Flashpoint

by Michael Gilbert

  Mongoose was right, thought Lambard. If you miss with your first bite, go after the snake again.

  He said, “You’ll need Counsel. Leading Counsel, for an application of that sort, I should think.”

  Jonas nodded.

  “And that will cost money.”

  “How much?”

  It was a question solicitors are always being asked, and can never answer.

  “Leave my fees out of it for the moment,” said Lambard. “It’ll be a short hearing. Say a single morning. Leading Counsel, a junior, a certain number of papers. A verbatim report of the hearing at West London would be useful. Did you have a shorthand writer in Court?”

  “I’m afraid not.”

  “I’m only guessing. But you might be able to do it for five hundred pounds.”

  “I see,” said Jonas bleakly. “If I can raise five hundred pounds, you’ll handle it for me?”

  “I didn’t say so. All I was doing was telling you what I thought it would cost you. I very much doubt if I can undertake it.”

  “Why not?”

  “A fair question. Before I answer it, I’ll put one to you. You seem willing to lay out five hundred pounds of your own money. There’ll be no question of recovering costs even if you succeed. You won’t get a penny of it back. What are you doing it for?”

  It was the second time in three days that he had been asked the question. Since he disliked Edward Lambard he had that much less hesitation in answering it. He said, “I think that certain members of the Anglo-Scottish Independent Aluminium Company were defrauded of a portion of their hard-earned savings. They are in no position to take action for themselves. I happen to be in a position to help them. I propose to do so.”

  “How much would you say was involved?”

  “Involved?”

  “Let me put it more crudely. How much do you think Dylan stole?”

  “It’s difficult to say. Somewhere between four hundred and eight hundred pounds.”

  “Let’s take the higher figure.” Lambard jotted it down. “I believe there are about four thousand men working in the smelter now. So each of them lost – let me see – twenty new pence.”

  “You can’t look at it mathematically.”

  “I always look at mathematical problems mathematically,” said Lambard. “Now what you’re telling me is that you feel so strongly about a workman who lost twenty pence that you’re prepared to spend five hundred pounds trying to get it back for him. Even though those same workmen kicked you in the face on Monday.”

  Jonas said, “How–?”

  “Perhaps you haven’t had time to read the papers today. The incident was reported in the Sheffield Courier on Wednesday and the London papers picked it up this morning. Just at this moment, you’re news.”

  He pushed across a copy of The Daily Telegraph folded open at the inside of the front page and Jonas saw the headline, ‘Solicitor Mobbed’.

  He skimmed through the account. It implied, using the carefully guarded double-talk of the press, that he had visited the smelter at Todmoor ‘in search of further evidence’, and had provoked the workmen by making tactless remarks about Will Dylan, ‘who is, of course, a highly respected figure in those parts’.

  “It’s totally inaccurate,” he said. “It wasn’t anything like that at all.”

  “But it was the ASIA workers who gave you that bruise on your face?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you still want to get their twenty pence back?”

  “Now you’re being stupid,” said Jonas. When he argued, a pressure built up inside him which made him say things which his own cooler reason rejected even while he was saying them. “Either you really don’t understand what all this is about, or you’re pretending not to understand it, so that you can have an excuse to wash your hands of it. Of course it’s not the money. It’s the principle.”

  “What principle exactly?” said Lambard.

  He had his pen in his hand and looked blandly over his glasses at Jonas as though he was preparing to write down his answer, word for word.

  Jonas swallowed, and said, “It’s the principle that the law is the law, and no matter how powerful the law breaker is, or how long ago he broke it, or however small the actual sum involved, he must be brought to trial.”

  “All right,” said Lambard. “That’s a principle which any lawyer ought to be able to accept. I think it’s a counsel of perfection, but let that go. The mistake you’re making is a common mistake with amateur logicians. You’re building on a faulty premise. Everything you have said holds good if the law has been broken. It does not necessarily hold good merely because you suspect that the law has been broken. As far as I can gather, that’s what the magistrate was telling you. Maybe he wasn’t very tactful about it. But that was the message he was trying to get over. Prove that a crime has been committed. Prove it beyond reasonable doubt, and the law must help you to extract the appropriate penalty. But don’t start slinging mud in the hope that the law will help you to make some of it stick.”

  Jonas had twice made angry noises at the back of his throat, but a lingering habit of deference to the man who had been his employer had restrained him. Now he got to his feet, the bruise on his cheek livid against a white face, and said in a strangled tone of voice, “I take it then, that you won’t help me?”

  “I’m afraid that’s right,” said Lambard.

  The Managing Director of Messrs Poynters (Builders and Decorators. Conversions our Speciality) looked at the card and at the insignificant man who had proffered it, and said, “It seems mad to me, but I can’t see the catch, Mr Raven.”

  “No catch at all,” said Terence. “You get your money, we get our money. That’s what the Raven Service is all about.”

  “You’ll pay me the whole of what Mr Killey owes me?”

  “Less the discount you would have given him for a cash settlement. Five per cent, I understand.”

  “Then what do you get out of it?”

  “We collect the lot. So the discount goes to us.”

  The Managing Director made a quick calculation. Five per cent of four hundred pounds was twenty pounds. The little man was offering to collect his debt for him for twenty pounds. It seemed a reasonable bargain.

  “It’s a deal,” he said. “What do you want me to do?”

  “Just sign this paper transferring the debt to us. I give you a certified cheque.” He produced paper and cheque from his briefcase and laid them on the desk.

  As the Managing Director was about to sign, a thought struck him.

  “How are you going to collect?” he said. “Mr Killey’s been pretty difficult about paying us. He’s going to be even more difficult when he finds someone else has bought up the debt.”

  “The Raven Service,” said Terence, “has its own methods.”

  12

  Patrick’s article appeared on Friday morning. It was printed on the left-hand centre page, opposite the leader, and was sub-titled, ‘A Case for Thought’.

  At first reading it appeared to be a general criticism of the arbitrary power of a magistrate to refuse an application for a summons on what, as the article put it, ‘must appear to a layman to be mere legalistic grounds’. Because a copy of a document was produced rather than an original, or a print of a photograph and not the negative, must a citizen be refused his primary right to pursue justice. Such niceties should surely be reserved for the hearing of the case itself.

  As an illustration of this, indeed almost as an afterthought, the facts of Jonas Killey’s application were mentioned.

  The editors of Fleet Street, who daily observe the developments of their rivals with the absorbed intensity of a mother watching for the first signs of pregnancy in a suspect daughter, said in unison to their assistant editors, “The Watchman’s up to something. Keep an eye on it.” Lobby correspondents were consulted and said, in similar unison, “We don’t think there’s anything in it. But better wait and see.”

  I read the article in
the train on my way up to London, and thought that Patrick had written it rather well. It was mercifully free from his usual verbal flourishes. Here, had I known it, I was paying tribute to the blue pencil of John Charles.

  The Minister for Labour, Bernard Gracey, read the article, and disliked it. He said as much to Air Vice-Marshal Pulleyne whom he had summoned to his house in St John’s Wood.

  “It’s a try-on,” he said.

  “Sailing a bit close to the wind,” said Pulleyne.

  “Can they comment like this on a decision of the Court? Give names and details?”

  “I’ve no idea, Minister.”

  “Ask Benz-Fisher. He’s a lawyer. You’ll be seeing him about it, I imagine.”

  “I think I shall have to,” said Pulleyne.

  He sounded so unenthusiastic that Gracey looked up and said, “You don’t approve of him, do you?”

  “I don’t disapprove of him,” said Pulleyne. “It’s just that he’s out of this world. The ordinary rules don’t apply to him any longer. He makes up his own rules. There were one or two people like him in the Air Force during the war. They killed themselves sooner or later, but they usually killed a lot of other people first.” There was something else that had to be said, and after a suitable pause Pulleyne said it. “I take it, Minister, that you want this business quashed.”

  “I do.”

  “And that is an order?”

  “It is.”

  Gracey said it angrily. Pulleyne, who was a student of how men behaved under pressure, thought that the anger had a touch of apprehension behind it.

  He telephoned Benz-Fisher that morning, and invited him round to the Ministry of Defence. Benz-Fisher said, “I don’t think it would be a terribly good idea if I were to be seen going into a place like that. It might give people ideas. If you don’t want to come round to my office, let’s meet on neutral ground. There’s a nice little pub on the corner of Petty France and Picton Street. It’s called the Battle of Salamanca. No one much in the Private Bar before lunch. Meet you there in twenty minutes.”

  He rang off before Pulleyne could frame an objection.

  The decor of the Private Bar of the Battle of Salamanca was much to Benz-Fisher’s taste. The Iron Duke, at that period a mere Earl, stared down his nose at Marshal Marmont. The Marshal bore a striking resemblance to Alf Ramsey and looked subdued. Possibly he realized that his team was going to be beaten. Other pictures had been related with equal care to the battle. Over the fireplace Wellington addressed Sir Edward Pakenham. “Move on with the Third Division and drive everything before you.” On the wall opposite the window General le Marchant, at the head of a thousand sabres, fell like a bolt from the blue upon the disorganized infantry of General Mancune.

  Benz-Fisher placed himself at the head of the charge and drew his own sabre. Then, remembering that le Marchant had fallen in the moment of victory, he substituted himself for Pakenham, who had had an equally satisfactory battle but had managed to survive it.

  “I know of no room in which beer tastes better,” said Benz-Fisher. “In this country patriotism and the brewing industry have always gone hand in hand. But perhaps you are not a student of the Peninsular War?”

  “Great stuff,” said Pulleyne. “The pictures, I mean. I won’t drink beer, if you don’t mind. A gin and tonic would do splendidly. A bit of ice, if they can manage it, but no lemon.”

  He was casting an eye round the small room as he spoke. His main reason for refusing to visit Benz-Fisher in his office was that he was aware that his conversation would be recorded. He was wondering whether this room also had been wired for sound. Benz-Fisher read his thoughts accurately. He said, “If you would feel more comfortable in the Public Bar–”

  “No, no. This will do excellently.”

  “No microphones, I assure you.”

  “Such a thought never crossed my mind. But you do appreciate that what I have to say is completely confidential.”

  “You mean,” said Benz-Fisher, “that if whatever it is you want me to do goes wrong, you’ll deny ever having told me to do it.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Would I be wide of the mark if I surmised that a certain fluttering in official dovecotes has been caused by an article in this morning’s Watchman?”

  “You’d be dead right.”

  “And that this is all part of the problem which you expounded to me in my office last week?”

  “It’s a development of that problem. Have you been able to do anything about it?”

  “Employing the sort of phraseology which this room suggests, I would say that I have planned a broad strategy, made certain tactical preparations and moved elements of my forces into position.”

  “I’m not asking for any details,” said Pulleyne hastily. “The fact is, the old man’s getting worried. I’d guess he’s planning to hold the election in the early autumn. He’ll announce it soon after the House rises at the end of next month.”

  There was a pause while the drinks arrived. Benz-Fisher lowered half of the contents of the silver tankard which the landlord kept aside for his personal use, and said, “One does appreciate that at this particular moment even a minor scandal could be an embarrassment. Particularly if it is of the sort of scandal that the Opposition press could take up.”

  “If it was anyone but Dylan,” said Pulleyne gloomily, “it wouldn’t be so bad. But he’s a sort of mascot. A key figure. Any attack on him which got off the ground could be terribly damaging.”

  “And you want me to see that it doesn’t get off the ground?”

  “We want it deflated. We want the whole thing cut down to size.”

  “And you want me to do the cutting?”

  “You’re not to do anything” – the Air Vice-Marshal paused, selecting his next word as carefully as if he was choosing the card to lead in a high stakes game of bridge – “anything outrageous.”

  Benz-Fisher bared his teeth in a terrifying grin. “Ask not the butcher which knife he will appoint. Let him cut up the carcass. You enjoy the joint.”

  “Oh, quite,” said Pulleyne.

  “All I need is the order to begin.”

  “You have it.”

  “Mon cher Alava,” said Benz-Fisher, “Marmont est perdu.”

  Patrick enjoyed a walk across London, in the small hours of the morning, when the streets were quiet and almost deserted. London, he had noticed, never went to sleep. Early risers crossed with belated revellers. Home-going cars drew aside to let through the great lorries which rolled into market at Covent Garden. An occasional policeman patrolled the empty pavements, or stood in a doorway watching the night go by.

  It had been an exciting evening. First, and most important, they had won the Beaverbrook trophy defeating the Daily Express in the third of three hotly contested legs. Even the redoubtable Pearly Deans had failed to stop them. When the pub had finally put up its shutters and turned victors and vanquished alike into the street, a move had been made to a drinking club in Farringdon Road of which Lefty Marks seemed to be a member. The club was short of beer but had reasonable stocks of whisky and a broad-minded interpretation of licensing hours.

  It was two o’clock when Patrick finally emerged, and set out on his long stroll across the town, setting his course northward and westward towards Regent’s Park. It took him fifteen minutes to reach the end of High Holborn, and here he turned to the right and plunged into the haphazard arrangement of small streets which surround the British Museum. He had no fear of losing his way. If he kept taking the first turning to the left and the first to the right he must eventually strike the Euston Road.

  The girl was sitting on the sand-bin at the end of Rickaby Street. She had her shoes off and was looking at her stockinged feet, one of which had a large hole in the toe.

  As Patrick came up she wriggled her toe at him, and said, “See that. Fifty pence the pair and worn out almost as soon as I put them on.”

  “Bad luck,” said Patrick. He thought the girl couldn’t have
been more than sixteen. He sat down on the other end of the sand-bin.

  “They don’t make stockings like they used to,” said the girl. “In my grandmother’s day they knitted them out of wool and wire.”

  “Wire? Are you sure?”

  “Wire,” said the girl firmly. “Every fifth strand was wire. She had a pair which lasted for forty years. She had to give them up in the end.”

  “Why?”

  “They were an unfashionable colour. You haven’t got a cigarette by any chance? I’ve got through all mine.”

  Patrick got out his case. The girl said, “Thanks,” took one, and got out her own lighter.

  “Aren’t you a bit young to be a regular smoker?” said Patrick. “Have you got any idea what it does to your lungs?”

  “No. Tell.”

  “It coats the delicate membranes with nicotine tar.”

  “Is that a bad thing? I thought tar was healthy. In the old days, when they cut your leg off, they smeared tar all over the stump. Did you know?”

  “Who told you that? Your grandmother?”

  The girl started to laugh, and stopped suddenly. Then Patrick saw the two men. They had come up behind him, walking very quietly. They were not large, but stocky. They were bareheaded. One of them had a round bald patch at the back of his head which Patrick noticed when he turned to address the girl.

  He said, “You’d better be getting along home.”

  The girl said, “I’m quite happy here,” but she swung her legs down and pushed her feet into her shoes. Her voice was not as confident as her words.

  “Stop bullying the girl,” said Patrick. “She’s doing no harm.”

  The men ignored him. The second one, who was younger, and had a razor-cut moustache, said, “You oughtn’t to be out as late as this. Just get along home.”

  The girl looked uncertain. The men looked at her, and said nothing. As she started to move away she gave Patrick an apologetic look as if to say, “I’m sorry, but you see how it is.”