Felix Francis - Dick Francis's Front Runner

I had spent nearly twenty hours in custody at the Royal Cayman Islands Police headquarters in George Town, answering questions and trying to explain how I had come to be on a deserted beach in the middle of the mangroves, with a gun in my hand and a dead body on the sand.

At first, it had been fairly obvious that the police didn’t believe a single word I was telling them.

Even to my ears, the story seemed too far-fetched to be true. Things like that just didn’t happen in the idyllic Cayman Islands.

‘Consider yourself a bit of a James Bond, do you?’ one of the local detectives had said as his opening gambit. ‘Reckon you’ve got a licence to kill, do you?’

‘No,’ I’d replied. ‘I do not.’

‘That’s not what I’ve heard from Mr Smith.’

I wondered if calling Derrick had been a mistake. He must have told them the tale of the foiled kidnapping of Secret Ways at Ascot. They were clearly getting me mixed up with the name of the horse.

I’d been arrested on suspicion of the murder of Bentley Robertson and had spent a night tossing and turning on a hard mattress in a stifling-hot prison cell.

It was not knowing what was happening outside that was the most frustrating thing.

After an initial interview on that first evening, when I had gone through the whole story from start to finish, I’d been left alone in the cell without any further communication, not only for the rest of the night but throughout the whole of the next morning.

‘What’s going on?’ I asked the police constable who brought me some lunch at noon.

He didn’t reply.

I was most concerned about what Sir Richard Reynard might be telling them. What fabrication he had thought up to land me in deeper trouble.

At about three in the afternoon, the same detective as before came to the cell, opening the metal door wide.

‘You’re free to go, Mr Hinkley,’ he said. ‘There will be no charges.’

I was relieved.

‘Have you arrested Sir Richard Reynard?’ I asked him.

‘Richard Reynard is dead,’ he said. ‘He was found this morning in his son’s dive store. It appears that he died of carbon monoxide poisoning. A petrol-driven air compressor was discovered still running in the store with insufficient ventilation for the exhaust fumes.’

‘Oh,’ I said. That had been Bentley’s idea.

‘We are treating his death as suicide,’ said the detective. ‘He left a note.’

No doubt, this time, then.

‘What was in the note?’ I asked.

He paused for a moment as if deciding whether or not he should tell me.

‘It was just four words long: I am so sorry .’

Unexpectedly, my overriding emotion was one of sorrow.

Up until last night, I had quite liked Uncle Richard. There had been a kind of magnetism about him, drawing people in under his wing, charmed by the strength of his personality.

But it had all been a façade.

His character had been deeply flawed by recklessness and greed.

And it had been his greed that had ultimately resulted in him taking his own life — that and the folly of imagining that he could somehow cover up Martin’s costly error by killing anyone who knew about it.

Part of me was surprised that he had chosen to take such a way out. I had half expected him to be more of a fighter and to brave it out, perhaps blaming everything on his dead lawyer. But Bentley had been like a son to him and maybe he didn’t want to further tarnish his memory.

‘You will have to remain on the island until the inquests for both Mr Reynard and Mr Robertson are opened,’ said the detective.

I wondered if he had intentionally dropped the ‘Sir Richard’, reducing him to a mere ‘Mr’.

‘When will that be?’ I asked.

‘In a few days’ time. At the very least, you will have to give evidence as to how Mr Robertson died.’

‘OK,’ I said, but I wondered where I would stay. The apartment at the Coral Stone Club was obviously out of the question, and all the hotels were full to overflowing at this peak time of the Christmas and New Year tourist season.

‘Mr Smith has indicated that you can stay with him,’ the detective said as if reading my mind.

We landed at Heathrow in a snowstorm early on New Year’s Day, and everything was covered in white.

The aircraft was parked out on a remote stand, and walking down the steps to the bus was quite a shock to the system. The Cayman police had been reluctant to return my suitcase from the boot of Sir Richard’s car as it was still classed as evidence, and I’d been unable to buy anything warmer than a paper-thin plastic rain jacket.

Unsurprisingly, there was little demand for thick warm sweaters, scarves and gloves in the tropics.

Derrick and Gay Smith had been good to me, providing me not only with food and accommodation, but also with a pair of trousers, a decent shirt, a wash kit and some friendly ears to listen.

I had told them everything over a welcome glass of wine in their sitting room on the day I’d been released.

They were both totally shocked.

‘I can’t believe that it was me who was the cause of everything,’ Derrick had said. ‘I introduced you to Richard Reynard, and I took you up to the Hennessy suite at Newbury.’

But he couldn’t have known what I’d hear on the balcony, and what Richard Reynard’s awful reaction to it would be.

Two days later, Derrick had driven me to George Town for the opening of the inquest into the deaths of both Bentley Robertson and Sir Richard Reynard.

I had been informed that, at this stage, the proceedings would establish only the identities of the dead, a brief summary of the actions leading up to the fatalities, and the actual cause of each death. Then there would be an adjournment, the inquest to be resumed only after the forensic and police investigations were concluded.

However, on the grounds that I would soon be leaving the island, the presiding magistrate, who was acting as the coroner, had required me to give a full and complete account of the events leading up to the shooting of Bentley Robertson, including details of the failed attempt to kill me with the poisoned dive tank on Christmas Day.

Inevitably, under questioning from the magistrate, I’d had to refer back to all the relevant incidents that had occurred since I had first set eyes on Bentley on the balcony at Newbury racecourse, and then explain my understanding of the reasons for those incidents.

I’d been in the witness box for most of the day.

It had been halfway through the morning before I’d noticed Martin Reynard sitting at the back of the courtroom. He was leaning forward and listening intently to every word I said.

There had been no sign of Henri.

I had purposely hung back at the lunch break so as not to run into Martin, but we had accidently come face to face at the end of the day, after my testimony was complete.

We had stood looking at each other from a distance of only a couple of feet.

‘I’m sorry for your loss,’ I said to him.

He nodded. And then he held out his right hand towards me.

‘It was my father’s idea to take you diving on Christmas Day. He was insistent that I should ask you. I’m sorry.’

I shook his hand.

Nothing more needed to be said.

Two weeks later, a BHA disciplinary panel held an inquiry into the race-fixing allegations against Bill McKenzie and Willy Mitchell, and the unusual betting practices of Leslie Morris.

Bill and Willy both arrived early at BHA headquarters, each of them wearing their best suit to try to impress the panel members.

Leslie Morris, however, was absent.

On New Year’s Eve, while still free on police bail, he had been prevented from driving his car onto a Channel-Tunnel train by a member of the border control, who had shown unusual diligence in spotting that he was attempting to travel on an expired passport.