Dead Heat - By Dick Francis & Felix Francis Page 0,115

forty balls’ worth. How much is that?’

I remembered from school that the formula for the volume of a sphere was π r3. The balls were about four centimetres across. I did a quick mental calculation. The volume of a ball was about thirty cubic centimetres: 30CC per ball × 240 balls = 7,200CC.

‘Just over seven litres,’ I said.

‘And just how much is that?’ asked Bernard. ‘I don’t work in litres.’

I did another rough calculation. ‘It would fill a bit more than twelve pint beer glasses.’

‘And how much would that volume of cocaine be worth?’ he asked.

‘I’ve no idea of the price of cocaine,’ I said.

‘I expect it will say on the Internet,’ said Toby. ‘I’ll go and ask Google.’ He disappeared again.

We sat and waited for him. I drank my tea, and Bernard sneaked his fourth chocolate biscuit.

Toby came back. ‘According to the Internet, cocaine is worth about forty pounds per gram as a sort of wholesale price,’ he said.

‘And how many grams are there in a pint mug?’ asked Bernard, holding out his chubby hands with the palms up.

I laughed. ‘My brain hurts. If it was water there would be a thousand grams in each litre. So there would be seven thousand grams in all. I don’t know whether cocaine powder is more or less dense than water. Does it float?’

‘It can’t be much different,’ said Bernard. ‘Say seven thousand grams at forty pounds a time is,’ he paused, ‘two hundred and eighty thousand pounds. Not bad. But not that much for all the risks involved.’

‘But that’s not the half of it,’ said Caroline. ‘For a start, you probably import cocaine at ioo per cent purity, and then you “cut” it, that is you add baking soda or vitamin C powder, or even sugar. At least a third, and sometimes as much as two thirds or three quarters of what is sold on the street is the cut.’

I looked at her in shocked surprise. She smiled. ‘I once had a crackhead as a boyfriend. It lasted for a week or two, until I found out about his habit. But we stayed friends for a while longer and he told me all about buying coke, as he called it. I sers mostly buy it as a twist of powder or a rock of crack. That’s just enough for a single dose. A twist of cocaine powder may only contain fifty milligrams of pure cocaine. So you can get at least twenty twists from a single gram. That puts the potential street value of each gram hugely higher. In all, a jumbo-jet-load would be worth millions, and how many jumbo-jetfuls are there?’

‘Plus, of course, the profit from the sale of the horses,’ I said.

‘If there is any,’ said Toby. ‘He would have to buy them in South America and pay for the transportation. I don’t suppose there would be that much profit. Unless horses are very cheap in Argentina.’

‘How would we find out?’ I asked.

Toby went out again and I thought he was going to somehow discover the answer to my question. But he didn’t. He came back with a book. It was like a large thick paperback. ‘This is a catalogue from the Horses in Training sale at Newmarket last October when I bought a horse from Komarov. I thought I’d look it up.’ He flicked through the pages. ‘Here it is.’ He studied it. ‘It says here that it was sent to the sale by a company called Horse Imports Ltd. But I know it was Komarov’s horse. He was there. He congratulated me afterwards on my purchase.’

‘You mean you spoke to this man?’ said Sally, disturbed. ‘Does he know who you are?’

‘Not really,’ said Toby.

‘I hope not,’ she said to him. ‘Not if he’s trying to kill your brother.’ She looked at me. ‘You shouldn’t have come here.’ I could see that, for the first time, she really did believe I was in danger, and, consequently, so was she, and so was her family.

Toby was actually my half-brother. We shared the same mother, but my father had been her second husband. Toby was the son of a newly qualified accountant who had died of kidney failure when Toby had been two. Toby’s surname wasn’t Moreton. It was Chambers.

‘Komarov won’t know that Toby is my brother,’ I said.

‘I hope you’re right,’ Sally said.

So did I.

CHAPTER 19

Toby spent much of the evening going through the sale catalogue page by page. He came up with the fact that sixty-eight of the