Dick Francis's Gamble

by Felix Francis

  I wondered what Claudia could be doing at a quarter to eleven in the morning, and with whom, that required her to have her phone switched off.

  I sighed. Perhaps I didn’t want to know.

  In my role as Herb’s executor, I used the account number and sort code on his statement to send an e-mail to his bank informing them that Mr. Kovak was deceased, and would they please send me details of all his accounts, and especially the balances.

  Somewhat surprisingly I received a reply almost immediately thanking me for the sad news and advising me that they would need various pieces of original documentation before they could release the information I had asked for, including the death certificate, a copy of the will and an order of probate.

  And how long would it take to get that lot?

  I heard Sherri go along the corridor to the bathroom.

  At least my troubles with Billy Searle were minor compared to hers.

  I took the front cover sheet off the Racing Post and folded it up, as if not being able to see the damning words would in some way limit their damage to my reputation and career. I put the offending piece in my pocket and went to throw the rest of it into the wastebasket under Herb’s desk.

  The basket had some things in it already, and, I thought, as I’ve looked everywhere else, why not there?

  I poured the contents of the basket out onto the desk.

  Amongst the opened envelopes, the empty Starbucks coffee cups and the screwed-up tissues were lots of little pieces of paper about an inch square. I put the cups, envelopes and tissues back in the basket, leaving a pile of the paper squares on the desk. It was fairly obvious that they were the torn-up remains of a larger piece, so I set about trying to put them back together. It was a bit like doing a jigsaw puzzle, but without the picture on the box to guide me.

  I fairly quickly established that the pieces had not been from one larger piece but three. I slowly built up the originals in front of me. They were each about six inches by four, printed forms with words written on them in pen, similar forms but each with different writing. I stuck the bits together with Scotch tape.

  “What are you doing?” Sherri asked from the doorway.

  She made me jump.

  “Nothing much,” I said, swiveling the desk chair around to face her. “How are you feeling?”

  “Dreadful,” she said, coming into the room and flopping down into the deep armchair. “I can’t believe it.”

  I thought she was about to cry again. I wasn’t sure whether the dark shadows beneath her eyes were due to tiredness or her tearsmudged mascara.

  “I’ll get you some more tea,” I said, standing up.

  “Lovely,” she said with a forced smile. “Thank you.”

  I went through to the kitchen and boiled the kettle. I also made myself another coffee and took both cups back to the living room.

  Sherri was sitting at the desk, looking at the pieces of paper. I sat down on the arm of the big armchair.

  “Do you know what they are?” I asked.

  “Of course,” she said. “They’re MoneyHome payment slips.” She sipped her tea. “One for eight thousand, and two for five.”

  “Pounds?” I asked.

  She looked at them.

  “Dollars. Converted into pounds.”

  “How do you know?” I asked.

  She looked at me.

  “I use MoneyHome all the time,” she said. “It’s a bit like Western Union, only cheaper. They have agents all over the world. Herb sent me the money for my airfare via MoneyHome.”

  “Are any of these slips from that?”

  “No,” she said with certainty. “These are the slips you get when you collect money, not when you send it.”

  “So Herb collected eighteen thousand dollars’ worth of pounds from MoneyHome?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “When?” I asked.

  She looked at the reconstructed slips carefully. “Last week, but not all on the same day. Eight thousand on Monday and five each on Tuesday and Friday.”

  “Who from?” I asked.

  “These only tell you which MoneyHome office it was collected from, they don’t say who sent the money.” She drank more of her tea. “What’s all this about anyway?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I just found those torn-up sheets in the wastebasket.”

  She sat drinking her tea, looking at me over the rim of the cup.

  “Why are you here?” she asked.

  “I was a friend of Herb’s and a work colleague,” I said, giving her one of the business cards from my wallet. “He made me the executor of his will.” I decided again not to mention that he had also made me the sole beneficiary.

  “I didn’t know he even had a will,” Sherri said, reading from my card, “Mr. Nicholas Foxton, BSc, MEcon, DipPFS.”

  “He made it five years ago when he first arrived at Lyall and Black,” I said, ignoring her reference to my qualifications. “Everyone in the firm has to have a will. The senior partners are always saying that we can hardly advise our clients to plan ahead if we aren’t prepared to do the same. But I have absolutely no idea why Herb chose to put me in his. Maybe it was just because we sat at desks next to each other. He’d only just landed in the country and perhaps he didn’t know anyone else. And none of us really expect to die when we’re in our twenties anyway. But he should still have named you as his executor, even if you were in the United States.”

  “Herb and I weren’t exactly talking to each other five years ago. In fact, I’d told him by then that I never wanted to see or hear from him again.”

  “Wasn’t that a bit extreme?” I said.

  “We had a flaming row over our parents.” She sighed. “It was always over our parents.”

  “What about them?” I asked.

  She looked at me as if deciding whether to tell me.

  “Our Mom and Dad were, shall we say, an unusual couple. Dad had made a living, if you can call it that, acting as an unlicensed bookie round the back side of Churchill Downs. He was meant to be a groom but he didn’t do much looking after the horses. He spent his time taking bets from the other grooms, and some of the trainers and owners too. Sometimes he won, but mostly he lost. Mom, meanwhile, had worked as a cocktail waitress in one of the swanky tourist hotels in downtown Louisville. At least that’s what she told people.”

  She paused, and I waited in silence. She’d say it if she wanted to.

  “She’d been a prostitute.” Sherri was crying again.

  “You don’t have to tell me,” I said.

  She looked at me with tear-filled eyes. “I’ve got to tell someone.” She gulped. “I’ve bottled it all up for far too long.”

  Between bouts of tears she told me the sorry saga of her and Herb’s upbringing. It amazed me that I had sat next to him for all those years without realizing the hurdles he’d had to overcome to be a financial adviser.

  Herb and Sherri’s father had been an abusive drinker who had seemingly treated his children as unpaid slave labor. Both of them had excelled in school but their father insisted that they drop out, aged sixteen, to go work, Herb as a groom in the Churchill Downs stables and Sherri as a chambermaid in one of the tourist hotels where her mother had plied her trade.

  Herb had rebelled and run away to Lexington, where he had secretly applied for and won a free place at a private high school. But he’d had no accommodations, so he’d slept on the streets. One of the trustees of the school had found him there and offered him a bed. The trustee had been in financial services, and hence Herb’s career had been decided.

  He’d stayed in Lexington after high school to attend the University of Kentucky on a scholarship, then, as the top graduate, had been offered a job at J.P. Morgan in New York.

  I wondered how such a highflier had come to move from one of the global assets management giants to a firm such as Lyall & Black, a relative tiddler in the financial pond. Had he somehow done something to thwart his career prospects in New York?


  Sherri, meanwhile, had been good at her job and bright about it, and she had been spotted by the management of the hotel for further training. That was ultimately how she came to be in Chicago, where she was currently assistant housekeeper in a big hotel in the same chain.

  I didn’t see how all this information was going to be of any use to me, but I sat quietly and listened as she unburdened her emotions.

  “How come you and Herb fell out?” I asked in one of the frequent pauses.

  “He refused to come home from New York for the funeral when Dad died. I said he should be there to support Mom, but he refused, and he said he wouldn’t come to her funeral either if she dropped down dead tomorrow. Those were his exact words. And Mom heard him say them because she and I were in my car and the call was on speakerphone.” She paused, and more tears ran down her cheeks. “I still think it’s the reason why she did it.”

  “Did what?” I asked.

  “Swallowed a whole bottle of Tylenol Extra. A hundred tablets.”

  “Dead?” I asked.

  She nodded. “That night. I found her in the morning.” She sat up straight and breathed in deeply through her nose. “I accused Herb of killing her, and that’s when I told him I never wanted to see or hear from him again.”

  “How long has it been since your parents died?”

  “About six years, maybe seven.” She thought for a moment. “It’ll be seven years in June.”

  “When did you change your mind?”

  “What? About contacting Herb?”

  I nodded.

  “I didn’t. It was he who contacted me, about two years ago.” She sighed. “Five years was a long time not to speak to your twin brother. I had wanted to be in touch with him much sooner, but I was too proud.” She paused. “Too stupid, more like. He wrote to me at the hotel company, and we arranged to meet in New York. Then last summer he invited me to come to England and stay with him for a holiday. It was great.” She smiled. “Just like old times.” The smile faded and the tears began again. “I just can’t believe he’s dead.”

  Neither could I.

  I finally arrived at the office at twenty past one, a time when I reckoned Gregory should be just sitting down to his substantial lunch at the far end of Lombard Street. However, I approached number 64 from the opposite direction to the one he took to his usual restaurant in order to minimize the chances of running into him if he was late.

  I ignored the lift, sneaked up the emergency stairway to the fourth floor and put my head around the glass entrance door. “Has Mr. Gregory gone to lunch?” I whispered to Mrs. McDowd, who was sitting at the reception desk.

  “Ten minutes ago,” she whispered back.

  “And Mr. Patrick?” I asked.

  “Went with him,” she replied. “Both gone for an hour at least, probably two.”

  I relaxed and smiled at her. “Maybe I’ll just stay for an hour.”

  “Very wise,” she said with a grin from ear to ear. “Now, tell me, is it true what it says in the paper?”

  “No, of course not,” I said.

  She gave me one of her “I don’t believe you” looks. “You must have done something or it wouldn’t be on the front page.”

  “Mrs. McDowd, it’s nothing. I promise you.”

  She curled down her mouth as if she was a spoilt child who had failed to be given an ice cream. I ignored her, walking past the reception desk and down the corridor beyond. As I passed by, I glanced through the ever-open door of the Compliance Office, but Jessica Winter was not at her desk. Jessica was one of those who always went out for her lunch hour, as Herb had done, though in his case it was not to eat but to work out at a local gym.

  I went on and into my office, not that I had it completely to myself. There were five cubicles crammed into the small room, one of which was mine. Herb had been next to me, both of us close to the window, while Diana and Rory, Patrick’s other assistants, occupied the two cubicles nearer the door. The fifth cubicle was no one’s specific personal domain but was used by any visiting staff, usually an accountant for two days a week, and Andrew Mellor, the lawyer, if he needed a desk. Today it was empty.

  Diana was out to lunch, as usual, while Rory was sitting at his desk, typing with one hand on his computer keyboard while holding a half-eaten sandwich in the other.

  “My God,” said Rory with his mouth full. “The invisible man returns. Gregory’s been looking for you all morning. You’re in real trouble.” He sounded as if he was rather pleased about it, and I could see a folded copy of the Racing Post lying on his desk. It had probably been him who had shown it to Gregory.

  “You haven’t seen me, all right!” I said.

  “Don’t involve me in your sordid little affairs,” he said rather haughtily. “I’m not putting my career at risk for you.”

  Rory could be a real pain sometimes.

  “Rory,” I said. “When, and if, you ever qualify to be an IFA, you can then start talking about your career. Until then, shut up!”

  Rory knew that I knew that he had failed his qualifying exams twice and he was now in the Last Chance Saloon. He sensibly kept quiet.

  I took off my suit jacket and hung it on the back of my chair. Then I sat down at Herb’s desk and pulled open the top drawer.

  “What are you doing?” Rory asked somewhat arrogantly.

  “I’m going through Herb’s desk,” I said. “I’m his executor and I’m trying to find the address of his sister.” He wasn’t to know that Herb’s sister was in Hendon. Rory ignored me and went back to his one-handed typing.

  There was no sign of Sherri’s address but there were two more MoneyHome payment slips lurking in a drawer and this time not torn up into squares. There was also another of the sheets with handwritten lists on both sides, just like the one Chief Inspector Tomlinson had shown me in Herb’s flat. I carefully folded them all up and put them in my pocket.

  Apart from that, the desk was almost too clean. No screwed-up papers or chocolate bar wrappers.

  I wasn’t surprised. In fact, I was amazed there had been anything at all. I would have expected the police would have stripped it completely bare on the Monday after his death.

  I looked around the cubicle. Some of the staff personalized their bulletin boards with family pictures or souvenir postcards sent by friends on holiday, but there had never been any such personal items pinned to Herb’s, not even a picture of Sherri. There was only the usual mandatory company telephone directory, and a small key pinned to the board with a thumbtack. I looked at it closely but left it where it was. A key without a lock wasn’t much use.

  And there was nothing of interest in his wastebasket either, as it was completely empty. It would be. Even if the police hadn’t emptied it, the office cleaners had been there since Herb had last sat at this desk on the previous Friday afternoon.

  I walked along the corridor and put my head right into the lion’s den.

  Now, Gregory, as a senior partner, did qualify for an office of his own, but, fortunately for me, this particular lion was still out to lunch. I sat down in his chair and looked at his computer screen. As I had hoped, he hadn’t bothered to log out from his session when he went to lunch. Most of us didn’t. The office system was great when it was working, but it took so long to boot up that we all tended to leave it on all day.

  I typed “Roberts Family Trust” into Gregory’s computer, and it instantly produced the details of the file on his screen with the date of the original investment prominently displayed at the top. The access list in the right-hand corner showed me that Gregory himself had looked at the file only that morning, at ten twenty-two a.m. precisely, no doubt in a lull from searching the offices for me. I just hoped he wouldn’t notice that his computer had accessed it again at one forty-six p.m.

  However, it was one of the other names on the recent-inquiry list I found most interesting. It showed that Herb Kovak had accessed the file just ten days previously. Now, why had Herb looked at one of Gregory’s cli
ent files? It would have been most improper, just as it was for me to be looking at it now. Perhaps Herb had also had some suspicions about the Bulgarian investment. I wondered what they had been. It was too late to ask.

  I would have loved to print out the whole file, but unfortunately the office server used a central printing system that recorded who had asked for what to be printed. How could I explain away an apparent request from Gregory when he was out to lunch? More to the point, how would I explain sitting at Gregory’s desk and using his computer if he returned unexpectedly early?

  I instinctively looked at my watch. It was ten to two. I reckoned I should be safe for at least another twenty minutes, but I had no intention of being even half that long.

  I flipped through the pages of the file trying to find the names of the Bulgarian agents involved in the project, but it was a nightmare, with PDF scans of the relevant documents all in the local Cyrillic script. It might as well have been in Chinese. I couldn’t read any of the words, but I could read what I thought was a telephone number written in regular digits. I copied it down on the back of one of Herb’s MoneyHome payment slips. It began “+359,” which I knew from looking at the Internet earlier was the international code for Bulgaria.

  I looked again at my watch. Two o’clock.

  I opened Gregory’s e-mail in-box and did a search for “Bulgaria.” There were six e-mails, all from September two years ago. I glanced through them but nothing seemed amiss. They were about European Union money, and they were all from the same source. I copied down the e-mail address of the sender, uri_joram@ec .europa.eu, and also that of the recipient, dimitar.petrov@bsnet .co.bg. Gregory had been copied into the correspondence but there was no sign of any replies. I took a chance and forwarded the e-mails to my private e-mail address, then I deleted the forwarded record from Gregory’s “Sent” folder. I wished I could have e-mailed myself the whole Roberts file, but our security system wouldn’t allow it.

  I reluctantly closed Gregory’s in-box and the Roberts Family Trust file and checked that the screen appeared the same as when I had first arrived.