Dick Francis's Gamble - Felix Francis [4]
The assassin had known what he was doing in that respect. It had clearly been a professional hit.
But why?
Every line of thought came back to the same question. Why would anyone want to kill Herb Kovak? I knew that some of our clients could get pretty cross when an investment that had been recommended to them went down in value rather than up, but to the point of murder? Surely not.
People like Herb and me didn’t live in a world of contract killers and hit men. We simply existed in an environment of figures and computers, profits and returns, interest rates and bond yields, not of guns and bullets and violent death.
The more I thought about it, the more convinced I became that, professional as the hit may have been, the killer must have shot the wrong man.
I was hungry and weary by the time I pulled the Mercedes into the parking area in front of my house in Lichfield Grove, Finchley. It was ten minutes to midnight and just sixteen hours since I had left here this morning. It felt longer—about a week longer.
Claudia had waited up, and she came out to the car.
“I watched the television news,” she said. “I can’t believe it.”
Neither could I. It all seemed so unreal.
“I was standing right next to him,” I said. “One moment he was alive and laughing about which horse we should bet on and the next second he was dead.”
“Awful.” She stroked my arm. “Do they know who did it?”
“Not that they told me,” I said. “What did it say on the news?”
“Not much, really,” Claudia said. “Just a couple of so-called experts disagreeing with each other about whether it was as a result of terrorism or organized crime.”
“It was an assassination,” I said firmly. “Plain and simple.”
“But who on earth would want to assassinate Herb Kovak?” Claudia said. “I only met him twice, but he seemed such a gentle soul.”
“I agree,” I said, “and the more I think about it, the more certain I become that it must have been a case of mistaken identity. Perhaps that’s also why the police haven’t yet revealed who was shot. They don’t want to let the killer know he hit the wrong man.”
I walked around to the back of the car and opened the trunk. It had been a warm and sunny spring day when we had arrived at Aintree, and we had decided to leave our overcoats in the car. I looked down at them both lying there, Herb’s dark blue one on top of my own brown.
“Oh God,” I said out loud, suddenly becoming quite emotional again. “What shall I do with that?”
“Leave it there,” said Claudia, slamming the trunk shut. She took me by the arm. “Come on, Nick. Time to put you to bed.”
“I’d rather have a stiff drink or two.”
“OK,” she said with a smile. “A couple of stiff drinks first, then bed.”
I didn’t feel much better in the morning, but that might have had something to do with the few more than a couple of stiff drinks I’d consumed before finally going to bed around two o’clock.
I had never been much of a drinker, not least as a need to keep my riding weight down when I’d been a jockey. I had left school with three top grades at A level and, much to the dismay of my parents and teachers, I had forgone the offered place at the LSE, the London School of Economics, for a life in the saddle. So, aged eighteen, when many young men going up to university were learning how to use their newfound freedom to pour large amounts of alcohol down their throats, I’d been pounding the streets of Lambourn in a sweatsuit or sitting alone in a sauna trying to shed an extra pound or two.
However, the previous evening, the shock of the day’s events had begun to show. So I had dug out the half bottle of single malt whisky left over from Christmas and polished it off before climbing the stairs to bed. But, of course, the spirit didn’t take away the demons in my head, and I had spent much of the night troubled and awake, unable to remove the mental image of Herb growing cold on a marble slab in some Liverpool mortuary.
The weather on Sunday morning was as miserable as I was,