‘Good luck,’ he wished me as we stepped out among the throng at Forster Square station in Bradford. He had an errand at the main post office, and we agreed to meet in half an hour at the nearby tea rooms. Mentioning the Braithwaite name –Yorkshire’s equivalent of Ali Baba’s Open Sesame – had netted me an eleven a.m. appointment with the legal beagle to Bradford’s mill-owning millionaire set. A well-turned out chap whose mohair suit did nothing to improve his appearance, he had the look of a cherubic baker of pork pies, his plump-cheeked face topped with wispy white hair. Watery blue eyes, narrowing in an attempt to look canny, gave him a peevish air. Folds of flesh cascaded in layers onto the stiff shirt collar that cut into his neck. He enlivened the usual dark three-piece suit with a maroon tie and gold pin that matched his cuff links. His white podgy hands looked as if they’d knead dough with great patience. If he were descended from a baker, I reckoned it must have been the chap from Pudding Lane who in 1666 made London burn like rotten sticks.
