Front Runner

by Felix Francis

  The missed call had indeed been from Faye.

  I held the phone in my hand and wondered what to do.

  Should I call the police?

  There was no doubt in my own mind that Dave Swinton had tried to kill me, but I was worried that no one else would believe it.

  I went over everything again in my head. Was there any way it could have been a mistake or an accident?

  I glanced over at the garden fork, still in position holding the sauna door firmly closed. The placing of that had been no accident, no mistake. And the person who put it there had to have been aware that the sauna was switched on.

  No one could have driven away from that garage and not have expected the man left in the sauna to die. The fact that I hadn’t died had simply been down to dogged determination on my part and good luck.

  I dialed 999 on my phone.

  “Emergency, which service?”

  “Police,” I said. “I wish to report an attempted murder.”

  5

  They did believe me—just—in the end.

  Initially, two young uniformed policemen arrived in a patrol car. They listened intently as I described what had happened and their eyes widened slightly when I showed them the garden fork. They widened even more when they saw the hole I had made in the wall of the sauna to escape. But it was when they discovered that I was accusing one of the country’s most well-known and best-loved sporting celebrities of attempted murder that reinforcements were summoned in the shape of a plainclothes officer who introduced himself as Detective Sergeant Jagger from the Thames Valley Police Major Crime Unit.

  “So, Mr. Hinkley,” said D.S. Jagger, “why do you think Mr. Swinton wanted to kill you?”

  Why did part of me still feel a need to keep confidential what Dave had told me yesterday? I surely was under no obligation to do so. I must be absolved from any promise I had made to him to try to forget what he had said. After all, he had tried to kill me.

  “I knew that he had purposely lost a horse race and I think he tried to kill me to stop me saying something to the authorities.”

  The detective clearly thought it was a poor motive for murder.

  “Are you really telling me that Mr. Swinton would risk a murder charge over something so trivial?”

  I tried to point out to the policeman that purposely losing races was not trivial for a professional jockey, but he wouldn’t believe it. And part of me agreed with him. Why would Dave risk a lifelong prison sentence when he knew I didn’t have any real evidence that he’d stopped a horse anyway? Especially as I didn’t even know which horse or race was in question.

  Had he expected to come home from Towcester that evening to find me dead, remove the garden fork and then try to make out that it had been due to dreadful misfortune—he had left me in the sauna alone and I had obviously spent too long in the heat and had been overcome?

  “Why don’t you ask him that question?” I said.

  “Oh, we will,” said the detective sergeant. “Just as soon as we find him.”

  “He’ll be at Towcester races,” I said, trying to be helpful. “He has five rides there this afternoon.” I looked at my watch. “The first race will be in about ten minutes.”

  “Mr. Swinton, so far, has not arrived at Towcester as had been expected. A request has been made to my Northamptonshire colleagues to detain him if, and when, he arrives.”

  “Oh,” I said. Jockeys had to be at the course at least forty-five minutes before a race they were due to ride in. That put paid to my theory that Dave would continue to act as if nothing had happened and claim my death was just a terrible accident.

  I had to go over my account one more time from the beginning while it was written down by a young detective constable. I was asked to read and sign the statement.

  “What now?” I asked.

  “You are free to go, Mr. Hinkley,” D.S. Jagger said.

  “Just like that?”

  “It is my understanding that you have declined any medical assistance. What else do you need?”

  “A lift to a railway station would be good.”

  He reluctantly agreed and I was dispatched with the young detective constable in an unmarked police car.

  “Hungerford, do you?” he asked.

  “That would be fine.”

  He drove in silence out of Lambourn.

  “Is there much crime in these parts?” I asked.

  “I’m based at Reading,” he said. “There’s lots of serious crime in Reading.” He sounded as if he was pleased. “Rapes, murders . . . all sorts.”

  “Is Detective Sergeant Jagger from there too?” I asked.

  He nodded. “We call him Mick,” the constable said with a laugh. “But not to his face, of course. He’s my guv’nor.”

  “Is he any good?”

  He chanced a quick look at me.

  “Why?”

  “I want to know if I can rely on him to catch Dave Swinton,” I said. “I don’t want to be looking over my shoulder all the time.”

  “Do you really believe he shut you in that sauna on purpose to kill you?” He didn’t sound as if he believed it.

  “Yes,” I said. “I do. Why otherwise would I call your lot?”

  “But it seems like a strange way to try and kill someone. Not very reliable.”

  “Trust me,” I said. “If you had been in there with the temperature at a hundred and ten Celcius, you wouldn’t have thought so. I was bloody lucky to get out alive.”

  “Maybe. And I have to admit that bursting through the wall like that was impressive.” He laughed. “Just like the Incredible Hulk.” He laughed again.

  This policeman had actually seen the garden fork in position and the hole I’d had to make in the side of the sauna to escape and he was still skeptical of the danger I’d been in. What chance would I have of convincing others?

  —

  I CALLED FAYE from the train while trying to ignore the strange looks I was receiving from my fellow passengers. Had they never seen a man with a large hole burned in his pants before?

  “Hi, little bro,” she answered. “How are things?”

  “Much the same,” I said, deciding not to tell her that someone had just tried to kill me. She would only worry. “How are you doing?”

  “I’m still alive.”

  It was the way she always answered that question.

  Faye had cancer. To be precise, she had gallbladder cancer, even though she no longer had a gallbladder. That had been removed two years previously.

  In those two years she’d had one setback when a scan had shown a small spot on her liver. More surgery and another round of chemotherapy had seemingly done the trick, but, as Faye always said, at her age you never truly survived cancer, you just held it at bay for a while in an ever-decreasing spiral dive into your grave. The slower the descent, the better, but one could never fully arrest the fall.

  “But are you having a good day?” I asked.

  “Moderate,” she said. “Q is out playing golf, so at least I have the house to myself.”

  Q was Quentin, my brother-in-law, Faye’s husband.

  “I thought Quentin hated golf,” I said.

  “He does. But he’s trying to ingratiate himself with some judge or other that he’s playing with.”

  Quentin always did something for a reason and never just because he wanted to. I sometimes wondered if he married Faye only because he believed that a Queen’s Counsel with a wife was somehow more suitable for elevation to the bench.

  “Do you fancy a visitor?” I asked.

  “Now?”

  “In a couple of hours or so. I’m on a train to Paddington at the moment and I need to go to my apartment first.”

  “Q will be back by then.”

  I laughed. “It’s OK, you know. I can be civil to him
if I try hard enough.”

  Faye knew that Quentin and I tended to bring out the worst in each other. He thought of me as a dangerously liberal loose cannon, while I considered him to be a dinosaur with outdated views and opinions.

  “Come to tea,” she said. “It will be lovely to see you.”

  She hung up and I looked out of the train window as the rural fields began to give way to the urban sprawl of west London.

  The events of this morning at Dave Swinton’s house seemed somehow surreal and distant. Had I really been so close to death then and yet so far from it now? I felt I should be doing something about it, not simply watching the world go by.

  Calling the police had never been my first instinct.

  I am an investigator, so I investigate. And I’m not fond of bringing in others to do it for me.

  True, attempted murder was outside my normal realm.

  I was a senior investigator for the BHA, the British Horseracing Authority, and much of my work over the years had been covert, moving in a world of shadows and secrets, mysterious and furtive, to protect British racing from those who would seek to gain an unfair advantage by dubious means.

  Doping, race fixing and unusual betting practices were more my concern, not assault with a deadly sauna, aided and abetted by a garden fork.

  But it still seemed strange to be sitting here on a train rather than actually doing something. Perhaps I should be out actively looking for Dave, but what good would it do? If the police couldn’t find him with all their resources, what chance would I have?

  —

  I TOOK a Bakerloo Line train from Paddington to Willesden Junction.

  I’d had to move out of the home that I shared with Lydia when it was sold, but I’d rented another place just around the corner, in yet another quiet suburban northwest London street.

  I suppose it was laziness on my part.

  I’d seen a GROUND FLOOR APARTMENT TO RENT sign outside a house as I’d walked to the local shop for some milk and I’d gone straight in to the realtor and arranged to see it there and then.

  I’d moved in the following week, cajoling my stepnephew and some of his friends to carry all my stuff the hundred yards from one abode to the next.

  Eight months later, some of the boxes remained unopened in the hallway. I kept telling myself that I ought to sort everything out, but I simply didn’t have the heart.

  I opened my front door, stepped carefully past the boxes and went into my bedroom to change.

  My phone rang.

  “Hello,” I said.

  “Mr. Hinkley,” said a voice. “D.S. Jagger here. Have you seen the news?”

  “No,” I said. “I’ve only just got back home.”

  “It would appear that Mr. Swinton has been found. Or, at least, his car has been.”

  “Where?”

  “Otmoor.”

  “And where is that?” I asked.

  “Between Oxford and Bicester. It’s mostly a nature reserve. Mr. Swinton’s Mercedes was discovered in a remote part of the moor used by the military for firing live ammunition. It has been burned out. It was the fire that attracted attention to the vehicle. Smoke was visible from a nearby farm and the fire department was called by the farmer.”

  “You’re sure it’s Dave Swinton’s car?”

  “Yes, quite sure. In spite of the intensity of the fire, Mr. Swinton’s personalized license plate was clearly visible to the senior fireman when he arrived at the scene.”

  “And Dave Swinton himself?” I asked.

  “A body was discovered in the car. At this time, there has been no identification of the remains, but . . .” He tailed off.

  “You assume it is Mr. Swinton?”

  “That would seem to be the obvious conclusion. Based on what you told us in Lambourn. It will be up to the Oxford Coroner to officially determine the identity of the victim and the cause of death. I thought you would like to hear the news from us rather than from the media.”

  “Thank you,” I said numbly.

  “Bloody journalists,” the policeman said. “A local news channel was monitoring the fire department’s radio and they dispatched a cameraman to the scene. He arrived even before the first engine. It would seem that the personalized license plate, together with Mr. Swinton’s unexpected failure to appear at Towcester races this afternoon, has turned a local story into national news.”

  I sat down on the end of my bed in a state of shock.

  “Was it the fire that killed him?” I asked.

  “It’s too early to say for sure. That will be determined by the autopsy. The flames were very intense and an accelerant appears to have been used.”

  “Accelerant?” I said.

  “Gasoline. Or some other highly flammable substance.”

  How horrible.

  “You will almost certainly be required to give evidence at the inquest,” the policeman said, “as you were probably the last person to see him alive.”

  “Other than whoever killed him,” I said.

  “We believe it may have been suicide.”

  “Setting oneself alight with gasoline seems to be a particularly unpleasant way of doing it,” I said.

  “People who kill themselves often do unpredictable things. Self-immolation, as it’s known, is surprisingly common in some parts of the world.”

  But not in rural Oxfordshire, I thought.

  I found it difficult to believe that Dave Swinton could have taken his own life in any manner, let alone that way. He’d had such spirit, such joie de vivre.

  “What makes you think he may have killed himself?” I asked.

  “I’m not saying he did. It is just one of the options. But it has all the hallmarks of a suicide. There’s no evidence pointing at anyone else being present; you told us he had problems with his job; he must have known he’d be in serious trouble for shutting you in that sauna, maybe even facing a murder charge; in his own car; at a deserted spot far from prying eyes—suicides generally prefer to do it alone.”

  It sounded to me like the perfect place for a murder, but maybe that was just the way my mind worked. There may have been other things D.S. Jagger knew but wasn’t telling me. I could tell from the tone of his voice that he believed it was suicide.

  “I am sure someone will be in touch with you soon about the inquest,” said the detective as a way of signing off.

  He hung up.

  I turned on the television.

  The news coverage of the fire was the lead story with video images from the scene shown in all their horror.

  The rear end of the Mercedes was largely untouched by the flames and the 121 DSS of the license plate was visible in the footage, but the interior of the car was ablaze, with flames roaring out of the open windows on both sides. In the center of the raging inferno, burned almost beyond recognition as being human, sat a figure in the driver’s seat.

  It was sickening.

  The commentary that accompanied the ghastly pictures gave little room for doubt. “A Mercedes with the registration 121 DSS is registered to top steeplechase jockey Dave Swinton, winner of last year’s Sportsman of the Year award. Mr. Swinton did not attend Towcester racetrack this afternoon, where he had been expected to ride in several races. Police are treating the death as unexplained, but are not actively looking for anyone else in connection with it at this time.”

  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 Department 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 pinup 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 forever.

  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 right 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 said 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 gray.

  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.