Front Runner

by Felix Francis

  “I was just wondering. Do they have any children?”

  “Theresa is desperate to have one. Martin had a son by a former wife and I know it bothers her. She’s had loads of tests and tried all sorts of fertility treatments. But no luck so far, and they’re both getting on. It must be hard for them, as Martin’s younger brother has four.”

  “Is he involved in the family firm?”

  “Not at all. He’s an artist and hates anything to do with it.” She made it sound like a failing. “He and his wife live in some godforsaken place in the Scottish Highlands with no electricity. I haven’t seen them for years.”

  “Do you ever see Martin’s son?”

  “All the time. His name’s Joshua. He’s fifteen now. Martin supports him financially, and he comes to stay with them at weekends when they’re in England and also during the school holidays. He’s been here to Cayman as well, often, but sadly not for Christmas this year. It would have been nice to have some kids around.” She laughed. “Perhaps you and I will have some.”

  We looked at each other. Were we really that serious?

  —

  I WOKE IN THE DARK and it took me a moment or two to remember where I was. Then I heard Henri’s rhythmic breathing beside me. I smiled. It was Christmas Eve in the Cayman Islands and all was well in my life.

  A little while later, I heard Henri stir.

  “Are you awake?” I asked quietly into the blackness.

  “No,” she replied.

  I snuggled over to her, searching for her body with my hands in the super-king-sized bed.

  “What time is it?” she asked.

  “Time for sex,” I replied.

  “Oh, goody.”

  —

  IT WAS STILL DARK when I went into the kitchen to make us some coffee. The digital clock on the stove told me it was ten minutes to six, ten to eleven back in the UK.

  When I went back into the bedroom, Henri was sitting up with the light on, reading.

  “What’s so interesting you have to read it in the middle of the night?”

  “Papers for the board meeting. I’ve had them for over a week now, but I haven’t even looked at them yet. Uncle Richard would be furious if he knew.”

  “What time’s the meeting?”

  “Ten o’clock.”

  “Why is it taking place here?” I asked.

  “Because this is where the company has its registered office. Martin moved everything here three years ago when he became managing director.”

  No wonder I hadn’t been able to find any recent accounts for Reynard Shipping Limited at Companies House.

  “Why?” I said.

  “Partly because this is where he lives.”

  “I thought you said he spends his time in Singapore.”

  “He does, but this is his official home. Even though Cayman is not an independent country—it’s an overseas territory of the UK—Martin and Theresa have what they call status here. It’s like Cayman citizenship.”

  She turned over another sheet of paper.

  “Of course, the company move was also done for tax reasons. Reynard Shipping was a British company and was therefore paying UK corporate taxes on all its worldwide profits. The whole lot. Our competitors, meanwhile, were mostly based in Singapore or Hong Kong, which have far lower tax rates than the UK. Hence, we had become noncompetitive. We even began losing money. So Martin moved the company registration over here to take advantage of Cayman’s tax laws.”

  “Very wise,” I said.

  “We still pay UK tax on our UK profit, of course, through our UK subsidiary. That’s fair enough. But not on everything else as well.”

  It all sounded eminently sensible.

  I left her to read the board papers and went into the kitchen to call Detective Chief Inspector Owens, D.S. Jagger’s senior officer, as I had promised.

  “Ah, Mr. Hinkley,” he said when I was finally put through to him. “Thank you for calling.”

  “Have you charged Leslie Morris with murder?” I asked.

  “No,” he said.

  “How about his son?”

  “So far, we have been unable to locate Mr. Andrew Morris.”

  “You mean he’s gone missing?” I said.

  “It would appear so,” agreed the chief inspector.

  “Have you charged Mr. Morris Senior with anything?”

  “Not yet. He’s out on bail, pending further inquiries. He has to report back to us on fifteen January.”

  “But surely you must have enough on him to charge him with blackmail.”

  “Mr. McKenzie is no longer being very cooperative,” the chief inspector replied. “He maintains that he might be mistaken about the times of the calls made to him demanding that he lose the horse race—times that we know from the records match calls made to his phone from Morris’s number. He now says he’s not sure it was Morris who was blackmailing him.”

  Unbelievable.

  I would have to have words with young Bill.

  “Mr. Hinkley, what I really wanted to talk to you about is your visit to Mr. Swinton’s house on the morning of his death.”

  “Yes?” I said. “What about it?”

  “At the time you gave your first statement to D.S. Jagger, you were under the impression that Mr. Swinton himself had locked you in the sauna. Is that correct?”

  “Yes,” I replied.

  “We now believe that it might have been, in fact, the action of a third party.”

  “Yes,” I said again. “I know.”

  “At the time, why did you think it was Mr. Swinton?”

  “I thought he was the only other person there, so it had to be him.”

  “But what was it about Mr. Swinton’s character that gave you reason to believe that he was capable of such a thing?”

  “Dave Swinton was the most competitive person I have ever met,” I said, “and I’ve met quite a few in racing. He would do almost anything to win a race, even if it was not entirely within the rules. He considered that life itself was a series of games and that winning was all that mattered. That’s why his marriage broke down. He was never prepared to lose an argument and he would never admit he was wrong even if he knew he was. Some people thought he was arrogant, and he was, but I’ll tell you, without that arrogance, he would never have been half the jockey he was.”

  “Does that mean you didn’t get along?” asked the D.C.I.

  “Not at all,” I said. “Dave and I were friends, but I still thought him capable of locking me in the sauna if he thought it would help him to win—whatever game he imagined we were playing at the time. Although, I have to admit, I was surprised and disappointed when I assumed he’d left me there to die. Why is all this relevant?”

  “I like to get inside the character of the murder victim,” the policeman said. “To try and think like him. Somehow, it helps me to understand the reasons someone might want him dead.”

  It sounded like mumbo jumbo to me.

  “The reason someone wanted Dave Swinton dead was because he’d found out who was blackmailing him,” I said. “Plain and simple. And that person was Leslie Morris.”

  “But what if Mr. Swinton was blackmailing Morris in return?”

  “Is that what Morris told you?” I laughed.

  I could easily believe that Dave had tried to blackmail the blackmailer. He would have considered it another game to be won. But the stakes had clearly been much higher than he’d imagined.

  “It would seem that Mr. Swinton somehow discovered that it was Morris who was blackmailing him. Swinton obviously couldn’t report it to us, as it would expose his own wrongdoing, so he attempted to silence Morris by telling him that if Morris spilled the beans about the unpaid taxes, he, in turn, would tell us about the blackmail and they would go down together.”

 
It sounded to me just the sort of thing Dave would have done.

  “I think that Mr. Swinton may have also threatened Morris with violence. Certainly Morris says he was afraid of that. Swinton must have figured out that Morris, a diminutive sixty-six-year-old retired accountant with a heart condition, couldn’t be a serious threat to him physically.”

  “But he hadn’t factored in the son?”

  “Just so,” he said. “From what I’ve gathered, Mr. Andrew Morris has always been very protective of his father and has been in a few scrapes over it.”

  “Well, I hope you find Andrew Morris soon,” I said. “And, preferably, before I get back to England.”

  “We are afraid that he may have already left the country. We are currently checking airline passenger lists.”

  Surely he couldn’t have followed me to the Cayman Islands?

  No, I told myself. Don’t be silly.

  29

  Henri went to her Reynard Shipping board meeting at nine-thirty, collected by her cousin Martin, while I called Bill McKenzie.

  “What’s all this nonsense about you telling the police you’re not sure if it was Morris who was blackmailing you?”

  “I’m not sure,” he replied almost in a whisper.

  “You were pretty sure when I spoke to you before.”

  “That’s as may be,” he said. “But now I’m not.”

  “What’s changed?”

  “Nothing,” he said. I could hear the nervous timbre in his voice even from four and a half thousand miles away.

  “Has Morris contacted you?”

  “No,” he said, but I knew he was lying to me from the slight hesitation before he answered.

  “What did he say?”

  “Nothing,” he said again.

  “Did he promise to give you the pictures if you didn’t help the police?”

  There was a long pause, which was answer enough.

  “You’re stupid,” I said. “Do you really trust him? The only way to stop your wife seeing those pictures is to get Morris locked up.”

  “And how long would that be for?” he said. “A year, two maybe? Then what? And you can still arrange to have things sent from prison, you know.”

  He was right.

  “But even if he sends you a set of prints, he’ll still have the original image files. He could print some more or send them to your wife in an e-mail.”

  “I’ll have to take that risk.”

  Bill McKenzie was in a very deep hole whatever he did. I suppose I couldn’t blame him for wanting to accept a ladder from the very man who’d put him down there in the first place.

  “Bill,” I said. “I’ll have no chance of saving your jockey’s license unless you cooperate.”

  His only reply was to whimper down the line.

  “Your best course of action is to bite the bullet and tell your wife about your French adventure. Then Morris would have nothing on you.”

  “I can’t,” he said. It was more of a plea than anything.

  “It would be much better coming from you than from Morris. I’m sure your wife will forgive you when she knows you were drugged and set up.”

  “She won’t,” he said. “You don’t know what she’s like.”

  That made me wonder if his marriage was even worth saving. But there was his child to consider, and another on the way.

  —

  HENRI RETURNED at half past twelve.

  “Good meeting?” I asked.

  “It was OK,” she said. “Our board meetings are never much more than rubber-stamping anyway. Most of the day-to-day decisions are made by the management board. The main board is just there to ratify them. Much of today’s meeting was taken up with the recent sale of our Hong Kong–based operation to a Chinese consortium. Uncle Richard thought it was a good time to sell off some of the company’s assets. The money involved is mind-blowing.”

  “No need to cancel the private jet just yet, then?” I said flippantly.

  “No.”

  “Who’s on the main board other than you?”

  “Uncle Richard and Martin, of course, plus a couple of directors appointed from our law firm over here. But those two don’t say much.”

  “How about Bentley?”

  “He’s not actually a board member. He’s the company secretary and takes the minutes.”

  “It must be interesting for you being a director of such a big organization,” I said.

  “Not really. It’s all rather boring and mundane, to tell the truth. The others don’t take much notice of what I say even though I do know what I’m talking about. Even though I run my own business in London, I think the others just look upon me as a token female on the board. Uncle Richard effectively makes all the decisions anyway.”

  “But you are a shareholder?”

  “Yes, that’s true. We are still a hundred percent family-owned business. My mother and Uncle Richard used to run it between them, so I suppose I’m now there to represent my side of the family. The main board only meets three times a year and I don’t usually get to all of them.”

  “Are they always here in the Cayman Islands?”

  “Mostly, although I prefer it when we meet in Singapore. We stay at Raffles and I absolutely love it there. But we have the major meeting of the year here. It also acts as the company’s annual general meeting. That’s what we did today.” She gave me a cuddle. “What have you been up to in my absence?”

  “Chilling out and making a few work phone calls,” I said.

  “You shouldn’t be working,” she said in mock crossness. “You’re meant to be on holiday.”

  “You’ve been working,” I pointed out.

  “That’s different.” She smiled. “Now I’m hungry. What shall we do for lunch?”

  “You know the place better than I do.”

  —

  WE LAZILY WALKED next door to the Ritz-Carlton Hotel and split a club sandwich and a Caesar salad at their pool bar, washed down with an excellent bottle of Côtes de Provence rosé.

  “So what’s on the agenda for the rest of the day?” I asked.

  “I’m afraid I’ve agreed for us to go with Uncle Richard and Aunt Mary to the traditional Christmas Eve carol singing in the garden of the Governor’s residence. That’s at seven. We could go out for dinner afterward, just the two of us, or we could just go back to bed.” She giggled and stroked my hand.

  “What happens tomorrow?” I asked.

  “We have champagne with a few friends at noon, followed by a traditional family Christmas lunch. Both at Martin and Theresa’s house. Then we laze around for the rest of the afternoon, complaining that we’ve eaten and drunk too much, before we eat and drink even more in the evening. Then we might watch a movie. Much the same as in England.”

  “Sounds great to me.”

  “Martin asked me if you were a diver. He always goes out diving early on Christmas morning. It’s a sort of ritual. He wonders if you would like to go with him.”

  It seemed strangely out of character for him to ask me.

  “I was taught to dive by the Army,” I said, “but that was ten years ago at Sharm el-Sheik, on the Red Sea. I haven’t done it now for ages.”

  “Shall I tell Martin you’d like to go?”

  I had to admit that I was quite keen..

  “Do you think I’m well enough to go diving?” I said.

  She laughed. “I’d say you were quite well enough, if your exertions in the night are anything to go by.”

  “I won’t be able to carry the tanks when they’re out of the water.”

  “That’s no problem. We always have a divemaster and a safety officer with us on the boat. They’ll help you.”

  “Will you be coming?” I asked.

  “If you want me to,” she said. “As long as you don’
t plan to go too deep. Otherwise, I’ll stay up on the boat while you and Martin dive.”

  “OK, then. Yes. I’d love to go.”

  —

  THE CAROL SINGING on the lawn in front of the Governor’s official residence was delightful. And it was packed with a mixture of expatriate British families and local Caymanians.

  Sir Richard and Lady Mary picked Henri and me up from the Coral Stone Club and we drove about half a mile down West Bay Road.

  Government House was an elegant colonial-style bungalow set among mature trees, close to the beach. A uniformed Cayman Island policeman stood guard at the gate, but there was no other sign of significant security. Indeed, the white-painted wall to the road was only about five feet high, and, on the beach side, there was simply a low white-painted picket fence, along with a couple of notices requesting that passersby should respect the Governor’s privacy.

  “Who is the Governor?” I asked Sir Richard as we walked into the garden, which was lit up with strings of festive lights, attractively wrapped in spirals around the tree trunks.

  “The current one is a chap called Peter Darwin,” he said. “The Governor is nominally appointed by the Queen, but it’s actually decided by the Foreign Office in London. It’s often the final posting before retirement for a career diplomat—a swan song in the sun. Peter is about halfway through his term.”

  “What’s his role?” I asked.

  “He is Her Majesty’s personal representative in the Cayman Islands.”

  “So he’s quite important, then?” I said.

  “Formally, Peter calls me Sir Richard, but I call him Your Excellency.”

  That was one sort of answer.

  I took a glass of thick red liquid from an offered tray.

  “What is it?” I asked Henri.

  “Cayman rum punch,” she said, also taking one. “It’s the national drink. Either this or frozen mudslides.”

  “Frozen mudslides?”

  “A cocktail made from ice, vodka, Baileys, Kahlúa, chocolate syrup and cream, all blended together. It’s absolutely brilliant.”

  “And incredibly fattening,” I said.

  “It was first created here on the Cayman Islands at The Wreck Bar at Rum Point. They’re famous for it.”