by Dick Francis
“They looked quite threatening to me,” I said.
“We can’t exactly arrest people for just looking threatening, now can we?” he said ironically.
“No,” I said. “I suppose I can see that. But I’d love to know who they were so I can watch out and avoid them in the future.”
“What was their vehicle registration?” he asked.
I gave it to him.
“No promises,” he said. “It’s against the rules, really.”
He took his mobile phone from his pocket and called a number.
“Jack,” he said into the phone. “Nick Boucher here. Can you do a vehicle check? Registration victor-kilo-five-five-zulu november-victor.” He waited for a while. “Yes,” he said. Then he listened again. “Thanks,” he said finally, and hung up.
“Sorry. That vehicle is registered to a company, not to an individual, so it won’t really help you.”
“Which company?” I asked him.
“Something called HRF Holdings Limited,” he said. “Ever heard of them?”
“No,” I said. I looked at Luca, who said nothing but shrugged his shoulders. “Thanks anyway.”
“Are you guys going to be all right from now on?” said PC Boucher. “I’ve got to get this bunch of drunks home. I’m the designated driver.”
“Yes,” I said. “Thanks.”
“See you next time, Teddy,” said the big guy, staggering a little and giving me a wave. I watched his group lurch over to a white minibus and fall into it. The passengers all waved enthusiastically at me through the windows as poor, sober PC Boucher drove them away. I waved back at them, laughing.
“HRF Holdings,” said Luca. “Do we know them?”
“Not by that name,” I said.
“What, then?” he asked.
“I believe HRF Holdings Limited is a parent company,” I said. “And I think I know one of its children.”
It took me less than an hour to get home, including a few extra trips around the roundabouts to ensure that I wasn’t being followed by a certain black BMW 4× 4 containing a couple of heavies.
I couldn’t see anyone following me, but they wouldn’t have actually needed to. I was sure that whoever their “boss” might be, he would have been able to find out where I lived with ease if he’d wanted to. My name and address were on the electoral rolls, for a start, and I hadn’t bothered to tick the box to keep that information secret.
Consequently, I drove up and down Station Road a couple of times to see if the BMW was parked up somewhere awaiting my arrival. There was no sign of it, but I couldn’t check every street in Kenilworth.
I parked the car in the space in front of the house and made it safely, unchallenged, to my front door.
“Hello,” said Sophie, coming to meet me. “Had a good time?”
“Very,” I said. “I always like Towcester, especially the evening meetings.”
“Hiya,” said Alice, coming out of the kitchen with a glass of white wine in each hand. She gave one of them to Sophie with a smile. I wasn’t sure that drinking alcohol was necessarily a good idea on top of her medication, but I wasn’t going to say so. For now, it was far more important that the truce between the sisters was still holding firm.
They had been out in Alice’s car when I had left for the races, and I thought they might have been to see their parents in spite of telling me that they were off to Leamington Spa for the shopping. However, there was no sign of the agitation that Sophie normally displayed after such a visit, so I wasn’t certain. And I wasn’t going to ask. We went into the kitchen.
“Have you had a good day?” I asked them.
“Lovely,” Sophie said without elaborating.
“So what time did you get back?”
“About seven.”
“Have you eaten?” I looked at my watch, it was now past ten.
“We have,” said Sophie. “But I’ve kept some for you. I know you’re always hungry when you get home after an evening meeting.”
I suppose it was true, but it didn’t mean I always had something to eat. During the past five months, I had more often than not had a stiff shot of Scotch and gone straight to bed.
“And we’ve been at the crisps and dip,” said Alice with a giggle.
And the white wine, I thought, though, to be fair, Sophie seemed pretty sober even if Alice was obviously quite tipsy.
“Do you know anything about a rucksack?” Sophie asked casually as she stood at the cooker reheating my supper.
“What?” I said sharply,
“A rucksack,” she said again. “A man came here. Said he wanted to collect a rucksack. He said you knew about it.”
“What sort of rucksack?” I said, rather flustered.
“A black-and-red rucksack,” she said. “The man told us you were looking after it for him. He was quite persistent, I can tell you. I don’t think he liked it much when I told him I knew nothing about it.”
Oh God, I thought.
“So you didn’t give it to him?” I asked her.
“No, of course not,” she said. “I didn’t even know we had a black-and-red rucksack. Where is it?”
“In the cupboard under the stairs,” I said. “Did the man try and get into the house?”
“No,” she said, slightly perturbed by the question. “Why would he?”
“I just wondered, that’s all,” I said. “So tell me, what happened?”
“I told him to go away and come back when you were at home.”
“We then locked the house up tight, opened a bottle and waited for you to get back,” said Alice with a smile. They were both remarkably calm about the man’s visit. Probably because they didn’t realize the seriousness of the situation. But why would they?
“When was this?” I asked.
“Round eight o’clock,” Sophie said.
“Can you describe the man?” I said to both of them.
“He was rather creepy,” said Alice.
“In what way was he creepy?” I asked.
“Oh, I don’t know,” she said. “He just was. And he was wearing his hood up, and a scarf. Now, I reckon you’ve got to be up to no good to be doing that on a night as hot as this.”
“Could you see his eyes?” I asked. “Were they set rather close together?”
“Yes,” said Alice, throwing a hand up in the air almost excitedly. “That’s it. That’s exactly why I thought he was creepy.”
So it had definitely been Shifty-eyes, the man that Paddy Murphy had called Kipper. He had found me at last.
“What are we going to do?” Sophie asked loudly, suddenly becoming scared. “I don’t want him coming back here.” In spite of the warm evening, she shivered.
“It’s all right, my love,” I said, putting a reassuring arm around her shoulders. “I’m sure he won’t come back tonight.”
The doorbell rang, and we all jumped.
“How sure?” Sophie said, looking worried.
“Ignore it,” said Alice. “Then he’ll have to go away.”
We stood silently in the kitchen, listening.
The doorbell rang again, and there were also some heavy thumps on the door.
“I know you’re in there,” shouted a voice from outside. “Open up.”
I went out of the kitchen into the hallway.
“Who is it?” I shouted through the wood of the front door.
“Mr. Talbot,” said the voice. “I think you may have something of mine, and I want it back.”
“What?” I asked.
“A rucksack,” he said. “A black-and-red rucksack.”
“But the rucksack belonged to Alan Grady, not you,” I said quickly without stopping to think first. Dammit, I thought. Why hadn’t I just denied any knowledge of any rucksack? He might then have gone away, but he wouldn’t do so now.
“I’m calling the police,” said Sophie, coming into the hallway. “Do you hear me?” she shouted loudly with a tremor in her voice. “I’m calling the police.”
“There’ll be no need for the police,” said the man calmly through the door. “Just give me the rucksack and I’ll go away.”
“Give him the rucksack,” Sophie said to me imploringly, her panicky eyes as big as saucers. “Please, Ned, just give him the damn rucksack.”
“OK, OK,” I said.
I went to the cupboard under the stairs and fetched it. It was still full of my father’s things.
“Give it to him,” Sophie urged me again, her voice quivering with fear.
I lifted the rucksack and turned to go upstairs with it.
“Where the hell are you going?” Sophie almost screamed at me.
“If you think I’m opening the front door with him there, you must be . . .” I didn’t finish the sentence. “I’m going to throw it to him out the window.”
I went up to our bedroom and opened the same window through which I had witnessed the departure of Mr. John Smith from my house only one week previously.
The man was close to the door, and I couldn’t see him as he was standing under the overhanging porch.
“Here,” I shouted.
He moved back into my sight. He appeared just as I had seen him the first time in the parking lot at Ascot racetrack: blue jeans, charcoal-gray hoodie, with a black scarf over the lower part of his face. I couldn’t tell if he was wearing the same black army boots he had used to split my eyebrow and I wasn’t about to go down there to find out. As before, all I could see were his eyes, set rather too close together for the width of his face.
I held the rucksack out through the open window at arm’s length.
“What’s your name?” I asked him.
“Drop the rucksack,” he said, ignoring my question. He didn’t have a strong regional accent, at least not one I could notice.
“What’s your name?” I repeated.
“Never you mind,” he said. “Just give me the rucksack.”
“How did you find my house?” I asked him.
“A little birdie told me,” he said.
“Which little birdie?”
“Never you mind,” he said again. “Just drop the rucksack.” He held up his arms ready to catch it.
“It’s only full of Mr. Grady’s clothes,” I said. “I’ve searched it. There’s nothing else there.”
“Give it to me anyway,” he said.
“Who are you working for?” I asked.
“What?” he said.
“Who are you working for?” I repeated.
“No one,” he said. “Now, give me the bloody rucksack.”
“Who’s John Smith?” I asked.
In spite of only being able to see his eyes, I could still tell that there was no recognition of the name. He didn’t know a Mr. John Smith, but, then, that wasn’t his real name, now was it?
“Give me the bag,” he hissed at me in the same way as he’d hissed at my father at Ascot. “And give it to me now or I’ll break your bloody door down.”
I opened my hand and dropped the rucksack. In spite of having his hands up, he failed to catch it before it hit the concrete path, but he quickly snatched it up and was off, jogging down Station Road in just the same manner as I had previously seen him do in Paddington near the Lancaster Gate tube station.
I wondered how he had found out where I lived. If he had obtained the information that I had given the coroner at the inquest, then why had it taken him so long to arrive at my door? I thought back to what I had done over the previous twenty-four hours. Perhaps his little birdie had been at Banbury police station yesterday, or somewhere else in the Thames Valley Police. That e-fit would have been sent right around the force, and perhaps someone recognized the face, someone not completely honest, someone who had then told Kipper, who had made it.
I would never know exactly how he had found me, and I hoped that this would be the last time I would see him, but, somehow, I had my doubts.
He would certainly find that the microcoder and the glass-grain RFID chips were missing from the rucksack as Mr. John Smith now had them. And I had also kept back the three house keys on their ring and the passports, the two photocopied equine ones, and both of those with my father’s picture in them.
However, if Paddy Murphy was to be believed—and there was absolutely no guarantee of that—then it would be the stash of money that the man would be more concerned about. If he knew where to look, Kipper would find the three blue-plastic-wrapped packages of banknotes back in their original hiding place underneath the rucksack lining. But, if he inspected them more closely, he might spot that the packages had been opened and then carefully resealed using clear sticky tape. And, if he then counted the cash, he might also discover that he was two thousand pounds short from each package.
It had seemed a good idea at the time. But now I wasn’t so sure.
What the hell was all that about?” Sophie demanded when I went down the stairs.
She and Alice were standing in the hall, looking up at me with concerned but expectant expressions on their faces.
“Just an impatient man who wanted something I had,” I said to them, trying to make light of the encounter.
“But he was horrible,” said Sophie. “Why did you give it to him?”
“But it was you who told me to,” I said, slightly exasperated.
“Whose rucksack was it anyway?” she asked.
“It belongs to a man called Alan Grady,” I said. “He gave it to me to keep safe.”
“Who’s Alan Grady?” she asked.
“Just a man from Australia that I met at Royal Ascot.”
“He’s not going to be very pleased with you for giving his rucksack away to someone else.”
She seemed to have completely forgotten the fear and panic that had gripped her when the man had been standing outside our front door.
“I don’t think he’ll mind too much,” I said without elaborating further. I smiled at the two of them. “Now, what’s for supper?”
“He won’t come back, will he?” Alice asked nervously as I ate my macaroni and cheese, the three of us sitting around the kitchen table.
“I don’t think so,” I said. “He’s got what he came for.”
At least he got most of it, I thought. But would he come back for the rest? There was no doubt that he now knew exactly where I lived, and, even though I had been half expecting him to turn up, it was still rather a shock that he had.
After my supper, I went up into my little office to log on to the Internet while the girls took themselves off to bed.
HRF Holdings Ltd was indeed a parent company, and one of the businesses it owned I knew very well. Tony Bateman (Turf Accountants) Ltd, to give it its full title, was one of the big-five High Street betting shop chains. Their shops were presently mostly confined to London and the southeast of England, but the business was expanding rapidly north and westwards.
I made a search of the Companies House WebCHeck service and downloaded the most recent annual report for Tony Bateman (Turf Accountants) Ltd and for HRF Holdings Ltd. They were both private limited companies, and the report recorded the names of the directors and the company secretaries, as well as a list of the current shareholders, of each entity.
Just as there is no longer an individual called William Hill in charge of the William Hill bookmaking company, there was no sign in the report of anyone actually called Tony Bateman either as a director or as a shareholder at Tony Bateman (Turf Accountants) Ltd. It must have been a name from the past, I thought, possibly the company founder or maybe an individual bookmaker who was, at some distant time, bought out by a bigger concern.
I did, however, recognize one name prominent amongst the list of both the directors and the shareholders of the company. Henry Richard Feldman was well known on British racetracks. Now in his late sixties, he had made his money in property development, specifically in the docklands of both London and Liverpool, although there were reports that a recent fall in house prices had hit him hard. For the past twenty years or so, he had been a p
rolific and successful racehorse owner, mostly jumpers. He was also the sole shareholder of HRF Holdings Ltd.
But why did he or, more precisely, why did Tony Bateman (Turf Accountants) Ltd want to buy my business?
Ever since betting shops were made legal in Britain in 1961, the big firms had been expanding their domains by buying out the small independent bookies. But mostly it had been the individual town-center betting shops they had been after. However, more recently they had also been turning up in the betting rings on the tracks, using their influence to further control the on-course prices.
Now, it would seem, it was the turn of my business to be in their sights whether I liked it or not. Tony Bateman Ltd wasn’t so much after me and Luca, or even our customers; they were after our lucrative pitch positions at the racetracks. And, it appeared, they were prepared to resort to threats and intimidation to get them.
Sophie was fast asleep when, well after midnight, I finally went along the landing to bed. As always, coming home from the hospital had completely exhausted her.
I crept quietly into our bedroom and, last thing, with both shifty-eyed Kipper and the bullyboys from HRF Holdings still out there somewhere, I put Sophie’s dressing-table chair under the door handle.
Just to be on the safe side.
19
On Wednesday morning I made the arrangements for my father’s funeral. What I really wanted was to have a cremation because I believed it gave greater closure. However, the coroner’s office had other ideas.
“The police have withdrawn their objection to a burial,” said an official. “But they said nothing about a cremation. And I haven’t heard anything from the CPS.”
“The CPS?” I asked.
“Crown Prosecution Service,” he said.
I sighed. Why was everything so damn difficult?
“Will you please ask them all, then,” I said, “if they have any objection to a cremation.”
“Can’t you do that?” said the official.
“But you would have to be told by them, not me, which would involve another call anyway,” I said. “So why don’t you just telephone them in the first place?”
