Felix Francis - Dick Francis's Front Runner

On Friday morning I caught a train to Ascot races for the first day of the last major meeting before Christmas. It had been almost two weeks since I’d been on a racecourse. That had been at Sandown on the day before I’d been stabbed.

That was also where I had first met Henrietta Shawcross, the day of the giggles over lunch in Derrick and Gay Smith’s box.

Thirteen days ago.

In some respects, it felt like much longer, in others, like only yesterday.

I hadn’t seen Henri since she’d been to Richmond on Monday evening, and I’d spoken to her only on the telephone for a few minutes.

‘I’m sorry,’ she’d said when I complained I was being neglected. ‘It’s my busiest time of the year. Everyone is having Christmas parties and needing staff. I’ve worked solidly every day this week, and every evening except Monday. All I want to do afterwards is go home and go straight to sleep.’

Sleep, I’d thought.

All I wanted to do was ‘sleep’ with her.

‘We will spend lots of time together next week,’ she’d said.

‘Shouldn’t I be booking my flights?’ I’d asked.

‘Don’t worry, I’ve done all that. We leave on Wednesday.’

‘Where to?’ I’d asked.

‘The Cayman Islands.’

It all seemed surreal as I struggled up the hill to the racecourse on a typical December day of dampness and wind. The Cayman Islands seemed as far away as the moon.

I had to stop at least twice to rest.

I was beginning to wish that I had heeded my sister’s advice to take things more easily, and to watch the racing on the television.

But there was nothing like actually being where the action was happening. On television one saw only what the producer decided was relevant, whereas I preferred to look elsewhere, perhaps to see what someone didn’t want me to.

I went through the racecourse entrance turnstiles using my official BHA pass and made a direct line for the coffee bar on the concourse level of the imposing grandstand. It wasn’t so much a drink that I needed but a place to sit down. The walk up from the station had tired me out more than I’d thought it would.

‘Now, you must be careful,’ the nurse had said at the hospital clinic the previous morning, when I’d gone to have the stitches out. ‘We don’t want you back in here again, now do we?’

No, I’d thought. We don’t.

As I was sitting, drinking my coffee, my phone rang. It was DI Galvin.

‘Banks has been charged with manslaughter,’ he said.

‘Why not murder?’ I asked.

‘He says he didn’t push Lawrence under the train on purpose. It was an accident.’

‘And you believe him?’ I asked, with sarcasm in my voice.

‘Of course not. But we were in danger of getting nothing and having to let him go as our time was almost up. Everything was circumstantial. The fact that the second witness couldn’t pick him out rather negated the one that could. He wasn’t saying anything at all, so we offered him a deal and he took it.’

‘I didn’t think plea bargaining was allowed in the UK.’

‘It wasn’t like one of those US deals. There was no mention of a specific sentence or anything. We simply gave Banks the opportunity to agree with us that Lawrence’s death was manslaughter, not murder. His solicitor must have thought we had a stronger case than we actually did, because he advised Banks to agree. He has since been chatting away telling us all about how, in the crush on the platform, he only slightly nudged his dear old friend Darryl, who then stumbled accidently, falling under the train.

‘It’s all a load of old hogwash. Banks knows it, the solicitor knows it, and I know it. But it does mean that Banks has confirmed his association with Lawrence and that was crucial for your case. What the solicitor doesn’t know is that we are now going to arrest Banks for the attempted murder of you, twice over. We’ll see what he has to say about that.’

‘Ask him if he knows a man called Leslie Morris,’ I said.

‘Why?’

I told him briefly about my inquiries into the fixed races and how Morris had placed the suspect bets at Sandown.

‘The attempts on my life may have been to stop me investigating.’

‘OK,’ he said. ‘I’ll try it.’

‘Will Banks be remanded in custody?’ I asked. That was far more important to me than anything else at the moment.

‘Sure to be.’

‘Well done,’ I said. ‘Please keep me informed.’

‘Will do.’

He hung up.

With Lawrence dead and Banks in jail, I suddenly felt a lot safer.

Part of the reason I’d come to Ascot was because I thought I’d detected a pattern in the races that had been lost on purpose.

Dave Swinton had ridden Garrick Party at Haydock Park in a lesser race on the day of the Grade 1 Betfair Chase. The same had been true for Bill McKenzie’s ride on Pool Table, on the same card as the Paddy Power Gold Cup. True, Wisden Wonder’s race at Sandown had been on a Friday, not a Saturday, but it had been the first day of the Tingle Creek Festival and a sizable crowd had attended, plus there had been a large number of bookmakers in the betting ring.

Someone trying to bet seventeen thousand pounds in cash would have stuck out like a sore thumb at, say, Newton Abbot on a Wednesday, when the seagulls would have outnumbered the genuine punters, and there would be only a half-dozen or so bookies to bet with. But amongst a big crowd, and with some serious money about, no one would raise an eyebrow.

Were there more races than just the three I had spotted? Were more jockeys involved than just Dave Swinton and Bill McKenzie?

I had spent most of Thursday afternoon researching race results and watching video recordings. I was looking for favourites that hadn’t won on days when large crowds would have been present.

Somewhat surprisingly, it was quite common for even very short-priced favourites not to win. Looking back for the past four months, I found seventeen horses that had started at odds shorter than two-to-one that had failed to win a race on the same card as the week’s main feature.

My list included two at Newbury on the same day that Dave Swinton had won the Hennessy Gold Cup on Integrated. One of those, Global Expedition, had started the Grade 2, Long Distance Hurdle at the incredibly short price of seven-to-four-on and had then finished a bad third of the six runners, well beaten by seven and eighteen lengths.

It was the first time Global Expedition had not won in his seven starts over hurdles and I remember the result being a considerable shock. However, I had been at Newbury that day, had watched the race live, and I hadn’t noticed anything questionable about the horse’s running at the time.

I studied the video of the race over and over again but, however many times I watched it, and from whichever camera position, I couldn’t establish that the horse had been deliberately prevented from winning by its rider. The jockey appeared to have made every effort to stay in touch with the leader, but to no avail.

I concluded that there was nothing suspicious. Global Expedition simply hadn’t performed on that day in the same way as he had done in the past.

Perhaps the horse had been feeling a touch unwell or was merely not in the mood to race. Racehorses were not machines. If they always ran exactly as their ratings suggested, racing would quickly die, as everyone would pick the same horse to back.

It was the healthy dose of unpredictability that made racing so exciting.

But there had been another heavily backed loser that had run on Hennessy day, in the first race, a two-and-a-quarter-mile novice handicap chase.

Electrostatic had started as the six-to-four favourite but, not only did he fail to win the race, he failed to jump even two of the thirteen fences. He’d been pulled up immediately after the first with, as the jockey claimed, a saddle that had slipped to the side.