Killing the Lawyers. Reginald Hill

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      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, СКАЧАТЬ