Felix Francis - Dick Francis's Front Runner

Henri and I didn’t stay long. The time change meant we were dog-tired and ready for bed by eight o’clock. It had been a long day and I’d been up for nearly twenty hours.

‘We can’t go to bed just yet,’ I said as we walked back along the beach in the dark to the Coral Stone Club.

‘Why not?’ she replied with a giggle.

‘I mean, we can’t go to sleep yet. We’d be awake again in the middle of the night.’

We managed to stay up until nine, chancing the mosquitoes and sitting outside on the patio to share a bottle of white wine that the management had kindly placed as a welcome gift in the refrigerator.

‘How long have Martin and Theresa been married?’ I asked.

‘Eleven years,’ Henri said. ‘I was a bridesmaid at their wedding. Why?’

‘I was just wondering. Do they have any children?’

‘Theresa is desperate to have one. Martin had a son by a former wife, and I know it bothers her. She’s had loads of tests and tried all sorts of fertility treatments. But no luck so far, and they’re both getting on. It must be hard for them as Martin’s younger brother has four.’

‘Is he involved in the family firm?’

‘Not at all. He’s an artist and hates anything to do with it.’ She made it sound like a failing. ‘He and his wife live in some godforsaken place in the Scottish Highlands with no mains electricity. I haven’t seen them for years.’

‘Do you ever see Martin’s son?’

‘All the time. His name’s Joshua. He’s fifteen now. Martin supports him financially and he comes to stay with them at weekends when they’re in England, and also during the school holidays. He’s been here to Cayman as well, often, but sadly not for Christmas this year. It would have been nice to have some kids around.’ She laughed. ‘Perhaps you and I will have some.’

We looked at each other. Were we really that serious?

I woke in the dark and it took me a moment or two to remember where I was. Then I heard Henri’s rhythmic breathing beside me. I smiled. It was Christmas Eve in the Cayman Islands, and all was well in my life.

A little while later I heard Henri stir.

‘Are you awake?’ I asked quietly into the blackness.

‘No,’ she replied.

I snuggled over to her, searching for her body with my hands in the super king-size bed.

‘What time is it?’ she asked.

‘Time for sex,’ I replied.

‘Oh, goody.’

It was still dark when I went into the kitchen to make us some coffee. The digital clock on the cooker told me it was ten minutes to six, ten to eleven back in the UK.

When I went back into the bedroom, Henri was sitting up with the light on, reading.

‘What’s so interesting you have to read it in the middle of the night?’

‘Papers for the board meeting. I’ve had them for over a week now, but I haven’t even looked at them yet. Uncle Richard would be furious if he knew.’

‘What time’s the meeting?’

‘Ten o’clock.’

‘Why is it taking place here?’ I asked.

‘Because this is where the company has its registered office. Martin moved everything here three years ago, when he became managing director.’

No wonder I hadn’t been able to find any recent accounts for Reynard Shipping Limited at Companies House.

‘Why?’ I said.

‘Partly because this is where he lives.’

‘I thought you said he spends his time in Singapore.’

‘He does, but this is his official home. Even though Cayman is not an independent country — it’s an overseas territory of the UK — Martin and Theresa have what they call status here. It’s like Cayman citizenship.’

She turned over another sheet of paper.

‘Of course, the company move was also done for tax reasons. Reynard Shipping was a British company and was therefore paying UK corporation tax on all its worldwide profits. The whole lot. Our competitors, meanwhile, were mostly based in Singapore or Hong Kong, which have far lower tax rates than the UK. Hence we had become uncompetitive. We even began losing money. So Martin moved the company registration over here to take advantage of Cayman’s tax laws.’

‘Very wise,’ I said.

‘We still pay UK tax on our UK profit, of course, through our UK subsidiary. That’s fair enough. But not on everything else as well.’

It all sounded eminently sensible.

I left her to read the board papers and went into the kitchen to call Detective Chief Inspector Owens, DS Jagger’s senior officer, as I had promised.

‘Ah, Mr Hinkley,’ he said when I was finally put through to him. ‘Thank you for calling.’

‘Have you charged Leslie Morris with murder?’ I asked.

‘No,’ he said.

‘How about his son?’

‘So far we have been unable to locate Mr Andrew Morris.’

‘You mean he’s done a runner?’ I said.

‘It would appear so,’ agreed the chief inspector.

‘Have you charged Mr Morris Senior with anything?’

‘Not as yet. He has been released on police bail pending further inquiries. He has to report back to us on the fifteenth of January.’

‘But surely you must have enough on him to charge him with blackmail.’

‘Mr McKenzie is no longer being very cooperative,’ the chief inspector replied. ‘He maintains that he might be mistaken about the times of the calls made to him demanding that he lose the horse race, times that we know from the records match calls made to his phone from Morris’s number. He now says he’s not sure it was Morris who was blackmailing him.’

Unbelievable.

I would have to have words with young Bill.

‘Mr Hinkley, what I really wanted to talk to you about is your visit to Mr Swinton’s house on the morning of his death.’

‘Yes?’ I said. ‘What about it?’

‘At the time you gave your first statement to DS Jagger, you were under the impression that Mr Swinton himself had locked you in the sauna. Is that correct?’

‘Yes,’ I replied.

‘We now believe that it might have been, in fact, the action of a third party.’

‘Yes,’ I said again. ‘I know.’

‘At the time, why did you think it was Mr Swinton?’

‘I thought he was the only other person there, so it had to be him.’

‘But what was it about Mr Swinton’s character that gave you reason to believe that he was capable of such a thing?’

‘Dave Swinton was the most competitive person I have ever met,’ I said. ‘And I’ve met quite a few in racing. He would do almost anything to win a race, even if it was not entirely within the rules. He considered that life itself was a series of games, and that winning was all that mattered. That’s why his marriage broke down. He was never prepared to lose an argument and he would never admit he was wrong, even if he knew he was. Some people thought he was arrogant, and he was, but I’ll tell you, without that arrogance, he would never have been half the jockey he was.’

‘Does that mean you didn’t get on?’ asked the DCI.

‘Not at all,’ I said. ‘Dave and I were friends, but I still thought him capable of locking me in the sauna if he thought it would help him to win — whatever game he imagined we were playing at the time. Although, I have to admit, I was surprised and disappointed when I assumed he’d left me there to die. Why is all this relevant?’

‘I like to get inside the character of murder victims,’ the policeman said. ‘To try and think like them. Somehow it helps me to understand the reasons someone might want them dead.’

It sounded like mumbo jumbo to me.

‘The reason someone wanted Dave Swinton dead was because he’d found out who was blackmailing him,’ I said. ‘Plain and simple. And that person was Leslie Morris.’