Dick Francis's Gamble

14

I’ll get back to you,” said Chief Inspector Tomlinson suddenly.

“I need to call in a few favors.”

He hung up, and I was cross I hadn’t asked him about Billy Searle. But it would wait.

The phone rang again in my hand.

“Hello,” I said, answering it. “Did you forget something?”

“Sorry?” said a female voice. “Is that you, Mr. Nicholas?”

“Mrs. McDowd,” I said. “How lovely to hear from you.”

There was a slight pause at the other end as Mrs. McDowd worked out that I was being sarcastic.

“I have a message from Mr. Patrick,” she said.

“How did you get this number?” I asked.

“He wants you to…” she started, but I interrupted her.

“Mrs. McDowd,” I said again loudly. “How did you get this number?”

“It was on the caller ID when you called in this morning,” she said.

That was careless, I thought, for someone meant to be in hiding.

“Anyway,” she said, “I know that number. You’re staying with your mother. How is she?”

Bloody Mrs. McDowd, I thought. How does she know so much about me?

“She’s fine, thank you,” I said, biting my tongue. “Now, what does Mr. Patrick want?”

“He wants you to call him in the morning before you come into the office. Something about arranging a meeting between you and Mr. Gregory.”

“Did he say what the meeting was about?” I asked.

“No,” she said, but I bet she knew. Mrs. McDowd knew everything.

“Please tell Mr. Patrick that I won’t be in the office very early tomorrow.”

“I’ve already told him that,” she said. “Not with you being down in Gloucestershire.”

Who else had she told?

In particular, had she told Mr. Gregory?

I spent much of the afternoon catching up on the changing price of derivatives and futures, and on how a recent fall in the Dow Jones Index in the United States had affected markets in the Far East more than those in Europe, and on fluctuations in the value of gold in pounds as a result of changes in the cost of a barrel of oil in dollars.

It was like a balancing act.

Some economies grew and others contracted; stock markets moved at different paces or in opposite ways; some currencies went up and others went down. The trick to winning in the great global financial game was to invest in the things about to go up in real value while selling those about to go down. Then there were hedge funds and short selling, both designed to make you money when the values went in the wrong direction.

But it was all a bit like gambling with a bookmaker. For you to win, he had to lose. So it was in the markets-there were winners and losers. The winners had big houses and the losers went bust, losing their big houses to the banks, which then sold them to the winners.

The money went round and round, but it did not always end up with the same people.

And then there were the fraudsters, those who tried to load the odds in their favor through insider trading or market manipulation.

Once upon a time, insider trading had been seen as a perk of the job for stockbrokers and company directors, cashing in on prior knowledge of profits and mergers by buying or selling stock before the facts were known to others. Nowadays, the courts send them to jail for doing what everyone used to do, and quite rightly too.

But there are always those who think they can beat the system, and many of them do, because betting on a certainty was like having a license to print money.

Herb Kovak had said to Mrs. McDowd that he liked to bet on certainties.

She’d told me.

Chief Inspector Tomlinson called back at five o’clock.

“He’d definitely been drinking,” he said. “I’ve seen the full autopsy report. There’s no mistake. They tested both his blood and the aqueous humor in his eye. And the stomach contained whisky residue.”

“How easy is it to force someone to drink whisky?” I asked.

“My, my,” he said. “Now who has the suspicious mind?”

“It’s just too convenient,” I said.

“But how could you give someone a heart attack?” he asked, his slightly sarcastic tone clearly indicating that he didn’t believe me.

“Hold his drunken head under the surface of his own swimming pool,” I said. “Either he drowns straightaway or, as he has a history of heart problems, he panics, has a heart attack and then drowns.”

“But why the alcohol?” he asked.

“To add confusion,” I said. “When you knew he’d been drinking, you instinctively believed he had been a stupid fool and you probably thought he half deserved to die for it.”

“True,” he said, “I did. But you are only speculating. There’s no evidence of foul play.”

“No,” I agreed. “And what there was has conveniently been buried in Golders Green.”

He laughed. “Story of my life.”

“What about Billy Searle?” I asked. “What did you find out?”

“He’s wide awake and talking,” he said. “But he’s not saying anything.”

“Nothing?”

“Pretty much. He refuses to say if he knew the person who knocked him off his bike. Says it was an accident. And he denies owing anyone any money.”

I wasn’t surprised. If it was a bookmaker and Billy was involved in some betting scandal, he was hardly likely to admit it. It would be tantamount to handing in his jockey’s license for good.

“Well, thanks for finding out for me,” I said. “Any news on the gunman?”

“Nothing as yet.”

“Didn’t you get any response from the video?”

“Masses,” he said. “Too much, really. The Met and us are sifting through it all, and cross-referencing with the criminal records bureau.”

That was what worried me the most. If he were a professional hit man, he was unlikely to have a criminal record, so he would never turn up from their cross-referencing.

“So how about that bodyguard you promised me?” I asked. “I can’t stay down here for long as it’s too far from London, but I don’t fancy going home with our friend still out there.”

“I’ll talk to my Super,” he said.

“Thanks,” I said. “And please make it soon.”

We disconnected, and I looked at my watch. It was quarter past five. Time to finish for the day.

I leaned back in the chair and pushed the GET MAIL button for a final check on my e-mails. One had arrived from Gregory Black.

I sat forward quickly and opened it.

“Nicholas,” he had written, “Patrick has asked me to write to you to apologize for my outburst of last week. So I am sorry. I can also assure you there will be no repetition of my actions when you return to this office after your stay with your mother. Yours, Gregory Black.”

Wow, I thought. My threat of court action had really put the cat amongst the pigeons. I could imagine Gregory absolutely hating having to write that e-mail with Patrick standing over him on one side and almost certainly with Andrew Mellor, the company’s lawyer, on the other, advising them both on employment law.

I may have received a grudging apology from Gregory, but he would resent it forever. And it wouldn’t make my future at the firm any easier.

I also didn’t like the fact that Gregory knew that I was staying with my mother.

Mrs. McDowd not only wanted to know everything about everyone, she also liked them to know she knew it by spreading the information. The whole office would now be aware that I was in Gloucestershire, and probably half of Lombard Street too.

At about seven-thirty my mother insisted I open a bottle of champagne to properly celebrate Claudia’s and my engagement.

“I put one in my old fridge last night,” she said, “so it should be nice and cold.”

And it was.

I retrieved the bottle and poured three glasses of the golden bubbly liquid, then we each in turn made a toast.

“To a long and happy marriage to my Claudia,” I said, and we drank.

“To long life and good health,” Claudia said, looking at me. We drank again.

“To masses of grandchildren,” my mother said, and we all drank once more.

Claudia and I held hands. We knew without saying what we were each thinking. Oh yes, please, to all three of the above. But with cancer, it was all so unpredictable and scary.

“Have you told your father yet?” my mother asked.

“No,” I said. “You’re the only person that knows.” Not even Mrs. McDowd, I thought, knew this little secret.

“Aren’t you going to tell him?” Mum asked.

“Eventually,” I said. “But I haven’t spoken much to him recently.”

“Stupid man,” she said.

I knew she blamed him for the breakup of their marriage, but, in truth, it had been as much her fault as his. But I didn’t want to get into all that again.

“I’ll call him tomorrow,” I said. “Let’s enjoy our own company here tonight.”

“I’ll drink to that,” said Claudia, raising her glass. So we did.

I thought about my father.

Seven years ago, when my parents had finally divorced and the big house had been sold, he’d taken his share of the money and used it to buy a boring bungalow in Weymouth, overlooking the sea. I’d only been there a couple of times since, although I’d seen him a few times in London for various functions.

We hadn’t been very close to start with and we were drifting further apart day by day. But I don’t think it was something that bothered either of us particularly. He hadn’t even called me when I’d been arrested and my face had been splashed all over the papers and on the TV. Perhaps my impending marriage and the possibility of grandchildren might help to revitalize our relationship, but I doubted it.

Claudia laid the dining table as my mother busied herself with saucepans of potatoes and carrots and the lamb roasted away gently in the oven. I, meanwhile, poured us all more champagne and let them get on with it, leaning up against the worktop and enjoying the last of the evening sunshine as it shone brightly through the west-facing kitchen window.

“Bugger,” my mother said.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“The cooker’s gone off,” she said.

“Is it a power cut?”

She tried a light switch, clicking it up and down. Nothing happened.

“Bloody electricity company,” she said. “I’ll call them straightaway.”

She rummaged in a drawer for a card and then picked up the phone.

“That’s funny,” she said, “the phone’s dead too.”

“Doesn’t it need power?” Claudia asked from over by the table. “Our cordless one does.”

“I’m not using the cordless,” my mother said. “This is the wired-in landline.”

Oh shit!

There was a heavy knock on the front door.

“I’ll get it,” said Claudia, turning away.

The power was off, the telephone was dead, there was a knock on the front door, and the hairs on the back of my neck were suddenly standing bolt upright.

“Don’t touch it,” I shouted at Claudia.

She turned to look at me, but she still moved towards the danger. “Why ever not?” she said.

“Claudia,” I shouted again, “get away from the door.”

I was already halfway towards her when the knock was repeated. And still Claudia moved towards it.

I grabbed her just as she was reaching for the handle.

“What on earth are you doing?” she said loudly. “Answer the bloody door.”

“No,” I said quietly.

“Why ever not?” she demanded.

“Keep your voice down,” I hissed at her.

“Why?” she said, but much quieter, with concern. She could probably read the fear in my face.

“Please. Just go over to the kitchen.” I looked over at my mother, who was staring at us, still holding the useless telephone receiver in her hand.

Something about the urgency of my voice finally got through to Claudia, and she went over to join my mother.

They both suddenly looked rather frightened.

I went into the small cloakroom next to the front door and peeked through a minute gap in the net curtains at the person standing outside.

He had on a gray-green anorak with the collar turned up, and this time he was wearing a dark blue baseball cap, but there was no doubt it was the same man that I had last seen in the grainy video from Mr. Patel’s newsagent’s, the same man who had gunned down Herb Kovak at Aintree and the same man who had shot at me in Lichfield Grove.

Bugger, I thought, echoing my mother.

I went back into the big room.

The front door had locked automatically when it was closed, with a latch a bit like a Yale’s. It was quite strong, but was it strong enough?

I went quickly across to the kitchen and locked the back door as well, turning the key slowly to keep the noise to a minimum and sliding across the bolt at the top.

Both my mother and Claudia watched my every step.

We heard the man rattle the front door and they both instinctively crouched down below the worktop.

“Who is it?” whispered my mother.

I’d have to tell them.

“Darlings,” I whispered. “He’s a very dangerous man and he’s trying to kill me.”

Claudia’s eyes opened so wide, I thought they would pop out of her head. My mother, however, thought I was joking and began to laugh.

“I’m being serious,” I said, cutting her off in mid-guffaw. “It’s the same man who killed Herb Kovak at Aintree races.”

This time they both looked more frightened than ever. And I was too.

“Call the police,” Claudia said, then remembered, “Oh my God, he’s cut the phone line.”

And the electricity.

The broadband connection would have failed with the power, and our mobiles didn’t have any signal here.

We were on our own.

“Upstairs,” I said quietly but firmly. “Both of you. Now. Lock yourselves in the bathroom, sit on the floor and don’t come out until I tell you to.”

Claudia hesitated a moment, but then she nodded and took my mother by the hand. They started to go but then turned back. “But what are you going to do?” Claudia asked with huge fear in her face.

“Try to keep him out,” I said. “Now, go on, go!”

They disappeared up the boxed-in staircase, and I heard the bathroom door being shut and locked above me.

And if he did get in and kill me, I thought, perhaps he’d leave them alone and go away, job done. As it was, with all three of us down here, I was sure he would have killed us all.

I looked around for some sort of weapon.

A loaded shotgun would have been nice, but my mother had about as much interest in country sports as I did in origami.

I heard the back door being tried, and I instinctively ducked away from it.

The sun went down, the last of its orange rays disappearing from the kitchen window. And it began to get dark, especially indoors with no electric lights to brighten the gathering gloom.

I looked around in desperation for something to use as a weapon. An umbrella stood in a large china pot near the front door, and a walking stick. I grabbed the walking stick, but it was a collapsible model, for ease of packing. So I opted for the umbrella, one of those big golf types with a heavy wooden handle. It wasn’t much, but it was all there was. How I wished the cottage still had a proper open fire with a big, heavy metal poker, but my mother had replaced it with one of those gas things with fake coals.

But at least I had one advantage over my assailant in so far as I could see him much more easily than he could see me.

It was still quite light outside, and I watched him through the windows as he went right around the house. At one point he came close to the kitchen window, cupping his hands around his face and up against the glass in order to peer in. I made sure I was standing to the side of the window, in a dark corner where he would have had no chance of spotting me.

Perhaps he would go away, I thought.

He didn’t.

The sound of breaking glass put paid to any hope I may have had that this was going to end simply and without violence.

My mother’s windows were old, in keeping with the age of her cottage. They were a version of the old leaded lights, small panes of glass held together by a lattice framework of metal strips.

The gunman had broken just one of the little panes in one of the kitchen windows, but it was enough for him to put his gloved hand through the opening and unlatch the whole thing. I watched him do it in the fading light, and the window swung open outwards.

Where could I hide?

Without doubt the best place to be was in the bathroom upstairs with the door locked but I had no intention of joining Claudia and my mother there. I was sure that that would lead in the end to the deaths of all three of us.

So, where else was there to hide?

Nowhere.

I concluded that hiding was, in fact, my least-favored option. It would simply give the advantage to the gunman, who could take his time, all night if necessary, and eventually he would undoubtedly find me and then I too would get a couple of bullets in my heart and another in my face just as poor Herb had.

So if I wasn’t going to hide, and I certainly wasn’t going to merely stand and wait to be killed, the only other option was to attack, and attack hard and fast.

He started to climb through the window, his gun with its long black silencer entering first.

I stood just to the side of the window and raised the umbrella, holding it by the pointed end so that I could swing the heavy wooden handle.

I used all my strength and brought the handle down hard onto the gun. I had actually been aiming for his wrist, but he pulled it back a fraction just at the last second.

The gun went off, the bullet ricocheting off the granite worktop below the window with a loud zing before burying itself in the wall opposite. But the blow had also knocked the gun from the man’s grasp. It clattered to the floor, sliding across the stonequarry tiles and out of sight under my mother’s old fridge. That evened things up a bit, I thought, but I would have loved to have been able to grab the gun and turn it on its owner.

“Ebi se!” the man said explosively.

I didn’t know what he meant, and it sadly didn’t stop him coming through the window.

I raised the umbrella for another strike, but he was wise to me now and he grabbed it as it descended and tore it from my grasp, tossing it aside as he stepped right through the open window and crouched on the worktop.

I rushed at him, but he was ready, pushing me aside with ease, so that I stumbled across the kitchen towards the sink.

I turned quickly, but the man had already jumped down to the floor. I watched him as he looked around and then withdrew a large carving knife from the wooden block next to my mother’s stove. Now, why hadn’t I thought of that?

I moved quickly to my right, putting the dining table between him and me. If he couldn’t reach me, he couldn’t stab me either.

There followed a sort of ballet, with him moving one way or the other and me mirroring him, always keeping the table between us. Once we ran around and around the table three or four times, with me watching carefully for him to change direction. He pulled out chairs to try to slow me down, but I was quick. I may not be as fit as I was as a jockey but I was still no slouch in the running department. It had fared me well in Lichfield Grove and was doing so again here.

But for how long?

He only needed to get lucky once.

He changed his tactics, using one of the chairs to climb up onto the table, and then he came straight at me across it.

I turned and ran for the stairs, pulling open the latch door and bounding up the steps two or three at a time. I could hear him behind me, and he was gaining.

Where could I go? I was running out of options.

Panic began to rise in my throat. I didn’t want to die.

I turned to face him. At least I would see it coming and I’d be able to make some effort to get away from the thrust of the knife.

He stood at the top of the stairs with me just four feet away in front of him. He advanced a step, and I retreated a step, then we both repeated the drill, but my back was now up against the wall. I had no farther to go.

He came a step closer to me, and I readied myself for his strike, although what I would do when it came I didn’t know.

Die, probably.

Claudia stepped out of the bathroom, just down the corridor to his right.

“Fuck off, you bastard,” she shouted at him with full fortissimo. “Leave him alone.” She then slammed the bathroom door shut again and locked it.

He turned momentarily towards the noise and I leapt at him, wrapping my right arm around his neck with my forearm across his throat while at the same time trying to gouge his eyes out with the fingers of my left hand.

I squeezed his neck with all my strength.

But it was not enough.

The man was considerably taller and stronger than I, and in spite of my best grip he simply began to turn himself around to face me. And with both of my arms held up around his head, my abdomen would be totally defenseless to a thrust of the knife.

What had that spinal specialist told me?

“Whatever you do,” he’d said, “don’t get into a fight.”

He’d said nothing about falling down stairs.

I hung on to the man’s neck as if my life depended on it, which it probably did, and then I dived headfirst down the narrow boxed-in stairway, taking the man down with me. It was a crazy thing to do, especially for someone who had precious little holding his head to his body. But it was my only chance.

I twisted as we fell so that I landed on top of the man, his head taking the full force of the heavy contact with the wall where the stairway turned ninety degrees halfway down. We slithered on to the bottom of the wooden stairs, coming to a halt still locked together by my right arm, which I was still pulling as tightly as I could around his neck. We were lying partially through the leverlatch doorway, our legs still on the stairs, our heads and torsos sticking out into the room beyond.

Even for me on top, and using the man’s body to break my fall, the first impact with the wall had been enough to drive the air from my lungs, but at least my head hadn’t fallen off.

I pulled my arm from under his neck and jumped to my feet, ready to continue the fight, but there was no need. The man lay limply, facedown, where he’d come to rest.

I went quickly to fetch my mother’s collapsible walking stick and then I used it to retrieve the gun from beneath her fridge, hooking it out with the handle.

If the man moved so much as an eyebrow, I thought, I’d shoot him.

I stood over him for what felt like a very long time, pointing the gun at his head and watching for any movement.

But the man didn’t move. Not even to breathe.

Nevertheless, I still didn’t trust him not to jump up and kill me, so I kept the gun pointing at him all the time.

“Claudia,” I shouted as loudly as I could. “Claudia, I need your help.”

I heard the bathroom door being unlocked and then footsteps on the floorboards above my head.

“Has he gone?” Claudia asked from the top of the stairs. It was so dark that she couldn’t even see the man lying right beneath her.

“I think he might be dead,” I said. “But I’m taking no chances, and it’s getting so dark I can hardly see him.”

“I’ve got a flashlight by my bed,” my mother said in a matter-of-fact tone.

I heard her walk along the corridor to her room, then she came back, shining the flashlight brightly down the stairwell.

“Oh my God!” Claudia said, looking down.

In the light we could see that the man’s head was lying almost flat against his right shoulder in a most unnatural position. The man’s neck was clearly broken just as mine had once been.

But, on this occasion, there were no friendly paramedics to apply an immobilizing collar, no one to save his life with prompt and gentle care as there had been for me at Cheltenham racetrack all those years ago.

This man’s broken neck had bumped on down to the bottom of a wooden stairway, all the time being wrenched to one side by my arm.

And it had killed him.