Front Runner

by Felix Francis

  I felt his pant pocket for my iPhone.

  Who should I call?

  The police for sure, but who else?

  I might need someone who was an ally.

  I punched in Derrick Smith’s number.

  37

  I didn’t catch the flight for which I’d made a reservation. In fact, I didn’t leave Cayman until four days later, boarding a commercial red-eye to London at seven o’clock on New Year’s Eve.

  I slept through the actual moment of change from December to January, somewhere over the mid-Atlantic at thirty-six thousand feet.

  As a journey, it couldn’t have been more different from that which had brought me to the Islands. This was no private jet—more like a knees-to-the-chest charter. And Henrietta Shawcross was becoming a distant memory.

  I had spent nearly twenty hours in custody at the Royal Cayman Islands Police headquarters in George Town, answering questions and trying to explain how I had come to be on a deserted beach in the middle of the mangroves with a gun in my hand and a dead body on the sand.

  At first, it had been fairly obvious that the police didn’t believe a single word I was telling them.

  Even to my ears, the story seemed too far-fetched to be true. Things like that just didn’t happen in the idyllic Cayman Islands.

  “Consider yourself a bit of a James Bond, do you?” one of the local detectives had said as his opening gambit. “Reckon you’ve got a license to kill, do you?”

  “No,” I’d replied, “I do not.”

  “That’s not what I’ve heard from Mr. Smith.”

  I wondered if calling Derrick had been a mistake. He must have told them the tale of the foiled kidnapping of Secret Ways at Ascot. They were clearly getting me mixed up with the name of the horse.

  I’d been arrested on suspicion of murdering Bentley Robertson and had spent a night tossing and turning on a hard mattress in a stifling-hot prison cell.

  It was not knowing what was happening outside that was the most frustrating thing.

  After an initial interview on that first evening, when I had gone through the whole story from start to finish, I’d been left alone in the cell without any further communication, not only for the rest of the night but throughout the whole of the next morning.

  “What’s going on?” I asked the police constable who brought me some lunch at noon.

  He didn’t reply.

  I was most concerned about what Sir Richard Reynard might be telling them. What fabrication he had thought up to land me in deeper trouble.

  At about three in the afternoon, the same detective came to the cell, opening the metal door wide.

  “You’re free to go, Mr. Hinkley,” he said. “There will be no charges.”

  I was relieved.

  “Have you arrested Sir Richard Reynard?” I asked him.

  “Richard Reynard is dead,” he said. “He was found this morning in his son’s diving store. It appears that he died of carbon monoxide poisoning. A gasoline-driven air compressor was discovered still running in the store with insufficient ventilation for the exhaust.”

  “Oh,” I said. That had been Bentley’s idea.

  “We are treating his death as a suicide. He left a note.”

  “What was in the note?” I asked.

  He paused for a moment as if deciding whether or not he should tell me.

  “It was just four words long: I am so sorry.”

  Unexpectedly, my overriding emotion was one of sorrow.

  Up until last night, I had quite liked Uncle Richard. There had been a kind of magnetism about him, drawing people in under his wing, charmed by the strength of his personality.

  But it had all been a façade.

  His character had been deeply flawed by recklessness and greed.

  And it had been his greed that had ultimately resulted in him taking his own life—that and the folly of imagining that he could somehow cover up Martin’s costly error by killing anyone who knew about it.

  Part of me was surprised that he had chosen to take such a way out. I had half expected him to be more of a fighter and to tough it out, perhaps blaming everything on his dead lawyer. But Bentley had been like a son to him and maybe he didn’t want to further tarnish his memory.

  “You will have to remain on the island until the inquests for both Mr. Reynard and Mr. Robertson are opened,” said the detective.

  I wondered if he had intentionally dropped the Sir Richard, reducing him to a mere Mr.

  “When will that be?” I asked.

  “In a few days time. At the very least, you will have to give evidence as to how Mr. Robertson died.”

  “OK,” I said, but I wondered where I would stay. The apartment at the Coral Stone Club was out of the question, obviously, and all the hotels were full to overflowing at this peak time of the Christmas and New Year’s tourist season.

  “Mr. Smith has indicated that you can stay with him,” the detective said as if reading my mind.

  —

  WE LANDED at Heathrow in a snowstorm early on New Year’s Day and everything was covered in white.

  The aircraft was parked out on a remote stand and walking down the steps to the bus was quite a shock to the system. The Cayman Police had been reluctant to return my suitcase from the trunk of Sir Richard’s car, as it was still classed as evidence, and I’d been unable to buy anything warmer than a paper-thin plastic rain jacket.

  Not surprisingly, there was little demand for thick, warm sweaters, scarves and gloves in the tropics.

  Derrick and Gay Smith had been good to me, providing me not only with food and accommodation but also with a pair of pants, a decent shirt, a shaving kit and some friendly ears to listen.

  I had told them everything over a welcome glass of wine in their living room on the day I’d been released.

  They were both totally shocked.

  “I can’t believe that it was me who was the cause of everything,” Derrick had said. “I introduced you to Richard Reynard and I took you up to the Hennessy suite at Newbury.”

  But he couldn’t have known what I’d hear on the balcony and what Richard Reynard’s awful reaction to it would be.

  Two days later, Derrick had driven me to George Town for the opening of the inquest into the deaths of both Bentley Robertson and Sir Richard Reynard.

  I had been informed that, at this stage, the proceedings would establish only the identities of the dead, provide a brief summary of the actions leading up to the fatalities and confirm the actual cause of each death. Then the hearing would be adjourned, to be resumed only after the forensic and police investigations were concluded.

  However, on the grounds that I would soon be leaving the island, the presiding magistrate, who was also acting as the coroner, had required me to give a full and complete account of the events leading up to the shooting of Bentley Robertson, including details of the failed attempt to kill me with the poisoned dive tank on Christmas Day.

  Inevitably, under questioning from the magistrate, I’d had to refer back to all the relevant incidents that had occurred since I had first set eyes on Bentley on the balcony at Newbury racetrack and then explain my understanding of the reasons for those incidents.

  I’d been on the witness stand for most of the day.

  It had been halfway through the morning before I’d noticed Martin Reynard sitting at the back of the courtroom. He was leaning forward and listening intently to every word I said.

  There had been no sign of Henri.

  I had purposely hung back at the lunch break so as not to run into Martin, but we had accidentally come face-to-face at the end of the day after my testimony was complete.

  We had stood looking at each other at a distance of only a couple of feet.

  “I’m sorry for your loss,” I said to him.

  He nodd
ed. And then he held out his right hand to me.

  “It was my father’s idea to take you diving on Christmas Day. He was insistent that I should ask you. I’m sorry.”

  I shook his hand.

  Nothing more needed to be said.

  —

  TWO WEEKS LATER, a BHA disciplinary panel held an inquiry into the race-fixing allegations against Bill McKenzie and Willy Mitchell and the unusual betting practices of Leslie Morris.

  Bill and Willy both arrived early at BHA headquarters, each of them wearing his best suit to try to impress the panel members.

  Leslie Morris, however, was absent.

  On New Year’s Eve, while still free on police bail, he had been prevented from driving his car onto a Channel Tunnel train by a member of the border police, who had shown unfamiliar diligence in spotting that he was attempting to travel on an expired passport.

  Consequently, Morris was presently remanded to Belmarsh Prison, charged with conspiracy to murder Dave Swinton, and also with violating the terms of his bail.

  Mr. Andrew Morris, Leslie’s son, was still on the run and believed to be somewhere in Spain. Detective Chief Inspector Owens of the Thames Valley Police had called and told me that he was convinced Morris Senior had been on his way to join his son when he’d been stopped. A European arrest warrant had since been issued for Andrew Morris and, according to the chief inspector, it was only a matter of time before he was caught.

  “Mind you,” the policeman had said, “Morris obviously thinks we won’t ever find his son because he’s now blaming him for everything in a misguided attempt to save his own skin. Singing like a canary, he is. Claims that it was his son who shut you in the sauna and also set fire to Dave Swinton. He maintains that he was there only as the driver. Does he think we are idiots or something?” He laughed. “But he is one, for sure. He’s clearly never heard of guilt by Joint Enterprise. Don’t worry, we have him nailed for murder.”

  —

  THE BHA formal disciplinary panel proceedings were short, the details having been discussed and agreed to ahead of time.

  Bill McKenzie and Willy Mitchell both pleaded guilty to charges of intentionally riding so that their mounts could not obtain the best possible placing, in contravention of rules (B)59.2 and (D)45.1 of the Rules of Racing.

  Both were banned from riding for twenty-eight days and warned regarding their future conduct.

  Subject to the outcome of legal proceedings, Leslie Morris was suspended from the fit and proper person list and thus could no longer be a registered owner. Furthermore, he was excluded from all BHA-registered premises.

  The whole thing took less than an hour.

  Bill and Willy were all smiles afterward when I met them in the lobby.

  I had been working behind the scenes on their behalf ever since I’d returned from the Cayman Islands and I had convinced the chairman of the Disciplinary Committee that they should be charged only with the most minor of possible offenses and that the penalty should be the most lenient available.

  If they had been found guilty of the most serious offense, they would have faced a ban from riding for ten years or more, which would have surely ended their careers.

  “I’ll take a holiday with my missus,” Bill said. “And I’ll be back before you know it.”

  “Is everything now sorted with Mrs. McKenzie?” I asked.

  “All fine and dandy,” he said with a laugh and without elaborating. “The baby’s due in April. We can’t wait.”

  I didn’t ask him if he’d told her about his encounter with the French floozy. Somehow, I doubted it.

  Willy Mitchell’s wife had come with him to the hearing and both of them came up to me.

  “Thank you,” Amy said. Then she touched Willy’s arm as if to prompt him.

  “Yes, thank you,” Willy said. “I suppose that went as well as we could have expected. At least I’ll be able to ride at the Cheltenham Festival. Maybe my gaffer will even let me ride Electrostatic in the big novice chase.”

  “I think he will,” I said.

  I’d been down to Gloucestershire to speak with the trainer in question. Initially, he’d been angry that Willy had claimed the saddle had slipped when it hadn’t. But I had explained the specific circumstances and, in the end, he had been supportive, and I think I’d convinced him to give Willy another chance.

  I wandered reluctantly back to my desk and opened the next file on the pile, an investigation into the possible blood doping of a novice hurdler at the Perth races in November.

  I sighed.

  Did I really want to do this for the rest of my life?

  Not for the first time, I thought seriously of emigrating to Australia, starting afresh in a new city on a new continent.

  There was plenty of racing in Australia. Surely I could find a job.

  I checked my phone. No messages. No texts.

  I had sent several to Henri, and I’d tried to call her, but all to no avail.

  I sighed again and dragged myself back to the topic in hand, reading through the blood report from the equine laboratory.

  But my heart wasn’t in it.

  Maybe I’d feel better in the morning.

  “I’m going home,” I said to Paul Maldini, putting my head around the door of his office. “I don’t feel well. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  I took the Tube to Willesden Junction and walked along the gloomy trackside path as the feeble mid-January daylight faded into night.

  No one attacked me. Did I care?

  As I turned into my road, I could make out a shadowy figure half-hidden by the bushes outside my front door.

  It was Henrietta Shawcross.

  We stood looking at each other in silence, each of us trying to gauge the mood of the other.

  “Martin has told me everything,” she said finally.

  I remained silent, unmoving.

  “I’m so sorry,” she said.

  She started to cry and I reached out a hand toward her. She rushed into my arms and hugged me as if never wanting to let go. I leaned down and kissed her and she responded in passionate fashion.

  “At least it isn’t all bad,” Henri said into my shoulder. “You did finally rid me of the creepy Bentley.”

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