Tip Off

by John Francome

  ‘But I thought you’d been told to forget Toby’s death?’

  ‘That was before Lord Tintern got pulled on this other matter; it’s amazing how quickly influence can dry up at times like these,’ he grinned.

  ‘Okay, but what prompted you to go after him over Toby?’

  ‘When the CID from Bristol went round to Ivydene to pick him up, they collected every document they could find on the premises. One of these was a note written by Toby, addressed to his mother, telling her why he was going to commit suicide.’

  I looked at Matt, who nodded, unsurprised.

  ‘I always thought it was the most likely scenario,’ he said.

  I sat back and sighed. ‘So, what happened?’

  ‘Tintern admitted he’d been round to Toby’s that morning.’ I tried to look surprised while Wyndham went on. ‘And the night before.’

  Now I was surprised.

  ‘Apparently Toby had rung him and asked him to come; said he wanted to talk to him about a very delicate matter.’

  ‘Did Tintern tell you all this?’ Matt looked puzzled.

  ‘No. He told us some of it, but on the strength of what Toby wrote, we’ve also been out and picked up a nasty little character called Steve Lincoln – I believe you know him, too?’

  We nodded.

  ‘Why didn’t you mention him before?’ Wyndham growled.

  ‘At that stage, we couldn’t see why you seemed so reluctant to investigate Toby’s death. If you’d shown more interest, maybe we would have done.’

  ‘Did you know he was round at Toby’s too, the night before?’

  ‘Yes,’ Matt said.

  ‘He said if we didn’t charge him, he’d tell us what we needed to know. He hadn’t got anything out of the blackmail apart from a few quid Tintern used as a decoy. And we’ll need a rock solid case against someone like him.’ Wyndham shrugged pragmatically.

  ‘Lincoln said that he and Toby had been arguing. Toby was still infatuated with him, apparently.’ Wyndham wrinkled his nose. ‘No accounting for taste! Anyway, Lincoln told Toby it wasn’t his brilliant judgement that was picking all these winners, it was because Tintern was doping the opposition. Toby wouldn’t believe him, and rang Tintern to come up so he could tackle him about it, face to face. Lincoln was still there, hiding in another room, when Tintern showed up, so he heard everything – like Toby saying he knew exactly what Tintern was up to, and how he was trying to bring the bookies to their knees. Tintern denied it at first, but finally said the bookies had been robbing racing for years and they deserved it. Then Toby started getting hysterical and screamed that no matter what Tintern thought of the bookies, what he was doing was out and out criminal fraud and he was a disgrace to racing.

  ‘This didn’t cut much ice with Tintern. He kept very calm, Lincoln said. He agreed that he had made sure that all the naps had won, but said that Toby would never prove a thing and if he ever mentioned it to anyone, he’d send everything he knew about him and his rent boys and gay junkie friends to the papers, then Toby would stop being everyone’s favourite, cuddly television racing personality overnight. He said that if Toby’s father were still alive, he’d be utterly ashamed of him.’

  I winced, imagining the hurt Toby must have felt.

  The detective sniffed. ‘Tintern didn’t say much more after that and left, but Lincoln had already sussed out most of what was happening anyway. And he’d seen some photograph Toby had in his toilet. It showed Toby’s dad in his regiment, as well as Tresidder, Greeves – the chap in Newmarket who topped himself – and, would you believe it . . .’

  ‘Yes, I would,’ I said. ‘We’ve got it. Lord Tintern’s in the photograph too when he was mere Captain The Hon. Gerald Birt. So what did Lincoln do?’

  ‘He stayed on and told Toby if he didn’t give him any money, he’d get it out of Tintern. He told Toby exactly what he thought of him, and said if Tintern did give a story to the papers, he’d be selling his part of it too for the right money.’

  ‘What did Toby do?’ I asked, beginning almost to feel sorry for him.

  ‘Blubbered like a baby, according to Lincoln. From the letter he wrote his mother, he must have been in a shocking state.’

  ‘Are you telling me you’ve taken all Lincoln’s statement at face value?’ Matt said scornfully. ‘I’m amazed you’re treating him as a reliable source.’

  ‘And you would be right, Major,’ Wyndham gave him a deferential smile, ‘if we hadn’t had Mr Brown’s letter and another very strong piece of evidence to corroborate it.’

  Matt looked back at him warily.

  ‘When we’d seen this document,’ Wyndham went on, ‘we went back to his flat and interviewed some of his neighbours again, to check that Tintern really had been back like Lincoln said. The first person I saw was a lady in the flat below, an American lady in fact, with an eleven-year-old son who’s a bit of a liability by the sound of it. A few weeks ago, the inquisitive little bugger found a tape recorder in the building, hidden behind a fire hose under the back stairs.’ His eyes rested keenly on Matt, who didn’t even blink. ‘He didn’t think he could get away with pinching the whole thing – but he helped himself to the tape. Trouble was, it was a DAT-cassette, and he didn’t have any equipment to play it on. When he told his mum, he owned up to her where he’d got it and went to show her but by that time the machine had gone too; that was the day after Toby died.’

  He cocked his head to one side. He knew he wasn’t going to get an answer from us yet, but it was clear where his suspicions lay.

  ‘How extraordinary,’ Matt drawled, making no impression on the policeman. ‘What was on the tape?’

  ‘Enough.’ He looked at each of us in turn. ‘Someone had obviously secured a radio mike somewhere in Toby’s flat and installed a sound reactive recorder to pick it up. Now, who do you suppose would want to do that?’

  I looked at Matt, shrugging my shoulders. I was delighted I’d been acquitted of having made a crass error, and I knew that there was nothing Wyndham could do to prove we had anything to do with it. I also thought it wouldn’t have suited him anyway, it would only have made things awkward for him if we owned up.

  ‘Well,’ Wyndham said, ‘whoever it was did us a great favour. The whole of the conversation between Lincoln and Toby, then Toby and Tintern, more or less as Lincoln reported, was recorded in digital stereo; then we heard what Lincoln didn’t tell us which was that he wasn’t having anything more to do with Toby. Called him a sad old slag who wouldn’t know how to turn on a jelly fish.’ Wyndham pursed his lips in disapproval and shook his head in disbelief. ‘After Lincoln left, Toby was sobbing his heart out. Then he put on some loud heavy music, and that used up the rest of the tape.’

  Wyndham sat back, glad to have got it all off his chest.

  I resisted the temptation to take some of the credit for the tape, and looked at Matt. He didn’t react.

  ‘When did Tintern find the letter?’ he asked Wyndham.

  ‘He said he went back on Sunday morning to talk something over with Toby. He found him hanging, and, on top of the bureau, a letter, just folded, with “Mrs Jane Brown” written on the outside.’

  ‘Why didn’t he bring it straight to you?’ Matt asked.

  ‘Because it contained a clear account of what had happened, fully implicating him in the doping scam, that’s why.’

  ‘So why didn’t he destroy it there and then?’

  ‘Because if we ever tried to pin Toby’s death on him, it would prove that he didn’t do it.’

  As he spoke, I thought about Tintern leaving, as Tilbury had told me, pretending to talk to Toby through the intercom for the benefit of anyone witnessing his visit. ‘He must have been quite happy to see Toby dead, though, if he thought he might have told you lot about him?’

  ‘Yes, and it must have come as a very nasty shock when he got the first demand from Lincoln a day or two later.’

  ‘Have you got this letter of Toby’s?’ Matt asked.

  ‘
We’ve got a copy. We’ve already given the original to Mrs Brown, with our undertaking that we won’t divulge the contents to any third party. The fact is, she didn’t know it, but we’ve spoken to Toby’s doctor who told us he was undergoing treatment for clinical depression. Did you know that?’

  ‘No,’ I replied honestly. ‘I didn’t, though now you tell me, I can believe it.’

  ‘He had some pills, but apparently he got sick of taking them, wanted to tough it out on his own, then found he couldn’t and everything got too much for him. You’d be surprised how common it is.’

  ‘I saw it in the army,’ Matt agreed. ‘If they were the volatile type, some of the hardest men would crumble.’

  ‘Who broke the news to Mrs Brown?’ I asked.

  ‘I went with a WPC, on the way here. It was a blow to her, of course, but I think she’ll find it easier knowing exactly what happened.’

  ‘We’ll go and see her after this. In the meantime, I suppose we ought to congratulate you. We never thought Tintern would get caught for the doping, not once Taylor and Tresidder had gone.’

  ‘I always knew there was more to Toby Brown’s death than we’d found. And it’s good to get rich, pompous bastards like Tintern from time to time – shows how impartial we are. Now, Major, last time we met you started telling me about a man who might have had something to do with all this.’

  I guessed he was talking about Matt’s reference to China Smith – Harry’s man. We certainly didn’t want to bring Harry into the game now.

  I glanced at Matt. ‘Who was that?’ I asked. ‘I didn’t know what you were talking about.’

  ‘We’d never find him again anyway,’ Matt dismissed the lead. ‘Nothing was stolen, was it?’

  ‘No,’ Wyndham grunted cynically, ‘but I still need a full statement about this bloke, anyone else you spoke to and every single thing you know about it all.’ He started opening a file and pulling out statement forms.

  ‘What? Now?’ I groaned.

  Wyndham turned his stony gaze on each of us in turn. There was a cold, heartless glint in his grey eyes. He took a long breath through quivering nostrils while I wondered if he even had the right to hold us here, if we didn’t want to stay.

  Suddenly, his face creased into an indulgent smile. ‘Go on then. I fancy a day at the races, and I don’t want to spoil your big day. I’ll see you Thursday morning, nine o’clock – if you can still remember anything then.’

  Frank Gurney seemed to be making a habit of producing bottles of very expensive champagne and finding excuses to drink them. We had several when we arrived back at Wetherdown that evening.

  We were gathered, once again, in the large, comfortable drawing room at Wetherdown. All of us except Frank were sitting on Jane’s deep, yielding sofas. A large fire of massive logs helped to dispel thoughts of the harsh mid-March gales thrashing across the downs and encouraged us to relax after the six most frenetic weeks most of us had ever lived through.

  Emma was wallowing in the security of her new-found identity as Frank’s daughter.

  Matt was delighted that two of our company’s biggest investigations so far had – somewhat tortuously – found their way to satisfactory conclusions; but when he told me that he had a thousand pounds at five to one on Better By Far to win the Champion Chase, I was suddenly hit by the reality of what was happening next day and couldn’t touch another drop of champagne.

  Jane was doing her best to join in.

  ‘Poor Toby,’ she said. ‘Whatever the doctor says I still hold Gerald totally responsible. If he hadn’t set up this whole mad scheme, Toby wouldn’t have been driven to the edge. Do the police think Gerald’ll go to prison?’ she asked Matt.

  ‘Yes. They’ve already accumulated a very strong case against him.’

  Frank handed Jane a foaming glass.

  ‘Is he really going to go bust?’ she asked him.

  ‘Probably. With luck he’ll be a couple of years in jail, and come out absolutely broke, with no friends . . .’

  ‘And no family,’ Emma added, with feeling.

  ‘You know, what puzzles Harry most,’ Sara said, ‘is that Tintern had all these horses doped and he never had any money on the winners – not even his own horse. It seems so bizarre to go to all that trouble, and not even have a bet.’

  ‘Not really,’ I said. ‘That wasn’t his purpose. He was simply obsessed with doing down the bookies – all of them, and especially Salmon’s, and his thousand or so wasn’t going to make the vital difference; he wanted the whole country to be punting against them, and he nearly pulled it off for a few weeks.’

  ‘I wonder if he’ll see the race tomorrow?’ Jane asked.

  Frank gave her an enigmatic grin. ‘He no longer has any interest in the horse. But if he runs well, I think you’ll have him back in your yard for next year – in fact, any day now.’

  Jane looked at him, puzzled for a moment. ‘Why? Haven’t the receivers or someone like that taken over all Gerald’s assets?’

  ‘I offered him a fair price; the receiver won’t object.’

  ‘Oh, no,’ I groaned. ‘Not again. Does that mean I still can’t send Nester back to Jane?’

  Frank paused from opening the bottle he had in his hand. ‘That depends,’ he said, glancing round the room with a smile, ‘on what our relationship is this time next year. It’s up to you.’

  I glanced at Emma, who wouldn’t meet my eye.

  ‘Well,’ I said, easily. ‘It doesn’t really matter. Nester’s very happy where he is now.’

  Eighteen nerve-stretching hours later there was nothing in front of Nester as he swung left-handed round the turn at the bottom of Cheltenham’s unkind hill in the last furlongs of the Queen Mother Champion Chase.

  The stupendous reverberating roar in the stands didn’t penetrate my consciousness as I gazed at the broad channel of green turf that stretched away in front of him, broken only by the two last fences, to the winning post. I didn’t consider the possibility of anything having the effrontery to pass him. Nor, it seemed, did Nester. His pace didn’t flag for a moment as he landed after the second from home, and even quickened as he pricked his ears for the last.

  He saw his stride and launched himself with the grace of a gazelle over the tight-packed birch, powering on towards the finish in a relentless gallop that allowed no challenge.

  I could scarcely believe what was happening as the post seemed to rush down to meet him.

  Abruptly, it was all over; he’d crossed the line and I was breathing again, suddenly aware of the massive cheers of the supporters of my horse, and the crowd pressing around me in the box.

  The first hand to fall on my shoulder was Matt’s. ‘Well done. It was a brilliant run. I think he’d have done it even if you’d been riding him,’ he laughed.

  Emma, on my other side, looked at me with her turquoise eyes wet and shining, and squeezed my arm. She stretched up and kissed me. ‘Of course he would!’

  ‘And next year,’ I said, ‘he will.’