Flashpoint Read online

  Copyright & Information

  Flash Point

  First published in 1974

  © Estate of Michael Gilbert; House of Stratus 1974-2012

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

  The right of Michael Gilbert to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted.

  This edition published in 2012 by House of Stratus, an imprint of

  Stratus Books Ltd., Lisandra House, Fore Street, Looe,

  Cornwall, PL13 1AD, UK.

  Typeset by House of Stratus.

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library and the Library of Congress.

  EAN ISBN Edition

  0755105222 9780755105229 Print

  0755131908 9780755131907 Kindle

  0755132270 9780755132270 Epub

  This is a fictional work and all characters are drawn from the author’s imagination.

  Any resemblance or similarities to persons either living or dead are entirely coincidental.

  www.houseofstratus.com

  About the Author

  Born in Lincolnshire, England, Michael Francis Gilbert graduated in law from the University of London in 1937, shortly after which he first spent some time teaching at a prep-school which was followed by six years serving with the Royal Horse Artillery. During World War II he was captured following service in North Africa and Italy, and his prisoner-of-war experiences later leading to the writing of the acclaimed novel‘Death in Captivity’ in 1952.

  After the war, Gilbert worked as a solicitor in London, but his writing continued throughout his legal career and in addition to novels he wrote stage plays and scripts for radio and television. He is, however, best remembered for his novels, which have been described as witty and meticulously-plotted espionage and police procedural thrillers, but which exemplify realism.

  HRF Keating stated that‘Smallbone Deceased’ was amongst the 100 best crime and mystery books ever published.“The plot,” wrote Keating, “is in every way as good as those of Agatha Christie at her best: as neatly dovetailed, as inherently complex yet retaining a decent credibility, and as full of cunningly-suggested red herrings.” It featured Chief Inspector Hazlerigg, who went on to appear in later novels and short stories, and another series was built around Patrick Petrella, a London based police constable (later promoted) who was fluent in four languages and had a love for both poetry and fine wine. Other memorable characters around which Gilbert built stories included Calder and Behrens. They are elderly but quite amiable agents, who are nonetheless ruthless and prepared to take on tasks too much at the dirty end of the business for their younger colleagues. They are brought out of retirement periodically upon receiving a bank statement containing a code.

  Much of Michael Gilbert’s writing was done on the train as he travelled from home to his office in London:“I always take a latish train to work,” he explained in 1980, “and, of course, I go first class. I have no trouble in writing because I prepare a thorough synopsis beforehand.”. After retirement from the law, however, he nevertheless continued and also reviewed for‘The Daily Telegraph’, as well as editing‘The Oxford Book of Legal Anecdotes’.

  Gilbert was appointed CBE in 1980. Generally regarded as ‘one of the elder statesmen of the British crime writing fraternity, he was a founder-member of the British Crime Writers’ Association and in 1988 he was named a Grand Master by the Mystery Writers of America, before receiving the Lifetime ‘Anthony’ Achievement award at the 1990 Boucheron in London.

  Michael Gilbert died in 2006, aged ninety three, and was survived by his wife and their two sons and five daughters.

  Vices necessary in all governments...

  So in all governments there are necessary offices which are not only vile, but vicious too: vices which have there a place, and help to make up the seam in our piecing, as poisons are useful for the preservation of health. If they become excusable, because they are of use to us, and that the common necessity covers their true qualities, we are to resign this part to the most robust and least fearful of the people, who sacrificed their lives, for the good of their country, we who are weaker taking upon us the parts that are more easy and less hazardous. The public good requires that men should betray and lie and murder.

  Essays of Montaigne – (Hazlitt’s Translation)

  Essay No 1 – Third Book

  Prefatory Note

  In a book which I wrote some years ago about the law I said, “There is no point in concealing the fact that London solicitors work in certain well-known and well-defined areas; nor would much purpose be served by giving these fictitious names.” This did not appear to upset anyone, and I hope that the same tolerance will be extended not only to the lawyers of all branches, solicitors, barristers, magistrates and judges, who feature in this book, but also to politicians and the press. The mention of the holder of an office has no reference whatever to any particular holder of that office, past or present. All the characters in this novel are entirely imaginary. It should also be noted that both the major political parties have their headquarters in Smith Square, Westminster.

  1

  The law, with its customary contempt for scientific fact, has decided that June 24th is midsummer day. It was half past six and I was on my way home from work.

  The long-range weather forecasters had told us it was going to be the hottest summer of the century, and it was getting off to a good start. When the train crawled out of Liverpool Street the carriage was full and the heat was overpowering. As the journey went on people got out and I was able to move into a corner by the open window and catch some of the breeze which came off the Essex saltings.

  It had been quite a day.

  When I joined the Law Society, as an assistant solicitor, four years after qualifying, all my friends said I was mad. Maybe I was. I realized there would be snags. Most of the people I dealt with would be older than myself, and would be suspicious of a young man who had abandoned the hard slog of practice for a seat in the bureaucracy of the law.

  What I had not appreciated was how awkward solicitors could be as a bunch. It’s the same with doctors. Take them singly and they’re nice enough. Lump them together, in some sort of professional organization, and you’ll find out how quickly they discard their bedside manner and behave like a herd of bullocks. Ask anyone who works for the BMA.

  I was one of eight solicitors in the Professional Purposes Section, which is the largest section in the Society. It’s important, too, being the one which has the most immediate contact with the members. Laurence Fairbrass, the departmental head, taught me a lot about human nature. We’d had a fair amount of human nature to cope with that midsummer day.

  The last of several straws had been a telephone message from Jonas Killey.

  When I came out of articles I took my first job with Sexton and Lambard, a big outfit in High Holborn. Jonas, who was ten years older than me, and had been with them for a year or two when I arrived, was told off by Edward Lambard to look after me. I think he welcomed the job, because he had very few friends.

  In Lincolnshire, which was where Jonas came from, they have a word ‘clench’. It means just what it sounds like. Rigid, uncompromising, prickly, with a bit of a grudge against life. Sometimes it’s the result of being bullied at school. You spend the rest of your life trying to get your own back on it. Like Wingate.

  The train pulled up with a jerk at Senhurst Street. Mutt was waiting for me on the
platform, and I promptly forgot about the Law Society and Jonas Killey and Orde Wingate and thought only about how lucky I was to have married her.

  It’s no good asking why my wife is called Mutt. It isn’t her name, or anything like it. There is a theory that it was originally Matt, being short for Matilda, and that she was called this either because she had early developed a talent for telling lies, or because she once set her nursery on fire.

  The Archbishop of Canterbury was tucked up in a wicker basket on the back seat of the car. His light blue eyes were shut and his round red face, under its fringe of hair, was set in the grave business of sleep. Mutt brings him to the station when she comes to meet me, considering him far too young to be left at home, even for ten minutes, although it was difficult to see what harm he could come to wrapped up like a cigar and tucked into a basket. I think she had once read a story about a cat that had come in and sat on a baby’s face and smothered him.

  We had been married for five years, and our second child was, fairly obviously, on the way.

  “You poor darling,” she said, “have you had a hellish day?”

  “Fairly hellish,” I said. “Let me see. In the morning we had the Ancient Mariner. He’s fun, but he does take up a lot of time.”

  “He holds you with his skinny hand.”

  “Not his skinny hand. His glittering eye. Then there was Women’s Lib in the early afternoon. And the Mighty Mouse turned up just before tea. And guess what? Just when I was thinking of packing up, Jonas Killey telephoned me.”

  “Jonas?” My wife wrinkled her small nose. “He’s a monomaniac. Monomaniacs are dangerous. Did you know that?”

  “I don’t think he’s dangerous. But he’s a terrible bore.”

  “All monomaniacs are dangerous,” said my wife, steering neatly round a hay cart and waving to the driver as she did so. “They’re mentally lopsided, and sooner or later it makes them topple over. What did he want this time? Was it that thing he used to rabbit on about when he came down to stay with us?”

  “The very same thing,” I said. “At least, I think it was.”

  When I was first married, I sometimes used to ask Jonas down for a weekend. He was a bachelor, with a mother tucked away somewhere in North London, so he was often at a loose end. As a guest I must admit he was no trouble. I don’t think he noticed what he ate, and he went to bed early. His only amusement seemed to be walking – and talking. I went with him, knowing well enough that in the first five minutes he’d be rambling on about ASIA and ACAT and MGM and Will Dylan.

  “He’s on television tonight,” said Mutt, as though she was reading my thoughts.

  “Jonas?”

  “No. Will Dylan. The man Jonas has his knife into. He’s doing a discussion thing. He’s a coming man.”

  “Who said so?”

  “Patrick. And he ought to know.”

  (Patrick is Mutt’s brother. He’s one of the Lobby correspondents on the Watchman.)

  “Patrick’s doing a profile on him. He says he’s terrific.”

  “What’s he going to do tonight? Show us a few conjuring tricks?”

  “It’s a discussion. With a Trade Union official and the managing director of ICI and someone from the London School of Economics.”

  “It doesn’t sound like my sort of programme.”

  “He’s terribly good. I heard him doing the same sort of thing last month. He had them all tied up in knots.”

  He came on after the ten o’clock news. I’d heard his name so often in Jonas’ windy diatribes that I was interested to see what sort of person he was.

  It was a square face that looked as though it had been cut out of wood by someone with a sharp chisel and a fairly good eye. The chin had a cleft in it, and the thick black hair was touched with grey. It was the sort of face which photographed very well. His voice had an ensnaring Yorkshire burr.

  “Isn’t he lovely?” said Mutt.

  He was more than a photogenic face. I realized that after listening to him for five minutes. The opposition wasn’t in the same league. It was like watching Bradman bat against minor county bowling. He hit them all over the shop, but managed to do it with a grin on his face which robbed the performance of most of its sting.

  He had a way of taking over his opponent’s argument, when it had got a bit tangled, restating it in clearer terms, and then picking it up and shaking it until most of the fallacies had fallen out. His strength was that he seemed to know more about Trade Unions than the trade unionist, and more about how to run a business than the managing director. The economist made whining noises from time to time, but none of the others took much notice of him.

  At eleven o’clock the compère called time, and we put the dog out and went to bed.

  Mutt was six months pregnant, and making love had become uncomfortable, so I lay on my back beside her, and watched the moon climbing up through the branches of the trees and listened to the owls tuning up for the nightly overture. It was cool and lovely and peaceful and I remembered it, because there was not much coolness or peace in the weeks to come.

  The next morning Laurence Fairbrass blew into what was charitably called my office. It was the size of a midshipman’s berth and was all the footage which the Law Society could spare a junior assistant. Laurence had a red face and grey hair and was mad about cricket. He still played a good game although he was fifty plus.

  He said, “I understand Killey rang you up last night.”

  “He did,” I said. “Incidentally, how did you know?”

  “He rang me up this morning. He says he’s got a new angle on that business of his.”

  “It’s got more angles than Euclid.”

  “You’d better look it up.”

  “I’ve looked it up a dozen times already.”

  “Make it a baker’s dozen,” said Laurence happily and bounced out.

  When I had got through the morning post I went down to Filing. Old Reiss extracted the bulging orange-coloured folder which was labelled ‘Killey re ACAT’, and I spent the next two hours looking through the statements and affidavits and Union rule books and accounts and chronological summaries; the debris of an unfought battle.

  It was in 1965 that the Mining and General Metalworkers Union had swallowed up little ACAT, otherwise the Aluminium, Copper and Allied Trades Union. ACAT had not struggled very hard to prevent themselves being swallowed. Actually it was fairly clear that they had welcomed the transaction. With their five or six hundred members they hadn’t packed many punches and, on balance, preferred the comfort and security of being a small cog in a large machine; and MGM, which holds the sort of position in the North that the Transport and General Workers do in the South, is very large indeed.

  When I first read the papers, it had occurred to me that the marriage had been consummated rather hastily. The 1964 Trade Union (Amalgamations) Act had been passed to make mergers easier, but it was new, and there were pitfalls in it. It did seem possible that the organizers of this merger had fallen into one of them.

  The snag was that the rules of ACAT didn’t give apprentice members, who were under twenty-one, a vote. Accordingly, the meetings which had been called to vote on the merger had been confined to full members. What had been overlooked was that Section 2 of the Act laid down that on this particular issue all members were entitled to vote, whatever the rule book said.

  This produced several of the sort of nice points which lawyers enjoy, and I could see young Jonas Killey licking his lips over them. At that time he was a salaried solicitor with Markstein, Place and Pennington of Sheffield, a firm with a big Union practice, and he had been given the job, under the senior partner, Arnold Markstein, of drafting the Instrument of Amalgamation and the new rule book, and had done most of the preliminary work himself.

  Unfortunately, when the actual meetings were held, he was away on sick leave, and when he came back, and studied the record of the proceedings, he had started to fuss. I had in front of me a copy of a memorandum which he had written t
o his senior partner. It was long, verbose and crammed with references to statutory enactments and decided cases. But what must have annoyed Arnold Markstein most was the suggestion, which underlay every other sentence, that if he, Jonas Killey, had been at the helm things would not have been mishandled in the way they had been.

  After this the air grew thick with memoranda. Sections of half a dozen Trade Union Acts were cited, the rule in Foss and Harbottle made its ritual appearance and Natural Justice hovered in the wings.

  When Mr Markstein had had enough of this, he introduced a rule of his own into the proceedings, which was that junior employees should be seen and not heard. Jonas was notified that his services were no longer required, and he came South, bringing his case, like King Charles’ head, under one arm. As soon as he was settled in at Sexton and Lambard he took up the cudgels again.

  You had to hand it to him, he hadn’t left many stones unturned. He had approached, successively, the Registrar of Friendly Societies, the General Council of the TUC, his own member of parliament, the Lord Chancellor, the Ombudsman and various organs of the press. Finally he tried the Law Society, and the file had landed, with a dull thud, on my desk.

  “You knew this chap,” said Laurence who had reappeared. “For God’s sake choke him off. He’s getting the law a bad name.”

  “You won’t choke him off easily,” I said. “It’s his life’s work. He explained it all to me on three successive seven-mile walks.”

  “What does he want us to do, for God’s sake?”

  “I think he’s got beyond that stage. He just knows that ACAT broke the rules. I suppose the only thing they could do would be to have the meetings all over again.”

  “It all happened years ago.”

  “Time means very little to Jonas.”