Silas Bream

The firm of Bream and Williamson, Solicitors and Notaries, had provided its legal services to the small town of Dewsbury in West Yorkshire for more than three generations. The Williamson part of the firm had long since departed, leaving Silas Bream to live with difficult times, declining income and the faded office portraits of his more successful forebears.

With his junior partner, his relatively small back office team and his long serving office manager Hazel, Silas had spent almost a decade presiding over  an unrelenting decline in the company's fortunes; a decline inextricably linked to the demise of the woollen industry itself. The mills, once hives of frantic activity and profitable endeavour had slowly mutated into trendy apartments and shopping complexes, victims of relentless competition from the far east. As a result, Bream and Williamson were now left to survive on their share of the mundane; conveyancing, will writing and legal aid felony work. Permanently disillusioned by events, Silas's get up and go had long since got up and gone.

Totally void of ambition and badly battered by a lengthy and bitter divorce, Silas was not the man to bring about dramatic business recovery. Content to operate under the shelter of the firm's long standing and hard earned reputation for probity and integrity, he had run on automatic pilot for most of his adult life, using just enough of his considerable intellect to get by. Silas had, by degree, fallen into the habit of resolving any difficulties by employing the simplest and most readily available solutions.

Creative accounting had become a way of life for Silas, borrowing from Peter in order to pay Paul, just to tide things over. Enjoying sole control over client accounts, Silas had found it easy to manipulate other people's money. To keep the business ticking over, to settle urgent accounts, pay salaries and more recently, cover the mounting debts from his increasingly adventurous list of peccadilloes. He had taken comfort in ever more frequent trips to Bradford, where he had become a regular at the city's casino. Silas, like most punters, only ever mentally registered the few occasions when he won, choosing to dismiss the more frequent occasions when he didn't. The only accurate tally on the fortunes of Silas Bream were kept in the ledgers of the High Roller Casino.

*   *  *

After a hundred and fifty years in the Mungo and Shoddy business, the firm of Obadiah Makepiece had been one of many that had succumbed to changing fashion and cheaper Asian competition. Jedediah Makepiece, the great great grandson of the founder, had been forced to diversify into other areas and had converted the mill into retail outlets and a nightclub, carving a niche market for himself in the town. As a long-standing and powerful mill owning family, the Makepieces had always been used to getting their own way, but as the industry had declined, so had their influence. In more recent times however, Jed had slowly restored the family notoriety by building his nefarious business empire with liberal use of his favourite tools; ruthlessness, intimidation and violence. If you challenged him you were subject to sudden and inexplicable mishap. Few therefore, ever did and as a consequence, Jed's business empire thrived, expanding into some very profitable areas. He now enjoyed substantial revenues from property development, gambling, entertainment and the drug trade. Jed Makepiece had become a man to be feared.

Silas and Jed had known each other all their lives. They attended the same schools and their families did business together. Silas had gone on to university to gain his law degree and Jed had joined his father in trying to slow the inevitable demise of the family business. Silas had seduced and hoodwinked his way through Cambridge to a second class degree and Jed had hand crafted  a first class diploma from the school of hard knocks. Inexplicably, the two had always got on well with each other, probably because they found each other useful. Jed had a secret admiration for Silas, his academic prowess and his professional repute in the town. Silas had always been afraid of Jed and envious of his physical prowess and aggressive can-do nature. Opposites attract, especially when it's good for business.
2.

Detective Sergeant Dave Oldroyd yawned loudly at his desk. He was coming to the end of another shift at Dewsbury nick, where nothing in particular had happened and nobody in particular had been arrested. His boss wasn't happy, because his boss wasn't happy. More crime had to be solved with ever reducing staff numbers and dwindling budgets and the backlog of unsolved cases was growing by the week. Heads would roll if things didn't improve, although which heads nobody quite knew.

A pile of unsolved case files had appeared from upstairs and Dave had spent the afternoon looking through them to see if any looked simple enough to solve without too many man hours. It didn't look good, but his interest had been caught by a burglary at the Tempo nightclub on Market Street. He knew well that this was one of Jed Makepiece's properties and also knew that no local villain would be unwise enough to try turning Makepiece over. He was intrigued enough to read through the entire file where the beat bobby's report said that there were no visible signs of entry, but that according to the manager, a locked, but empty safe, had been unlocked and left wide open; as had the rear door. Nothing was missing except for bottles of spirits from behind the bar. They were simply reporting the matter for the insurance claim covering the lost stock.

Oldroyd put this file to one side as a possible and continued his task with dwindling enthusiasm. Nothing much in the pile appealed to him until the very last folder. An assault report, in which a well known local villain had turned up

at the hospital with substantial injuries; the result of a very competent beating. The doctor had reported the matter because the patient had refused to give any details on how he had received such injuries, but by the time officers had arrived, the patient had discharged himself and disappeared. Numerous calls at the address he'd given had proved fruitless, the lady of the house saying she knew nothing about any injuries or the whereabouts of her husband. Alarm bells began to ring in Dave Oldroyd's head. He put the two files into his drawer and the rest on the desk of the newly appointed Detective Constable Ann Waters. Tomorrow, he told himself, as he slid into his overcoat, they would make some real headway into the unsolved crime list.

*  *  *

In recent times, when feeling things were getting on top of him and on the pretext of visiting a client, Silas had taken to driving himself up onto Emley Moor, parking in a lay-by up there and gazing out across Huddersfield to the Pennine Hills beyond. As he did so, he would listen to a cassette, usually Bach's St. Matthew Passion, and allow the life affirming view and the magnificent sound to wash over him in an attempt to reset his rather easily disturbed equilibrium. Today was such an occasion, following a morning that had unsettled him.

The son of one of his elderly clients had rung, wishing to discuss Silas's power of attorney over his mother's financial affairs. Worse still, Silas had twice refused a call from Jed Makepiece. Silas's equilibrium had been well and truly disturbed. Still unsettled and unable to evade his responsibilities any longer, he drove back to Dewsbury, parked in his reserved space in the office car park and attempted to reach his office without being seen.

'Ah! Silas, there you are,' said Hazel as she confronted him in the corridor, 'I've got a whole list of people for you to contact. The phone's been non-stop since you went out.'

'Just put the list on my desk please Hazel, I'll look at it later.'

'There's one that won't wait I'm afraid. Mr Makepiece, Mr Jed Makepiece that is, was quite rudely insistent that you get in touch with him immediately. He was extremely unpleasant on the phone and I have to tell you that if he ever speaks to me again like that I will replace the receiver and continue my work. Your father would never have tolerated anything like that and neither will I.'

'Times are changing I'm afraid Hazel and so is common civility. We either come to terms with these facts or we find ourselves without clients.'

'Common civility, as you put it Silas, lubricates the machinery of all successful relationships, always has and always will. I've never been spoken to in that manner before by any client and most certainly not by a member of the Makepiece family.  Old Obadiah would turn in his grave if he heard such discourtesy, especially from one of his own.'  

Silas had been gently coaxed around the hair pin bends of his life by three strong and  influential women, Nanny Beevers, his mother Daphne Bream and Hazel Braithwaite. Hazel had started at the firm as a filing clerk on leaving school at fourteen and had spent the ensuing fifty years of her working life there. She had evolved, like the local grit-stone, into a pillar of the community and the backbone of Bream and Williamson. Silas, now sufficiently admonished, took possession of the list and sought sanctuary in his office.