Tip Off (7 page)

‘We received instructions from Lord Tintern as chairman of the disciplinary committee the day before yesterday,' I told him.

‘So, what do
you
think?'

‘It's too soon to say,' Matt put in before I could reply. ‘Do you have any theories yourself, sir?'

‘Forget the “sir”. You're not in the army now, you know.'

Matt allowed himself a quick smile. I acknowledged to myself the subtlety of his technique in gaining control of meetings like this.

‘Thank you, but what are your ideas?'

‘It's obvious, isn't it?' The question wasn't entirely rhetorical.

‘You tell us, sir,' Matt prompted.

Chapman ignored the ‘sir' this time. ‘Well, it's not sheer skill, is it?'

We shook our heads.

‘Or luck,' Chapman growled. ‘He's cheating.'

‘The reason we've come to see you is to hear what you've discovered so far,' Matt pressed.

‘Like what?'

‘Have you identified who's been your biggest winner since this run started?'

Harry made a face. ‘Of course we've tried. But there isn't any one big winner – it's all of them. One guy phones the line and tells ten friends. It's killing us.'

‘But there's no one individual or consortium?'

Chapman shrugged. ‘No, they're all at it.'

‘Have you ever experienced such a successful run for a tipster before?' Matt asked.

‘No,' Harry replied emphatically. ‘Never. There are people who know their job and have winning weeks, but not regularly; and if it does get too frequent, we close their accounts. Now, if we stopped everyone who was winning, we'd have no clients left.'

‘How much have Salmon's lost so far from all this, then?' Matt pressed.

The question hit a nerve. Chapman's face lost some of its colour. ‘Too much,' he grunted. ‘It can't go on – and you can quote me on that.'

I had the impression that if we didn't find out soon what Toby was doing, Chapman would do something about it himself. He lifted his large frame from the chair. ‘Now, if you'll excuse me?'

We were already rising from our seats in anticipation of the end of the interview. I looked at Matt, showing only a hint of my disappointment at this lack of any fresh information.

‘Thank you for your time,' I said.

Chapman shrugged indifferently. ‘If you start making any real progress, let me know. Give my regards to Lord Tintern. Tell him I'm delighted he's put two such sharp young men on the case. I expect his relationship with Toby makes the whole situation a bit ticklish for him.'

‘I didn't detect any particular reticence when he was instructing us,' I said.

Chapman laughed. ‘Yes,' he said, ‘you're probably right. Well, good day to you.' He ushered us from his office with another hearty shake of his hand.

We walked through to the ante-room and Matt closed the door behind him. Sara was sitting at her desk. He lifted an eyebrow. ‘What time do you finish work?' he asked quietly.

‘About six,' she said, with an almost imperceptible glance at the door to her boss's office.

‘I'll be here to pick you up then.'

 

We retrieved my Audi from its meter outside and headed for my sister's small house in Notting Hill which we used as a London base.

‘Looks as though you might have scored,' I said.

‘It's not a question of scoring,' Matt blustered. ‘I just thought it might be useful to have a pair of ears inside that office. Those people have more reason than anyone to stop Toby.'

I restrained a smile. I'd always been rather curious about Matt's approach to women. I suspected that beneath the irrefutably tough and tightly controlled exterior there was an emotional vulnerability – perhaps the origin of the hardened outer shell. I had never encroached on this private area and thus our long friendship had survived.

‘All right, but I bet you wouldn't have thought of it if she wasn't so attractive.'

Matt allowed this. ‘Possibly not.' He picked up the phone. ‘I'm going to call the office.'

When he was answered, he spoke for a few minutes to Jason who co-ordinated the half dozen men, ex-soldiers mostly, whom we employed on the bread-and-butter personal protection and surveillance work.

I gathered nothing new had come in on our present job, but David Dysart of Wessex Biotech had rung.

‘At least we've got something to tell him,' Matt muttered.

‘Come on,' I protested. ‘We haven't much at all.'

‘We agreed that Griffiths seemed to have more assets than his salary would account for.'

‘That proves nothing, though.'

But Matt was already punching a number into the phone. When it was answered, he asked for Dysart and waited. After a few moments, he made a face. ‘Right, I'll come down in person as soon as I can,' he grunted and put the phone down.

 

My sister Catherine had used all the money our father had left her to buy a pretty little house near Notting Hill Gate.

Fortunately for me, almost as soon as she'd bought it, she'd left her job at
Vogue
and gone to work on an American glossy in New York. She'd asked me to keep an eye on the house. In return, Matt and I used it as our London base. Catherine had installed her own dark room and we had converted the bottom floor into an office.

As soon as we arrived there, Matt left for Bristol to see Dysart and I dialled Toby's tipping line. I listened to a recording of his familiar voice offering his selections for the day, put the phone down, and went out.

I retrieved my car from where I'd left it, two streets away, and drove to Sandown Park. Toby's nap was a horse called Musicmusic in a two-mile handicap hurdle, and I wanted to see it run.

Wearing the winter racing uniform of velvet-collared covert coat and brown trilby, I blended naturally into the crowd milling around by the stables. I watched Musicmusic being tacked up and led to the parade ring. I was looking for anything out of the ordinary. I watched his lad every step of the way. Studied the horse's distinguished trainer appraising him in the paddock with the famous rock musician who owned him, and kept an eye on the yard's travelling head lad.

I tried to detect any sign of interference with any of the other five runners.

I scoured the crowd around the ring, especially by the gate where the horses would leave for the course; I noticed nothing and no one that aroused my suspicions.

As the jockeys mounted, I walked round and placed myself near the exit so that I could follow Musicmusic as closely as possible while he was making his way down the laurel walk to the track.

He was a well-made horse who looked ready to run and was being ridden by Jimmy McBain, the season's leading pilot. He would probably have been offered by the bookies at around 3/1 favourite without Toby's recommendation; with it, he looked likely to start at even money.

He was a big, strong, imposing horse; if you'd never seen a horse before in your life, he'd have taken your eye. Maybe, I thought, Toby was just doing a thorough job after all, as he'd claimed. Having been so impressed by Musicmusic beforehand, I wasn't surprised by the ease with which he won.

He was two lengths clear at the last, and on the run in gained another two. What was more conspicuous was the cheer that greeted his win. I wondered how much Harry Chapman and his rivals had lost from people here on the course, and another few million punters in betting shops around the country.

Through my binoculars I studied the winner coming back. Jimmy McBain had wheeled him round and he was still jogging. I thought that if I owned him, I'd think about running him over longer distances.

I'd seen nothing that could be called suspicious in the way the horse had run. I wondered if the stewards would dope test him. They only selected a horse to test after a race was run. It wasn't always the winner. If they took a urine sample from Musicmusic I didn't expect the horse to show any symptoms of doping.

But neither could I see any of the other, losing horses coming back showing signs of undue distress.

I felt utterly frustrated by the lack of evidence of any irregular influence on the result of the race. Moodily I made my way back towards the stands. Near the doors, I heard a female voice call my name from somewhere above. I looked up and saw Emma.

‘Come on up,' she called when I returned her wave.

I knew my way to the Tintern box, and a couple of minutes later, I was walking into it. To my relief, His Lordship wasn't there. Emma, though, was surrounded by three other men who appeared to be at least as interested in her as I was.

‘Si!' she greeted me with apparent relief, offering a cheek to be kissed and leading me by the elbow out on to the empty balcony. ‘God, I'm glad I saw you.' She pulled a face but didn't expand. She filled a glass for me from a bottle of wine she'd picked up on the way. ‘Is there any way you could give me a lift back to London?'

‘Where's your car?' I asked.

‘I came with Jane, thinking I'd go back home afterwards, but there's a party this evening. I wasn't going to go, but if you can come, I think I'd enjoy it.'

I thought about the job Matt and I were on, and wondered what else I could have done that evening to further it. ‘Where is it?'

‘Some gallery near Bond Street – I've got the address. It's a preview party for an exhibition by a horse sculptor. He's rather good.'

I winced. ‘I don't know if I can take another room full of leaping bronze nags.'

‘We could have dinner afterwards?' Emma played her trump with a flourish.

The party was pretty much what I'd expected – more appreciation of points of the horse than points of art. But at least there seemed to me to be genuine merit in some of the bronzes that went further than just figurative images of the thoroughbred.

The place was full to bursting with racing people who might have been expected to write cheques easily for at least a few thousand pounds if something took their eye. I'd already seen several of them at the races that afternoon.

While Emma had drifted off to talk to friends, I found myself standing beside an old acquaintance, Daniel Dunne, a racing mad estate agent I'd known since schooldays. We both found ourselves looking at Emma. Despite the sculpture on show, she was easily the most attractive object in the room.

‘I'm just about to buy a property for her father,' Daniel said, in a way that implied he'd like to get his hands on Emma as part of the deal.

‘Where's that?' I asked, not really interested.

Daniel touched the side of his nose. ‘The deal's not done yet, so I can't say, but if it goes through, I guarantee he'll be a very happy man.'

He drifted off, and I took the opportunity to duck out into Bond Street and find a quiet haven in a shop window recess where I could use my mobile in privacy. I punched Matt's number and was answered almost at once.

‘How did it go?' I asked.

‘Fine, I'll tell you later. Why don't you meet me at Harry's Bar at nine?'

‘I thought you were with Sara?'

‘I am.'

‘But I'm with Emma.'

‘That's okay.' Matt sounded relieved. When I didn't answer at once, he added, ‘I'll pay.'

At a hundred quid a head, that made it a better proposition. ‘Fine. Nine o'clock.'

When I'd finished the call I decided I'd had enough of the preview party and went back inside, hoping that I might persuade Emma to leave.

To my relief, she was looking for me, already impatient. ‘God, what a load of stiffs,' she said, not quietly enough. ‘No wonder I decided to go to the States. The Yanks may be naïve, but at least they're not all full of crap.'

‘I gather you've been talking to someone who doesn't agree with you?'

‘Don't start,' she said, then laughed. ‘Let's go somewhere else.'

As we walked out, I told her we were meeting Matt later. She looked surprised.

‘It's okay, he's having dinner with a girl.' I laughed. ‘You won't believe it but he just asked her out when we met her in Harry Chapman's office this morning.'

‘How amazing. I was beginning to wonder if he was gay.'

‘I think I'd have known before now if he were,' I said. ‘Let's go in here.' I nodded at a small quiet pub that seemed to have got lost in the elegant canyons of Mayfair.

Once I'd got us both drinks, we sat on a comfortable sofa by a fake log fire.

‘This is cosee,' Emma said in a Sybil Fawlty voice. ‘At least,' she said, resuming her own, ‘it's better than being pushed around by a lot of pompous, braying oafs.'

‘You aren't in a very charitable mood, are you?' I said. ‘What's the problem?'

‘Seeing my father always winds me up.'

‘He's not that bad, is he?'

Emma looked at me a moment. ‘The awful thing is that I've started to think maybe he isn't my father at all.'

I put down the glass in my hand and stared at her. ‘That's a bit radical.'

She shrugged. ‘It's just that he and I are so different, it's hard to imagine we have a single gene in common.'

‘I thought you were being serious for a moment.'

‘I am.'

She took a sip of her vodka. ‘Do you remember I told you the other day how my mother and I stayed with Frank Gurney in Menton – when Toby was doing his system at the casinos?'