Dick Francis's Damage (20 page)

D
aniel Jubowski came out of the offices of Hawthorn Pearce at five-twenty on Tuesday afternoon and I was waiting for him, dressed as Tony Jefferson, my gay alter ego.

He saw me immediately and came over.

“Hi, Tony,” he said. “What brings you here?”

“Daniel, I desperately need some help.”

“What's the matter?”

“I need a place to stay for a night or two,” I said quickly, “until I can find somewhere of my own.”

“I thought you lived with your mother.”

“I did.” I said it almost in a sob. “My stepfather has found out that I'm gay and he has thrown me out. He owns the house, so there is nothing my mom can do about it. I didn't know where else to go.”

He put his arm around my shoulders.

“Come on, Tony, cheer up. I'm sure we can find you a bed. You'd better come home with me.”

“Thank you,” I said with a wan smile, “that's what I hoped you might say.” And I'd made sure I hadn't tried this on a Wednesday evening. I had no desire to go home with him via the Fit Man gym in Soho.

We took the Northern Line from Bank to King's Cross and then walked from there to number 17 New Wharf Road.

As I had thought when I'd first followed him here, this flat was anything but cheap.

“Wow!” I said, going out onto the second-floor balcony overlooking Regent's Canal. “What a place.”

“I'm very lucky,” Daniel replied.

“Rented?” I asked, coming back in to face him.

He shook his head. “I bought it two months ago.”

“Wow!” I said. “Do you share?”

“I used to but not anymore.”

“That's good,” I said, changing my tone of voice completely. “Then we won't be disturbed. Tell me, Daniel, are Hawthorn Pearce aware that you offer strangers crystal meth at just a tenner for their first wrap?”

He was completely taken aback and just stood there with his mouth hanging open.

“Are they aware of that, Daniel?” I asked again. “And do they also know that your colleague at Hawthorn Pearce, John McClure, solicits sex from men in pubs by groping their bottoms? Do they know that, Daniel?”

“Who are you?” he said finally.

“A friend of Ken Calderfield.”

I could see from his body language that he wanted to run. He
bunched the muscles in his arms and he began to look around him. The last thing I wanted was for him to disappear again.

“Daniel,” I said to him firmly, “sit down. Sit down now.”

I pointed at the deep leather sofa and, slowly, he did as he was told.

“What do you want?”

“I want to know why you are accusing Ken of supplying drugs when both you and I know he'd never do such a thing.”

“He took them.”

“Maybe he did, but he didn't supply them, did he, Daniel?” I stood over him and did my best to make my five-foot-ten-inch frame as imposing as possible. “You do all the supplying, don't you, Daniel? That's how you can afford to buy this flat. You supply crystal meth to your gay friends at parties, don't you, Daniel? I'm sure your elders and betters at Hawthorn Pearce would love to hear all about those, now wouldn't they, Daniel?”

He sat staring at me.

“You can't prove anything.”

“I don't need to prove it,” I said. “I just need to send an anonymous file to the chief executive of Hawthorn Pearce. I assure you I have plenty of photographic evidence. For a start, I have a video of you trying to sell me drugs at the William Ball pub and of your chum John trying to seduce me into going with him to the Fit Man gym for sex. And I have another video of the two of you going into the same gym later that night together with Mike Kennedy, dragging with you a reluctant teenager.” I paused to let everything sink in. “Oh, no, Daniel, I don't need to prove anything. I am sure the directors of Hawthorn Pearce are pretty old-school, with traditional values. Trust me, they will believe enough of it. You may not go to jail, but you would never work in the City again.”

“What do you want?” he asked once more.

“Just the truth,” I said. “You will withdraw your statement to the police that Ken Calderfield supplied drugs to you or to anyone else. You will also tell the police that the drugs found in Ken's flat did not belong to him and that he had no knowledge of them being there. That's all. Just the truth. Then I will go away and leave you and John McClure in peace.”

“How can I be sure of that?”

“You can't,” I said. “But what choice do you have?”

“The police might accuse me of wasting their time.”

“That's your problem, Daniel, because you have indeed been wasting their time. But it's better than telling lies in court and being convicted of perjury.”

He sat slumped into the leather sofa.

“Oh, yes,” I said, “there's one more thing. I want to know why you set out to destroy Ken Calderfield. What did he do to deserve it?”

“I won't tell you.”

“Oh, yes, Daniel,” I said, “I think you will. It's part of the deal to keep me quiet.”

“You didn't say that.”

“Well, I'm saying it now.”

He sat silently for what seemed like a long time but was probably only about thirty seconds or so. Once or twice he appeared as if to start saying something but then didn't.

“Come on, Daniel,” I said encouragingly, “you can tell me.”

“I was jealous.” He said it quietly, without looking up at me.

“Jealous?” I could hardly believe it. “You have a great job and this fabulous flat. How can you be jealous of anyone?”

“I am jealous of Ken,” he said. “He is so young and so gorgeous. The others at the gym swoon over him, they won't
leave him alone.” He swallowed. “That's what they used to do with me.”

“Ken also dumped you, didn't he, Daniel, in favor of other men from the gym? So you decided to get your revenge by setting him up, isn't that right?”

He nodded. “It was stupid, I see that now. It was me that called the police on the night of the party. I went into the bathroom to phone them. I claimed to be an angry disturbed neighbor.”

“Ken said you had to convince him to have the party in the first place. Was the whole thing a setup?”

He nodded again, then he sobbed. “I'm sorry.”

I had wondered if it had been someone trying to get at Quentin, but it was nothing more than a lovers' tiff that had spiraled out of control.

Such was the power of love and jealousy.

I
arrived at Scrutton's Club more than half an hour early for the meeting on Wednesday morning, but Crispin Larson was there ahead of me.

“Any news?” I asked.

“Our friend has been in touch again in the mail this morning and he's pretty angry.”

“I don't care,” I said. “It's us who should be angry, not him. He has a hundred thousand pounds of our money.”

“He says it's not enough.”

“Tough shit,” I said. “If it was up to me, he'd get nothing more. In fact, he'd have had nothing in the first place. What else can he do to us that's worse than disrupting the Grand National?”

The others started arriving, and we were taking our places around the table when Howard Lever came into the room, ashen-faced and visibly shaking.

“What on earth is the matter?” Stephen Kohli said, standing up and offering Howard a steadying hand.

“I've just had a call from the Press Association,” Howard said in a slightly quavering voice. “They want to know if there is any truth in the tip-off they have received that the winner of the Gold Cup has failed a dope test.”

—

CHIEF SUPERINTENDENT
Dominic Allenby of the Metropolitan Police Homicide and Serious Crime Command sat impassively at the head of the table as Roger Vincent and Howard Lever, on either side of him, outlined the sequence of events that had occurred during the preceding three weeks, from the murder of Jordan Furness on Champion Hurdle Day right up to the payment of the hundred thousand pounds.

On several occasions, Stephen Kohli, Crispin Larson and I were invited to add some details, while Ian Tulloch, Bill Ripley, Neil Wallinger and Piers Pottinger were not shy in coming forward with their opinions. The other two directors, Charles Payne and George Searle, both chose to sit quietly, listening intently.

All the directors appeared rather uneasy at having had everything laid out bare in front of the chief superintendent.

I was also feeling slightly anxious, but for a different reason.

I kept remembering back to the meeting at the BHA office on the day after the Grand National. Something then had made me feel uncomfortable and I'd had the same feeling today, although I couldn't put my finger on exactly why.

The chief superintendent was particularly interested in the payment of the money.

“You said this was thrown from a moving train?”

“Yes,” I said. “The seven-oh-three express from Paddington to Plymouth.”

“And where exactly did this take place?” he asked.

“Between Newbury and Taunton stations,” I said. “It was getting dark, so we are not quite sure where. We believe it may have been about halfway between the two, perhaps somewhere near the town of Westbury.”

Crispin was sitting next to me and he glanced across, a quizzical look on his face. He was just opening his mouth to speak when I gently kicked his leg under the table. He shut his mouth again and stayed silent.

“A hundred thousand pounds, you say?” said the policeman.

“Yes,” I said, “in used fifty-pound notes.”

“For what?”

“Sorry?” said Roger Vincent.

“It is normal to pay a ransom in return for something or somebody. You appear to have paid one for nothing.”

He made it sound as if we had all been rather stupid.

Perhaps we had.

Some members of the Board squirmed in their seats from embarrassment. It was all too much like having our dirty laundry washed in public.

“And what exactly do you expect of me?” the chief superintendent asked when we had finished.

There was a moment of silence, then Ian Tulloch said what we were all thinking.

“Why, Chief Superintendent, we expect you to catch this man, of course. Then put him in jail and throw away the key.”

“Yes,” said Howard Lever, “and quickly. Before he totally destroys the integrity of the British Horseracing Authority. As I've previously said, the BHA governs racing in this country by consensus, not by statute. If that consensus is not self-evident, then . . . there could be anarchy.”

I personally thought Howard was slightly overdramatizing the situation, but who knew what the outcome could be? I don't suppose the then Football League had anticipated that the English Premier League would be formed in 1992 and siphon off nearly all the TV and sponsorship money.

Could British racing afford half a dozen or so of the larger tracks to break away and run their own Premier League of Racing, retaining all the television proceeds for themselves? Most of the minor tracks, which presently received a share of such revenues, would go out of business overnight.

We might end up with a situation similar to that in the United States, where Thoroughbred racing was administered on a state-by-state basis, with wide variations in the rules, especially with respect to which drugs were allowed and which weren't, and each racetrack separately sold off its media rights to the highest bidder.

Twenty-three of the fifty states have no Thoroughbred racing at all, and a further fifteen have only one track each. Only the mighty state of California has more than three racetracks, but even it has only six to serve a population of almost forty million people, and each track declares its own champion jockey.

It could be argued that the BHA was more than just horseracing's authority, it was also the glue that held the diversity of British racing together as a single entity.

“Catching this man may not be as easy as you think,” said the chief superintendent. “I have been involved in several extortion cases before and none of them have been straightforward. I assume here that we are dealing with something you would like to remain confidential until such time as the perpetrator may be apprehended.”

“Absolutely,” Roger Vincent said. “The whole future of racing depends on the confidence and trust of the betting public.”

“That very confidentiality makes detection so much more difficult,” said the chief superintendent. “If one can't even explain to people why they are being asked questions, then they are far less likely to answer them. And the very questions themselves have to be circumspect.”

Tell me about it, I thought. That had been my trouble all along.

I could sense a degree of disappointment from some members of the Board who had clearly thought that informing the police would hasten the end of the problem.

But I could tell from his manner that a touch of extortion against the BHA didn't appear that brightly on Chief Superintendent Allenby's radar.

The murder at Cheltenham was being investigated by the Gloucestershire Police, who undoubtedly had the killer in custody, and the disruption of the Grand National was being looked into by those in Liverpool.

There had been no murders or any violence committed on the Met's patch, and I could tell from the policeman's body language that he didn't consider the loss of reputation of the BHA a sufficient reason to mobilize his troops. In fact, he showed all the signs of believing that we'd been fools to pay the man anything at all and therefore probably deserved to lose our good standing.

It was all a bit of a mess.

“If you have certain information that is pertinent to the investigation being carried out by my Merseyside colleagues,” the chief superintendent went on, “I would advise you to make it known to the investigating officer at the earliest opportunity.
Otherwise, you might be accused of hindering the investigation and hence obstructing the police in the execution of their duty. That is an offense under Section 89 of the Police Act of 1996.”

I wondered if there was a special school somewhere that taught policemen to speak in such a haughty and roundabout manner.

“But what about this man?” said Roger Vincent with a degree of desperation in his voice. “How will he be caught?”

“The Merseyside Police will be continuing their investigation into the events at the Grand National. I would suggest that might present the best opportunity.”

“So you will do nothing?” Ian Tulloch's tone was contemptuous. “I thought that extortion was a serious crime.”

“And so it is,” said the policeman looking straight down the table at Tulloch, “in particular when it follows a kidnap or if it is backed by threats of violence against the person. But this situation surely has more to do with animal welfare than criminality. It is not a case for the Homicide and Serious Crimes Command.”

He simply hadn't grasped the enormity of the possible consequences for one of the largest employment sectors in the United Kingdom. Horseracing and bloodstock were not just sport, they were major industries.

“Animal welfare?” Roger Vincent said in disbelief. “This isn't about animal welfare. It's about the whole future of racing in this country.”

But he was on a road to nowhere if he thought he could convince the chief superintendent, who stood up and made his excuses, expressing the wish to be elsewhere chasing more important criminals like murderers and rapists.

There was a stunned silence in the room after the door closed behind him.

“Well, that was an utter waste of time,” said Bill Ripley.

I had to agree with him. Far from my fear that the police would move in and try to take over, they had left us completely to our own devices.

“So what do we do now?” Ian Tulloch asked.

“We have to deal with the damn Press Association,” Howard Lever said. “It must be the same bloody man who told them. Who else would have leaked information about Electrode's positive test?”

“Could it have come from the labs?” asked Roger Vincent.

“Most unlikely,” Stephen Kohli said. “All samples are coded with a number rather than by the name of the horse.”

“Who has access to the codes?” I asked.

“No one at the labs. They are kept locked in the Integrity Department's safe.”

“So who else knows that Electrode tested positive?” I asked. “Apart from the people in this room.”

“Only the man who doped him,” said Ian Tulloch. “And now that policeman.”

I looked around the table. Could someone here have leaked the information to the Press Association?

It was not the sort of thing one could do accidentally.

—

THE MEETING
broke up without any firm decisions about what to do next.

We would neither confirm nor deny the Press Association's tip-off, although, despite his earlier reservations, Piers Pottinger was now concerned about the PR implications of saying nothing.

“The PR would surely be worse if we confirmed it,” said Roger Vincent. “Or if we denied it and then the truth came out later.”

“We could declare the Gold Cup void,” said George Searle.

“After doing the same to the Grand National only last week?” Howard Lever said sharply. “Our two most prestigious jump races of the year both void?” He shook his head. “We'd be a laughingstock.”

I feared that we may be a laughingstock already.

At Neil Wallinger's insistence, it was agreed that Howard should speak to the Merseyside investigating officer to provide him, in confidence, with the information concerning the threats we had received, so as to avoid being accused of knowingly obstructing the police.

Howard, however, wasn't at all keen on the plan. “We have no actual proof that the man responsible for the disruption of the Grand National is the same person who has been sending us the demands for money. His use of the word
fireworks
might have been just coincidental. Isn't it possible that they were set off by someone completely different? For all we know, the police may be right in thinking that it was done by animal rights activists.”

More sticking-head-in-sand behavior by the chief executive.

I was sure that no one else around the table believed it.