Dick Francis: Odds against

‘There aren’t,’ I said. ‘I checked that.’

‘How about the last column, the small one on the right?’

‘The banks?’

‘The banks.’

‘What about them?’ I said.

‘How many different ones are there?’

I looked down the long list, counting. ‘Five. Barclays, Piccadilly. Westminster, Birmingham. British Linen Bank, Glasgow. Lloyds, Doncaster. National Provincial, Liverpool.’

‘Five bank accounts, in five different towns. Perfectly respectable. A very sensible arrangement in many ways. He can move round the country and always have easy access to his money. I myself have accounts in three different banks: it avoids muddling my clients’ affairs with my own.’

‘I know all that. I didn’t see any significance in his having several accounts. I still don’t.’

‘Hm,’ said Noel. ‘I think it’s very likely that he has been evading income tax.’

‘Is that all?’ I said disgustedly.

Noel looked at me in amusement, pursing his lips. ‘You don’t understand in the least, I see.’

‘Well, for heaven’s sake, you wouldn’t expect a man like Kraye to pay up every penny he was liable for like a good little citzen.’

‘You wouldn’t,’ agreed Noel, grinning broadly.

‘I’ll agree he might be worried. After all, they sent Al Capone to jug in the end for tax evasion. But over here, what’s the maximum sentence?’

‘He’d only get a year, at the most,’ he said, ‘but…’

‘And he would have been sure to get off with a fine. Which he won’t do now, after attacking me. Even so, for that he’ll only get three or four years, I should think, and less for the malicious damage. He’ll be out and operating again far too soon. Bolt, I suppose, will be struck off, or whatever it is with stockbrokers.’

‘Stop talking,’ he said, ‘and listen. While it’s quite normal to have more than one bank account, an Inspector of Taxes, having agreed your tax liability, may ask you to sign a document stating that you have disclosed to him all your bank accounts. If you fail to mention one or two, it constitutes a fraud, and if you are discovered you can then be prosecuted. So, suppose Kraye has signed such a document, omitting one or two or even three of the five accounts? And then he finds a photograph in existence of his most private papers, listing all five accounts as undeniably his?’

‘But no one would have noticed,’ I protested.

‘Quite. Probably not. But to him it must have seemed glaringly dangerous. Guilty people constantly fear their guilt will be visible to others. They’re vibratingly sensitive to anything which can give them away. I see quite a lot of it in my job.’

‘Even so… bombs are pretty drastic.’

‘It would entirely depend on the sum involved,’ he said primly.

‘Huh?’

‘The maximum fine for income tax evasion is twice the tax you didn’t pay. If for example you amassed ten thousand pounds but declared only two, you could be fined a sum equal to twice the tax on eight thousand pounds. With surtax and so on, you might be left with almost nothing. A nasty set-back.’

‘To put it mildly,’ I said in awe.

‘I wonder,’ Noel said thoughtfully, putting the tips of his fingers together, ‘just how much undeclared loot Kraye has got stacked away in his five bank accounts?’

‘It must be a lot,’ I said, ‘for bombs.’

‘Quite so.’

There was a long silence. Finally I said, ‘One isn’t required either legally or morally to report people to the Inland Revenue.’

He shook his head.

‘But we could make a note of those five banks, just in case?’

‘If you like,’ he agreed.

‘Then I think I might let Kraye have the negatives and the new sets of prints,’ I said. ‘Without telling him I know why he wants them.’

Noel looked at me enquiringly, but didn’t speak.

I grinned faintly. ‘On condition that he makes a free, complete and outright gift to Seabury Racecourse Company of his twenty-three per cent holding.’