Felix Francis - Dick Francis's Gamble

Yes, indeed, we had all better start looking for new positions by another firm’s window. But what chance would we have with a reference from Lyall & Black? Not much.

There were nearly a hundred unanswered e-mails for me on the company server, plus twenty-eight messages on my office voice mail, including quite a few from irate clients with whom I had missed meetings. There were also two from the Slim Fit Gym, reminding me again that they wanted Herb’s locker back.

“Where’s the key?” I asked Rory.

“What key?” he said.

“The key that was pinned to Herb’s bulletin board.”

“Still on it, I expect,” Rory said. “I swapped the whole desk cubicle.”

I went over to one of the empty cubicles and checked. The key was still pinned to the board. I took it off and put it in my pocket.

I sat down again at my desk and started going through the mass of e-mails but without really taking in any of the information contained in them. My heart simply wasn’t in this job anymore.

If and when Claudia beat this cancer, we would do something different, something together.

Something more exciting. But maybe something a little less dangerous.

“I’m going out,” I said to Rory and Diana, as if they cared.

As I walked down the corridor I had to step over some big tied-up polyethylene bags stacked full of files and computers. The Fraud Squad was busily packing up the stuff from Gregory’s office. I was quite surprised they hadn’t thrown us all out of the building to pack up the whole firm. That would come later, no doubt, when they had discovered a little more.

The receptionist at the Slim Fit Gym was really pleased to see me.

“To be honest,” she said in a broad Welsh accent, “it’s beginning to smell a bit, especially today in this warm weather. It’s upsetting some of our other clients. There must be some dreadfully sweaty clothes in there.”

The key from Herb’s desk fitted neatly into the hefty padlock on the locker, and I swung open the door.

The receptionist and I leaned back. It smelled more than a just a bit.

There was a dark blue bag in the locker with a pair of off-white training shoes placed on top, and I think it was the shoes, rather than the clothes inside the bag, that were the culprits as far as the smell was concerned. Perhaps Herb had suffered from some sort of foot-fungal problem that had spread to his shoes and then clearly festered badly there over the last three weeks. But whatever the cause, the smell was pretty rank.

“Sorry about this,” I said. “I’ll get rid of it all.”

I tucked the offending shoes into the bag on top of the clothes and left the receptionist tut-tutting about having to disinfect all the lockers.

I walked back towards Lombard Street and dumped the whole thing, together with all the contents, into a City of London-crested street litter basket. I didn’t think Mrs. McDowd would be very happy if I took that smell back into the office.

I had walked nearly a hundred yards farther on when I suddenly turned around and retraced my steps. I had searched everything else of Herb’s. Why not that blue bag?

Neatly stacked, in a zipped-up compartment beneath the clothes, was over a hundred and eighty thousand pounds wrapped in clear plastic sandwich bags, three thousand in twenty-pound notes in each bag. There was also a list of ninety-seven names and addresses, all of them in America.

Good old Herb. As meticulous as ever.

Mr. Patrick would like to see you,” Mrs. McDowd said to me as I skipped through the door with the bag of loot over my shoulder. “In his office, right now.”

Patrick was not alone. Jessica Winter was also there.

“Ah, Nicholas,” said Patrick. “Come and sit down.” I sat in the spare chair next to the open window. “Jessica and I have been looking at how things stand. We need to implement a damage-control exercise. To maintain the confidence of our clients and to assure them that it’s ‘business as usual’ at Lyall and Black.”

“And is it business as usual?” I asked.

“Of course,” he said. “Why wouldn’t it be?”

I thought that was pretty obvious. Members of the Fraud Squad were still in the room next door, bagging up evidence.

“No,” Patrick went on, “we mustn’t let this little setback disrupt our work. I will write to all of Gregory’s clients, telling them that for the time being I will be looking after their portfolios. It will just mean we all have to work a little harder for a while.”

But for how long, I wondered?

The maximum sentence for conspiracy to murder was life imprisonment.

“So how about the Bulgarian business?” I asked.

“Jessica and I have just been looking at it,” Patrick said. “Or what is left to look at after those damn police have been in here taking stuff away.”

“And?” I asked.

“It’s rather inconclusive,” Jessica said.

“What’s inconclusive?” I asked, somewhat surprised.

“There seems to be no evidence to show if the original investment was obtained by fraudulent means, or whether there was any purposeful deception by anyone in this firm,” Jessica said.

She’s covering her back, I thought.

“But how about the European Union grants?” I said.

“They are not our business,” Patrick said sharply. “Neither Gregory individually nor Lyall and Black as a firm can be held responsible for the actions of people in Brussels, those who may have issued EU grants without due diligence. The only matter that affects this firm is the original Roberts Family Trust investment and then only if we were knowingly negligent in brokering it. As far as we can establish, the investment idea was put forward by the senior trustee of the trust.”

I had to admit, it was a persuasive argument, especially as Viscount Shenington was unlikely to be in any state to refute it. Perhaps I had been a tad premature in writing off the future of Lyall & Black.

But that didn’t explain what had happened to Herb Kovak, and it didn’t explain Shenington’s comment about me being difficult to kill and not turning up where I was expected. The only place I’d been expected had been the offices of Lyall & Black and the only people who had known where I’d been expected had been the firm’s staff. Gregory must have at least discussed the matter of my murder with Shenington. That alone would have been enough to convict him.

“What about the photographs that Gregory showed to Colonel Roberts?” I said. “The ones that purported to prove that the factory and houses had already been built.”

“Gregory told me this morning that he’d been sent those by the developer in Bulgaria and in good faith,” said Patrick. “He’d had no reason to doubt their authenticity.”

“Not until Jolyon Roberts asked about them,” I said. “What did he do then?”

“Gregory told me that Colonel Roberts didn’t exactly say that he questioned whether the photos were accurate or not. In fact, Gregory said that Roberts kept contradicting himself and changing his mind throughout their final telephone conversation and he kept apologizing all the time for wasting Gregory’s time. In the end, Gregory wasn’t quite sure what to think.”

I could believe it. Jolyon Roberts had done exactly the same with me at Cheltenham. I thought it strange that a man who had clearly been so decisive on the battlefield could have been so befuddled and incoherent when it came to accusing a friend of lying and of stealing from him. I suppose it was all about family honor, and not losing face.

“Thank you, Jessica,” Patrick said. “You can be getting back to your office now.”

Jessica stood up and left. I remained where I was.

“Now, Nicholas,” said Patrick when the door was shut, “I have decided to overlook your rather strange behavior over the past three weeks and to wipe the slate clean. Your job is still yours if you want it. To be honest, I don’t know how we would manage at the moment if you weren’t here.”