Dick Francis's Damage

by Dick Francis

  My friend placed the tracking device, the receiver and the pens in a bag before relieving my credit card of an extortionate amount of money.

  I hoped the BHA was still paying my expenses.

  —

  I WAS back at El Vino just before two o’clock and there was no sign of Crispin.

  I checked once again that the Nokia phone was properly switched on and I placed it on the table in front of me. The icons on the screen showed me that it had full power and a five-bar signal. All I had to do was wait for the instruction text to arrive.

  Crispin appeared with a small battered grip in his hand and stood by the bar, looking around.

  I waved at him, but, at first, he took no notice.

  Eventually, after more waving on my part, he came over.

  “Jeff?” he asked.

  When one wears a disguise, you are the only person who doesn’t see it. Everything looks normal from within.

  “Yes, Crispin,” I said. “Stop staring and sit down.”

  “Why the masquerade?”

  “I think it would be better if it’s you who makes the drop while I shadow you. If Leonardo is a racing insider and if he knows what we normally look like, I thought it might be to our advantage if one of us became anonymous, that’s all. There was nothing to lose and everything to gain.”

  “I suppose you might be right.”

  “Have you got the money?”

  He removed a bright orange canvas bag from the grip.

  “It’s a tent-peg bag,” Crispin said. “I bought it at a camping shop.”

  “But is that it?” I asked, surprised. “I thought two hundred thousand pounds would be bigger.”

  “It’s only one hundred thousand,” Crispin said. “That was all the banks would provide. Bloody money-laundering regulations. What a nightmare. As it is, we had to get it from three different banks, and, even then, they weren’t at all keen about it. Roger Vincent has been pulling in favors from his banker friends all morning to bankroll even this amount.”

  “At least it’s not two million,” I said. “Or five. A hundred thousand will have to be enough.”

  “It’s only a down payment.”

  “Not if we manage to catch the bastard as he collects it.”

  “What’s with the rugby ball?” Crispin asked, pointing at the ball beside me on the table next to the Nokia phone.

  “I’m not really sure,” I said with exasperation. “I had a crazy idea but now it seems totally mad. I tried to get an electronic tracker we could hide amid the money, but that’s impossible as they’re all so big and would be seen far too easily. So I’ve spent much of the past hour putting a tracking device into this.” I held up the old, battered, deflated rugby ball. “I found it in a bush in Kensington Gardens and I had the thought that if we could somehow put it with the money, he might just take them both.” I held up my hands as if surrendering. “I know it’s stupid, but we have to try something.”

  “It’s no more stupid, dear boy, than giving someone a hundred grand with nothing to show for it. Our friend could go and do the same thing next Saturday. And the Saturday after that, for all we know. We need to catch him.”

  “Did Stephen Kohli call his police friend?”

  “He’s apparently been in court all day. Stephen’s left him a message, but I wouldn’t hold your breath.”

  “Why didn’t he go to the court and see him when they broke for lunch?”

  “He’s giving evidence at the High Court of Justiciary in Edinburgh. It’s mostly a Scottish case, but there was a constituent murder in London.”

  “Then we must find somebody else in the police to contact,” I said. “We could really do with their help this afternoon.”

  “You’re not going to get it. Howard and Roger Vincent have decided to wait another day in the hope that Stephen can make contact with his friend this evening.”

  “What did Neil Wallinger say about that?”

  “He doesn’t know.”

  “Madness,” I said. “Now, grab one of these and let’s get marking.”

  I gave him one of the invisible-ink pens and together we sat in a secluded corner booth writing BHA in big invisible letters on one side of the fifty-pound notes and the office phone number on the other. It was a very long shot, but just maybe someone in a bank somewhere would be curious enough to call.

  There were two thousand fifties in the bag, ten bundles each of two hundred notes wrapped in a paper sleeve. We had marked about half the notes when the Nokia phone emitted a beep-beep. A text had arrived.

  Both of us looked at it.

  Go to Trafalgar Square and wait.

  “He’s going to give us the runaround,” said Crispin, “in case we’re being followed by the police.”

  “I wish we were,” I said. “This could be a long afternoon.”

  22

  We took separate taxis to Trafalgar Square and waited patiently among the never-ending groups of foreign tourists.

  Crispin was holding the bright orange bag full of cash tightly in his right hand with the Nokia phone in his left hand, while I stood about twenty yards away from him on the other side of a fountain, doing my best to look inconspicuous holding Crispin’s battered grip containing the old rugby ball and the tracker receiver.

  I had wired us both with microphones inside our shirts and earpieces, mine hidden by my brown woolen beanie, while Crispin’s was under his scarf.

  We went on waiting. And waiting. And waiting.

  It was not until almost two hours later, at a quarter past four, that I clearly heard the Nokia phone beep-beep again through my earpiece.

  “Our friend must be watching us,” Crispin said into my ear courtesy of the electronics.

  “Why, what does it say?”

  “Only one person. The others must leave.”

  “He must be guessing,” I said. “He says ‘others,’ plural, when there’s only one of me.”

  “He may have spotted you and then assumed there are others.”

  I looked around at the familiar sights of Trafalgar Square and the buildings surrounding it. Could Leonardo be standing on the steps of the National Gallery? Or under the portico of St. Martin-in-the-Fields? Perhaps he was situated behind one of the hundreds of windows facing the square, from the Greek Revival splendor of Canada House on the west side to the Portland stone South Africa House on the east.

  I glanced up at Nelson atop his column and wondered if the view was better from there?

  “Maybe Leonardo is watching,” I said. “Shrug your shoulders or something as if you don’t know what he’s on about.”

  I glanced across as Crispin placed the canvas bag on the rim of a fountain and not only shrugged his shoulders but spread his hands open and flat in the universal gesture of not understanding.

  “That’s enough,” I said with a laugh. “Don’t let go of that money. Someone will steal it.”

  Crispin quickly grabbed back hold of the bag.

  “Now what?” he said.

  “We wait. He will text again. I’m staying right here.”

  I offered to take a photo of a Japanese couple against one of the fountains using their own camera. They smiled for the picture and then smiled again and bowed. And then bowed some more. OK, OK, I thought, don’t make a scene. The couple went on smiling and bowing as I moved away.

  The text arrived after another half an hour. I could hear the beep-beep via Crispin’s microphone.

  “It says I should walk to Oxford Circus. I have fifteen minutes.”

  “Go on, then,” I said. “I’ll be watching.”

  Crispin walked off briskly in the direction of the Haymarket, carrying the bag. I let him go. I didn’t need to keep him in view so much as to look out for someone else who might be following him.

  If there was anybody, he was very
good indeed.

  I was almost a hundred yards behind Crispin, as he walked up the hill past the statue of Eros at Piccadilly Circus and on up Regent Street, and I couldn’t spot anyone following.

  “Stop a moment and look in a shopwindow,” I said.

  Crispin did as I asked.

  No one else varied their stride in response—nobody slowed to light a cigarette or moved past him, only then to wait. As far as I could tell from across the street, no one other than me took the slightest notice of Crispin.

  “OK, carry on,” I said. “You have no tail.”

  “You sound disappointed.”

  “I am, rather. I was looking forward to twisting somebody’s arm. I was a soldier once, you know. I like a bit of action. And don’t talk, just listen. Just in case someone is watching your lips.”

  Crispin stopped when he arrived at Oxford Circus and he leaned heavily on the railing around the steps down to the tube station.

  “I’m far too old for this bloody lark,” he said, putting a hand over his mouth and breathing fast into the microphone.

  The phone beep-beeped again almost immediately.

  “Now where?” I asked.

  I watched from across the road as Crispin pulled out a handkerchief from his pocket and covered his nose and mouth. “Bakerloo Line to Paddington,” he said quickly, still panting. “Thank God, I’m not walking there. But why didn’t he put me on a train at Charing Cross? It’s on the same bloody line and was much nearer.”

  “Maybe Leonardo doesn’t know London as well as you do,” I said. Or maybe he was enjoying just giving us the runaround.

  I went down to the tube station using a different entrance from street level but ended up on the same train as Crispin.

  I still couldn’t spot a tail and I was now sure there wasn’t one.

  “You’re clean,” I said quietly into the microphone. “I’m in the car behind you.”

  I could see Crispin through the interconnecting door and I watched as he glanced in my direction and nodded. My examiner in the Intelligence Corps would have had a fit.

  I was six people behind Crispin as he ascended the escalator from the Tube into Paddington Station carrying the bright orange bag with its precious cargo.

  “Go and take a seat in front of the departure boards,” I said. “It will be easy to keep an eye on you there.”

  Crispin went straight over to where I had suggested and found himself space in the second row of red metal seats. I, meanwhile, sat down outside a café, with my back to the wall, from where I had an uninterrupted one-hundred-and-eighty-degree view of the station concourse.

  We waited.

  And waited some more, while all of those seated around Crispin went off to catch their trains and others arrived to fill their seats. At one point, I took a complete turn around the station to check if there was anyone else watching and waiting longer than might be expected. There wasn’t.

  At a few minutes after six o’clock, the Nokia phone beep-beeped again as another text arrived.

  “Bloody hell,” Crispin said covering his mouth with his handkerchief. “This is ridiculous.”

  “What is?”

  “I have to buy a first-class ticket to Plymouth.”

  “Plymouth!”

  “That’s what it says.”

  “You’d better do it, then. I’ll get one too.”

  “Do I get a one-way or a round-trip?” he asked.

  “Depends if you want to come back or not,” I said with a nervous laugh.

  “Our friend could make me catch a ferry to France from Plymouth.”

  “Or to Spain,” I said and heard him groan. “Get a round-trip. The BHA will pay.”

  “Not if they’re made bankrupt, they won’t.”

  He walked over towards the ticket office and I followed, keeping him in sight all the time. I wondered if Leonardo had made the buy-a-ticket request just to get Crispin to a certain point in the station where he would then grab the money, so I kept fairly close and alert.

  But there was no dash for the cash as Crispin uneventfully bought an open-ended first-class round-trip to Plymouth.

  “Have you any idea how much that cost?” Crispin said into his microphone as he turned away from the counter. “Almost four hundred quid. It’s scandalous. I could get a chauffeur-driven limo to Plymouth and back for less than that.”

  “Wait where you are,” I said, “while I buy mine.”

  I used a self-service ticket machine, but it charged the same unbelievable price. Add to that the cost of the tracking device, plus the receiver, and it had been an expensive afternoon for my credit card. I sincerely hoped the BHA wouldn’t go bankrupt before my expenses were due.

  “Now what?” Crispin asked, again covering his mouth with his handkerchief.

  “We wait.”

  I could hear Crispin sigh. He was clearly getting fed up with this game. But I thought it might go on for quite a while longer yet.

  I remembered one particular ransom drop in Afghanistan that had taken three days to complete, with me and the cash having gone on a tour of most of the southern half of the country before being “dropped” only a few miles from where we’d started.

  It was all to do with confidence. Only when Leonardo was confident that he would be able to collect the cash securely and anonymously would he give the final instruction to leave it somewhere.

  At precisely seven o’clock by the station clock, I clearly heard the beep-beep of the phone once more through my earpiece.

  “It says to get on the 19.03 train to Plymouth.”

  I looked up at the departure boards.

  “Platform six,” I said, “Go, now. Run. We’ve only got a couple of minutes.”

  I ran ahead of him, through the ticket barrier and along the platform. The guard had already walked the length of the train, slamming the doors shut, as I made it to the nearest one and reopened it.

  Crispin followed, struggling a bit, but he made it onto the train just before the door was slammed shut again and the guard blew his whistle for the train to depart.

  We both sat down wearily in the first-class car, albeit in different sections, as the train pulled out from Paddington Station, gathering speed as it rushed westwards through the London suburbs towards the first stop at Reading.

  The phone received no further texts until the train had just left Newbury Station almost fifty minutes later, at ten to eight.

  “It says I should go to the rearmost door lobby and prepare to throw the bag of money out the window on the left-hand side of the train as soon as I get the next text.”

  Bloody hell.

  The next scheduled stop for the train after Newbury was at Taunton, nearly a hundred miles away. It would take hours for me to get there and back, by which time Leonardo would have long gone together with the money. He had pulled a fast one. He wasn’t on the train at all. He was waiting somewhere beside the line to collect his loot.

  “Do we still throw the money out or not?” I asked. “The whole point of offering a down payment was to try and catch him at the drop and that won’t now happen. I reckon we should hang on to it.”

  “I think we have to throw it,” Crispin said. “In a strange way, we need to develop some trust with our friend.”

  Trust? I wouldn’t trust him further than I could throw this train.

  We went out together into the lobby at the back of the car.

  Unlike most of the British railway companies, which had progressed to installing automatic doors, Great Western trains still used the slam-door system, with a handle only on the outside. The doors were locked shut while the train was moving, but to open a door at a station a passenger had to pull down the window in the door, lean out, and use the external handle.

  Crispin pulled down the left-hand window as far as it would go and looked out
. I similarly pulled down the one on the right.

  The daylight was beginning to fade, but there was just enough of it remaining to see the houses of Newbury give way to the trees and fields of the countryside.

  We stood and waited, cold, and with the noise of the train loud in our ears.

  My crazy plan of somehow getting Leonardo to take the rugby ball with the cash had gone out the window—literally. Throwing them out together while moving at such a high speed would result in them separating wildly.

  “OK,” I said. “Throw the bag out, but give it a good firm chuck or else it will be drawn back under the wheels.”

  We stood in readiness, with Crispin holding the phone up to his ear so as not to miss the sound of the text’s arrival.

  The phone went beep-beep and Crispin immediately threw the bright orange canvas bag containing the hundred thousand pounds out the train window.

  At the same time, I tossed the battered old rugby ball out my window, hoping that it wouldn’t be seen by someone waiting on the other side.

  Both of us stood for a moment looking out into the gathering darkness.

  “Now what, dear boy?” asked Crispin, pulling up his window.

  “Enjoy the journey and get off at Taunton. You then take a train back to London and I’ll find a room for the night. There’s absolutely nothing we can do in the dark. I’ll rent a car and try to find the rugby ball in the morning. It might tell us exactly where we were when you threw the money out.”

  “Right,” Crispin said gloomily. “I’d better call Roger Vincent and Howard Lever. They’ll be wondering what has happened. I can’t think that either of them will be pleased.”

  Rather him than me, I thought.

  I looked out the train window into the night that had now completely enveloped us. “Our friend Leonardo has been very shrewd,” I said. “He knew exactly what time of day to stage this stunt so there would be just enough light left for him to find the money but would be pitch-black long before anyone else could get there.”

  “He’s a clever bastard,” Crispin said, “that’s for sure.”

  Yeah, I thought, but I could be a clever bastard too.