Dick Francis's Gamble Read online

  “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.”

  “Maybe that was just a front,” said the detective, writing a note.

  “My, you do have a suspicious mind,” I said.

  “Yes,” he said, looking up. “And it’s surprising how often I’m right.”

  Could he really be right? Could Herb and Jessica have been fooling the rest of us all this time? And could anyone else at the firm also be involved? I told myself not to be so silly. At this rate I would soon be distrustful of my own mother.

  “And do you also think Mr. Kovak was a bit of a maverick?”

  “No,” I said, “not really. He was just a flamboyant American in a business where people have a bit of a reputation for being boring.”

  “And are you boring?” he said, looking up at me.

  “Probably,” I said. I was certainly more boring now than I had been as a jockey. But maybe it was better being boring and alive than flamboyant and dead.

  I returned to the reception area after my interview to join the other fifteen members of the firm squashed into the client waiting area that had been designed for just a small coffee table and two armchairs.

  “What did they ask you?” Jessica said.

  “Not much,” I said, looking at her and trying not to let her see in my face the questions about her that the chief inspector had triggered in my mind. “They just want to know what Herb did here and why I thought anyone would want to kill him.”

  “Surely he wasn’t killed because of his work.” Jessica looked shocked. “I thought it must be to do with his private life.”

  “I don’t think they have the slightest idea why he was killed,” said Patrick Lyall. “That’s why they’re asking about everything.”

  There was a slight commotion outside in the lobby as someone not on the company staff list tried to gain access. He was being barred by our rather overbearing uniformed guard. I could see through the glass door that the would-be visitor was Andrew Mellor, the company solicitor. Lyall & Black was too small to have a full-time company lawyer of its own so we used Andrew, who worked in a legal practice around the corner in King William Street.

  Patrick saw him as well and went over to the door.

  “It’s all right, officer, Mr. Mellor is our lawyer.”

  “But he’s not on my list,” said the uniformed policeman adamantly.

  “It was I who provided that list and I forgot to add Mr. Mellor.”

  Reluctantly the policeman stood aside and allowed the visitor to enter.

  “Sorry, Andrew,” said Patrick. “It’s all a bit of a nightmare here at present.”

  “Yes, so I can see.” Andrew Mellor looked around at the sea of faces. “I’m so sorry to hear about Herb Kovak. Unbelievable business.”

  “And bloody inconvenient too,” interjected Gregory, who had been mostly quiet since his altercation with the chief inspector earlier. “But I’m glad you’re here.” I wondered if Gregory had asked Andrew to come around to be present during his interview. “We’ll have to talk outside.” Gregory began to ease himself up from one of the armchairs.

  “Actually, Gregory,” said the lawyer, putting up a hand to stop him, “it’s not you I have come to see. I need to talk to Nicholas.” Fifteen pairs of eyes swiveled around in my direction. “Do you mind?” he sai
d to me, holding out his arm towards the door.

  I could almost feel the stares on my back as I went outside into the lobby with Andrew. We went past the lifts and around a corner so that the prying eyes in Lyall & Black could no longer see us through the glass door and the policeman on guard couldn’t hear our conversation.

  “Sorry about this,” he said, “but I have something to give you.”

  He pulled a white envelope out of his jacket inside pocket and held it out to me. I took it.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “Herb Kovak’s Last Will and Testament.”

  I looked up from the envelope to Andrew’s face.

  “But why are you giving it to me?” I asked.

  “Because Herb named you in it as his executor.”

  “Me?” I said, somewhat taken aback.

  “Yes,” Andrew said. “And you are also the sole beneficiary of his estate.”

  I was astonished. “Has he no family?”

  “Obviously none that he wanted to leave anything to.”

  “But why would he leave it to me?” I asked.

  “I’ve no idea,” Andrew said. “Perhaps he liked you.”

  Little did I realize at the time how Herb Kovak’s legacy would turn out to be a poisoned chalice.

  3

  On Tuesday I went to the races—Cheltenham Races, to be precise. But this was no pleasure outing, it was work.

  Racing can be a funny business, especially amongst the jockeys.

  Competition is intense. It always has been. Before the advent in 1960 of the racing patrol films to aid the stewards in catching the wrongdoers, stories abounded of jockeys who would cut off a rival, giving them no room, literally putting a horse and rider through the wings of a fence in order to help their own chances of winning. And riding whips have not always been employed solely to strike the horses but have left their mark on jockeys too. On one famous occasion at Deauville in France, Lester Piggott, having dropped his own whip, took one from one of the other jockeys during the race, to help him ride a tight finish.

  But once the race is run, whatever the result, there exists a camaraderie between these men and women who risk their lives five or six times an afternoon for the entertainment of others. And they look after their own.

  Such it was with me.

  My erstwhile opponents who, during my riding days, would have happily seen me dumped onto the turf if it meant that they could win a race, were the first to express their concern and support when I’d been injured.

  When I had been forced to retire at the ripe old age of twentyone, it had been a handful of my fellow jocks who had arranged a testimonial day for me at Sandown Park to raise the funds needed to pay my university tuition fees. And it had been the same individuals who had clamored to become my first clients when I’d qualified as an IFA.

  Since then I had acquired a bit of a reputation as horse racing’s very own financial adviser. Nearly all my clients had some connection with racing, and I had a near monopoly within the jockeys’ Changing Room that I believed had much to do with a shared view of risk and reward.

  So I now regularly spent a couple of days a week at one racetrack or another, all with Patrick and Gregory’s blessing, making appointments to see my clients before or after, and occasionally during, the racing.

  Cheltenham in April has a touch of “after the Lord Mayor’s Show” about it—rather an anticlimax following the heady excitement of the four Steeplechasing Festival days in March. Gone were the temporary grandstands and the acres of tented hospitality village. Gone too was the nervous energy and high anticipation of seventy thousand expectant spectators waiting to cheer home their new heroes.

  This April meeting may have been a more sedate affair in the enclosures, but it was no less competitive on the track with two of the top jockeys still vying to be crowned as the champion for the current season that concluded at the end of the month. Both were my clients, and I had arranged to meet one of them, Billy Searle, after racing.

  Part of the government’s anti-money-laundering requirements was that financial advisers had to know their clients, and Lyall & Black, as a firm, reckoned that a face-to-face meeting with every client should occur at least annually, in addition to our regular three-monthly written communications and twice-yearly valuations of their investments.

  I had long ago decided that expecting racing folk to come to a meeting in the London offices was a complete waste of time. If I wanted them as clients—and I did—then I would have to come to see them, not vice versa. And I had found that seeing them at their place of work, the racetracks, was easier than chasing them down at home.

  I had also discovered that being regularly seen at the races was the best way to recruit new clients, which was why I was currently standing on the terrace in front of the Weighing Room, warming myself in the midday April sunshine, more than ninety minutes before the first race.

  “Hi, Foxy. Penny for your thoughts? What a lovely day, eh? Did you see the National yesterday?” Martin Gifford was a large, jovial, middle-ranking racehorse trainer who always joked that he had never made it as a jockey due to his large feet. The fact that he stood more than six feet tall and had a waist measurement that a sumo wrestler would have been proud of seemed to have escaped him.

  “No,” I said, “I missed it. I was stuck in the office all day. I just saw the short report on the television news. But I’d been at Aintree on Saturday.”

  “Bloody rum business, that was,” Martin said. “Fancy postponing the Grand National just because some bastard got themselves killed.”

  He had obviously been reading the papers.

  “How do you know he was a bastard?” I asked.

  Martin looked at me strangely. “Because it said so in the paper.”

  “I thought you knew better than to believe what you read in the papers.” I paused, deciding whether to go on. “The person murdered was a friend of mine. I was standing right next to him when he was shot.”

  “Bloody hell!” shouted Martin. “God, I’m sorry. Trust me to jump in with both feet.”

  Trust him, indeed. “It’s OK,” I said. “Forget it.”

  I was suddenly cross with myself for even mentioning it to him. Why hadn’t I just kept quiet? Everyone in racing knew that Martin Gifford was a five-star gossip. In an industry where there were many who believed that there was no such thing as a private conversation or a secret, Martin was the past master. He seemed to have a talent for knowing other people’s private business and passing it on to anyone who would listen. Telling Martin that the murder victim had been a friend of mine was akin to placing a full-page spread in the Racing Post to advertise the fact, except quicker. Everyone at Cheltenham would probably know by the end of the afternoon, and I was already regretting my indiscretion.

  “So was the National a good race?” I asked, trying to change the subject.

  “I suppose so,” he said. “Diplomatic Leak won easily in the end, but he made a right hash of the Canal Turn first time round. Nearly ended up in the canal.”

  “Were there many people there?” I asked.

  “Looked pretty full to me,” he said. “But I watched it on the television.”

  “No runners?” I asked, but I knew he hadn’t any.

  “I haven’t had a National horse for years,” he said. “Not since Frosty Branch in the nineties, and it was the death of him, poor fellow.”

  “Any runners today?” I asked.

  “Fallen Leaf in the first and Yellow Digger in the three-mile chase.”

  “Good luck,” I said.

  “Yeah. We’ll need it,” he said. “Fallen Leaf probably wouldn’t win if he started now, and I don’t rate Yellow Digger very highly at all. He has no chance.” He paused. “So who was this friend of yours who got killed?”

  Dammit, I thought. I’d hoped he would leave it, but I should have known better. Martin Gifford hadn’t earned his reputation for nothing.

  “He was just a work colleague, reall
y,” I said, trying to sound indifferent.

  “What was his name?”

  I wondered if I should I tell him. But why not? It had been in all of yesterday’s papers.

  “Herbert Kovak.”

  “And why was he killed?” Martin demanded.

  “I’ve no idea,” I said. “As I told you, he was only a work colleague.”

  “Come on, Foxy,” Martin said in an inviting tone. “You must have some inkling.”

  “No. None. Nothing.”

  He looked disappointed, like a child told he can’t have any sweets.

  “Go on,” he implored once more. “I know you’re holding something back. You can tell me.”

  And half the world, I thought.

  “Honestly, Martin,” I said. “I have absolutely no idea why he was killed or who did it. And if I did, I’d be telling the police, not you.”

  Martin shrugged his shoulders as if to imply he didn’t fully believe me. Too bad, I thought. It was true.

  I was saved from further inquisition by another trainer, Jan Setter, who was everything that Martin Gifford wasn’t—short, slim, attractive and fun. She grabbed my arm and turned me around, away from Martin.

  “Hello, lover boy,” she whispered in my ear while giving me a kiss on the cheek. “Fancy a dirty weekend away?”

  “I’m ready when you are,” I whispered back. “Just name your hotel.”

  She pulled back and laughed.

  “Oh, you’re such a tease,” she said, looking up at me beguilingly from beneath her heavily mascaraed eyelids.

  But it was she who was the tease, and she’d been doing it since we had first met more than ten years ago. Back then I had been an impressionable eighteen-year-old, just starting out, and she was an established trainer for whom I was riding. I hadn’t really known how to react, whether to be flattered or frightened. Apart from anything else, she’d been a married woman at the time.

  Nowadays, she was a mid- to late-forties divorcée who seemed intent on enjoying life. Not that she didn’t work hard. Her stables in Lambourn were full, with about seventy horses in training, and, as I knew from experience, she ran the place with great efficiency and determination.