Stuart Pawson - Some By Fire

Priest, to below four hundred. Guess who stepped in to rescue the business? That's right, J. J. Fox. They now stand at five-eighty pence. Not bad, eh? Seven years ago they were giving away shares in the Alpha Brig oilfield after borehole samples were analysed and the predictions made the whole thing look like a white elephant. J. J. Fox bought up every available share and blow me if it didn't turn out to be a software fault and the samples were promising after all. Everybody agrees that the water companies have a licence to print money, but last year was the driest on record and things looked dodgy for a while. When a technician put a decimal point in the wrong place and tipped a hundred times too much concentrated aluminium sulphate into the Tipley Valley supply, five thousand people were made ill. Tipley Water shares plummeted but this year they are predicting a record dividend. Guess who suddenly became a major shareholder? I could go on and on and on, Mr. Priest." He sat back and waited for a reaction.

I wasn't happy. The midges were bothering me, my beer was warm and I didn't like his story. I had no doubts that Fox was a crook, but so what? Everybody in his position must have done something mean and nasty as they fought their way up the heap. Nice people didn't make it because they couldn't do it. Well, that was my excuse. "So what's all this to do with the fire?" I asked.

"I'm sorry," he said, leaning forward. "I get carried away. It's all been bottled up inside me for so long. Back in 1975 Fox was just making his mark nationally. He'd been involved in several contracts with a certain company of planners working on town centre developments.

I'd been looking into his activities for a number of years, when I was in local government, and didn't like what I was seeing. I asked questions in the House about him, and wanted him to appear before a select committee to explain his apparent good fortune. Proving what I knew was difficult, as I'm sure you appreciate, and I couldn't voice my allegations outside the House, but I wanted his replies on record. The fire, like so many events, came at a very opportune moment for Mr.

Fox."

I wished that we had the power of parliamentary privilege to shelter behind, and said: "You're saying he started the fire to discredit you?"

"Not personally, Mr. Priest. He didn't start the fire personally. He has a network of recruits to do his dirty work for him, but he gave the orders. It's the only explanation. The technician with Tipley Water is currently on a Reynard management training scheme. The computer programmer with Alpha Brig escaped the sack and moved to a systems analyst post in the Reynard Organisation, until he died in an accident.

Fox looks after his friends, one way or another."

"Can you put all this in writing for me?" I asked. It's a simple enough theory. Someone pops in and gives you a lifetime's work, so you bounce it straight back at them by suggesting they put it all in writing. Often, you never hear from them again.

"It's all here," he said, delving into his inside pocket and producing a bundle of papers and envelopes.

Ah well, I thought, it was never much of a theory. I pointed at his empty glass. "Same again?"

"Oh, er, yes please."

I meandered to the bar and ordered a pint of orange juice for myself.

I'd tell him I'd ask around, do what I could, but I'd only be stalling him. Fox might be as guilty as hell, we might even prove it, but we'd never get near a conviction. His lawyers would tie us in knots, spin things out for years, cost the taxpayer a fortune and we'd be accused of wasting public money by pursuing a man who gave employment to thousands. He would be left whiter than white. Perhaps, they'd concede, some of his staff were over enthusiastic in their desire to see Reynard do well, but that was the unfortunate reverse side of loyalty… We were on a hiding to sod-all.

I placed his beer in front of him and sat down. The three ladies were poring over the menus again, their empty dinner plates in a considerate pile for the waitress to collect. The fence around the garden was lined with tubs of blooms, blazing with colour. Fat bees stumbled between them, overladen with pollen. "The flowers are gorgeous," I said, nodding in their direction.

"Geraniums," he told me, although I was already fairly sure of it.

"They bring back memories for me." He looked unhappy, his thoughts filled with oomph ah bands and lederhosen, and thanked me absent-mindedly for the beer. After a silence he said: "Did you see the television programme a few years ago about Fox's early life?"

"No."

"It was a harrowing account, Mr. Priest, even after making allowances for it being a Reynard production. It told of how the storm troopers came to arrest his parents a few days after the Kristallnacht, the Night of the Broken Glass. His name then was Johannes Josef Fuchs, he said, and his father was an outspoken lawyer, hated by the Nazis, and a Jew, of course. Young J. J. was bundled out of the back of the house with as much money as they had, plus a few items of jewellery, and told to find his way to France and then England. He was twelve years old.

He caught a train that he hoped would take him to Strasburg, but a party of Hitler Youth boarded it at the next station and began to torment him. Eventually they beat him up, stole everything he possessed and threw him off the train. He walked the one hundred and fifty kilometres to the border, being looked after by several people on the way, farmers mainly, some gypsies, and eventually made it into France and then on to Britain. When he was settled here he Anglicized his name and became the John Joseph Fox we all know so well."

I wasn't sure what the point of the story was. I'd been expecting a last attempt to win my sympathy, but this justified some aspects of Fox's character. "In a way," I said, 'it explains why Fox has turned out the way he has: determined to succeed; single-minded; responsible to no one. Experiences like that must be ingrained in your character for the rest of your life." I had a good long drink of my orange juice. After the warm beer it tasted good. "Tell me," I went on. "Why have you suddenly resurrected all this, after twenty-three years?

What's happened to bring it all back again? What do we know now that we didn't know before?" I had a feeling he was using me, and that's a feeling I don't like.

"This came last Tuesday," he said, extracting a crumpled envelope from the sheaf of papers. "I made you a photocopy."

I took the page he offered me and read it. There was a Welwyn Garden City address at the top and it went on:

Dear Mr. Crosby It is my sad duty to inform you that my older brother, Duncan Roberts, committed suicide four weeks ago. We found your address and telephone number among his papers and assume he had been in contact with the Friend's in Need society. May I take this opportunity to thank you for any help you may have offered Duncan, but unfortunately there was nothing anyone could do for him. Please accept this small cheque as a donation to help you in your good work. Yours sincerely, Andrew Roberts.

It was brief and to the point. Somebody was clearing up, doing their housework, after an untimely death in the family. You can excuse a surplus apostrophe in a situation like that.

"There was a cheque for twenty pounds with it," Crosby informed me.

"So who was Duncan Roberts?" I asked, laying the photocopy on the table. I was growing tired of riddles.

"Four weeks earlier," he explained, "I was on holiday in Ireland. When I returned the Friends informed me that a man had been trying to contact me. He phoned three times, sounding desperate, but would not talk to anyone else. The calls were traced to a phone box in south London. In the third and final call he said: "Tell him I did it. I started the fire, and I'm sorry." Then he hung up and there were no more calls. A few weeks later this letter arrives. It must be the same person, Mr. Priest. Duncan Roberts started the fire and it's been troubling his conscience all these years. I feel sure that it will be possible to link him to J. J. Fox."