Even Money

17

The creak of someone walking over the third step brought me instantly from deep sleep to sharp awareness. It was already light. I lay there in bed, holding my breath and trying hard to listen for any movement on the stairs. I turned my head and looked at the door. Sophie still slept soundly beside me.

How could I have put her in such danger? I thought. What a fool I was.

The door handle slowly depressed and the door began to open. I could feel my heart pounding in my chest. What was I to do?

“I made you some tea,” said Alice, coming into the room, carrying a tray with two mugs of steaming liquid.

“Oh, Alice,” I said with such relief in my voice that I almost cried. “Thank you.”

“It’s a beautiful morning,” she said in a whisper, looking at Sophie.

“Yes,” I replied in the same manner. “I’ll leave her to sleep.”

Alice put the tray down on my bedside table and, with a wave, she departed. I heard step three creak twice, as usual, as she went down.

What was I doing? I thought.

Was it time to go to the police and hold my hands up for my failings and ask for their help and protection?

It was all well and good for me to perform the James Bond, secret-agent act when it was only my life and my future on the line. But what would Sophie do without me, especially now that she was home and getting better? Maybe her recovery wouldn’t last forever, but surely I had an obligation to her in the meantime.

Shifty-eyes was still out there somewhere, and he surely would still be searching for his money. I was actually quite surprised that he hadn’t already found me. Mr. John Smith had seemingly had no problem in turning up in my home in the dead of night. Perhaps it was not as easy as I thought to get records from a Coroner’s Court. Or perhaps Shifty-eyes would have had to give his name to get them, and I suspected he might have been reluctant to do that. Maybe he still didn’t know that I existed, but I thought it unlikely.

Thinking about the Coroner’s Court reminded me that today was when I should call their office to see if an order had been signed to allow for my father’s funeral to take place. I wondered if my sisters knew yet that their father was dead, or whether they even cared.

Sophie slept in until nine-thirty, while the mug of tea cooled to room temperature on her bedside table. I took her up a fresh one and sat on the bed with her as she drank it.

“What a wonderful night,” she said, stretching her arms high above her head. “This bed is just so comfortable.” She snuggled down again under the covers.

“It’s been a very lonely bed without you in it,” I said.

“Oh, Ned,” she said, stroking my leg. “Let’s really try and make it work this time. I’m so tired of all this.”

If only, I thought. We had said this all too often in the past. False hope had burned in our breasts on so many occasions only to be dashed each time by seemingly unstoppable events.

“Yup,” I agreed, ruffling her hair. “Let’s really make it work this time.”

But first I had some unfinished business to deal with.

I left her to dress and titivate herself in front of her dressing-table mirror while I went downstairs to call the coroner’s office.

“The Thames Valley Police are still apparently objecting to a burial order,” I was informed by one of the officials. “You could try calling them and asking. It may be an oversight on their part.”

“Thank you,” I said. For nothing.

I called Thames Valley Police headquarters and asked to be put through to Detective Chief Inspector Llewellyn.

“Ah, Mr. Talbot,” he said, coming on the line.“The bookmaker.” His tone was instantly unfriendly.

“Yes, Chief Inspector,” I replied with far more levity. “And just why, exactly, don’t you like bookmakers?”

“My father was addicted to gambling,” he replied with surprising anger. “That, and demon drink, they stole my childhood.”

I was astonished that he’d told me. But it explained a lot.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“If you were really sorry, you’d give it up,” he said.

“But that wouldn’t make much difference, now would it?” I said somewhat sarcastically. “There are lots of other bookmakers.”

“One at a time,” he said. “One at a time. All you bookmakers are scum.”

Again, I was surprised by the passion of his outburst, but I could tell that whatever I might say would make no difference to his firmly entrenched opinion. His usually analytical, problem-solving, keen detective’s mind clearly couldn’t appreciate the lack of logic in his thinking on the issue.

“Can I go ahead and bury my father?” I asked by way of changing the subject. “The Coroner’s Court says that the police still have an objection to the issuing of a burial order. What is the objection?”

“Er,” he said, “I’ll have to get back to you.”

I reckoned that he only needed more time in order to think up a new excuse.

“Good,” I said, and gave him my home telephone number. “I will be in all day today, and I want to get on and make the arrangements.”

“Right,” he said almost as if he was distracted. “And Mr. Talbot?”

“Yes.”

“You still haven’t provided us with an e-fit of the killer.”

“Do you still need it?” I asked.

“Yes, we do,” he said. “There has been little or no progress with this case.”

Probably, I thought rather ungraciously, because the victim had been with a bookmaker. At the time, Chief Inspector Llewellyn had been convinced that I’d been the killer, but the numerous statements of the champagne revelers in the parking lot had all agreed that I hadn’t. And, much to his annoyance, they couldn’t all be wrong.

“I’d love to come in and do an e-fit,” I said. “I would have expected you to have chased me before this. It must surely be a bit late? Any potential witnesses who saw the killer will have forgotten him by now.”

“We already have some e-fits from the other witnesses in the Ascot parking lot, but, to put it mildly, they are not very consistent. Anything you can add may be helpful.” But don’t bank on it, his tone implied.

“Right,” I said eagerly. “When and where?”

“Any Thames Valley police station will do, provided it has the right staff and an e-fit computer.”

“Which one would be the nearest to Kenilworth?” I asked.

“Banbury, probably,” he said. “I’ll find out and call you back.”

He did so about five minutes later.

“It’s fixed for two this afternoon, at Banbury,” he said.

“Fine,” I said. “I’ll be there. And is there any news about the burial order?”

“I will inform the coroner that we have no further objection to the issue of such an order,” he said formally. Was it my imagination or was Detective Chief Inspector Llewellyn warming slightly? “But I still don’t trust you, Mr. Talbot.”

Yes, it must have been my imagination.

“I’m sorry about that, Chief Inspector,” I replied. But I suppose if I were honest, I would have to admit that he had good reason not to fully trust me. I wondered if I should ask him about a certain Mr. John Smith, but I decided it might complicate things and lead to rather more questions than I would be easily able to answer, so I didn’t.

Next, I again used my father’s mobile to call Paddy Murphy.

“Well, hello,” he said cheerfully, again with the emphasis on the final “o.” “I didn’t think I would have heard the last of you.”

“What’s the name of the man with his eyes too close together?” I asked, getting straight to the point.

“I don’t have his real name,” said Paddy.

“What name do you have?”

“Kipper.”

“Kipper what?” I asked.

“Just Kipper,” he said. “But it’s only a nickname.”

“Have you ever met him?” I asked.

“I haven’t rightly met him, but I believe I saw him once.”

“In Ireland?” I asked.

“Hell, no,” he said. “In England. Your dad was that frightened of him. Said he was a strange fellow, bit of a loner.”

If my father was as frightened of this Kipper as Paddy made out, why had he kicked out at him and told him to go to hell in the Ascot parking lot?

“What else did my father say about him?” I asked.

“He thought he was being paid too much for what he did,” said Paddy. “Moaned about it all the time, your dad did.”

“But how did he know how much this Kipper was being paid?” I asked.

“I don’t rightly know. Something about him bringing his share over from Australia,” Paddy said. “Your dad claimed that he should have been getting as much as Kipper ‘for delivering the merchandise,’ as he put it. Then he laughed, and said they’d find out soon enough that they should have been paying him more.”

“Who were ‘they’?” I asked.

“Search me,” he said.

“And what did he mean by saying they would find out soon enough?”

“I don’t know that either,” he said.

Paddy Murphy wasn’t being very helpful. He was suddenly backtracking. Perhaps he was now regretting having told me anything. I wondered if what my father had said about them finding out soon enough was to do with him stealing the microcoder.

“You told me that this Kipper worked for an insurance company,” I said. “Which one?”

“Well, to be sure, I don’t rightly know,” he said.

“Is the company Irish?” I asked. “Or English?”

“I don’t know that either,” he said. “All your father told me was that Kipper’s job was as an investigator looking into horse deaths. Maybe I just assumed he was with an insurance company.”

That wasn’t very helpful either.

However, he went on to tell me a few interesting things about the two missing counterfeit RFID chips that could turn out to be very helpful indeed, not least that a horse that had supposedly recently died from colic had, in fact, been switched using the fake RFIDs with a much less valuable animal, which had then been killed for a large insurance payout. And he indicated that the horse had been a winner at the Cheltenham Steeplechase Festival the previous March.

I remembered reading something only the other week in the Racing Post about a horse dying from colic.

“What was the horse’s name?” I asked him.

“No, no,” he said. “I’ve told you too much already.”

Indeed he had, but he had been boasting about his cleverness.

“Well, let me know if this Kipper fellow turns up at your door,” I said.

“Bejesus,” he bellowed. “I don’t want the likes of him here.”

“He’s dangerous, so keep clear of him.”

“To be sure, I will,” said Paddy.

“Also, let me know when you’re next in England,” I said. “Perhaps we can meet.”

“Well,” he said a little uncertainly, “I’m not sure about that.”

“Who are you anyway?” I asked. “What is your real name?”

“Now, that would be telling,” he said with a laugh, and hung up.

Detective Chief Inspector Llewellyn himself was at Banbury police station to meet me at two o’clock. He was accompanied, as always, by Detective Sergeant Murray with his notebook.

“Hello, Chief Inspector,” I said cheerfully as he appeared in the entrance lobby. “For what do I deserve this honor?”

“For telling me lies, Mr. Talbot,” he said without any humor. “I don’t like people telling me lies.”

Oh dear, I thought, he must know about my father’s luggage. How was I going to get out of this one?

“What lies?” I said, trying to keep my voice even. “I told you everything I know.”

“You told me that your father had given you nothing at Ascot,” he said.

“That’s right, he didn’t,” I protested.

“But I have reason to believe that he may have given you a black box like a television remote control.” He paused, and I stood there looking at him, saying nothing. “We understand from Australia that your father is thought to have stolen such a box. Now, quite by chance, one of my officers on the case helps with a club for young offenders in High Wycombe, and he tells me he saw a similar black box there last week. This morning, my officer called the person who had brought the black box to the club and, surprise, surprise, that person says that you gave it to him.”

Thanks, Luca, I thought. But he could probably have said nothing else.

“Oh, that thing,” I said.

“So you were lying,” he said almost triumphantly.

In fact, I hadn’t been. I had been completely truthful. My father had not given the box to me at Ascot, I’d actually found it with his luggage in Paddington.

“I’d forgotten about it, that’s all,” I said. “I was carrying it for him amongst our equipment. I found it the following day when I was setting up.”

Now I was telling lies, but Detective Sergeant Murray wrote them down nevertheless.

“You should have given the box to me immediately after you found it,” he said.

“Sorry,” I replied. “Is it important?”

He didn’t answer my question. “Where is it now?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. Technically, that was not a lie.

“But what did you do with it?” he persisted.

“I threw it away,” I said. “It didn’t seem to do anything. I thought it must have been a garage-door opener or something. Perhaps from his home. It wasn’t much use to me, so I just dumped it in the trash.”

“Where in the trash?” He was beginning to lose what little patience he had.

“At home, last weekend, in the house wheelie-bin,” I said. “But the men have been to empty it since then, so it’s probably somewhere on a Warwickshire council tip by now.”

“Didn’t you think it was odd that he would carry his garage-door opener halfway round the world?” the chief inspector asked.

“Not really,” I replied. “He had just told me that he was my father, who I believed had died thirty-seven years ago when I was a baby. Now, I admit I thought that was odd.”

“Are you now telling me more lies?” he said.

“No, of course I’m not,” I said crossly. “I’ve come here to help you with an e-fit. Don’t you think I want you to catch my father’s killer?”

“I’m not so sure that you do,” he said slowly. “And, Mr. Talbot, don’t go away anywhere without telling us first.”

“Why not?” I asked him sharply. “Am I under arrest or something?”

“Not yet, no,” he said. “Not yet.”

Producing the police e-fit was easy. I had dreamed so much about Shifty-eyes that I had little trouble transferring the image in my head to a picture on a computer. The young “e-fit technician,” as he was called, was an expert.

“A little bit wider,” I said about the man’s face.

The technician turned the wheel on his computer mouse with his right forefinger, and the face in front of me squeezed in or stretched out until it was just right. His eyes were added, rather too close together for the width of the face, and then a nose, mouth and ears, each in turn adjusted in height, width and thickness by the rotation of the mouse wheel. Finally, short, straight fair hair was grown instantly and made to stand upright on the top of the head.

Shifty-eyes, or Kipper as Paddy Murphy had called him, looked out at me from the screen, and it sent a shiver down my back.

“That’s it,” I said.

“Great,” the technician replied, punching the SAVE button on his keyboard. “The chief inspector will be delighted.”

I doubted that, I thought.

I wondered if my image was anything like any of those produced by the other witnesses. But I had an advantage over them. I’d not just seen him in the Ascot parking lot, I’d seen him again in Sussex Gardens, and without his hoodie and scarf.

By the time I arrived back at Station Road, peace had broken out between the sisters.Alice had conceded that Sophie would be allowed to enter her own kitchen to help with the dinner preparations, and Sophie, in her turn, had agreed to allow Alice to do all the cleaning up after her. It seemed like an excellent deal to me, especially as all I had to do was eat.

“We’re having Thai green chicken curry and sticky rice,” said Sophie with a flourish. “They never once served spicy food in the hospital, and I’m desperate for some. Alice and I walked down to the shops while you were out.”

“Great,” I said, meaning it.

“Where did you go?” she asked.

“Banbury,” I said.

“What for?”

Quick, think!

“I went to see someone who has a new device which he wants us to buy to put on our computer, at the races.”

“Oh,” she said, uninterested. “And did you buy it?”

“No,” I said. “It wasn’t much good, and it was too expensive.”

What was I doing? Lying to the police was one thing, but lying to Sophie was quite another. I didn’t like it. And it would have to stop. This whole secret-agent circus had to stop, and soon. Just as soon as Shifty-eyes was arrested for my father’s murder and the police, in the person of Detective Chief Inspector Llewellyn, got off my back.

I spent much of Tuesday morning sitting in my little office doing some research, both on the Internet and using the two printed volumes most familiar to anyone in racing: the Directory of the Turf and Horses in Training.

I wasn’t really sure what I was looking for.

First, I searched back through the online editions of the Racing Post until I found the piece I had read about a horse dying. The horse had been called Oriental Suite, and, according to the newspaper, he had died as a result of complications arising from a bout of severe colic. Oriental Suite had won the Triumph Hurdle, a high-class hurdle race for four-year-old novices, going away from his rivals up the Cheltenham hill last March. He had been tipped to be a future Champion Hurdler. The obituary quoted the horse’s owner as being distraught over the untimely death. Racing, he declared, had been cruelly robbed of a future megastar.

If Paddy Murphy was right and the horse had been switched and therefore wasn’t actually dead, the real truth was not that racing had been cruelly robbed of a future star, but that an insurance company had been cruelly robbed of a reasonable-sized fortune.

I removed from the top drawer of my desk the photocopies of the horse passports I had found in my father’s rucksack. One of them was for a bay horse with the name Oriental Suite. I looked up Oriental Suite on the Racing Post website. In his short life, he had won nearly two hundred thousand pounds in prize money. No wonder he’d been well insured.

But why would anyone want to effectively kill off his potential champion steeplechaser? Many owners spent their whole lives, and often most of their wealth, trying to find themselves a champion horse. Perhaps it was all down to cash flow, or maybe the owner believed he could have his cake and eat it too-collect both a big insurance payout and still have the horse go on to be a champion under a different name.

“What are you up to?” Sophie asked, coming in and standing behind me, stroking my back.

“Just researching the runners for the coming week,” I said.

Bookmakers, as well as regular punters, needed to keep abreast of all the winners and losers if they were to make a living from other people’s folly.

“Do you want a coffee?” Sophie asked. “That is if Miss Ugly Sister down there will let me into my own kitchen.”

“Now, now, Cinders,” I said, laughing. “If Alice was one of the Ugly Sisters, she wouldn’t let you leave the kitchen, not keep you out of it.”

“I know you’re right, dearest Buttons,” she sighed. “But she’s beginning to drive me nuts.”

We looked at each other in surprise and then both burst out laughing at what Sophie had said. Did it prove she wasn’t nuts anymore?

“I’ll have a word with her, if you like,” I said.

“No, no, don’t do that,” she said. “I know she means well, but she’s so… intense. I feel I have to be so careful not to upset her while she is trying so hard not to upset me.”

“Go and tell her that,” I said. “She’ll understand.”

“I’ll try,” she said, and went out.

I went back to using the Internet and did some more research, including, amongst other things, looking up the declared runners for the coming week. I also used it to try to look up anything about valuable horses that had recently died in unusual or mysterious circumstances. But there was precious little information to be found.

In spite of being strong and physically fit, Thoroughbred racehorses were actually quite delicate creatures, and, sadly, many of them died unexpectedly from injury or disease. Such events, while often being disasters for the horse’s owner and trainer, were unlikely to be newsworthy unless it was the death of a potential champion such as Oriental Suite.

After twenty minutes or so, I began to wonder whether or not my cup of coffee was coming, so I went down the stairs to find out. As always, I carefully avoided treading on step three.

Alice and Sophie were both in tears, sitting at one end of the kitchen table, hugging each other. My mug of coffee stood alone at the other end, getting cold. I said nothing but walked over, picked it up and drank down some of the lukewarm brown liquid.

“Oh,” said Sophie, dabbing her eyes with a tissue, “I’m so sorry.” She was more laughing than crying. “I forgot. Alice and I have been talking.”

“So I see,” I said, smiling at them both.

“We’ve been talking about Mum and Dad,” said Sophie. “They want to come over and see us.”

I stopped smiling. I hadn’t spoken to Sophie’s parents in nearly ten years, and I had no wish to start doing so again now. They had been so hurtful towards me when Sophie had first fallen sick, accusing me of bringing on the mania by acts of cruelty towards the wife I adored. Her father even told me that Sophie’s illness was God’s punishment for me being a bookmaker.

I had walked out of their house on that day and had never been back. And, as far as I was aware, they had never set foot in my house, and I had no intention of inviting them to do so now.

“You can go and see them if you really want to,” I said. “But count me out.”

Sophie gave me a pained look.

I knew that Sophie had seen her parents at various times throughout the previous ten years, but we never spoke about it. I knew only because she was always agitated after the visits and I didn’t like it. Once or twice, those agitations had led to full-blown mania and subsequent depression. And on at least one occasion I was sure of, an argument between Sophie and her stubborn, ill-tempered and self-righteous father had resulted in her early return to the hospital.

“You know it’s not a good idea,” I said to her gently. “It always ends in a row of one sort or another, and rows are not good for you.”

“It’s different this time,” she said.

That is what she always said. Of course, I lived in the hope that it would be different this time, but, inside, I had to assume it wouldn’t be. I would be unable to endure the future disappointment if I placed too great an expectation on her present progress only for my optimism to be dashed.

I could hardly tell her not to see her own parents, and she would probably ignore me if I did. But I felt quite strongly about it. However, I didn’t want her going secretly behind my back, knowingly against my wishes. And, most of all, I didn’t want to argue with her.

What was I to say?

“What do you think Sophie should do,Alice?” I said, sidestepping the problem and placing it on another’s shoulders.

“I know Mum is very keen to see her,” she said.

“Then why didn’t she visit her in the hospital?” I asked. But I knew the answer.

“The hospital is so upsetting for them both,” said Alice.

It hadn’t been a barrel of laughs for the rest of us, but we had still gone. The truth was, I thought, that neither of Sophie’s parents could bear to admit that their precious elder daughter was mentally ill, and, provided they didn’t actually see her in an institution, they could go on fooling themselves that she was fine and well.

However, they didn’t fool me or, indeed, Alice, who had been painstaking and diligent in visiting her sister almost every other day. Even her two brothers had visited Sophie at least twice during her recent five-month stay. But of her parents, there had been not a sign.

“You must do what you think is best,” I said to Sophie. “But I would prefer it if they didn’t come here. So go and see them at their place, if you like. I won’t come, but, if you do go, I think it would be a good idea for you to go with Alice.”

“To dilute them, you mean,” Sophie said.

“Yes,” I said. “And to try and prevent a row.”

“Fine by me,” said Alice. “If Dad starts being a pain, I’ll kick him.”

She and Sophie laughed, their heads close together in sisterly conspiracy.

She’d better take steel-toe-capped boots, I thought.