Flashpoint

by Michael Gilbert

  Off again, thought Terence. Right up in the stratosphere.

  On the last word Benz-Fisher slammed shut the door of the furnace, perched his bowler hat on his head, picked up his brief-case, gave a cheerful wave of his rolled umbrella and vanished through the doorway.

  It was a bit like a conjuring trick, thought Terence.

  There were a number of reasons why the various parties who were searching for Jonas Killey should have failed to locate him.

  One reason was his handwriting. This was so vile that the hotel at which he was staying had registered him as Jacob Pellow and addressed him as Mr Pellow throughout his stay. The second reason was that he had forgotten, in the excitements of the past month, to get his hair cut. It was now not only much longer than usual but, feeling self-conscious about the bruise down the side of his face, he had allowed it to descend in embryo sideburns. A more important reason was that the press had been unable to locate a useful photograph. Jonas was not a man who sought publicity, and the best that the researchers had been able to turn up was a school group, taken in his last year at Grantham Grammar School nearly twenty-five years before, and a rather blurred snapshot of a group of solicitors who had attended a seminar on International Law in Amsterdam.

  But the real reason why nobody spotted Jonas was that he wasn’t hiding. He wasn’t hiding because it hadn’t occurred to him that anyone was looking for him. If he had behaved in a fugitive-like manner it is possible he would have been noticed. But he was not a fugitive. He was taking an unscheduled, but extremely enjoyable, holiday. The only newspapers which he saw were the Salisbury and Winchester Journal and the Andover Herald, and the headlines in these were devoted to such topics of local interest as an outbreak of arson at Bulford, the new by-pass, and suspected foot and mouth disease at Pewsey.

  From time to time Jonas thought guiltily of his practice, but he comforted himself with the reflection that it would do young Willoughby a power of good to have a few days at the helm. There was nothing like responsibility for settling a young man down. His only real worry was his mother. He telephoned the nursing home every morning and every evening and the reports which he received, though tactfully delivered, left him in no doubt as to the truth. Her life was slipping away.

  On the Thursday he caught a bus into Salisbury and called on a firm of solicitors in Castle Street. He had telephoned them on the previous afternoon, and the senior partner, Mr Abigail, saw him at once.

  Being a solicitor himself Jonas appreciated that nine tenths of the instructions which clients give solicitors are superfluous. He confined himself to mentioning the names, addresses and sums of money which mattered. It took exactly five minutes.

  As he rose to go Mr Abigail said, “You’ve been having a short holiday, Mr Killey?”

  “A few days.”

  “The press not bothering you?”

  “No. Why should they?”

  After a moment of silence Mr Abigail said, “Have you seen the papers in the last few days?”

  “Only the local ones.”

  “I suggest you buy The Times and The Telegraph. Oh, and the Watchman too. If you’d like to see Tuesday’s and Wednesday’s, I can get them for you.”

  “Please don’t bother,” said Jonas. “If there’s anything interesting in them I can see them when I get back to London.”

  After he had left, Mr Abigail took that morning’s copy of the Watchman out of his briefcase and reread the paragraph on page one.

  “It was noted that Mr Killey was not in Court either on the Monday when the riot occurred or on the following day when their Lordships reserved judgement. Speculation is beginning to grow as to his whereabouts. A spokesman for the police said, ‘We have no instructions to investigate Mr Killey’s movements nor is there any reason why we should have such instructions. Mr Killey is free to go wherever he wishes.’ The central figure in one of the most extraordinary dramas of recent times would seem to have vanished. Enquiries at his Wimbledon office revealed that they had had no word from him since Friday. Where is Mr Killey?”

  Mr Abigail reflected that had professional propriety not forbidden it, the Watchman would have paid him handsomely for the answer to that question.

  When Jonas got back to his hotel the message which he had been expecting from the nursing home was waiting for him. He gave the necessary instructions, and said that he would be returning on the following day. The matron said, “Very peaceful. No pain at all. She simply went to sleep and didn’t wake up.” Jonas cut her short by ringing off. He was equally brusque when the proprietor offered his condolences. He said, “I’m going for a walk. I shall be back for supper. Could you have my bill ready?”

  23

  “In this country,” said the Prime Minister, “we seem to have overlooked the value of the Courts of Law as a setting for demonstrations. It wasn’t only propaganda trials, in the Russian manner, that I was thinking of. It is the French, it seems to me, who have perfected the art of the scene in court. I was reading, only yesterday, a new account of the case–”

  Will Dylan, sitting uneasily in the tall, leather-covered armchair stamped with the insignia of the House of Commons, wondered how the Prime Minister had time to read anything except official papers. There was a heap of these on his desk at that moment. He wondered, also, how long the Prime Minister was going to take to reach what was evidently in his mind. Although he had not been long in Parliament, he was well aware of the speed with which reputations rose and fell; the way in which people were reassessed almost daily, as on a Stock Exchange, so that a member could be a blue chip one day and a bad buy on the next. He had a shrewd idea of what was coming, but it was no use trying to hurry the old man.

  To help things along, he said, “You mean that business in the High Court.”

  “And that scene at Bow Street. The same men were involved in both.”

  “I don’t see the connection.”

  “The connection is that they were both aimed at you. The first indirectly, the second directly. They were both designed to draw public attention to the allegations which a solicitor called Killey has been making about you.”

  When he came to the point, thought Dylan, he came straight there, no fooling.

  He said, “You could be right, Prime Minister. I hadn’t quite viewed it in that way. What do you want me to do about it?”

  “There’s only one thing a member of this House can do when his personal reputation is attacked. He has to stand up and defend it. It’s a useful privilege. If vague stories are being whispered, vague allegations being made, he can bring them out into the open. Fresh air kills germs. If plain lies are being told, he can nail them. I think the best time will be this evening. I’ll have a word with the Opposition and they’ll clear the floor for you at about seven o’clock. That means we shall get full coverage in the morning papers. They’re more responsible about that sort of thing than the evening papers.”

  Will was silent for so long that the Prime Minister raised his head sharply and said, “Well?”

  Will said, “Ever since I came down here, Prime Minister, I’ve been realizing how important words are. It doesn’t matter what you do. It doesn’t matter if you do nowt, as long as you make the right noises.”

  “Not entirely true,” said the Prime Minister. He was conscious of the strength of the man opposite; a strength of character and bone, showing in the face. He noticed, too, that now that he was speaking from the heart rather than the head Dylan was reverting to a fashion of speech which he had modified, consciously or unconsciously, during his stay in the South. “Some truth in it. Go on.”

  “This thing you’re talking about. It’s been on t’boil for a long time. Simmering, you might say, to start with. Now it’s come to boil. T’other chap’s done all the talking. I’ve said nowt. I’m not starting now.”

  “So far as you’re concerned, that’s a point of view I can understand. In the ordinary way, no one’s called on to defend himself from malicious rumours. But this isn’t an or
dinary situation. It’s got blown up out of all proportion. And it’s hurting the party.”

  “I’m not that important,” said Will.

  “My party managers tell me a different story.”

  “Even if it happened to be true, and I’ll be blunt with you, it wouldn’t keep me awake nights. I’m not a party man. Truth to tell, there doesn’t seem to be a lot of difference between parties, except that one’s in and t’other’s out.”

  The Prime Minister said, with an edge of exasperation showing for the first time in his voice, “I can’t force you to take my advice. But you realize what it’ll mean to you if you don’t.”

  Will said, with a grin, “If you’re taking back your offer of the Ministry of Employment, that’s understood.”

  “I didn’t mean that only. I meant to you personally. The sniping will go on. And if Killey gets his order, it’ll get a lot worse. I don’t doubt that when it finally comes to Court, you’ll win, but by then it’ll be too late. The thing’s got to be stopped now, once and for all. If the good of the party doesn’t weigh with you, you might at least consider the feelings of your friends, and your family.”

  As soon as the Prime Minister had said this, he realized that he had made a mistake.

  Will said, his face dark with anger, “We’ve had a basinful already. And I don’t only mean anonymous letters. They’re as good as newspapers to light fire with. But we’ve had phone calls, at home. And things said to my boy at school. And messages chalked up by some crackpot on the houseboat I’m living in. But I got one letter this morning that wasn’t anonymous. It was from an old friend of mine. He’s secretary of Mining and General Metalworkers. Bill Hancock. He told me he was retiring this autumn. What he said was, ‘Come back here, and the job’s yours. You’ve got a lot of friends up here. People who don’t believe lies just because they’re printed in newspapers. Politics is a dirty game. It’s not your cup of tea. Come back home.’ That seemed like sound advice to me, Prime Minister.”

  On the Friday morning Jonas returned to London. When he appeared in Lambard’s office, Edward Lambard had to look twice to recognize him. His skin, which was normally pale, had reacted remarkably to a week of open air and blazing sun and was now a dark reddish brown. A handsome pair of mutton-chop whiskers had changed and broadened the outlines of his face. But it was not only his appearance. His personality seemed to have undergone a perceptible change. The most immediate impression was one of relaxation.

  “There are one or two things I want to talk about,” he said. “My mother died yesterday.”

  Lambard had noticed the black band on his arm. He said, “I’m very sorry.”

  “It wasn’t unexpected,” said Jonas. The tone in which he said it defied Lambard to be sympathetic. “I should be obliged if your firm would undertake the winding up of her estate. You acted for my father in his litigation against the North-West Marine people. I believe it was your late senior partner, Arthur Sexton, who handled the compensation money he got from them.”

  “I was in the army at the time,” said Lambard. “I don’t remember the details, but we can get the files up easily enough. Did your mother leave a will?”

  “I have it here. It’s very short. She left everything to me. It’s quite a substantial fund, and well invested. That’s the next thing I wanted to talk about. I shall need four thousand pounds almost at once. I expect you can arrange a bridging loan from the bank?”

  “That shouldn’t be too difficult. But I don’t suppose the appeal’s going to cost anything like that.”

  “It’s not the appeal. I’m buying a small general store and post office in a village called Sambourne, in Wiltshire. I’ve arranged with a local firm to handle the actual conveyancing. I shall move in as soon as it’s completed.”

  “Move in?”

  “Certainly.”

  “To run the shop?”

  “Such is my intention. I think it has distinct possibilities. I plan to enlarge the scope of the business considerably. There are no real shopping centres nearer than Devizes on one side and Salisbury on the other. I see no reason why it should not develop other lines. Greengrocery, for instance. There are a lot of vegetables grown locally – they only want an outlet. Ironmongery, too. There are endless possibilities.”

  “And your practice at Wimbledon?”

  “I shall close it down. Now, if there is nothing else – I know you’re a very busy man.”

  “Don’t you want to hear about what happened on Monday and Tuesday?”

  “Oh, the appeal. Yes. I read the report in The Times. I thought Cairns handled it very well.”

  “The general view is that we’ve got rather better than an even chance of success. You realize that if we get our order, there’ll be a great deal to do.”

  “Yes,” said Jonas. “That was something I did mean to mention.” For the the first time a very slight note of embarrassment had crept into his voice. “The fact is, I’ve decided not to take the matter any further.”

  Lambard stared at him, his mouth half open. He sometimes thought that thirty years in the law had deprived him of the faculty of surprise. He discovered that he was wrong.

  Before he could frame any adequate comment, Jonas had continued.

  “As I see it, there’s really no point in taking it any further. If we fail in the High Court, we can’t proceed anyway. But we have at least demonstrated, I fancy, that there was a case to answer. If we win, we’ve demonstrated the point even more conclusively. There’s nothing to be gained from rubbing it in. That would simply be vindictive. At least, that’s how I see it.”

  Lambard had recovered his voice. He said, “If the Court gives you the order, surely you’re obliged to pursue it.”

  “Certainly not,” said Jonas sharply. “If I decide to drop the matter, no one can force me to take any step at all. The authorities could, of course, pursue the action themselves, if they wished to, but I don’t see them doing it, do you?”

  “No,” said Lambard.

  “That’s how I reasoned it out. And that’s the decision I came to.”

  “I suppose you realize that you’ve done Dylan almost irreparable harm.”

  “It was entirely his fault. If he’d admitted in the beginning that I was right, none of this would have happened, would it?”

  “I suppose not,” said Lambard.

  24

  Much of what happened afterwards is a matter of recent history.

  On July 31st, the last day of the legal term, the Divisional Appeal Court rejected Jonas’ application for an order of mandamus by two votes to one. Leave to appeal to the House of Lords was refused. This loosed a further storm of abuse from the press, but it had little to feed on as neither of the principal characters in the drama seemed anxious to comment.

  Will Dylan disappeared from the London scene with his family and buried himself in Union affairs. I don’t suppose for one moment that we’ve heard the last of him. When he does choose to re-emerge into the public eye, poor old Patrick may be able to use the Profile which he completed with such pains and which hasn’t yet been published.

  I took my annual leave in August. When I got back Laurence Fairbrass sent for me and offered me the job of taking charge of Jonas’ abandoned practice. A solicitor can’t just shut up shop like a greengrocer. There are too many things going on. Not only litigation. Trusts and administrations and half-finished conveyancing matters. The Law Society has to step in sometimes and help to clear up the mess.

  Mutt advised me to take it. She never had a high opinion of me as an administrator. Much too soft-hearted. It was a pretty fair shambles, but Willoughby agreed to stay on and we gradually got things under control. Jonas wasn’t much help. He was far too busy reorganizing the Sambourne General Stores.

  The general election was held in the second week of October. The Government was thrown out and the Opposition came in with a majority of twenty-five seats. One of the first actions of the new Government was to set up an official enquiry into the Se
curity Services. Most of its hearings had to be in camera and its report was a model of discretion.

  Air Vice-Marshal Pulleyne was made a principal scapegoat and was removed from his job. But since no one felt able to explain what that job was, the effect of his dismissal was muted. Benz-Fisher was felt to be too dangerous to pursue and his name was never mentioned publicly at all. He continued to live very happily with his blonde girlfriend in the hills above Grasse, drawing from time to time on one of his bank accounts in Switzerland.

  One odd result of the election was that the new Government honoured, as it often does, the less controversial sections of the dissolution list of its predecessor, and Edward Lambard got his Knighthood. As far as he was concerned it was from the wrong party, but a detail like that didn’t worry his wife, I imagine.

  Only the other day I happened to see Jonas’ name in the papers again. It was a small paragraph in the Evening Standard, under the byline, ‘A Village Hampden’. It reported that Jonas Killey, an ex-solicitor now running the village store and post office, was commencing proceedings against the local squire, Edwin Lamplough, to have a right of way across the park reopened.

  I felt deeply sorry for Mr Lamplough.

  Michael Gilbert Titles in order of first publication

  All Series titles can be read in order, or randomly as standalone novels

  Inspector Hazlerigg

  Close Quarters (1947)

  They Never Looked Inside (alt: He Didn’t Mind Danger) (1948)

  The Doors Open (1949)

  Smallbone Deceased (1950)

  Death has Deep Roots (1951)

  Fear To Tread (in part)(1953)

  The Young Petrella (included) (short stories)(1988)

  The Man Who Hated Banks and Other Mysteries (included) (short stories)(1997)

  Patrick Petrella