Dick Francis's Gamble

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.