Dick Francis's Gamble

“It’s rather inconclusive,” Jessica said.

“What’s inconclusive?” I asked, somewhat surprised.

“There seems to be no evidence to show if the original investment was obtained by fraudulent means, or whether there was any purposeful deception by anyone in this firm,” Jessica said.

She’s covering her back, I thought.

“But how about the European Union grants?” I said.

“They are not our business,” Patrick said sharply. “Neither Gregory individually nor Lyall and Black as a firm can be held responsible for the actions of people in Brussels, those who may have issued EU grants without due diligence. The only matter that affects this firm is the original Roberts Family Trust investment and then only if we were knowingly negligent in brokering it. As far as we can establish, the investment idea was put forward by the senior trustee of the trust.”

I had to admit, it was a persuasive argument, especially as Viscount Shenington was unlikely to be in any state to refute it. Perhaps I had been a tad premature in writing off the future of Lyall & Black.

But that didn’t explain what had happened to Herb Kovak, and it didn’t explain Shenington’s comment about me being difficult to kill and not turning up where I was expected. The only place I’d been expected had been the offices of Lyall & Black and the only people who had known where I’d been expected had been the firm’s staff. Gregory must have at least discussed the matter of my murder with Shenington. That alone would have been enough to convict him.

“What about the photographs that Gregory showed to Colonel Roberts?” I said. “The ones that purported to prove that the factory and houses had already been built.”

“Gregory told me this morning that he’d been sent those by the developer in Bulgaria and in good faith,” said Patrick. “He’d had no reason to doubt their authenticity.”

“Not until Jolyon Roberts asked about them,” I said. “What did he do then?”

“Gregory told me that Colonel Roberts didn’t exactly say that he questioned whether the photos were accurate or not. In fact, Gregory said that Roberts kept contradicting himself and changing his mind throughout their final telephone conversation and he kept apologizing all the time for wasting Gregory’s time. In the end, Gregory wasn’t quite sure what to think.”

I could believe it. Jolyon Roberts had done exactly the same with me at Cheltenham. I thought it strange that a man who had clearly been so decisive on the battlefield could have been so befuddled and incoherent when it came to accusing a friend of lying and of stealing from him. I suppose it was all about family honor, and not losing face.

“Thank you, Jessica,” Patrick said. “You can be getting back to your office now.”

Jessica stood up and left. I remained where I was.

“Now, Nicholas,” said Patrick when the door was shut, “I have decided to overlook your rather strange behavior over the past three weeks and to wipe the slate clean. Your job is still yours if you want it. To be honest, I don’t know how we would manage at the moment if you weren’t here.”

So was that a vote of confidence in my ability, I wondered, or a decision born simply out of necessity?

“Thank you,” I said. “I’ll think about it.”

“Don’t take too long about it,” Patrick said. “It’s time to put other things out of your mind and get back to work.”

“I’m still not happy about things,” I said. “Especially the fraud.”

“Suspected fraud,” he corrected. “If you ask me, it is a shame you ever went to see Roberts’s nephew in Oxford.”

“Maybe,” I said.

“Well, go now and get on with your work, I have things to do.”

It was a dismissal, so I stood up and went back to my desk.

I was still greatly troubled by Patrick’s and Jessica’s seeming brush-off of such a serious situation.

Herb had accessed the file and then he was killed.

Shenington and his gunmen knew more about my movements than they could have done without someone in the firm passing on the information.

Something wasn’t right. I could tell because the hairs on my neck refused to lie down. Something definitely wasn’t right. Not right at all.

I took out a sheet of paper from a drawer and wrote out again a copy of the note I had found in Herb’s coat pocket.

YOU SHOULD HAVE DONE WHAT YOU WERE

TOLD. YOU MAY SAY YOU REGRET IT, BUT

YOU WONT BE REGRETTING IT FOR LONG.

I wrote it out in capital letters, using a black ballpoint pen, so that it looked identical to the original.

I picked up my mobile phone and the note and went down the corridor. I walked into Patrick’s office, closing the door behind me.

“Yes?” he asked, showing some surprise at my unannounced entrance.

I stood in front of his desk, looking down at him as if it was the first time I had ever seen him properly.

“What did you tell Herb to do?” I asked him quietly.

“What do you mean?” he replied with a quizzical expression.

“You told him that he should have done what he was told,” I said.

I laid the note down on the table, facing him, so that he could read the words.

“What was it you told Herb to do?”

“Nicholas,” he said, looking up at me and betraying a slight nervousness in his voice, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Yes, you do,” I said with some menace. “It was you all along, not Gregory. You devised the fraud, you found Shenington to put up the five million from his family trust, and you saw to it that you weren’t found out.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said again, but his eyes showed me he did.

“And you had Herb killed,” I said. “You even wrote this note to him as a sort of apology. Everyone liked Herb, including you. But he had to die, didn’t he? Because he had accessed the Roberts file and he’d worked out what was going on. What did you do? Offer him a piece of the action? Try and buy his silence? But Herb wasn’t having any of that, was he? Herb was going to go to the authorities, wasn’t he? So he had to die.”

Patrick sat in his chair, looking up at me. He said nothing.

“And it was you that tried to have me killed as well,” I said. “You sent the gunman to my house in Finchley and then, when that didn’t work, you sent him to my mother’s cottage to kill me there.”

He remained in his chair, staring at me through his oversized glasses.

“But that didn’t work either,” I said. “So you arranged for me to come here on Monday for a meeting with you and Gregory.” I laughed. “A meeting with my Maker, more like. But I didn’t come, although you tried hard to convince me to. Then I saw you on the train, and you said, ‘Come home with me now, and we’ll sort this out tonight.’ But I’d have been dead if I had, wouldn’t I?” I paused and stared back at him. He still said nothing. “So then Shenington changed his mind about talking to me and invited me to be his guest at the races in order to complete the job.”

“Nicholas,” Patrick said, finally finding his voice, “what is all this nonsense?”

“It’s not nonsense,” I said. “I never told you that I’d been to see Mr. Roberts’s nephew in Oxford. In fact, I’d purposely not told you because I didn’t want anyone knowing my movements. I just told you that I’d spoken to him. For all you knew, it could have been on the telephone. But Shenington told you that I went to Oxford to meet his son, didn’t he? And you repeated it to me just now.”

“You have no proof,” he said, changing his tune.

“Did you know that you can get fingerprints from paper?” I asked, picking up the note carefully by the corner.

He wasn’t to know that the original had already been tested by the Merseyside Police forensic department and found to have only my and Herb’s prints on it.

His shoulders sagged just a fraction, and he looked down at the desk.