Dick Francis's Gamble (31 page)

“Could you please call Mr. Roberts again and tell him I'm from the Balscott Lighting Factory and I need to see him now.”

Benjamin Roberts appeared in three minutes flat, with his long dark hair still unbrushed, bags under his eyes and with no socks inside his black leather shoes. He was tall, probably near six-feet-four or -five, and he towered over my just five-foot-eight.

“Mr. Smith?” he asked. I nodded. “Jarvis here tells me you're from the Balscott factory.”

We were still standing in the entrance archway, with students passing us continually in both directions, and with Jarvis, the college porter, hovering nearby.

“Is there anywhere quiet we could go and talk?” I asked.

He turned to the porter. “Thank you, Jarvis, I'll be taking Mr. Smith up to the Dining Hall for a while.”

“All visitors have to be signed in,” Jarvis said rather officiously.

Benjamin Roberts went into the lodge for a moment and then reappeared.

“Bloody rules,” he said. “They treat us like kids.”

We walked along a gravel path down the side of a building and then up some wide steps to the college dining hall, an impressively tall space with three lines of refectory tables and benches running along its full length.

Some catering staff at the far end of the hall were laying up for lunch but Benjamin and I sat down close to the door, across one of the tables from each other.

“Now,” he said, “what's all this about?”

“Benjamin,” I said, starting.

“Ben,” he interrupted.

“Sorry, Ben,” I said, corrected. “I was a friend of your uncle Jolyon.”

He looked down at his hands on the table. “Such a shame,” he said. “Uncle Jolyon was fun. I'll miss him.” He looked up again at me. “But what have you to do with the factory?”

“Your uncle Jolyon told me that you'd recently been to Bulgaria.”

“Yes,” he said slowly. “A group of us from the university skiing club went to Borovets during the Easter vac. It was very good value and great snow. You should try it.”

Not with my neck, I thought.

“But your uncle also said you went to see the factory.”

“There isn't any factory, is there?” he said.

“You tell me,” I said. “You're the one that went to see it.”

He didn't answer but sat looking at me across the table.

“Who are you, exactly?” he said. “Is Smith your real name?”

“No,” I admitted, “it is not.”

“So who are you?” he asked, standing up and with a degree of menace in his voice. “And what are you after?”

“I'm not after anything,” I said defensively, looking up at him. “Except to be left alone.”

“So why are you here? If you want to be left alone, why don't you just go away?”

“I would, but someone is trying to kill me,” I said, this time without looking up at his face. It was hurting my neck. “Now, will you please sit down.”

He slowly lowered his huge frame back down onto the bench. “Who is trying to kill you?” he asked in a tone that indicated disbelief. “And why?”

“I don't know who,” I said. “Not yet. But I think I may know why. Your uncle approached me because he was worried that the family's investment in the Bulgarian factory project was a scam. He had been shown photographs of the factory buildings, but you had then told him that they didn't actually exist. So he asked me to look into it, to check that, in his words, it wasn't ‘a rotten egg of an investment.' ”

He smiled at the use of the words. They were clearly familiar to him.

“And,” I went on, “I think that it is indeed a rotten egg of an investment. Your family money was the key to everything because the private finance for the factory triggered the public funding for all the houses. Someone has been defrauding the European Union of a hundred million euros by obtaining grants towards the cost of building a lightbulb factory and hundreds of homes that don't actually exist and never will. And that same someone is trying to kill me before I can prove it, and before I find out who they are.”

I paused, and Ben Roberts sat staring at me in silence.

“And,” I said, going on, “I believe your uncle may have been murdered for the same reason.”

U
ncle Jolyon wasn't murdered, he died of a heart attack,” Ben Roberts said unequivocally. “At least he had a heart attack and then he drowned.”

Ben looked down again at the table in front of him. Jolyon Roberts had died only four days previously. It was still very recent—very raw.

“Did you know he was drunk when he drowned?” I asked.

“He couldn't have been,” Ben said, looking up at me.

“The autopsy showed he was,” I said.

“But that's impossible.”

“Because he didn't drink?”

“Never,” he said. “He might have a tiny sip of champagne occasionally, you know, at a wedding for a toast, that sort of thing, but otherwise he never touched alcohol.”

“Did he ever drink whisky?” I asked. “Late at night maybe?”

“Not that I was aware of,” Ben said. “And I very much doubt it. I tried to get him to have a beer at my twenty-first birthday party, but I had no chance. He said that he didn't like booze so it was no hardship not to have it.”

“Was he teetotal because of his heart condition?” I asked.

“Heart condition?” Ben said. “Whatever gave you the impression Uncle J had a heart condition? His heart was as strong as an ox. Or at least we all thought it was until last Monday.”

Perhaps Ben hadn't known about his uncle's heart condition, I thought. After all, it's not the sort of thing people usually advertise about themselves.

“Tell me about your trip to Bulgaria,” I said. “When you went to see the factory.”

“There's absolutely nothing there,” he said. “Nothing at all. And the locals know nothing about it. They've never even heard of any plans to build a factory, let alone the houses.”

“Are you sure you were in the right place?” I asked.

He glanced at me with a look that could only be described as one of contempt.

“Of course I'm sure,” he said. “I took all the details with me so that I would be able find it. My family are so proud of what the Trust does to help those less fortunate than ourselves. That's why I was so keen for the skiing club to go to Bulgaria in the first place, and especially to Borovets. It was close enough so I could spend a day going to see the factory if I wanted.”

“Did anyone know you were going to the factory?” I asked.

“No,” he said. “I wasn't absolutely sure that I would. It depended on the snow and the weather. To be honest, I'd much rather ski than visit factories, but on one day the cloud was right down on the slopes so I went, but the factory wasn't there.”

“Where was it meant to be?” I asked.

“Close to a village called Gorni, south of Sofia. But when I saw the site, it was nothing more than a toxic waste dump left over from the mass industrialization of the country during the Soviet era.”

“So what have you done about it?” I asked. “Your family has invested a lot of money in the project.”

“Yeah, and lost it all too.” He sounded resigned to the loss.

“Aren't you even going to try to get it back?”

“I don't expect so,” Ben said. “My father is worried that the family name will be discredited. What he means is that we will be shown up to have been bloody fools—and fools that were easily separated from their money. He is furious about it, but mostly because he was talked into it by Uncle Jolyon and some financial adviser chap.”

“Gregory Black?” I asked.

“He's the one,” he said.

“So your father says to forget it? Forget five million pounds just like that?”

“It's only money,” he said almost flippantly. “And money is fairly easy to replace. It's not like one's family reputation. It can take many generations to repair damage to one's family's standing, and sometimes it can never be restored.”

It sounded to me that he was quoting his father.

“But it's not possible to replace your uncle Jolyon,” I said.

“That's surely all the more reason to forget about the whole thing. If the stress of this factory business gave Uncle J his heart attack, then we should unquestionably let sleeping dogs lie. Otherwise, our foolishness will be shown to have cost the family far more than mere money.”

“But I believe your uncle was murdered,” I said. “Don't you want justice?”

“Would that bring him back?” he said angrily. “No, of course it wouldn't. And, anyway, I believe that you are wrong. In fact, I believe you are just here to cause my family trouble.” He stood up quickly, bunching his fists. “What is it you're really after? Do you want money? Is that it? Money or you'll go to the papers?”

This could get very nasty, and very quickly, I thought.

I didn't move but just sat still on the bench, not even looking up at him.

“I don't want your money,” I said calmly.

But what did I want?

Did I really care if some clever eurocrat in Brussels and a Bulgarian property entrepreneur were conspiring to steal a hundred million euros from the European Union with or without the help of Gregory Black? Or did I care that the Roberts Family Trust had been duped out of five million pounds?

No, I decided. I didn't care about either of those things.

And was I really bothered whether Jolyon Roberts had died of natural causes or if he'd been murdered?

No, I suppose I didn't even care about that. He had been a nice enough man, and I was sorry he was dead, but it didn't make any real difference to me how he'd died.

But I did care that someone had killed Herb Kovak, and I cared very much more that they were trying to kill me too.

“So what, exactly, do you want?” Ben Roberts asked belligerently from somewhere above my eye line.

“I want what is right,” I said. Whatever that meant.

And, I thought, I want to live a long and happy life with my future wife.

I looked up at his face. “What is it that
you
want?” I asked back. He didn't answer, and I went on looking at him. “Your uncle told me you wanted to change the world.”

He laughed. “Uncle J was always saying that.”

“And is it true?” I asked.

He thought for a moment.

“It's true that I want to be a politician,” he said. “And all politicians hope to be in power. To be in a position to make the changes they believe in, otherwise there'd be no point.” He paused. “So, yes, I suppose I do want to change the world. And for the better.”

“For the better, as
you
see it,” I said.

“Obviously.”

“So,” I said, “is it for the better that you value your family's reputation ahead of doing what is right by your late uncle?”

He sat down again and stared at me.

“What's your real name?” he asked.

“Foxton,” I said. “Nicholas Foxton. I am a financial adviser with Lyall and Black, the same firm where Gregory Black works.”

“Well, Mr. Nicholas Foxton, financial adviser, what is it that
you
really want?” he asked. “And why have you come here?”

“I need to find out more about your family's investment in the Bulgarian project,” I said. “I simply don't have enough information to take my concerns to the authorities. They'd probably laugh at me. All I have are some copies of the original transaction report, some e-mails between someone in Brussels and a man in Bulgaria, and a sackful of suspicion. And now that your uncle is dead, I can't ask
him
.”

“So why don't you go and ask Gregory Black?” he said.

“Because I'm not altogether sure that I trust him.” In fact, I was sure I didn't.

“OK. I'll speak to my father about it,” Ben said. “But I can tell you now, he won't like it, and he probably won't talk to you.”

“Ask him anyway,” I said.

“How do I contact you?” he asked.

“Leave a message on my mobile.” I gave him the number, which he stored on his own phone.

“Please speak to him soon.”

“I'm going home tonight for the weekend,” Ben said. “I'll try to find the right moment to speak to him on Sunday afternoon. He's always at his most relaxed after a good Sunday lunch.”

I hoped it would be soon enough.

 

 

W
hen I returned to Jan's place in Lambourn at four-thirty, I found her, Claudia and my mother sitting around the kitchen table, and they were already hard at the vino.

“Bit early, isn't it?” I said, looking at my watch and declining the offered glass of Chardonnay.

“Early?” Claudia said with a giggle. “We started at lunchtime.”

The others giggled with her.

“Are you sure it's wise to drink so soon after surgery?” I asked. “Especially on top of your painkillers.”

“Don't be such a killjoy,” Jan said amid more sniggering.

What a fine state of affairs, I thought. I was trying to keep us alive, and my mother and fiancée were drunk.

“So what have you done today other than drink?” I asked.

“Nothing,” Jan said. “We've been talking, that's all.”

“I thought you'd be at the races,” I said to her.

“No runners today,” she said. “But I've got to go now to evening stables.” She stood up with a slight wobble and giggled again. “Oops, I think I've had a bit too much.”