Dick Francis - Crossfire

"So what did Roderick want you to do with it instead?"

"Buy into an investment fund he was very keen on."

I again hadn't really wanted to believe my ears.

"And did you?" I'd asked him.

"Oh yes," he'd said. "We took out another mortgage and invested it in the fund."

"So that money is still safe?" I had asked with renewed hope.

"Unfortunately, that particular investment fund didn't do too well in the recession."

Why was I not surprised?

"How not too well?" I'd asked him.

"Not well at all, I'm afraid," he said. "In fact, the fund went into bankruptcy last year."

"But surely you were covered by some kind of government bailout protection insurance?"

"Sadly not," he'd said. "It was some sort of offshore fund."

"A hedge fund?"

"Yes, that's it. I knew it sounded like something to do with gardens."

I simply couldn't believe it. I'd been stunned by his naivete. And it was of no comfort to know that hedge funds had been so named because they had initially been designed to "hedge" against fluctuations in overall stock prices. The original intention of reducing risks had transformed, over time, into high-risk strategies, capable of returning huge profits when things went well but also huge losses if they didn't. Recent unexpected declines in the world's equity markets, coupled with banks suddenly calling in their loans, had left offshore tax shelters awash with hedge-fund managers in search of new jobs.

"But didn't you take any advice? From an independent financial adviser or something?"

"Roderick said it wasn't necessary."

Roderick would. Mr. Roderick Ward had obviously spotted my complacent mother and her careless husband coming from a long way off.

"But didn't you ever think that Roderick might have been wrong?"

"No," he'd said, almost surprised by the question. "Roderick showed us a brochure about how well the fund had done. It was all very exciting."

"And is there any money left?"

"I had a letter that said they were trying to recover some of the funds and they would let investors know if they succeeded."

I took that to mean no, there was nothing left.

"How much did you invest in this hedge fund?" I'd asked him, dreading his reply.

"There was a minimum amount we had to invest to be able to join." He had sounded almost proud of the fact that they had been allowed into the club. Like being pleased to have won tickets for the maiden voyage of the Titanic.

I had stood silently in front of him, blocking his route away, waiting for the answer. He hadn't wanted to tell me, but he could see that I wasn't going to move until he did.

"It was a million U.S. dollars."

More than six hundred thousand pounds at the prevailing rate. I suppose it could have been worse, but not much. At least there was some capital left in the real estate, although not enough.

"What about other investments?"

"I've got a few ISAs," he'd said.

Ironically, an ISA, an individual savings account, was designed for tax-free saving, but there was a limit on investment, and each ISA could amount to only a few thousand pounds per year. They would help, but alone they were not the solution.

I wondered if the training business itself had any value. It would have if my mother was still the trainer, but I doubted that anyone buying the stables would pay much for the business. I had spent my childhood, at my mother's knee, being amazed how contrary racehorse owners could be.

Some of them behaved just like the owners of football clubs, firing the team manager because their team of no-hopers wasn't winning, when the solution would have been to buy better, and more expensive, players in the first place. A cheap, slow horse is just like a cheap two-left-footed footballer-neither will be any good, however well they're trained.

There is no telling if the owners would stay or take their horses elsewhere. The latter would be the more likely, unless the person who took over the training was of the same standing as Josephine Kauri, and who could that be who didn't already have a stable full of their own charges?

I had to assume that the business had no intrinsic value other than the real estate in which it operated, plus a bit extra for the tack and the rest of the stable kit.

I lay on my bed and did some mental adding up: The house and stables might raise half a million, the business might just fetch fifty thousand, and there was another fifty thousand in the bank. Add the ISAs and a few pieces of antique furniture and we were probably still short by more than four hundred thousand.

And my mother and Derek had to live somewhere. Where would they go and what could they earn if Kauri House Stables was sold? My mother was hardly going to find work as a cleaner, especially in Lambourn. She would have rather gone to prison.

But going to prison wasn't an either/or solution anyway. If she was sent down she would still have to pay the tax, and the penalties.

Over the years I had saved regularly from my army pay and had accumulated quite a reasonable nest egg that I had planned to use sometime as a down payment on a house. And I had invested it in a far more secure manner than my parent, so I could be pretty sure of still having about sixty thousand pounds to my name.

I wondered if the Revenue would take installments on the never-never.

The only other solution I came up with was to approach the circumstances as if I had been in command of my platoon in the middle of Afghanistan planning a combat estimate for an operation against the Taliban. PROBLEM: enemy in control of objective (tax papers and money) MISSION: neutralize enemy and retake objective SITUATION: enemy forces-number, identity and location all unknown friendly forces-self only, no reinforcements available WEAPONS: as required and/or as available EXECUTION: Initially find and interrogate Roderick Ward or, if in fact really dead, his known associates. Follow up on blackmail notes and telephone messages to determine source. TACTICS: absolute stealth, no local authorities to be alerted, enemy to be kept unaware of operation until final strike TIMINGS: task to be completed asap, and before exposure by local authorities-their timescale unknown H HOUR: operation start time: right now

All I could see of him were his eyes, his cold, black eyes that stared at me from beneath his turban. He showed no emotion but simply raised a rusty Kalashnikov to his shoulder.

I fired at him, but he continued to lift the gun. I fired at him again, over and over, but without any visible effects. I was desperate. I emptied my complete magazine into him, but still he swung the barrel of the AK-47 around towards me, lining up the sights with my head. A smile showed in his eyes, and I began to scream.

I woke with a start, my heart pumping madly and with sweat all over my body.

"Thomas! Thomas!" someone was shouting, and there was banging on my bedroom door.

"Yes," I called back into the darkness. "I'm fine."

"You were screaming." It was my mother. She was outside my room on the landing.

"I'm sorry," I said. "It was just a bad dream."

"Good night, then," she called suddenly, and I could hear her footfalls as she moved away.

"Good night," I called back, too quietly and too late.

I suppose it was too much to expect my mother to change the habits of a lifetime, but it would have been nice if she had asked me how I was, or if I needed anything, or at least if she could come into my room to cool my sweating brow, or anything.

I laid my head back onto the pillow.

I could still remember the dream so clearly. In the last couple of months, I had started to have them fairly regularly about the war. They were always a jumble of memories of real incidents coupled with the imagination of my subconscious brain, unalike insofar as they were of different events but all with a common thread-they all ended with me in panic and utter terror. I was always more terrified by the dreams than I remember ever having been in reality.