Crossfire

7

At nine o'clock sharp on Tuesday evening my mother received another demand from the blackmailer. The three residents of Kauri House were suffering through another unhappy dinner around the kitchen table when the telephone rang. Both my mother and stepfather jumped, and then they looked at each other.

"Nine o'clock," my stepfather said. "He always calls at exactly nine o'clock."

The phone continued to ring. Neither of them seemed very keen to answer it, so I stood up and started to move over towards it.

"No," my mother screamed, leaping to her feet. "I'll get it."

She pushed past me and grabbed the receiver.

"Hello," she said tentatively into the phone. "Yes, this is Mrs. Kauri."

I was standing right next to her, and I tried to hear what the person at the other end was saying, but he or she was speaking too softly.

My mother listened for less than a minute.

"Yes. I understand," my mother said finally. She placed the phone back in its cradle. "Scientific at Newbury, on Saturday."

"To lose?" I asked.

She nodded. "In the Game Spirit Steeplechase."

She walked like a zombie back to her chair and sat down heavily.

I picked up the phone and dialed 1471, the code to find the number of the last caller.

"Sorry," said a computerized female voice, "the caller withheld their number."

I hadn't expected anything else, but it had been worth a try. I wondered if the phone company might be able to give me the number, but that, I was sure, would involve explaining why I needed it. I also thought it highly unlikely that the blackmailer had been using his own phone or a number that was traceable back to him.

"What chance would you expect Scientific to have anyway?" I asked.

"Fairly good," she said. "He's really only a novice, and this race is a considerable step up in class, but I think he's ready for it." Her shoulders slumped. "But it's not bloody fair on the horse. If I make him ill again, it may ruin him forever. He'll always associate racing with being ill."

"Would he really remember?" I asked.

"Oh yes," she said. "Lots of my good chasers over the years have been hopeless at home only to run like the wind on a racetrack because they liked it there. One I had years ago, a chestnut called Butterfield, he only ran well at Sandown." She smiled, remembering. "Old boy loved Sandown. I thought it was to do with right-handed tracks, but he wouldn't go at Kempton. It had to be Sandown. He definitely remembered."

I could see a glimpse of why my mother was such a good trainer. She adored her horses, and she spoke of Butterfield as an individual, and with real affection.

"But Scientific is not the odds-on sure thing that Pharmacist was meant to be at Cheltenham last week?"

"No," she said. "There's another very good chaser in the race, Sovereign Owner. He'll probably start favorite, although I really think we could beat him, especially if it rains a bit more before Saturday. And Newark Hall may run in the race as well. He's one of Ewen's, and he should have a reasonable chance."

"Ewen?" I asked.

"Ewen Yorke," she said. "Trains in the village. Has some really good horses this year. The up-and-coming young opposition."

From her tone, I concluded that Ewen Yorke was more of a threat to her position as top dog in Lambourn than she was happy with.

"So Scientific is far from a dead cert?" I said.

"He should win," she stressed again. "Unless he crossfires."

"'Crossfires'?" I asked. "What's that?"

"It's when a horse canters and leads with a different leg in front than he does at the rear," she explained.

"OK," I said slowly, none the wiser. "And does Scientific do that?"

"Sometimes. Unusually he tends to canter between his walk and gallop," she said. "And if he crossfires, he can cut into himself, hitting his front leg with his hind hoof. But he hasn't done it recently. Not for ages."

"OK," I said again. "So even supposing that Scientific doesn't crossfire, no one would be vastly surprised if he didn't win."

"No," she agreed. "It would be disappointing but no surprise."

"So," I said, "after that call from our friend just now, all we have to do is ensure he doesn't win on Saturday without making him so ill he gives up on the idea of racing altogether."

She stared at me. "But how?"

"I can think of a number of ways," I said. "How about if he doesn't run in the first place? You could simply not declare him and tell everyone he was lame or something."

"He said the horse had to run," she replied gloomily.

Time to move on to plan B.

"Well, how about a bit of overtraining on Thursday or Friday? Give him too much of a gallop so he's worn out on Saturday."

"But everyone would know," she said.

"Would they really?" I thought she was being overly worried.

"Oh yes, they would," she said. "There are always people watching the horses work. Some of them are from the media, but most are spotters for the bookmaking firms. They know every horse in Lambourn by sight, and they would see all too easily if I gave Scientific anything more than a gentle pipe-opener on Thursday or Friday."

Was there a plan C?

"Can't you make his saddle slip or something?" I asked.

"The girths will be tightened by the assistant starter just before the race starts."

"But can't you go down to the start and do it yourself and just leave them loose?" Was I clutching at straws?

"But the jockey would fall off," she said.

"At least that would stop him from winning," I said with a smile.

"But he might be injured." She shook her head. "I can't do that."

Plan D?

"How about if you cut through the reins just enough so that they break during the race? If the jockey can't steer, then he surely can't win."

"Tell that to Fred Winter," she said.

"What?"

"Fred Winter," she repeated. "He won the Grand Steeple-Chase de Paris on Mandarin with no steering, way back in the early sixties. The bit broke, which meant he had no brakes, either. He used his legs, pressing on the sides of the horse to keep it on the figure-eight course. It was an absolutely amazing piece of riding."

"And will this Fred Winter be the jockey on Scientific on Saturday?" I asked.

"No, of course not," she said. "He died years ago."

"Well, in that case, don't you think it's a good idea?"

"What?"

"To make the reins break." God, this was hard work.

"But…"

"But what?" I asked.

"I'd be the laughingstock," she said miserably. "Horses from Kauri House Stables don't go to the races with substandard tack."

"Would you rather be laughed at or arrested for tax evasion?"

It was a cruel thing to say, but it did bring the problems she faced into relative order.

"Thomas is right, dear," my stepfather said, somewhat belatedly entering the conversation.

"So it's agreed, then," I said. "We won't subject Scientific to the green-potato-peel treatment, but we will try and arrange for his reins to break during the race. And we take our chances."

"I suppose so," my mother said reluctantly.

"Right," I said positively. "That's the first decision made."

My mother looked up at me. "And what other decisions do you have in mind?"

"Nothing specific as yet," I said. "But I do have some questions."

She looked back at me with doleful eyes. Why did I think she knew the questions wouldn't be welcome?

"First," I said, "when is your next Value Added Tax return due?"

"I told you I don't pay VAT," my mother said.

"But the stables must have a VAT registration for the other bills, like the horses' feed, the purchase of tack, and all sorts of other stuff. Don't the race entries attract VAT?"

"Roderick canceled our registration," she said.

If Roderick hadn't already been dead, I'd have wrung his bloody neck.

"How about the other tax returns?" I said. "Your personal one and the training-business return. When are they due?"

"Roderick dealt with all that."

"But who has been doing it since Roderick died?" I asked in desperation.

"No one," she said. "But I did manage to do the PAYE return last month on my own."

At least that was something. PAYE, or Pay-As-You-Earn, was the way most UK workers paid their income tax. The tax amount was deducted by their employer out of their paychecks, and paid directly to the Treasury. The non-arrival of the PAYE money was usually the first indication to the tax man that a company was in deep financial trouble. It would have rung serious alarm bells at the tax office, and representatives of Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs would have been hammering on the kitchen door long before now.

"Where do you keep your tax papers?" I asked.

"Roderick had them."

"But you must have copies of your tax returns," I implored.

"I expect so," she said. "They might be in one of the filing cabinets in the office."

I was amazed that anyone who was so brilliant at the organization and training of seventy-two racehorses, with all the decisions and red tape that must be involved to satisfy the Rules of Racing, could be so completely hopeless when it came to anything financial.

"Don't you have a secretary?" I asked.

"No," she said. "Derek and I do all the paperwork between us."

Or not, I thought, as the case may be.

I was pretty certain that my mother's individual self-assessment tax return, as for every other self-employed person in the United Kingdom, should have been filed with the tax office by midnight on January 31 at the very latest, along with the payment of any income tax due. Unlike in the United States, where the filing date is April 15 and one is able to file for an extension, in the UK January 31 is the deadline, period.

I looked up at the calendar on the wall above her desk. It was already February 9. There were no exceptions to the deadline, so she would have already incurred a penalty for late filing, to say nothing of the interest for late payment.

I'd checked the tax office website on the Internet. It confirmed that she would have notched up an automatic one-hundred-pound late-filing penalty plus interest on the overdue tax. It also said that she had until the end of February before a five percent surcharge of the tax due was added, on top of the interest.

Very soon now, the Revenue was probably going to start asking difficult questions about my mother's accounts. The time left to sort out the mess was unknown, but it had to be short. Maybe it was already too late and the Revenue would be at her door in the morning.

I wondered about my own tax affairs.

As an employee, I paid my tax as I earned through the PAYE system, which meant I didn't need to complete an annual tax return. The army deducted my tax and National Insurance before it paid the remainder of my salary into my bank account. Mostly they took off my board and lodging costs too, but there hadn't been any of those for a while. Even the army couldn't charge me to stay in a National Health Service hospital.

Sometime soon I should be receiving a tax-free lump sum of nearly a hundred thousand pounds from the Armed Forces Compensation Scheme, although how they could put a value on the loss of a lower leg and foot is anyone's guess. The major from the MOD had taken away my completed AFCS form with a promise that it would be dealt with promptly. That had been nearly three weeks ago now, but I had long learned that anything less than six months was "promptly" as far as army finances were concerned.

Perhaps it might help to keep the tax man's handcuffs from my mother's wrists. But would it be enough? And would it arrive in time?

I searched through my mother's filing cabinets, and eventually I found her previous year's tax return filed under R for Roderick. Where else?

The tax return was a piece of art. It clearly showed that my mother had only minimal personal income, well below that which would have incurred any tax to be paid. It stated that her monthly income was just two hundred pounds from her business, mere pocket money.

Perhaps the Revenue might not be knocking at her door in the morning after all, even if they could find it.

Possibly designed to confuse them, the return was not in the name of Mrs. Josephine Kauri, and her address was not recorded as Kauri House Stables. It wasn't even in Lambourn but at 26 Banbury Drive, Oxford. However, I did recognize the signature as being that of my mother, in her familiar curly handwriting.

Only the name was unfamiliar. She had signed the form Jane Philips, her real, legal, married name.

In the same filing cabinet, I also found a Kauri House Stables Ltd corporate tax return for the previous year. It was dated May and they were annual so at least we had some breathing space before the next one was due.

I looked through it. Roderick had worked his magic here as well.

How, I wondered, did my mother afford to pay two thousand pounds a week in blackmail demands if, as according to the tax returns, her personal income was less than two and a half thousand a year, and her business made such a small profit that it paid tax only in three figures, in spite of all the extras paid by the horse owners in nonexistent VAT.

But, of course, I could find no records of the profits made by the company called Kauri House Stables (Gibraltar) Ltd. In fact, there was no reference to any such entity anywhere in the R for Roderick drawer of the filing cabinet, or anywhere else, for that matter. However, I did find one interesting sheet of paper nestling amongst the tax returns. It was a letter from an investment fund manager welcoming my mother and stepfather into the select group of individuals invited to invest in his fund. The letter was dated three years previously and had been signed by a Mr. Anthony Cigar of Rock Bank (Gibraltar) Ltd.

Mr. Cigar hadn't actually used the term "hedge fund," but it was quite clear from his letter, and from the attached fee schedule, that a hedge fund was what he'd managed.

I sat at my mother's desk and looked up Rock Bank (Gibraltar) Ltd on the Internet. I typed the name into Google and then clicked on the bank's own Web address. The computer came back with the answer that the website was under construction and was unavailable to be displayed.

I went back to the Google page and clicked on the site for the Gibraltar Chronicle, one of the references that had mentioned the Rock Bank. It reported that back in September, Parkin amp; Cleeve Ltd, a UK-based firm of liquidators, had unsuccessfully filed a suit in the High Court in London against the individual directors of Rock Bank (Gibraltar) Ltd in an attempt to recover money on behalf of several of their clients. The directors were not named by the report, and the Chronicle had been unable to obtain a response from any representative of the bank.

It didn't bode well for the recovery of my mother's million dollars.

I yawned and looked at my watch. It was ten to midnight, and my mother and Derek had long before gone up to bed, and it was also well past my bedtime.

I flicked off the light in the office and went up the stairs.

My first day as sleuth-in-residence at Kauri House Stables hadn't gone all my own way. I hoped for better news in the morning.

When I came down to breakfast at eight o'clock I found my stepfather sitting silently, staring at a single brown envelope lying on the bleached-pine kitchen table, with "On Her Majesty's Service" printed in bold type along the top.

"Have you opened it?" I asked him.

"Of course not," he said. "It's addressed to your mother."

"Where is she?" I asked.

"Still out with the first lot," he said.

I picked up the envelope and looked at the back. "In case of non-delivery, please return to HMRC" was printed across the flap, so there was no mistake-it was definitely from the tax man.

I slid my finger under the flap and ripped open the envelope.

"You can't do that," my stepfather said indignantly.

"I just did," I said, taking out the contents. I unfolded the letter. It was simply a reminder for her Pay-As-You-Earn payments for the stable staff.

"It's OK," I said. "This is just a routine monthly reminder notice. It was generated by a computer. No one is going to come here. Not yet anyway."

"Are you sure?" he asked, still looking worried.

"Yes," I said."But they will come in the end if we don't do something about this mess."

"But what can we do?" he said.

It was a good question.

"I don't know yet," I said, "but I do know that we will be in even more trouble if we do nothing and then the tax man comes calling. We simply have to go to them with answers before they come to us with questions."

My mother swept into the kitchen and placed her hands on the Aga.

"God, it's cold out there," she said. Neither my stepfather nor I said anything. She turned around. "What's wrong with you two? Quiet all of a sudden?"

"A letter has arrived from the tax office," my stepfather said.

In spite of her cold-induced rosy cheeks, my mother went a shade paler.

"It's all right," I said in a more reassuring tone than her husband's had been. "It's just an automatic PAYE reminder. Nothing to worry about." I tossed the letter onto the kitchen table.

"Are you certain?" she asked, moving forwards and picking it up.

"Yes," I said. "But I was saying to Derek here, we will have to tell the tax man soon about what's happened, and before he starts asking us difficult questions we can't answer."

"Why would he?"

"Because you should have sent them a tax return by January thirty-first."

"Oh," she said. "But why does that mean we have to tell them everything? Why can't I just send them a tax return now?"

Why not indeed? I thought. As things stood, I could just about argue that I was not an accessory to tax evasion, but I certainly wouldn't be able to if I helped her send in a fraudulent tax return.

Junior officers have to learn, from cover to cover, the contents of a booklet titled Values and Standards of the British Army. Paragraph twenty-seven states: Those entrusted with public and nonpublic funds must adhere unswervingly to the appropriate financial regulations. Dishonesty and deception in the control and management of these funds is not a "victimless crime" but shows a lack of integrity and moral courage, which has a corrosive effect on operational effectiveness through the breakdown in trust.

"Let's leave it for a few days," I said. "The tax website says you won't get any more penalties until the end of the month." Other than the interest, of course.

I left my mother and Derek to reflect on things in the kitchen while I went out to the stable yard in search of Ian Norland.

"You're still here, then?" he said as I found him in the feed store.

"Seems so," I said.

I stood in silence and watched him measure out some oats from a hopper into some metal bowls.

"I'm not going to talk to you," he said. "It nearly cost me my job last time."

"We've moved on since then."

"Who has?"

"My mother and me," I said. "We're now on the same side."

"I'll wait for her to tell me that, if you don't mind."

"She's in the kitchen right now," I said. "Go and ask her."

"I think I'll wait for her to come out."

"No," I insisted. "Please go and ask her now. I need to talk to you."

He went off reluctantly in the direction of the house, looking back once or twice as if I might call him back and say it was all a joke. I hoped my mother wouldn't actually bite his head off.

In his absence I went from the feed store into the tack room next door. It was all very neat and smelled strongly of leather, like those handbag counters in Oxford Street department stores. On the left-hand wall there were about twenty metal saddle racks, about half of which were occupied by saddles with their girths wrapped around them. On the opposite wall there were rows of coat hooks holdings bridles, and at the end between the saddles and bridles, there were shelves of folded horse rugs and other paraphernalia, including a box of assorted bits and a couple of riding helmets.

It was the bridles I was most interested in.

As I looked at them one of the stable staff came in and collected a saddle from one of the racks and a bridle from a hook.

"Are these bridles specific to each horse?" I asked him.

"No, mate," he said. "Not usually. The lads have one each, and there are a few spare. This is mine." He held up the one he had just removed from a hook. "My saddle too."

"Did you have to buy it?" I asked him.

"Naah, of course not," he said with a grin. "This is the one the guv'nor gives me to use, while I'm 'ere, like."

"And are these saddles also used in the races?"

"Naah," he said again. "The jocks have their own saddles."

"And their own bridles?"

"Naah," he said once more. "But we 'ave special racing ones of those. Jack keeps them in the racing tack room with the other stuff."

"Who's Jack?" I said.

"Traveling 'ead lad." He paused. "Who are you anyway?"

"I'm Mrs. Kauri's son," I said.

"Oh, yeah," he said, glancing down at my right leg. " 'Eard you were 'ere."

"Where is the racing tack room?" I asked him.

"Round the other side," he said, pointing through the far wall, the one with the shelves.

"Thank you, Declan," my mother said domineeringly, coming into the tack room. "Now, get on."

Declan went bright pink and scurried away with his saddle and bridle under his arm.

"I'll thank you not to interrogate my staff," she said.

I walked around her and pulled the tack-room door shut.

"Mother," I said formally. "If you want me to go now, I will." I paused briefly. "I'll also try to visit you in Holloway Prison." She opened her mouth to speak, but I cut her off. "Or you can let me help you, and I might just keep you out of jail."

Actually, secretly, I was beginning to think that the chances of managing that were very slight.

She stood tight-lipped in front of me. I thought she might cry again, but at that moment Ian Norland opened the tack-room door behind her and joined us.

"Ian," my mother said without turning around, her voice full of emotion. "You may say what you like to my son. Please answer any questions he might ask you. Show him whatever he wants to see. Give him whatever help he needs."

With that, she turned abruptly and marched out of the tack room, closing the door behind her.

"I told you last week that something bloody strange was going on round here," Ian said. "And it sure is." He paused. "I'll answer your questions and I'll show you what you want to see, but don't ask me to help you if it's illegal."

"I won't," I said.

"Or against the Rules of Racing," he said.

"I won't do that either," I said. "I promise."

I hoped it was another promise I'd be able to keep.

To my eye, the racing bridles looked identical to those in the general tack room. However, Ian assured me they were newer and of better quality.

"The reins are all double-stitched to the bit rings," he said, showing me, "so that there's less chance of them breaking during the race."

Both the bridles and the reins were predominantly made of leather, although there was a fair amount of metal and rubber as well.

"Does each horse have its own bridle?" I asked.

"They do on any given race day," Ian said. "But we have fifteen racing bridles in here, and they do for all our runners."

We were in the racing tack room. Apart from the bridles hanging on hooks, there was a mountain of other equipment, the most colorful being the mass of jockeys' silks hanging on a rail. There were also two boxes of special bits, and others of blinkers, visors, cheek pieces and sheepskin nosebands. Up against the far wall, on top of a sort of sideboard, there were neat stacks of horse blankets, weight cloths and under-saddle pads, and there was even a collection of padded jackets for the stable staff to wear in the parade ring.

"So, say on Saturday, when Scientific runs at Newbury," I said. "Can you tell which bridle he'll use?"

Ian looked at me strangely. "No," he said. "Jack will take any one of these." He waved a hand at the fifteen bridles on their hooks.

To be honest, that wasn't the most helpful of answers.

"Don't any of the horses have their own bridle?" I asked, trying not to sound desperate.

"One or two," he said. "Old Perfidio has his own. That's because he has a special bit to try and stop him from biting his tongue during the race."

"But doesn't sharing tack result in cross-contamination?" I said.

"Not that we've noticed. We always dip bridles in disinfectant after every use, even the regular exercise ones."

I could see that making Scientific's bridle or reins break on Saturday in the Game Spirit Steeplechase was not going to be as easy as I had imagined, at least not without Ian or Jack knowing about it.

"How about special nosebands?" I asked. "Why, for example, do some horses run in sheepskin nosebands?"

"Some trainers run all their horses in sheepskin nosebands," Ian said. "It helps them to see which horse is theirs. The colors aren't very easy to see when the horses are coming straight at you, especially if it's muddy."

"Do my mother's horses all wear them?"

"No," he said. "Not as a general rule. But we do use them occasionally if a horse tends to run with his head held up."

"Why's that?"

"If a horse runs with his head too high he isn't looking at the bottom of the fences, and also when the jockey pulls the reins the horse will lift it higher, not put it down like he should. So we put a nice thick sheepskin on him and he has to lower his head a little to see where he's going."

"Amazing," I said. "Does it really work?"

"Of course it works," he said, almost affronted. "We wouldn't do it if it didn't work. We also sometimes put cross nosebands on them to keep their mouths shut, especially if they're a puller. Keeping their mouths closed often stops them from pulling too hard. Or an Australian noseband will lift the bit higher in the mouth to stop a horse from putting his tongue over it."

"Is that important?" I asked.

"It can be," Ian said. "If a horse puts his tongue over the bit it can push on the back of the mouth and put pressure on the airway so the horse can't breathe properly."

There was clearly so much I didn't know about racehorse training.

I think you might have to revert to the liquidized green potato peel," I said to my mother when I went back into the kitchen.

"Why?" she said.

"Because I can't see how we are going to arrange for Scientific's reins to break during the race on Saturday if we can't even be sure which bridle he'll be wearing."

"I'll ask Jack," she said.

"That might be a bit suspicious," I said. "Especially after the race. Much better if we can be sure ahead of time which bridle he'll be wearing. Can't you run him in a sheepskin noseband?"

"That won't help," she said. "We simply fit the sheepskin to a regular bridle using Velcro."

"Can't you think of anything?" I asked, not quite in desperation. "How about a cross or an Australian noseband?"

"He could run in an Australian, I suppose. That would mean he would have to have the one bridle we have fitted with it."

"Good," I said. "But you'll have to show me."

"What, now?"

"No, later, when Ian and Jack have gone," I said. "And make sure Scientific is the only horse this week that runs in it."

The phone rang. My mother walked across the kitchen and picked it up.

"Hello," she said. "Kauri House."

She listened for a moment.

"It's for you," she said, holding the telephone out towards me. I thought I detected a touch of irritation in her voice.

"Hello," I said.

"Hi, Tom. Would you like to come to supper tomorrow night?" It was Isabella.

"I thought you were cross with me," I said.

"I am," she replied bluntly. "But I always invite people I'm cross with to supper. Have you tasted my cooking?"

I laughed. "OK, I'll chance it. Thanks."

"Great. Seven-thirty or thereabouts, at the Hall."

"Black tie?" I asked.

"Absolutely," she said, laughing. "No, of course not. Very casual. I'll be in jeans. It's just a kitchen supper with friends."

"I'll bring a bottle."

"That would be great," she said. "See you tomorrow."

She disconnected, and I handed the phone back to my mother, smiling.

"I don't know why you want to associate with that woman," she said in her most haughty voice. She made it sound as though I was fraternizing with the enemy.

I wasn't in the mood to have yet another argument with her over whom I should and should not be friends with. We had done enough of that throughout my teenage years, and she had usually won by refusing entry to the house for my friends of whom she hadn't approved, which, if I remembered correctly, had been most of them.

"Are you going to the races today?" I asked her instead.

"No," she replied. "I've no runners today."

"Do you only go to the races if you have a runner?" I asked.

She looked at me as if I was a fool. "Of course."

"I thought you might go just for the enjoyment of it," I said.

"Going to the races is my job," she said. "Would you do your job on days you didn't have to, just for the enjoyment?"

Actually, I would have, but there again, I enjoyed doing the things others might have been squeamish about.

"I might," I said.

"Not to Ludlow or Carlisle on a cold winter Wednesday, you wouldn't." She had a point. "It's not like Royal Ascot in June."

"No," I agreed. "So you can show me which bridle Scientific will use after lunch when the stable staff are off."

"Do you really think you can make the reins break during the race?" she asked.

"I had a good look at them," I said. "I think it might be possible."

"But how?"

"The reins are made of leather, but they have a nonslip rubber covering sewn round them, like the rubber on a table-tennis bat but with smaller pimples." She nodded. "The rubber is thin and not very strong. If I was able to break the leather inside the rubber, then it wouldn't be visible, and the reins would part during the race when the jockey pulls on them."

"It seems very risky," she said.

"Would you rather use your green-potato-peel soup?" I asked.

"No," she said adamantly. "That would ruin the horse forever."

"OK," I said. "You show me which bridle Scientific will wear, and I'll do the rest."

Was I getting myself in too deep here?

Was I about to become an accessory to a fraud on the betting public as well as to tax evasion?

Yes. Guilty on both counts.