Flashpoint (17 page)

“That’s quite all right,” said Willoughby stiffly. He handed the money to the older man, who counted it carefully, and said, “Dead right. The young lady done a good job. I’ll give you a receipt.”

He signed the paper he had brought, handed it to Willoughby, winked at Deborah, and led the way out of the room. The younger man shut the door softly behind him. It seemed like a curtain coming down at the end of a violent scene.

Willoughby took a deep breath and said, “I’m sorry that Mr Killey isn’t here. He was called away unexpectedly. However, I think I can bring you up to date with our thoughts on the matter.”

Mr Stukely made no attempt to move. He said, “I, too, am sorry that Mr Killey is not here. I imagine that if he were here he would be able to explain something which has been puzzling me ever since I met this young lady at the bank.”

Willoughby said, “Oh?” He tried to make it sound like a polite enquiry.

“When I was here last, you gave me an interesting explanation of the rules of the Law Society which govern solicitors’ accounts. You told me, correct me if I am wrong, that you kept your own money at the Investors and Suburban Bank and your clients’ money quite separately at the London and Home Counties Bank. Right? Now I gathered from my conversation with this young lady that the account you had been called upon to meet was a private account of your own. Builders, wasn’t it?”

Willoughby gulped and nodded.

“Then perhaps you could explain to me why you were drawing money to meet it from your clients’ account at the London and Home Counties Bank. An account which, I cannot help reflecting, contains twenty thousand pounds of my money. You appreciate my interest in the matter?”

“What happened next?” said Jonas.

“Nothing much. He just pushed off. I’m terribly sorry about it. It was the coincidence of those two blighters turning up just when we were expecting Stukely.”

“And the coincidence of me being away.”

“Yes. There was that too. Do you think he’s going to make trouble?”

“Yes,” said Jonas. “I’m sure he’s going to make trouble.”

As a Junior Minister, Will Dylan had the use of a small room in the House which he shared with his three colleagues. At the moment it was occupied only by him and his agent, Mr Clover.

Mr Clover looked worried. He said, “It’s difficult to put a finger on it, but I can smell trouble.”

“Things seemed happy enough when I was up there last Monday.”

“That’s just when it seemed to start.”

“What started?”

“Talk.”

“Who’s been talking?”

“Edgar Dyson, for one.”

“Edgar’s a hardline Communist. He says what he’s told to say.”

“He’s well thought of,” said Mr Clover. “Next to you, he’s probably the most influential man in the district.”

“As long as he’s only the second most influential,” said Will. He considered the matter. Clover was a good agent, a man who kept his ear to the ground. If he said that trouble was building up, it was a fact and would have to be faced.

“Can you give me some idea what line he’s taking?”

“What he’s saying is that he doesn’t, personally, think you pocketed any of the Union money–”

“Kind of him.”

“But he does think you ought to meet the accusation openly, now that it’s been made, and not hide behind the technicalities of the law. They seem to have got hold of a slanted account of what happened in that Magistrates’ Court, and they don’t like it much.”

“They don’t care a lot for Magistrates in Todmoor,” agreed Will. “What exactly does Dyson mean when he talks about meeting the accusation openly? Officially there’s no accusation to meet. If Killey does succeed in getting out a summons, I shall defend it, of course.”

“It’s awkward.”

“Until that happens, I think it’s a case of least said, soonest mended.”

A colleague shot into the room with a bundle of papers, saw Mr Clover, said, “Sorry,” dumped the papers on the table and made for the door.

“It’s all right, Mick,” said Dylan. “We’ve finished.” To Clover he said, “You say this trouble started up early last week?”

“That’s right. After your visit.”

“I wasn’t the only visitor. Killey was up there too.”

“I wasn’t told about that,” said Clover. “Do you think it was something he picked up while he was up there that started the trouble?”

“The only thing he picked up in Todmoor,” said Dylan with a grin, “was a lovely black eye. Don’t fret, Charlie, we’ve ridden out worse storms than this together.”

It was eight o’clock that evening when he got back to Chiswick and he was surprised to find Fred still up.

“You ought to have been in bed a long time ago,” he said.

His wife came in from the kitchen. She said, “I told Fred to stay up until you came home. You’ve got to do something about it. I told him he’d be punished next time he did it.”

“Did what?”

“He’ll tell you,” said Pauline and went out again, shutting the door behind her.

Fred looked at his father and his father looked at Fred.

“Well?” said Will.

Fred said, “I diddun go to school.”

“Why not?”

“I diddun want to.”

At this point his own father would have said, “Get your pants down. You’ve earned yourself a belting.”

He found himself incapable of saying it. Instead, in tones that were far from fierce, he said, “I thought you liked school. What’s gone wrong?”

“They started saying things.”

“You ought to be able to stand up to that. Call “em names back again.”

“It wasn’t me they said things about,” said Fred. “It was you. They said you’d been stealing money. They said it’s in all the papers.”

And he burst into tears.

“Aren’t children beasts,” said Will. Supper was over. Fred was tucked up in bed, unbeaten but fortified by much good advice. Pauline was sewing a patch into the elbow of a coat. She said, “Of course the papers never said any such thing.”

“Papers don’t have to say things. They’ve trained people to read between the lines. They’ve got a shorthand of their own. If you read that a clergyman has been charged with an offence
involving choirboys
you don’t assume that he has been training the choir in shoplifting, or conspiring with them to burn down the chapel, do you?”

Pauline said, “Sometimes I think we were happier before we had newspapers. Who can be ringing you up at this time of night?”

It was the Prime Minister’s private secretary. He said that the Prime Minister would be most obliged if Dylan could come round and have a word with him. Would he come by the private access through the Foreign Office and the garden of Number Eleven, as there was a deputation of Biafran ladies camped out in front of Number Ten and quite a number of pressmen with them.

“I’m sorry to drag you out on one of your few evenings at home,” said the Prime Minister. “It must be particularly pleasant on the river on a night like this. The trouble is that my own day is parcelled out for me into strict sections. When I want to conduct a little business of my own it has to be squeezed in at odd hours.”

Dylan said he quite understood. Typical of the old man to indicate, indirectly, that he was sufficiently interested in you to know where you lived. He sounded friendly. Dangerous to build on it. The hand behind his back could hold a bouquet or an axe. You wouldn’t know until he brought it out.

“One of the reasons I didn’t want the press and certain other people to see you coming in was that they might have jumped to conclusions. Which, in this case, would have been perfectly correct. I’ve made up my mind to go to the country in October. The precise date hasn’t been fixed, but it’ll be in the first two weeks of the month. I never embark on a general election without assuming” – the Prime Minister switched on his famous smile – “that I’m going to win it. I make my plans on this assumption, and I make them well in advance. In the next Government which I form I want to offer you the Ministry for Employment.”

When I got to the Law Society on Friday morning there was a note on my desk from Laurence Fairbrass asking me to look in on him. When I got there his office was empty. As I was wondering what to do he came in, with a letter in his hand.

“I’ve been having a word with Tom,” he said. “It’s Killey again. Have a look at this.”

The letter was handwritten, on Club notepaper, and covered two pages. It was signed A R Stukely. I read it through twice before I handed it back.

“According to this it wasn’t Killey who drew the cheque,” I said. “It was his partner.”

“Willoughby’s a salaried partner. In fact, an employee. Killey’s responsible for anything he does. You know that perfectly well.”

I knew it perfectly well.

“What do you want me to do?”

“We shall have to look into it. You’ve got the file. You’d better start the ball rolling.”

When a complaint is made against a solicitor, the Professional Purposes Section of the Law Society has to make a preliminary investigation. If it seems to be a prima facie case, it makes a report to the Council, who have to decide whether to prosecute or not. They don’t try the case themselves. It comes before the Disciplinary Committee, which is a separate statutory body, set up by the Lord Chancellor. Most cases are fairly cut and dried and don’t attract a lot of attention. The offender is reprimanded, or fined, or struck off and there is a note in the
Gazette
and that’s the end of the matter.

“Write him the usual letter,” said Laurence. “And it mightn’t be a bad idea if you went down to see him. You know him better than most. He’s more likely to talk to you than to a stranger.”

“If I’m any judge of Jonas’ character,” I said, “he won’t talk to me, or anyone. He’ll sulk in his tent and defy us to do our worst.”

At this point one of the porters appeared. He said, “There’s a Mr Killey asking for you, sir.” Laurence grinned and said, “I’ll leave him to you.”

The first thing I noticed about Jonas was the bruise on his face. It was more than a mere black eye. It had highlighted the whole of the left-hand side of his face in shades of blue-black, purple and yellow.

“Have you been in a fight?” I said.

“I was assaulted by a pack of louts,” said Jonas. “But that’s not what I’ve come to talk about. Or not directly.” He spotted the letter on my desk. “Is that from that man who calls himself Stukely?” Before I could stop him he had picked it up and started reading it.

“I don’t think you’re meant to see that actually,” I said. “It’s a privileged communication.”

“It’s a pack of lies,” said Jonas, when he had finished reading it.

“You mean it didn’t happen?”

“The sequence of events it describes did actually occur.”

“Then how can it be a pack of lies?”

“If you would be good enough to allow me to state the case, without adopting an attitude of officialdom simply because you happen to be sitting behind an official desk, I’ll do my humble best to give you the facts.”

“Carry on,” I said. I had known Jonas too long to allow him to nettle me. At the end, I said, “So you’re telling me it was a put-up job.”

“If you were listening, that will be the impression you will have obtained, I should imagine.”

“There are one or two coincidences,” I agreed. “But coincidences do happen in real life. If the thing was planned, how do you suppose they did it? Weren’t they a bit lucky in their timing?”

“There was no luck about it. My office telephone had been tapped. They knew I had left to look after my mother.”

“But how were they to know it was going to happen at all? Or was that a put-up job too?”

“Of course. It was probably the same two men. They had plenty of time to get down to Wimbledon.”

“But,” I said, “why–”

“Why what?”

“Why should anyone go to all that trouble to rig up a case against you? Trouble
and
expense. You say Mr Stukely actually deposited twenty thousand pounds in your client account. It’s a lot of money.”

“I imagine the Government can find twenty thousand, if it wants to.”

I stared at him.

“Are you serious?” I said at last.

“I have not come here to make jokes. Or to have my word doubted. The Law Society exists to protect the interests of solicitors. You agree with that, I imagine.”

“It’s one of its functions.”

“It’s what I pay my subscription for. A subscription, incidentally, which helps to pay
your
salary. Let us be clear about this. I am not asking for a favour. I have the right to be helped, and I propose to see that I get it.”

I was still trying to grapple with the preposterous idea. I said, “I simply don’t believe that governments behave like that.”

“What you are prepared to believe is a matter of little interest to me,” said Jonas. “If you don’t wish to help, perhaps you will arrange for me to see someone who will.”

“What exactly do you want us to do?”

“This man Stukely must be investigated. He’s clearly a professional
agent provocateur.”

“I don’t think we’re geared for that sort of job. And anyway, we’re meant to be investigating your conduct. Not his.”

“I can see that it’s useless talking to you.”

“When a solicitor’s accused of professional misconduct he usually gets another firm to represent him. Why don’t you do that? Lambard would be glad to help.”

“I have already approached Mr Lambard, and he made it quite clear that he was not interested.”

“Already?”

“Not on this precise point, no. On a connected matter.”

“Try him again,” I said. “This is different. You were a member of his staff. He’ll certainly do it.”

“Of all the solicitors in London,” said Jonas, “I can think of few less suitable. What we are up against here is the Establishment, of which he is himself a member. Now, if you’ve quite finished evading the issue, perhaps you’ll answer my question. Are you prepared to help, or not?”

“I’ll have a word with my boss,” I said.

Laurence Fairbrass said, “Get the file up and prepare a preliminary report. It’ll have to go up to Tom. I didn’t want to bother him, because he’s up to the neck with this Law Revision Committee, but we’ll have to let him know what’s happening.”