Flashpoint

by Michael Gilbert

  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.

  10

  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.”

  “Oh?”

  “But you can’t find it, can you?”

  “No.”

  “You looked for it, but you couldn’t find it.”

  “I’m afraid that’s right,” said Mr Mason, turning his pink placid face towards Jonas. “I’m very much afraid that’s right. We both searched thoroughly, but we couldn’t find what you wanted.”

  Jonas felt certain that the old man was lying. Markstein had warned them that he was coming and had told them what he wanted. The accounts were there. Accountants always kept one set for themselves. It was not all that long ago. If only he could get rid of the woman.

  He said, “There’s one other matter I have to discuss with Mr Mason. It really is entirely confidential. Do you think I could speak to him alone for a moment?”

  “No,” said Miss Mason. She said it neither rudely nor abruptly, but in the firm and final tone in which a nurse refuses a child a treat. Jonas stared at her.

  After a moment she said, “My brother doesn’t care to see people alone. It worries him too much.”

  “That’s right,” said Mr Mason. “I get worried.”

  He didn’t look worried. He had travelled beyond the land of worry. He had crossed the frontier, into the land of illusion, and was heading for the land of sleep.

  Miss Mason said, “Well, what is it?”

  Jonas felt disinclined for further invention. He got up and said, “If I’m not permitted to speak to Mr Mason in private, there’s nothing more I can usefully say.”

  “That’s that, then,” said Miss Mason. She also got up. Mr Mason waved a white, blue-veined hand towards him and said, “Goodbye, goodbye. I’m sorry you should have come so far to no good purpose. You’ll have to excuse me not getting up. My legs aren’t what they were.”

  When Jonas had gone Miss Mason went into the room at the back of the house which was still referred to as the business room although no business had been done in it for many years. She unlocked a wooden cabinet, took out a green covered set of accounts, and looked them over curiously. She wondered what secrets they contained which were important enough to bring a busy man all the way from London to look at them. They meant nothing to her, but Mr Markstein’s instructions had been quite clear. It was through Mr Markstein that their pension cheque from ASIA reached them each month.

  She put them back and relocked the cabinet.

  Jonas was driving, rather faster than he usually did, to exorcize his frustration. It took him half an hour to clear the northward sprawl of Sheffield, but as soon as he had passed through Sandygate he was in a different country. The road followed the course of the Rivelin stream, climbing steadily through Hollow Meadows and past Moscar Cross, where a board marked the extreme western limit of Yorkshire, and then dropping sharply to the Ladybower Reservoir.

  It was a gaunt and sombre landscape. In place of the soft limestone of the south, sharp peaks of millstone grit, tors and edges slashed by sudden ravines, criss-crossed by lines of dry-stone wall, broken by patches of dark green grass where flowers seemed unwilling to grow.

  As Jonas drove, the thought crossed his mind that in all the five or six years that he had lived and worked in Sheffield he had never suspected that this rugged savagery lay, less than an hour’s easy drive, behind his back door. He had been too busy to waste his time admiring scenery. Now, for the first time, he felt something of its menace. The sun was still shining, but its light was hard and heavy. Behind the whaleback of Kinder Low and Edale Head a storm was building up.

  From Ladybower Inn the road climbed south, skirting Bamford Edge, crossed the main railway line and joined the main road to Todmoor and Castleton. Instead of following it directly into Todmoor he turned aside up a minor road, into the hills above. It was as though he wanted to spy out the land before venturing too far into it.

  ASIA was spread out below him, like a diagram in a primer of industrial geography. The quadruple line of pot-rooms anchored to their own power station. The anode plant and cast-house. The private line of rail which branched from the main line at the exit of the long Cowburn tunnel and brought the truckloads of alumina from Stretford Docks to the factory; and, striding away to the northeast, the double line of pylons which climbed over Win Hill and dipped down out of sight towards Ladybower.

  The effect on Jonas was curious. He was seeing, for the first time, in the flesh, something which had, up to that point, only been a symbol. He had read the name ASIA so many times, had written about it, thought about it and argued about it and here it was, suddenly spread out before him in hard outline. It was like going out one morning, turning a corner and coming face to face with a well-known character out of a book.

  He turned his car carefully and drove down to Todmoor.

  A woman directed him to Sam Barming’s house which turned out to be a bungalow, lying a few yards back from the main road and close to the works entrance to the smelter. Like the sailor who could not bear to be out of sight of the sea, Sam Barming had evidently decided to enjoy his retirement within sight and sound of his life’s work.

  As Jonas walked up the front path, the clouds finally overcame the sun and a shadow swooped down on the valley from Edale Moor. Jonas rang the bell.

  For a long minute nothing happened. Then he heard the thump of footsteps approaching, the door was flung open, and Sam Barming appeared. He was a big, well-made man who had gone to seed, a human edifice in which almost everything was tumbling into ruin, dropped cheeks and chin, fallen shoulders, sagging stomach. He walked with the aid of a heavy, rubber-tipped stick.

  He said, “Well? Who is it? What do you want?”

  Jonas said, “Can I come in?”

  “Is that your car?”

  “It’s one I’ve hired.”

  “What did you say your name was?”

  “I didn’t. But it’s Killey.”

  “It’s what?”

  “Killey.”

  “What do you want?”

  “I’d like a word with you.”

  Mr Barming seemed to be t
urning this over in his mind. Jonas saw his lips moving, and the tip of his tongue appearing and disappearing, like a snake looking cautiously out of its hole. Then he said, “Orright.”

  “Hadn’t we better go inside?”

  Mr Barming turned and stumped away down the passage and into the living-room, leaving Jonas to follow. It was a room which might have been neat and cheerful when Mrs Barming was alive to look after it, but like its owner it had gone to seed.

  Mr Barming perched his sagging bottom on the corner of the table. Jonas chose one of the hard chairs beside it. They seemed to him to be safer than the cavernous armchairs in front of the fire. Mr Barming swung one of his great legs slowly, and said nothing. Jonas said, “I expect you know why I’ve come. I imagine that Markstein will have telephoned you.”

  Mr Barming nodded, and continued to say nothing.

  “Then I won’t waste a lot of your time.”

  Five minutes or five hours, it made no difference to Mr Barming. He had the rest of his life to waste.

  “What I’m looking for is a copy of the last set of accounts Dylan prepared for you. The final account before the amalgamation. You were one of the three trustees. I think you’ll agree that it’s your duty, as a trustee, to see that nothing went amiss with the funds of your Union. After all, that’s what you were elected for, isn’t it?”

  The darkening of Sam Barming’s face was as ominous as the darkening of the landscape outside. Had Jonas been in any degree a sensitive man he would have got up and got out; out of the house, out of Todmoor. Being Jonas, he settled more comfortably in his chair and prepared to improve the occasion.

  He said, “If you consider the matter rationally, you will see that you have nothing to lose and everything to gain by co-operating with us. Consider the alternatives. If the discrepancy in the accounts can be cleared up, well and good. You’ll have done Dylan a good turn, won’t you? If on the other hand it should eventually transpire that he had been helping himself to Union money then your mates at the smelter will be thankful to you for seeing–”