Читать книгу: «Killing the Lawyers»

2

Even running like hell and driving like Jehu couldn’t get Joe back to his flat and out to Oldmaid Row much before a quarter to six.

Still, he thought, if the guy’s as good as Butcher cracks him up to be, couple of minutes should be plenty to confirm I’ve got a cast-iron case.

He rehearsed it as he kerb-crawled the elegant Regency terrace looking for the chambers.

Back in the autumn, his car had nose-dived through a cattle grid and been bombed by rubble from a ruinous gate arch. Ram Ray had produced an estimate for repairs running into a couple of thousand. ‘No sweat,’ the Penthouse assessor had said. ‘Cause of accident, faulty cattle grid. The estate owner pays.’ But when it turned out that the ownership of the estate was in dispute and that the current occupier was about to start a long prison sentence, the tune changed. This was when Mrs Airey, the senior claims inspector, appeared. She came to look at the remains of the car, sucked in her breath sharply, said it was clearly a write-off and if Joe cared to submit his own estimate of value with supporting documentation, it would be taken into account. Joe made his submission. Penthouse made their offer, Joe thought it was a misprint. He pointed out that his car was close to vintage status. They suggested it missed by a good thirty years and pointed out that the same model was still being manufactured in India. In fact, if they took the price of a new one from Ram Ray and projected twenty-five years depreciation, the value came to something less than one hundred. So the argument swayed for a good three months till finally Penthouse ended it with their cheque and Joe was desperate enough to admit he needed a lawyer.

It wasn’t that he had anything against lawyers, except that they were slow, pompous, patronizing and extortionate. Nothing personal, just what everybody knew. And he saw nothing in Oldmaid Row to disabuse him. It was described in The Lost Traveller’s Guide, the best-selling series describing places you were unlikely to visit on purpose, with a rare lyricism.

‘But now after a long trudge through a desert of architectural dysplasia, the traveller sees before him an oasis of style, proportion and elegance which he may at first take for mere mirage. Here behind a small but perfectly formed park, bosky with healthy limes, runs a Regency terrace so right in every degree that one wonders if some Golden Horde of Lutonian reivers has not rampaged westwards and returned dragging part of Bath amongst its booty. Rest here a while and rebuild your strength for the struggles still to come …’

No one lived here any more, though royal-blue plaques alongside several doors signalled that some of Luton’s brightest and best had once dwelt within. Now it was the best and brightest of the town’s businesses that located here. The rentals were astronomical but the letterhead alone was worth a thirty per cent hype of any normal professional fee.

The firm of Poll-Pott occupied the last house on the left, which in olden times had nursed the muse of Simeon Littlehorn, Poet, ‘The Luton Warbler’. Though not much known beyond his native heath, his ‘Ode on the Death of Alderman Isengard Who Fell Out of a Hot Air Balloon on the 17th of July 1843’ is the shibboleth of all claiming to be native-born Lutonians. As Joe looked at the plaque he could no more keep the opening lines out of his mind than an Englishman can refrain from saying, ‘Sorry,’ when asked to pass the salt.

Oh Isengard whose winged word,

High borne aloft on fiery breath,

E’er raised the hearts of all who heard,

Can such as thou plunge down to death?

As he mused, a BMW pulled up behind the Mini. A woman got out, looked at the poppied paintwork in horror, then advanced to the door and punched in a code which opened it.

As the door closed behind her, Joe jumped forward and blocked it with his foot.

‘Excuse me,’ he said, though in fact he only got as far as ‘Exc …’ before the woman whirled round, jabbed her fingers in his throat, seized his right wrist in both hands, pulled him towards her, then stepped aside and swept his legs from beneath him so that his own momentum sent him crashing to the ground. A knee then rammed between his shoulder blades and his head was dragged back by the hair just high enough for her forearm to slide beneath his chin and crush up against his Adam’s apple.

‘Try to move and I snap your windpipe,’ she said.

Joe tried to croak his understanding, found nothing came out, so tried to telepath it instead.

‘OK, let’s get the police,’ she said.

The hand holding his hair let go, then the arm beneath his chin moved away. He risked a glance round and saw it was no relenting on her part which had brought this relief but the need of both hands to use a mobile phone.

At sight of his head movement she stopped dialling and raised the instrument like a club.

‘I told you, don’t move!’ she yelled. ‘You want your head ripped off?’

She could do it too, Joe guessed. He’d recently started on a martial arts evening class and if he’d learned nothing else after four lessons, he knew that Mr Takeushi, his elderly Japanese instructor, could fillet him and lay him out to dry without breaking sweat. This woman was clearly Black Belt or beyond.

He tried the croak again, this time managed, ‘… Potter …’

She’d resumed dialling. Now she paused once more.

Encouraged, he gasped, ‘… Mr Potter … appointment …’

‘You’re here to see Peter?’ She didn’t sound persuaded. Balding black PIs wearing ex-Luton-works-department donkey jackets and driving antediluvian Minis clearly didn’t figure large among Potter’s clients.

‘… Butcher sent … Bullpat Square …’

‘Butcher? You’re one of Butcher’s?’

A look of distaste touched her face, but at least it was edging out the look of incredulity. Butcher might be to Luton legal circles what Cerberus was to Crufts, but you couldn’t ignore her.

Joe nodded vigorously. The movement eased the pain in his neck and he repeated it.

‘Go on like that,’ she said, ‘and you’ll end up on the back sill of a car.’

But at least she removed her knee from his spine. He pushed himself upright, trying to look as if only old-fashioned courtesy had prevented him from defending himself, but a certain weakness round the knees which sent him swaying for support from the reception counter undermined the act.

The woman, who was youngish, good-looking in a glossy-mag kind of way and wearing a short fur coat which he hoped was imitation but wouldn’t have bet on it, was regarding him assessingly rather than anxiously as she enquired, ‘Are you all right?’

‘I think so,’ he said.

‘Good. You could have caused a serious misunderstanding, forcing your way in like that. Perhaps next time you’ll ring the bell and wait till someone admits you.’

She had to be a lawyer, thought Sixsmith, admiring the way she was already rehearsing her defence against a possible assault charge. He looked around for the file he’d been carrying. The woman spotted it first and scooped it up, allowing the cardboard cover to fall open and give her a glimpse of the contents. The sight of his motor policy seemed to convince her finally of his bona fides.

‘Here,’ she said, handing it to him. ‘You’ll find Mr Potter’s office on the second floor. You are sure he’s here, are you?’

‘Yes. Butcher rang him,’ said Joe.

She frowned as if puzzled by her colleague’s presence, or maybe just his accessibility.

Joe headed for the staircase he could see at the end of the foyer. The woman unlocking a door marked Sandra Iles, called after him, ‘There’s a lift.’

‘It’s OK,’ said Joe nonchalantly. If he couldn’t sue her for a million, he could at least demonstrate that her assault had been a gnat bite.

He ran lightly up the first flight, but as soon as he turned out of sight on a half landing, he halted and drew in great gasps of air which did nothing for his bruised ribs. Also his nose felt like it might be broken from when it had hit the floor. He touched it gingerly but it didn’t fall off.

Recovered slightly, he made his way sedately up the remaining stairs.

The second floor was unlit but enough light filtered up from below to let him see the names on the doors. Victor Montaigne … Felix Naysmith … Darby Pollinger … Peter Potter … all the male partners up at the top with the sole female down below … Legal machismo? Or maybe Iles specialized in assault cases and her clients had access problems.

Such idle thoughts occupied his mind as he raised his hand to knock at Potter’s door, but before his fist could make contact the door was wrenched open by a huge muscular man whose face registered such anger that Joe leapt back, fearful of provoking yet another attack from yet another pugnacious lawyer.

‘Who the hell are you?’ demanded this fearsome figure.

‘Mr Potter, I’m Joe Sixsmith, Butcher rang you, it’s about my car claim, I’m sorry I’m late but I had to go home to get my documentation, and then I got talking with Miss Iles downstairs and the time just flew …’

It came out in a defensive torrent, reinforced by the file which he thrust in front of him.

The man who, on closer examination and as the anger faded from his face, proved to be only about six-one and not much broader than an orang-outang, said, ‘Sixsmith, you say? From Butcher? And you’ve been downstairs with Miss Iles?’

‘That’s right. Look, I know you said I should be here by quarter to six but it’s only …’

He glanced at his watch and saw that the interlude with old Black Belt down below had shrunk his couple of minutes to a couple of seconds.

‘… well, anyway I’d be very grateful if you could just take a quick look …’

He put on what Beryl Boddington called his baby-seal look which she averred might make him irresistible to mummy seals but did nothing for staff nurses who had to be up for the early shift.

Happily, large lawyers didn’t seem to be so adamant.

‘All right,’ said Potter. ‘A quick look then I’m off.’

Joe followed him into the room which was smallish and contained a desk with a typewriter, a few filing cabinets and an old-fashioned coat stand. The lawyer took the file and began to leaf through its contents. Joe, perspiring freely from his recent exertions, took off his donkey jacket, to get the benefit later, and began to hang it on the stand.

‘No need to strip off,’ said Potter irritably. ‘This won’t take long. You’ve wrecked your car, right?’

‘It got wrecked …’

‘And it’s a write-off?’

‘So they say but …’

‘And it was an old banger, made in the sixties? And they’re offering you one twenty-five? Grab it, you’ve got a bargain.’

He glared at Joe as though challenging him to demur.

Joe thought, glad I’m not paying this guy else I’d want a refund! He opened his mouth to voice this thought when a telephone started ringing. The man looked over his shoulder, looked back at Joe, snapped, ‘Wait here!’, stood up and went through a door behind him. It was dark through there, but Joe got a sense of a much larger room. Or chamber! The bastard’s kept me in his typist’s office, thought Joe indignantly.

He heard Potter on the phone, his voice still loud and bad tempered enough to be clearly audible.

‘Felix, I’ve been trying to get hold of you. Yes, that’s right. It’s urgent. Something’s come up. Can you get back for a meeting tomorrow? Good. Midday would be fine. Hang on a moment, will you?’

Potter came back into the outer office.

‘You still here?’ he said. ‘I’ve told you, you haven’t got a case. Now if you don’t mind, I’m busy.’

He rammed the contract back into its file and thrust it at Joe, using it as a weapon to force him to the door.

Joe said, ‘Hey, man, no need to get so heavy …’

‘Just go away,’ snarled Potter. ‘The days are past when you could wreck your old banger and get paid for a Jag XJ.’

Joe was out in the corridor now. He wasn’t a man to raise his voice but some things needed to be heard.

‘One thing to get straight,’ he said forcefully. ‘This ain’t no old banger we’re talking about. This is a vintage Oxford with an engine so sweet it could sing in the Philharmonic Choir.’

‘And pigs could fly!’ sneered Potter. ‘Good night!’

He closed the door. Joe turned away, paused, turned back, and flung it open again.

Potter re-entering his chamber, turned with a look of such fury that Joe almost fled. But some things are more precious than mere self-preservation.

‘I may not have a case,’ he said. ‘But I do have a coat, and you’re not having that off my back.’

So saying, he seized his donkey jacket and swept it down off the coat stand. Unfortunately for the gesture, the collar caught on the point of the hook and as he dragged it loose, the whole stand came toppling over.

Joe’s evasive backward leap took him out into the corridor once more as the stand hit the floor with a tremendous crash. It seemed like a good sound to exit on and pulling his coat round his shoulders he went down the stairs like Batman.

Black Belt was standing in the doorway of her office.

She said, ‘What the hell’s going on up there?’

Joe said, ‘Not much. Whoever said “Kill all the lawyers” just about got it right!’

It was a bold thing to say to someone whose earlier response to much smaller provocation was still jangling through his nerve ends. So he didn’t pause for an answer but headed straight out into the street where the sight of the Magic Mini brought his indignation back to boiling point.

‘Old banger!’ he yelled up at the blank-eyed building. ‘Now this is an old banger. You lawyers can’t tell tit from tat!’

His anger took him down to the Glit, the famous Luton pub dedicated to the living legend of Gary Glitter, superstar, where he poured Guinness down his gullet and his woes into the ear of Merv Golightly. Merv, old workmate, fellow redundant, and reconstructed taxi driver, said, ‘Yeah, yeah,’ in tones of sepulchral sympathy at all the right moments, but his body language, which was as articulate as his six and a half foot length, seemed to have a different script.

‘So what you been up to that’s so interesting, Merv?’ said Joe, slightly hurt to find he was boring his friend. ‘How’s the publicity campaign? I ain’t been swamped by enquiries yet.’

It was a pretty mild retaliatory gibe, but it seemed to hit the button. Merv’s face screwed up in a rictus of anticipated pain and he said, ‘Well, yeah, something to tell you there, Joe.’

‘Hey, Joe, how’re you doing? You look tired, doesn’t he look tired, guys?’

‘Well, he would be, wouldn’t he? All that hard work he’s been doing, but he loves his work, don’t you, Joe?’

‘Yeah, night and day he stays on the job. Night and day!’

The enigmatic greetings from a group of regulars who’d just come in set the whole bar laughing. Joe grinned too and waved his glass, though he couldn’t for the life of him see what was so funny.

‘About the hand-outs,’ said Merv.

Merv regarded himself as a kind of sleeping partner in Joe’s PI business, and as he was Joe’s oldest friend, and as he had sometimes been positively helpful and as he didn’t want pay, Joe was happy to go along with this.

Just before Christmas Joe had been bewailing the slowness of business and Merv, a man of sudden enthusiasms, had said, ‘Yeah, it’s all this goodwill but that won’t last. Holiday over and it’s back to basics. You want to be ready, Joe. You want to be sure your name comes up first when folks find they need a gumshoe. You want to advertise!’

‘Great,’ said Joe. ‘I’ll take a ten-minute spot in the middle of The Bill.’

‘Start small, build big,’ said Merv. ‘Printed hand-outs are the thing.’

‘Couldn’t afford more than three, handwritten,’ said Joe.

‘No sweat. I got this friend, Molly, whose daughter works with some printing firm …’

‘You going out with a woman old enough to have a working daughter?’ interrupted Joe mockingly. ‘You’ll be into grannies next.’

‘She was a child bride,’ retorted Merv. ‘Anyway, I’ve been checking out the cost of putting out fliers advertising the cab, and Molly says Dorrie – that’s the daughter – can get these hand-outs done real pro standard, cost next to nothing, materials only. And I got to thinking, sheet of paper’s got two sides, why not let my friend Joe in on this unique marketing opportunity? Ten quid your share, call it fifteen for cash. What do you say?’

‘I say, what about distribution?’ said Joe, interested despite himself.

‘I go all over in my cab. Few here, few there, push ’em through letter boxes, pin ’em on walls, word’ll spread like smallpox. Let’s work out the wording. Direct message, that’s the name of the game.’

The direct message he’d come up with was:

IN TROUBLE? NEED HELP?

JOE SIXSMITH’S THE MAN

ON THE JOB NIGHT AND DAY

NOTHING TOO SMALL OR TOO BIG

FOR THE JOE SIXSMITH TOUCH.

GOT TROUBLE?

GET SIXSMITH!

Ring, write or call:

SIXSMITH INVESTIGATIONS INC

Top Floor, Peck House, Robespierre Place

(Tel: 28296371)

Couldn’t do any harm, thought Joe. Also, he was touched to see Merv so enthusiastic, motivated by nothing more than friendship. So he’d agreed.

Why was he suddenly wishing he hadn’t?

‘What’s wrong, Merv?’ he asked.

‘Nothing. Well, not much. In fact you’d hardly notice it.’

He dug in his pocket and produced a pale-pink hand-out. He’d been lying. Joe noticed it at once. In fact, it leapt from the page and hit you in the eye.

Every time the name SIXSMITH occurred it was spelled SEXWITH.

‘It was Dorrie’s fault, that’s Molly’s daughter,’ said Merv defensively. ‘She must have misread it from my script and it seems she’s a bit dyspeptic …’

‘You gave her the thing handwritten?’ said Joe incredulously. ‘Shoot, Merv, you know your scrawl makes prescriptions look like road signs. And don’t you mean dyslexic?’

‘That too. And she should’ve checked,’ protested Merv.

‘Yeah, yeah, I bet you made sure she got your name right,’ said Joe, turning the sheet over to look at the advert for Merv’s FAB CAB with his home and mobile numbers. ‘So tell me the bad news. How many copies of this foul-up did you distribute?’

‘Hardly any. And soon as I spotted it I started collecting them back in. Honestly, Joe, if half a dozen people saw it, that’s the limit.’

‘Hey, Merv, watch him or he’ll be giving you that special touch,’ said Dick Hull, the Glit’s owner, as he arrived behind the bar.

‘Yeah, half a dozen, and they all just happen to be in here,’ said Joe.

‘Pay them no heed. Joe, I really have been pulling these things back in and sticking them on the fire. Won’t be any left very soon, I promise you.’

He sounded so genuinely contrite, Joe found his anger ebbing. Confession’s all right for Catholics, said Aunt Mirabelle. It’s putting things right that saves your soul.

His mollification was completed when Merv offered to refund him the fifteen quid he’d contributed to expenses.

‘That’s OK, it was a good idea,’ he said. ‘But in future I’ll stick to word of mouth. And let’s not leave any of these things lying around, OK?’

He picked up the hand-out lying on the bar, thrust it into his pocket, finished his drink and left the bar. This had not turned out to be one of his better days. Best thing to do was pick up Whitey from Mirabelle’s then head for home and see if he could find an old feel-good movie on the box to restore his faith in a benevolent deity. Failing that, he could carry on improving himself professionally by reading Beryl Boddington’s Christmas present. Not So Private Eye, the life story of Endo Venera, the famous Mafia soldier turned gumshoe, as told to some Pulitzer-winning journalist. Beryl’s purpose had, he guessed, been satirical, but Joe was finding the book fascinating and full of pointers.

He took a deep breath of the cold night air. Promised to be a hard frost. Which reminded him he hadn’t closed his office window when he rushed out in his foolish eagerness to get legal advice. Like a man with piles sitting on a red-hot stove for relief. Best head back there to shut it. Way things were working out today, someone would be up the drainpipe and in through the window to help himself to the electric kettle and the answer machine. Probably had been already.

But no, they were both still there, with the machine registering that one call … Four Golden Rings … fat chance!

It was a woman’s voice. Young, nicely spoken, probably black, but with so much cross-dressing these days, it was hard to say. Kids picked their accents like they picked their clothes, to fit the fashion.

She said, ‘Hi, Mr Sixsmith. Like to see you sometime, have to talk about a problem I got. Look, I’ll pass this way early tomorrow, look in just on the off chance. But before nine. If not, I’ll ring again. OK? By the way, the name’s Jones. Miss Jones. OK?’

Way she said Jones had a bit of a giggle in it. Could this be a wind-up by one of the Glit jokers? He played it again, listened carefully. No, definitely Sixsmith not Sexwith. So where was the joke? Get him into the office before nine? Ha ha, really funny.

The phone rang. He grabbed it but didn’t say anything. If this was some joker, let them make the first move.

‘Sixsmith, is that you?’

The voice was female but this time he recognized it.

‘Butcher, is that you?’ he echoed.

She wasn’t in the mood for joking. Her voice was urgent.

‘Listen, you went to see Peter Potter, did you?’

‘That’s right,’ he said, his sense of grievance welling up. ‘And he’s a lot further gone than you imagine.’

‘What do you mean?’

She sounded alarmed.

‘You just got him down as a self-seeking fascist, if I remember you right. I’d say he was an A1 dickhead with all the charm and good manners of a wire worm!’

‘You didn’t get on?’

‘No, we didn’t.’

‘So what happened?’

‘What happened? He told me I’d got no case and should think myself lucky to be getting one twenty-five. I told him he should think himself lucky still to be chewing on a full set of teeth.’

‘Sixsmith, you didn’t?’

‘No, I’m just being macho after the event,’ he confessed. ‘Why? Has he been complaining? What does he say I said?’

‘Nothing. What happened then?’

‘Well, I left, didn’t I? Nothing more to be said and he looked the type who was capable of billing me by the millisec.’

‘And he was all right when you left?’

‘Yes, of course, he was fine … Butcher what’s going on?’

‘Listen, Joe, I’ve just had the police here. They came to ask if I’d sent a small balding black man round to see Potter. I said I needed to know why they were asking before I answered. They said that Potter had been attacked in his office and they needed the said small balding black man to help with enquiries.’

‘What? Shoot, Butcher, this is crazy. All they got to do is ask Potter. He’ll tell them I never laid a hand on him.’

‘They can’t do that, Joe. He’s dead. Pete Potter’s dead.’

Joe sat and looked at the phone as if hoping it would burst into laughter and tell him it was OK, this was just the new British Telecom dial-a-joke service.

He could hear footsteps running up the stairs.

‘Joe, I’m sorry, I had to give them your name. They’ll be round to see you any minute …’

The door burst open and three uniformed policemen spilled into the room.

‘With you in a moment, gents,’ said Joe Sixsmith. ‘Butcher, I think I need a lawyer.’