I hoped I kept my irritation from showing. I was becoming pretty damned tired of going home to an empty house. 'All right; I have a job for you. All the Sunday newspapers for November 2nd. Extract anything that refers to a man called Billson. Try the national press first and, if Luton has a Sunday paper, that as well. If you draw a blank try all the dailies for the previous week. I want it on my desk tomorrow.'

That's a punishment drill.'

'Get someone to help if you must. And tell Mr Malleson I'll meet him at four o'clock at the Inter-City Building for the board meeting.'

I don't know if I liked Brinton or not; he was a hard man to get to know. His social life was minimal and, considered objectively he was just a money-making machine and a very effective one. He didn't seem to reason like other men; he would listen to arguments for and against a project, offered by the lawyers and accountants he hired by the regiment, and then he would make a decision. Often the decision would have nothing to do with what he had been told, or perhaps he could see patterns no one else saw. At any rate some of his exploits had been startlingly like a magician pulling a rabbit out of a hat. Hindsight would show that what he had done was logically sound, but only he had the foresight and that was what made him rich.

When Charlie Malleson and I put together the outfit that later became Stafford Security Consultants Ltd we ran into the usual trouble which afflicts the small firm trying to become a big firm – a hell of a lot of opportunities going begging for lack of finance. Lord Brinton came to the rescue with a sizeable injection of funds for which he took twenty-five per cent of our shares. In return we took over the security of the Brinton empire.

I was a little worried when the deal was going through because of Brinton's reputation as a hot-shot operator. I put it to him firmly that this was going to be a legitimate operation and that our business was solely security and not the other side of the coin, industrial espionage. He smiled slightly, said he respected my integrity, and that I was to run the firm as I pleased.

He kept to that, too, and never interfered, although his bright young whiz-kids would sometimes suggest that we cut a few corners. They didn't come back after I referred them to Brinton.

Industrial espionage is a social disease something akin to VD. Nobody minds admitting to protecting against it, but no, one will admit to doing it. I always suspected that Brinton was in it up to his neck as much as any other ruthless financial son-of-a-bitch, and I used the firm's facilities to do a bit of snooping. I was right; he employed a couple of other firms from time to time to do his ferreting. That was all right with me as long as he didn't ask me to do it, but sooner or later he was going to try it on one of our other clients and then he was going to be hammered, twenty-five per cent shareholder or not. So far it hadn't happened.

I arrived a little early for the meeting and found him in his office high above the City. It wasn't very much bigger than a ballroom and one entire wall was of glass so that he could look over his stamping ground. There wasn't a desk in sight; he employed other men to sit behind desks.

He heaved himself creakily out of an armchair. 'Good to see you, Max. Look what I've gotten here.'

He had a new toy, an open fire burning merrily in a fireplace big enough to roast an ox. 'Central heating is all very well,' he said. 'But there's nothing like a good blaze to warm old bones like mine. It's like something else alive in the room – it keeps me company and doesn't talk back.'

I looked at the fireplace full of soft coal. 'Aren't you violating the smokeless zone laws?'

He shook his head. 'There's an electrostatic precipitator built into the chimney. No smoke gets out.'

I had to smile. When Brinton did anything he did it in style. It was another example of the way he thought. You want a fire with no smoke? All right, install a multi-thousand pound gadget to get rid of it. And it wouldn't cost him too much; he owned the factory which made the things and I suppose it would find its way on to the company books under the heading of 'Research and Development – Testing the Product'.

'Drink?'he asked.

'Yes,' I said. The working day seems to be over.'

He pressed a button next to the fireplace and a bar unfolded from nowhere. His seamed old face broke into an urchin grin. 'Don't you consider the board meeting to be work?'

'It's playtime.'

He poured a measured amount of Talisker into a glass, added an equal amount of Malvern water, and brought it over to me. 'Yes, I've never regretted the money I put into your firm.'

'Glad to hear it.' I sipped the whisky.

'Did you make a profit this year?'

I grinned. 'You'll have to ask Charlie. He juggles the figures and cooks the books,' I knew to a penny how much we'd made, but old Brinton seemed to like a bit of jocularity mixed into his business.

He looked over my shoulder. 'Here he is now. I'll know very soon if I have something to supplement my old age pension.'

Charlie accepted a drink and we got down to it with Charlie spouting terms like amortization, discounted cash flow, yield and all the jargon you read in the back pages of a newspaper. He doubled as company secretary and accountant, our policy being to keep down overheads, and he owned a slice of the firm which made him properly miserly and disinclined to build any administrative empires which did not add to profits.

It seemed we'd had a good year and I'd be able to feed the wolf at the door on caviare and champagne. We discussed future plans for expansion and the possibility of going into Europe under EEC rules. Finally we came to 'Any Other Business' and I began to think of going home.

Brinton had his hands on the table and seemed intent on studying the liver spots. He said, 'There is one cloud in the sky for you gentlemen. I'm having trouble with Andrew McGovern.'

Charlie raised his eyebrows. 'The Whensley Group?'

That's it,' said Brinton. 'Sir Andrew McGovern – Chairman of t he Whensley Group.'

The Whensley Group of companies was quite a big chunk of Brinton's holdings. At that moment I couldn't remember off-hand whether he held a controlling interest or not. I said, 'What's the trouble?'

'Andrew McGovern reckons his security system is costing too much. He says he can do it cheaper himself.'

I smiled sourly at Charlie. 'If he does it any cheaper it'll be no bloody good. You can't cut corners on that sort of thing, and it's a job for experts who know what they're doing. If he tries it himself he'll fall flat on his face.'

'I know all that,' said Brinton, still looking down at his hands. 'But I'm under some pressure.'

'It's five per cent of our business,' said Charlie. 'I wouldn't want to lose it.'

Brinton looked up. 'I don't think you will lose it – permanently.'

'You mean you're going to let McGovern have his way?' asked Charlie.

Brinton smiled but there was no humour in his face. 'I'm going to let him have the rope he wants – but sooner than he expects it. He can have the responsibility for his own security from the end of the month.'

'Hey!' I said. 'That's only ten days' time.'

'Precisely.' Brinton tapped his finger on the table. 'We'll see how good a job he does at short notice. And then, in a little while, I'll jerk in the rope and see if he's got his neck in the noose.'

I said, 'If his security is to remain as good as it is now he'll have to pay more. It's a specialized field and good men are thin on the ground. If he can find them he'll have to pay well. But he won't find them – I'm running into that kind of trouble already in the expansion programme, and I know what I'm looking for and he doesn't. So his security is going to suffer; there'll be holes in it big enough to march a battalion of industrial spies through.'