Tip Off

by John Francome

  I nodded. ‘There’s a Green Paper being prepared with proposals to take away the bookies’ rights to make their own books and to leave them just as agents for the Tote. The proposers have a couple of Cabinet Ministers on their side and there’s a lot of support for it from most branches of racing. There’s even a rumour that the government may try to privatise the Tote. But until then, there’s no way the Tote could afford to buy these companies on their current profitability.’

  ‘What do you mean, “their current profitability”? They’re losing money hand over fist at the moment, which is presumably why the Tote have suddenly decided to come in with another offer.’

  ‘You can’t blame them,’ I argued. ‘It’s a heaven-sent opportunity. The way they operate, it wouldn’t matter how many tips Connor came up with.’

  ‘The point surely,’ Sara said, ‘is whether there’s a connection between this and Toby’s death?’

  We all stopped talking for a moment.

  ‘No,’ Matt said finally. ‘Because the winning naps have just gone on, and the people at the Tote simply recognise an opportunity when they see one. I agree with Simon: they’re being pretty naïve because the current position must be very short term.’

  ‘But if it keeps up much longer,’ Sara butted in, ‘it’ll be all over for the bookies anyway. I can tell you, their position is dire.’

  ‘Well,’ Emma turned to Matt, ‘what do you think happened to Toby?’

  He leaned back in his chair with his hands behind his head. ‘What’s the first thing that comes to mind when someone like Toby is found dead?’ He looked around at us all. ‘There always has to be a connection with what’s called their “life-style”. I’m pretty sure this has got nothing whatever to do with racing. I went to see Wyndham this afternoon, and he said they’ve still no reason to think Toby’s death was anything but suicide. I know Jane’s convinced otherwise, but that’s understandable.’

  ‘All right,’ I said. ‘But what do you think?’

  ‘I agree with the police. If Toby had been murdered by an angry ex-lover or whatever, it would have been a frenzied attack. If he was murdered and the whole thing made to look like suicide, it would have to have been premeditated, and that just doesn’t fit.’

  I took a deep breath; Jane’s instincts carried a lot of weight with me. ‘I still think our priority is to dig into Toby’s love life – to find Steve Lincoln.’

  ‘I won’t argue with that.’ Matt nodded. ‘We can carry on looking out for him whenever one of Connor’s naps is running – in case he’s still mixed up with it.’

  I was relieved that I wasn’t having to fight Matt every inch of the way and we carried on planning the best approach until soon after eleven when Emma broke things up, saying she wanted to be back at Wetherdown before Jane was up for early stables.

  Our first breakthrough came at Hereford, a day later.

  The course on the edge of the old city had attracted a good crowd for a Thursday; the West Country people were avid supporters of National Hunt, and the men of mid-Wales, with no course of their own, flocked in by the hundreds.

  I was the first to see Lincoln.

  He was leaning against the parade-ring rails, his eyes glued to Rowan’s Rainbow, Connor’s nap. Once again, it was a good horse which would probably have been favourite anyway in a race of this standard.

  With my heart thumping and hardly daring to believe that at last we’d found him, I pulled from my pocket a print of the photo Toby’s cleaner had given me. I looked at it to double check.

  There was no doubt.

  I moved quickly to a point where I could watch him unimpeded, afraid he might drop out of sight any moment. Discreetly using my mobile, I alerted Matt.

  Between us we shadowed every move Lincoln made, taking photos whenever we had the chance. When Rowan’s Rainbow won, Lincoln did as we had predicted and headed straight for the car-park. Matt stayed with him and watched him get into a well-used red Ford Escort while I started up my car and prepared to follow. I picked up Matt on the way out, with another car and a horse-box between us and the Ford.

  Lincoln drove at a sensible speed straight back to London, stopping only once for petrol outside Swindon. He finally came to a halt in a quiet road in West Kensington where, just before seven, he parked and let himself into a rundown red-brick terrace house which had been divided into flats.

  After two dragging hours, he reappeared, got back into his car and headed for central London.

  We followed, evidently still unnoticed. We passed the Victoria and Albert Museum and managed to tuck in behind him as the lights changed against us when he turned south into Beauchamp Place. He ended up in Wilton Crescent, where he parked and began walking back towards Knightsbridge.

  We carried on past him until we found a space for my car. We let him walk by before we opened the doors, chatting inconsequentially, and trailed behind him as he turned east towards Hyde Park Corner.

  A double-decker pulled up at a stop beside him. He wavered a moment, as if about to board it. We were still fifty yards from him, too far to sprint without drawing attention to ourselves.

  But Lincoln carried on while, with great relief, we stood and observed his reflection in the window of a chemist’s shop. He kept on walking for another fifty yards until he stopped outside a large jazz bar that was just beginning to get busy. We turned away as he looked up and down the road, apparently expecting someone.

  From the corner of my eye, I saw his gaze fixed beyond us, further down the road. He was standing absolutely still, as if unsure what to do.

  ‘He won’t know who you are,’ I said to Matt. ‘Get into the bar. I’ll phone your mobile right now. Keep it on.’

  I watched Matt walk in through the double glass doors, laughing into his phone.

  Very soon after, Lincoln turned and went in behind him.

  ‘He’s followed you in, Matt. You watch him there. I’ll stay outside.’

  After a few moments, Matt’s urgent voice reached me. ‘He’s walked up to someone at one of the tables. A man. He’s got his back to me at the moment, but he’s wearing an old cord jacket and jeans.’

  ‘Can you get a look at his face?’

  ‘I’ll try.’

  Nothing came through for the next thirty seconds, apart from the buzz of the bar.

  ‘Shit,’ Matt hissed. ‘He’s got up – a tall guy, but I still can’t see him properly. He’s left a packet on the table; Lincoln’s just sitting there . . . Tall guy’s out . . . he’s heading back towards the front of the club. Our man’s watched him go . . . he’s looking around, not doing anything.’

  As he spoke, I caught a glimpse of a man fitting Matt’s description pushing his way out of the bar, through a crowd that had all just arrived together. As I tried discreetly to tail him, he turned sharply east up towards the Lanesborough Hotel, with his left hand raised for a taxi. I broke into a run to catch up with him and get a look at his face, but before I did he’d caught his cab and was in, the taxi pulling away as I reached it.

  Sick with frustration, I looked around wildly for another cab to chase him, but there weren’t any empty ones in sight.

  Angrily, I turned and walked back towards the bar, speaking into my phone. ‘Matt, what’s happening?’

  ‘Lincoln’s on his way out. He’s got the packet – shoved inside his jacket. He should be coming out now. Look for him, Simon.’

  As he spoke, Lincoln came into view and a siren began to wail – a sound so common in London I didn’t give it a thought until I saw Lincoln’s reaction.

  He had come out looking very pleased with himself; now, suddenly, he was terrified. Before I could register the reason for it, he was gone – straight across the pavement, on to the broad street where three busy lanes of traffic headed out abreast from central London.

  The police had spotted their quarry just in time, though. Two of them leaped out of the noisy car and tried to run across the road after him, but Lincoln’s route was almost suicidal. H
is pursuers had to wait, losing a few vital seconds.

  Matt appeared by my side and we watched, frustrated, as the two policemen managed to jink across the tide of vehicles and sprinted west towards the Hyde Park Hotel. But by now Lincoln was well out of sight.

  ‘Shit!’ Matt snapped. ‘They’ve lost him. Let’s get back to his car.’

  ‘I’ll call Dougie; he can go and watch the house in West Ken.’ Dougie was an ex-soldier, first class in surveillance and one of our regulars on stand-by.

  Matt nodded as we turned to retrace our steps to Wilton Crescent where Lincoln’s small red Ford was still parked as if nothing had happened.

  We spent the next two hours sitting in my car, waiting for him to come back for the Escort, but he didn’t appear. Bitter at our failure, having got so close, we gave up just before eleven. Without any real hope of its producing anything, we took a note of the car’s registration number and headed home.

  ‘Lincoln must have been set up,’ Matt muttered as we left London behind at Chiswick.

  I nodded. ‘Either that or the police were already following one of them. I wonder what was in that package?’

  ‘Money or dope.’ Matt shrugged. ‘I’d bet money.’

  Chapter Seventeen

  I couldn’t justify it, but I felt sure we’d achieved something. It was just possible that what we’d witnessed in Knightsbridge was connected in some way with Toby.

  The very fact that Lincoln had taken the trouble to go all the way to Hereford to watch the race before coming back to London to pick up whatever was in that package encouraged us to think the two events must be related.

  I called Emma and, although it would be well after midnight by the time I got there, arranged to go and see her at Wetherdown. On the way, Matt and I went to the office to have a closer look at all the shots we’d taken at the races that afternoon.

  There were still a few cars in the car-park, and scattered lights showed in the glass and steel building where people were working late. After the noise of the wind and the incessant rumble of traffic on the motorway there was an air of cloistered calm and gentle warmth in the ultra-modern block.

  Up on the fourth floor, in the far corner of the building, the deep silence helped me to channel my mind into an hour’s concentration.

  I made large prints of everything that had come back on disc and spread them out across the broad ash table under a strong light in my office.

  Within the first few minutes, I matched one of them and recognised another face I hadn’t picked out before. It belonged to one of the official photographers. There were sometimes one or two down at the start but we hadn’t taken a lot of notice of them and, anyway, they were hard to identify, usually obscured by their cameras or bending over their kit bags.

  I was suddenly certain that this man had been photographing down at the start of every single race we had covered. With the diverse geographical spread of all the courses involved, it was beyond the realms of chance it could be mere coincidence.

  Then, looking harder at him, trying in some way to get to know him from this scanty photographic evidence, I knew I had seen this man somewhere before, maybe in some other context. But, try as I might, I couldn’t think where.

  Jane had been making arrangements for Toby’s funeral which had been fixed for the following day. It was obvious that the emotion this aroused had for the time being overwhelmed her. She had been in bed an hour or so by the time I got to Wetherdown around one. It seemed that Emma had been shouldering a lot of the job herself, and she was very glad to see me.

  The funeral was being held in the village church. Toby was to be buried in the ancient graveyard there, alongside his father.

  ‘What’s happening afterwards?’ I asked Emma as she bustled around, cooking me a very late supper.

  ‘Jane’s laying on a massive reception here. She thinks hundreds of people will turn up and expect a drink or three afterwards.’

  ‘That’s normal enough,’ I said. ‘I hope everyone comes back and has a party after I’ve fallen off for the last time.’

  ‘Simon! Don’t say things like that. Do you know, if you hurt yourself now, I’d be miserable.’ Emma widened her green-blue eyes and pulled a doleful face. ‘In fact, I think I’m going to ban you from riding any more.’

  I laughed. ‘It’s okay – I’m improving all the time. I’ve had a lot of sessions with Julia de Morlay, and she says my jumping’s much better.’

  ‘I hope that doesn’t mean you’re thinking about riding Nester again?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I replied evasively. ‘Anyway, we were talking about poor old Toby’s funeral. Who does Jane think will turn up?’

  ‘Obviously most of the racing world, and her family and Toby’s father’s relations.’

  ‘Are there many of them?’

  ‘Not really. But what’s worrying her is the gay contingent. She has simply no idea who or how many of them will come.’

  ‘My God!’ I gasped as the thought hit me. ‘Lincoln . . .’

  ‘He won’t turn up here tomorrow, will he?’

  I shrugged. ‘We’ll just have to wait and see. But, as a matter of fact, this wake of Toby’s might give us an opportunity to check out a few other people.’

  Emma turned back to the tagliatelle she was cooking. ‘Well, I’m glad it’s going to make someone happy.’

  ‘Come on,’ I protested. ‘That’s not fair. We’re doing this for Jane, remember?’

  Despite the lack of sleep and the tension of the last twenty-four hours, I was buzzing with adrenaline as I drove over to Reading through a drizzling, dark pre-dawn. I had arranged to meet Matt at seven.

  In the office, Monica primed us with coffee while we pored over all the shots again and Matt agreed with my findings. We couldn’t do Toby’s funeral and the races, so we allocated Larry to the job of checking out the day’s nap, focusing on the photographers and Lincoln, if he showed up. There’d been no sign of him at the flat, and Dougie had reported that his car had been clamped, apparently abandoned.

  The sky was clearing as we drove back over the chalk downs to East Ilsley for Toby’s final send-off.

  As Jane had anticipated, the crowd of mourners was too big to squeeze into the church and the late arrivals found themselves outside in, fortunately, mild, early-spring sunshine, listening to the service through loudspeakers.

  Toby’s uncle, Frank Gurney, had arrived from France first thing that morning. He came prepared with a moving eulogy, stressing Toby’s skills, talents and enthusiasm.

  I had seen photographs of Frank but this was the first time I’d seen him in the flesh. As I listened to the well-chosen words of his affectionate, unsentimental address, I couldn’t stop myself from thinking of Emma telling me of her conviction that he and her mother had once been lovers.

  Frank was impressive in an understated way. His deep voice was quiet; his well-preserved six-foot frame clad in unostentatious, high-quality Savile Row tailoring. His thick sandy grey hair was cut to a fashionable length and his tanned skin showed few direct blemishes or signs of strain. As he spoke, his candid blue eyes moved around the congregation in the crowded pews, coming to rest more than once on Emma, sitting between me and Jane.

  Afterwards, back at Wetherdown, where every room on the ground floor had been cleared and opened up to accommodate around three hundred mourners, I searched for Steve Lincoln. I found Miles Wheatley first. He looked as if he’d been crying.

  ‘Hello, Miles,’ I said, as kindly as I could.

  He looked up guardedly. ‘Hi. Sorry, I must look a bit of a sight.’

  ‘I’m sure we all do,’ I said. ‘A lot of people were very fond of Toby.’

  ‘Not many of us here, though,’ he said.

  ‘No,’ I agreed. ‘Most of these people are from racing. That chap over there, for instance,’ I said conversationally, pointing out Connor McDonagh, ‘is the man who’s taken over as the infallible tipster since Toby died.’

  This didn’t appear
to mean much to Miles who glanced at Connor and shook his head.

  ‘No sign of Steve Lincoln,’ I remarked.

  ‘Thank God!’ Miles spat.

  ‘Do you think he might have had something to do with Toby’s death?’

  ‘I’m sure of it.’

  ‘Why?’ I looked at him hard.

  Miles thought for a moment. ‘I don’t really know, but I’m sure he was part of it. He’s just that sort of person.’

  I spent a few more minutes trying to prise out more information but finally gave up and excused myself when I saw Frank Gurney standing a few feet away.

  I caught his eye. ‘I’m Simon Jeffries – a friend of the family’s. Aren’t you Jane’s brother, Frank?’

  ‘That’s right,’ he said affably. ‘And I know who you are. Amongst other things, you own one of Jane’s star chasers, Better By Far.’

  ‘I’m afraid you’re not completely up to date. I had to move him.’

  ‘Why was that? Not paying your bills on time?’ he laughed.

  ‘No. Gerald Tintern sent Purple Silk to the yard and that produced a conflict of interests.’

  There was a momentary stillness in Frank’s lively eyes. ‘Did it indeed?’ he said. ‘Tintern getting his own way as much as he ever did, then?’

  ‘I haven’t known him long enough to say,’ I answered innocently.

  ‘I have,’ Frank said, but in a way that made it clear that he wasn’t going to elucidate – not then, anyway. ‘By the way, I wanted to talk to you in rather more detail about what Toby was up to. I gather you found him?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘I didn’t want to discuss it with Jane. I thought it would only upset her.’

  ‘I’d be glad to,’ I said.

  ‘Let’s go to the office; it’s the only place that won’t be crawling with people.’

  In the comparative quiet of the small, book-lined room, Frank listened with complete attention and few interruptions to my resumé of everything Matt and I had unearthed so far.