Dick Francis - Odds against

‘Yeah.’ He grinned. ‘Kraye was legally married to Doria Dawn, née Easterman, two years ago. Before that he had two other wives. One killed herself; the other divorced him for cruelty.’ He pointed to the names and dates.

‘So clear,’ I agreed. ‘When you know how.’

‘If you weren’t so impatient you’d have a legible typed report. But as you’re here…’ He went on down the page, pointing. ‘Geologists think him a bit eccentric… quartz has no intrinsic value, most of it’s much too common, except for the gem stones, but Kraye goes round trying to buy chunks of it if they take his fancy. They know him quite well along the road at the Geology Museum. But not a breath of any dirty work. Clubs… he belongs to these three, not over-liked, but most members think he’s a brilliant fellow, talks very well. He gambles at Crockfords, ends up about all square over the months. He travels, always first-class, usually by boat, not air. No job or profession, can’t trace him on any professional or university lists. Thought to live on investments, playing the stock market, etc. Not much liked, but considered by most a clever, cultured man, by one or two a hypocritical gasbag.’

‘No talk of him being crooked in any way?’

‘Not a word. You want him dug deeper?’

‘If you can do it without him finding out.’

George nodded. ‘Do you want him tailed?’

‘No, I don’t think so. Not at present.’ A twenty-four-hour tail was heavy on man-power and expensive to the client, quite apart from the risk of the quarry noticing and being warned of the hunt. ‘Anything on his early life?’ I asked.

George shook his head. ‘Nothing. Nobody who knows him now has known him longer than about ten years. He either wasn’t born in Britain, or his name at birth wasn’t Kraye. No known relatives.’

‘You’ve done marvels, George. All this in one day.’

‘Contacts, chum, contacts. A lot of phoning, a bit of pubbing, a touch of gossip with the local tradesmen… nothing to it.’

Jack, moodily poking his fingers through the cobweb remains of his jersey, looked at me over the half-moon specs and said that there wasn’t a prelim on Bolt yet because ex-sergeant Carter, who was working on it, hadn’t phoned in.

‘If he does,’ I said, ‘let me know? I’ve an appointment with Bolt at three thirty. It would be handy to know the set-up before I go.’

‘O.K.’

After that I went down and looked out of the windows of the Racing Section for half an hour, idly watching life go by in the Cromwell Road and wondering just what sort of mess I was making of the Kraye investigation. A novice chaser in the Grand National, I thought wryly; that was me. Though, come to think of it, I had once ridden a novice in the National, and got round, too. Slightly cheered, I took Dolly out to a drink and a sandwich in the snack bar at the Air Terminal, where we sat and envied the people starting off on their travels. So much expectation in the faces, as if they could fly away and leave their troubles on the ground. An illusion, I thought sourly. Your troubles flew with you; a drag in the mind… a deformity in the pocket.

I laughed and joked with Dolly, as usual. What else can you do?

The firm of Charing, Street and King occupied two rooms in a large block of offices belonging to a bigger firm, and consisted entirely of Bolt, his clerk and a secretary.

I was shown the door of the secretary’s office, and went into a dull, tidy, fog-coloured box of a room with cold fluorescent lighting and a close-up view of the fire-escape through the grimy window. A woman sat at a desk by the right hand wall, facing the window, with her back towards me. A yard behind her chair was a door with ELLIS BOLT painted on a frosted glass panel. It occurred to me that she was most awkwardly placed in the room, but that perhaps she liked sitting in a potential draught and having to turn round every time someone came in.

She didn’t turn round, however. She merely moved her head round a fraction towards me and said ‘Yes?’

‘I have an appointment with Mr Bolt,’ I said. ‘At three thirty.’

‘Oh, yes, you must be Mr Halley. Do sit down. I’ll see if Mr Bolt is free now.’

She pointed to an easy chair a step ahead of me, and flipped a switch on her desk. While I listened to her telling Mr Bolt I was there, in the quiet voice I had heard on the telephone, I had time to see she was in her late thirties, slender, upright in her chair, with a smooth wing of straight, dark hair falling down beside her cheek. If anything, it was too young a hair style for her. There were no rings on her fingers, and no nail varnish either. Her clothes were dark and uninteresting. It seemed as though she were making a deliberate attempt to be unattractive, yet her profile, when she half turned and told me Mr Bolt would see me, was pleasant enough. I had a glimpse of one brown eye quickly cast down, the beginning of a smile on pale lips, and she presented me again squarely with the back of her head.

Puzzled, I opened Ellis Bolt’s door and walked in. The inner office wasn’t much more inspiring than the outer; it was larger and there was a new green square of carpet on the linoleum, but the greyish walls pervaded, along with the tidy dullness. Through the two windows was a more distant view of the fire-escape of the building across the alley. If a drab conventional setting equalled respectability, Bolt was an honest stockbroker; and Carter, who had phoned in just before I left, had found nothing to suggest otherwise.

Bolt was on his feet behind his desk, hand outstretched. I shook it, he gestured me to a chair with arms, and offered me a cigarette.

‘No, thank you, I don’t smoke.’

‘Lucky man,’ he said benignly, tapping ash off one he was half through, and settling his pin-striped bulk back into his chair.

His face was rounded at every point, large round nose, round cheeks, round heavy chin: no planes, no impression of bone structure underneath. He had exceptionally heavy eyebrows, a full mobile mouth, and a smug self-satisfied expression.

‘Now, Mr Halley, I believe in coming straight to the point. What can I do for you?’

He had a mellifluous voice, and he spoke as if he enjoyed the sound of it.

I said, ‘An aunt has given me some money now rather than leave it to me in her will, and I want to invest it.’

‘I see. And what made you come to me? Did someone recommend…?’ He tailed off, watching me with eyes that told me he was no fool.

‘I’m afraid…’ I hesitated, smiling apologetically to take the offence out of the words, ‘that I literally picked you with a pin. I don’t know any stockbrokers. I didn’t know how to get to know one, so I picked up a classified directory and stuck a pin into the list of names, and it was yours.’

‘Ah,’ he said paternally, observing the bad fit of Chico’s second best suit, which I had borrowed for the occasion, and listening to me reverting to the accent of my childhood.

‘Can you help me?’ I asked.

‘I expect so, I expect so. How much is this er, gift?’ His voice was minutely patronising, his manner infinitesimally bored. His time, he suspected, was being wasted.

‘Fifteen hundred pounds.’

He brightened a very little. ‘Oh, yes, definitely, we can do something with that. Now, do you want growth mainly or a high rate of yield?’

I looked vague. He told me quite fairly the difference between the two, and offered no advice.

‘Growth, then,’ I said, tentatively. ‘Turn it into a fortune in time for my old age.’

He smiled without much mirth, and drew a sheet of paper towards him.

‘Could I have your full name?’

‘John Halley… John Sidney Halley,’ I said truthfully. He wrote it down.