To the Hilt

by Dick Francis

  On Monday I went by train again to Reading and did the rounds of the offices.

  Life had moved on for Tobias and Margaret, who were already dealing with the next unfortunates down the line, but they each gave me half an hour and information.

  “Old Quorn’s dead!” Tobias exclaimed. “Then where’s the money?”

  I said, “I thought you might be able to work it out.”

  He gave me his best blank outer stare concealing furious activity within.

  “I followed him to Panama ...” he said thoughtfully.

  “How many stops to Panama?” I asked.

  “Wait.” He turned to one of his three computer monitors, sorted out a disc from an indexed box, and fed it into a slot, pressing keys. “Here we are. Wire transfer from the brewery to a bank in Guernsey ... six transfers in one day, each from a different brewery account—it was as if he’d collected everything available into those six accounts; then he sent all six separately into the same account in Guernsey, but the bank there already had instructions to transfer the whole amount—multiple millions—to a bank in New York, which already held instructions to wire the money onwards to a bank in Panama, and that bank cannot say where the money went from there.”

  “Can’t or won’t?” I asked.

  “Quite likely both. All these banks have unbreakable privacy laws. We only know the path to Panama because Norman Quorn had scribbled the ABA numbers on some rough paper and neglected to shred it.”

  “Remind me about ABA numbers.”

  Tobias chewed a toothpick. “They identify all banks in the United States and roundabout areas like the Caribbean. They’re part of the Fedwire system.”

  “Tobe—what’s Fedwire?”

  “There are three huge worldwide organizations dealing with the international transfer of funds and information,” he said. “Fedwire—ABA included—is the Federal Reserve Bank’s institution. They have nine-digit routing numbers, so any transfer with a nine-digit code is likely to have been seen to by Fedwire.”

  I sighed.

  “Then,” Tobe said, “there’s SWIFT—the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication. And third, there’s CHIPS—Clearing House Interbank Payments System, which is operated also through New York and has special identifier codes unique to their customers, ultra secret.”

  “God.”

  “Take your pick,” Tobias said. “All the systems have identifying codes. The codes will tell you the bank, but not the account number. We know the brewery money went to a branch of Global Credit in Panama, but not into which account there.”

  “But they must know,” I said. “I mean, they can’t have millions sent to them every day from New York. The amount, the dispatcher, the date ... they could surely work it out.”

  “Perhaps, but it’s against their law to pass the information on.”

  “Not to the police? Or the tax people?”

  “Especially not to the police or the tax people. A lot of banks would be out of business at once if they did that.” Tobe smiled. “You’re an infant, Al.”

  I acknowledged it. “But,” I said, “what if the money just sits in Panama forever, now that Norman Quom is dead?”

  “It may do.” Tobias nodded. “There are billions and trillions of loot in unclaimed accounts sitting in banks all over the world, and you can bet your soul the banks profit from them and are in no hurry to look for heirs.”

  “Henry the Eighth syndrome,” I said.

  “What?”

  I explained about gold church treasures hidden in fields.

  “Just like that,” he said.

  I left him pulverizing a toothpick over someone else’s problems and presented myself on Margaret Morden’s doorstep.

  I told her what few details I knew of Norman Quorn’s exit.

  “Poor man,” she said.

  “So you don’t think,” I asked, “that the wages of sin is death?”

  “Are death, surely? And where have you been for the last fifty years? The wages of sin nowadays are a few years of full board and lodging at the country’s expense with a chance to study for a degree, followed by tender loving care from ex-prisoners’ aid societies.”

  “Cynical.”

  “Realistic.”

  “What about the victims?”

  “The wages of a victim are to be blamed if at all possible for a crime committed against her—I regret it’s often a her—and seldom to be offered compensation, let alone free board and lodging and a university education. The wages of a victim are poverty, oblivion and a lonely grave. It’s the sinners the tabloids pursue with their checkbooks.”

  “Margaret!”

  “So now you know me better,” she said. “Norman Quorn robbed little old widows of their pathetic dividends and I don’t give a shit if he died of a guilty conscience.”

  “Little old widows are a bit mawkish ...”

  “Not if you happen to be one.”

  “Well ... if the little old widows’ dividends are languishing in a foreign bank somewhere, how do we find them?”

  She said, “What’s in it for you?”

  I looked at my hands. What could I say? She would consider it mawkish in the extreme whatever I said.

  “I don’t mean that, Al. I’m in a bad mood today. I’m dealing with yet another deliberate bankruptcy whose sole aim is to dodge paying small-scale creditors, who may themselves go out of business through the loss. The people I’m dealing with will dump the suppliers in the shit, declare the business bankrupt and closed and go off and start all over again under another name.”

  “But,” I said, “is that legal?”

  “Legal, yes. Moral, you must be kidding. I’m not used to people like you. Go away and leave me to my disillusions.”

  “I wanted to ask you,” I said, “about that possible trial run. Do you remember any of the trial’s destinations?”

  She frowned, then, as Tobias had done, consulted one of her row of computer faces and tapped instructions into the keys.

  “It’s possible,” she said finally, but with doubts, “that Quorn sent a fairly small sum to a bank on an island in the Bahamas, who forwarded it to a bank in Bermuda, who sent it back to Wantage. The transactions weren’t backed up by signed documentation, and half the information—like the actual account numbers—is missing. If the brewery’s money is in either of those banks, which is doubtful, you’re not going to find it.”

  “Thanks a bunch.”

  “Cheer up. First thing this morning I consulted your committee of creditors. The agreements they signed with you will remain unaltered by Norman Quorn’s death.”

  chapter 9

  I walked to the office of Young and Uttley, expecting to find it locked, but when I knocked and turned the handle, the door opened.

  I walked in. The occupant that day wasn’t a skinhead or a secretary or Mr. Young with mustache or even the football coach Uttley, but a straightforward-looking man of about my own age dressed much as I was myself in jeans, shirt and sweater: no tie, unaggressive sneakers and clean hands. The chief difference between us was that he had very short light brown hair, while mine still curled on my shoulders.

  I smiled at him slowly, and I said, “Hello.”

  “Hello.”

  “What’s your name?” I asked.

  “Chris.”

  “Chris Young?”

  He nodded. “I’ve done a bit of let-your-fingers-do-the-walking for you,” he said.

  His accent was unchanged. The skinhead, the secretary and Chris Young all spoke with the same voice.

  “And?” I asked.

  “There was a goldsmith name of Maxim working in London in the 1800s. Like Garrard’s or Asprey’s today. Good name. Ritzy. Made fancy things like peacocks for table ornaments, gold filigree feathers with real jewels in.”

  “Tobe promised me you were good,” I said.

  “Just good?”

  “Brilliant. A genius, actually.”

  He grinned immodestly. �
�Tobe told me you were a walking brain and not to be put off by your good manners.”

  “I’ll kill him.”

  “Tobe told me you were raised in a castle.”

  “It was cold.”

  “Yeah. I drew an orphanage. Warm.”

  We got on fine. I made a drawing of King Alfred’s golden chalice, and he phoned back to his goldsmith informant with a detailed description. “And it has engraved lines round it that look just like random patterns but are some sort of verse in Anglo-Saxon. Yeah, yeah, that’s what I said, Anglo-bloody-Saxon. See what you can do.”

  He put down the receiver. “Those specs you gave me,” he said, “you can buy them anywhere.”

  I nodded.

  “I’d use them myself for disguises, if I could see through them.”

  “I reckon that’s why the robber took them off.”

  “That’s another thing,” Chris Young said. “Boxing gyms. Your spanking pal Surtees never goes near a gym. He’s as unfit as a leaking balloon. I’ve tailed him until I’ve had it up to here with him, and besides, none of the gyms in his area have ever heard of him ...”

  “Fingers doing the walking?”

  “Sure.”

  “Suppose he uses a different name?”

  Chris Young sighed. “He’s not the gym type, I’m telling you. Which leaves me—and don’t point it out—with no option but to flash your drawings of your robbers all over the place hoping for a fist in the guts.”

  I stared.

  “An adverse reaction,” he said carefully, in his incongruous voice, “is a positive indication of a nerve touched.”

  “You’ve been reading books!”

  “I’ve been bashed a few times. It always tells me something. Like being bashed told you quite a lot, didn’t it?”

  “I suppose it did.”

  “See? If anyone bashes you again, learn from it.”

  “I don’t intend to be bashed again.”

  “No? That’s why you asked about bodyguards?”

  “Exactly why.”

  He grinned. “I’ve a friend who’s a jockey over the jumps. He’s broken his bones about twenty times. It’ll never happen again, he says. He says it every time.”

  “Mad,” I agreed.

  “Have you ever met a jump jockey?”

  “I was married once to a trainer in Lambourn.”

  “Emily Cox,” he said.

  I was still.

  “I like to know who I’m working for,” he said.

  “And to check up on whether I would lie to you?”

  “Most of my clients do.”

  I would, I acknowledged to myself, have lied to him if I’d wanted to.

  His telephone rang and he answered it formally: “Young and Uttley, can I help you?”

  He listened and said, “Thank you,” half a dozen times, and wrote a few words onto a notepad, and disconnected.

  “Your chalice,” he said, “was inscribed with something called Bede’s Death Song. It sounds a right laugh. It was made in 1867 to the order of a Mr. Haworth Hill of Wantage, Oxfordshire, probably to impress the neighbors. It cost an arm and a leg because it was solid gold inlaid with emeralds, sapphires and rubies.”

  “Real ones?” I exclaimed, surprised.

  Chris consulted his notes. “Cabochon gems, imperfect.” He looked up. “What does cabochon mean?”

  “It means polished but uncut. No facets. Rounded, like pebbles. Not made to sparkle.” I paused. “They don’t look real. They’re big.”

  “You mean, you’ve actually seen this thing?”

  “I think it’s what I got bashed for.”

  “So where is it now?”

  “You,” I said, smiling, “are—I hope—going to prevent anyone else from trying to bash that information out of me.”

  “Oh.” He blinked. “How difficult would it be to make you tell?”

  “Fairly easy.” But, I thought, it might depend on who was asking.

  “You’d fold? You surprise me.”

  “The chalice isn’t mine.”

  “Reasonable. OK. I’ll start on the gyms.”

  “Be careful,” I said.

  “Sure.” He sounded lighthearted. “Black eyes will cost you extra.”

  He wanted to know if I was serious about a bodyguard, and we agreed that identifying my robbers took priority.

  Ah well.

  Returning by train, metro and legs to Park Crescent I was met by my mother in a state of agitation: that is to say, she was looking out for me and told me calmly but at once that I should telephone Emily immediately.

  “What about?”

  “Golden Malt got loose.”

  Damnation, I thought; fuck it.

  “How’s Ivan?” I asked.

  “Not bad. Phone Emily, won’t you?”

  I phoned her.

  “Golden Malt got loose on the Downs at Foxhill,” she said. “He’s not an easy ride, as you know. He bucked off the exercise groom and got loose and they couldn’t catch him.”

  “But racehorses often go home by themselves, don’t they? Surely he’ll turn up—”

  “He has turned up,” she interrupted. “He’s found his way back here. Don’t ask me how. He’s been in this yard for five years, ever since Ivan bought him as a foal, and first chance he got, he came home.”

  “Bugger.”

  “The thing is, what do you want me to do?”

  “Keep him. I’ll think.”

  “I’ve had a phone call from Surtees. He says he’s coming to collect him.”

  “He said what?”

  “He says the horse is Patsy’s.”

  I took a steadying breath. “The horse is Ivan’s.” “Surtees says Patsy’s going to sell the horse to prevent you getting your hands on it. He says you’ve stolen the King Alfred Cup and you’ll steal Golden Malt and rob Patsy and the brewery. I said you wouldn’t do that, but he’s bringing a trailer to collect Golden Malt and take him to his stud farm for safekeeping.”

  I tried to organize scattered thoughts.

  “When do you expect him?” I asked.

  “He’ll be on his way already.”

  I groaned. I’d just come from Reading, about thirty miles from Lambourn, and now, in London, it was nearer eighty.

  “How did Surtees know you have the horse back?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. But he also knows he was in Foxhill. All my lads know too. I can’t send the horse back there.”

  “Well ... I’ll come as soon as I can. Don’t let Surtees take Golden Malt.”

  She said despairingly, “But how do I stop him?”

  “Let down the tires of the trailer. Build a Great Wall. Anything.”

  I explained the problem briefly to my mother, who said at once that I could borrow Ivan’s car.

  Two hours at least by car. Roadworks and holdups in tortoise-slow traffic. Also, remembering the gauge from Saturday, I would have to stop for gas.

  I chose a train. I wasn’t bad at trains. I ran and was lucky, catching a metro without waiting and a nonstop express from Paddington to Didcot junction and a taxi driver who hurried his wheels to Lamboum for a bonus. I took with me my mother’s cash card and her phone card and all her available money, and my own new credit card and checks, and also a zipped bag containing the things I’d borrowed ten days earlier from Emily—helmet, padded jacket, jodhpur boots—that my mother hadn’t yet returned to her.

  Helter-skelter though I went, Surtees had arrived first. He had brought with him not only a trailer for the horse but an assistant horse handler in the shape of his nine-year-old daughter, Xenia.

  Surtees, Emily, Xenia and Golden Malt were all out in the stable yard, Emily holding the horse by his bridle and arguing angrily with the others.

  Emily’s Land-Rover stood in the driveway behind Surtees’s trailer, effectively blocking his way out. The exit on the far side of the yard, the wide earth track used by the horses on their way out to exercise, was at present impassable as it seemed a truck
delivering hay had carelessly shed its load of bales there.

  I paid the taxi driver his bonus and with reluctance walked into the angry scene. Emily looked relieved to see me, Surtees furious. Xenia gave me a head-to-toe sneer and in a voice just like her mother’s said, “What do you think you look like?”

  “Good afternoon, Surtees,” I said. “Having trouble?”

  Surtees said with unthrottled rage, “Tell your wife to get out of my way. That horse is Patsy’s, and I’m taking it.”

  I said, “It’s Ivan’s, and I’m looking after Ivan’s things, as you know.”

  “Get out of my way!”

  “The horse is officially in training here with Emily. It can’t race from your stud farm. You surely know the rules.”

  “Bugger the rules!”

  Xenia, giving me the insolent stare she’d learned from her parents, said, “You’re a thief. Mummy says so.”

  She was dressed in riding breeches, navy hacking jacket, polished boots and black velvet cap, as if for a showground. Not a bad kid. Fair-haired, blue-eyed, hopelessly spoiled.

  “Why aren’t you in school?” I asked.

  “I have riding lessons on Monday afternoons,” she answered automatically, and then added, “and it’s none of your business.”

  Surtees, presumably deciding that argument would get him nowhere, made a sudden American-football charge at me while my head and attention were turned towards Xenia, and with his shoulder cannonballing into my stomach, knocked me over.

  He fell on top of me, seeking to damage. Neither American football nor any form of contact sport had ever been my choice or capability. I rolled over and over in the gravelly dirt with Surtees, scrambling for a weight advantage, trying to disconnect myself and stand up.

  I could sense Xenia jumping up and down and screaming, “Kill him, Daddy. Kill him.”

  The whole situation was idiotic. Farcical. Killing me was definitely outside Surtees’s imagination, but the prospect of offering Golden Malt to Patsy as a symbol of his virility and superiority over the hated stepbrother lent him a strength and viciousness hard to deal with.