Flashpoint Read Free Page A

North Pole. Just name the time and I’ll be there.”
    After that, we had a rigmarole of going through his engagement diary for Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, to demonstrate how busy he was.
    “You’re certainly keeping your nose to the grindstone,” I said. “What about today?”
    “Right now?”
    “Right now.”
    “You mean that an important official of the Law Society is prepared to come down to Wimbledon to see me today?”
    I said patiently, “It looks as if it’s got to be today, or next week. It’s up to you.”
    “Then of course we’ll make it this afternoon.” He was doing me a great favour. “It’s No. 27b Coalporter Street. A few minutes from Wimbledon Station. You won’t find it in the Law List. We haven’t been here very long.”
    I got there at four o’clock. I thought at first that I must have mistaken the number, since the building which was marked as No. 27 appeared to belong entirely to Crompton and Maudling, Surveyors, Auctioneers and Estate Agents. Then I spotted the plate, outside a side door. ‘Jonas Killey, LL B Solicitor and Commissioner for Oaths. Second Floor.’
    Two flights of linoleum-covered stairs edged with metal ribbing led up to a small landing. A hand-printed notice invited me to Ring and Enter, which I did.
    There was a long thin outer office, just large enough to hold two wooden chairs and a table covered with back numbers of the Law Journal. On the walls were handbills announcing forthcoming sales by Messrs Crompton and Maudling, and there was a hatch on the far side with a frosted glass window to it, and a bell on the ledge in front. Beyond it, I could hear a typewriter being punished.
    I pressed the bell. The typing stopped, the hatch opened, and a middle-aged lady peered out. I told her who I was, and she said would I take a seat as Mr Killey was temporarily engaged with a client.
    None of the walls was very thick. I guessed that I was in what had once been a single large room, now partitioned into three or four. I could hear Jonas’ voice. It had an odd nasal twang to it. He seemed to be doing most of the talking. There was an occasional mumble and grumble from his client, like a double bass interrupting a long saxophone solo. Then a door beside the hatch opened and they came out.
    Jonas was saying, “Really, Mr Huxtable, you have to understand that there are rules and regulations which a solicitor is bound to observe.”
    Mr Huxtable looked as though he didn’t give a hoot for rules and regulations, but wanted something on the cheap. He departed grumbling. Jonas said, “We shall be about half an hour, Mrs Warburton. Tell Willoughby he’ll have to wait.” He held the door open for me, and I walked into the front part of the office which commanded a good view of a betting shop on the other side of Coalporter Street, and was crammed with the papers, files, books and paraphernalia which, in a larger office, might have been kept out of sight.
    Jonas waved me to the client’s chair, inspected me briefly and said, “Your hair’s going back a lot. If you don’t watch it, you’ll be bald before you’re forty.”
    “You’re not looking any younger yourself,” I said.
    “If you gentlemen who sit at ease in Chancery Lane had the faintest conception of the work involved in running a solicitor’s practice you would be a trifle more sympathetic to our problems.”
    “All right. I’m sympathetic. That’s why I’ve come to see you. I gather you want us to pursue your Trade Union case for you. I’ve been reading the papers, and I’m bound to say that I think you’re ploughing the sand.”
    “Do you now?”
    “I don’t think any court in the world would order a Trade Union which, incidentally, no longer exists, to hold a meeting, which took place six years ago, all over again because of a technicality which they failed to observe. If it’s any consolation to you, I think you were probably quite right. Under the 1964 Act the apprentice members should have