Felix Francis - Dick Francis's Front Runner

I smiled to myself as I walked back down the beach to the Coral Stone Club. There was definitely a measure of schadenfreude in me knowing that my tormentor from the previous evening was being cheated on by his own wife, and right under his nose. And with the creepy Bentley Robertson, too.

Henri might be pleased that Bentley’s lecherous leanings were currently directed elsewhere. Not that I’d tell her.

She was still sleeping soundly as I slipped back between the sheets beside her, and now I quickly joined her in the Land of Nod.

In spite of my nocturnal sojourn, I was awake early and I left Henri asleep while I went into the kitchen.

I opened my laptop and checked for any new e-mails but, unsurprisingly over the Christmas holiday, there weren’t any.

Horseracing paused for just two days before Christmas and also on the big day itself, then it restarted with fervour on Boxing Day with eight or nine different meetings, the most prestigious being at Kempton Park for the annual running of the King George VI Chase.

The London office of the BHA took the more usual British approach to the Christmas period, closing from Christmas Eve right through until the New Year. Not that all the BHA staff had the time off. Far from it. Integrity officers, clerks of the scales, stipendiary stewards and many others were still working on the racecourses, checking horse identities, monitoring weighing rooms and carrying on the other regulatory functions of the Authority.

Indeed, this was the first time since I’d joined the BHA that I had not been working on Boxing Day.

I logged on to the Racing Post website to see the declared runners for the King George. Unlike the Hennessy, this race was not a handicap but a Grade 1 championship race, where past form made no difference to the weight a horse had to carry. It was an even test, won without question by the best horse on the day.

This year, there were ten runners going to post, all of them top-class chasers aged between six and nine, each due to carry a weight of eleven stone ten pounds over the three miles and eighteen fences.

I noted that Bill McKenzie had been declared to ride a horse called Special Measures. His collarbone must have mended sufficiently for him to have been passed fit to ride by the medics.

I looked at my watch. It was just gone seven in the morning in Cayman — midday at Kempton. The crowd would already be gathering in their droves at the west-London track. The big race was the fifth of the afternoon, due off at ten past three London time, ten past ten here. I could imagine the anticipation of the owners, trainers and jockeys in the run-up to start time, to say nothing of the betting public who would be eagerly selecting their preferences, if they had any money left to wager after all that Christmas shopping.

I had always been excited by the electric atmosphere that exists at a racecourse on a major event day, and part of me wished I were at Kempton to enjoy it.

I would have to make do with watching the race on my computer, via the internet, steeplechasing not being rated highly enough to be shown live on the American TV channels available in Cayman.

I made some tea and took a cup through to Henri.

‘Go away,’ she said, turning over and burying her head beneath the pillow. ‘I’m still asleep.’ Martin clearly wasn’t the only one to have drunk too much wine the previous evening.

I went back to my laptop and connected it to my iPhone to download the photos I didn’t want to lose.

It took just a few seconds to complete and I scanned through the files to check that they had transferred safely without being corrupted.

That’s strange, I thought.

The photo I had taken of Martin Reynard and Bentley Robertson during their heated discussion at Newbury on Hennessy Gold Cup day didn’t appear to have made the transition from iPhone to laptop.

I looked through the ‘Camera Roll’ on the phone.

It wasn’t there.

I checked again but there was no mistake.

The photograph had been deleted.

Henri and I ordered a taxi and, with the help of a couple of calls from my mobile, we eventually found our way to Derrick and Gay Smith’s house for drinks at six o’clock on Boxing Day evening.

They lived on the wonderfully named Conch Point Road in a large house set well back from the road, out of sight behind a stone wall, and with no name shown on the unpretentious gateway. Hence we had driven past it twice without realizing.

‘Welcome,’ Gay said, meeting us at the front door. ‘Well done for finding us. We like to keep a low profile. Come on in.’

We were ushered out to a covered veranda with its magnificent view north-eastward towards the sea.

We were not their sole guests.

Peter Darwin, the governor, and his wife, Annabel, were there ahead of us.

‘You should have much in common with Peter,’ Gay said to me. ‘He loves his racing.’

‘Just my luck to be posted to a country without a racecourse,’ Peter said with a laugh. ‘When I was told I was being sent to the West Indies, I secretly hoped it would be Barbados. I’ve always fancied going racing on Garrison Savannah.’

‘Wasn’t that a horse?’ I asked, dragging up a distant memory.

‘Yes, indeed,’ he said. ‘It won the Cheltenham Gold Cup back in the nineties. But it was named after the racecourse on Barbados.’

‘I’m so sorry Cayman is such a disappointment to you,’ Derrick said, handing around glasses of champagne.

‘I’ve got over it,’ Peter said with another laugh. ‘I keep in touch with things on the internet, as much as I can, and we go racing whenever we’re back home on leave. Don’t we, darling?’

‘As much as possible,’ Annabel agreed. ‘We always try and get to the Cheltenham Festival in March. Peter effectively grew up on Cheltenham racecourse.’

‘There are worse places,’ he said, laughing.

‘And we adore going racing at Stratford,’ Annabel said, looking lovingly at her husband. ‘That’s where Peter and I met.’

‘How romantic,’ Henri said. ‘Jeff and I met at Sandown races.’

‘In my box,’ Derrick said, all smiles.

Annabel beamed at us, her big blue eyes positively sparkling with delight.

‘Peter’s father was a jump jockey, and I once worked for the British Jockey Club.’

‘Jeff, don’t you work for the Jockey Club?’ Gay asked.

‘Not quite,’ I said. ‘But I do work for the racing authorities.’

Derrick again recounted the story of how I had saved his horse from being stolen at Ascot. I’d given up trying to tell him it was meant to be confidential. But if you couldn’t tell someone in the diplomatic service a secret, whom could you tell? Diplomats were meant to be good at keeping secrets. But they were also meant to be fairly proficient at lying for their country as well.

‘When was your father a jockey?’ I asked Peter.

‘Back in the sixties,’ he said. ‘He wasn’t famous or anything. He only ever rode four winners. He’d just started out on his career when he was killed in a road accident.’

‘How awful,’ I said.

‘I was only an infant at the time. I don’t remember him at all.’

‘I’ll look him up in the records. What was his first name?’

‘Paul,’ Peter said, pleased that I had taken some interest. ‘He was actually Paul Perry. I only became a Darwin when I was twelve and my mother remarried.’

‘Any relation to...?’ I asked.

‘None,’ he replied quickly, with one of those wan smiles that told me that he’d been asked that too many times before, and he was bored with it.

We watched as the last of the daylight faded away and then marvelled as the full moon seemed to emerge straight out of the water, its orange disc appearing unnaturally large and almost frighteningly close.