I imagined Finch had also been sending enlarged bills to all the non-Nantucket owners, getting them to make out their cheques to him personally rather than to the company, and then diverting a slice to himself before paying a reasonable sum into the business.
The Nantuckets were far away, and uninterested. All I guessed they’d wanted had been a profit on the bottom line, and he’d given them just enough to keep them quiet.
As a final irony, he’d charged the Nantuckets six thousand pounds for auditors’ fees, and nowhere in our books was there a trace of six thousand pounds from Axwood Stables. Trevor might have had his half, though, on the quiet: it was enough to make you laugh.
A long list of varied frauds. Much harder to detect than one large one. Adding up, though, to an average rake-off for Finch of over two thousand pounds a week. Untaxed.
Year in, year out.
Assisted by his auditor.
Assisted also, it was certain, by the ever-sick secretary, Sandy, though with or without her knowledge I didn’t know. If she was ill as often as all that, and away from her post, maybe she didn’t know. Or maybe the knowledge made her ill. But as in most big frauds, the paperwork had to be done well, and in the Axwood Stables’ case, there had been a great deal of it done well.
Ninety to a hundred horses. Well trained, well raced. A big stable with a huge weekly turnover. A top trainer. A trainer, I thought, who didn’t own his own stable, who was paid only a salary, and a highly taxed one at that, and who faced having no capital to live on in old age, in a time of inflation. A man in his fifties, an employee, seeing into a future without enough money. An enforced retirement. No house of his own. No power. A man with money at present passing daily through his hands like a river in flood.
All racehorse trainers were entrepreneurs, with organising minds. Most were in business on their own account, and had no absentee company to defraud. If William Finch had been his own master, I doubted that he would ever have thought of embezzlement. With his abilities, in the normal course of things, he would have had no need.
Need. Ability. Opportunity. I wondered how big a step it had been to dishonesty. To crime.
Probably not very big. A pay-packet for a non-existent stable lad, for a little extra regular cash. The cost of an unordered ton of hay.
Small steps, ingenious swindles, multiplying and swelling, leading to a huge swathing highway.
‘Trevor,’ I said mildly, ‘how long ago did you spot William’s... irregularities?’
Trevor looked at me sorrowfully, and I half-smiled.
‘You saw them... some of the first ones... in the books,’ I said, ‘and you told him it wouldn’t do.’
‘Of course.’
‘You suggested,’ I said, ‘that if he really put his mind to it you would both be a great deal better off.’
Finch reacted strongly with a violent gesture of his whole arm, but Trevor’s air of sorrow merely intensified.
‘Just like Connaught Powys,’ I said. ‘I tried hard to believe that you genuinely hadn’t seen how he was rigging that computer, but I reckon... I have to face it that you were doing it together.’
‘Ro...’ he said sadly.
‘Anyway,’ I said to Finch, ‘you sent the books in for the annual audit, and after all this time neither you nor Trevor are particularly nervous. Trevor and I have been chronically behind with our work for ages, so I guess he just locked them in his cupboard, to see to as soon as he could. He would know I wouldn’t look at your books. I never had, in six years; and I had too many clients of my own. And then, when Trevor was away on his holidays, the unforeseen happened. On Gold Cup day, through your letterbox, and mine, came the summons for you to appear before the Tax Commissioners a fortnight later.’
He stared at me with furious dark eyes, his strong elegant figure tall and straight like a great stag at bay against an impudent hound. Round the edges of the curtains the daylight was fading to dark. Inside, electric lights shone smoothly on civilised man.
I smiled twistedly. ‘I sent you a message. Don’t worry, I said, Trevor’s on holiday, but I’ll apply for a postponement, and make a start on the books myself. I went straight off to ride in the Gold Cup and never gave it another thought. But you, to you, that message meant ruin. Degradation, prosecution, probably prison.’
A quiver ran through him. Muscles moved along his jaw.
‘I imagine,’ I said, ‘that you thought the simplest thing would be to get the books back; but they were locked in Trevor’s cupboard, and only he and I have keys. And in any case I would have thought it very suspicious, if, with the Commissioners breathing down our necks, you refused to let me see the books. Especially suspicious if the office had been broken into and those papers stolen. Anything along those lines would have led to investigation, and disaster. So as you couldn’t keep the books from me, you decided to keep me from the books. You had the means to hand. A new boat, nearly ready to sail. You simply arranged for it to go early, and take me with it. If you could keep me away from the office until Trevor returned, all would be well.’
‘This is all nonsense,’ he said stiffly.
‘Don’t be silly. It’s past denying. Trevor was due back in the office on Monday, April 4th, which would give him three days to apply for a postponement to the Commissioners. A perfectly safe margin. Trevor would then do the Axwood books as usual, and I would be set free, never knowing why I’d been abducted.’
Trevor buried his face in his brandy, which made me thirsty.
‘If you’ve any mineral water, or tonic, Trevor, I’d like some,’ I said.
‘Give him nothing,’ Finch said, the pent-up violence still thick in his voice.
Trevor made fluttery motions with his hands, but after a moment, with apologetic glances at Finch’s tightened mouth, he fetched a tumbler and poured into it a bottle of tonic water.
‘Ro...’ he said, giving me the glass. ‘My dear chap...’
‘My dear shit,’ Finch said.
I drank the fizzy quinine water gratefully.
‘I bust things up by getting home a few days early,’ I said. ‘I suppose you were frantic. Enough, anyway, to send the kidnapping squads to my cottage to pick me up again. And when they didn’t manage it, you sent someone else.’ I drank bubbles and tasted gall. ‘Next day, you sent your daughter Jossie.’
‘She knows nothing, Ro,’ Trevor said.
‘Shut up,’ Finch said. ‘She strung him along by the nose.’
‘Maybe she did,’ I said. ‘It was supposed to be only for a day or two. Trevor was due back that Sunday. But I told you, while you were busy filling my time by showing me round your yard, that Trevor’s car had broken down in France, and he wouldn’t be back until Wednesday or Thursday. And I assured you again that you didn’t have to worry, I had already applied for the postponement, and I would start the audit myself. The whole situation was back to square one, and the outlook was as deadly as ever.’
Finch glared, denying nothing.
‘You offered me a day at the races with Jossie,’ I said. ‘And a ride in the novice hurdle. I’m a fool about accepting rides. Never know when to say no. You must have known that Notebook was unable to jump properly. You must have hoped when you flew off to the Grand National, that I’d fall with him and break a leg.’
‘Your neck,’ he said vindictively, with no vestige of a joke.
Trevor glanced at his face and away again, as if embarrassed by so much raw emotion.
‘Your men must have been standing by in case I survived undamaged, which of course I did,’ I said. ‘They followed us to the pub where I had dinner with Jossie, and then to the motel where I planned to stay. Your second attempt at abduction was more successful, in that I couldn’t get out. And when Trevor was safely back, you rang Scotland Yard, and the police set me free. From one point of view all your efforts had produced precisely the desired result, because I had not in fact by then seen one page or one entry of the Axwood books.’