by Dick Francis
‘No. What did he look like?’
Puzzled, Sandy Nutbridge did his best. ‘Well… he was shortish. I suppose about fifty. Ordinary. Sort of posh English accent, though. Wore a grey suit, and a tie. He wouldn’t stand out in a crowd.’
‘Our Mr Harlow,’ Ray Wichelsea said with peaceful emphasis, ‘the Mr Harlow you’ve just described, is, I am almost certain, a computer originator. An inventor. An entrepreneur.’
‘How does that affect us?’ Nutbridge asked.
‘He can afford a whole bunch of fillies.’
*
The quiet Mr Harlow was buying the splendid two-year-old as an engagement gift for the lively widow who had decided he should be her husband number three. Numbers one and two had bossed her around and then died and left her huge fortunes: Jules Harlow, richer yet, found pleasure in letting her run the show. The widow adored him.
She knew all about horses and spent days of delight at the racetrack. Before he met her, Jules had been barely aware of the Kentucky Derby. He spent his days inventing and developing microchip circuits and was quiet because of the depth of his thoughts.
When these two had first dined and slept together, their different interests and personalities had surprisingly meshed. Time had thoroughly cemented their coalition.
In England, Sandy Nutbridge’s mother packed her own suitcase with excitement and tried unsuccessfully to damp down the high spirits of her two grandchildren, Bob and Miranda (10 and 8), who were to accompany her to South Carolina to spend two weeks of the Easter school holidays with their father.
Sandy Nutbridge, divorced, seldom saw his children. The forthcoming visit, and that of his mother, filled him with genuine joy. Two whole weeks! He had told Ray Wichelsea not to line him up for any work during that time.
He had sent the money for all his family’s fares: his widowed mother lived on a meagre pension, and his ex-wife, remarried, had said if he wanted to have the children to stay, he could pay for them. He went to meet them at the airport and in hugs and kisses considered every dollar well spent. His mother, in new clothes, wiped tears from her eyes, and the children, who had never left England before, stared at the surprising spaciousness of America and were open-mouthed with ingenuous awe.
Sandy Nutbridge lived in a rented fourth floor two-bedroomed lakeside condominium apartment with entrancing views of sailboats, forests, blue-grey water and the setting sun. An hour’s drive over easy rolling roads took him to the centre of horse country where, in Ray Wichelsea’s office, he regularly put his feet up on a desk and drank coffee from disposable cups. Ray Wichelsea paid him by commission, not salary, and he collected his commissions in cash.
The Nutbridge life, on the day the children arrived, was coasting along comfortably at a fair standard of prosperity: the life of a reasonably honest operator with no political ambitions.
The children – and his mother – although tired from the transatlantic flight, were ecstatic over a real American fast-food chain supper of burgers and fries, learning the idiom ‘Hold the mayo’, with innocent glee.
That was Tuesday. At breakfast time on Wednesday morning, Sandy Nutbridge put on a thin dressing-gown over his pyjamas and, leaving his family exploring unfamiliar breeds of cereal, went down in slippers to the condominium lobby, as he always did, to buy a daily paper from the vending machine there.
Behind a desk in the lobby sat the blue-uniformed condominium many-job factotum, who acted as security guard, receptionist, lister of callers and message taker. Sandy Nutbridge casually said, ‘Hi, Bill,’ as he always did and turned to go back to the elevator, paying no attention to the two armed policemen leaning on Bill’s desk.
Bill, however, said, ‘That’s him,’ to the policemen who, as if galvanised by puppet strings, straightened up fast and pounced on Sandy Nutbridge, slamming him face first against the green-patterned wall paper and shouting at him to raise his hands and spread his legs apart.
Sandy Nutbridge had lived long enough in the United States to know that protest was futile. The policemen out of fear needed to know there were no hand-guns concealed in the sleeping pyjamas. Sandy might think it ludicrous that with maximum roughness they handcuffed his wrists behind his back and ‘read him his rights’, which mostly appeared to consist of a threat that if he said anything it would be held against him in court, but that seemed to be the American way of the world.
‘What am I supposed to have done?’ he asked.
The policemen didn’t know. They had been dispatched merely to ‘bring Nutbridge in for questioning’.
Sandy Nutbridge asked if they would accompany him upstairs so that he could dress and also tell his kids he would be gone for a couple of hours. The policemen didn’t bother to answer but shoved him towards the outside doors.
‘Tell my mother, Bill,’ Sandy called over his shoulder, but wasn’t sure his request would be granted. Bill couldn’t be relied on for the slightest favour.
Sandy Nutbridge still didn’t take the farcical arrest seriously and laughed a good deal to himself when the policemen drove in circles because they’d lost the way back to the main road into town. But stupidly hilarious or not, the situation hardened into seriously worrying when, at police headquarters, he was unceremoniously pushed into a barred cell and locked there.
Vigorously protesting, he was finally allowed one phone call, which he spent on alerting a friend who was also a lawyer to come at once to his aid after reassuring his no doubt frightened family.
Sandy Nutbridge had never before needed the services of a lawyer in criminal proceedings (had never in fact been arrested before) and wasn’t aware that his friend was a better drinking companion than advocate. Wasn’t aware either that his friend had got him arrested in the first place by sounding off within range of the wrong ears.
Patrick Green, the lawyer friend, saying he was trying to find out on what charge Sandy was being held, came no nearer pin-pointery than, ‘The IRS wants you on a three-year-old tax matrer involving drug money deposits in your bank.’
Baffled and by then deeply alarmed, Sandy Nutbridge found himself in court on Thursday morning (after a wretched night in the cells) before a judge who seemed equally unsure of the evidence for his presence there but who had a solution for everything. To Patrick Green’s plea that Sandy be released at once, the public prosecutor responded that as Nutbridge was a British citizen with a resident alien ‘green card’ (which was in fact white) he might slip out of the country before the IRS completed its investigation. The public prosecutor, therefore, opposed setting Nutbridge free on bail.
The judge, with years of weary cases behind him, banged his gavel and set bail at one hundred thousand dollars.
Patrick Green had expected it, but to Sandy Nutbridge such a sum was a disaster. He didn’t have a hundred thousand dollars, nor would his bank lend it to him without collateral. Unless he raised the money, however, he would stay behind bars until he came up for trial, and as no one seemed to be able to say accurately what he was being accused of, no trial date could be set.
Patrick Green reassured his friend Sandy that the bail money could quickly be raised: it would, after all, be repaid to the people lending it as soon as a trial date was set and Sandy appeared in court.
Between them, they did sums: so much from Sandy himself, so much from his mother, who telephoned and borrowed from neighbours and against her pension from her sympathetic bank in England; and so much from Ray Wichelsea, who lent his own money, not his firm’s, because of his faith in Sandy’s strong declaration of his innocence of any crime he could think of.
When all was added up, by Thursday late afternoon, they were still ten thousand dollars short. The money so far on its way by wire from England and the amounts already collected in cashier’s cheques in South Carolina were considered by nightfall to be in the hands of the US District Clerk, who would authorise the setting free from custody of Sandy Nutbridge but only when he physically held the complete one hundred thousand. If, he added not unkindly, if
the missing ten thousand dollars were in his hands by noon on Friday, he would alert the facility holding Sandy Nutbridge behind bars, and if they received the instruction by two o’clock they would do the necessary paperwork and free Nutbridge that afternoon so that he could spend the weekend and the rest of their intended stay with his mother and children.
Mrs Nutbridge, in tears, telephoned Ray Wichelsea, whom she had never actually met, and begged him to get Sandy out of jail. Ray Wichelsea could afford no more than the substantial sum he had already sent. ‘But…’ he said slowly, ‘if it’s a last resort, you might try a man to whom Sandy sold a horse a couple of weeks ago. He’s rich and he’s British. He might listen to you, you never know.’
So Mrs Nutbridge telephoned Jules Reginald Harlow and poured her sensible heart out in sob-laden local-accent English.
‘Sandy said I wasn’t to bother you,’ she finished despairingly. ‘He was adamant, when I talked to him on the telephone. He says Mr Wichelsea should never have suggested I ask you, but the children have come such a long way from home, and they are frightened… and I don’t know what to do…’ Bewilderment and overwhelming distress closed her throat, and it was for her, the beleaguered grandmother, that Jules Harlow felt sympathy, not for her salesman son, who was probably guilty (he thought) of whatever he’d been hauled in for. Jules Harlow still had faith that justice ruled.
He said ‘No promises’ to Mrs Nutbridge, but wrote down the address and phone number of Sandy’s condominium and said he would ring her back.
Harlow sat for a while with the receiver in his hand rehearing the desperation that he could alleviate. Then he phoned Ray Wichelsea and asked for his opinion.
‘If Sandy says he’ll surrender to his bail when the time comes,’ Wichelsea said, ‘then he will. I totally trust him. What’s more, his mother has borrowed money all over the place in England towards that iniquitous hundred thousand dollars, and there’s no way he’s going to default and leave her in bankruptcy and disgrace. If you put up money for his bail, you’ll definitely get it back. I wouldn’t have put up my own personal savings if I hadn’t been certain of it.’
‘But,’ Jules Harlow responded, ‘what has he done?’
‘He says he hasn’t done anything wrong. He says he thinks the tax people believe he’s been laundering drug money, but he hasn’t.’
‘Well…’ Jules Harlow hesitated, ‘has he?’
‘If he says not, then he hasn’t.’
Ray Wichelsea’s certainty didn’t altogether convince Jules Harlow, but as the computer genius realised that the essential question wasn’t guilt or innocence but whether or not Sandy Nutbridge would surrender to his bail, he telephoned his accountant and asked him what he thought.
‘If you want to do it, then do it,’ the accountant said. ‘There’s no reason why you shouldn’t.’
It was by then well after going-home time in the city’s Thursday afternoon offices: Jules Harlow’s day-to-day jobbing attorney had left and would be out of town until Monday, unavailable for advice. Jules Reginald Harlow drummed his fingers and looked out of the window and thought of poor Mrs Nutbridge, and finally dialled her number and put her miseries to rest.
‘Oh!’ she exclaimed, bereft of breath. ‘Oh! Do you mean it? Do you really?’
‘You’ll have to tell me what to do.’
‘Oh. Oh…’ She slowly recovered. ‘Sandy’s lawyer,’ she said. ‘His name is Patrick Green. Well, he’s gone to Texas.’
‘He’s done what?’
‘He had another case there. He said he had to go tonight. But he’s told a sort of colleague of his… well, at any rate, someone who shares office space with him… to deal with Sandy’s bail.’ Her voice wavered with uncertainty and doubt, a mirror reflection of Jules Harlow’s own feelings. He wished bleakly that he’d never bought the filly from Sandy Nutbridge: that he’d never in the first place thought of giving his fiancée a horse.
Mrs Nutbridge said hastily, ‘It’s all right, I’m sure it is. Sandy’s friend says if you get to his office with a cashier’s cheque in time for him to courier it round to the District Clerk by twelve o’clock tomorrow morning Sandy will be freed in the afternoon.’
‘Well, who is this friend?’
‘He’s a lawyer, too. His name is Carl Corunna. He said I should give you his phone number, and ask you to ring him just before nine tomorrow morning when he will be in his office.’
Jules Harlow, frowning, wrote down the number, and felt he couldn’t honourably retreat, much as he would have liked.
‘I’ll see to it, Mrs Nutbridge,’ he assured her. ‘Do you have anr money for food?’
‘Mr Wichelsea gave us some. Ever so kind, he’s been.’
On Friday morning before nine, Jules Reginald Harlow telephoned the lawyer who shared office space with Patrick Green and asked him how to proceed.
The colleague, Carl Corunna, gave simple instructions without emotion: Jules Harlow should go to his bank and withdraw ten thousand dollars on a cashier’s cheque. Mr Harlow should then motor to his – Carl Corunna’s – office on the outskirts of the financial centre. He, Carl Corunna, would receive the cheque, give Mr Harlow a receipt for it, and courier it round immediately to the courthouse.
Corunna the colleague gave detailed directions to his office and said he was sure all would go well. The collection of bail money was so common as to be routine.
‘Um,’ Jules Harlow said, ‘do I make the cashier’s cheque payable to you?’
‘No, no. I’m only acting for Patrick Green as he’s away. Get your bank to make it out to him. Come as soon as you can. My office is a good hour’s drive from where you are, and time is of the essence, as you know.’
With a sigh of mild reluctance Jules Harlow followed all the instructions and reached a thoroughly conventional suite of attorneys’ offices in a building a mile or so from the city centre. He parked outside at eleven twenty-five.
A bustling receptionist showed him into the book-lined domain of Carl Corunna, who proved to be bulky, bearded and approximately his own age, fifty.
Jules Harlow, reassured, shook his hand. Carl Corunna saw a smallish, slight, unimpressive-looking man whose somewhat fluffy hair was turning grey; and as usual he had no trouble in dominating and conducting the meeting.
‘You brought the cheque?’ he asked, waving Harlow to a chair, and when he held the expensive piece of paper in his big hands he examined it line by line, nodding his assent.
He pushed buttons on his telephone and told Jules Harlow that he was without delay talking to the US District Clerk’s office in the Federal courthouse.
‘Yes,’ he said into the mouthpiece, ‘the last ten thousand for Nutbridge is here. Cashier’s cheque, yes. I’ll courier it round to you at once. And you do confirm that Nutbridge will be freed this afternoon? Great. Thanks very much.’
He put down the receiver, called for his secretary to make a photo-copy of the cheque, and wrote and signed a receipt, giving it to Harlow.
‘What’s next?’ Harlow asked.
‘Nothing,’ Corunna told him. ‘When Sandy Nutbridge gives himself up for trial, you’ll get your money back. Until then, you just wait.’
With a sense of anticlimax after the rush, Jules Harlow drove uneventfully home. Sandy Nutbridge was released at three o’clock from the cells. Mrs Nutbridge wept with relief when he walked in through his front door, and the children demanded and ate endless comfort burgers and fries.
Mrs Nutbridge telephoned Jules Harlow to thank him, and after joyful boat trips on the lake for the rest of their holiday, Sandy’s family flew safely home to England. Sandy sold more horses. The court moved on to other cases, the Nutbridge urgency quietly receding. Jules Harlow, entranced with his fiancée, only thought about his bail adventure when the filly Sandy had sold him kicked up her tough little heels and won repeatedly.
Three months passed.
Towards the end of that time Jules Reginald Harlow married his delicious horse-racing lady and
took her on a wedding trip to Paris. While they were away Sandy Nutbridge was summoned for trial.
Sandy Nutbridge, supported by his lawyer-friend Patrick Green (long ago returned from Texas), successfully proved in court that the IRS (Internal Revenue Service – the tax people) had done its sums wrong and was prosecuting him in error. The judge agreed and dismissed the case. As Nutbridge had surrendered to his bail, the District Clerk duly dug out and distributed the one hundred thousand dollars in his care.
And that should have been the end of a fairly unremarkable no-crime event – except that it was only the beginning.
When Jules Harlow in good spirits returned from France he telephoned Ray Wichelsea, engaging him to find him another good young thoroughbred as a wedding gift for his new wife.
‘And by the way,’ Jules Harlow added, ‘any news of Sandy Nutbridge? Is his trial date set yet?’
Ray Wichelsea related the dismissal of the charges and said that all was well. The US District Clerk had returned his – Ray Wichelsea’s – money, and Jules Harlow would no doubt receive his own in a few days’ time, now that he was home again.
The few days passed and became three weeks. Jules Harlow wrote to Patrick Green, Sandy’s lawyer, and explained that as he was in residence again, he was ready to receive his ten thousand dollars.
A week later he received not ten thousand dollars but a short sharp letter:
Dear Mr Harlow,
I am not forwarding the $10,000 received from the US District Clerk but made payable to me, as Sandy Nutbridge has told me you wish me to apply that sum to my fees incurred on his behalf.
Faithfully yours,
Patrick Green.
Mild Jules Harlow positively gasped. Very seldom did he lose his temper, but when he did it was in a cold sweat of fury, not a red-roaring rampage. He walked tautly into Ray Wichelsea’s office and laid the letter on his desk.
Ray Wichelsea, not wanting to lose a top customer, but alarmed by his manner, read the page apprehensively and went pale in his turn. Sandy Nutbridge, summoned urgently by mobile phone, found himself facing two tight-faced hostile men.