Not surprisingly, people yesterday were asking if Foxton’s argument with Searle could have had some sinister connection to the Aintree murder. The Rules of Racing clearly ban gambling by professional jockeys, but no such restriction applies to former jockeys. The Racing Post will endeavor to keep its readers up to date with this story.
The article cleverly didn’t actually accuse Billy Searle or me of any wrongdoing, it merely asked leading questions. But there was little doubt that the tone of the piece was designed to imply there was a criminal conspiracy between us, which also had something to do with the death of Herb Kovak.
No wonder Gregory Black was steaming around the office fit to burst.
I was surprised my phone wasn’t ringing off the hook.
Bugger, I thought. What should I do now?
I called Patrick on his mobile. I didn’t fancy using the office number just in case Gregory himself answered, as we all sometimes did if the receptionists were busy on other calls.
“Hello, Nicholas,” said Patrick. “I thought I told you to be discreet. I hear that Gregory’s after your blood. I’d keep your head down if I were you.”
“I will,” I said. “But it’s all a pack of lies.”
“You know that, and I know that. But, unfortunately, John Doe on the street will believe what he reads in the paper.”
“But they have completely distorted the truth. It’s so unfair.”
“Tell that to the politicians.” He laughed. “I have already told Gregory not to believe what he reads, but he says, quite rightly, that you shouldn’t have been having a public argument with a client in the first place. He’s pretty mad.”
“It wasn’t an argument,” I claimed in my defense. “Billy Searle just started shouting and swearing at me for no reason.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Patrick said. “It’ll all blow over in a couple of days.”
I wish he’d been right.
6
I walked back to Herb’s flat hardly feeling my feet on the pavement.
What a bloody mess.
I could imagine that Billy Searle wasn’t too happy about it either. I thought the last thing he’d want would be the racing authorities asking him questions about why he needed a hundred thousand pounds so urgently.
I let myself in through Herb’s front door and went to check again on Sherri. She hadn’t moved and was still sound asleep. I left her alone and went back to the living room, where I sat at Herb’s desk wishing I’d brought my laptop with me. It was lying on the kitchen table in Finchley and I was tempted to go home to fetch it. Instead I called Claudia.
“Hi, it’s me,” I said when she answered.
“Hi, you,” she replied.
“Could you bring my computer over to Herb’s flat?” I said. “His sister has turned up, and she didn’t know he was dead. She’s sleeping now, but I don’t feel I can leave her for long. I’ll stay and work here, but I do need my laptop.” I decided against mentioning as yet the unwelcome coverage in the Racing Post.
There was a slight pause.
“OK,” Claudia said in a slightly irritated tone.
“It’s not very far,” I said encouragingly. “Use the car. You won’t need to park or anything, just drop it off.”
“OK,” she said again, lacking enthusiasm. “But I was just going out.”
Bloody hell, I thought. It wasn’t very much to ask.
“Where are you going?” I asked.
“Oh, nowhere,” she said. “Just to have coffee with a friend.”
“Who?”
“No one you know,” she said evasively.
Probably one of her artist friends. I didn’t know them and I didn’t really want to. Some of them were as weird as her paintings.
“Please, Claudia,” I said firmly, “I need it here so I can do my job.” And to bring in the money so you can live rent free, I thought, but didn’t say.
“OK,” she said once more, resigned. “Where is the flat?”
I gave her the address, and she promised she would bring the computer right over.
While I waited I went through the piles of papers on Herb’s desk, those remaining after the chief inspector had taken his box away.
There were the usual clutter of utility bills and debit card receipts interleaved with financial services’ magazines, insurance documents and some personal letters. I glanced through them all but nothing gave any clue to who would want Herb dead or how he came to gamble away a hundred thousand pounds a month on the Internet.
I didn’t expect them to. I assumed that the police would have removed anything of interest.
Next I went through the desk drawers. There were three on each side, and the ones on the left contained such exciting items as a stapler with spare staples, various-sized brown envelopes, paper and ink cartridges for the printer, a pack of permanent markers in bright colors, a plastic tub of large paper clips and a calculator.
Those on the right were only partially more interesting, with a large pile of paid bills, various income tax papers, a copy of Herb’s U.S. tax return, a rubber-band-bound stack of received Christmas cards and a plastic folder containing monthly pay slips from Lyall & Black.
I was curious to see that Herb had been paid somewhat more than I was, no doubt due to his three years’ prior experience at J.P. Morgan Asset Management in New York before moving to London. Now that I was Patrick’s most senior assistant, I would have to have a discussion with him about a raise.
I flicked through the bills but there was nothing that appeared to shine out like a lighthouse to guide me to his killer, although I did notice that Herb had been what my mother always described as a “free-spending spirit.” It was a term she used for those she considered to squander their money on lavish, unnecessary purchases instead of prudently saving it for a rainy day as she had always done.
Two separate invoices from a local travel agent showed that Herb’s free spending had run to at least two British Airways first-class roundtrip tickets across the Atlantic at eight thousand pounds each, one of them dated only the previous month for a planned but not yet taken trip in May. He may have been earning more than me, but there was no way he could have financed those out of his income from Lyall & Black even without the online gambling debts he had run up on the credit cards.
I wondered if he had inherited a large sum from his dead parents. I thought it unlikely as he had always claimed that his father had gambled away most of his family’s money. But perhaps Herb had been busy spending and gambling away the rest.
But where had he kept it?
I looked again at the photocopy I had made of his last bank statement. I had only made it to have a record of Herb’s account number and sort code. I would need them when I contacted the bank to inform them of his death. The latest balance was a little under ten thousand pounds, but there were no entries on the statements that appeared to be payments for the credit card accounts, and certainly no eight thousand pounds to the travel agent the previous month.
Herb had to have had another bank account, but there was no sign of it anywhere in his desk.
I looked at my watch. I had called Claudia nearly half an hour ago, and the journey should have taken her only ten minutes from Lichfield Grove, Finchley, to Seymour Way, Hendon. I went to the door to see if she was outside somewhere, but there was no sign of her or the Mercedes.
I waited in the doorway for five further minutes with slightly increasing irritation. I didn’t really want to call her again, but she was beginning to try my patience.
Once I would have been so excited by the prospect of seeing her, I wouldn’t have minded if she had been half a day late arriving. On one occasion I had been at Heathrow Airport at least two hours before her flight was due to land just to be sure not to miss her passing through customs.
But now, and not for the first time, I wondered if our relationship had run its course.