Travelling rarely tired Sir Brian Malone, which was just as well since he flew more miles in a month than many people did in a lifetime.
He was a tall, broad-faced man with small bright eyes but there was a heaviness beneath them this Saturday morning as he sat in his usual seat on the Concorde from New York and waited for it to touch down at Heathrow.
He wore no coat and carried no luggage, not even a cabin bag. Wherever he happened to be in the world, everything he needed was already there waiting for him, along with someone from Malone Global, the huge corporation he controlled.
One such executive was on duty now as he was shepherded through a special immigration channel and into the VIP lounge. Gerry Bruce, hair as sleek as an otter, was the head of corporate communication in the London office, paid a generous six-figure salary out of which he could well afford to buy the expensive tailoring he wore, but Malone did not seem conscious of his seniority and barely acknowledged his greeting.
‘Some papers for you, Sir Brian.’ He handed over a black leather folder of faxes and messages. It was embossed in a corner with the letters BM. ‘Flight OK for you, sir? You seem to have made a little extra time.’
He hurried alongside, trying to get in step with Malone who kept on walking and did not respond. Instead he glanced quickly at the contents of the file then shut it with a snap.
Silence was one of his most effective weapons; he used it to instil fear and to keep control. It was at its most potent during the phone calls he made regularly to the editors of his newspapers. It was his practice to ask an awkward question and when it had been answered he would say nothing at all, leaving an eerie emptiness on the line which the quietly quivering editor felt intimidated into filling. In the end, inevitably, the man would let slip something he had not intended to, digging a hole for himself in which Malone would proceed to bury him.
Malone used another form of silence, too, sometimes not ringing his top people at all for days, even weeks, so that the victim was left to agonise over whatever misdemeanour might have been committed. There was always one. When the call of punishment did come, it was often a relief.
In his nervousness, Bruce kept up a running commentary of small talk, even though he knew it made him look like a gibbering idiot.
Malone tired of it at last. He fixed Bruce with a murderous stare. ‘Don’t speak to me. Just get me out of here.’
‘Of course, sir. Of course.’
Bruce felt his silk Armani shirt begin to stick to his armpits. His task was to see Malone through Heathrow as quickly and as unobtrusively as possible without the great man being spotted by one of the freelance photographers who patrolled the airport seeking out the rich and famous.
Malone always avoided personal publicity where possible, not to the obsessive extent of locking himself away like a Howard Hughes, but he shunned high profile events and places where he was likely to find himself in the spotlight. He hated seeing his picture in the papers, even in his own.
They went out of the VIP area through a side door and climbed into a dark Mercedes which had its engine running. An airport police car led the way on a short journey that ended at the steps leading to a small black Learjet.
Bruce stood at the bottom as Malone took the steps two at a time. ‘I’ll be here when you return, sir,’ he said and wondered if he would. Christ, it was like working for Stalin.
Malone settled into his seat as the aircraft was cleared for take-off. It taxied towards its runway slowly, to Malone interminably, then picked up speed suddenly and took off like an arrow, climbing sharply, then banking left, heading north west towards Northern Ireland.
He opened the folder. There were progress reports on various projects, proposals which would need his approval, but he found it impossible to concentrate. He closed it again and put his head back with a sigh.
He had made some tough decisions in his time and carried them out without a flicker of uncertainty because he knew they were right for the future of the company.
Over the years he had sacked a lot of people personally – always quick and to the point, getting it over with and ensuring they were off the premises straight away. He had closed whole businesses so that he could strip away their assets and in the process he had put hundreds of people out of work. It had never cost him a thought.
But this morning was different. This morning he was on his way to Belfast to fire his son.
He looked out of the cabin window at a searing blue sky and clouds like fields of fluff.
Had he been foolish putting Christopher into that job? It had been a little rocky at first, although soon things had started to come good. The boy had shown flair and imagination but Malone had begun to wonder if he had enough judgement. Now his doubts had turned to a gloomy certainty.
Drive and enterprise were one thing but sometimes caution was needed. Christopher mistook caution and judgement for weakness and indecision.
He blamed himself for all this. His son saw the way he did business, like buying into a sleepy group of Canadian newspapers all those years ago, a move that many thought was simply throwing money away.
In eighteen months he had changed both the image of the papers and their fortunes and had started his own swift rise into the super league. He had gone from there to the ownership of a group of papers on the US east coast, including a tabloid New York daily. Now there were magazines, television stations and banking interests as well, both across the Atlantic and in the UK where he was a major operator in the new digital field.
In the US he was an outsider, resented by the old-money establishment who loathed the idea of him buying into their publishing heritage. He had rubbed their noses in it even further by the generous funding of a chair in European business studies at Harvard.
Newspapers and magazines, not those he controlled, liked to portray him as a lucky gambler and an adventurer who took huge risks which always seemed to pay off. The trouble was, Christopher believed it, too, and wanted desperately to emulate his father’s achievements.
He knew Christopher drove himself and everyone else in Malone Group hard but there was nothing wrong with that. It was a management style they shared and it got results. You pay people well enough, you deserve to get every last drop of sweat out of them.
He had never interfered. The only thing he had ever insisted on was that BB remain as personal assistant because there was no one who could do it better.
And, of course, there was the additional motive: he could rely on her, rather than his son, to be his eyes and ears in case of trouble.
And now trouble had arrived. In spades.
BB had called him the morning it happened. He had flown straight to Belfast. When he saw the problem he had snapped at her for not warning him earlier but the truth was that he should have seen the signs himself a long time ago.
It was all there: the extremes in Christopher’s personality, elation that could turn to despair, the drinking and the women, a messy marriage break-up with his wife alleging that he had been violent to her on occasion.
The Lear changed direction. The engine altered pitch and he could feel the aircraft begin to descend.
He sat up straight. This self-recrimination would get him nowhere. The simple fact was that Christopher had not fulfilled the trust he had placed in him. He had not been able to cope and he had had a breakdown.
Malone and BB and a couple of reliable cronies on the board had taken over. They had whisked Christopher off to a sanatorium on the Isle of Man for a month and told everybody he was on holiday. Malone had made sure to keep well back in the shadows since any hint of his unexpected presence in Belfast could cause a wobble in Malone Group’s share price and perhaps even start the market, ever paranoid, to wonder about Malone Global.
While the boy was in the hospital, Malone had got some of his best people to carry out a very confidential analysis of the Group. The news they had brought him, nervously, was not good. Malone Group was nodding off to sleep. Its results for the moment were healthy but they were too static; there was no evidence of real development.
Alone at his home in Toronto one night, he had read the report and raged in his seclusion.
‘Christopher. You stupid fucking idiot.’
He had said it aloud, his voice echoing in his empty, high-ceilinged study.
All the frantic activity involving the leisure division had obscured dwindling performance in other areas. Christopher’s monthly reports to the board had been a carefully constructed illusion of smoke and mirrors.
He had felt shame, an emotion which seldom troubled him, mixed with anger. But then he had calmed himself and got on with the job.
He had contacted the board members individually to inform them of the findings. There was no question about what had to be done, he told them all. Christopher would leave and move to an unspecified position with Malone Global. This way it would look like a promotion rather than a sacking and shareholder confidence in Malone Group would not weaken. One of the Group’s most experienced senior executives would take over until a permanent replacement was found.
The Lear slipped into the clouds which were thick at first, billowing, then they began to thin, drifting past in wisps. He saw Northern Ireland below him, a deep, damp green.
He had the house in Toronto, an apartment in New York and a villa in Spain but he had a special affection for the place he had built among the trees on an island on Lough Erne in County Fermanagh. He could be there in less than half an hour by helicopter.
It was in the ancient stillness of the lakeland, gazing out on its timeless waters, that he felt most private. But he would not go there today. He would be in Northern Ireland for only a few hours. He would do the thing he had come for and tonight he would be back in New York.
The plane touched down and taxied towards a squat building which joined the main terminal. A sign above it said it was the Business Centre.
He descended from the aircraft, strode into the building and almost immediately he was out again through a side door. His life was a succession of private rooms, discreet entrances and exits.
Outside, dressed in blue trousers and a chunky sweater, BB stood beside her silver Alfa Romeo. She looked tense but when she saw him a smile warmed her face.
‘Good to see you,’ he said. They embraced fleetingly and he felt the tight grip of her hands on his upper arms.
She opened the passenger door for him. They had agreed that in order to talk freely on the way to Christopher’s home, there would be no company driver this time.
‘How is he?’ Malone asked as he belted himself in and she headed for the gate that led to the main road. They would be at the house in twenty minutes. It always amazed the people he occasionally brought here to realise how near everything was to everything else.
‘Calm. Thoughtful. He called in yesterday briefly.’
‘Depressed?’
‘No, not at all. He was on his way to Royal Belfast for a game of golf. He looked well. He had some stuff he wanted to leave in his office. He didn’t hang around.’
‘Do you think he knows what’s coming?’
‘Of course he does. When you ring him from New York and tell him you’re flying in today and flying out again straight away he knows it’s not a social call.’ She glanced at him. ‘He’s your son, Brian. He knows.’
No one had the strength of BB. No one else talked to him like this.
He looked out of the window. They were passing a country hotel.
Once, many years ago, there had been a conference there. They had been working late in his room, him and BB, going over a presentation he would give in the morning . . .
They had never spoken about it afterwards and they had never repeated the experience. They were both alone now, married and divorced: once in her case, three times in his. He glanced at her but she was looking straight ahead and there was no hint of anything in her face.
‘Do you think he’s well enough to take it?’ he asked her.
‘I think so. The report about his treatment on the Isle of Man was good. He seems to have hit a kind of an emotional brick wall but the damage isn’t permanent; there’s nothing that can’t be remedied. As you know, the doctors recommend a change of lifestyle. He might feel relieved, rather than resentful.’
‘Resentful? He has no right to feel resentful.’
She said nothing, letting him brood. And unlike any other Malone employee, the silence did not unnerve her.
Ten minutes later she swung the car abruptly in through an old stone gateway almost hidden from view. Christopher’s house was not visible from the road. Set among rambling gardens and behind high hedges, it had been built in the late forties, a large place with a tiered roof and big windows, what Malone in his early days as an estate agent would have described in the brochure as a ‘gentleman’s residence’.
The drive curved past slim beech trees and a sloping lawn. BB pulled up at the front. There were broad steps up to the house, begonias and azaleas wet and drooping in big pots.
‘I’ll just wait for you here,’ she said.
Malone went up the steps and rang the doorbell. He heard it sound somewhere far away. There was no reply. After a few moments he rang it again. Still no answer.
He looked at his watch. Twelve thirty, the time they had agreed.
His temper was like an itch. Damn fool. Where was he?
He thumped the heavy door hard with his fist. ‘Christopher!’ he called, then bent down and pushed open the letter-box. He shouted into it. ‘Christopher!’
There was no response.
He came back down the steps, giving BB an exasperated look as he passed, and went round the side of the house towards the kitchen.
He tried the door. It was unlocked so he walked in.
The television was on, mounted in a little alcove above the breakfast table. There was a grunt and the thump of a tennis ball being hit very hard. He saw the intense face of Pete Sampras.
He looked around. The kitchen was big and airy and very tidy. The work surfaces were bare and spotless and above them gleaming saucepans hung neatly from their hooks in perfect order of size.
A small coffee pot stood on the table. Beside it there was a single cup. He touched the pot and felt a faint warmth lingering in it.
‘Christopher?’ he called again.
‘Game and first set to Sampras,’ a voice from the television said. He found the remote control and turned it off.
He went through the ground floor rooms. The dining room was cold and felt little used. There was a big sitting room that looked equally untouched, everything in place like a stage set, then a smaller living room with a television that was much too large for it and newspapers strewn on the floor.
He went upstairs. Christopher’s room was the one that had been slept in. The bed was unmade. There were clothes on a chair and on the floor, a John Grisham novel open face down on the bedside table.
‘Christopher?’ He stepped onto the landing and listened. There was nothing. He tried the bathroom: nothing. Then he hurried downstairs again, opened the front door and went outside to BB in the car. She lowered her window.
‘He’s bloody well not here,’ he said. ‘What the hell’s he playing at?’
She got out. ‘Is there no sign of him at all?’
‘The kitchen door wasn’t locked. He’s left the TV on.’
‘Then he must be somewhere. Is his car here?’
They went round to the garage. Malone twisted the handle and the door opened upwards. A grey Daimler was parked with its rear to them.
‘Well, wherever he’s gone, he’s not using this. He hasn’t another car, has he?’
‘Brian,’ BB said softly.
He turned towards her. She was standing absolutely still, looking down the long slope of the back garden towards a cluster of trees at the bottom. For a second he thought she must have spotted an animal, a fox or a squirrel or something, and did not want to disturb it.
But then he saw what she was staring at.
There was a chestnut tree, branches outstretched welcoming.
A dark shape was hanging from one of them. He began to run towards it.