Felix Francis - Dick Francis's Front Runner

Such a simple question with so many unspoken overtones attached.

‘Fine,’ she said. ‘A little tired, as always.’ She laughed again. ‘I’ve been using that as my excuse to get Quentin to do all the washing-up.’

We chatted a bit more about what we had both been doing.

‘How’s it all going with Henrietta?’ she asked.

‘Great,’ I said. ‘Very happy.’

‘Quentin was very taken with her.’

I knew. I’d noticed.

‘Is he there? I’d like to have a word with him.’

I waited while she found him.

‘What the hell time is it with you?’ Quentin said as he came on the line.

‘Half past three,’ I said. ‘I couldn’t sleep.’

‘Got a guilty conscience?’

‘Slightly,’ I said. ‘But that’s not why I rang. Do you remember you told me about the man who sold his printing business and didn’t pay the capital gains tax?’

‘Of course. What about it?’

‘How did he claim to be tax resident in the Channel Islands, and why did you think he wasn’t?’

‘He bought a house in Guernsey, and established his residence there, but he then spent too many days in London. He was a fool to think that no one would bother to count.’

‘What’s the limit on days?’ I asked.

‘They’ve introduced a new system, and I’m not sure of the latest rules, but it used to be if someone spent more than one hundred and eighty-three days in the UK during any one year, or more than an average of ninety days per year over the current and previous three years, then they were considered as a tax resident. Those were the rules that applied in the case.’

Unlike for American citizens, who are obliged to file an annual IRS tax return wherever they live in the world, the British are required to do so only for years when they are actually tax resident in the United Kingdom.

‘How can you find out how many days someone spends in the UK?’

‘It’s not as straightforward as you’d think. Passports are now scanned on the way into and out of the country, but that didn’t used to be the case. Until very recently, there were no records taken when anyone left. Airline passenger lists could tell you, provided they went by air. But there were no passenger lists on the ferries, or on the trains through the Channel Tunnel. Then, of course, there’s Ireland. There are no passport checks whatsoever for UK citizens going either way across the Irish Sea, or when crossing the land border between Northern Ireland and the Republic. That’s where my Guernsey man went — he used cash to buy a ferry ticket from Liverpool to Belfast as a foot passenger, took a bus to Dublin, and then returned to London by air, later claiming he’d been in Ireland for two whole weeks. The revenue reckoned he’d gone there and back in a single day. He couldn’t produce any hotel receipts, or even say where he’d stayed.’

Sometimes Quentin’s long answers could be quite useful.

‘How do I find out the new rules?’

‘It’s sure to be on the web somewhere,’ Quentin said.

‘If I was so inclined, to whom would I report it, if I discover that someone has been defrauding the taxman?’

‘Directly to the revenue.’

‘Not the police?’

‘No. The police wouldn’t really know what to do with it other than pass it on to the tax authorities. It is they who prosecute tax cheats, not the CPS. They even have a tax-evasion hotline especially for tip-offs from the public.’

‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘That’s very helpful.’

‘Glad to be of service.’

We hung up.

Quentin knew better than to ask me why I wanted the information, or even who I was interested in. I would tell him if I needed to.

I went through to the kitchen and opened my laptop.

I Googled the rules on determining UK tax residency and discovered that the new system was far more complicated than the one Quentin had described. It took into account many factors other than just the days a person was present in the UK. Available accommodation, family ties and days spent actually working in the country were also now important.

Henri had told me that Martin had been working in the UK to restructure the British end of their organization. He also had a house and a minor child in the country. All of those things would have worked against him, reducing the number of days he was allowed to remain.

From carefully reading the rules on the UK Government website, it seemed to me that Martin would have been allowed to be in the country for a maximum of only ninety days without becoming a tax resident, maybe even less. Yet Henri had said he’d spent much of the summer there, and he’d also been in England for at least a week during the previous month.

I’d seen him.

So had he overstayed his permitted time?

You’re a total fucking idiot! You absolutely shouldn’t be here. You shouldn’t even be in the country. It’s far too risky.

And what had Martin then replied to Bentley?

No one will ever know .

But I knew.

I went back to bed but I still couldn’t sleep.

I lay on my back in the dark, thinking and asking myself many questions, but I came up with very few definitive answers.

Apart from the one in Dave Swinton’s sauna, were the other attempts on my life nothing to do with the blackmailing of jockeys to fix races?

Were they all to do with the fact that I knew Martin Reynard had been at Newbury races on Hennessy Gold Cup day, and I’d taken a photograph to prove it?

It seemed rather extreme, as others would surely have also seen him there on that day.

Was it Martin Reynard, not Leslie Morris, who’d sent a couple of London’s criminal fraternity to kill me with a carving knife?

Indeed, when those attempts had failed, had he resolved to murder me here in Cayman with the contaminated dive tank?

And perhaps the most important question of all — if I was right, how did I stop him from trying again?

If it had been Martin who had taken the opportunity to delete the photo from my iPhone during the confusion on the boat, was that enough? Was that an end to it? Or did he still feel the need to bump me off?

Could I take that chance?

So far, I’d been very lucky to survive; the doctors kept telling me so.

Could I trust that my luck would hold? I had to be lucky every time whereas my would-be murderer had to be lucky only once.

I could report my suspicions to the revenue, but it wouldn’t result in an arrest — not yet, anyway. There would be weeks, months or even years of investigation.

Maybe not even that.

I suspected that no crime had yet taken place, as we must still be in the tax year in question. Any tax return for the current year would not be due to be filed until well into the year after next, more than twelve months away. A crime would be committed only at that point if a tax return was not submitted, and the due tax not paid.

A year’s income tax didn’t seem worth murdering me over, not on the off chance that I might have spotted what was going on, especially as the attempts had done nothing more than make me increasingly determined to discover why.

But Derrick Smith had been constantly telling people that I was some sort of secret-agent super sleuth who could spot and prevent wrongdoing from afar with almost mystical powers.

Had Martin believed it and simply decided to act sooner rather than later?

But murder?

All he had to do was accept his responsibilities and pay his tax, like everybody else. End of story.

Other than the minor fact that he may have tried three times to cause my untimely death, I didn’t have any particular axe to grind against Martin — after all, I was an investigator for the BHA not the tax authorities. But would it make it safer for me if I told him that I believed he had become UK tax resident for the current year, and that I had informed many others including the revenue? He could hardly murder everyone, so would he then have anything to gain by killing me?