cards. If anyone knew how expensive it was to borrow on plastic, then a financial adviser would. Even with interest rates historically low, the annualpercentage rate on credit cards was typically between sixteen and twenty percent, with some even as high as thirty. Borrowing money on credit cards was a mug’s game. The interest charges alone on a debt as big as that would be around fifteen hundred a month. That was about half what Herb was taking home in salary, after the usual deductions for tax and National Insurance.
If Herb had owed nearly a hundred thousand on credit cards, then his flat must surely be mortgaged to the hilt. It certainly wouldn’t end up being mine, more likely the bank’s.
And yet he’d always had plenty of money in his pocket. He was extravagant even in his spending, always wearing new clothes and dining out being the norm. It didn’t make sense.
“Can I have a closer look at those?” I asked the chief inspector, reaching out for the papers.
He handed them over, and I skimmed through the first three or four statements. There was no doubt that the outstanding balance on each was very large and, in some cases, close to the maximum limit, but that did not show the full picture, not by a long way. I looked through the rest. They were all the same.
“Didn’t you notice something unusual about these?” I asked.
“Notice what?” said the chief inspector.
“There are no interest payments from previous months. All these charges, on all of these statements, they’re all new.”
I turned a statement over to look at the detailed breakdown and to see what Herb had spent a hundred thousand pounds on in a month and was shocked again. There were no purchases, as such, just payments to and from a plethora of Internet gambling and online casino sites. Masses of them. I looked through all the statements and they were the same. Many of the payments were quite modest but one or two ran into the thousands. Quite a few of the betting sites had actually paid money back to the accounts, but most showed a deficit. Overall, Herb had been a loser not a winner, nearly a hundred-thousand-pound-a-month loser.
All the statements showed clearly that the previous month’s balances had been settled in full by the due date. I mentally added them up. As well as still owing almost a hundred thousand, Herb had paid nearly the same amount in gambling debts to the cards during March alone. Where had he obtained that sort of money? And how on earth had he had the time to gamble on so many different sites with so many different credit cards while working full-time at Lyall & Black? It sure as hell didn’t make any sense.
As Claudia had said, you never really knew what even your closest friends were up to. Could this compulsive online gambling somehow be the reason that Herb was killed? The totals may have been large but the individual entries on the statements were modest, and certainly not big enough to initiate murder.
“There are some other things I would like you to have a look at,” said the chief inspector. “You may be able to help me understand them.”
He turned and walked down the hallway, turning left through a door. I followed him.
Herb’s living room was in true bachelor-pad fashion, with half of it taken up by a single deep armchair placed in front of a large wall-mounted flat-screen television. On the far side of the room was a large desk, with a laptop computer, a printer and three piles of papers in metal baskets.
It was some of the papers that the chief inspector wanted me to look at.
“We need your permission as Mr. Kovak’s executor to remove certain items that we believe may help with our inquiries. These, for example. But we would like your opinion on them first.”
He handed me two sheets of paper covered entirely on both sides by handwritten lists with columns of what appeared to be dates with amounts of money alongside, together with a further column of capital letters. “Could they have something to do with Mr. Kovak’s work?”
I studied the lists briefly.
“I doubt it,” I said. “They are handwritten and we do everything on computer. I think these could be amounts of money.” I pointed at the center two columns. “And these look like dates.”
“Yes,” he said. “I worked that much out. But do you know what they are?”
“Do they correspond to the amounts on the credit card statements?” I asked.
“No. I looked at that. None of the figures are the same.”
“How about last month’s statements?” I said. “Most of these dates are last month.”
“We have been unable to locate any statements other than those you have seen. But some of the dates on this list would have been for the statements we have, and none of the amounts match.”
“Then I’m afraid I can’t help you,” I said. “I don’t recognize any of the amounts and, individually, most are far too small to be anything to do with Mr. Kovak’s work. We always work in thousands, if not tens of thousands. Most of these are hundreds.” I looked once more at the lists. “Could that third column be people’s initials?”
The chief inspector looked. “It might be. Do you recognize any of them? For example, do they match any of your work colleagues?”
I scanned through the list. “Not that I can see.”
“Right,” he said suddenly, as if making a decision. “With your permission we will take these papers away, together with the credit card statements, Mr. Kovak’s laptop computer and these other things.”
The chief inspector waved a hand towards a box on a side table near the door. I went over and looked in. The box contained various bits and pieces, including Herb’s American passport, an address book, a desk diary and a folderful of bank statements. It was all rather sad.
“It’s fine by me,” I said. “But you do know that his computer won’t give you access to Mr. Kovak’s work files?”
“So I believe.”
“He would have been able to access the office files and e-mails through his laptop, but no records of them would have been stored on it. The laptop would have merely been acting as a keyboard and a screen for the firm’s mainframe computer in Lombard Street.”
“Nevertheless,” said the chief inspector, “it is our policy to search through such a device for any correspondence that might have a bearing on his death. I trust you are happy with that.”
“Absolutely,” I agreed.
“Good,” he said, folding the computer flat and placing it in the box with the other things.
“But can I make copies of that credit card stuff before you take it away? I do know that one of the first tasks for executors is to close the bank accounts and pay the debts of the deceased but goodness’ knows where I will get a hundred thousand to do that. How much did he have in the bank?”
“Not that much,” said the chief inspector.
“Do you mind if I look?” I asked.
“Not at all,” he said. “I understand from Mr. Kovak’s lawyer that it will be yours anyway.”
I pulled the folder of bank statements out of the box and looked at the most recent ones. The balance was quite healthy, but, as DCI Tomlinson had said, it didn’t run to anything like a hundred thousand. More like a tenth of that. I unclipped the last statement from the folder and made a photocopy using the printer/copier on the desk. I then photocopied all the credit card statements, and both sides of the two sheets of handwritten figures, before handing them all back to the policeman.
“Thank you,” he said. “I just need your signature on this form to give us permission to remove these items, and I have a receipt for them to give you.”
He handed me the form, which I signed, and the receipt, which I put in my pocket.
“Bloody paperwork,” he said, taking back the form. “These days we have to be so damn careful to do everything exactly according to the book or some clever-dick defense lawyer will claim that any evidence we find is not admissible in court. I can tell you, it’s a bloody nightmare.”
Although better on the whole, I thought, than the police marching in anywhere they liked, in their size-twelve boots, taking away any stuff they wanted without permission and for no good reason.
He packed his paperwork into the box along with the other things. “Now, Mr. Foxton,” he said, “could you just wander round the flat to satisfy yourself that we have left the place in reasonable order and also to check that nothing appears out of place or is missing.”
“I’m happy to have a look,” I said, “but I’ve never been in here before so I don’t know what it looked like before you arrived.”
“Please, anyway,” he said, putting his hand out towards the door.
He followed me as I went around the flat, looking briefly in each of the two bedrooms, the bathroom and the
