Tip Off

by John Francome

  I was grateful for Frank’s tolerance.

  ‘The plan’s quite simple. Gerald has borrowed a hundred and fifteen million pounds to buy up his Buckingham Gate site, and secured the loan with his shareholding in the King George Hotel Group. Until he’s bought the final freehold, and the Salmon’s Racing lease in the ground floor, the site is worth a lot less than he paid for it. Most of the properties are derelict with no income. I’ve arranged that tomorrow the loan will be called in for immediate repayment. The site, as it’s currently occupied, would take months to sell, so he’ll have no option but to sell his shares in King George.’

  Matt stared at him doubtfully. ‘But can you do that?’

  ‘You can if the chairman of the bank is one of your oldest friends, and Sir Alec Denaro and I have known each other since we were five. Then, when I put the word around that the site won’t be freed up by Salmon’s for years, no one else will lend Gerald the money.’

  Frank looked at each of us in turn, checking we were taking it all in. He was evidently satisfied now that he had Matt’s undivided attention.

  ‘Gerald’s been active in extending his interests into a lot of other areas. We’ve checked his current position as closely as possible and I can tell you that he’s put a great deal of venture capital into companies where, if you’re lucky, the returns can be enormous. But this hasn’t been the case for him. His portfolio isn’t broad enough and he’s stretched.

  ‘We estimate personal borrowings of over a hundred and thirty million at this point in time. If the Buckingham Gate site is disposed of in a forced sale, with Salmon’s still in situ, it won’t fetch more than seventy-five million. His shares in the King George Group would realise about thirty-five million and he would be insolvent to the tune of twenty million.’

  Matt, I saw, was sitting forward on the edge of his chair, any pretence at lack of interest abandoned. I could tell that he was beginning to see where Frank was taking us.

  Matt moved back into the centre of the room. ‘So that’s it? You think that as it’s impossible to get Tintern convicted or punished for murdering Toby Brown, trying to bankrupt him will have to do?’

  Frank met his gaze square on. ‘Yes. I entirely accept your deduction that it must have been Gerald who visited Toby on Sunday morning before the bookie’s man found him dead. But from what Simon’s told me, we just don’t have enough to tie him to it.’

  I nodded. ‘Tilbury didn’t even see him – only heard him. Let’s face it, Matt, it may not be ideal, but this way at least we’ll know Tintern’s getting what he deserves for what he did.’

  ‘Besides,’ Frank intervened, ‘are you two sure of what he’s done, and why?’

  ‘I am,’ I said emphatically. ‘We know why he started fixing races, and using Toby as an unsuspecting front, and we know that Steve Lincoln worked out what was going on and decided to blackmail Tintern.’

  ‘Around about the time Toby died,’ Frank murmured.

  ‘Maybe Lincoln had got Toby to confront Tintern over whether or not he was behind the doping.’

  Frank lowered himself on to his steamer chair and lay back with his eyes tight shut. ‘It’s very hard to believe,’ he said, shaking his head, ‘though I think you must be right.’ He took a deep breath and opened his eyes. ‘But Lincoln then blackmailed him, which must have given Gerald a terrible shock, if he thought he’d killed Toby for nothing.’

  ‘The bookies might have, if he hadn’t. They sent China to do it.’

  ‘I think they only sent him after Toby to frighten him. Toby wasn’t a hard case, but they thought he was taking their money and carrying on his tipping through Connor.’

  ‘Right, but obviously Tintern thought he’d better nip the blackmail in the bud, and set up Lincoln to be nicked.’

  ‘But how could he risk that?’ Emma asked. ‘The police would want to know why he was being blackmailed.’

  ‘That’s not such a mystery,’ Matt said unexpectedly. ‘I was doing some research of my own yesterday while Simon was in London. I spoke to Wyndham and asked him to check out what was going on that evening in Knightsbridge. As far as he can tell, that raid was entirely unofficial – a piece of private enterprise which was never recorded, nor would have been.’

  ‘Just two coppers standing by in a patrol car?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes.’ Matt nodded. ‘I shouldn’t think it’s that difficult or expensive to arrange, and Tintern was probably hoping Lincoln would be frightened off for good by the shock of almost having his collar felt by the police.’

  ‘Okay,’ Frank said, holding up both hands. ‘I accept that you think you know what happened though you can’t prove it. But, as I said, this way at least Tintern gets to pay for what he’s done. It won’t bring Toby back for Jane, but we’ll make sure she knows what we’ve done, and believe me, that’ll help.

  ‘Simon, perhaps you’d be good enough to open the champagne, then?’ He nodded at a bottle in a bucket under a palm tree. ‘Emma, glasses please.’

  When we each had a full glass in our hand Frank raised his a little. ‘To justice,’ he said. Then, looking at Emma, ‘And fatherhood.’

  ‘To justice,’ I repeated happily, ‘and Better By Far, Champion Chaser.’

  Matt looked at me with a cynical grunt. ‘To justice, certainly, and possibly fatherhood – but I’m sorry, Simon. I’d like to support you, but I have to say that there isn’t a horse in the world that would come in champion with you on its back!’

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  I understood how Jane felt.

  Her son had been found hanging from a beam; she couldn’t accept that he might have taken his own life, and yet, apart from myself and a few of her friends, no one seemed to care.

  I’d ridden out on Baltimore. The yard at Wetherdown was as busy as usual on a Saturday, with five runners going off to three different courses. Jane was trying to persuade herself that she wanted to go to Chepstow, where she knew she ought to be. But in the meantime, she had agreed to stay back until midday, to talk to a journalist – one whom she trusted enough to report her version of why Lord Tintern’s eight horses, including the Champion Chase favourite, were being so abruptly withdrawn from her yard.

  I was sitting alone with her in her study.

  ‘Jane, I can imagine what it must be like, believe me, and I wish to God there were some way we could persuade the police to go after Tintern, but we just haven’t found anything that categorically proves he did it, and they’re adamant it was suicide.’

  ‘It had to be Gerald,’ she whispered bleakly. ‘Toby was far too proud to have done it himself.’

  ‘I know that’s what you think, Jane, and I wish there was something I could say to help, but there just isn’t. And at least Tintern’s going to suffer, even if it isn’t as a direct result of what he did to Toby. You do realise, don’t you, that by the time all his guarantees have been called, he’ll have lost his shares in King George’s? And no one’s going to take any pity on him then. He’ll pay for what he did.’

  ‘But he’ll still be free, that’s what irks me,’ she said. ‘And he won’t know the real reason he’s lost King George.’

  ‘When he’s declared bankrupt, I’ll make it my business to let him know how it happened.’

  ‘But how did you do it, Simon?’

  ‘The timing was mostly good luck, but originally it was a chance remark of Frank’s that prompted me.’

  I explained to her how Tintern had tried to bring Salmon Racing to its knees and, even though he’d failed, bid for it out of desperation when he saw he was going to lose the Buckingham Gate site.

  ‘But then, of course,’ I told her, ‘it was a crazy idea, and he was too late anyway because the bookies were making money again. I guess you could say they’d outflanked him.’

  Jane nodded, even allowing herself a smile. ‘Gerald must be seething – at just the thought of losing the hotels, and Purple Silk moving to another yard, so close to the Champion Chase.’

  ‘Why di
dn’t you hang on until after Cheltenham?’

  ‘I couldn’t – not once I knew he’d been involved in Toby’s death. I made him take all his horses away. I just hope you can beat him on Nester.’

  I left Jane with promises ringing in her ears that everything humanly and legally possible would be done to ensure that Better By Far beat Purple Silk in the Champion Chase in ten days’ time. But my more immediate, and no less cherished, aim was to see Gerald Tintern pay heavily and promptly for his crimes.

  I had marked out Daniel Dunne as a man who would respond better to large quantities of soiled banknotes than anything else.

  Having arranged with Frank that such quantities as I might need could be made available, I had phoned Daniel. Without telling him why I wanted it, I’d arranged a meeting late Saturday morning, in his small West End office, a few hundred yards, as it happened, from Toby’s last address.

  Daniel Dunne’s personal tastes were reflected in a display of vast, inept oil paintings of classic horse races that crowded his office walls. The small bronze of a Derby winner on his desk confirmed it.

  ‘Hello,’ he said, getting up from behind it to welcome me warily. ‘I hope you haven’t come here to try and sell me a horse.’

  ‘I don’t think I’ve got any fast enough for you,’ I said, nodding at the pictures.

  He gave a disappointed laugh. ‘I’d always be interested in a nice inside deal. So, what can I do for you?’ He waved vaguely at a faux-Chippendale chair. I concluded that Tintern, for his own reasons, had not yet told Dunne I was responsible for Harry Chapman’s volte-face.

  ‘You’ve occasionally had to acquire properties for our mutual friend Gerald Tintern, haven’t you?’ I said, sitting down.

  Dunne was instantly on his guard. ‘I’ve acted for him once or twice, in sensitive situations.’

  ‘Like when he’s been building up a holding in a block?’

  ‘How the hell do you know?’

  ‘I can tell you that Tintern won’t be in a position to complete on anything as from tomorrow. But I’ve come here to tell you there’s still a way you could earn a commission.’

  Dunne’s cheek twitched in a way that reminded me of Tintern. ‘Really? How?’

  ‘What I want to know is which of the fourteen freeholds in that block Tintern hasn’t bought yet.’

  ‘Why should I tell you that?’

  ‘Because if there are any left, he won’t be buying them, and with Harry Chapman sitting on his lease for eighteen years, the block’s worth bugger all to any developer.’

  ‘Have you got a punter?’

  ‘Yes, if there’s one of the freeholds left which could create a bit of leverage.’

  ‘As it happens, there is one left,’ he said quietly, ‘and I’m just on the point of getting the old bastard who owns it to sell. He’s wound me up on the price as far as he could, not because he knew Tintern’s filling a gap but because he’s one of those canny old boys who can just smell how keen you are, however well you fake it.’

  I had to fake hard myself, to disguise my relief there was still one part of the deal that would escape receivers if Tintern’s loans were called in.

  ‘Well, if you want a buyer,’ I said calmly, as if there were some question about it, ‘who’ll pay you another five percent over the top, in readies, I’ve got one.’

  The tension in Jane’s cramped office was almost tangible.

  Four days after my meeting with Daniel Dunne, we were waiting for the phone call that would confirm that the deal was done – or, at least, was so far down the line that it was irrevocable.

  The phone tinkled, and I answered it.

  ‘Hello, Simon. Harry here. Just to let you know we’ve bought that little property you recommended. I haven’t had a look at it, but my surveyor tells me it’s a terrible place and will probably fall down in a few years anyway. And your Mr Dunne was in for a good cut.’

  ‘I know, Harry, but you understand as well as I do it was money well spent.’

  ‘I do indeed. And I was phoning to say thank you. We’ll be in touch.’

  I put the phone down with a satisfied grin.

  ‘Well done,’ Frank said. ‘That’ll really sting Gerald when he finds out.’

  ‘What exactly have you done now?’ Jane asked, pleased that Tintern seemed to be getting what he deserved, but confused by the details.

  ‘Let me tell you,’ I said. ‘Tintern had marked out a major hotel site which he’d been buying up for years. By promising to grease the palm of a chap called Daniel Dunne, I discovered that of the fourteen freehold premises on the block, Tintern had acquired all bar one. Most of those freeholds had various commercial tenancy agreements within them, and he’d bought out nearly all the commercial leaseholders, letting some hang on under licence until he’d got a full house. As it happens, the building of which Salmon’s shop occupies the ground floor was the only freehold he hadn’t got. Until yesterday he thought he had it, and even though Salmon’s had backed out of their agreement to sell him their lease, I’m sure he thought that once he’d got the freehold, sooner or later he’d get them out somehow.’

  ‘Or maybe,’ Frank said, ‘he was sure he was going to buy out the whole Salmon group anyway.’

  ‘Exactly,’ I agreed, wondering if Jane was following, or cared anyway. I went on. ‘Daniel Dunne was on a percentage of the whole deal when it was complete, but after I convinced him that would never happen, he switched horses like a circus rider. Yuri Ashkenazy, the old boy who owned the last of the freeholds, of which the Salmon’s shop occupied only the ground floor, had owned the property since the fifties, when he’d operated a small jeweller’s there. When he retired, he granted Salmon’s a lease and himself lived in the top three floors of the building, resisting all efforts to buy it until now. His health is failing, though, and his daughter in Portsmouth has insisted that if he wants care, he will have to move to pay for it.

  ‘But that hasn’t stopped him stringing along the Jersey property company who seemed so anxious to acquire the impractical building that they were prepared to offer almost double the price Dunne had originally put on it.

  ‘When his tenants on the ground floor came to him with an offer a good ten percent higher than the Jersey company’s bid, on condition he exchanged and completed within a week of the offer, Dunne told him the original bidders wouldn’t go any higher, and Ashkenazy’s just signed a deal with Salmon Racing.’

  ‘Lord T must be fuming!’

  It was nearly a week later, and Matt had picked me up from home at nine in the morning to drive us to the first day of the Cheltenham Festival to watch the Champion Hurdle. He was looking at me now with an odd grin. ‘I’m sure he’s fuming – he was arrested yesterday.’

  ‘What!’ I gaped at him. ‘Tintern arrested? What are you talking about?’

  ‘The police went round to Ivydene yesterday; they took him away plus the contents of his study.’

  I was still finding it hard to believe.

  ‘Jason rang me from the office half an hour ago. The police from Bristol phoned, wanting to talk to us. They’ve caught Taylor . . .’

  ‘Who is Taylor?’ I asked with my mind still in turmoil at the news.

  ‘David Dysart’s research scientist, the one who went missing. They caught him flying back in from Spain yesterday – to collect his dog, of all things – and he totally broke down; definitely not one of life’s born villains. He gave them the whole story about Tintern becoming a shareholder in Powderjet and then offering Taylor money and a research company of his own if he would create an air gun from a camera. I suppose the whole scam hinged on the fact that Tintern had free access to the bar-codes that were used to identify the runners, and that he could easily authorise a photographer’s badge; he thought it was his chance to cripple the bookmakers.’

  I shook my head in amazement. ‘Quite a nice idea. Especially Tintern using a good tipping service to make the selections for him. It must have been strange for poor old Toby not havi
ng a clue why he was tipping so many winners.’ I noticed that Matt was heading into the centre of Cheltenham. ‘Why aren’t we taking our usual route to the race-course? We don’t want to get snarled up in the town with the rest of the punters.’

  ‘No choice, I’m afraid,’ he said airily. ‘We’ve got to go and see Inspector Wyndham; he’s at the local nick.’

  ‘Why on earth didn’t you say so earlier?’

  ‘Because I didn’t want to spoil your day sooner than was necessary.’

  The detective was waiting for us in a room in the County Police HQ in Lansdown Road. He looked even closer shorn and meaner than last time. But I could see that under the hard exterior, he was very pleased with himself.

  ‘Morning, gentlemen,’ he said. ‘I thought you were never coming. I guessed you’d rather see me here than have to talk to me at the races tomorrow – it’s a big day for you, I gather?’ He looked at me.

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Right, I thought I’d tell you myself what’s been going on, and I need you to corroborate some of it. I told you when I saw you at Paddington if anything new came up that justified it, we would re-open the case. As you’ve no doubt heard, Lord Tintern was arrested at his home yesterday evening. One of the parties to this doping scam – a man called Taylor – has spelled the whole thing out. Did you two know anything about this, by the way?’

  ‘I expect the CID in Bristol have told you they came and spoke to us about some missing prototypes which Taylor had developed,’ Matt said blandly. ‘We’d been asked by Wessex Biotech to find them. At least David Dysart will be a satisfied customer now,’ he added smugly.

  ‘We didn’t do much,’ I put in.

  ‘It was because we found Tresidder that Taylor got out,’ Matt reminded me.

  ‘Yes,’ I conceded, but turned to Wyndham. ‘How come you’re involved? You didn’t have anything to do with the prototype enquiry, did you?’

  ‘No. But after he got nicked for the theft of Biotech’s property – and he’s already been charged with conspiracy to defraud for that – I was offered the chance to talk to him a little more about the late Toby Brown. As a result of further enquiries, I was able to pull him for the doping scam.’