Felix Francis - Dick Francis's Gamble

“And that’s all you need to collect the money,” I said. “No passport or driver’s license?”

“Not unless it’s been specially requested by the sender,” she said. “Sometimes there’s a question I have to ask, and then you’d have to give the right answer. It’s a bit like spies and such.” She smiled.

“So in fact,” I said, “you have no way of knowing who has sent the money or who has collected it?”

“The recipient’s name is on the slip.”

The recipient’s name on the slip I had shown her was Butch Cassidy. The names on the others I had were Billy Kid, Wyatt Earp, Jessie James and Bill Cody.

“That isn’t his real name,” I said.

“No,” she said, looking. “I suppose not. But it’s their money. As long as they’ve paid us our fee, it’s not our business who they really are.”

“Does the amount make any difference?” I asked.

“MoneyHome’s head office doesn’t allow us to accept transfers of more than the equivalent of ten thousand U.S. dollars, as that breaks the money-laundering rules. Other than that, the amount doesn’t matter, although we here have a payout limit of four thousand pounds without prior notice. You know, so we can get in the cash.”

“Are your transfers always in cash?” I asked.

“Yeah, of course,” she said. “That’s what we do. Cash transfers. Lots of the immigrant workers round here send cash home to their wives. Poles mostly. And we do a special deal on transfers to Poland, up to a thousand pounds for just twenty quid.”

Overall, it wasn’t very helpful. Herb had clearly set up a system that would be difficult, if not impossible, to unravel. From what I could tell from the lists and the MoneyHome payment slips, it was clear that he’d received large sums of cash from multiple sources, money he must have then used to pay the monthly balances on the twenty-two credit cards.

Herb had collected eighteen thousand dollars’ worth of pounds only the previous week, five thousand of it just the day before his death. Some of that cash must still be hidden somewhere.

My problem was that, while I had the statements showing the ninety-four thousand pounds outstanding, and, as his executor and beneficiary I was liable for the debt, I hadn’t yet found the stash of readies to pay it.

Claudia wasn’t at home when I arrived back at three-thirty. I tried her mobile, but it went straight to voice mail.

I wandered around the house, wondering what had gone wrong with our relationship.

I didn’t really understand it. The sex that morning had been as good as ever, but Claudia had been uncharacteristically quiet during and afterwards, as if her mind had been elsewhere.

I asked myself what I really wanted. Did I want to continue or was it time to draw a line and move on? Did I love her enough? How much would I miss her if she left?

Claudia and I had been together now for almost six years. I was twenty-nine, and she was three years my junior. Apart from my real concern about her weird paintings, I found the setup comfortable and fulfilling. And I was happy as things were.

Was that the problem? Did Claudia want something more from our relationship than I did? Did she perhaps now want that ring on her finger? Or maybe she had changed her view about children? But, then, surely she would have told me. I would have been delighted.

So, I concluded, it had to be me that was the problem. Claudia must have tired of me, and perhaps there was someone else already lined up to take my place. It was the only conclusion that made any sense.

I tried her mobile again, but, as before, it went straight to voice mail.

The house suddenly felt very empty, and I realized that I was lonely without Claudia here. I wandered around, looking at familiar things as if it were the first time I had seen them.

I went up to Claudia’s studio and looked at the painting she was working on, and also at two or three others leaned against the wall, waiting for the paint to dry and harden.

As always, they were dark and, to my eye, somewhat disturbed. One of them was full of bizarre flying monsters with birdlike bodies and human heads, each head with a huge open mouth full of fearsome-looking pointed teeth.

I shuddered and covered the image with another painting, this one of several identical and very beautiful women all dressed in blue ball gowns. A pretty enough sight, one might think, except these women had feet that were in fact eagle claws ripping apart the naked body of the man on whom they were standing.

Was the man meant to be me? And were the women all representations of Claudia herself? Was this how our relationship would end, with Claudia ripping me apart? I doubted it would happen quite so literally as in the picture, but emotionally she had me halfway to the funny farm already.

Once again I asked myself how such a sweet girl could paint such strange images. And I was sure they had become more bizarre and much more violent in recent months. Was there a whole side to Claudia’s character that I remained totally unaware of? But, on the whole, I believed that it was better for her to find an outlet for such strange thoughts than to keep them bottled up inside her head, with the pressure ever building towards explosive levels.

The house phone rang, and I went through to our bedroom to answer it, hoping it would be Claudia.

It wasn’t. It was Patrick.

“I’m sorry for Gregory’s outburst earlier,” he said. “He and I had a discussion, and he’s now calmed down a lot. He was just upset by what had been written in the papers.”

Not as upset as me, I thought.

“So can I come back into the office?” I asked.

“Not today,” he said rather too quickly. “Maybe on Monday, or later next week. Let the dust settle for a few days.”

“I’ll work from home, then,” I said, “using the remote-access facility.”

“Right,” Patrick said slowly. “But I agreed with Gregory that you would not be representing the firm for the immediate future.”

“And how long, exactly, is the immediate future?” I asked.

“Until he and I agree,” he said.

“Are you telling me I’m fired?”

“No, of course not,” he said. “Just that it might be better for you to take some paid holiday until the police sort out who really did try to murder Billy Searle.”

“What if they never do?” I asked.

“Let’s hope that is not the case,” he said. “I’ll call you next week. In the meantime I must ask you not to use the remote-access facility and not to contact anyone at the firm.”

Patrick disconnected without saying good-bye, no doubt pleased to have got through the conversation without me shouting at him.

I felt like shouting at someone. Everything that had been fine just a week ago was suddenly going down the tubes. I sat down on the edge of the bed, feeling more miserable than I had since the day I had been told I couldn’t ride again.

I decided that feeling sorry for myself wasn’t going to achieve anything, so I went downstairs and sat down at the kitchen table with my laptop computer.

I spent a fairly unproductive half hour looking at the six e-mails that I had forwarded to my in-box from Gregory’s, concerning the Bulgarian property development.

They were all from the same man, Uri Joram, and the first two were about the grants available to disadvantaged parts of the European Union for industrial developments that would assist in the regeneration of sites previously occupied by state-subsidized factories. Many such factories had quickly gone bust when the communist regime had collapsed and free-market competition had arrived in its place.

As far as I could make out from Mr. Joram’s rather poor grasp of written English, the EU money would only be forthcoming if there was some private investment in the project on the basis that two euros would be granted for each euro invested privately. Jolyon Roberts had told me that his family trust had invested five million pounds, so that alone could have attracted a further ten million from the European tax coffers.