Front Runner

by Felix Francis

  I hoped so. Even though I occasionally backed up everything from my cell to my laptop, I hadn’t done it for a while, and I’d hate to lose the photos taken on this trip.

  —

  AS IT WAS GETTING DARK, we walked along the road to the Reynard residence to avoid being bitten by the sand flies on the beach.

  Martin’s welcome was less than enthusiastic, and his anger simmered just below the surface for most of the evening. He pointedly did not offer me a drink when we arrived even though he poured a glass of wine for Henri.

  Fortunately, Henri noticed, giving me her glass before fetching another for herself. It saved a minor diplomatic incident.

  I didn’t care. I could cope with his spiteful little actions with ease. He wasn’t likely to walk up behind me and blow my brains out, as I’d suspected of some of the hosts with whom I’d been a houseguest in Afghanistan. At least, I hoped he wasn’t.

  Remarkably, no one asked me if I was all right. In fact, the morning’s incident was not spoken of at all. It was as if the whole thing had never occurred. I soon realized that it was not just my poisoning they weren’t going to talk about, none of them wanted to talk to me about anything. Apart from Henri, they were even avoiding eye contact. I put it down to their embarrassment that such a thing could happen to a guest, but, nevertheless, I found their behavior somewhat bizarre.

  Only Theresa said anything to me and that was to ask if I’d enjoyed my Christmas lunch.

  “Yes, thank you,” I replied. “Very thoughtful of you.”

  “I’m sorry there was no Christmas pudding with it,” she said. “That was still steaming when Henrietta left.” She forced a smile. “But you can make up for that tonight. There’s plenty left over.”

  During yet another awkward gap in the conversation, I asked if anyone knew the whereabouts of my cell phone.

  There was a collective shaking of heads.

  “Then does anyone have Carson Ebanks’s home telephone number?”

  Martin reluctantly gave me the number, and I called it, using the phone in the kitchen.

  “Sure, man,” said Carson in his deep, resonant voice. “I got it.”

  That was a relief.

  “Your shirt too, man,” he said. “You OK now?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Fully recovered. Thank you.”

  “Had me worried there, man,” he said. “First person to pass out on me.” He sounded anxious. “I keep oxygen on the boat, man, in case. First time I used it.”

  “What happened wasn’t your fault,” I said to him. “In fact, it was your prompt action in giving me the oxygen that probably saved me.”

  I could hear his relief over the phone line that I wasn’t blaming him.

  “Where do you live?” I asked. “I’ll come by to pick up my phone.”

  “No, man,” he said. “I’ll bring it. You staying with Mr. Martin?”

  “No, I’m at the Coral Stone Club,” I said. “Unit number one.”

  “I know it, man,” Carson said. “I’ll get the phone back there.”

  “Thank you,” I said, and hung up.

  “Any luck?” Henri asked me when I went back to the others.

  “Yes. Carson Ebanks has my phone and my shirt. He’s going to drop them back to the apartment.”

  “Great.”

  —

  THE ATMOSPHERE improved little throughout the evening as we ate some supper and then played charades, each of us, in turn, drawing a book, film, song or play title from a hat and trying to get the others to guess it by mime alone.

  I thought there was going to be a slightly awkward moment when I drew Agatha Christie’s A Murder Is Announced out of the hat, but no one else seemed to notice.

  Sir Richard was particularly good at guessing, even getting the tricky title True Grit from some rather strange and obscure miming by Bentley Robertson. I could easily understand how Reynard Shipping Limited had grown to be the market leader under his astute leadership. There seemed to be nothing going on that escaped his sharp and insightful scrutiny.

  Hence, I couldn’t imagine that he was unaware of the ongoing antagonism directed at me by his son—an antagonism that intensified in direct ratio to the amount of red wine Martin consumed, which was considerable. But Sir Richard made no attempt either to stop it or to apologize to me in any way.

  In contrast to her husband, Lady Mary was not the sharpest needle in the sewing basket, getting hopelessly confused by the game and being totally unable not to speak when she shouldn’t. But even she was not as affable toward me as she had been in the Range Rover at Luton Airport.

  Bentley wasn’t being very pleasant either. He took every opportunity to put me down. Whenever I made a wrong guess, he would roll his eyes and make some comment or other about how stupid I had been. But at least I could understand the reason why he was so ill-disposed toward me—she was sitting next to me on the sofa.

  I had what he wanted.

  What I couldn’t fathom was why Martin had been so blatantly unfriendly ever since I’d arrived on Cayman.

  It couldn’t only be because I’d accused him of purposely poisoning me with carbon monoxide, although that in itself would have probably been enough, and it certainly hadn’t helped.

  There had to be more to it.

  Perhaps he didn’t approve of me as the boyfriend of his cousin.

  But he’d actually been unduly hostile toward me right from when we’d been first introduced by Gay Smith on the balcony of the box at Sandown, which had been before I’d even met Henri.

  Everything pointed to the fact that it must have something to do with me overhearing him being so crudely castigated by Bentley at Newbury. Perhaps he was embarrassed that I’d seen him being spoken to in that manner by someone I would consider his subordinate.

  —

  MY SHIRT and phone were waiting for us on the doorstep when Henri and I arrived back at our apartment just before midnight.

  Our truce from earlier was still holding and we went to bed and converted it into a full-blown peace treaty.

  But I couldn’t get to sleep afterward.

  Henri, meanwhile, went straight off and was soon snoring gently beside me. I continued to toss and turn for what seemed like an age before finally getting up and going through to the kitchen to make myself a cup of tea. Perhaps that would help.

  I put on some shorts and took my tea outside to the beach. It was a beautiful night, with an almost full moon casting nighttime-sharp shadows of the palm trees on the sand. I walked down near to the water’s edge.

  I was troubled.

  Coming away for Christmas with Henri’s relations had been a mistake. My presence now seemed to be resented by all of them. Maybe it was because Christmas is such a family-oriented time and I was an interloper here to take one of their number away from them. Or had my first instinct been right all along—she was out of my league.

  I wandered along the beach in the moonlight.

  All was in darkness at the Reynard residence.

  My naturally inquisitive instincts drew me closer. Was there a garbage can handily placed that I could rummage through to discover Martin’s darkest secrets?

  I knew there wasn’t.

  Henri had already shown me how all the trash was mechanically compacted into tightly compressed bales before being placed in a dumpster ready for pickup. Great for reducing the volume of garbage but not much good for snoopy investigators like me.

  Nevertheless, I walked off the beach onto the Reynard terrace as if somehow being close by might help me to understand what was going on in Martin’s mind.

  I wondered if there were any CCTV cameras watching me. I couldn’t see any. Martin had already said how safe he felt on Cayman and that crime was rare. However, I would have expected some sort of security at such a valuable property, especially as Martin and Theresa
were away so much in Singapore.

  I finished my tea and was about to walk back out onto the beach on my way to bed when I heard a noise—a door being opened.

  I silently stepped into the shadow beneath one of the casuarina trees and watched as Theresa padded along the path in bare feet from the main house toward the guest cottage. She was wearing a thin white housecoat that billowed open slightly as she moved, revealing her nakedness beneath.

  So I had been right about the body language on the plane. Theresa and Bentley were lovers.

  As she walked, she held her hand to her mouth and furtively scanned from side to side as if she knew precisely how dangerous was this particular Christmas game she was playing. It didn’t matter how drunk her husband had become after all that red wine, there was no guarantee he wouldn’t wake up and discover her missing from their marital bed.

  I smiled to myself as I walked back down the beach to the Coral Stone Club. There was definitely a measure of schadenfreude in me, knowing that my tormentor from the previous evening was being cheated on by his own wife—and right under his nose. And with the creepy Bentley Robertson too.

  Henri might be pleased that Bentley’s lecherous leanings were currently directed elsewhere. Not that I’d tell her.

  She was still sleeping soundly as I slipped back between the sheets beside her. And now I quickly joined her in the Land of Nod.

  —

  IN SPITE OF my nocturnal sojourn, I was awake early and I left Henri asleep while I went into the kitchen.

  I opened my laptop and checked for any new e-mails, but, not surprisingly over the holiday, there weren’t any.

  Horseracing paused for just two days before Christmas, and also on the big day itself, then it restarted with fervor on Boxing Day with eight or nine different meetings, the most prestigious being at Kempton Park for the annual running of the King George VI Chase.

  The London office of the BHA took the more usual British approach to the season, closing from Christmas Eve right through until the New Year. Not that all the BHA staff had the time off. Far from it. Integrity officers, clerks of the scales, stipendiary stewards and many others were still working at the racetracks, checking horse identities, monitoring weighing rooms and carrying on the other regulatory functions of the authority.

  Indeed, this was the first time since I’d joined the BHA that I had not been working on Boxing Day.

  I logged on to the Racing Post website to see the declared runners for the King George. Unlike the Hennessy, this race was not a handicap but a Grade 1 championship race, where past form made no difference to the weight a horse had to carry. It was an even test, won, without question, by the best horse on the day.

  This year, there were ten runners going to post, all of them top-class chasers, aged between six and nine, each due to carry a weight of one hundred sixty-four pounds over three miles and eighteen fences.

  I noted that Bill McKenzie had been declared to ride a horse called Special Measures. His collarbone must have mended sufficiently for him to have been passed as fit to ride by the medics.

  I looked at my watch. It was just gone seven in the morning in Cayman—midday at Kempton. The crowd would already be gathering in droves at the west London track. The big race was the fifth of the afternoon, due off at ten past three London time, ten past ten here. I could imagine the anticipation of the owners, trainers and jockeys in the run-up to start time, to say nothing of the betting public, who would be eagerly selecting their preferences, if they had any money left to wager after all that Christmas shopping.

  I had always been excited by the electric atmosphere that exists at a racetrack on a major event day, and part of me wished I were at Kempton to enjoy it.

  I would have to make do with watching the race on my computer, via the Internet, steeplechasing not being rated highly enough to be shown live on the American TV channels available in Cayman.

  I made some tea and took a cup to Henri.

  “Go away,” she said, turning over and burying her head beneath the pillow. “I’m still asleep.” Martin clearly wasn’t the only one to have drunk too much wine the previous evening.

  I went back to my laptop and connected it to my iPhone to download the photos I didn’t want to lose.

  It took just a few seconds to complete, and I scanned through the files to check that they had transferred safely without being corrupted.

  That’s strange, I thought.

  The photo I had taken of Martin Reynard and Bentley Robertson, during their heated discussion at Newbury on Hennessy Gold Cup day, didn’t appear to have made the transition from iPhone to laptop.

  I looked through the Camera Roll on the phone.

  It wasn’t there.

  I checked again, but there was no mistake.

  The photograph had been deleted.

  33

  Henri and I ordered a taxi and, with the help of a couple of calls from my cell, we eventually found our way to Derrick and Gay Smith’s house for drinks at six o’clock on Boxing Day evening.

  They lived on the wonderfully named Conch Point Road in a large house set well back from the road, out of sight behind a stone wall, and with no name shown on the unpretentious gateway. Hence, we had driven past the house twice without realizing it.

  “Welcome,” Gay said, meeting us at the front door. “Well done, finding us. We like to keep a low profile. Come on in.”

  We were ushered out to a covered veranda, with its magnificent view northeastward toward the sea.

  We were not their sole guests.

  Peter Darwin, the Governor, and his wife Annabel were there ahead of us.

  “You should have much in common with Peter,” Gay said to me. “He loves his racing.”

  “Just my luck to be posted to a country without a racetrack,” Peter said with a laugh. “When I was told I was being sent to the West Indies, I secretly hoped it would be Barbados. I’ve always fancied going racing on Garrison Savannah.”

  “Wasn’t that a horse?” I asked, dragging up a distant memory.

  “Yes indeed,” he said. “It won the Cheltenham Gold Cup back in the nineties. But it was named after the racetrack on Barbados.”

  “I’m so sorry Cayman is such a disappointment to you,” Derrick said, handing around glasses of champagne.

  “I’ve got over it,” Peter said with another laugh. “I keep in touch with things on the Internet as much as I can and we go racing whenever we’re back home on leave. Don’t we, darling?”

  “As much as possible,” Annabel agreed. “We always try and get to the Cheltenham Festival in March. Peter, effectively, grew up on Cheltenham racetrack.”

  “There are worse places,” he said, laughing.

  “And we adore going racing at Stratford,” Annabel said, looking lovingly at her husband. “That’s where Peter and I met.”

  “How romantic,” Henri said. “Jeff and I met at Sandown races.”

  “In my box,” Derrick said, all smiles.

  Annabel beamed at us, her big blue eyes positively sparkling with delight.

  “Peter’s father was a jump jockey, and I once worked for the British Jockey Club.”

  “Jeff, don’t you work for the Jockey Club?” Gay asked.

  “Not quite,” I said. “But I do work for the racing authorities.”

  Derrick again recounted the story of how I had saved his horse from being stolen at Ascot. I’d given up trying to tell him it was meant to be confidential. But if you couldn’t tell someone in the diplomatic service a secret, who could you tell? Diplomats were meant to be good at keeping secrets. But they were also meant to be fairly proficient at lying for their country as well.

  “When was your father a jockey?” I asked Peter.

  “Back in the sixties,” he said. “He wasn’t famous or anything. He rode only four winners—ever. He’d just starte
d out on his career when he was killed in a car accident.”

  “How awful,” I said.

  “I was only an infant at the time. I don’t remember him at all.”

  “I’ll look him up in the records. What was his first name?”

  “Paul,” Peter said, pleased that I had taken some interest. “He was actually Paul Perry. I only became a Darwin when I was twelve and my mother remarried.”

  “Any relation to . . . ?” I asked.

  “None,” he replied quickly with one of those wan smiles that told me that he’d been asked that too many times before and he was bored with it.

  We watched as the last of the daylight faded away and then marveled as the full moon seemed to emerge straight out of the water, its orange disk appearing unnaturally large and almost frighteningly close.

  “Magnificent,” Peter said. “Quite enough to drive a man mad.”

  “Lunatic,” I said.

  “Exactly so.”

  —

  THE SIX OF US went for dinner at the Calypso Grill at Morgan’s Harbour.

  It was everything I had expected, except that there was no sign of Harry Belafonte, and the music being played through the sound system was more steel drum than true calypso. But the bright blues, reds and burnt orange colors, together with the laid-back No problem, man atmosphere, were authentically Caribbean.

  We were shown to a table out on the open terrace, right alongside the lapping water, and I found myself sitting next to Annabel Darwin and across from Gay Smith.

  “How lovely,” I said. “I don’t think I have ever sat out under the stars for dinner on Boxing Day.”

  “I hate the winters in England,” Gay said. “Give me the warmth any day.”

  “Doesn’t it get too hot here in the summer?” I asked.

  “Not too hot,” Gay said. “But it does get very humid and it rains a lot. We tend to go away from May to September.”

  “To England?”

  “Mostly, yes, to see the grandchildren. But up to now, we’ve not been able to spend the whole summer in England. There’s a limit on the number of days we’re allowed, so we also go to Ireland. And anywhere else that takes our fancy.”