Front Runner

by Felix Francis

The detective inspector hesitated. There was no way I was going to let him go away now without telling me.

  “Tell me,” I insisted. “After all, you and I are in the same business. I am a member of horseracing’s police force. We’re both detectives.”

  “All I know is, the Thames Valley forensic team discovered evidence of bodily fluids in the unburned section of the trunk of the Mercedes, including traces of blood from Mr. Swinton.”

  “In the trunk?”

  “Yes.”

  One couldn’t drive a car from the trunk.

  Someone else had to have been there and suicide is a solitary affair.

  So if it wasn’t suicide, was it murder?

  17

  By Thursday morning, I was more than ready to be discharged. For a start, I was getting fed up with hospital food. And I was not sleeping very well. Not that it was a bad thing—I had one eye always open for a stocky man with a carving knife in his hand.

  “Can I please go home?” I asked Dr. Shwan, who popped in to see me at seven-thirty on his way to his day shift in the ER.

  “We need to give things a little longer to heal with you resting here,” he said.

  “I can rest at home,” I pointed out.

  “But would you? It’s only been four days since I had your heart actually beating in my hand. I’ll admit you’ve made remarkable progress so far, but you must give your body a chance to recover from having had both your chest and your abdomen opened or otherwise you’ll be back here in worse shape. I’ve said that you might be able to go home on Saturday, yet that’s really too soon. The sutures won’t come out until the middle of next week and, while they remain, there’s always a risk of infection.”

  “I’ll take that as a no, then,” I said.

  He smiled and nodded. “You do that.”

  “Can you give me something to help me sleep? I’m lying awake for hours every night.”

  “It’s not unusual for open-heart patients to complain about having insomnia after their surgery, but I’m loath to give you sedatives. They can slow the healing process. If it’s pain that’s keeping you awake, we can give you something for that.”

  “It’s not so much pain as the bloody itching of the wounds. It’s driving me crazy, especially in the quiet of the night, when it seems to come on the worst.”

  “Itching is actually a good thing,” he said. “It means you’re mending. However, try not to scratch, as that can cause infection. When they’ve healed a bit more, you can use a cream. But not yet. Sorry.”

  The doctor departed and I went back to studying the ceiling of my room while trying hard not to rub at the incisions on my chest and abdomen.

  I was frustrated.

  I had promised Faye that I would get on and live my life to the full. Instead, I was stuck here in a hospital room, marking time.

  There were things I wanted to do. Not least, finding out who had tried to kill me.

  —

  THURSDAY TURNED OUT to be a day full of visitors.

  Next to arrive was D.S. Jagger from the Thames Valley Police, who walked into my room unannounced just after nine o’clock as I was looking through some of the mug shots on the iPad.

  “Recognize any of them?” he asked. “We’ve got plenty more of those at Thames Valley.”

  “None so far,” I said, putting the iPad down. “I hear you have some news for me.”

  “Have I?” he said, pulling up a chair.

  “Concerning Dave Swinton’s car?”

  “How did you hear that?” he asked.

  “Through the grapevine.”

  He wasn’t pleased. “I have some questions for you,” he said.

  “Fire away.”

  “On the morning when you were shut in the sauna, did you actually see who pushed you in there?”

  “No,” I said. “I told you that I didn’t. I was pushed in and the door slammed shut before I could turn around.”

  “Do you think it could have been someone other than Mr. Swinton?”

  “I suppose it could have been anyone,” I said. “I assumed it was Dave, but I didn’t actually see him. Whoever it was didn’t say anything when I called out, even though he had to have heard me. Why do you ask?”

  “We now think it may be possible that Mr. Swinton was not responsible.”

  I waited for him to go on but he didn’t, so I prompted.

  “What did you find in the trunk of his Mercedes?”

  “Plastic cable ties,” he said.

  It was not what I’d been expecting. “What about them?”

  “At least one of them had traces of David Swinton’s blood on it. The DNA proved it.” He paused, as if deciding whether or not to continue. “The back end of the car was never fully enveloped by the fire. We found bloodstains on the trunk carpet that survived the inferno. These too matched Mr. Swinton. There were also traces of urine in the carpet, although we cannot be sure who it came from, as urine doesn’t contain any DNA.”

  “Are you implying that Dave Swinton may have been tied up in the trunk of his own car with cable ties?”

  “Yes, I am,” the sergeant said. “That is the possibility we are now investigating. And we are formally treating his death as unexplained.”

  “Not as murder?” I asked.

  “No, not yet. We still have more tests to make on both the car and the ties, and also on Mr. Swinton’s remains, before we are sure. Officially, suicide still remains an option.”

  “But you don’t believe it?” I said.

  “No.”

  “Was he even still alive when the fire started?” I said.

  “Yes, he was, otherwise we would know for sure it wasn’t suicide. There was evidence of deep internal burns that are consistent with him breathing in superheated air and flames. There were also some gasoline residues found in his lungs.”

  Too much information.

  “I suppose he may have been unconscious,” I said, wishing for a more agreeable mental picture in my head. “Otherwise, why would he sit meekly in a car while someone else set fire to it?”

  “Maybe he was forced into that position. A couple of cable ties to secure his hands to the steering wheel would do it. The plastic would fully burn away in a fire of such intensity. There’d be no trace. If it hadn’t been for the prompt arrival of the fire department, we would never have recovered those left in the trunk.”

  I shivered once again at the memory of the video images of Dave sitting bolt upright in the burning Mercedes. To think that he might have been tied up, alive and alert, while someone poured gas into the car and then set it alight was unimaginably awful.

  “Now,” he said, “you told me at Lambourn that you thought Mr. Swinton had tried to kill you because you were aware that he had purposely lost a horse race and he didn’t want you telling anyone.”

  “Yes.”

  “If it wasn’t David Swinton who shut you in the sauna, can you think of anyone else who would want you dead?”

  I looked at him and raised my eyebrows. “Why do you think I’m in here?”

  He smiled. “Yes, of course. But can you think of anyone who might have wanted both you and Mr. Swinton dead?”

  It was time to tell the whole truth, not just the edited version.

  “Dave Swinton was being blackmailed,” I said.

  He stared at me. “How do you know?”

  “He told me the day before he died, on the way to Newbury races.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me this before?” He was cross and maybe he had a right to be.

  “I would have told the inquest,” I said as a lame excuse. “I didn’t think it was relevant to your investigation if he had killed himself. But now . . .”

  His look was enough to tell me that he thought it was relevant anyway.

  “Who was blackmailing him?” h
e asked me.

  “I don’t know who. But I think Dave had found out. When he rang to ask me to come back to Lambourn on Sunday morning, he said that he now knew who it was. He wouldn’t tell me on the phone because he didn’t trust that someone wasn’t listening to his calls. That’s why I went to see him.”

  “Was he being blackmailed because he purposely lost races?”

  “No,” I said emphatically. “That’s what he was blackmailed into doing.”

  “So what else was it?”

  I hesitated.

  “Come on, Mr. Hinkley,” said the detective impatiently. “Tell me now.”

  “I really don’t want to further denigrate the reputation of one of our sport’s greatest ambassadors. It may have nothing to do with his death.”

  “Let me be the judge of that,” he said sternly.

  He was right.

  Of course he was right. If Dave Swinton had been murdered to prevent him saying who the blackmailer was, then why he was being blackmailed was more than just relevant to the investigation, it was crucial.

  “Dave told me that it was to do with taxes. Something about not declaring income from extra payments he’d received for riding in races.”

  “Did he say how much these extra payments were?”

  “About two hundred thousand pounds,” I said. “It seems that someone was threatening to report him to the authorities.”

  “How much did the blackmailer demand?”

  “That’s what’s strange. He didn’t want money. He just told Dave to lose a race.”

  “Mr. Swinton was sure it was a man?”

  “He said a man called him and told him which race he must not win.”

  I could see from his expression that D.S. Jagger thought it a very unlikely scenario. He had made it quite clear previously that he rated the purposeful loss of a horse race as rather trivial, and I suppose it was compared with his daily diet of murders and rapes.

  “Who would know about these extra payments?”

  “Just about every trainer and owner Dave Swinton rode for. It was general knowledge that he would demand an extra payment over and above the regular riding fee.”

  “But did they all know that he hadn’t paid tax on it?”

  “It seems that he always asked for the extra payments in cash. And it doesn’t take much imagination to realize why.”

  “Did Mr. Swinton tell you all of this?”

  “Not all of it,” I said. “After Dave died, I spoke to a couple of trainers that he’d ridden for. They both told me, independently, about the extra payments. The only thing Dave told me was that he was being blackmailed for not paying tax on some money, not where the money came from.”

  D.S. Jagger wrote in his notebook. “Mr. Hinkley, you will have to make another formal statement and, this time, with all the relevant information included. Do I make myself clear?”

  He was still cross with me.

  “Perfectly clear,” I said.

  “I will arrange for one of my constables to come and take it. Will you be in here long?”

  “I’m told until Saturday,” I said. “But I’m forming an escape committee.”

  “I’ll send my constable tomorrow,” he said. “And be sure to tell him everything you can think of whether you believe it’s relevant or not.”

  “Tell him to bring lots of paper,” I said. “I’ll give him my life story.”

  “Be serious, Mr. Hinkley.”

  “I am. If there’s one lesson I’ve learned during my time at the BHA, it’s that there is no such thing as an isolated incident. Thoroughbred racing may be one of the largest industries in this country, but those involved—breeders, owners, trainers and jockeys—are like a close-knit family. Everybody knows everybody else and they’re all connected by blood, by marriage or by financial dependency.”

  I wondered if I should tell him about Bill McKenzie and his ride on Wisden Wonder. And maybe about Leslie Morris and his large cash bets. Were they also relevant? Bill McKenzie had told me that he wasn’t being blackmailed, but I wasn’t sure I believed him. He had definitely lost that race at Sandown on purpose, just as Dave Swinton had at Haydock. Were the two connected?

  That’s what I should have been investigating this week, not lying in some hospital bed twiddling my thumbs.

  —

  NEXT TO ARRIVE was Paul Maldini, although it did take him a while to get in, as one of the nurses had called hospital security when she found him loitering outside my room.

  “It must be your shady Italian ancestry,” I said with a laugh as he was finally permitted to enter.

  “Bloody ridiculous,” he said.

  “Not at all. I asked them to vet all my visitors. There’s someone out there with a long, thin carving knife, and I have no wish to meet him again, thank you very much.”

  “It’s very inconvenient, you being in here,” he said, clearly irritated. Paul Maldini was not one for pleasantries like How are you feeling? or I’m glad you’re alive, he was only thinking of the work I was missing.

  “I’m not lying here out of choice, I can assure you, and it’s better than the alternative.”

  “What alternative?”

  “The morgue,” I said. “Seems it was close.”

  I filled him in on most of the details without making the whole thing too melodramatic.

  He was silent for a moment, perhaps thinking, as I was, that my present predicament was not quite so inconvenient after all. At least I would be coming back to the office eventually.

  “Do you have any idea who did it?” he asked.

  “No,” I said. “But it might be the same person who shut me in the sauna last week.”

  “What sauna?” he asked.

  Oops! I’d forgotten that I hadn’t actually told Paul about the sauna incident. In fact, I hadn’t told him anything about my exchanges with Dave Swinton.

  This could be awkward. Not least because I’d already told the police.

  “Someone locked me in a sauna,” I said.

  “How odd,” he said. “Where?”

  I hesitated.

  I’d have to tell him and face the music. “At Dave Swinton’s house.”

  “What were you doing at Dave Swinton’s house?”

  I took as deep a breath as my stitches would allow. “I think I’d better explain everything from the beginning.”

  I told him about Dave calling me early on Hennessy Saturday, demanding to speak with me, and of my subsequent trip to Lambourn and Newbury.

  Paul’s eyes widened when I recounted what Dave had said about purposely losing a race, and his eyebrows almost disappeared into his hairline when I explained about the blackmail. By the time I disclosed the details of my return visit on Sunday morning, including being shut into and then escaping from the sweltering sauna, he was almost apoplectic.

  “Why the bloody hell didn’t you tell me all this before?”

  “When it was reported on the news that Dave had killed himself, it suddenly didn’t seem important. Why would I want to tarnish the glittering reputation of our hero with nasty rumors about race fixing and tax evasion when I had no real evidence that either was true?”

  “But he himself had admitted it,” Paul said angrily. “We should have suspended him from riding immediately and convened a disciplinary panel.”

  “There you go,” I said. “If I’d told you straightaway, it would have been headlines in the Sunday papers.”

  “But—”

  “But nothing,” I said, interrupting him. “Just be thankful that it didn’t happen, otherwise the BHA would have been blamed for pushing Dave Swinton to kill himself.”

  That shut him up.

  “And also,” I said, “instead of reflecting on his stellar racing career, as they rightly did, the obituaries would have been all about his possible
connection to fraud and deception. Is that what you would have wanted?”

  From the look on his face, perhaps it was.

  Paul always considered that anyone who broke the Rules of Racing was personally insulting him in some way. And he didn’t take kindly to insults. But maybe it was because Paul individually had invested so much in Dave Swinton as the poster boy of the Racing Needs You! campaign and he felt betrayed.

  “So why are you telling me all this now?” he said in a tone that reminded me of a hurt schoolboy.

  “Because Dave Swinton didn’t kill himself. He was murdered.”

  18

  Paul stared at me. “Are you sure?”

  “Absolutely,” I said. “It’s impossible to drive a car at the same time as you are tied up in the trunk.”

  Paul went on staring.

  “The police found plastic cable ties in the trunk of the Mercedes with Dave’s blood on them.” I went on to tell him everything that D.S. Jagger had told me. “And if Dave himself was already trussed up in his car like a chicken, the person who shoved me into the sauna to die is most likely the same person who killed him. And it may be the same person who tried again this Sunday with a carving knife.”

  “But why would anyone want you dead?” Paul asked.

  It was the question I had been asking myself over and over.

  “Maybe I know something that someone doesn’t want me to tell anyone else about.”

  “What?” Paul said.

  “If I knew that, then I’d shout it loudly to everybody so that there’d be no need to kill me to prevent it.”

  “I don’t suppose it has anything to do with McKenzie falling off Wisden Wonder at Sandown,” Paul said. “With you indisposed in here, I’ve asked Nigel to have a look into that. And I’ve arranged for a letter to be sent to McKenzie summoning him to a disciplinary panel in January to explain his riding of the horse.”

  I would have much preferred it if Paul had left that for me to deal with later.

  I was an advocate of doing the investigating first, preferably furtively and in secret, and then calling the miscreants to account based on my findings.

  Paul, meanwhile, tended to believe that the early summons to a disciplinary panel would put the fear of God into the accused and could produce dividends in the form of a confession. He seemed not to appreciate the fact that accomplices, or even the brains behind the scam, might go to ground and never be implicated.