The Esther & Jack Enright Series: Books 1-3 (Sapere Books Boxset Editions) by David Field

Author:David Field [Field, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sapere Books
Published: 2018-12-10T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter Seventeen

Percy Enright had a familiar glint in his eye as he returned from the offices of Hemmingsworth Properties and headed straight for Records, where he called for the file for the company he now suspected beyond any reasonable doubt was up to its Memorandum of Association in union money. Sure enough, there it was, so far as he could deduce given the inadequacies of the law on such matters.

Trade unions were regarded in law as ‘unincorporated associations’, which gave them both advantages and disadvantages from a legal perspective. Since they were not legal ‘entities’ they could not own property, or make investments, in their own name, but had to do so through certain nominees. These nominees were private individuals who in the case of unions could be expected to be office bearers and Percy was prepared to bet a substantial sum of money that the ‘Union of Allied Woodworkers and Turners’, of which a Mr George Manners was the General Secretary and legal officer, was the same union to whom a certain Mr Jenston had been referring as the one that he dared not annoy if he was to retain his job at Eastside Jobber and Joiners. The self-same union that had taken a substantial shareholding in Hemmingsworth Properties less than a year ago.

It all slotted into place as neatly as a tongue and groove joint executed by one of Eastside’s skilled craftsmen. The union had invested in the property company to whom its directors were therefore beholden. By virtue of its control over the men who formed its workforce that same union was able to flex its muscle when it came to which man did which job. It was the union that had been in the ultimate overall position to ensure that when Helen Trenchard was unwittingly unwise enough to require certain internal alterations to her rented premises, it could insert its own ferret into the rabbit hole.

But was it simply a matter of union rivalry, or was there something much deeper that had not so far surfaced? And was the man who went by the name of Bert Freeman simply an unpleasant bully boy hired for the occasion, or did he have a relationship with the union — or perhaps one of its officers — that went back much further in time? Perhaps something more personal in relation to Helen herself? Though surely, if that were the case, would she not have recognised him when he was posing as the foreman inside her business premises?

One thing was clear — they were not going to get any further unless and until they could pull the mask of anonymity from the face of ‘Bert Freeman’.

Though Esther had been detailed the painstaking work of enquiring of as many of her union members as she could whether any of them had something to offer that would identify the man, any name that her searches revealed would almost certainly not be that of Bert Freeman and Jack would need to be ready to match any other name that floated to the surface with a criminal history that fitted the bill.

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