Felix Francis - Dick Francis's Front Runner

‘Thank you,’ I said.

‘He was charged with both the manslaughter of Darryl Lawrence and the attempted murder of you. He is due back in court next week but that will be a formality. You can rest assured that he will now stay behind bars until his trial.’

‘When will that be?’ I asked.

‘Sometime next year,’ he said. ‘The date won’t even be set for months yet.’

That was a relief.

‘Did he say anything?’ I asked.

‘He blames it all on Lawrence. Claims he didn’t know that Lawrence had a knife with him. He says he thought they were there just to rough you up a bit.’

‘He definitely knew about the knife when they came to the hospital to try and finish the job.’

‘He says it wasn’t him with Lawrence on that occasion.’

‘But he was wearing the red baseball boots.’

‘Indeed,’ said the inspector with a slight laugh. ‘I’m afraid our friend Mr Banks is not very bright. He just talked himself into more and more trouble.’

‘I assume that you asked him why they were after me.’

‘He said he doesn’t know. Lawrence was the brains behind it, if you can call them brains. Lawrence just told Banks what to do.’

‘How about the phone calls to my landline?’

‘Lawrence made those, apparently. Just as you thought, they were trying to find out where you were. It seems that they’d been waiting for you to appear outside Sandown racecourse on that Saturday afternoon. Banks told us they were planning to “do” you on your way back to Esher railway station. But you never turned up.’

I’d departed from the racecourse in an ambulance, on its way to Kingston Hospital with Bill McKenzie, and his broken collarbone.

‘What did Banks say when you mentioned Leslie Morris?’ I asked.

‘He swore blind that he’s never heard of anyone called Leslie Morris,’ said DI Galvin. ‘But, then, he would, wouldn’t he?’

Perhaps he had been telling the truth.

The timing didn’t fit.

Bill McKenzie hadn’t known that I was interested in him until he was leaving the parade ring on Lost Moon for the race in which he’d be injured. Even if he’d wanted to, he hadn’t had a chance to contact Leslie Morris before he’d gone to surgery. I knew because I’d been with him all the time.

Morris would have been unaware that I was at Sandown that Saturday. So, if he hadn’t told Lawrence and Banks to wait for me outside the racecourse, who had ?

And how would they have known what I looked like?

Even if Morris had spotted me following him on the previous afternoon, which I knew he hadn’t, then Lawrence and Banks would have been looking for a man with long dark hair, a brown beanie hat and a goatee.

If so, it would appear to be a very poorly thought through plan for murder.

The chances of knifing the wrong man to death as a result of misidentification seemed enormous.

No, they had to have known exactly what I looked like.

‘Did you ask Banks how they would recognize me outside the racecourse?’ I asked the inspector.

‘Indeed I did,’ he said. ‘It seems that they followed you to the racecourse from Esher railway station earlier in the day.’

I silently berated myself for not having spotted a tail. I was the one who usually did the following, and I knew all the tricks. I should have noticed.

‘But how did they know what I looked like then?’

‘According to Banks, you were pointed out to them.’

The hairs on the back of my neck began to stand up. It was my turn for an adrenalin rush. Fight or flight. The body’s natural response to fear. I had been pointed out to a pair of killers without me having the slightest notion of why, and it frightened me badly.

‘Who pointed me out?’ I asked, forcing my voice box to relax.

‘Banks says he doesn’t know. Just a man.’

‘Didn’t he give you a description?’

‘He claims he never met the man. He only saw him from afar. Lawrence spoke to him inside the station while he, Banks, had been told to wait outside.’

‘He must be able to give you something,’ I said. ‘Was the man young or old? Tall or short? Fat or thin?’

‘He says he doesn’t know, but I’m not sure I believe him. He claims that only Lawrence knew who the man was.’

And Lawrence was conveniently dead.

On Monday morning I caught another train from Paddington, this time to Reading, where I took a taxi to the police station for a booked appointment with Detective Sergeant Jagger.

‘Now, how can I help you?’ he said when we had both sat down in one of the interview rooms. We were accompanied by a detective constable with a pen and notebook.

‘I think it’s more about how I can help you ,’ I replied.

‘I’m all ears,’ he said.

‘A lot of it was in the statement I gave to your colleague. But I now have more to tell you.’

I told him everything about my investigation into the race fixing, from my meeting with Dave Swinton in his sauna on the morning of the Hennessy Gold Cup, right up to my conversation with Willy Mitchell on the previous day. I told him of the dubious bets made by Leslie Morris and of my visit to Morris’s house in Raynes Park. I left out the actual identities of McKenzie and Mitchell, referring to them only as Jockey A and Jockey B . I also skipped over the true reasons why they were being blackmailed.

‘You know who these jockeys are, of course?’ he asked.

‘Of course,’ I confirmed. ‘But I’d like to keep them out of it.’

There was a brief moment of silence, bar the scratching of the constable’s pen on his notebook.

‘Are you sure that Mr Swinton told you that he was aware who had been blackmailing him?’

I thought back to the conversation. Dave had been reluctant to say anything of substance down the phone line. But I was sure.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘He told me on the morning that he died. He said that he knew who it was. I presume he had found out at Newbury races the day before, or maybe on the Saturday evening. Either way, he wouldn’t tell me the person’s name over the phone. He said he didn’t trust them after being a victim of hacking a few years ago. That’s why I went back to his house that Sunday morning.’

‘He hadn’t known who it was when you spoke to him on Saturday?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘He told me that he’d kill him if he knew.’

The detective raised his eyebrows. ‘Do you think Mr Swinton might have set a trap for the blackmailer on Sunday morning? One that went badly wrong?’

‘I suppose it’s possible,’ I said. ‘I tend to think that saying he’d kill him was only a turn of phrase, rather than an actual threat. Dave was ruthless in his riding, even aggressive, but he was a gentle soul underneath. That is why I was so surprised when I thought he had left me in his sauna to die.’

‘Do you believe that the same person is blackmailing the other jockeys?’

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I do. Otherwise it would be too much of a coincidence.’

‘The world is full of coincidences,’ the detective said. ‘Trust me, that’s something you learn very quickly in my business.’

‘So are you now going to arrest Leslie Morris?’

‘You say Mr Morris is a retired accountant?’

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘Well into his sixties?’

‘He’s sixty-six.’

‘Do you think a sixty-six-year-old would have the strength to overcome a young, fit jockey like Mr Swinton? And would he also have the strength to lift him into and then out of the boot of a car?’

They were good points.

‘But whoever it was had to have an accomplice with him anyway,’ I said. ‘To drive another car. Otherwise how did he get away from the burning Mercedes? You can hardly hitch a lift in the middle of Otmoor. And how did he get to Lambourn in the first place?’