Flashpoint Read Free

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.”
    “It wouldn’t be the same members now. A lot of them will have retired. Some of them will be dead.”
    “The fact that a wrong is difficult or troublesome to put right,” I said, quoting from one of the more sanctimonious of the recent judgements in the Court of Appeal, “is no reason, at law, for not correcting it.”
    Laurence took off his glasses and chewed the end of the earpiece for a bit. Then he said, “You must have some idea what he wants.”
    “To be honest,” I said, “I believe that if Will Dylan got up in public and admitted that he was right, Jonas might feel that honour was satisfied.”
    “Will Dylan? How does he come into it?”
    “He was Secretary and Treasurer of ACAT at the time. It was his first Union job.”
    “I saw him on television last night. He seemed a reasonable sort of cove. Do you think he’d play?”
    “He comes from Yorkshire,” I said, “and Yorkshiremen aren’t noted for admitting they were wrong. Look at the troubles they’ve had with their cricket team.”
    I knew this would divert Laurence. It was ten minutes before we got back to the subject in hand. He said, “You’ll have to go down and see Killey. His office is in Wimbledon. It won’t take you long.”
    “What am I meant to do? Brainwash him? He’s even less likely than Dylan to admit that he was wrong. It’s his life’s work. His one-man crusade.”
    “He told me he’d got some new evidence.”
    “What does it matter if he has,” I said. “He’s flogging a dead horse. Not only a dead horse. One that’s died and been buried and forgotten by everyone except him.”
    “We’re here to serve the profession. He says he wants to talk to us. If you don’t go down and see him, he may come up here and see me. And I’m busier than you are.”
    I couldn’t contradict this. When he was going he said, “Didn’t I see something in the Watchman the other day about Dylan?”
    “They’re doing a profile on him. As a matter of fact, it’s my brother-in-law, Patrick Mauger, who’s doing it.”
    “When journalists do these profiles they follow the man round for weeks, don’t they, and chat him up. He must have got to know him quite well by now. Do you think he’d help? Slip in a word that we think this thing ought to be buried.”
    “It’s an idea,” I said.
    “Give him lunch some time. The Law Society will pay. Any reasonable amount,” he added hastily.
    “You really mean that?”
    Laurence looked at the file which was six inches thick and spilled across the whole of one side of my desk. He said, “If you can get this bloody man off our necks, it’ll be cheap at the price.”

 
2
    I telephoned Jonas after lunch. He said, “Well, well, fancy hearing from you again. I thought now you’d joined the Establishment you wouldn’t have time to talk to a poor hardworking practitioner.”
    This was Jonas in his playful mood.
    I said that was exactly what I was planning to do. When could I come and see him?
    “You mean that you are prepared to journey all the way down to Wimbledon?”
    “You make it sound like the