Dick Francis's Gamble

17

Sunday was, indeed, a day of rest.

The trip to the supermarket had almost been too much for Claudia, who was still far from well after her surgery.

“Don’t try and do too much too soon,” Dr. Tomic, the surgeon, had said. “Plenty of rest is needed to allow the abdominal wall to mend.”

He hadn’t mentioned anything about running up stairs, shouting at gunmen or food shopping, but he probably wouldn’t have approved of any of them.

“You stay in bed today,” I said to Claudia. “I’ll fetch you some breakfast.”

She smiled and closed her eyes again as I went out.

Jan was already downstairs making toast.

“My God,” she said, going into the larder, “we’ve even got marmalade!” She turned around and grinned at me. “I can’t remember when I last had so much food in here. I’m completely useless at cooking. All I can do is heat things up in the microwave. But you really shouldn’t have bought so much.”

“Consider it our rent,” I said.

“You don’t have to pay rent, lover boy,” she said, coming back out of the larder and opening the marmalade. “You can pay me in kind.” She laughed. “Except I now know I have no chance of that.”

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“Don’t be,” she said. “I think Claudia is really lovely. You’re a lucky man.” She paused and breathed deeply. “And I suppose I’d better stop calling you lover boy.”

There were tears in her eyes. I went over to her and gave her a hug. There was nothing to say, so I didn’t speak, I just held her tightly until the moment had passed.

“Life can be so random,” she said, stepping back from me. “When I was married to Stuart, all I wanted was to divorce him and keep half his fortune. Well, I’ve done that, but-and I know this sounds crazy-I miss him. I even miss the god-awful rows we used to have. Now, with Maria away at college in London, I’m just a rich, lonely old spinster.”

“But you must have masses of friends,” I said.

She looked at me as she spread the marmalade on her toast. “I have plenty of acquaintances but no real friends. Racing is so competitive that I find it difficult to make any true friends with racing people. Of course, I know lots of them round here, other trainers and such, and I see them at the races, but I’m not a member of the village dinner-party set. All my friends were Stuart’s friends, and when he went, they went too.”

“Well, it’s high time you met some more,” I said, trying to lighten the mood.

She laughed again but only briefly. “That’s not as simple as it sounds, and finding someone to satisfy one’s needs is far from straightforward, I can tell you. You chaps have it made.”

“In what way?” I asked.

“If a man wants sex, he can just go and buy it from some girl on a street corner or in some lap-dancing club,” she said. “It’s not so easy for a middle-aged woman.”

I stood there slightly dumbstruck. I had always treated her advances as a bit of a joke. I hadn’t realized the degree of her desperation.

“Oh, Jan!” I said. “I’m so sorry.”

“I don’t want your pity,” she said, quickly turning away from me and taking the marmalade back into the larder.

No, I thought, she wanted my body.

I took a cup of coffee and some muesli up to Claudia.

“You took your time,” she said, sitting up in bed.

“Sorry. I was talking to Jan.”

“Isn’t she lovely?” Claudia said. “We had a long chat yesterday morning while you were out.”

“What did you talk about?” I asked.

“Life in general,” she said obliquely. “Stuff like that.”

“Did you tell her about… you know?”

Why was the word cancer so difficult to use?

“I started to, but then your mother came in, and I’m still not sure it’s time to tell her yet.”

“But when will it be time?” I said. “Now seems as good a time as any.”

“I suppose you’re right,” she said. “I just feel…” She stopped.

“What?” I said.

“I suppose I feel a failure. And I don’t want her to be disappointed in me.”

“Don’t be daft,” I said. “She loves you.”

“Only because she thinks I’m her pathway to grandchildren.”

“That’s not true,” I said, but I did wonder if she was right.

“And she won’t love me if I marry you and then we find I can’t have any babies. She will then see me not as a pathway but as an obstacle.”

She was almost in tears.

“Darling,” I said, “please don’t upset yourself. OK, if you don’t want to, we won’t tell her. Not yet.”

But we would have to tell her if, and when, Claudia’s hair started falling out.

The rest of Sunday seemed to drag on interminably, with me forever wondering how Ben Roberts was faring with his father. But, as I was still reluctant to leave my mobile phone switched on, I would have no way of knowing anyway.

My mother, with Jan helping, cooked roast beef for lunch with all the trimmings, the wonderful smells even enticing Claudia downstairs in her dressing gown.

“I can’t tell you how long it’s been since I had a proper Sunday lunch in this house,” Jan said as we all sat down at the kitchen table. “Not since Stuart left, that’s for sure. He used to do the cooking.” She laughed. “Can’t you stay forever?”

The lunch was accompanied by a couple of bottles of the supermarket’s finest claret, of which I had just one small glass. Someone had to keep their wits about them. I left the ladies to sleep it off on the deep sofas in the living room while I again went to make some calls from Jan’s office.

First I used her landline to remotely access my voice mail. There were four new messages. All were from Chief Inspector Flight and each one threatening me with arrest if I didn’t come forward immediately to speak to him. He read out a number where he could always be reached, and I wrote it down on the notepad beside the telephone.

But there was no message from Ben Roberts. Perhaps he hadn’t yet found the right moment to speak to his father.

Next, I called DCI Tomlinson’s mobile number, taking care to dial 141 first to withhold Jan’s number from caller ID.

He answered at the fourth ring, but he sounded as if I’d woken him from a Sunday-afternoon slumber.

“Sorry,” I said. “I thought you’d have your phone off if you weren’t working.”

“I am working,” he said. “I’m in my office. Just having forty winks on my desk. I was up half the night.”

“Partying?” I asked.

“Something like that,” he said. “Or what goes for partying round these parts. An abused girlfriend finally had too much and stabbed her boyfriend to death.”

“Nice.”

“No,” he said, “not really. She stabbed him about thirty times with a screwdriver. He bled to death. It was not a pretty sight, and especially not at four in the morning when I should have been tucked up in my bed.”

“Sorry,” I said.

“Thanks,” he replied. “But it’s sadly too common round here, especially after they’ve been drinking. I rarely get a full night’s sleep on a Saturday.”

I decided against adding homicide detective to my list of possible future careers.

“Do you have any news for me?” I asked.

“What sort of news?” he asked back.

“Anything,” I said. “How about the dead man? Was he Bulgarian?”

“We don’t know yet. His image and fingerprints haven’t turned up on anything. Still waiting for the DNA analysis. But I can tell you one thing.”

“Yes?” I said eagerly.

“The forensic boys have been working overtime, and they tell me the gun matches.”

“Matches what?” I asked.

“The gun found in the bush outside your mother’s cottage was definitely the same gun that killed Herb Kovak, and they’re pretty sure the same gun was also used to shoot at you in Finchley. They can’t be a hundred percent certain without the bullets.”

The image of the line of policemen crawling up Lichfield Grove on their hands and knees came into my mind. They obviously hadn’t found anything.

“Does that mean that Chief Inspector Flight is now off my back?”

“I wouldn’t exactly say that,” he said. “He’s still hopping mad.”

“Yes,” I said. “I know. He’s left messages on my phone.”

“Speak to him,” Tomlinson said. “That’s probably all he wants. He may think you’re playing with him.”

“Does he still want to arrest me?” I asked.

“I don’t know. Ask him.”

We disconnected.

I looked at the number on the notepad and thought about calling DCI Flight. Ignoring him would only make him madder and then he might use more of his energies trying to find me than discovering the identity of his corpse. But I wasn’t going to call him from here. Dialing 141 might be enough to prevent the number appearing on caller ID but I was sure the police could still obtain it from the telephone company if they really wanted to.

But I’d called Chief Inspector Tomlinson using Jan’s phone. What was the difference?

It was a matter of trust, I thought. I trusted Chief Inspector Tomlinson not to go to the trouble of finding where I was from the call. But I didn’t trust DCI Flight.

So, at about five o’clock, I drove into the outskirts of Swindon and stopped in a pub parking lot before switching on my mobile and calling the Gloucestershire detective.

“DCI Flight,” he said crisply, answering at the first ring.

“This is Nicholas Foxton,” I said.

“Ah,” he said. “And about time too.”

“Have you spoken to DCI Tomlinson and Superintendent Yering?” I asked.

“Yes,” he said slowly. “I have.”

“Good,” I said. “So who was the man at my mother’s cottage?”

“Mr. Foxton,” he replied curtly. “It is me who needs to ask you some questions, not the other way round.”

“Ask away,” I said.

“What happened at your mother’s cottage last Thursday evening?”

“A man with a gun broke in, we had a fight, and he fell down the stairs and broke his neck.”

“Is that all?” he asked.

“Isn’t that enough?” I asked sarcastically. “Oh yes, and he was trying to stab me at the time he fell down the stairs.”

“We found a knife under the body,” he said. “But why did he need one? What happened to his gun?”

“It was under the fridge,” I said.

He paused.

“How, exactly, did it get under the fridge?”

“I hit it with an umbrella.”

This time there was a lengthy pause from the other end.

“Are you being serious, Mr. Foxton?” he asked.

“Very,” I said. “The man cut the power and the telephone. He then broke a pane of glass in the kitchen to get in, and as he was climbing through the window I hit him with a golf umbrella. He dropped the gun, which slid under the fridge. He then took a knife from its block and tried to stab me. I managed to get upstairs, but the man followed. As he was attacking me, we struggled, and both of us fell down the stairs. He came off worse. End of story.”

There was another pause, another lengthy pause, almost as if the chief inspector had not been listening to me.

“Hold on,” I said suddenly. “I’ll call you back.”

I hung up, switched my phone off and quickly drove the car out of the pub parking lot and down the road towards the city center. After about half a mile, a police car with blue flashing lights drove past me, going fast in the opposite direction. Now, was that just a coincidence?

I went right around a roundabout and drove back to the pub, but I didn’t go in. I drove straight past without even slowing down. The police car, still with its blue flashers on, had stopped so that it was completely blocking the pub parking lot entrance, and two uniformed policemen were getting out of it.

Was that also a coincidence? No, I decided, it was not.

I obviously hadn’t needed to ask DCI Flight if he still wanted to arrest me. I’d just seen the answer.

I drove north along the A419 divided highway towards Cirencester, in the opposite direction to Lambourn, and pulled over near the village of Cricklade.

I turned my phone on again and pressed REDIAL.

DCI Flight answered immediately.

“Trust,” I said. “That’s what you need.”

“Give yourself up,” he said.

“But I’ve done nothing wrong.”

“Then you have nothing to fear.”

I hung up and switched off my phone. Then I started the car and made my way back to Lambourn, being careful not to speed or in any way attract the attention of any passing policeman.

Dammit, I thought. All I didn’t need was an overly interfering detective who was more interested in catching me than in anything else. “Give yourself up” indeed. Who did he think I was, Jimmy Hoffa?

I caught the train from Newbury to Paddington just after seven o’clock on Monday morning, leaving the blue rental car in the station parking lot.

As the train slowed to a stop in Reading, I turned on my phone and called my voice mail.

“You have two new messages,” said the familiar female voice.

The first was from DCI Flight, promising not to arrest me if I came to the Cheltenham Police Station to be interviewed.

Why did I not believe him?

The second was from Ben Roberts.

“Mr. Foxton, I have spoken with my father,” his voice said. “He is not willing to meet with you or to discuss the matter further. I must also ask that you do not contact me again. I’m sorry.”

He didn’t actually sound very sorry, and I wondered if his father had been standing next to him as he had made the call.

My investigating wasn’t exactly going very well. Where did I go from here?

I turned off my phone and sat back in my seat as the train rushed along the metal towards London. I watched absentmindedly through the window as the Berkshire countryside gradually gave way to suburbs and then to the big city itself, and I wondered what the day would bring.

I had to admit that I was nervous about the disciplinary meeting with Patrick and Gregory.

Lyall & Black had been my life for five years, and I had begun to really make my mark. I had brought some high-profile, highworth clients to the firm, and some of my recommendations for investment, especially in film and theater, had become standard advice across the company.

Over the next few years I might have expected to have expanded my own client base while giving up most of the responsibility of acting as one of Patrick’s assistants. I might even have hoped to be offered a full senior partner position when Patrick and Gregory retired, and that would be only five or six years away. That was where the real money was to be made and when my modest nest egg might start expanding rapidly. Providing, of course, that I was good enough to maintain the confidence of the clients.

However, I was now in danger of missing out completely.

But why? What had I done wrong?

It wasn’t me who was defrauding the European Union of a hundred million euros, so why was it me who was attending a disciplinary meeting?

Perhaps the only thing I had done incorrectly was to not go straight to Patrick, or to Jessica Winter the Compliance Officer, as soon as Colonel Roberts had expressed his concerns over Gregory and the Bulgarian factory project. I should never have tried to investigate things behind their backs.

And I would rectify that mistake today.

I caught the Circle Line Tube from Paddington to Moorgate and then walked from there towards Lombard Street.

As I walked down Princes Street, alongside the high, imposing walls of the Bank of England, I suddenly started to feel uneasy, the hairs again standing up on the back of my neck.

For the past four days, I had been so careful not to let anyone know where I was staying, yet here I was walking to a prearranged appointment at the offices of Lyall & Black. Furthermore, the appointment was for a meeting with one of those I believed was responsible for trying to kill me.

I really didn’t fancy finding another gunman waiting for me in the street outside my office building.

I slowed to a halt on the sidewalk, with people hurrying past me in each direction late for work. I was less than a hundred yards away from Lombard Street.

It was as near as I got.

I turned around and retraced my path back up Princes Street to London Wall, where I went into a coffee shop and ordered a cappuccino.

Perhaps Claudia was right and I was becoming paranoid.

I looked at my watch. It was ten to nine. Patrick and Gregory would be expecting me in ten minutes.

What should I do?

My instinct at my mother’s cottage had been absolutely right when I had prevented Claudia from opening the front door to the gunman. But I desperately needed to talk to someone about my suspicions, to set in motion a proper investigation into the Bulgarian affair. Surely I would then be safe, as killing me would be too late. If Ben Roberts’s father wouldn’t talk to me, who else should I speak to? It had to be Patrick, if not to save my job, at least to save my life.

I turned on my mobile phone and rang the office number.

“Lyall and Black,” answered Mrs. McDowd. “Can I help you?”

“Hello, Mrs. McDowd,” I said. “It’s Mr. Nicholas here. Can I speak to Mr. Patrick, please?”

“He’s in the meeting room with Mr. Gregory and Andrew Mellor,” she said. “I’ll put you through.”

Patrick came on the line. “Hello,” he said.

“Patrick,” I said. “Please don’t say anything. It’s Nicholas. I need to talk to you alone,” I said. “And without Gregory knowing.”

“Hold on a minute,” he said. “I’ll go to my office.”

There were some clicks on the line and then Patrick came back on.

“What’s this all about?” he asked quite crossly. “You are due to be here now for a disciplinary meeting.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, “but I won’t be coming to the meeting.”

“Nicholas,” he said formally, “I must insist that you come into the office right now. Where are you?”

Where should I say?

“I’m at home,” I said. “Claudia still isn’t well.”

“I’m sorry,” he said, not sounding it. “But this meeting is very important.”

So was Claudia, I thought.

“Where can I speak to you in private?” I asked.

“Here,” he said firmly and loudly. “I will speak to you here, in the office, at the disciplinary meeting.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, “but I will not be coming to the office today.”

“Listen to me,” he said. “If you don’t come into the office today, there seems little point in you coming back at all.” He paused. “Do I make myself clear?”

“Yes,” I said. “I’ll see what I can do.”

“Yes,” he said with ill-disguised anger. “You do that.”

He hung up.

I could imagine him going straight back into the meeting room and telling Gregory and Andrew that I wasn’t coming. I was just glad I hadn’t told him the truth about where I was.

I caught the Tube from Moorgate Station but not back to Paddington. Instead I took the Northern Line to Hendon Central, walked down Seymour Way to number 45, and let myself into Herb Kovak’s flat.

Sherri had gone home to America the previous Friday, and there were already a few letters lying on the mat. I picked them up and added them to the pile that she had left on the desk.

I sat down on Herb’s desk chair and opened his mail.

Amongst other things there were some utility bills and a letter from a building society complaining that the direct debit had been canceled and they hadn’t received the preceding month’s interest on Herb’s mortgage. It reminded me of the gym that also hadn’t been paid due to the bank canceling the direct debit. I wondered how many others there would be.

There was so much to deal with, and the worst of it was not the domestic bills, troublesome as they were, it was the never-ending stream of demands from the twenty-two credit card companies. About half of them had sent their next statements, and not only were the previous months’ balances still outstanding, overdue and generating interest but there were more charges on the accounts.

The American gamblers were still gambling, and still losing. But how could I stop them if I didn’t know who they were?

There must come a time, I thought, when the credit card accounts reached their limit. That should bring it all to a stop, but at what cost?

I used Herb’s landline telephone to call the building society and let them know why the direct debit had been stopped. They were so sorry to hear of Mr. Kovak’s death, but of course that did not mean they would stop accruing the interest on the loan. Did they not know the real meaning of mortgage? The mort referred to death, as in mortuary and mortality. A mortgage was originally a pledge to repay the loan outstanding on one’s death, not on the never-never thereafter.

Next I called the utility companies and tried to arrange for the gas, electricity and phone to be cut off. I made the mistake of telling them that I wasn’t Herb Kovak, that he was dead and I was his executor. They all needed documentary proof that I was acting on Mr. Kovak’s behalf, and, anyway, they needed the bills paid first. I pointed out that if I didn’t pay the bills, they would cut the services off anyway. It didn’t help.

I collected the credit card statements and the other things together and put them in a large white envelope that I found in Herb’s desk. What I really needed was a solicitor to get things moving on the job of obtaining probate. At least I would then be able to cancel the credit cards, but probably not before they were paid off as well. This apartment would also have to be sold, and if the scale of the outstanding interest payment in the building society’s letter was anything to go by, there may not be enough capital remaining after paying off the mortgage to cover the other bills. Perhaps I might need to make Herb’s estate bankrupt.

All in all, it was not such a fine legacy.

I knew Patrick lived in Weybridge. I knew it because Claudia and I had been to his house for dinner a few times, and also the firm’s annual summer party the previous year had been held in his expansive garden.

I also knew that his journey from home to work involved being dropped at Weybridge Station by his wife, catching a train to Waterloo and then squeezing onto the Waterloo and City Tube line to Bank. Everyone in the office knew because Patrick was not averse to complaining loudly about public transport, or, for that matter, his wife’s driving, especially if it had made him late for work.

I assumed his return journey would be the same but in the opposite direction, and I planned to join him for some of it.

He usually left the office between six o’clock and half past, but I was at Waterloo waiting by five in case he was early. Even so, I still very nearly missed him.

The main problem was that there were at least six trains an hour to Weybridge and they seemingly could leave from any of the nineteen platforms.

I waited on the mainline station concourse opposite the bank of escalators that rose from the Underground lines beneath. During the peak evening rush hour, two of the three escalators were used for up traffic, and these, together with the stairs alongside, disgorged thousands of commuters every minute onto the concourse, all of them hurrying for their trains.

By twenty-five past six, my eyes were so punch-drunk from scanning so many faces that my brain took several long seconds to register that I had fleetingly glimpsed a familiar one, but by then he had become lost again in the crowd walking away from me.

I chased after, trying to spot him again, while also attempting to search the departure boards overhead for trains to Weybridge.

I followed someone right across the concourse towards Platform 1 and only realized it wasn’t Patrick when he turned into one of the food outlets.

Dammit, I thought. I had wasted precious minutes.

I turned back and looked carefully at the departure board.

There was a train for Basingstoke, via Weybridge, leaving from Platform 13 in two minutes. I would have to take the gamble that Patrick was on it. I rushed right back across the station, thrust my ticket into the gray automatic barrier and ran down the platform.

I leapt aboard the train just seconds before the doors slammed shut. But I hadn’t foreseen that it would be so crowded, with more people standing in the aisles than actually sitting in the seats. As the train pulled out of Waterloo Station I began to make my apologies and work my way along the congested carriages.

Eventually, after annoying at least half the train’s occupants, and thinking that Patrick must have caught a different one, I spotted him sitting in the relatively empty first-class section. Where else? He was reading an evening newspaper and hadn’t noticed me coming towards him. He didn’t even look up as I made my way through a sliding glass door and sat down in the empty seat next to him.

“Hello, Patrick,” I said.

If he was surprised to see me, he didn’t particularly show it.

“Hello, Nicholas,” he said calmly, folding his paper in half. “I was wondering when you would turn up.”

“Yes,” I said. “I’m sorry about this, but I needed to talk to you without Gregory knowing or listening.”

“What about?” he asked.

“Colonel Jolyon Roberts,” I said quietly, conscious of the other passengers.

He raised his eyebrows a little. “What about him?”

“He spoke to me nearly two weeks ago at Cheltenham Races and again at Sandown a week last Saturday.”

“You know he died last week?” Patrick asked.

“Yes,” I said, “I do know. Terrible. I spoke to you after his funeral.”

“Of course you did,” Patrick said. “He had a heart problem, apparently.”

“So I’ve heard.”

“So, tell me, what did he speak to you about?”

“He was worried about an investment that the Roberts Family Trust had made in a lightbulb factory in Bulgaria.”

“In what way was he worried about it?” Patrick asked.

“Mr. Roberts’s nephew had evidently been to the site where the factory should be, and there was nothing there. Nothing except a toxic waste dump.”

“Perhaps it hasn’t been built yet. Or the nephew was in the wrong place.”

“That’s what I thought,” I said. “But apparently Gregory had shown photos of the factory to Mr. Roberts, and the nephew is adamant that he was in the right place.”

“You have spoken to the nephew?” Patrick asked.

“Yes, I have,” I said. “I spoke to him on Friday.”

“And have you approached Gregory about it?”

“No,” I said. “Gregory was so angry with me last week for all that Billy Searle business that I didn’t like to.”

“How about Jessica?” he asked.

“No, not her either. I know I should have done, but I haven’t had the chance.”

The train pulled into Surbiton Station, and two of the passengers in the first-class section stood up and departed.

“So why are you telling me?” Patrick asked as the train resumed its journey. “The Roberts Family Trust is a client of Gregory’s. You need to speak to him, or to Jessica.”

“I know,” I said. “I just hoped you could look into it for me.”

He laughed. “You’re not frightened of Gregory, are you?”

“Yes,” I said.

And I was, very frightened indeed.

“Is this what all this being away from the office has been about?”

“Yes,” I said again.

He turned in his seat and looked at me. “You are a strange man at times, Nicholas. Do you realize that you have placed your whole career on the line here?”

I nodded.

“Gregory and I agreed at the disciplinary meeting this morning, the one you were supposed to attend, that we would demand your resignation from Lyall and Black forthwith.”

So I was being fired.

“However,” he went on, “Andrew Mellor advised us that we were obliged to hear your side of any story before we made such a precipitous decision. So no final conclusion was reached.”

“Thank you,” I said.

“So will you be in the office tomorrow so we can sort all this out?”

“I can’t be sure of that,” I said. “I would much rather you started an internal inquiry into the Bulgarian investment before I returned.”

“You really are afraid of Gregory,” he said with a chuckle. “His bark is worse than his bite.”

Maybe, I thought, but his bark had been pretty ferocious. And I also wasn’t too keen on his hired help.

“Patrick,” I said seriously, “I have reason to think that a multimillion-euro fraud is going on here and that Gregory may be mixed up in it. Yes, I am frightened, and I feel I have good reason to be.”

“Like what?” he said.

“I know it sounds unlikely, but I believe that the Bulgaria business may have something to do with why Herb was killed.”

“But that’s ridiculous,” he said. “Next you’ll be accusing Gregory of murder.”

I said nothing but just sat there looking at him.

“Oh come on, Nicholas,” he said. “That’s madness.”

“Madness, it may be,” I said. “But I’m not coming into the office until I’m certain that I’d be safe.”

He thought for a moment.

“Come home with me now, and we’ll sort this out tonight. We can call Gregory from there.”

The train pulled into Esher Station.

Esher was the station for Sandown Park racetrack. Had it really been only nine days since I had alighted here to go to speak to Jolyon Roberts?

And two days later Jolyon Roberts was dead.

“No,” I said, jumping up. “I’ll call you tomorrow morning in the office.”

I rushed through the glass dividing door and then stepped out onto the platform just before the train’s doors closed shut behind me.

I didn’t want Patrick telling Gregory where I was-not tonight, nor any other night.