in the south. It’s a geographer’s word. Once they called it the Sudan but when the British pulled out they left a state called the Sudan so the geographers had to find another word because they didn’t want to mix geography and politics. They came up with Sahel.’

‘Doesn’t look much different from desert.’

‘It’s different,’ said Byrne positively. ‘These uplands get as much as six inches of rain a year.’

‘That’s a lot?’

‘A hell of a lot more than Tam,’ he said. ‘There’ve been periods of up to ten years when it hasn’t rained there at all.’

We stopped at a small village called Iferouane which must have been important in the Aïr because it had an airstrip. Although the people here were Tuareg there was a more settled look about them. ‘Still nomadic,’ said Byrne. ‘But there’s more feed around here, so they don’t have to move as far or as often.’

There were more animals to be seen, herds of camels, sheep and goats, with a few hump-backed cattle. The Tuareg seemed to be less formal here than in the north and some of the faces I saw were decidedly Negroid. I mentioned that to Byrne, and he shook his head. ‘Those people are either Haratin or slaves.’

‘Slaves!’

‘Sure. The Tuareg used to go raiding across the Niger Bend to bring back slaves.’

‘Is there still slavery?’

‘Theoretically – no. But I wouldn’t bet on it. A few years ago a British novelist bought a slave in Timbouctou just to prove that it could be done. Then he set the man free which was a damnfool thing to do.’ He saw my frown. ‘He had no land, so he couldn’t grow anything; he had no money so he couldn’t buy anything – so what was the poor bastard to do? He went back to his old master.’

‘But slavery!’

‘Don’t get the wrong idea,’ said Byrne. ‘It’s not what you think and they don’t do too badly.’ He smiled. ‘No whips, or anything like that. Here, in the Aïr, they grow millet and cultivate the date palms on a share-cropping basis. Theoretically they get a fifth of the crop but a smart guy can get as much as half.’

Byrne seemed well-known and popular in Iferouane. He talked gravely with the village elders, chaffed the young women, and distributed sweets and other largesse among the children. We stayed there a day, then pushed on south over rougher country until we arrived at Timia and Byrne’s home.

Ever since we had left Fort Flatters, Billson had avoided me. He couldn’t help being close in the truck but he didn’t talk and, out of the truck, he kept away from me. I suppose I had not hidden my contempt of him and, naturally enough, he didn’t like it. I had penetrated his thick skin and wounded whatever amour propre he had, so he resented me. I noticed that he talked a lot with Byrne during this time and that Byrne appeared to show interest in what he was saying. But Byrne said nothing to me at the time.

Byrne was un Tuareg enough to have built himself a small house on the slopes of what passed for a pleasantly-wooded valley in the Aïr. The Tuareg in the area lived, not in leather tents as they did in the desert to the north, but in reed huts, cleverly made with dismountable panels so that they could be collapsed for loading on the back of a pack camel. But Byrne had built a house – a minimal house, it is true, with not much in the way of walls – but a house with rooms. A permanent dwelling and, as such, foreign to the Tuareg.

We arrived there late and in darkness and I didn’t see much that night because we ate and slept almost immediately. But next morning, Byrne showed me around his kingdom. Close by there was something which, had it been permanent, would have been called a village and Byrne talked to a man whom he told me was Hamiada, Mokhtar’s brother. Hamiada was tall, even for a Targui, and his skin, what little I could see of it above his veil, was almost as white as my own.

Byrne said to me, ‘Most of the herd’s grazing out towards Telouess – about twenty kilometres away. I’m going out there tomorrow. Like to come?’

‘I’d like that,’ I said. ‘But what about Billson?’ Billson was not with us; when we had left that morning he was still asleep.

Byrne looked troubled. ‘I want to talk to you about him – but later. Now I want to show you something.’

Hamiada had gone away but he returned a few minutes later leading a camel. It was one of the biggest beasts I had seen and looked to be about ten feet high at the hump, although it could hardly have been that. It was of a colour I had never seen before, a peculiar smokey-grey. Byrne said, ‘This is my beauty – the cream of my herd. Her name is Yendjelan.’

He spoke with such obvious pride that I felt I had to echo it even though I was no expert on the finer points of camel-breeding. ‘She’s a very fine animal,’ I said. ‘A racing camel?’

He chuckled. ‘There’s no such thing. She’s a Mehari – a riding camel.’

‘I thought they raced.’

‘Camels don’t run – not unless they’re urged. And if they run too far they drop dead. Fragile animals. When you come with me tomorrow you’ll be riding one. Not Yendjelan, though; she’s mine.’

Yendjelan looked at me in the supercilious way of a camel, and her lip curled. She thought as much of the idea of me riding a camel as I did.

We looked at some more of Byrne’s herd, the few that were browsing close by. As I watched them chewing up branches of acacia, three-inch thorns included, I wondered how in hell you controlled a camel. Their mouths would be as hard as iron.

We accepted Hamiada’s hospitality – cold roast kid, bread and camel milk. Byrne said abruptly, ‘About Billson.’

‘Yes.’

‘What was your intention?’

I sighed. ‘I don’t quite know. I thought if we could get him further south into Nigeria, then I could get him on to a plane back to England.’

Byrne nodded. ‘Yes, south to Kano, a plane from there to Lagos, and so home.’ He paused, chewing thoughtfully like one of his own camels. ‘I don’t know if that would be such a good thing.’

‘Why not?’

‘The guy’s unstable enough as it is. He’s come out here and made a bust of it so far. If he goes home now he knows he’ll never be able to come back, and that might knock him off his perch entirely. He could end up in a looney-bin. I don’t know that I’d like that. Would you?’

I thought of the biblical bit about being one’s brother’s keeper. Also the Chinese bit to the effect that if you save a man’s life you are responsible for him until he dies. Also the Sinbad bit about the Old Man of the Sea. ‘What’s he to you?’ I asked.

Byrne shrugged. ‘Not much. Something to Hesther, though.’

I wondered, not for the first time, about the exact relationship between Byrne and Hesther Raulier. She’d said she’d never married but that did not necessarily mean much between a man and a woman. I said, ‘What are you suggesting? That we indulge him in his fantasies?’

‘Fantasies? Oh, sure, they’re fantasies as far as Billson is concerned. I mean, it’s fantastic for Billson to suppose that he could come out here and find that airplane unaided. But, as far as the plane itself is concerned, I’ve been talking to him and what he says makes a weird kind of sense.’

‘You mean he’s talked you into believing that the plane’s still here?’

‘Must be,’ said Byrne simply. ‘It was never found.’

‘Not necessarily so,’ I said. ‘Not if Billson did defraud the insurance company.’

‘I thought Hesther had talked you out of that way of thinking.’

‘Maybe – but for Christ’s sake, the Sahara is a bloody big place. Where the hell would we start?’

Byrne drained a bowl of camel milk. ‘Billson really studied that last flight of his father. He’s got all the details at his fingertips. For instance, he knew that when his old man took off from Algiers he intended to fly a great circle course for Kano.’ He chuckled. ‘I borrowed your map and traced that course. It’s been a few years since I had to do spherical trigonometry but I managed.’