Dick Francis's Gamble - Felix Francis [130]
His shoulders sagged just a fraction, and he looked down at the desk.
“What did Herb say he regretted?” I asked.
“He said he regretted finding out,” Patrick said wistfully with a sigh. “I was careless. I stupidly left a document under the flap of the photocopier. Herb found it.”
“So what did you tell him to do?” I asked for a third time.
“To accept what he’d been offered,” he said, looking up at me. “But he wanted more. Much more. It was too much.”
Herb had clearly not been as much of a saint as I’d made out.
“So you had him killed.”
He nodded. “Herb was a fool,” he said. “He should have accepted my offer. It was very generous, and you can have the same—a million euros.”
“You make me sick,” I said.
“Two million,” he said quickly. “It would make you a rich man.”
“Blood money,” I said. “Is that the going rate these days for covering up fraud, and murder?”
“Look,” he said, “I’m sorry about Herb. I liked him, and I argued against having him killed, but the others insisted.”
“Others?” I said. “You must mean Uri Joram and Dimitar Petrov.”
He stared at me with his mouth open.
“Oh yes,” I said. “The police know all about Joram and Petrov because I told them. I told them everything.”
“You bastard,” he said with feeling. “I wish Petrov had killed you at the same time he shot Herb Kovak.”
Throughout the encounter I’d been holding my mobile phone in my left hand. It was one of those fancy new do-anything smart phones, and one of its functions was the ability to act as a voice recorder.
I’d recorded every word that had been said.
I pushed the buttons and played back the last bit. Patrick sat very still in his executive leather chair, listening, and staring at me with a mixture of hatred and resignation in his eyes.
“I wish Petrov had killed you at the same time he shot Herb Kovak.”
It sounded rather metallic out of the telephone’s tiny speaker, but there was no doubt that it was Patrick Lyall’s voice.
“You bastard,” he said again.
I folded the note, turned away from him and walked back along the corridor to my desk to call Chief Inspector Tomlinson. But I’d only just picked up the telephone when there was a piercing scream from outside the building.
I stuck my head out through the window.
Patrick was lying faceup in the middle of the road, and there was already a small pool of blood spreading out around his head.
He had taken the quick way down from our fourth-floor offices.
Straight down.
And it had been the death of him.
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EPILOGUE
Six weeks later Claudia and I went to Herb Kovak’s funeral at Hendon Crematorium, the Liverpool Coroner finally having given his permission.
There were just five mourners, including the two of us.
Sherri had returned from Chicago and would be taking Herb’s ashes back to the States with her. The previous day, she and I had attended the solicitors’ offices of Parc Bean & Co., just off Fleet Street, to swear affidavits in order for the court to confirm a Deed of Variance to Herb’s will, making her, his twin sister, rather than me, the sole beneficiary of his estate. It would surely have been what he would have wanted. I, however, was to remain as his executor in order to complete the sale of his flat and to do the other things that were still outstanding.
I had written to all the American names I had found in Herb’s dark blue bag, informing them of his untimely death and that their little scheme to use his credit card accounts for their Internet gambling had died with him. I’d told them that they shouldn’t worry about me going to the authorities and they wouldn’t be hearing from me again. But I also told them that I had no expectation of hearing from them either even if they had paid Herb in advance more than they had subsequently lost. Then I’d used the cash from the bag to pay off all the credit card balances and used my letter from the Coroner to close the accounts.
Detective Chief Inspector Tomlinson had come down from Merseyside for the funeral service and he sat