Tip Off

by John Francome

  We were in the cottage for an hour. Our instructions were to make exploratory investigations only, at this point, and in no way to antagonise a key member of Dysart’s research team.

  As I looked around the small sitting room of his house, I was struck by the quality of the furniture and the pictures on the walls. From my patchy knowledge of eighteenth-century equestrian paintings, I judged that one of them, at least, was worth twice its owner’s annual salary.

  During a lull in Matt’s questioning, I remarked on it.

  ‘Yes, it’s nice, isn’t it? It’s a Herring, as a matter of fact.’

  ‘Must be worth a lot?’

  Griffiths looked at me a little primly, as if I’d just committed some social gaffe, which, I supposed, I had.

  Matt wasn’t put off. ‘I see you’ve got one of the new Range Rovers outside, too?’ The subtle approach wasn’t his style.

  Griffiths looked at him like an owl through his big tortoiseshell glasses. ‘I do a lot of hill walking. It comes in handy for getting up to good start points.’ He stood up. ‘Now I think I’ve told you all I can about the missing systems and I’ve some work to catch up on. So, if you wouldn’t mind . . .?’

  ‘What a complete bloody waste of time!’ Matt fumed as we drove back towards Berkshire.

  ‘Well, we discovered something.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Like he has a painting on his wall that’s worth at least fifty or sixty grand.’

  Matt turned his head to look at me. ‘As much as that? Where would he get money like that to spend on a picture?’

  ‘Maybe he didn’t.’ I shrugged. ‘Maybe he was left it.’

  ‘Maybe, but I didn’t think much of him. Did you notice how he kept putting his finger inside his collar and lifting his chin – almost as if it was too tight? That’s a sure sign of lying.’

  ‘That doesn’t prove anything, though.’

  ‘At least it gives us something to report, and I suggest next time we go there when Griffiths is out.’

  Chapter Five

  The following morning, on the way to see Harry Chapman in London, Matt and I talked about Jane’s family connections with Gerald Tintern, and how her brother, Frank Gurney, was a long-term shareholder in Tintern’s King George Hotel Group.

  ‘Salmon Leisure own a chain of hotels too, so I imagine Chapman must know Lord Tintern.’

  ‘If he didn’t before, he does now.’

  ‘Was Chapman one of the bookies who complained to the Jockey Club?’

  ‘Salmon Leisure are one of the four largest operators. They always show a united front whenever anything threatens their interests. The rest of the time they do everything they can to trample on each other.’

  ‘A metaphor for the human race,’ Matt said drily.

  ‘If it’s philosophy, it must be Thursday,’ I laughed. ‘But what still worries me is why Tintern decided to hire us to do the job, given that he doesn’t think I’m good enough for his daughter?’

  ‘I thought we’d established that he came to us because you know Toby well enough to get close to him without having any particular loyalty towards him.’

  ‘How the hell would he know whether or not I felt any loyalty? I think he just wanted to protect Toby from any heavy-handed stuff from the in-house security people. He’s his godfather after all. I expect he thought we’d be more gentle.’

  ‘Not necessarily,’ Matt said with a wolfish grin.

  The head office of Salmon Leisure Plc was in a handsome old building in Hanover Square. Inside, it was decorated with low-key paintings and furniture of a quality that suggested it had been chosen to contrast deliberately with the vulgar way it had been gained.

  A pretty dark girl sat behind the long sweep of polished elm that faced the main entrance. With East End chirpiness, she pointed us to the lift which went straight up to the chief executive’s office on the fourth floor. There we were directed into an ante-room hung with large equestrian canvases, where another girl, even more striking than her colleague on the ground floor, looked up. After a momentary frown, she broke into a glowing smile that instantly encompassed both of us.

  For once, I heard a faint stutter in Matt’s voice as he introduced us. ‘Matthew James and Simon Jeffries,’ he murmured, ‘on behalf of the Jockey Club, to see Mr Chapman.’

  The girl’s black hair was cut in a short bob, setting off high cheekbones and slightly angled, electrifying blue eyes which lingered on Matt for a moment before she glanced down at the desk diary in front of her. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Mr Chapman’s expecting you. He’ll be free in a few minutes.’ She stood up. She was wearing a short black skirt that rode up a little over the dark nylon of her tights and I saw a twitch of approval on Matt’s face at the sight of her well-filled blouse. ‘Coffee?’ she asked.

  ‘Er . . . yes, please,’ Matt muttered and I nodded.

  ‘Take a seat,’ she said, waving towards a cluster of squashy sofas around a low table. She disappeared through a small door behind her desk. We sat down. I looked at Matt.

  ‘Which do you fancy most, the pictures or the staff?’ I asked, sensing that he was unusually uptight.

  ‘No contest,’ he answered curtly and tried to relax back on to the sofa. It gave more than he expected, until he found himself almost supine. He heaved himself back and sat on the front edge, making a face; he hated to look foolish.

  The girl came back in carrying a cafetière and two cups on a tray. A pleasing aroma of strong fresh coffee wafted through the air as she bent over to place it on the table.

  ‘Thanks,’ Matt said. ‘Where would you like to have dinner?’ he added hurriedly.

  I was astonished; I’d never seen him move so fast. The girl straightened her back and considered the question.

  ‘Tonight?’ she asked, swinging her bobbed hair to one side.

  ‘Of course,’ Matt said clearly, having evicted the frog from his throat.

  ‘Harry’s Bar.’

  Before Matt could reply, a deep voice resounded from an intercom on the desk. ‘Sara. I’m free now.’

  ‘I’ll bring your coffee through,’ she said with a mischievous smile.

  Harry Chapman’s office was so big, it could have been a small ballroom. Perhaps once it had been.

  The chief executive of Salmon Leisure stood up behind his desk, with his back to a tall window that overlooked the bustling, rain-drenched square below.

  But no outside sounds penetrated the room, and the deep quiet matched the subdued grey-green and heather colours of the decor.

  As Harry came round the desk, his features became clearer. He was a tall man, not dissimilar in build to Lord Tintern. Facially, he could scarcely have been more different. His rubbery flesh was the pale pink of a peeled prawn, his nose bulbous and cheeks chubby. Beneath a mop of fluffy grey hair and heavy lids, his eyes radiated a wily charm. He held out his hand and shook Matt’s then mine with flamboyant gusto.

  ‘Good morning.’ There was a hint of South London in the gravelly voice. ‘Let me guess which of you is which,’ he cut in as I was about to tell him my name. ‘I’ve had a look at your company profile, and I see that Mr James was one of those covert heroes who do so much to protect our liberty. That would be you,’ he said, looking at me.

  So forceful were his gaze and conviction that I almost quailed from contradicting him. ‘Nearly right, Mr Chapman,’ I muttered. ‘In fact, I’m Simon Jeffries.’

  The big man let go of my hand and roared with laughter. ‘Nearly right,’ he guffawed. ‘Very good.’ He turned to Matt. ‘Sorry. Someone once told me you SAS chaps all look like university professors. Very wise, I should think. But you look more of the James Bond type. Anyway, have a seat.’

  He sat down before us in a large easy chair, while we sat opposite on another over-filled sofa. Sara came in with our tray and poured coffee. I saw her glance at Matt with a quick smile.

  ‘So, what have you boys come to see me about, exactly? I see you’re a client, Mr James.’
>
  ‘It’s nothing to do with that,’ I said hurriedly. ‘I understand that you approached the Jockey Club on behalf of the Bookmakers’ Association, to register your concerns over Toby Brown’s tipping service?’

  Chapman nodded. ‘Yes, I did. And I’d have gone to them with or without the other members of my association. I don’t know how he’s doing it, but it’s costing all of us millions. It can’t go on.’ He stopped and looked at us squarely, as if we were the culprits, to add more emphasis to his words. ‘It’s giving racing a terrible name, and those pompous old buggers in Portman Square weren’t doing much about it when it’s clearly their responsibility. As you know, anything to do with racing in this country comes under their jurisdiction. If Brown were being palpably fraudulent, we could bring the police in, but we have nothing to go on and, as far as I can see, the powers that be have done little to mobilise their internal security people.’

  ‘We received instructions from Lord Tintern as chairman of the disciplinary committee the day before yesterday,’ I told him.

  ‘So, what do you think?’

  ‘It’s too soon to say,’ Matt put in before I could reply. ‘Do you have any theories yourself, sir?’

  ‘Forget the “sir”. You’re not in the army now, you know.’

  Matt allowed himself a quick smile. I acknowledged to myself the subtlety of his technique in gaining control of meetings like this.

  ‘Thank you, but what are your ideas?’

  ‘It’s obvious, isn’t it?’ The question wasn’t entirely rhetorical.

  ‘You tell us, sir,’ Matt prompted.

  Chapman ignored the ‘sir’ this time. ‘Well, it’s not sheer skill, is it?’

  We shook our heads.

  ‘Or luck,’ Chapman growled. ‘He’s cheating.’

  ‘The reason we’ve come to see you is to hear what you’ve discovered so far,’ Matt pressed.

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Have you identified who’s been your biggest winner since this run started?’

  Harry made a face. ‘Of course we’ve tried. But there isn’t any one big winner – it’s all of them. One guy phones the line and tells ten friends. It’s killing us.’

  ‘But there’s no one individual or consortium?’

  Chapman shrugged. ‘No, they’re all at it.’

  ‘Have you ever experienced such a successful run for a tipster before?’ Matt asked.

  ‘No,’ Harry replied emphatically. ‘Never. There are people who know their job and have winning weeks, but not regularly; and if it does get too frequent, we close their accounts. Now, if we stopped everyone who was winning, we’d have no clients left.’

  ‘How much have Salmon’s lost so far from all this, then?’ Matt pressed.

  The question hit a nerve. Chapman’s face lost some of its colour. ‘Too much,’ he grunted. ‘It can’t go on – and you can quote me on that.’

  I had the impression that if we didn’t find out soon what Toby was doing, Chapman would do something about it himself. He lifted his large frame from the chair. ‘Now, if you’ll excuse me?’

  We were already rising from our seats in anticipation of the end of the interview. I looked at Matt, showing only a hint of my disappointment at this lack of any fresh information.

  ‘Thank you for your time,’ I said.

  Chapman shrugged indifferently. ‘If you start making any real progress, let me know. Give my regards to Lord Tintern. Tell him I’m delighted he’s put two such sharp young men on the case. I expect his relationship with Toby makes the whole situation a bit ticklish for him.’

  ‘I didn’t detect any particular reticence when he was instructing us,’ I said.

  Chapman laughed. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘you’re probably right. Well, good day to you.’ He ushered us from his office with another hearty shake of his hand.

  We walked through to the ante-room and Matt closed the door behind him. Sara was sitting at her desk. He lifted an eyebrow. ‘What time do you finish work?’ he asked quietly.

  ‘About six,’ she said, with an almost imperceptible glance at the door to her boss’s office.

  ‘I’ll be here to pick you up then.’

  We retrieved my Audi from its meter outside and headed for my sister’s small house in Notting Hill which we used as a London base.

  ‘Looks as though you might have scored,’ I said.

  ‘It’s not a question of scoring,’ Matt blustered. ‘I just thought it might be useful to have a pair of ears inside that office. Those people have more reason than anyone to stop Toby.’

  I restrained a smile. I’d always been rather curious about Matt’s approach to women. I suspected that beneath the irrefutably tough and tightly controlled exterior there was an emotional vulnerability – perhaps the origin of the hardened outer shell. I had never encroached on this private area and thus our long friendship had survived.

  ‘All right, but I bet you wouldn’t have thought of it if she wasn’t so attractive.’

  Matt allowed this. ‘Possibly not.’ He picked up the phone. ‘I’m going to call the office.’

  When he was answered, he spoke for a few minutes to Jason who co-ordinated the half dozen men, ex-soldiers mostly, whom we employed on the bread-and-butter personal protection and surveillance work.

  I gathered nothing new had come in on our present job, but David Dysart of Wessex Biotech had rung.

  ‘At least we’ve got something to tell him,’ Matt muttered.

  ‘Come on,’ I protested. ‘We haven’t much at all.’

  ‘We agreed that Griffiths seemed to have more assets than his salary would account for.’

  ‘That proves nothing, though.’

  But Matt was already punching a number into the phone. When it was answered, he asked for Dysart and waited. After a few moments, he made a face. ‘Right, I’ll come down in person as soon as I can,’ he grunted and put the phone down.

  My sister Catherine had used all the money our father had left her to buy a pretty little house near Notting Hill Gate.

  Fortunately for me, almost as soon as she’d bought it, she’d left her job at Vogue and gone to work on an American glossy in New York. She’d asked me to keep an eye on the house. In return, Matt and I used it as our London base. Catherine had installed her own dark room and we had converted the bottom floor into an office.

  As soon as we arrived there, Matt left for Bristol to see Dysart and I dialled Toby’s tipping line. I listened to a recording of his familiar voice offering his selections for the day, put the phone down, and went out.

  I retrieved my car from where I’d left it, two streets away, and drove to Sandown Park. Toby’s nap was a horse called Musicmusic in a two-mile handicap hurdle, and I wanted to see it run.

  Wearing the winter racing uniform of velvet-collared covert coat and brown trilby, I blended naturally into the crowd milling around by the stables. I watched Musicmusic being tacked up and led to the parade ring. I was looking for anything out of the ordinary. I watched his lad every step of the way. Studied the horse’s distinguished trainer appraising him in the paddock with the famous rock musician who owned him, and kept an eye on the yard’s travelling head lad.

  I tried to detect any sign of interference with any of the other five runners.

  I scoured the crowd around the ring, especially by the gate where the horses would leave for the course; I noticed nothing and no one that aroused my suspicions.

  As the jockeys mounted, I walked round and placed myself near the exit so that I could follow Musicmusic as closely as possible while he was making his way down the laurel walk to the track.

  He was a well-made horse who looked ready to run and was being ridden by Jimmy McBain, the season’s leading pilot. He would probably have been offered by the bookies at around 3/1 favourite without Toby’s recommendation; with it, he looked likely to start at even money.

  He was a big, strong, imposing horse; if you’d never seen a horse before in your life, he’d have taken you
r eye. Maybe, I thought, Toby was just doing a thorough job after all, as he’d claimed. Having been so impressed by Musicmusic beforehand, I wasn’t surprised by the ease with which he won.

  He was two lengths clear at the last, and on the run in gained another two. What was more conspicuous was the cheer that greeted his win. I wondered how much Harry Chapman and his rivals had lost from people here on the course, and another few million punters in betting shops around the country.

  Through my binoculars I studied the winner coming back. Jimmy McBain had wheeled him round and he was still jogging. I thought that if I owned him, I’d think about running him over longer distances.

  I’d seen nothing that could be called suspicious in the way the horse had run. I wondered if the stewards would dope test him. They only selected a horse to test after a race was run. It wasn’t always the winner. If they took a urine sample from Musicmusic I didn’t expect the horse to show any symptoms of doping.

  But neither could I see any of the other, losing horses coming back showing signs of undue distress.

  I felt utterly frustrated by the lack of evidence of any irregular influence on the result of the race. Moodily I made my way back towards the stands. Near the doors, I heard a female voice call my name from somewhere above. I looked up and saw Emma.

  ‘Come on up,’ she called when I returned her wave.

  I knew my way to the Tintern box, and a couple of minutes later, I was walking into it. To my relief, His Lordship wasn’t there. Emma, though, was surrounded by three other men who appeared to be at least as interested in her as I was.

  ‘Si!’ she greeted me with apparent relief, offering a cheek to be kissed and leading me by the elbow out on to the empty balcony. ‘God, I’m glad I saw you.’ She pulled a face but didn’t expand. She filled a glass for me from a bottle of wine she’d picked up on the way. ‘Is there any way you could give me a lift back to London?’

  ‘Where’s your car?’ I asked.

  ‘I came with Jane, thinking I’d go back home afterwards, but there’s a party this evening. I wasn’t going to go, but if you can come, I think I’d enjoy it.’