Felix Francis: Dick Francis's Gamble

“No,” I replied. But I wouldn’t, the note had been written carefully in capital letters, each one very precise and separate.

“And you have handled this paper?” I assumed it was a rhetorical question as he had clearly seen me remove the paper from my pocket and spread it out. I remained silent.

“Did you not think this might be evidence?” he asked. “Handling it may jeopardize the chances of recovering any forensics.”

“It was screwed up in his coat pocket,” I said in my defense. “I didn’t know what it was until I’d opened it up and by then it was too late.”

He studied it once more.

“And what do you think it means?”

“I’ve no idea,” I said. “But I think it might be a warning.”

“A warning? Why a warning?”

“I’ve spent much of the night thinking about it,” I said. “It’s clearly not a threat or it would say ‘Do as you are told or else’ and not ‘You should have done what you were told.’”

“OK,” the policeman said slowly, “but that doesn’t make it a warning.”

“I know,” I said. “But think about it. If you wanted to kill someone, you’d hardly ring them up and tell them, now would you? It would do nothing except put them on their guard and make it more difficult for you. They might even ask for police protection. There is absolutely nothing to be gained and everything to lose. Surely you would just do it, unannounced.”

“You really have thought about it,” he said.

“Yes,” I said, “a lot. And I was there when Herb was killed. There was no ‘You should have done so and so’ from the killer before he fired. Quite the reverse. He shot so quickly, and without preamble, that I reckon Herb was dead before he even knew what was happening. And that is not in keeping with this note.” I paused. “So I think this might have been a warning from someone else, not from the killer. In fact, I believe that it’s almost more than a warning, it’s an apology.”

The chief inspector looked up at me for a few seconds. “Mr. Foxton,” he said finally. “This isn’t a television drama, you know. In real life people don’t apologize for murdering someone before the event.”

“So you’re saying I’m wrong?”

“No,” he said slowly, “I’m not saying that. But I’m not saying you’re right either. I’ll keep an open mind on the matter.”

It sounded to me very much like he thought I was wrong. He stood up and went to the door, and presently another officer came in and removed the piece of paper, placing it carefully into a plastic bag with some tweezers.

“Now,” said the chief inspector as the door closed. “Do you know of anything in Mr. Kovak’s work that might help me understand why he was killed?”

“Absolutely not,” I said.

“Mr. Lyall told me that you and Mr. Kovak worked closely together.” I nodded. “So what did he do, exactly?”

“The same as me,” I said. “He worked mostly for Patrick Lyall as one of his assistants, but he also had some clients of his own.”

“Sorry,” said the chief inspector, interrupting. “I’m a little confused. Mr. Lyall didn’t mention that Mr. Kovak was his personal assistant.”

“But he wasn’t like a secretary or anything,” I said. “He assisted in the monitoring of the investments of Mr. Lyall’s clients.”

“Hmm,” he said, pausing, and not appearing to be any the wiser. “Could you describe to me exactly what you do here, and also what this firm does?”

“OK,” I said. “I’ll try.”

I took a breath and thought about how best to explain it so that DCI Tomlinson would understand. “Putting it simply, we manage people’s money for them. They are our clients. We advise them where and when they should invest their capital, and then, if they agree, we invest their money for them and then we monitor the performance of the investments, switching them into something else if we believe there is a better return elsewhere.”

“I see,” he said, writing some notes. “And how many clients does the firm have?”

“It’s not quite that simple,” I said. “Even though we are a firm, the advisers are all individuals, and it’s they who have the clients. There are six qualified and registered IFAs here, at least there were before Herb got killed. I suppose there are now five.”

“IFAs?”

“Independent financial advisers.”

He wrote it down.

“Are you one of those?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“And you have clients of your own?”

“Yes,” I said. “I have about fifty clients but I spend about half my time looking after Patrick’s clients.”

“And how many clients does Mr. Lyall have?”

“About six hundred,” I said. “Apart from Herb Kovak and myself, there are two other assistants that help look after them.”

“Are they also IFAs?”

“One is,” I said, “although she’s just recently qualified and has no clients of her own yet. And the other isn’t.” I gave him their names, and he found them on the list of all the firm’s staff.

“How can you be independent if you work for a firm?”

It was a good question and one that I was asked often.

“Independent in this case means we are independent of any investment providers and we are therefore free to advise our clients about all investment opportunities. If you go to see your bank about investing some money, an adviser there will only sell you something from that bank’s investment portfolio even if there are better products elsewhere. They may be excellent financial advisers, but they are not independent.”

“So how do you make your money?” he asked. “I’m sure you don’t do this for free.”

“No,” I agreed. “We make our money in one of two ways, depending on the client. Most of them nowadays opt to pay us a fixed fee, which is a small percentage of the total we invest for them, and others choose that we collect the commissions from investment providers on the products we advise them to buy.”

“I see,” he said, but I wondered if he did. “How much money do you look after in total?”

“Lots,” I said flippantly, but he didn’t laugh. “Some clients have just a few thousand to invest, others have millions. I suppose the firm as a whole looks after hundreds of millions. Most of our clients are high earners or they have considerable family wealth, or both.”

“And these clients trust you with large sums of their money?” He sounded surprised.

“Yes,” I said. “And they trust us because we have masses of safeguards and checks to ensure that none of it goes missing.”

“And do these safeguards and checks work?”

“Absolutely,” I said, trying to sound affronted that he should even question it.

“Could Mr. Kovak have been stealing from his clients?”

“Impossible,” I replied instantly, but I couldn’t help thinking about what Claudia had said the previous afternoon about not knowing if someone was a crook. “Everything we do is subject to spot-check inspections by the financial services regulatory authorities, and we have someone called a Compliance Officer in the firm whose job is to scrutinize the transactions to ensure they are done according to the rules. If Herb had been stealing from his clients the Compliance Officer would have seen it, not to mention the Regulator.”

He looked down at the staff list. “Which is the Compliance Officer?”

“Jessica Winter,” I said. He found her on the list. “She was the woman who asked you earlier if we could go out for a coffee.”

He nodded. “How well did Mr. Kovak know Miss Winter?”

I laughed. “If you’re suggesting that Herb Kovak and Jessica Winter conspired together to steal from his clients, you can forget it. Herb thought that our dear Compliance Officer was an arrogant little prig, and she thought he was a bit of a maverick. Jessica was the only person in the firm who didn’t like Herb.”