Dick Francis's Gamble

9

On Saturday afternoon I put on my thick skin and went to Sandown Park Races on the train from Waterloo.

“Bloody hell,” said Jan Setter. “I didn’t expect to see you here. I thought you’d been sent to the Tower.”

“Not quite,” I said.

I was standing on the grass close to the parade ring, near the statue of the horse Special Cargo.

“Did you do it?” Jan asked in all seriousness.

“No, of course I didn’t,” I said. “The police wouldn’t have let me go if they still thought I’d tried to kill Billy. I have an alibi.”

“Who did do it, then?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “But it wasn’t me.”

“Blimey,” she said. “Then there’s still a would-be murderer out there on the loose.”

“Lots of them,” I said. “Not just Billy’s but Herb Kovak’s too.”

“Who’s Herb Kovak?” she asked.

“Chap who was shot at Aintree last Saturday,” I said. “He was a colleague of mine at work.”

“Did you kill him then?”

“Jan,” I said forcefully, “I didn’t kill anyone, or try to. OK?”

“Then why were you arrested?”

I sighed. People, even good friends, really did believe what they read in the papers. “Someone told the police that Billy had shouted at me at Cheltenham, demanding to know why I was going to murder him. They put two and two together and made five. That’s all. They got it wrong.”

“So why did Billy shout at you?”

“It was to do with his investments,” I said.

Jan raised a questioning eyebrow.

“It’s confidential,” I said. “You wouldn’t want me telling everyone about your investments, now would you?”

“No,” she agreed. “But then I haven’t been deliberately knocked off my bike.”

“That’s a fair point, but confidentiality rules still apply,” I said. “Severely injured or not, he’s still my client.”

Mind you, I thought, there was a limit to confidentiality.

The Wiltshire Police had called me on Friday evening to make an appointment, and I had spent time with two of their number earlier, going over in minute detail all the events of Tuesday and Wednesday at Cheltenham Races, with particular reference to Billy Searle’s investments.

“Was it true that you owe Mr. Searle over a hundred thousand pounds?” one of them had asked me as his opening shot.

“No,” I’d replied calmly. “Not personally. I’m a financial adviser and Billy Searle is a client of mine, which means I manage the investment of his money. In total, he has about a hundred and fifty thousand invested through me, and he told me on Tuesday that he urgently wanted all his money out in cash. He became very distressed and angry when I told him it would take a few days to realize the cash through the sale of his stocks and shares.”

“Why do you think Mr. Searle needed such a large sum so quickly?” the other policeman had asked.

“He told me he owed some guy a hundred thousand and he needed to pay it back by Wednesday night at the very latest, or else.”

“Or else what?” they’d both asked in unison.

“Billy seemed frightened, and when I told him that his money wouldn’t be in his bank until Friday, he said he hoped he would still be alive by Friday.”

“Those were his exact words?”

“Pretty much,” I’d said.

“Did he give you any indication who this guy was?”

“None, but he was clearly terrified of him. Why don’t you ask Billy?”

“Mr. Searle is in a critical condition,” one of them had replied.

“He has severe head injuries, and it is far from certain yet whether he will ever recover consciousness.”

How dreadful, I thought. Billy had survived all those racing falls over all those years only to have head injuries due to someone knocking him off his bike. It didn’t seem fair.

“I wouldn’t have thought that knocking someone off their bicycle was a very sure way of killing them,” I’d said. “How would someone know he would be riding his bike at that time?”

“Mr. Searle rode his bicycle to Lambourn every day at the same time. Apparently, it was part of his fitness regime, and well known. And the car seems to have struck him with considerable force.”

“Yes, but, even so, it is not as certain as a shooting.” I had been thinking of Herb the previous Saturday. “Are you sure it was attempted murder?”

“We are treating the attack as attempted murder,” one of them had replied rather unhelpfully.

Yes, I’d thought, but that didn’t necessarily make it so.

“Can we go back to this man to whom Mr. Searle owed money? Are you sure that Mr. Searle gave you no indication who it was?”

“Positive,” I’d said. “All Billy told me was that he owed the money to some guy.”

But why would you try to kill someone because they owed you money? Then there would be no chance of getting it back. Maybe the attack had meant to be a warning, or a reminder to pay up, and had simply gone too far. Or had it been a message to others: Pay up or else-just as Billy had been afraid of.

“The Racing Post seems to have implied it was a bookmaker.”

“I think that was probably speculation on their part,” I’d said. “Billy never mentioned anything like that to me. In fact, he said that he couldn’t tell me why he owed the money.”

“So why did he claim that it was you who was murdering him?”

“I now realize that he must have believed he might be murdered because I couldn’t get his money together by Wednesday night and it would therefore be my fault if he was killed. But obviously I didn’t think that at the time.”

The two policemen had then effectively asked me the same questions over and over again in slightly different ways, and I had answered them each time identically, with patience and good grace.

Eventually, after more than an hour, they had been satisfied that I had nothing else to tell them and had gone away, but not before they’d had a close inspection of my car to see if there were any dents or scratches caused by Billy Searle’s bicycle. So much for my alibi.

As soon as they had gone, I had rushed away from home, just making it to Sandown in time for the first race. I’d had to endure a few stares on my way into the racetrack, together with a few indelicate and abusive comments, but, even so, it felt good to be in a familiar environment, as well as free in the fresh air.

It would have been better still if I’d been riding.

“Do you have any runners today?” I asked Jan. At least I could be certain that, this time, she hadn’t come to the races just to see me.

“One in the big chase,” she said. “Ed’s Charger. Not much chance but the owner insisted.” She rolled her eyes up into her head, and I laughed. “Still got your sense of humor, then?”

“Why shouldn’t I have?” I asked.

“Seems everyone you talk to gets themselves murdered or attacked. I hope it doesn’t happen to me.”

So did I. She might have indeed been just about old enough to be my mother, but she was still a very attractive woman. Had I been a tad too hasty, I wondered, in turning down her offer?

Jan went into the Weighing Room to find the jockey who was riding her horse while I leaned on the rail of the paddock and looked up Ed’s Charger in the race program. I noticed it was to be ridden by Mark Vickers, my client and, now with Billy Searle out of the running, the champion jockey-in-waiting.

Billy’s attempted murder had certainly been convenient for Mark’s championship ambitions, but I didn’t really believe that the attack in Baydon had been arranged for that purpose. True, there had been the infamous incident when one Olympic ice skater had allegedly arranged for the leg of her rival to be broken so as to better her own chances, but attempted murder was surely a step too far, if indeed that was what it had been. And there was the unanswered question of the hundred thousand pounds and, in particular, to whom it had been owed by Billy, and why.

“Hi, Foxy. Penny for your thoughts?” said a voice behind me and I groaned inwardly. Martin Gifford was the last person I wanted to see.

I turned around and forced a smile at him. “Just working on my next murder,” I said. “Do you fancy being the victim?”

Martin looked really worried for a fraction of a second before he realized I was joking.

“Very funny,” he said, regaining his composure. “Tell me, what was it like being arrested?”

“A laugh a minute,” I said. “And you didn’t bloody help by telling the Post you thought I knew more about the Aintree killing than I was letting on. And why did you tell them that Herb Kovak was my best friend when I specifically told you he was only a work colleague?”

“I only told them what I believed to be true,” he said selfrighteously.

“Bastard,” I said. “You made it all up and you know it.”

“Now, come on, Foxy,” he said. “You weren’t being completely honest with me. The truth, remember, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.”

“Bollocks,” I said forcefully. “We were not in court, and what makes you think you have a divine right to know everything about everybody anyway? You’re the most indiscreet man on a racetrack. You couldn’t keep a secret if your life depended in it.”

I knew as soon as I’d said it that it had been a mistake. Martin Gifford was all I’d said he was, but he was also the sort of person one needed to keep on one’s side and I’d probably just lost him as an ally forever. But I didn’t care. I’d had my fill of him over the years, and I looked forward to him not coming up every time he saw me and offering me a penny for my thoughts.

“Well, if that’s what you think,” he said haughtily, “you can bugger off.” And with that he turned and walked away with his nose held high. It had been a fairly weak riposte but no less accurate for that.

Jan came back out of the Weighing Room and over the grass to where I was standing. I watched her walk towards me with slightly renewed interest. She saw me looking at her and wiggled her hips.

“Changed your mind then, lover boy?” she said quietly as she came up close to me.

“No,” I said. But had I?

“Pity,” she replied. “Are you sure you won’t come over to my place for a ride?”

“I told you I couldn’t. I can’t take the chance with my neck.”

“Not that sort of ride, silly.” She smiled. “I’d give you a ride where it wouldn’t be your neck that would have to take its chances.” She leaned forward suggestively over the paddock rail, rubbing her bottom up against my leg.

“Jan, behave yourself!” I said.

“Why should I?” she asked, laughing. “I’m a rich divorcée, remember? By definition, we’re not meant to behave ourselves. Fancy a fuck?”

“Jan!” I said. “Please stop it.”

“My,” she said, abruptly standing bolt upright next to me. “I do believe you’re embarrassed. What an old-fashioned, strange boy you are.”

I was certainly old-fashioned, but was I really strange?

Maybe I was, but did that mean I wanted Jan as a lover?

No, I suddenly decided, it did not.

I wanted Claudia.

My real reason for coming to Sandown had been to see Jolyon Roberts.

According to the morning paper, one of the horses running in the third race was owned by Viscount Shenington, and I hoped it was one of those he co-owned with his brother.

I looked out for Colonel Roberts on the grandstands during the first and second races but, not surprisingly, I couldn’t see him. The fine weather had helped to bring out a good Saturday crowd at Sandown for one of the very few mixed meetings of the year, that is where both flat and jumping contests were scheduled side by side on the eight-race program. Indeed, the first event of the day was a special one-mile flat race where jockeys from both codes raced against one another in a sort of Flat V Jump championship.

I went down to the parade ring before the third race and, sure enough, Jolyon Roberts was there, standing on the grass in the center with a group of three men and two ladies, none of whom I recognized.

I maneuvered myself next to a gap in the rails, through which I assumed the Roberts party would eventually need to pass, and waited.

He saw me when he was about five strides away and, if he was shocked or surprised, he didn’t show it. However, I did detect a very slight shake of the head as he looked me square in the eye.

As a true gentleman, he stepped to the side to allow the others in his party to pass through the exit first.

“Chasers Bar after the sixth,” Jolyon Roberts said quietly but distinctly, and straight at me, as he went through the gap, not breaking his Guard’s step. I stood still and watched as he caught up to one of the ladies and took her arm. He didn’t look back at me. His words may have been softly spoken, but his message had been crystal clear: “Don’t stop me now, I’ll speak with you later in private.”

I was in the Chasers Bar well ahead of him. In fact, I watched the sixth race on one of the wall-mounted television sets so as to ensure I could get a table discreetly situated in the corner farthest from the door, and away from the bar.

I sat, watching the entrance, with two glasses of wine in front of me, one red and one white.

Jolyon Roberts appeared, stopped briefly to look around, then strode purposefully over and sat down opposite me.

“Sorry about this, sir,” I said. “But I had no other way of contacting you.”

“What do you have to tell me?” he said.

“Drink?” I asked, indicating the wine.

“No thank you,” he said. “I don’t. Never have.”

“Something soft?” I asked.

“No, nothing, thank you.”

“What a shame about your horse,” I said.

It had fallen at the second hurdle and broken a leg.

“These things happen,” he said. “My wife was more upset about it than me. To be honest, it solved the problem of what to do with the damn thing. It couldn’t have won the race if it’d started yesterday.” He chuckled at his own joke, a habit I found slightly irritating. “Now, tell me what you’ve found.”

“Nothing much, I’m afraid,” I said, taking a large sip of the white wine. “Except that if it is a fraud, it’s a much bigger fraud than either of us thought.”

“In what way?” he asked.

“The factory project would seem to be only the key to a much bigger enterprise,” I said. “The factory was to have cost about twenty million euros, with your family trust putting in just over six million and getting European Union funding at the rate of two euros for each one of yours.”

He nodded. “That’s right,” he said. “It was about five million pounds.”

“Yes,” I said. “But it was the funding of the factory that triggered the grant for the housing project. And that was a whopping eighty million euros, without the need for any further private finance. So it was your investment that was the key to it all.” I paused. “How did you hear about the investment opportunity in the first place?”

“I can’t really remember,” he said. “But it must have been through Gregory Black. Almost everything the trust invests in, other than the family estate, is done through Lyall and Black.”

“So was the naming of the factory Gregory Black’s idea?”

“Oh, I can’t remember,” he said. “What does it matter? The important thing is whether the factory exists. That’s what I’m most concerned about.”

“I haven’t yet managed to find that out. Is there any chance I could speak with your nephew?”

Mr. Roberts looked doubtful.

“I’d just like to ask him where he went and what he saw, or not, as the case may be.”

“He’s up at Oxford,” he said.

“Oxford University?” I asked.

Jolyon Roberts nodded. “At Keble. Reading PPE. Thinks he wants to change the world. Bit full of himself, if you ask me.”

PPE was philosophy, politics and economics. I’d thought of applying for it myself, but had opted instead for a degree course at the LSE.

PPE at Oxford was often seen as the first step on the political ladder to real power, both in British and foreign governments, and elsewhere. Alumni included such diverse members as three UK Prime Ministers, including David Cameron, the Nobel Peace Prize-winning Burmese pro-democracy campaigner Aung San Suu Kyi, the media tycoon Rupert Murdoch and the convicted IRA bomber Rose Dugdale. Even Bill Clinton had studied with the Oxford PPE class for a while when he was at the university as a Rhodes Scholar.

If Jolyon Roberts’s nephew wanted to change the world, he was starting at the right place.

“Do you have a telephone number for him?” I asked.

Jolyon Roberts seemed rather hesitant. “Look,” he said, “I’d much rather he wasn’t involved.”

“But, sir,” I said, “he is involved. You told me he was the one who started your concerns in the first place by visiting Bulgaria.”

“Yes,” he said, “but my brother, his father, has told him to forget it.”

“Does your brother have any idea you have spoken to me?”

“Good God no,” replied Mr. Roberts. “He’d be furious.”

“Sir,” I said formally. “I think it might be best if I left you to sort out any further questions you might have with Gregory himself. I have rather gone out on a limb here to find out the small amount I have, but I think it’s time to stop. The Roberts Family Trust is our client in this matter, and your brother is the senior trustee. I really should not act behind his back.” Nor behind Gregory’s, I thought.

“No,” he said. “Quite right. I can see that.” He paused. “Sorry. Should have realized. I’ll give Gregory Black a call about it on Monday.” He paused again. “Right, matter closed, as far as you’re concerned. I’ll trouble you no further.” He stood up, nodded at me briefly and walked out of the bar.

I sat there for a while longer and transferred my allegiance from white wine to red.

Had I done the right thing?

Definitely.

I was a financial adviser, not a fraud investigator.

But what if there really was a hundred-million-euro fraud going on? Had I not a responsibility to report it to someone? But to whom? Perhaps I should send an e-mail to Uri Joram at the European Commission. But did I care?

I finished the red wine and decided it was time to head home.

Going home to Claudia had always filled me with excitement, raising the pulse a fraction and causing things to stir down below. But now I was hesitant, even frightened of what I might find, of what I might hear, of what I might see.

Claudia was at home when I arrived and she’d been crying.

She tried to hide it from me, but I could always tell. The slight redness of the eyes and the streaky mascara were dead giveaways.

“You could have phoned me,” she said crossly as I walked into the kitchen. “You should know better than to sneak up on a girl.”

I’d hardly sneaked up, I thought. This was my home, and I was arriving back from the races at six-thirty on a Saturday evening.

“You can’t phone on the Tube,” I said.

“You could have phoned on the train from Sandown.”

That was true, but the reason I hadn’t was because I didn’t want my call to go straight to voice mail again. That alone sent my imagination into overdrive. It was much better not to know if Claudia’s phone was turned off.

“Now, darling, what’s the matter?” I said, putting an arm around her shoulders.

“Nothing,” she said, shrugging me off. “Just my back hurts. I’m going up to have a bath.”

She walked briskly out of the kitchen, leaving me standing there alone. She had complained of backache a lot recently. Probably from too much lying on it, I thought somewhat ungraciously.

I mixed myself a large, strong gin and tonic. Not really a great idea after two glasses of wine at Sandown, but who cares? I wasn’t trying to make a riding weight for the next day’s racing. More’s the pity.

I could hear her bath running upstairs and, quite suddenly, I was cross. Did she think I was a fool? Something was definitely not right in this household, and, painful as it might be, I had a right to know.

I thought about charging upstairs and confronting her in the bathroom, but I was frightened. I didn’t want to lose her. And I’m not sure I could bear it if she said she was leaving me for someone else.

I walked through into the living room and flicked on the television, but I didn’t watch it. Instead I sat in an armchair feeling miserable, and drank my gin.

In due course, I heard the bathwater draining, and, presently, Claudia came downstairs and went into the kitchen, closing the door.

I really didn’t know what to do. Did she want me to go in to her or not? “Not,” I thought, or she would have left the door open.

I stayed where I was in the living room and finished my drink. According to the clock on the mantelpiece it was twenty past seven.

Was it too early to go to bed?

I sat in the armchair while some teenage stick insect warbled away on the screen in a TV talent show, going over and over in my head what I needed to say to Claudia. Doing nothing was no longer an option.

If our relationship was dead, so be it. Let me mourn. Anything was better than remaining in this state of limbo with my imagination running wild and my emotions in turmoil. I loved Claudia, I was sure of it. But, here I was, angry and hurt, accusing her in my mind of deceiving me and sleeping with another. It was time for the truth.

When I walked into the kitchen, she was crying openly and with no pretense this time that she wasn’t. She was sitting at the kitchen table in her blue dressing gown, her elbows on the table, a glass of white wine in one hand and her head in the other. She didn’t look up as I went in.

At least, I thought, she’s not leaving me with a dismissive wave of the hand and not a single glance back. This breakup was going to be painful for both of us.

I went over to the worktop beside the fridge and poured myself another stiff gin and tonic. I was going to need it.

“Darling, what’s the matter?” I said, but without turning around.

Perhaps it would be easier for her to talk if she couldn’t see my face.

“Oh, Nick,” she said, her voice quavering slightly. “There’s something I have to tell you.” She gulped. “And you’re not going to like it.”

I turned around to face her. Maybe I didn’t want to make it too easy for her after all.

She looked up at me.

“I’m so sorry,” she said.

I could feel the tears welling up in my own eyes. All I wanted to do was to hug her.

“I’m so sorry,” she said again. “I’ve got cancer.”