Flashpoint (11 page)

“Both stolen from this office.”

“If you care to put it that way.”

“It’s the truth. And I’ll repeat it in open court if I have to. The judge won’t be happy, I’d guess, about accepting two bits of paper which are second-hand
and
stolen.”

“So you admit you’ve got the originals of both documents?”

“Certainly I admit it. How do you think you’re going to get hold of them?”

“If those documents are vital to my case, there must be some process–”

“You’re talking like a baby. My client is MGM. If you were thinking of bringing a case against them, you might be able to force me to produce them. But you’re not, are you?”

Jonas shook his head. He couldn’t trust himself to speak.

“Your case, if it’s a case at all, which I doubt, is against Dylan. He hasn’t got these documents. And his solicitors won’t have them either. So how are you going to force them to produce them?”

There was a long silence. At the end of it, Markstein said, “You always were an awkward bugger. In some ways I respect you for it. A bit of what we call ‘okkerdness’ can be useful in our job. But like every virtue it turns into a vice when you carry it too far.”

Jonas was looking down at the floor. He still said nothing.

“Another thing, what do you think’s happening to your practice while you’re gallivanting about up North. It’s hard enough to keep a practice going when you give your whole mind to the job. What are your partners going to say?”

“I haven’t got any full partners, actually.”

“Worse still. Who’ve you left in charge of the shop? The office boy?”

“I have a very capable salaried man.”

There was another silence. Markstein looked at Jonas. He saw a white face, a set mouth, a tight jaw. He sighed, and said. “Is there anything else you want to know?”

Jonas looked at a piece of paper he had taken out of his pocket. He said, “It would save me a bit of time if you could give me the present address of Raybould, Pentridge and Barming.”

“Those being the last trustees of ACAT before it got taken over.”

“Correct.”

“Raybould is dead, and Pentridge is in Canada.”

“And Barming?”

“Sam Barming,” said Markstein thoughtfully. “I believe he lives out at Todmoor, near the ASIA works. He retired last year. I expect people out there will be able to give you his address.”

“Thank you. And Mr Mason?”

“You were thinking of seeing him?”

“Yes.”

“He’s a very old man.”

“But he’s still alive?”

“Aye. He’s still alive. He lives on Thorpe Common. The quickest way to get there is up the M1 to the second Rotherham exit point. It’s about half a mile back, on the right, down a side road. I’m not sure how you’d get there without a car.”

“I’m hiring a car tomorrow morning. I shall need one in any event if I’m going out to Todmoor.”

Markstein stared at him. He said, “They can read, you know.”

“I don’t follow you.”

“The people at Todmoor. They’ve all read the papers too.”

“I expect they have,” said Jonas. He got up. As he turned to go, Markstein, who had been consulting a black indexed book on his tidy desk said, “Mason’s telephone number is Ecclesfield 0929. I should give him a ring before you go out there. Have a word with his sister. She looks after him.”

“Thank you,” said Jonas politely.

When he had gone Markstein sat hunched in his chair, unmoving, for nearly a minute. Then he put out a hand, turned back the leaves of the book from M to B, picked up the telephone and asked for a number.

The commercial hotel near the station served the meal which they described as tea at half past six. After Jonas had eaten it he went out into the street.

When he had arrived at midday, Sheffield had been an oven, baking under the sun of that exceptional summer. Now a little coolness had come into the day. Jonas made his way to the bus terminus, and boarded a bus for Owlerton and Framhill.

The rush hour was over, and the old Corporation two-decker trundled him along, first west, then north through nearly empty streets. As they approached Walkley, Jonas realized that he would pass the end of the street in which he had once lodged. It awoke no feelings of nostalgia. He was not a man who lived in the past.

By the time he had reached Framhill and found the street called Cowgate, the sun was going down in red glory mellowing even that unromantic row of terrace houses. There was a small brass knocker on the front door of 109. Jonas tapped with it once or twice, unhopefully, and then banged with his knuckles on the glass. A voice shouted, “Oo is it? Come round the back.”

He pushed open the gate which blocked the mouth of the tunnel between 109 and 111 and picked his way through an entanglement of deckchairs, prams, cartons, beer bottle crates and what looked like a small flying saucer. As he came out at the end something white and soft hit him in the face.

“That’s just Flossie being friendly,” said a big man in shirtsleeves. He stretched out a hand and gathered up the white fantail pigeon from the back of a bench. “I thought I heard you knocking. I don’t open that front door for anyone except the Queen, and she don’t come here often.”

He gave a great guffaw, and the neat white bird in his hand tilted its head and looked at him out of one eye.

“Time you were in bed,” said the man. He nipped his wrist and the pigeon, seeming to understand him, volplaned across to the rambling tenement of boxes, sticks and wire netting which filled the bottom of the garden.

“People’ll tell you you can’t keep fantails and racers together. They say they’ll fight. It’s a load of old knackers. I’ve been doing it for years. I’m Edgar Dyson.”

“Pleased to meet you,” said Jonas. “My name’s Killey.”

“They told me you might be around. Come inside and have a glass of beer. If you don’t mind sitting in the kitchen.”

“I may talk like a Southerner,” said Jonas. “But I was born in Lincolnshire and brought up in Sheffield.”

“You’re a lawyer,” said Dyson. “You used to work for Markstein. Right?”

“That’s right.”

“We read about you in t’paper. The magistrate gave you a bloody nose. Now you’ve come up here to prove him wrong. Bide a moment and I’ll get two glasses. The old woman’s at bingo tonight and we’ll have to look after ourselves.”

If Dyson wished to pose as a simple householder living in a back street this was his business. The bluff speech, the kitchen and the shirtsleeves did not deceive Killey for a moment. He had lived in the North. He recognized that he was in the presence of an unusual man. You were not elected convener in a factory employing four or five thousand men because you kept racing pigeons and slapped people on the back. The row of books which he saw on the shelf above the kitchen table wore the serviceable brown uniform of the Everyman Edition, and had a well-thumbed look about them. Philosophers, economists, political scientists, thinkers and dreamers. Marx rubbing shoulders with Hume and Mill.

Dyson came back with the beer.

He said, “I got the word from friends down South. Anything I can do, in reason, I’ll do it. But I warn you, you’re swimming against the tide. Cheers!”

“Tides turn.”

“As long as you don’t get drowned while you’re waiting for “em to do it.” Dyson took a long pull at his beer, belched comfortably, and loosened his leather belt a couple of notches. “What have you come up here to find?”

“Two bits of paper. And one or two facts.” He explained what he wanted. Dyson drank more beer and thought about it. He said, “When ACAT was on its own, things were done informal like. Not being a registered Union, we made up a lot of our own rules. And we kept “em when we felt like it. Times we didn’t bother. Will Dylan was gaffer. The trustees did what he told “em was best to do.”

“But he had to produce accounts. And the trustees had to approve them.”

“The trustees signed where he put his finger. Phil Raybould was an old woman. Matthew Pentridge was little more than a boy. He married a Canadian girl, and went back to Canada with her, did you know?”

“Markstein told me.”

“Sam Barming, he’s different. Sam had a mind of his own. And a tongue.” Dyson chuckled at some memory. “But he backed Will all the way. He’d seen him come up by the hard road, and he was like a father to him. More than a father. Fathers are quick enough to belt their sons. In Sam’s eyes, Will could do nowt wrong. Mind you, I’m not saying he wasn’t right about that. Will’s a remarkable lad.”

He refilled his own glass and topped up Pilley’s.

“Your best chance of getting a signed set of accounts is from old Mason. If he hasn’t lost “em. As for the amalgamation agreement, MGM have got a copy, no doubt. I’ll see if I can get hold of it. ‘T won’t be easy. The information you want. I’ll put out a few feelers. If proceedings were started there’ll be some sort of record.”

“It’s very kind of you,” said Jonas. “Tell me something. Why are you doing this for me?”

Dyson looked at him speculatively over the rim of his beer glass. He said, “As far as I’m concerned, the answer’s easy. I’m doing it because I’ve been told to do it. It’s you I’m wondering about. You’re on the road to collect a lot of kicks and no ha’pence. What’s driving
you?”

There were a lot of answers to this. Easy answers, which he had often given to himself. That it was intolerable that a crime should be committed and the criminal escape punishment because he was important or popular. That since he was the only man with all the requisite knowledge, it was clearly his duty to pursue the matter. And there were less comfortable answers. Answers in which pride and pique played their part. Under Dyson’s candid gaze all of these answers seemed inadequate. In the end Jonas simply said, “If I didn’t finish this thing off, I shouldn’t think much of myself.”

“Speaking as a man who likes peace and quiet,” said Dyson, “I’m glad I’ve not got your conscience, lad. Drink up.”

It was quite dark when Jonas went out into the garden. From the feathered tenement at the far end he could hear the rustling and clicking as the birds settled down for the night. The air was heavy with the scent of stocks and wallflowers and roses.

Dyson held a torch for him to help him through the dark passageway. As he went past he kicked the flying saucer. “My son made that,” he said. “He thought he was going to fly to the moon in it.”

Jonas walked slowly back to the bus stop. He had a lot to think about. Dyson’s position in the matter was now fairly clear. He must be a member of the Communist Party, possibly of its extreme activist wing, the most disciplined of all the party organizations in the land. He was helping because he had been ordered to help; because, presumably, his masters had seen a political advantage in the upsetting of Dylan.

But there was more than that on his mind. The perversity of his nature was such that opposition stimulated him. The hostility of a man like Markstein had been a positive shot in the arm. Obstruction, enmity, polite disregard, apathy, were familar dragons in his path. What he had found disconcerting was Dyson’s friendliness.

If Dyson had been a different sort of man, his friendliness could have been discounted as mere softness. But he was clearly a fighter. A man who had carved out a small secure kingdom for himself, and was now at ease in it.

At this point the bus arrived, and with it the first heavy drop of rain from the thunderclouds which had been rolling down since dusk from Snailsden Moss and Broomhead Moor.

The thunderstorm cracked and rumbled over Sheffield during the night, but failed to clear the air. The false bright sunshine of the following morning held a threat of more to follow.

Jonas collected his car from the garage near the hotel, and took the Rotherham road. At motorway junction 35 he turned right and, in a mile, right again. He was now in a country lane, running between fields on one side and a golf course on the other. A boy on a bicycle directed him to the Mason house. It was at the far side of the green and had its name ‘Brenjam’ on a shingle by the gate.

A female face at the window watched him as he walked up the red brick path, and a female person opened the door to him before he could touch the wrought-iron bell pull. She had a crop of iron-grey hair drawn back in a bunch over her skull, a powerful nose and a mouth like the slot of a letterbox. She said, “You are Mr Killey. I am Miss Mason. Come in.”

“Who is it, Brenda?”

She marched to the door, and said, in the clearly enunciated tones that one uses when speaking to a child or a deaf person, “This is Mr Killey, James. He telephoned from Sheffield. He has come to see you on business.”

“Business, business,” said Mr Mason. He was perched in a high-backed padded chair near the window, with a rug tucked round his legs. Such hair as he still possessed was white and his cheeks held that pink bloom which means health in youth and high blood pressure in old age.

“Come in, Mr Killey. I’m afraid I can’t get up. My legs aren’t what they were.”

“Please don’t bother.”

“It’s very good of you to come all this way to see me. I can’t quite recall what you wished to talk about, but if we can help you, we shall be glad to do so. When I say ‘we’ I mean my sister and myself. You won’t mind my sister sitting in on our talk. She looks after all my affairs nowadays.”

Jonas did mind. To deal with the artless Mr Mason was one thing. His grenadier of a sister was a different proposition.

He said, “What I had to say
was
rather confidential–”

“Splendid,” said Mr Mason. “Then my sister will be just the person to deal with it.”

Jonas turned to Miss Mason, who regarded him sardonically but said nothing. Jonas said, “Oh, very well. It’s a little complicated, but I’ll try to explain it.”

He repeated what he had said to Markstein. At each pause in his exposition he received a smile and an encouraging bob from the white head opposite. When he had finished, Mr Mason said, “I’m not very quick at grasping these matters, but Brenda will have understood it. She has a wonderful grip of business. Perhaps you could explain it to me, my dear?”

“Mr Killey wants a copy of the last set of accounts you audited for ACAT.”