Felix Francis - Dick Francis's Front Runner

The media must have been briefed by Detective Sergeant Jagger.

I watched on the screen as two firemen with hoses were shown approaching the vehicle, but it was some time before they made any noticeable impression on the firestorm, such was the intensity of the flames.

My phone rang again.

‘Jeff? It’s Paul. Have you seen the dreadful news about Dave Swinton?’

Paul Maldini was Head of Operations in the Integrity Service of the BHA and my immediate boss. It was very unlike him to call me on a Sunday.

‘I’m watching it now,’ I said. ‘Appalling, isn’t it?’

‘Really awful,’ he agreed. ‘I can’t believe it.’ He paused. ‘Find out what you can, will you?’

‘In what way?’ I asked.

‘Make sure there’s nothing that will come back to bite us in racing.’

‘Do you think there might be?’

‘I’ve no idea but it can’t be good for the sport for our pin-up boy to end up as a human torch.’

‘No,’ I agreed.

‘So just have a look, will you?’ he said. ‘Root around a bit in your usual confidential manner and get back to me.’

I wondered how much I should tell Paul at this stage about my conversations with Dave in the sauna and in his car.

Paul Maldini was never the most subtle of men. If I told him that the champion jockey had admitted not winning a race on purpose he would initiate a full-scale investigation and any chance of having a root around a bit in my usual confidential manner would be lost. If I also told him that Dave had actually tried to kill me, he would have had the whole department mobilized and blundering around like bulls in a china shop. The chances of finding out the truth would be lost for ever.

I’d probably tell him in the end, but just not yet.

I’d been in trouble before for not telling Paul everything I was thinking or doing straight away, but I had good reason to be reticent. He was very good at the day-to-day nitty-gritty of the Integrity Service — checking that runners in races were actually the horses they were meant to be, ensuring the smooth running of the drug testing of the winners, checking that trainers and jockeys conformed to the administrative rules for racing and the like. However, he had little or no understanding of the undercover work I was usually occupied with.

Things to him were either black or white, never grey.

I was gaining a reputation for keeping those in racing on the straight and narrow, not by stewards’ inquiries and bold publicity after some wrongdoing, but by quiet words and gentle warnings before any formal proceedings were warranted. Not that I didn’t write formal reports — I did. But sometimes, to Paul’s huge annoyance, the identification of the individuals concerned was somewhat vague and ambiguous.

‘I saw Dave at Newbury yesterday,’ I said to Paul. ‘We spoke briefly.’

‘Did he give you any indication he intended to kill himself?’

‘None at all,’ I said. ‘And we don’t know for sure that he did.’

‘Looks like it to me,’ he said. ‘What else could it be?’

Murder, I thought, but didn’t say so. ‘We don’t even know for certain that it was Dave Swinton in that burning car.’

‘Who else would it be?’ Paul said. ‘It was his car.’

‘I suppose the post-mortem will tell us,’ I said. ‘If there’s enough left of him to work with.’

I shuddered once more as the news channel again showed the burning car, even if the TV company had now belatedly edited out the most gruesome images.

‘Just let me know if you turn up anything that could be harmful to the reputation of racing.’

‘OK,’ I said. ‘Will do.’

He hung up.

I went on watching the news coverage, transfixed by the awfulness of the situation.

The reporters clearly assumed it was suicide but the big question that they kept asking, and that no one could answer, was WHY would Dave Swinton kill himself?

Why indeed? Surely throwing a race was not reason enough, even if he had admitted it to me.

So-called experts were dragged in front of the TV cameras to discuss depression and how a seemingly highly successful person could have so many private demons that it drove him to end everything.

Not that Dave would be the first of those, not by a long shot. There was an extensive roll of A-list Hollywood actors, best-selling novelists, chart-topping musicians as well as medal-winning sportsmen who had all taken their own lives.

There had even been a previous suicide of a top jockey when Fred Archer, the sporting superstar of his generation, winner of over two and a half thousand races and thirteen times champion jockey on the flat, shot himself in 1886 aged just twenty-nine.

But, somehow, the television images made this suicide seem worse than those that had gone before. It had been shown in all its horror and misery.

The pin-up boy of British racing — that’s how Paul Maldini had referred to Dave Swinton, and it was an accurate description.

His death was something that wouldn’t send just ripples through racing, it would be a tsunami.

Faye didn’t look very well when she opened the front door of her house overlooking Richmond Green.

‘Are you OK?’ I asked with concern.

‘You know that I have good days and not-so-good days?’ she said. ‘Well, this is one of the not-so-good, that’s all. It’s all to do with the drugs I have to take. They make me feel sick.’

‘I thought you were off the chemo.’

‘I am. These are drugs designed to boost my red-blood count. The chemo does more than kill the cancer — apparently it’s not too good for my bone marrow either.’ She sighed. ‘Such is life... and death. Anyway, enough about me. What have you been up to?’

‘Same old stuff,’ I said to her. ‘Nothing very interesting.’

Nothing very interesting except someone trying to kill me.

We went through into her kitchen.

‘Tea?’ she asked. ‘Or coffee? Or would you prefer wine?’

I looked at my watch. It was twenty past four.

‘It’s never too early on a Sunday,’ Faye said, smiling. ‘I’d like some.’

‘Great,’ I said. ‘So would I.’

She took a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc from the fridge and poured two generous glasses.

‘I need this,’ she said. ‘Somehow, alcohol helps reduce the feeling of nausea I get from the pills. I often have a brandy if it gets too bad.’

‘Why don’t you take the pills with a glass of brandy?’ I said. ‘Then you probably won’t feel sick in the first place.’

She laughed. ‘I can hardly have a glass of brandy to take pills when I wake up in the morning.’

‘Why not?’ I said. ‘It must be better than feeling ill all day.’

She laughed again. ‘Perhaps I’ll try it, though I’m not sure what Q would say.’

‘Tell him it’s medicinal.’

‘What’s medicinal?’ Quentin asked, coming into the kitchen.

‘Having brandy for breakfast,’ I said.

‘British soldiers in the First World War were given tots of rum for breakfast,’ Quentin said. ‘And most of the officers had cases of brandy sent out to them from home. Or whisky. Masses of it. It helped them cope.’

‘So were they all drunk when they went over the top?’

‘Absolutely,’ Quentin said. ‘A double ration of rum was issued to the men before the off. Otherwise they wouldn’t have gone.’

‘There you are,’ I said to Faye with a smile. ‘So you can have brandy for breakfast.’

‘To help me cope?’ She burst into tears.

It was a reminder of how close to the edge Faye’s life had become, always living in dread of a return of the cancer. Treatment was ever more effective and the statistics were steadily improving but, deep down, even those patients given the final all-clear from the disease lived with the fear that it would get them in the end. That it would only be a matter of time. This year, next year, sometime — but not never .