Felix Francis - Dick Francis's Gamble

“Do you recognize any of the initials on the lists?” I asked Sherri.

“Is that what they are?” she said.

“I don’t know but they look like it.”

She shook her head.

“Did you know that Herb liked to gamble?” I asked.

She looked up at me. “Of course,” she said. “Don’t all men? Herb had always been one for an occasional flutter on the horses. Just like his father had been. It must be in the genes.”

“Did you know how much he gambled?” I asked.

“Never very much,” she said. “He may have liked the odd bet, but I know he believed that gambling had ruined our childhood. He would never have staked more than he could afford to lose. I’m absolutely sure of that.”

“And how much could he afford to lose?” I asked.

“What are you getting at?” Sherri said.

“Herb gambled a lot on the Internet,” I said. “A huge amount.”

She was shocked. “Are you sure?”

I nodded. “He must have spent hours every day gambling on Internet betting sites and playing at the virtual poker tables in the online casinos. And he lost. He lost big-time.”

“I don’t believe it,” Sherri said. “How do you know?”

I held out the photocopies of the credit card statements to her. “Herb lost more than ninety thousand pounds last month alone. And the same the month before.”

“He can’t have done,” she said with a nervous laugh. “Herb didn’t have that sort of money.”

“Look for yourself,” I said, handing her the statements.

She looked at them for a moment, but I could see she was crying again.

“Do you think that’s why he was killed?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. But I thought it quite likely.

She cried some more.

“I wish he’d never come to England,” Sherri said sadly. “Herb wouldn’t have been able to gamble like that at home. Internet gambling is illegal in most of the United States.”

So it was.

I remembered reading about the head of an Internet gambling website who’d been arrested when he’d arrived at a U.S. airport and charged with racketeering simply for allowing Americans to gamble on his website even though it was based in England. It had all been about accepting credit card accounts with a United States address.

I looked again at the handwritten lists of dates, amounts of money and initials. And I pulled from my pocket the MoneyHome payment slips I had found in Herb’s office cubicle.

Only last week, according to the torn-up payment slips I’d found in his wastebasket, Herb had received three large amounts of cash, two equivalent to five thousand dollars and one for eight thousand.

Suddenly, all of it made complete sense to me.

It hadn’t been Herb who had lost ninety thousand pounds last month, it had been the people whose initials were to be found on Herb’s lists, the ninety-seven people who were responsible for the five hundred and twelve different entries on the credit card accounts. And I’d like to bet they were all Americans.

If I was right, Herb had been running a system to provide ninety-seven Americans with a UK-based credit card account in order for them to gamble and play on Internet betting and casino sites.

But why would that have got him murdered?

To say my arrival at the offices of Lyall & Black about an hour after lunch caused a bit of a stir would be an understatement.

“Get out of these offices,” Gregory shouted at me almost as soon as I walked through the door on the fourth floor into the reception area, and he wasn’t finished then. “You are a disgrace to your profession and to this firm. I will not have you here contaminating the other staff.”

I had made the mistake of not sneaking in while he was at lunch.

Mrs. McDowd looked positively frightened by the outburst. I probably did as well.

“Gregory,” I tried to say, but he advanced towards me, bunching his fists. Surely, I thought, he’s not going to hit me. He didn’t, but he grabbed me by the sleeve of my suit and dragged me towards the door.

He was surprisingly strong and fit for someone whose only workout was the walk to and from the restaurant on the corner.

“Leave me alone,” I shouted at him. But he took no notice.

“Gregory. Stop it!” Patrick’s deep voice reverberated around the reception area.

Gregory stopped pulling and let go of my sleeve.

“I will not have this man in these offices,” Gregory said. “He has brought the firm of Lyall and Black into disrepute.”

Patrick looked at the reception desk, and at Mrs. McDowd and Mrs. Johnson, who were sitting behind it.

“Let us discuss this in your office,” Patrick said calmly. “Nicholas, will you please wait here.”

“Outside the door,” Gregory said, pointing towards the lifts and not moving an inch towards his office.

I stood there, looking back and forth between them. Everyone in the firm knew of Gregory’s temper, it was legendary, but I had rarely seen it laid bare and so raw, and at such close quarters.

“I will go out for a coffee,” I said. “I’ll be back in twenty minutes.”

“Best to go home,” Patrick said. “I’ll call you later.”

Gregory turned towards Patrick. “I told you that we should never have taken him on in the first place.”

“In your office, please, Gregory!” Patrick said, almost shouting. He had a pretty good temper in him too, although it was usually slow to rise.

I waited while Gregory reluctantly moved off down the corridor with Patrick. I would have adored being a fly on the wall during their discussion.

“You had better go,” said Mrs. McDowd firmly. “I don’t want you upsetting Mr. Gregory anymore. His heart can’t take it.”

I looked at her. Mrs. McDowd, who saw it as her business to know everything about everyone in the firm. She probably knew Gregory’s blood pressure, and his heart surgeon.

“Tell me, Mrs. McDowd, do you think Herb gambled much?”

“You mean on the stock market?” she asked.

“On the horses.”

“Oh no,” she said. “Mr. Herb didn’t like betting on the horses. Too risky, he said. So much better to bet on a certainty, that’s what he always told me.”

Death was a certainty.

Benjamin Franklin had said so-death, and taxes.

Idid go home, but not immediately.

Before I left Hendon I had looked up the locations of MoneyHome agents near to Lombard Street. I was amazed at how many there were, at least thirty within a one-mile radius of my office, the nearest being just around the corner in King William Street.

“This didn’t come from here,” said the lady sitting behind the glass partition. “It hasn’t got our stamp on it.”

I had somehow expected the MoneyHome agency to be like a bank, or a money exchange, but this one was right at the back of a convenience store.

“Can you tell me where it did come from?” I asked the lady.

“Don’t you know?” she asked.

“No,” I said with declining patience. “I wouldn’t have asked if I knew.”

She looked at me through the glass, then down at the payment slip. I had brought with me one of those I had found in Herb’s desk rather than the torn-up squares, which were still at Herb’s flat anyway.

“Sorry,” she said. “I don’t recognize the stamp. But I know it’s not ours.”

“Can you tell who sent the money?” I asked.

“No,” she said.

“What do you need to produce in the way of identification to collect money from a MoneyHome transfer?”

“The recipient’s name and the MTCN.”

“What’s that?”

“There,” she said, pointing at the payment slip. “It’s the Money Transfer Control Number.”