Part 5 (1/2)

She put the receiver down with a crash before I could utter a word, and I sat bemusedly looking at my own telephone and feeling as if I'd swallowed a wasp.

Whoever she was, I thought wryly, she wouldn't want to send flowers to the funeral, though she might have been gladdened by the death. I wondered what on earth Greville could have done to raise such a storm, but that was the trouble, I didn't know him well enough to make a good guess Thankful on the whole that there weren't any more numbers to be tried I looked again at what few entries he had made, more out of curiosity than looking for helpful facts.

He had noted the days on which his horses had run, again only with initials. DR, Dozen Roses, appeared most, each time with a number following, like 300 at 8s, which I took to mean the amounts he'd wagered at what odds. Below the numbers he had put each time another number inside a circle which, when I compared them with the form book, were revealed as the placings of the horse at the finish. Its last three appearances, all with 5 in the circle, seemed to have netted Greville respectively 500 at 14s, 500 at Ss, 1000 at 6/4. The trot-up scheduled for Sat.u.r.day, I thought, would be likely to be at odds-on.

Greville's second horse, Gemstones appearing simply as G, had run six times, winning only once but profitably: 500 at 100/6.

All in all, I thought, a moderate betting pattern for an owner. He had made, I calculated, a useful profit overall, more than most owners achieved. With his prize money in addition to offset both the training fees and the capital cost of buying the horses in the first place, I guessed that he had come out comfortably ahead, and it was in the business sense, I supposed, that owning horses had chiefly pleased him.

I flicked casually forward to the end of the book and in the last few pages headed 'NOTES' came across a lot of doodling and then a list of numbers.

The doodling was the sort one does while listening on the telephone, a lot of boxes and zig-zags, haphazard and cries-crossed with lines of shading. On the page facing, there was an equation: CZ=C x 1.7. I supposed it had been of sparkling clarity to Greville, but of no use to me.

Overleaf I found the sort of numbers list I kept in my own diary: pa.s.sport, bank account, national insurance.

After those, in small capital letters further down the page, was the single word DEREK. Another jolt, seeing it again in his writing.

I wondered briefly whether, from its placing, Greville had used my name as some sort of mnemonic, or whether it was just another doodle: there was no way of telling. With a sigh I riffled back through the pages and came to something I'd looked at before, a lightlypencilled entry for the day before his death. Second time around, it meant just as little.

Koningin Beatrix? he had written. Just the two words and the question mark. I wondered idly if it were the name of a hbrse, if he'd been considering buying it; my mind tended to work that way. Then I thought that perhaps he'd written the last name first, such as Smith, Jane, and that maybe he'd been going to Ipswich to meet a Beatrix Koningin.

I returned to the horse theory and got through to the trainer I rode for, Milo Shandy, who enquired breezily about the ankle and said would I please waste no time in coming back.

'I could ride out in a couple of weeks,' I said.

'At least that's something, I suppose. Get some ma.s.sage.'

The mere thought of it was painful. I said I would, not meaning it, and asked about Koningin Beatrix, spelling it out.

'Don't know of any horse called that, but I can find out for you in the morning. I'll ask Weatherby's if the name's available, and if they say yes, it means there isn't a horse called that registered for racing.'

'Thanks a lot.'

'Think nothing of it. I heard your brother died. Bad luck.'

'Yes . . . How did you know?'

'Nicholas Loder rang me just now, explaining your dilemma and wanting me to persuade you to lease him Dozen Roses.'

'But that's crazy. His ringing you, I mean.'

He chuckled. 'I told him so. I told him I could bend you like a block of teak. He didn't seem to take it in.

Anyway, I don't think leasing would solve anything.

Jockeys aren't allowed to own racing horses, period. If you lease a horse, you still own it.'

'I'm sure you're right.'

'Put your s.h.i.+rt on it.'

'Loafer bets, doesn't he?' I asked. 'In large amounts?'

'So I've heard.'

'He said Dozen Roses would trot up at York on Sat.u.r.day.'

'In that case, do you want me to put a bit on for you?'

Besides not being allowed to run horses in races, jockeys also were banned from betting, but there were always ways round that, like helpful friends 'I don't think so, not this time,' I said, 'but thanks anyway.'

'You won't mind if I do?'

'Be my guest. If Weatherby's let it run, that is.'

i 'A nice little puzzle,' he said appreciatively. 'Come over soon for a drink. Come for evening stables.'

I would, I said.

'Take care.'

I put down the phone, smiling at his easy farewell colloquialism. Jump jockeys were paid not to take care, on the whole. Not too much care.

Milo would be horrified if I obeyed him.

In the morning, Brad drove me to Saxony Franklin's bank to see the manager who was young and bright and spoke with deliberate slowness, as if waiting for his clients' intelligence to catch up. Was there something about crutches, I wondered, that intensified the habit?

It took him five minutes to suspect that I wasn't a moron. After that he told me Greville had borrowed a sizeable chunk of the bank's money, and he would be looking to me to repay it. 'One point five million United States dollars in cash, as a matter of fact.'

'One point five million collars,' I repeated, trying not to show that he had punched most of the breath out of me. 'Whatfor?'

'For buying diamonds. Diamonds from the DTC of the CSO are, of course, normally paid for in cash, in dollars.'

Bank managers around Hatton Garden, it seemed, saw nothing extraordinary in such an exercise.

'He doesn't . . . didn't deal in diamonds,' I protested.

'He had decided to expand and, of course, we made the funds available. Your brother dealt with us for many years and as you'll know was a careful and conscientious businessman. A valued client. We have several times advanced him money for expansion and each time we have been repaid without difficulty. Punctiliously, in fact.' He cleared his throat. 'The present loan, taken out three months ago, is due for repayment progressively over a period of five years, and of course as the loan was made to the company, not to your brother personally, the terms of the loan will be unchanged by his death.'

'Yes,' I said.

'I understood from what you said yesterday that you propose to run the business yourself?' He seemed happy enough where I might have expected a shade of anxiety. So why no anxiety? What wasn't I grasping?

'Do you hold security for the loan?' I asked.

'An agreement. We lent the money against the stock of Saxony Franklin.'

'All the stones?'

'As many as would satisfy the debt. But,our best security has always been your brother's integrity and his business ability.'