Dick Francis's Gamble - Felix Francis [49]
She was shocked. “Are you sure?”
I nodded. “He must have spent hours every day gambling on Internet betting sites and playing at the virtual poker tables in the online casinos. And he lost. He lost big-time.”
“I don’t believe it,” Sherri said. “How do you know?”
I held out the photocopies of the credit card statements to her. “Herb lost more than ninety thousand pounds last month alone. And the same the month before.”
“He can’t have done,” she said with a nervous laugh. “Herb didn’t have that sort of money.”
“Look for yourself,” I said, handing her the statements.
She looked at them for a moment, but I could see she was crying again.
“Do you think that’s why he was killed?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. But I thought it quite likely.
She cried some more.
“I wish he’d never come to England,” Sherri said sadly. “Herb wouldn’t have been able to gamble like that at home. Internet gambling is illegal in most of the United States.”
So it was.
I remembered reading about the head of an Internet gambling website who’d been arrested when he’d arrived at a U.S. airport and charged with racketeering simply for allowing Americans to gamble on his website even though it was based in England. It had all been about accepting credit card accounts with a United States address.
I looked again at the handwritten lists of dates, amounts of money and initials. And I pulled from my pocket the MoneyHome payment slips I had found in Herb’s office cubicle.
Only last week, according to the torn-up payment slips I’d found in his wastebasket, Herb had received three large amounts of cash, two equivalent to five thousand dollars and one for eight thousand.
Suddenly, all of it made complete sense to me.
It hadn’t been Herb who had lost ninety thousand pounds last month, it had been the people whose initials were to be found on Herb’s lists, the ninety-seven people who were responsible for the five hundred and twelve different entries on the credit card accounts. And I’d like to bet they were all Americans.
If I was right, Herb had been running a system to provide ninety-seven Americans with a UK-based credit card account in order for them to gamble and play on Internet betting and casino sites.
But why would that have got him murdered?
8
To say my arrival at the offices of Lyall & Black about an hour after lunch caused a bit of a stir would be an understatement.
“Get out of these offices,” Gregory shouted at me almost as soon as I walked through the door on the fourth floor into the reception area, and he wasn’t finished then. “You are a disgrace to your profession and to this firm. I will not have you here contaminating the other staff.”
I had made the mistake of not sneaking in while he was at lunch.
Mrs. McDowd looked positively frightened by the outburst. I probably did as well.
“Gregory,” I tried to say, but he advanced towards me, bunching his fists. Surely, I thought, he’s not going to hit me. He didn’t, but he grabbed me by the sleeve of my suit and dragged me towards the door.
He was surprisingly strong and fit for someone whose only workout was the walk to and from the restaurant on the corner.
“Leave me alone,” I shouted at him. But he took no notice.
“Gregory. Stop it!” Patrick’s deep voice reverberated around the reception area.
Gregory stopped pulling and let go of my sleeve.
“I will not have this man in these offices,” Gregory said. “He has brought the firm of Lyall and Black into disrepute.”
Patrick looked at the reception desk, and at Mrs. McDowd and Mrs. Johnson, who were sitting behind it.
“Let us discuss this in your office,” Patrick said calmly. “Nicholas, will you please wait here.”
“Outside the door,” Gregory said, pointing towards the lifts and not moving an inch towards his office.
I stood there, looking back and forth between them. Everyone in the firm knew of Gregory’s temper, it was legendary, but I had rarely seen it laid bare and so raw, and at such close quarters.
“I will go out for a coffee,” I said. “I’ll be back in twenty minutes.”
“Best to go home,” Patrick said. “I’ll