Odds Against Read online

  The doctors agreed to enquire from St Thomas’s how soon I could go there.

  On Wednesday morning I rang up my accountant and asked when he had a free day. Owing to an unexpected cancellation of plans, he said, he would be free on Friday. I explained where I was and roughly what had happened. He said that he would come to see me, he didn’t mind the journey, a breath of sea air would do him good.

  As I put the telephone down my door opened and Lord Hagbourne and Mr Fotherton came tentatively through it. I was sitting on the edge of the bed in a dark blue dressing-gown, my feet in slippers, my arm in a cradle inside a sling, chin freshly shaved, hair brushed, and the marks of Kraye’s fists fading from my face. My visitors were clearly relieved at these encouraging signs of revival, and relaxed comfortably into the arm-chairs.

  ‘You’re getting on well, then, Sid?’ said Lord Hagbourne.

  ‘Yes, thank you.’

  ‘Good, good.’

  ‘How did the meeting go?’ I asked. ‘On Saturday?’

  Both of them seemed faintly surprised at the question.

  ‘Well, you did hold it, didn’t you?’ I said anxiously.

  ‘Why yes,’ said Fotherton. ‘We did. There was a moderately good gate, thanks to the fine weather.’ He was a thin, dry man with a long face moulded into drooping lines of melancholy, and on that morning he kept smoothing three fingers down his cheek as if he were nervous.

  Lord Hagbourne said, ‘It wasn’t only your security men who were drugged. The stable lads all woke up feeling muzzy, and the old man who was supposed to look after the boiler was asleep on the floor in the canteen. Oxon had given them all a glass of beer. Naturally, your men trusted him.’

  I sighed. One couldn’t blame them too much. I might have drunk with him myself.

  ‘We had the inspector in yesterday to go over the boiler thoroughly,’ said Lord Hagbourne. ‘It was nearly due for its regular check anyway. They said it was too old to stand much interference with its normal working, and that it was just as well it hadn’t been put to the test. Also that they thought that it wouldn’t have taken as long as three hours to blow up. Oxon was only guessing.’

  ‘Charming,’ I said.

  ‘I sounded out Seabury Council,’ said Lord Hagbourne. ‘They’re putting the racecourse down on their agenda for next month. Apparently a friend of yours, the manager of the Seafront Hotel, has started a petition in the town urging the council to take an interest in the racecourse on the grounds that it gives a seaside town prestige and free advertising and is good for trade.’

  ‘That’s wonderful,’ I said, very pleased.

  Fotherton cleared his throat, looked hesitantly at Lord Hagbourne, and then at me.

  ‘It has been discussed…’ he began. ‘It has been decided to ask you if you… er… would be interested in taking on… in becoming Clerk of the Course at Seabury.’

  ‘Me?’ I exclaimed, my mouth falling open in astonishment.

  ‘It’s getting too much for me, being Clerk of two courses,’ he said, admitting it a year too late.

  ‘You saved the place on the brink of the grave,’ said Lord Hagbourne with rare decisiveness. ‘We all know it’s an unusual step to offer a Clerkship to a professional jockey so soon after he’s retired, but Seabury executive are unanimous. They want you to finish the job.’

  They were doing me an exceptional honour. I thanked them, and hesitated, and asked if I could think it over.

  ‘Of course, think it over,’ said Lord Hagbourne. ‘But say yes.’

  I asked them then to have a look at the box of photographs, which they did. They both scrutinised each print carefully, one by one, but they could suggest nothing at the end.

  Zanna Martin came to see me the next afternoon, carrying some enormous, sweet-smelling bronze chrysanthemums. A transformed Zanna Martin, in a smart dark green tweed suit and shoes chosen for looks more than sturdy walking. Her hair had been re-styled so that it was shorter and curved in a bouncy curl on to her cheek. She had even tried a little lipstick and powder, and had tidied her eyebrows into a shapely line. The scars were just as visible, the facial muscles as wasted as ever, but Miss Martin had come to terms with them at last.

  ‘How super you look,’ I said truthfully.

  She was embarrassed, but very pleased. ‘I’ve got a new job. I had an interview yesterday, and they didn’t even seem to notice my face. Or at least they didn’t say anything. In a bigger office, this time. A good bit more than I’ve earned before, too.’

  ‘How splendid,’ I congratulated her sincerely.

  ‘I feel new,’ she said.

  ‘I too.’

  ‘I’m glad we met.’ She smiled, saying it lightly. ‘Did you get that file back all right? Your young Mr Barnes came to fetch it.’

  ‘Yes, thank you.’

  ‘Was it important?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘He seemed very odd when I gave it to him. I thought he was going to tell me something about it. He kept starting to, and then he didn’t.’

  I would have words with Chico, I thought.

  ‘It was only an ordinary file,’ I said. ‘Nothing to tell.’

  On the off-chance, I got her to look at the photographs. Apart from commenting on the many examples of her own typing, and expressing surprise that anybody should have bothered to photograph such ordinary papers, she had nothing to say.

  She rose to go, pulling on her gloves. She still automatically leaned forward slightly, so that the curl swung down over her cheek.

  ‘Good-bye, Mr Halley. And thank you for changing everything for me. I’ll never forget how much I owe you.’

  ‘We didn’t have that lunch,’ I said.

  ‘No.’ She smiled, not needing me any more. ‘Never mind. Some other time.’ She shook hands. ‘Good-bye.’

  She went serenely out of the door.

  ‘Good-bye, Miss Martin,’ I said to the empty room. ‘Good-bye, good-bye, good-bye.’ I sighed sardonically at myself, and went to sleep.

  Noel Wayne came loaded on Friday morning with a bulging brief-case of papers. He had been my accountant ever since I began earning big money at eighteen, and he probably knew more about me than anyone else on earth. Nearly sixty, bald except for a grey fringe over the ears, he was a small, round man with alert black eyes and a slow-moving mills-of-God mind. It was his advice more than my knowledge which had turned my earnings into a modest fortune via the stock markets, and I seldom did anything of any importance financially without consulting him first.

  ‘What’s up?’ he said, coming straight to the point as soon as he had taken off his overcoat and scarf.

  I walked over to the window and looked out. The weather had broken. It was drizzling, and a fine mist lay over the distant sea.

  ‘I’ve been offered a job,’ I said, ‘Clerk of the Course at Seabury.’

  ‘No!’ he said, as astonished as I had been. ‘Are you going to accept?’

  ‘It’s tempting,’ I said. ‘And safe.’

  He chuckled behind me. ‘Good. So you’ll take it.’

  ‘A week ago I definitely decided not to do any more detecting.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘So I want to know what you think about me buying a partnership in Radnor’s agency.’

  He choked.

  ‘I didn’t think you even liked the place.’

  ‘That was a month ago. I’ve changed since then. And I won’t be changing back. The agency is what I want.’

  ‘But has Radnor offered a partnership?’

  ‘No. I think he might have done eventually, but not since someone let a bomb off in the office. He’s hardly likely to ask me to buy a half share of the ruins. And he blames himself for this.’ I pointed to the sling.

  ‘With reason?’

  ‘No,’ I said rather gloomily. ‘I took a risk which didn’t come off.’

  ‘Which was?’

  ‘Well, if you need it spelled out, that Kraye would only hit hard enough to hurt, not to damage beyond repair.
’

  ‘I see.’ He said it calmly, but he looked horrified. ‘And do you intend to take similar risks in future?’

  ‘Only if necessary.’

  ‘You always said the agency didn’t do much crime work,’ he protested.

  ‘It will from now on, if I have anything to do with it. Crooks make too much misery in the world.’ I thought of the poor Dunstable Brinton. ‘And listen, the house next door is for sale. We could knock the two into one. Radnor’s is bursting at the seams. The agency has expanded a lot even in the two years I’ve been there. There seems more and more demand for his sort of service. Then the head of Bona Fides, that’s one of the departments, is a natural to expand as an employment consultant on the managerial level. He has a gift for it. And insurance – Radnor’s always neglected that. We don’t have an insurance investigation department. I’d like to start one. Suspect insurance claims; you know. There’s a lot of work in that.’

  ‘You’re sure Radnor will agree, if you suggest a partnership?’

  ‘He may kick me out. I’d risk it though. What do you think?’

  ‘I think you’ve gone back to how you used to be,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘Which is good. Nothing but good. But… well, tell me what you really think about that.’ He nodded at my chopped off arm. ‘None of your flippant lies, either. The truth.’

  I looked at him and didn’t answer.

  ‘It’s only a week since it happened,’ he said, ‘and as you still look the colour of a grubby sheet I suppose it’s hardly fair to ask. But I want to know.’

  I swallowed. There were some truths which really couldn’t be told. I said instead. ‘It’s gone. Gone, like a lot of other things I used to have. I’ll live without it.’

  ‘Live, or exist?’

  ‘Oh live, definitely. Live.’ I reached for the booklet Chico had brought, and flicked it at him. ‘Look.’

  He glanced at the cover and I saw the faint shock in his face. He didn’t have Chico’s astringent brutality. He looked up and saw me smiling.

  ‘All right,’ he said soberly. ‘Yes. Invest your money in yourself.’

  ‘In the agency,’ I said.

  ‘That’s what I mean,’ he said. ‘In the agency. In yourself.’

  He said he’d need to see the agency’s books before a definite figure could be reached, but we spent an hour discussing the maximum he thought I should prudently offer Radnor, what return I could hope for in salary and dividends, and what I should best sell to raise the sum once it was agreed.

  When we had finished I trotted out once more the infuriating photographs.

  ‘Look them over, will you?’ I said. ‘I’ve shown them to everyone else without result. These photographs were the direct cause of the bombs in my flat and the office, and of me losing my hand, and I can’t see why. It’s driving me ruddy well mad.’

  ‘The police…’ he suggested.

  ‘The police are only interested in the one photograph of a ten pound note. They looked at the others, said they could see nothing significant, and gave them back to Chico. But Kraye couldn’t have been worried about that bank note, it was ten thousand to one we’d come across it again. No, it’s something else. Something not obviously criminal, something Kraye was prepared to go to any lengths to obliterate immediately. Look at the time factor… Oxon only pinched the photographs just before lunch, down at Seabury. Kraye lived in London. Say Oxon rang him and told him to come and look: Oxon couldn’t leave Seabury, it was a race day. Kraye had to go to Seabury himself. Well, he went down and looked at the photographs and saw… what? What? My flat was being searched by five o’clock.’

  Noel nodded in agreement. ‘Kraye was desperate. Therefore there was something to be desperate about.’ He took the photographs and studied them one by one.

  Half an hour later he looked up and stared blankly out of the window at the wet grey skies. For several minutes he stayed completely still, as if in a state of suspended animation: it was his way of concentrated thinking. Finally he stirred and sighed. He moved his short neck as if it were stiff, and lifted the top photograph off the pile.

  ‘This must be the one,’ he said.

  I nearly snatched it out of his hand.

  ‘But it’s only the summary of the share transfers,’ I said in disappointment. It was the sheet headed S.R., Seabury Racecourse, which listed in summary form all Kraye’s purchases of Seabury shares. The only noticeable factor in what had seemed to me merely a useful at-a-glance view of his total holding, was that it had been typed on a different typewriter, and not by Zanna Martin. This hardly seemed enough reason for Kraye’s hysteria.

  ‘Look at it carefully,’ said Noel. ‘The three left hand columns you can disregard, because I agree they are simply a tabulation of the share transfers, and I can’t see any discrepancies.’

  ‘There aren’t,’ I said. ‘I checked that.’

  ‘How about the last column, the small one on the right?’

  ‘The banks?’

  ‘The banks.’

  ‘What about them?’ I said.

  ‘How many different ones are there?’

  I looked down the long list, counting. ‘Five. Barclays, Piccadilly. Westminster, Birmingham. British Linen Bank, Glasgow. Lloyds, Doncaster. National Provincial, Liverpool.’

  ‘Five bank accounts, in five different towns. Perfectly respectable. A very sensible arrangement in many ways. He can move round the country and always have easy access to his money. I myself have accounts in three different banks: it avoids muddling my clients’ affairs with my own.’

  ‘I know all that. I didn’t see any significance in his having several accounts. I still don’t.’

  ‘Hm,’ said Noel. ‘I think it’s very likely that he has been evading income tax.’

  ‘Is that all?’ I said disgustedly.

  Noel looked at me in amusement, pursing his lips. ‘You don’t understand in the least, I see.’

  ‘Well, for heaven’s sake, you wouldn’t expect a man like Kraye to pay up every penny he was liable for like a good little citzen.’

  ‘You wouldn’t,’ agreed Noel, grinning broadly.

  ‘I’ll agree he might be worried. After all, they sent Al Capone to jug in the end for tax evasion. But over here, what’s the maximum sentence?’

  ‘He’d only get a year, at the most,’ he said, ‘but…’

  ‘And he would have been sure to get off with a fine. Which he won’t do now, after attacking me. Even so, for that he’ll only get three or four years, I should think, and less for the malicious damage. He’ll be out and operating again far too soon. Bolt, I suppose, will be struck off, or whatever it is with stockbrokers.’

  ‘Stop talking,’ he said, ‘and listen. While it’s quite normal to have more than one bank account, an Inspector of Taxes, having agreed your tax liability, may ask you to sign a document stating that you have disclosed to him all your bank accounts. If you fail to mention one or two, it constitutes a fraud, and if you are discovered you can then be prosecuted. So, suppose Kraye has signed such a document, omitting one or two or even three of the five accounts? And then he finds a photograph in existence of his most private papers, listing all five accounts as undeniably his?’

  ‘But no one would have noticed,’ I protested.

  ‘Quite. Probably not. But to him it must have seemed glaringly dangerous. Guilty people constantly fear their guilt will be visible to others. They’re vibratingly sensitive to anything which can give them away. I see quite a lot of it in my job.’

  ‘Even so… bombs are pretty drastic.’

  ‘It would entirely depend on the sum involved,’ he said primly.

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘The maximum fine for income tax evasion is twice the tax you didn’t pay. If for example you amassed ten thousand pounds but declared only two, you could be fined a sum equal to twice the tax on eight thousand pounds. With surtax and so on, you might be left with almost nothing. A nasty set-back.’

  ‘To put it mildly,’ I s
aid in awe.

  ‘I wonder,’ Noel said thoughtfully, putting the tips of his fingers together, ‘just how much undeclared loot Kraye has got stacked away in his five bank accounts?’

  ‘It must be a lot,’ I said, ‘for bombs.’

  ‘Quite so.’

  There was a long silence. Finally I said, ‘One isn’t required either legally or morally to report people to the Inland Revenue.’

  He shook his head.

  ‘But we could make a note of those five banks, just in case?’

  ‘If you like,’ he agreed.

  ‘Then I think I might let Kraye have the negatives and the new sets of prints,’ I said. ‘Without telling him I know why he wants them.’

  Noel looked at me enquiringly, but didn’t speak.

  I grinned faintly. ‘On condition that he makes a free, complete and outright gift to Seabury Racecourse Company of his twenty-three per cent holding.’