Felix Francis - Dick Francis's Front Runner

‘How big an additional cut?’ I asked.

‘As much again as the rules state, paid in cash to him as a gift. I had to get my owners to agree as they had to pay it.’

Mr and Mrs Valdemon nodded at me in unison.

‘We thought it was worth it to get his services,’ said Mrs Valdemon in a soft Black Country accent. ‘He won two races for us before.’ She squeezed her husband’s hand. ‘And he should have been riding Peach of a Day for us this afternoon. It is such a dreadful thing to have happened to him, isn’t it?’

‘Indeed it is,’ I agreed.

I left the three of them to their drinks and went outside to watch the second race from the grandstand — a not very exciting-looking two-and-a-half-mile novice hurdle race for conditional jockeys.

Inexperienced riders on inexperienced horses — not surprisingly, it was a recipe for disaster.

Southwell racecourse is a flat oval with two long straights joined by sharp semi-circular bends. It is just over a mile round, which means that, in a two-and-a-half-mile race, the horses have to complete two-and-a-bit full circuits. Hence the start was between the second last and final hurdles.

The seven runners jumped off fairly well and, as is always the way in novice hurdle races, they clattered their way noisily over the first obstacle.

As they passed in front of the grandstand for the first time, one of them tried to dive back down the chute towards the parade ring and the stables. The poor fresh-faced jockey was caught completely unawares and was unceremoniously dumped onto the turf in full view of the meagre crowd, much to the enjoyment of most.

The remaining six continued on their way round the sharp turn and down the back straight, negotiating the hurdles with little drama.

That was reserved for later.

Two of the young jockeys obviously couldn’t count up to three and rode out a finish between them when there was still a whole circuit of the course to complete. Their embarrassment was compounded when they both pulled up and put their arms around each other as if they had just finished the Grand National.

That left four who made heavy weather of the final mile, one horse falling in the back straight and another unseating its rider at the second last hurdle. So, just two of the seven lasted the course to contest a finish, but at least they did manage to provide some decent entertainment for those in the stands.

In a flurry of hands, heels, elbows and knees, they were finally separated only by a photograph and, in truth, despite their less than stylish techniques, neither of them deserved to lose. The two jockeys received a good hand as their mounts were led back to the unsaddling enclosure, which is more than could be said for the others, who sneaked back to the changing room in disgrace.

I stayed to watch Peach of a Day run second in the day’s feature steeplechase.

He ran well enough but the replacement jockey had kept him slightly off the pace for too long and the horse had been just unable to make up the deficit in the run to the line from the last fence.

Mr and Mrs Valdemon appeared rather disappointed as they listened to the excuses.

Maybe they felt that paying Dave Swinton his extra ‘gift’ in cash would have been worth it to get the win, if only he had been alive to receive it.

Were they wrong?

Not one bit.

Racing was all about the winning.

There were no plaudits for coming second.

‘It was definitely Mr David Swinton in the burning Mercedes. We now have a positive identification of the remains.’

‘Oh,’ I said.

DS Jagger called me at eight o’clock on Wednesday morning as I was in the shower.

‘Did the DNA match?’ I asked.

‘In the end we didn’t need to resort to DNA. Mr Swinton had twice broken his right leg in racing falls, once above and once below the knee. On both occasions, surgeons had inserted a titanium plate into the leg. The two plates had serial numbers stamped into them and the numbers matched those on similar plates found in the remains. There is no doubt.’

‘Thank you for letting me know.’

‘This call is also to inform you officially that, as a result of the formal identification of the body of Mr Swinton, there will be no further investigation into the events in the sauna at his home on Sunday morning.’

‘Yes, I understand.’

‘But those events may well have had a material bearing on his death and, as the last-known person to see him alive, you will almost certainly be called as a witness at the inquest.’

‘I didn’t actually see him. He pushed me into the sauna from behind and slammed the door shut before I could turn round.’

‘Nevertheless, you should expect a summons from the coroner in due course.’

‘Are you sure it was suicide?’ I asked. ‘Burning oneself to death with petrol is a particularly nasty way to kill yourself.’ I shivered again at the memory of the TV images of the figure sitting amongst the flames.

‘Is there such a thing as a nice way?’ he said. ‘All I can say is that, bearing in mind what he did to you and what you’ve told us, we are currently not looking for anyone else in regard to the death.’

‘Is that police-speak for Yes, it was suicide ?’

‘I suppose it is.’

‘How about the petrol? Where did he get that?’

‘An empty metal petrol can was discovered in the burnt-out vehicle. It matched a second one found in Mr Swinton’s garage that was full. Mr Swinton’s gardener has confirmed that two such cans were used to store fuel for the lawnmower and that he, the gardener, had filled both the cans the previous week.’

So he had taken the petrol from his own garage.

‘Not much doubt, then.’

‘No.’

He disconnected and I stood there still dripping water onto my bedroom carpet.

So Dave had been the body in the car. So much for my crazy theory that it was someone else. But it still didn’t make sense.

If he had taken the can of petrol from his garage, he knew before he left home what he was going to do. And yet he had still left me to die in the sauna.

Was he such a heartless man?

That was not the Dave Swinton that people knew and loved. All he’d had to do was flick off the electricity. He hadn’t needed to let me out so I could stop him.

I’d thought of him as my friend. Had I been so wrong?

And why drive nearly an hour to Otmoor to set himself on fire?

There were plenty of isolated spots on the Downs above Lambourn where no one would have interrupted him.

Had he gone to Otmoor for a specific purpose, perhaps to meet someone?

I spent the rest of the day at the BHA headquarters in High Holborn.

The news of the positive identification of the body in the car had been reported to the media and it gradually filtered through the office grapevine. No one was surprised but it didn’t exactly help lift the sense of gloom that had descended on the place.

Dave Swinton had been due to be in the offices that Wednesday for a meeting of the Racing Needs You! campaign. Everyone had been looking forward to it, and a buffet lunch had been planned for the staff to meet him.

It was most unusual for the stars of the sport to make such visits. All too often they were only present at HQ to face disciplinary panel hearings, and social niceties, such as lunch with the staff, were never on the agenda for those occasions.

Needless to say, after the events of Sunday, the buffet lunch had been cancelled, but that didn’t stop people speculating on what might have been.

I, meanwhile, went back to watching race videos from the BHA database.

I should have been looking at the other open files on my desk but I kept being drawn back to the questions surrounding Dave Swinton.