Dick Francis's Gamble

15

What the hell do we do now?” Claudia said from the top of the stairs.

“Call the police,” I said from the bottom.

“How?”

“I’ll take the car and find somewhere with a signal,” I said.

But there was no way Claudia and my mother were allowing me to go off in the car, leaving them alone in the house with the gunman. Dead or not, they were still very frightened of him, and I can’t say I blamed them.

“Pack up our things,” I said to Claudia. “Mum, pack an overnight bag. No, take enough for a few days. We’re going somewhere else.”

“But why?” my mother asked.

“Because someone sent this man here to kill me and when he finds out that his gunman hasn’t succeeded, that someone might send another to try again.”

Neither of them asked the obvious question: Why was the man trying to kill me? Instead they both quickly went together to pack, taking the flashlight with them and leaving me standing in the dark.

In spite of being pretty certain the man was indeed dead, I didn’t stop listening, holding the gun ready in case he made a miraculous recovery.

I found I was shaking.

I took several deep breaths, but the shaking continued. Perhaps it was from fear, or relief, or maybe it was a reaction to the sudden realization that I had killed a man. Probably a bit of all three.

The shaking continued for several minutes, and I became totally exhausted by it. I wanted to sit down, and I felt slightly sick.

“We’re packed,” Claudia said from upstairs, the flashlight again shining down the stairway.

“Good,” I said. “Pass the things down to me.”

I stepped carefully onto the first few stairs, next to the man’s legs, and reached up as Claudia handed down our bags and my mother’s suitcase.

Next, I guided each of them down in turn, making sure they stepped only on the wood and not on the man.

“Oh my God. Oh my God,” Claudia said, repeating it over and over again, as she came nervously down the stairs, pressing herself against the side while at the same time holding her hands up to ensure she wouldn’t touch the man by mistake.

My mother was surprisingly much more stoical, waltzing down the stairs as if there was nothing there. In fact, I suspected that she would’ve liked to have given the corpse a sharp kick for ruining her roast dinner.

The three of us went out to the car, loaded the stuff and drove away down the rutted lane, leaving the dead man alone in the dark house.

I drove into Cheltenham and called the police, but I didn’t dial the emergency number. Instead, I called Chief Inspector Tomlinson on his mobile.

“The man who killed Herb Kovak,” I said, “is lying dead at the bottom of my mother’s stairs.”

There was the slightest of pauses.

“How tiresome of him,” the chief inspector said. “Did he just lie down there and die?”

“No,” I said. “He broke his neck falling down the stairs.”

“Was he pushed?” he asked, once again demonstrating his suspicious mind.

“Helped,” I said. “We fell down the stairs together. He came off worse. But he was trying to stab me with a carving knife at the time.”

“What happened to his gun?” he asked.

“He lost it under the fridge,” I said.

“Hmm,” he said. “And have you told the local constabulary?”

“No,” I said. “I thought you could do that. And you can also tell them he was a foreigner.”

“How do you know?”

“He said something I didn’t understand.”

“And where are you now?” he asked.

“In Cheltenham,” I said. “The gunman cut the power and the telephone wires. I’ve had to leave to make a call on my mobile. There’s no signal at the cottage.”

“Is anyone still at the cottage?”

“Only the dead man,” I said. “I have Claudia and my mother with me in the car.”

“So are you going back there now?” he asked.

“No,” I said firmly. “Whoever sent this man could send another.”

“So where are you going?” he asked, not questioning my decision.

“I don’t know yet,” I said. “I’ll call you when I do.”

“Who knew you were at your mother’s place?” he asked, always the detective.

“Everyone in my office,” I said. And whomever else Mrs. McDowd had told, I thought.

“Right,” he said. “I’ll call the Gloucestershire Police, but they’ll definitely want to talk to you, and to Claudia and your mother. They may even want you back at the cottage.”

“Tell them I’ll call them there in two hours,” I said.

“But you said the line had been cut.”

“Then get it fixed,” I said. “And get the power back on. Tell them I think my mother has left the stove on. I don’t want the place burning down when the power’s reconnected. And also tell them I’ve left the back door unlocked so they won’t have to break the front door down to get in.”

“OK,” he said. “I’ll tell them.” He paused. “Is the gun still under the fridge?”

“No,” I said. “I retrieved it.”

“So where is it now?”

I had so wanted to bring it with me, to give myself the armed protection that I’d been denied by the police.

“It’s outside the front door,” I said. “In a bush.”

“Right,” he said, sounding slightly relieved. “I’ll tell the Gloucestershire force that too. Save them hunting for it, and you.”

“Good,” I said.

It had been the right decision to leave the gun behind. I could still claim the moral high ground.

I hung up and switched off my phone. I would call the police on my terms, and I also didn’t want anyone being able to track my movements from the phone signal.

“Do you really think we’re still in danger?” Claudia asked next to me.

“I don’t know,” I said, “but I’m not taking any chances.”

“Who knew we were there?” she asked.

“Everyone at the office, I expect,” I said. “Mrs. McDowd definitely knew and she’d have told everyone else.”

And Detective Chief Inspector Tomlinson had known as well.

I’d told him myself.

It was my mother who finally asked the big question.

“Why was that man trying to kill you?” she said calmly from the backseat.

We were on the road between Cirencester and Swindon.

I’d made one more stop in Cheltenham at one of the few remaining public phone boxes. I hadn’t wanted to use my mobile for fear that someone could trace who I was calling. We were going where no one would find us.

“I’m not totally sure but it may be because I am a witness to him killing a man at Aintree races,” I said. “And it wasn’t the first time he’d tried.”

Neither my mother nor Claudia said anything. They were waiting for me to go on.

“He was waiting outside our house in Lichfield Grove when I got back there on Tuesday afternoon,” I said. “Luckily, I could run faster than him.”

“Is that why we came to Woodmancote,” Claudia asked, “instead of going home?”

“It sure is,” I said. “But I didn’t realize that Woodmancote wasn’t safe either. Not until it was too late. I won’t make that mistake again.”

“But what about the police?” my mother asked. “Surely we must go to the police. They will look after us.”

But how much did I trust the police? I didn’t know that either. They hadn’t given me any protection when I’d asked for it and that omission had almost cost us our lives. No, I thought, I’d trust my own instincts. The police seemed more interested in solving murders than preventing them.

“I have been to the police,” I said, driving on through the darkness. “But it will be me who will look after you.”

And I would also find out who was trying to have me killed, and the real reason why.

Well, lover boy,” Jan Setter said, “when I asked you to come and stay, I didn’t exactly mean you to bring your girlfriend and your mother with you!”

We laughed.

We were sitting at her kitchen table in Lambourn, drinking coffee, the said girlfriend and mother having been safely tucked up in two of Jan’s many spare bedrooms.

“I didn’t know where else to go,” I said to her.

I had briefly thought about going to my father’s bungalow in Weymouth, but he had only two double bedrooms and, amusing as the thought had been, I could hardly expect my parents to share a bed together, not after seven years of divorce, and I certainly wasn’t sleeping with the old bugger.

“So what’s all this about?” Jan asked finally.

All I had said to her on the phone from Cheltenham had been that I was desperate and could she help by putting us up for a night or two.

“How desperate?” she had asked calmly.

“Life or death,” I’d said. “Complete secrecy.”

She had asked nothing further but had simply said, “Come,” and she’d asked no questions when we’d arrived, not until after my traumatized mother and fiancée had been safely ushered up to bed. As it had with me, the shock and fear had manifested itself in them after the event.

In all the years I had known Jan, both as her former jockey and more recently as her financial adviser, I had never known her to be flustered or panicked by anything. She was the steady head I needed in this crisis.

But how much did I tell her?

Would she even believe me?

“I know this is going to sound rather overly dramatic,” I said. “But someone is trying to kill me.”

“What’s her name?” Jan asked with a laugh.

“I’m being serious, Jan,” I said. “Tonight a man came to my mother’s cottage to murder me. He had a gun. I promise you, we are extremely fortunate to be alive. The same man has now tried to kill me twice.”

“Let’s hope it isn’t third time lucky.”

“He won’t get a third time.”

“How can you be sure?” she asked.

“Because he’s dead. The last time I saw him he was lying on the floor of my mother’s living room with his neck broken.”

She stared at me. “You are being serious, aren’t you?”

I nodded. “Very.”

“Have you called the police?”

“Yes,” I said. “But I need to call them again.” I looked at my watch. It had been at least two hours since I’d spoken to Chief Inspector Tomlinson. But they could wait a little longer.

“So why come here?” she asked. “Why not go straight to the police?”

“I need somewhere to hide where no one can find me.”

Not even the police, I thought.

“But, if the man’s dead, why do you still need to hide?” she asked.

“Because he was a hired killer, and I am worried that whoever hired him will simply hire another.”

I could tell from the look on Jan’s face that her credulity had reached its limit.

“It’s true, I assure you,” I said. “I’m not making it up, and I think it’s all to do with stealing a hundred million euros from the European Union. Now, that really is big money. And what’s the going rate for having someone killed these days? Twenty thousand? A hundred grand maybe? Or even half a million? That’s still only a half of one percent of the take. Cheap at twice the price.”

“But what have you got to do with stealing a hundred million euros?” she asked.

“Nothing,” I said. “But I may have asked the wrong questions to those that have. And I suspect that somebody believes I need to be permanently removed before I ask some more questions and bring the whole scheme tumbling down round their ears.”

“So what are you going to do?” she said.

“Ask the questions quickly,” I said, grinning at her. “And then keep my head down.”

Someone answered after just one ring when I called my mother’s cottage. I was sitting in Jan’s office and using her mobile phone, and I had carefully withheld the number from caller ID. I hoped it was enough to keep it secret.

“Hello,” I said.

“Is that Nicholas Foxton?” came a man’s voice in reply.

“It is,” I said. “To whom am I talking?”

“Detective Chief Inspector Flight,” he said, “Gloucestershire Police.”

Not another detective chief inspector, I thought. What’s the collective noun for detective chief inspectors? It was a posse of police, so maybe it’s an evidence of detective chief inspectors.

“Where are you, Mr. Foxton?” asked this particular chief inspector.

“Somewhere safe,” I said.

“And where is that?” he asked again.

I ignored him. “Who was the man who tried to kill me?” I asked.

“Mr. Foxton,” he said, “I need you to come to a police station to be interviewed. Tonight.”

He was persistent, I’d give him that.

“Have you spoken to DCI Tomlinson from Merseyside Police?” I asked. “Or Superintendent Yering from the Metropolitan Police Armed Response Team?”

“No,” he said, “not personally.”

“Then I suggest you do,” I said.

“Mr. Foxton,” he said, “you are in danger of obstructing the police in the course of their duties. Now, please tell me where you are.”

“No,” I said. “Did you watch the television news on Tuesday? The dead man in my mother’s cottage is the same man as in the video. And I think he was foreign. He said some words I didn’t understand. Something like ‘Ibe se!’”

“Mr. Foxton.” Detective Chief Inspector Flight was getting quite worked up. “I must insist you tell me where you are.”

“And I must insist you speak to DCI Tomlinson or Superintendent Yering.”

I hung up.

That didn’t go too well, I thought. Too bad. But I was definitely not going to any police station to be interviewed tonight, or any other night if I could help it. People could get shot at police stations. Ask Lee Harvey Oswald.

I heard Jan leave the house at a quarter to seven in the morning to supervise the exercising of her horses on the gallops. She had asked if I wanted to accompany her up onto the Downs to watch, but I had declined, not because I didn’t want to but because I didn’t want anyone to recognize me and hence know where I was staying.

It may have been eight years since I was a regular in Lambourn, but there were plenty who had been here longer than that, even amongst Jan’s staff, and most would have known me by sight.

I realized it was highly unlikely that news of my whereabouts would then get back to hostile ears, but I didn’t want to take any unnecessary risks if I didn’t have to.

I got up as quietly as I could but Claudia was already awake.

“Don’t go,” she said.

I snuggled down again next to her under the covers.

“When will this all end?” she asked.

“Soon,” I said. But I really had no idea when.

“I was so frightened last night,” she said with tears in her eyes. “I really thought he was going to kill you.”

I’d thought it too.

“But he didn’t,” I said. “So everything’s all right.” I was trying to sound encouraging even if I was not so sure inside.

“So why have we come here?” she asked. “Why can’t we go home now?”

“There’s just a few things I have to do before we can go home,” I said, sitting up on the side of the bed. “And I don’t want to take any chances if we don’t need to.”

“I think we should go to the police,” she said.

“I spoke to them last night after you went to bed. They agreed that it was better for us to stay here for a couple of days while they carry out their investigations.”

At least the first bit was true.

“So what is it that you have to do?” she asked.

“Well, first, I have to go to Oxford,” I said. “And I’m going to do that right now.” I stood up and started to dress.

“I’ll come with you,” Claudia said, throwing the duvet to one side and sitting up.

“No,” I said firmly. “You stay here with Jan and my mother. You need to recover fully from your operation. And I won’t be long. You’ll be quite safe here.”

I think she was secretly relieved as she lay down again and pulled the duvet back over her.

“Why are you going?” she asked.

“To see a young man at the university,” I said. “I want to ask him some questions about a factory, or, rather, about the lack of a factory.”

I stopped on the outskirts of Oxford and turned on my mobile phone to call Detective Chief Inspector Tomlinson.

“DCI Flight of Gloucestershire Police is not happy with you,” he said. “Not happy at all.”

“Too bad,” I said.

“He’s applied for a warrant for your arrest on suspicion of manslaughter.”

“But that’s ridiculous,” I said.

“Maybe it is,” he agreed, “but he’s really pissed off. I do think it might be better if you go and see him.”

“Not if he’s going to arrest me.” I didn’t relish spending another day in a police cell. “Anyway,” I said, “I have things to do first.”

“Not investigating again, are you?” said the professional detective. “I’ve told you to leave that to the police.”

“But what are you going to investigate?” I said. “It is me, not you, that believes Colonel Jolyon Roberts was murdered, but there is no evidence for that belief. In fact, quite the reverse. The evidence indicates that he died of natural causes helped by a dose of stupidity. The police see no crime, so there is no investigation.”

“So what do you want me to do?” he asked.

“Speak to Flight,” I said. “Get him off my back. Tell him there’s no way I’ll see him if he’s going to arrest me.”

“I’ll try,” he said. “But I still think you ought to at least talk to him.”

“Get me his number,” I said. “Then I’ll call him.”

“How can I contact you?” he asked.

“Leave a message on this phone. I’ll pick it up.”

“Anything else?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said. “Can you find out if the dead man in my mother’s cottage was Bulgarian?”

I thought about also asking him to get the fraud squad to initiate an investigation into the Balscott factory project, but, as I knew from previous experience with a former client, fraud investigations involving foreign investments started with months and months of delving into paperwork before there was any prospect of an arrest. Add to that the complexities of the European Union grants system, and it would take years.

And I’d be dead and buried long before that.

I disconnected from DCI Tomlinson, but the phone rang again in my hand almost immediately.

“This is your voice mail,” said an impersonal female voice when I answered. “You have two new messages.”

One of them was from DCI Flight, and, as the other chief inspector had said, he didn’t sound very happy. I ignored it.

The other was from Patrick Lyall, who also wasn’t pleased with me, in particular because I had left a message on his mobile saying that I wouldn’t be coming into the office today.

“Nicholas,” Patrick’s voice said, “I am sorry that you have decided not to be in the office once again. I think we need to have a talk about your commitment to the firm. I will be writing to you today formally warning you as to your future conduct. Please, would you call me and tell me where to have the letter delivered.”

It sounded to me as if the company lawyer had been advising him again on employment law-written warnings and all that.

I ignored him too.

Did I, in fact, have any future in the firm? And did I really care?

Keble College was on the north side of the city near the Oxford

University Museum of Natural History. I parked in Museum Road and walked back to the college.

“Sorry, sir,” said a man in a smart blue jersey intercepting me in the entrance archway. “The college is closed to the public. Trinity has begun.”

“Trinity?” I asked.

“Trinity term,” he said. “The students are here.”

It hadn’t even crossed my mind they wouldn’t be.

“Exactly,” I said to him. “I’ve come to see one of the students.”

“Which one?” he asked politely but firmly. He was obviously used to repelling visitors who had no good cause to be there.

“Benjamin Roberts,” I said.

“And is Mr. Roberts expecting you?” he asked.

“No,” I said. “It’s a surprise visit.”

He looked at his watch, and I looked at mine. It was just past ten o’clock.

“It might be a bit early for Mr. Roberts,” he said. “I heard he was partying rather late last evening. But I’ll try and call him. What name shall I say?”

“Smith,” I said. “John Smith.”

The college porter looked at me somewhat skeptically.

“I get that reaction all the time,” I said. “Unimaginative parents.”

He nodded, as if making up his mind, and then disappeared into the porters’ lodge.

I waited patiently under the arch.

Presently, the porter reappeared. “Mr. Roberts asks if you could come back later, round one o’clock.”

“Could you please call Mr. Roberts again and tell him I’m from the Balscott Lighting Factory and I need to see him now.”

Benjamin Roberts appeared in three minutes flat, with his long dark hair still unbrushed, bags under his eyes and with no socks inside his black leather shoes. He was tall, probably near six-feet-four or -five, and he towered over my just five-foot-eight.

“Mr. Smith?” he asked. I nodded. “Jarvis here tells me you’re from the Balscott factory.”

We were still standing in the entrance archway, with students passing us continually in both directions, and with Jarvis, the college porter, hovering nearby.

“Is there anywhere quiet we could go and talk?” I asked.

He turned to the porter. “Thank you, Jarvis, I’ll be taking Mr. Smith up to the Dining Hall for a while.”

“All visitors have to be signed in,” Jarvis said rather officiously.

Benjamin Roberts went into the lodge for a moment and then reappeared.

“Bloody rules,” he said. “They treat us like kids.”

We walked along a gravel path down the side of a building and then up some wide steps to the college dining hall, an impressively tall space with three lines of refectory tables and benches running along its full length.

Some catering staff at the far end of the hall were laying up for lunch but Benjamin and I sat down close to the door, across one of the tables from each other.

“Now,” he said, “what’s all this about?”

“Benjamin,” I said, starting.

“Ben,” he interrupted.

“Sorry, Ben,” I said, corrected. “I was a friend of your uncle Jolyon.”

He looked down at his hands on the table. “Such a shame,” he said. “Uncle Jolyon was fun. I’ll miss him.” He looked up again at me. “But what have you to do with the factory?”

“Your uncle Jolyon told me that you’d recently been to Bulgaria.”

“Yes,” he said slowly. “A group of us from the university skiing club went to Borovets during the Easter vac. It was very good value and great snow. You should try it.”

Not with my neck, I thought.

“But your uncle also said you went to see the factory.”

“There isn’t any factory, is there?” he said.

“You tell me,” I said. “You’re the one that went to see it.”

He didn’t answer but sat looking at me across the table.

“Who are you, exactly?” he said. “Is Smith your real name?”

“No,” I admitted, “it is not.”

“So who are you?” he asked, standing up and with a degree of menace in his voice. “And what are you after?”

“I’m not after anything,” I said defensively, looking up at him. “Except to be left alone.”

“So why are you here? If you want to be left alone, why don’t you just go away?”

“I would, but someone is trying to kill me,” I said, this time without looking up at his face. It was hurting my neck. “Now, will you please sit down.”

He slowly lowered his huge frame back down onto the bench. “Who is trying to kill you?” he asked in a tone that indicated disbelief. “And why?”

“I don’t know who,” I said. “Not yet. But I think I may know why. Your uncle approached me because he was worried that the family’s investment in the Bulgarian factory project was a scam. He had been shown photographs of the factory buildings, but you had then told him that they didn’t actually exist. So he asked me to look into it, to check that, in his words, it wasn’t ‘a rotten egg of an investment.’ ”

He smiled at the use of the words. They were clearly familiar to him.

“And,” I went on, “I think that it is indeed a rotten egg of an investment. Your family money was the key to everything because the private finance for the factory triggered the public funding for all the houses. Someone has been defrauding the European Union of a hundred million euros by obtaining grants towards the cost of building a lightbulb factory and hundreds of homes that don’t actually exist and never will. And that same someone is trying to kill me before I can prove it, and before I find out who they are.”

I paused, and Ben Roberts sat staring at me in silence.

“And,” I said, going on, “I believe your uncle may have been murdered for the same reason.”