Flashpoint (22 page)

Willoughby said, “If I use much more force I’ll snap the key. There’s something in the lock. It’s not dirt. It’s something hard.”

At this point Jonas arrived. He examined the lock and sent Deborah out to fetch the ironmonger from his shop at the other end of Coalporter Street. The ironmonger arrived with a probe and a length of wire and after a few minutes of fiddling extracted the fragment of metal that was jamming the lock and got the door open.

“Stone the crows,” he said. “Someone’s been having a party, no error.”

The outer office was a sea of papers. Filing cabinets had been opened, and the contents strewn over the floor. The mess in the other rooms was worse. Every drawer in Jonas’ desk had been emptied by the simple process of pulling it out and upending it. The top drawer, which he kept locked, had been smashed. Books had been swept out of the shelves. Folders of papers had been torn open and the contents added to the pile in the middle of the room.

The ironmonger said, “I’ll give the police a ring from my shop. Not much good trying to use that.”

The telephone had been pulled out of the wall.

The police sergeant who arrived examined the chaos with an experienced eye. He said, “Doesn’t look as if they were after money. They’d have gone straight to the safe.”

“I don’t think they were after money,” said Jonas. He sounded unperturbed, almost uninterested. “Actually I think they were after some papers.”

“Something important?”

“Important to them. But they didn’t find it.”

“And how would you know that, sir?”

“Because if I’m right, the things they were looking for are in my own lawyer’s strongroom up in Holborn.”

The sergeant considered this. He said, “Well, sir, if you know what they were looking for, you must have some idea who it was did the job.”

“Oh I have,” said Jonas. “It was Her Majesty’s Government.”

The sergeant looked at Jonas suspiciously. Then he said, “Mr
Killey
?
Mr
Jonas
Killey? Aren’t you the man they’ve been making all that fuss about in the papers?”

“I believe there have been a number of reports. I haven’t bothered to read them.”

“Thought I recognized the name. I’m going to get the inspector in on this.”

“Will it be all right if we start clearing up?”

“Can’t do much harm. Not easy to pick up fingerprints on paper. Better leave your desk for the moment. We might pick up something off that.”

By the time the inspector arrived a measure of order had been restored. The inspector examined the lock and the piece of metal which had been retrieved from it.

“Professional job,” he said. “They used a thin key blank and forced up the catch with it. Works all right in an old lock, when there’s plenty of play in the gate. Forced it so hard they broke the tip off.”

The sergeant agreed with him. He said, “Must have taken quite a time to do all this. I’d better start asking round. See if anyone noticed anything. No curtains on the windows. Someone may have noticed the light on.”

When the sergeant had gone, the Inspector said, “Did I understand, sir, that you told Sergeant Borrie you had some idea who might have done this?”

“I was pulling the sergeant’s leg,” said Jonas. “I’ve really no idea. I expect the man was after cash. He wasn’t equipped to open the safe, so he turned the place upside down.”

“But what could he have expected to find?”

“He probably did it out of spite,” said Jonas impatiently. “As far as I can see, we don’t seem to have lost anything. The desk will have to be repaired and the telephone put back. I’ve spoken to the Post Office about that. They’re sending an engineer right away.”

“I shall have to make a report,” said the Inspector.

“You do that,” said Jonas. He sounded unaccountably cheerful.

A possible reason for this was explained when he sent for Willoughby after midday. “I thought I ought to tell you,” he said, “only that little bit of fuss this morning put it out of my head. I’ve heard from the Law Society. They don’t intend to take any further action about Mr Stukely’s complaint.”

“They don’t – for God’s sake. What’s made them decide? I mean – I’m very glad.”

“They came to the conclusion that Mr Stukely was not likely to prove a reliable witness. Did you succeed in reassembling Mrs Lampier’s file? I must do something about her maintenance claim.”

Willoughby returned to his own room and converted an imaginary try by booting the waste-paper basket over the desk. He was a conscientious young man, and the thought that he might have blotted his copybook at the outset of his professional career had been weighing very heavily on him.

“I wonder
when
he knew,” he said. “For God’s sake. He might have told me before. A professional misconduct charge. ‘Thought I ought to tell you.’ The office burgled. ‘A little bit of a fuss.’ I wonder if anything really
would
upset him.”

Half an hour later he found an answer to this. Jonas came into his room. His face was white. He said, “I’ve just had a call from the nursing home at Woking. My mother’s had a turn for the worse. I’m going there right away.”

Willoughby made some suitable comment. He had never met Mrs Killey, and could not feel very deeply about her. His immediate reaction was that with Jonas out of the way he could take a decent lunch break. He felt that he could use it.

A favourite lunching place, when he had time to get there and back, was the Ring of Bells on Putney Common. A public house which served a decent variety of food, and where he could usually encounter rugby-playing acquaintances. He fell in with two of them at once, and was joined by a third. This involved four rounds of drinks. By the time the last of them had been consumed, Willoughby felt that he was ready to eat.

He shared his small table with a man he thought he had met before, but could not quite place. It is difficult to sit face to face with someone, one yard from them, without saying something. Willoughby, who was not a reticent young man at any time, and was feeling particularly relaxed and happy at that moment, was soon deep in conversation.

Two further rounds of drinks followed. The man opposite was a year or two older than him, and had a pleasant, non-descript face. The tie he was wearing had silver crossed quills on a dark red background. Willoughby meant to ask him about it, but the conversation had somehow turned on to his own job. Willoughby was not drunk. But he had reached a point where it seemed easy and natural to confide in a chance-met stranger things that he might not have said at all if he had been strictly sober.

Soon he was telling him about the burglary. The young man was most interested, and insisted on ordering another drink.

“If your boss has gone down to this nursing-home place at Woking,” he said, “it’s ten to one he won’t be coming back at all today. Might as well make the most of it. After all, it isn’t every day you have a burglary to celebrate.”

“As a matter of fact,” said Willoughby, “it wasn’t only the burglary. Something else happened this morning.”

The young man was a good listener. The story of Mr Stukely’s appearance and disappearance lost nothing in the telling.

At half past two the shutters went up on the bar, and they drifted out into the street. The young man had a car, and obligingly dropped Willoughby at the end of Coalporter Street. Then he sprinted to the nearest telephone box and dialled a number.

The news editor of the
Banner
said, “What’s that?” and “Come again. Say it slowly and I’ll get someone to take it down.” And finally, “I suppose it’s true.”

“Of course it’s true,” said the young man. “He works in Killey’s office. I took him back there just now, to make sure.”

“We’ll get people checking up on all the different angles,” said the news editor. “You got the name of that nursing home in Woking? Good boy.”

Parts of the room were dark; parts were bright, where the afternoon sun struck down through the slats of the Venetian blind and laid patterns on the floor.

Killey sat beside the bed. His mother was asleep. He could see the deep lines which life had carved on her face, but sleep had flattened the edges and relaxed the tensions. Her mouth was half open, and she was breathing shallowly.

He had not needed the matron’s guarded remarks to tell him that she was slipping downhill.

He had sat there quietly for more than an hour when she opened her eyes. It took her a minute or two to collect herself. When she turned her head to look at Jonas he saw that she was fully conscious and that there was a gleam of animation in her eyes. Her voice had the sharp edge to it which he remembered.

“What are you doing here?” she said. “You ought to be working.”

“I thought I’d take the afternoon off,” said Jonas. “How are you?”

“Bored. Lift the blind a bit. I don’t like this dim light. It’s like being in church.”

Jonas discovered how the complex of cords on the blind worked and opened the slats, letting in a flood of light.

“That’s better,” said his mother. “You don’t look too fit yourself. I expect you’ve been overworking. How’s it going?”

Jonas knew what she meant by ‘it’. He said, “It’s going all right. We’re in the Court of Appeal on Monday.”

“The Court of Appeal,” said the old lady. “That’s where your father ended up. It never did him a scrap of good.”

“He won.”

“I wasn’t talking about winning. I was talking about doing him good. It killed him. You don’t call that doing good.”

Jonas said, patiently, “I don’t think that’s quite true.”

“Of course it’s true. Mind you, if he’d known he was going to die the next day he’d still have gone on with it. He was obstinate. As obstinate as you are.”

There was a long silence. The brief spark of animation had died down. Jonas wondered if she had dropped off to sleep again. But she apparently had been thinking. She said, “If I asked you to stop it, would you do that for me?”

“I couldn’t,” said Jonas.

“Why not?”

“It’s gone too far. I couldn’t stop now. It wouldn’t be possible.”

“They’re only using you.”

“Who are?”

“The newspapers. I’ve read them. They used your father too. I’ve got boxes full of them at home. They all said how wonderful he was. A little man standing up to a big company and beating it. They didn’t really care. A week later they’d forgotten about him. It’ll be the same with you. You realize that?”

The old lady’s eyes were snapping. There was more vitality in them than Jonas had seen for months.

“I can’t help it,” said Jonas. “I didn’t ask the papers to join in. I don’t need their help.”

“You’ll get it whether you like it or not, my boy. Once they get hold of you, you belong to them.”

“What’s all this,” said the matron. “We mustn’t get excited. It’s not good for us. I’ve brought you both a cup of tea. Then we shall have to turn you out, Mr Killey. We’ve got to make your mother comfy for the night.”

When Jonas got outside he found two men waiting for him. They fell in beside him as he walked away. One of them said. “We’re from the
Evening Banner,
Mr Killey. Would you care to comment on a report we’ve had–”

Jonas quickened his pace until he was nearly running.

“–A report we’ve had that the Law Society were contemplating proceedings against you but have now decided to drop them.”

There was a policeman walking along the opposite pavement. Jonas hailed him. He said, “These men are bothering me
.
Will you tell them to go away.”

“What’s all this, now?”

“Press. We were just asking this gentleman a few questions.”

“If he doesn’t want to talk to you, you’ve no right to pester him.”

“Thank you,” said Jonas. He walked off quickly in the direction of the station. The men hesitated, then started to follow more slowly.

“Well,” said Deborah to the insinuating young man who followed her home and was now sitting in the front room, chaperoned by her mother. “I must admit, at the time, I did think it was odd.”

“Odd, Miss Massingham?”

“Those two men busting into the office like that. Debt collectors, they called themselves. I mean to say. That’s not the way to collect debts, is it?”

“Were they abusive?”

“I don’t know about abusive.”

“Tell him about the typewriter, Deb,” said her mother.

“Oh that.” Deborah began to giggle. “They said, if we didn’t pay up they were going to take away the typewriters. Mrs Warburton – she’s a terrific old stick, really – she’d got a new typewriter that week. An electric one. She just threw herself flat down on top of it.”

“Like a hen with its last chick,” suggested the young man imaginatively.

“She is a bit like a hen,” agreed Deborah.

“Tell him the bit about going to the bank.”

“It was Mr Willoughby sent me. He gave me a cheque. I had to take it down and cash it. That was when I met Mr Stukely. Ever so gentlemanly. He walked back to the office with me.”

“I don’t quite understand about those two banks and the two different accounts. Do you?”

“Search me,” said Deborah. “One bank’s the same as another as far as I’m concerned. Why don’t you ask Mr Willoughby?”

“I expect we shall be doing that,” said the young man.

The attack on the Law Society came just after I had left. The reporter was referred to the head of the Publicity and Public Relations Section, who had no idea what to do with him, and passed him on to Laurence Fairbrass, who was working late. Laurence listened to his opening remarks, and said, “You must realize that you’re asking me to comment on something which, if your facts were right, which I don’t admit, would be entirely confidential.”

“I realize that. It’s just that we’ve been given this story about a complaint being made against Mr Killey and the Law Society deciding not to pursue it. We thought we ought to check up on it.”

“Why?”

“He’s rather in the public eye at the moment.”

“That doesn’t constitute a reason for asking impertinent questions.”

“It does, actually,” said the reporter. “But I can quite see you don’t have to answer them. I’d better say ‘no comment’, I suppose.”