Front Runner

by Felix Francis

  “Do Bentley and Martin get on?”

  “Not really. Martin hates the fact that Uncle Richard talks to Bentley about business strategy more than to him. I know I shouldn’t say this but at times I think that Uncle Richard wishes that Bentley was his son rather than Martin.”

  It was quite a statement.

  “How about you?” I asked. “Do you get on all right with Martin?”

  “Yes, I’d say so,” she said. “Sometimes, I feel a bit sorry for him. It’s not his fault that he’s not quite up to the job. He tries his best. But God knows what will happen to us when Uncle Richard finally retires. Or dies.”

  “How about the other directors? The two from the law firm?”

  “They don’t seem to have much to do with the day-to-day running of things. Their job is more to do with ensuring that we, as a board, comply with all the local regulations.”

  “You could always bring in more directors,” I said. “Bentley, for example.”

  Henri pulled a face. “Martin won’t allow that. He’s totally adamant. I think he feels threatened—and for good reason. I suppose we will have to have more directors at some point, but Uncle Richard is keen to keep control in the family for the time being, especially while we are selling off some of the company’s assets.”

  I couldn’t argue with that.

  “Now, what would you like to do today?” Henri asked.

  “What is there?”

  “We could go to Stingray City.”

  —

  HENRI ARRANGED to charter a boat to take us, but we wouldn’t be going until later in the day when the cruise ship passengers had all departed.

  “It would be a nightmare earlier,” Henri said. “Far too many people.”

  From the beach in front of the apartment we could see five huge liners at anchor off George Town, each of them disgorging thousands of passengers on the island for the day, all of them searching for something to keep them busy.

  So we spent much of the day lying on chaise longues in the shadow of a beach cabana while I tried to work out what I should do.

  I wondered if I should tell Henri of my suspicions.

  The last thing I wanted to do was to ruin our budding affair by further accusing her cousin of trying to kill me. It had caused enough trouble when I’d suggested he’d purposely given me a contaminated dive tank. To now accuse him of also sending the men with the carving knife to stab me to death would probably be terminal for our relationship.

  Perhaps I could tell her only that I believed Martin had inadvertently become a tax resident in the UK. But she would likely say So what? Why are you telling me? and all the other stuff would all come out.

  But I felt I had to tell someone.

  It would surely be safer for me if someone else knew.

  But who?

  Bentley the lawyer must already know. Otherwise, why would he have been so outspoken on the Newbury balcony?

  What had he said at the time?

  I know, and that in itself is bad enough.

  If the company lawyer knew, then surely in due course Martin would have to file a UK tax return. Unless Bentley was planning to turn a blind eye.

  Henri went down to the sea for a cooling swim while I went back inside the apartment to call Quentin. I needed some legal advice and he was my go-to lawyer of choice.

  “I’m not sure what to do,” I said to him. “I don’t know the law.”

  I explained the gist of my problems.

  “With reference to the tax position, no crime appears to have been committed as yet, so you are under no obligation to report anything to the authorities,” he said. “That would only change later if you had firm evidence to the effect that a tax return and payment had not been submitted when due, hence a fraud had been committed.”

  “So what would you do now?” I asked.

  “Say nothing and get out of there as soon as possible. I’d write formally to Reynard Shipping, at their registered address, explaining that you believe that Martin Reynard may be a UK tax resident for the current year. You should copy the letter to their accountants, if you know who they are. You would then be fully covered, from a legal point of view.”

  It all sounded so logical.

  “But I would also contact the UK police,” Quentin went on, “to inform them of your suspicions regarding the attacks on you and leave them to deal with it.”

  Maybe saying nothing and leaving as soon as possible was the sensible thing to do, but did I really want to prematurely end my time in Cayman with Henri?

  This was the first holiday I’d had in years.

  I decided that I should take my brother-in-law’s advice. He hadn’t become a top QC by getting much wrong.

  I logged on to the Internet and looked up commercial flights back to London. There was a direct one the following evening.

  I would stay until then.

  I made a reservation online.

  Meanwhile, I would say nothing to any of the Reynard gathering and, when I was safely home, I would write the letters Quentin had suggested.

  And to ensure my well-being, I would make certain that I was never left alone with Martin Reynard. In fact, I would spend every moment of my remaining time on Grand Cayman in the company of one Henrietta Shawcross.

  Little did I realize that it would not be enough.

  35

  Henri went on working on her tan for the rest of the morning while I sat in the shade complaining that it was far too hot in the midday sun even for mad dogs and Englishmen.

  “Would you like a cold drink?” I asked, standing up.

  “Yes, please.”

  “Water or wine?”

  “Both,” she said. “Together. I’ll have a spritzer. With some ice, please.”

  “Sounds lovely. I’ll have the same.”

  I walked the few yards into the apartment and went into the kitchen to fix the two spritzers, but I didn’t go straight back outside. Instead, I went into the master bedroom and took out the packet of Henri’s board papers from the bedside drawer where she’d put them.

  Atherton, Bradley and Partners, Attorneys-at-Law was printed across the top of an accompanying letter that gave the details of the Christmas Eve meeting to be held at their offices. I found a notepad and copied down the address and telephone number. I tore off the sheet and put it in my pocket.

  I skimmed through the stack of papers, looking for any financial accounts that might indicate the identity of the company’s accountants, but there was nothing. In fact, the board papers appeared to be very sparse for the main annual meeting of the directors of such a big organization. Henri had clearly been right when she said that most of the discussion and decisions were made at the management level and the main board was only there to rubber-stamp their findings.

  I glanced briefly at the documents pertaining to the sale of the Hong Kong end of the business. The amount of money being paid for it made me whistle. I reckoned the Reynard family would soon be moving farther up the Sunday Times “Rich List”—some considerable way farther up.

  I put the papers back how I’d found them in the drawer and took the drinks out to Henri, who hadn’t moved an inch.

  “Lovely,” she said, taking one of them. “Thank you.”

  We clinked our glasses. How perfect was this?

  I decided not to tell Henri that I intended to go home the following evening. I would make up some work-related excuse in the morning and then try to slip away before Martin even realized I had gone. I certainly wasn’t going to spoil our last wonderful day together in this paradise.

  —

  STINGRAY CITY was everything that Henri had made it out to be, with not a single street or building to be seen. This particular city’s blocks were nothing but water.

  In the middle of North Sound, at least a mile from the nearest p
oint of dry land, we stood waist-deep on a barely submerged sandbar while scores of stingrays swam around us, gliding back and forth between our legs like mini delta wing bombers, their soft undersides caressing our skin like velvet.

  By holding small pieces of cut-up squid, we were able to make them follow our hands in circles in the water, even to swim right onto our outstretched arms to lie with their prominent, staring eyes just inches from our faces.

  A stingray had killed Steve Irwin, the Australian conservationist and broadcaster, and their very name implied danger. But here they were acting like pets, playing with us, seemingly enjoying the experience as much as we were.

  Our captain, the weather-beaten local from whom we had chartered the boat, told us that more than fifty years ago, when he was a young lad, the local fishermen used to bring their catch to the sandbar to clean and gut it, where the water was calm and they were able to throw the waste into the sea.

  The stingrays would gather to feed on the fish scraps, and soon the fishermen were organizing trips for locals to see them and Stingray City was born. And so it had continued, with both the humans and the stingrays apparently very happy with the arrangement.

  “This is now the most visited tourist attraction in Cayman,” Henri said. “There would have been masses of boats and literally hundreds of people here earlier, all on organized tours from the cruise ships. It’s like Piccadilly Circus at rush hour, from about ten in the morning until about four in the afternoon, almost every day of the year. Then they go back to their ships and sail away.”

  I looked around us at the empty sea, with only our boat bobbing gently at anchor nearby.

  “It was a good call of yours to come later,” I said.

  It had also given me the opportunity to phone Atherton, Bradley and Partners, Attorneys-at-Law, and ask them who the accountants for Reynard Shipping Limited were. Not that it had been a satisfactory call.

  “I’ll put you through to Greg Sherwood,” the operator had said.

  “And who are you, exactly?” Greg Sherwood had asked when I’d repeated my request to him.

  “Just someone who wants to know.”

  There had been a distinct pause on the other end of the line.

  “I am sorry,” he’d said eventually. “Cayman law does not permit me to give out that information to persons not directly involved with the company.”

  I had no way of knowing if he’d been telling me the truth or not. Either way, I would have to be satisfied with just writing to the company at their registered office. They could forward it to their accountants if they wanted.

  Henri and I stayed on the sandbar a while longer, enjoying the stingrays, until the sun started dipping rapidly toward the western horizon. Then we climbed back on the boat and set course for the shore as the darkness descended across us like a falling blanket from the east.

  Henri and I stood in the bow of the boat, in each other’s arms, and watched as the lights in the hotels and condominiums on Seven Mile Beach began to twinkle brightly.

  “It’s so beautiful,” Henri said. “I don’t want to ever go home.”

  Neither did I. And especially not five days earlier than originally planned.

  —

  THE PHONE was ringing in the apartment when we arrived back just before seven.

  Henri answered it.

  “We’d love to,” she said. “Shall we meet you there?” She listened. “OK. We’ll be ready.”

  “Who was that?” I asked as she put the phone down.

  “Uncle Richard,” she said. “He’s asked if we would like to go out to dinner tonight with him and Aunt Mary. There’s a new restaurant they want to try. They’re picking us up in an hour.”

  “Is Martin coming?” I asked.

  “Uncle Richard didn’t say. I got the impression it was just the four of us.”

  Henri hurried into the bathroom to shower and change while I opened my laptop and logged on to the Internet. I was still in the shorts and T-shirt I’d been wearing on the boat, but it would only take me a few minutes to change.

  There was an e-mail from Quentin:

  Jeff,

  A few more thoughts about our friend Martin Reynard. I called a solicitor friend of mine who deals with tax affairs for offshore companies. He says the new rules on tax residency are catching out all sorts of people who thought they were safe and now find they’re not, mostly because of how the tax authorities are interpreting the UK ties rule in their new Statutory Residence Test. Some, who thought the new system meant they could stay in the United Kingdom for up to 120 days each year, are actually only allowed to stay here for 90, or even for only 45. There was also something else he said that might be of interest—it seems that some companies are also finding themselves in trouble because of a director inadvertently becoming a UK tax resident.

  Good luck, Quentin.

  I typed UK tax residency for companies into the Internet search engine. The result was most revealing:

  A company is generally treated as tax resident in the United Kingdom if it is either incorporated in the United Kingdom or, if not, if the boardroom control is exercised in the United Kingdom, or a majority of its board members are UK tax residents.

  Reynard Shipping Limited was not incorporated in the United Kingdom. Martin had moved its registration to the Cayman Islands three years before.

  I could hear Henri singing in the shower.

  I went quickly into the bedroom and looked again at the packet of board papers in the bedside drawer. They included the minutes of the last meeting, held in Singapore the previous September. The minutes recorded those board members present: Sir Richard Reynard (Chairman), Martin Reynard (Managing Director), Henrietta Shawcross, Greg Sherwood and Alistair Vickers. There had been no apologies made for absences. So the Reynard Shipping Limited board of directors comprised just those five.

  I knew from my earlier phone call that Greg Sherwood worked for Atherton, Bradley and Partners, the local Cayman lawyers, and I assumed that Alistair Vickers did as well. They were the two directors that Henri had said were there just to ensure the company complied with the local regulations.

  Sir Richard and Henrietta both lived permanently in England.

  A company is generally treated as tax resident in the United Kingdom if . . . a majority of its board members are UK tax residents.

  As long as Martin was a nonresident, a majority of the board members were nonresidents, so the company was nonresident.

  If, however, Martin had become a UK tax resident, even accidentally, then the company . . .

  “What are you doing?” Henri said behind me in an accusatory tone that made me jump.

  I turned around with the board papers still in my hands. It was far too late to put them back without her seeing.

  “Nothing,” I said, smiling at her.

  She did not smile back. “What are you doing with those?” she asked, pointing at the papers, the accusation still evident in her voice.

  “I just wondered who the other directors were,” I said tamely.

  “Why?”

  “No reason.”

  I could hardly tell her my true motive. I returned the papers to the drawer and pushed it shut.

  She was not happy.

  I had grossly invaded her privacy and she didn’t like it. Not one bit.

  The doorbell rang.

  I was relieved, thinking that it had got me out of a spot of trouble.

  How wrong I was.

  I opened the front door to find Bentley Robertson and Sir Richard Reynard standing there and neither of them was in a friendly mood. They didn’t wait to be asked in, they just forced their way through the door as I backed down the hallway. They closed the door behind them.

  Henri came waltzing out of the bedroom wearing her bathrobe and with a towel turban on her head.

 
“What’s going on?” she said. “You said in an hour. I’m not ready.” She pointed at Bentley. “And what the hell is he doing here? I’m not going anywhere with him.” She was almost shouting.

  “Henrietta, be quiet,” Sir Richard said, taking his eyes off me for only a fraction of a second.

  Henri opened her mouth as if to say something more.

  Her uncle held his hand up toward her. “I said, be quiet!”

  She closed her mouth again.

  “Greg called me from Atherton’s,” Sir Richard said. “Someone’s been asking questions about the company and I reckon it’s Hinkley. I want to know why.”

  “He’s been asking me lots of questions about it as well,” Henri said unhelpfully. “And I’ve just caught him looking through my board papers.”

  “Are you some sort of industrial spy?” Sir Richard asked. “Who are you working for?”

  “I am not a spy,” I said. “And you know damn well that I work for the British Horseracing Authority.”

  “So why are you asking questions about our company?”

  I thought about Quentin’s advice and said nothing.

  “Go and pack your things,” Sir Richard ordered. “You’re leaving.”

  I looked at Henri, but if I thought she was going to stand up for me, I was sorely mistaken. She turned away without looking at my face.

  Sir Richard followed me into the bedroom and waited while I gathered my things together and put them in my suitcase. It seemed to be the only thing to do.

  “Where am I going?” I asked him, putting my wallet and passport in my shorts pocket.

  “Out of here,” he said. “We will put you on the late Cayman Airways flight to Miami. After that, I don’t care.”

  We went back to the others.

  My laptop computer was open on the table and Bentley was studying the screen, which I’d carelessly left still showing the government website on company tax residency.

  “He knows,” he said, looking up at Sir Richard. There was something about his tone I didn’t like.

  “You bastard!” Henri shouted, coming up and standing right in front of me. I could see the tears in her eyes. “And to think I was falling in love with you when all you were interested in doing was spying on me. You make me sick.”