Reginald Hill: Killing the Lawyers

It was a Magic Mini from the psychedelic sixties, still wearing its body paint of pink and purple poppies with weary pride. Clashing desperately with the floral colours was the legend in pillar-box red along both doors ANOTHER RAM RAY LOAN CAR.

At least after many hours of Sixsmith tender loving care, the engine now burst into instant life and the clutch no longer whined like a heavy-metal guitar.

It was already dark and the bright lights of downtown Luton struck sparks off the slushy sidewalks, while high in the sky the Clint Eastwood inflatable over Dirty Harry’s bucked in the gusting wind, now aiming its fluorescent Magnum at the glassy heart of the civic tower, now drawing a bead on the swollen gut of a jumbo as it lumbered with its cargo of suntanned vacationists towards the line of festal light on Luton Airport.

Even through his anger, Joe felt the familiar pang of affection and pride. This was his town. And he was going to leave it better than he found it.

Just leaving it should do the trick, said a deflating voice.

He glanced towards the passenger seat, but Whitey, who usually got blamed for such cynical telepathy, wasn’t there.

OK, so I’m talking to myself now. And I know better than to take myself too seriously. But there’s folk in this town got to learn to take me serious enough!

Armed with this thought, he parked his car on a double yellow in front of Bullpat Square Law Centre and strode into the building.

He saw at once he needn’t have worried about the time. Christmas might jerk the daily bread out of the mouths of gumshoes and hitmen. It did nothing to remove the bitter cup from the lips of the deprived and the depressed.

For a moment his resolution wavered and he might have headed for the comfort of the Glit if Butcher’s door hadn’t opened that second to let out a black woman with two small children.

Ignoring both the young man at the reception desk and the people crowding the wall benches, he walked straight in.

From behind a pile of files and beneath a miasma of smoke a small woman in her thirties glared at him and said, ‘Just when I thought things couldn’t get worse.’

‘Butcher, I need a lawyer. Read this.’

He handed her the letter. She read it, at the same time lighting another thin black cheroot from the butt end of the one she’d just finished.

‘Don’t you ever think of your unborn children?’ he asked, wafting the smoke away.

‘When would I have time for unborn children?’ she asked. ‘This looks fine to me. Generous almost. That heap of yours couldn’t have been worth more.’

‘That heap was a 1962 Morris Oxford which I had restored to a better than pristine condition. Also it was part of my livelihood. I need a car.’

‘You’ve got a car. I’ve seen it.’

‘Then you know what I mean. I’m a PI. I follow people. I sit outside their houses and keep watch. In that thing, I might as well be beating a drum and shouting, Hey there, folks, you’re being tailed by Joe Sixsmith!’

‘At least it’s free,’ she said. ‘It’s a Ram Ray loan car, isn’t it?’

‘Yeah, sure. The work I’ve done on it to make it fit to drive would have cost you four figures if one of Ram’s ham-handed mechanics had done it. And besides, only reason he made the loan is he’s anticipating I’m going to get enough money to pay him to repair the Oxford or replace it with one of them Indian jobs he’s importing. Now what happened was …’

‘OK, OK, Sixsmith,’ she said, waving her cheroot impatiently. ‘I don’t want details. I just want to know why you imagine I can help you?’

‘I need a lawyer,’ he said. ‘And you’re my lawyer.’

‘Now that’s where you’re making your mistake,’ she said. ‘Way back, when Robco Engineering made you redundant and tried to stiff you for your severance money, then I was your lawyer. And OK, from time to time, as your persistence in maintaining this pretence that you’re a PI has dropped you in the mire, I’ve given a helping hand. But that was out of, God help me, mere charity and pity for a dumb creature. Now, all those folk out there who have come to me with serious life-threatening problems which I should be dealing with this very moment, I am their lawyer. But I am not your lawyer, Sixsmith. And even if I was, I don’t do motor insurance!’

She thrust the letter back at him. He took it and let his eyes drift up to a poster on the wall behind her. It read:

SHAKESPEARE SAID

Kill All The Lawyers !

Except, of course, us.

We’re here for your protection, not our profit.

IF YOU KNOW YOU’RE RIGHT,

WE KNOW YOUR RIGHTS!

Pointing, he said, ‘I don’t see where it says, excepting Joe Sixsmith.’

‘OK, OK,’ said Butcher. ‘Don’t go weepie on me. Look, I’m really no good for you, what you need is a specialist. There’s this guy I know … he owes me a sort of favour …’

She smiled rather grimly. Joe guessed that in lawyer-speak, a sort of favour meant you knew something to put the black on a guy.

‘You mind stepping outside a moment, Joe. I don’t like witnesses to extortion.’

He went out. Expectant eyes focused on him. He smiled guiltily. The door opened and he slipped back in.

‘Heard of Poll-Pott?’ she said.

‘Butcher, I’m not going to Cambodia.’

‘Ho ho. Pollinger, Potter, Naysmith, Montaigne and Iles,’ she said.

‘ That Poll-Pott,’ he said. ‘With those posh offices in Oldmaid Row?’

‘That’s them, except when they charge like they do, they don’t have offices, they have chambers.’

‘Sort of chamber poll-pot,’ said Joe, who was often stimulated to wit by Butcher’s presence.

‘Je-sus. Anyway, Peter Potter and I used to be sort of buddies way back, before he became too rich to afford me. He specializes in insurance cases.’

‘And he’ll look into mine?’

‘Not so much look into as glance at. He’ll give you five minutes to tell your tale of woe then he’ll spare five seconds to tell you whether you’ve got a hope in hell. You want more, you’ll have to make an appointment and start paying by the parsec for his professional services. Sorry, that’s the best I can do, and even that has cost me dear.’

‘It’s great,’ Joe assured her. ‘When do I see him?’

‘In the next half hour. After that, don’t bother.’

‘What’s he doing?’ said Joe, looking at his watch which said quarter past five. ‘Jetting off to Bermuda for his hols?’

‘Don’t kick a gift horse in the teeth, Sixsmith. Pete Potter may be self-seeking, hedonistic, and fascist, but he makes the big insurance companies reach for their bulletproof vests. You can be round there in five minutes if you step smartly.’

‘No, I can’t,’ said Joe. ‘The policy’s back in my flat.’

‘Oh God. Why do I bother? And why are you still cluttering up my workspace? Don’t step smartly, run like hell!’

Joe ran like hell.

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.