Front Runner

by Felix Francis

  “I was snapping the view,” I said. “They just happened to be in the shot. It’s at Newbury races.”

  “What a coincidence.”

  “Who’s Bentley?” I asked.

  “Bentley Robertson. He’s a creepy little lawyer,” she said, screwing up her nose again. “He’s all work and no play. A bore. Worse, he’s a bore who thinks I’m in love with him. I keep telling him that I’m not, but he just winks at me and refuses to believe it. He’s a letch. At least, he is toward me. I once quite liked him, now he makes my skin creep.” She shivered. “But enough about him. Tell me more about you.”

  We sat in happy harmony talking about everything and nothing—where we grew up, schools, jobs, likes, dislikes, even our families and our dead parents.

  “It was such a dreadful time,” Henri said. “Mom and Dad were on their way to pick me up from the sports field at my boarding school. We were going to a family wedding in Lincoln. I can remember being so excited about going in a helicopter.” She paused, and there were tears in her eyes. “They never arrived. I waited and waited for hours, but they never came. Eventually, the headmaster came out to where I was standing to tell me.”

  A tear ran down her cheek. I reached over and held her hand.

  “They clipped a tree in the garden during takeoff. The official report said it was the pilot’s fault. He was also killed in the crash, so I suppose it’s easy to blame him.”

  She was silent for a while.

  “Sorry,” she said, wiping her eyes with a tissue. “I don’t do that very often anymore.”

  “There’s no reason to be sorry,” I said. “I still cry sometimes over my mother and she’s been dead now for twenty-four years. Sometimes, I have difficulty recalling her face. And I haven’t been able to ‘hear’ her voice in my head for longer than I wish to remember.”

  “What about your dad?” she asked.

  “I don’t usually talk about him much. He went off the rails after my mother died. He couldn’t cope without her. Everything in the house—cooking, washing, cleaning and so on—he left for my sister to do. He started drinking too much and lost his well-paid job with the council because of it. He ended up as an assistant gardener in a local park, but he was usually drunk. He was only kept on due to the kindness of his old council chums who felt sorry for him.

  “I actually remember him really well. He was drunk a lot of the time, yet he was always kind and loving toward me, even if he wasn’t ever particularly happy. He drank himself to death, in the end, although the official cause was pneumonia.”

  “How old were you?”

  “Fourteen,” I said. “I can remember his funeral as if it was yesterday.”

  “Who, then, looked after you?”

  “Faye. My sister. She’s twelve years older than me. She became my official guardian. I joined the Army at eighteen.”

  “Which regiment?”

  “The Intelligence Corps,” I said, making a mock salute. “Two-five-one-nine-eight-two-four-one, Captain Jefferson Roosevelt Hinkley, at your service.”

  “Jefferson Roosevelt?” she said incredulously. “You’ve got to be kidding.”

  “I am not,” I said in my most superior tone of voice. “My parents clearly admired dead American presidents.”

  Henri laughed.

  “Don’t you start,” I said. “I was endlessly bullied at school because of it.”

  But at least it had taught me to fight and that had always been an asset, not least during the previous night.

  21

  After constant badgering, the doctors finally agreed that I could go home on Sunday morning. I think they were glad to see the back of me—I know the nurses were. They didn’t appreciate having a potential killer on the prowl.

  To be honest, and for the same reason, I was grateful when Quentin arrived in his BMW to drive me to Richmond rather than to my apartment in Harlesden.

  I’d been in the hospital for a whole week, but, in many ways, it seemed longer.

  I was eager to get back to work in spite of the dire warnings I’d been given by Dr. Shwan about having to take things easy for a while. In particular, I wanted to continue my look into Bill McKenzie’s riding and the gambling habits of Leslie Morris, and to rescue the investigation from the desk of Paul Maldini.

  Was it just eight days since I’d met Henrietta Shawcross at Sandown Park races? It seemed that I had known her forever.

  She had come into the hospital on Saturday afternoon and we had watched the Channel 4 coverage of racing at Cheltenham and Doncaster.

  “I’m sorry I can’t stay late tonight,” she said. “I’m going to a dinner at the Dorchester. It’s the Christmas party for all our UK staff and their wives. We do it every year.”

  “For Reynard Shipping?”

  “Yes. I promised Uncle Richard I’d be there.”

  “Will your cousin Martin also be there?”

  “Oh, yes. He’s the host tonight. That’s why he’s over here.”

  “From the Cayman Islands?” I asked.

  “From Singapore. He has a place in the Caymans, but he spends much of his time in Singapore running our operation there, although he was here for most of the summer restructuring the UK business. He’s our new managing director now that Uncle Richard is taking things a bit easier.”

  “Well, I hope you have a great evening,” I said. “Much better than staying here.”

  “I doubt that,” she said. “The Christmas party always turns into a nightmare. Everyone drinks too much and then they start telling me what they really think of us.”

  “Which is?”

  “That we don’t pay them enough, we have too many Asia-based staff and that the company makes the Reynard family too much money.”

  “And does it?” I’d asked.

  “No. My great-grandfather took a job as a stevedore on the London Docks after returning from the battlefields of France in 1918. Her started his own ship-loading business in 1920 and, since then, it’s been the Reynard family that has built the business up to what it is today, so why shouldn’t we enjoy the spoils?”

  It sounded to me like something she was well used to justifying.

  “Everyone who works for us is well paid. We certainly have no trouble recruiting from our competitors. And, these days, our main hub is in Singapore, so we are bound to have lots of Asia-based staff, aren’t we?”

  “Are you much involved?”

  “I sit on the board as a non-exec director.”

  “But you work full-time elsewhere?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  I had been desperate to ask her why, but I said nothing. She would tell me if she wanted to. And she did.

  “I run a recruitment agency in Fulham,” she had said finally.

  “You told me at Sandown that you worked for an agency, not that you ran it.”

  “I didn’t want to brag. I set it up about six years ago after a friend complained how difficult it was to get catering staff for her kids’ parties and it’s sort of blossomed from there into quite an enterprise. I now have six full-time employees, including me, and literally hundreds of people on our books. Clients come to us with their requirements and we act as the middlemen, putting them together with our self-employed chefs, waiters and waitresses. We do all the contract work and arrange payment to the staff. And we charge the clients a fee for doing it all.”

  “Sounds great.”

  “It is,” she’d said, beaming. “The agency makes a healthy profit and it’s all because of me rather than my family.”

  I could see how important that was to her.

  “I’ve just started a section recruiting entertainers and magicians for events.”

  I could do with a magician, I thought, to make Darryl Gareth Lawrence disappear.

  —

  FAYE FUSSED around me like a m
other hen, insisting that I sit on the sofa in their living room with my feet up.

  “Can I get you anything?” she asked.

  “Nothing, thank you.”

  I had talked Quentin into going home to Richmond via Harlesden to pick up some things from my apartment.

  “Will it be safe?” he’d asked.

  “What has Faye been telling you?”

  But my safety was indeed a big concern.

  Twice I’d made Quentin make a detour in the journey up Harrow Road toward Harlesden while I watched to see if anyone was tailing us.

  Satisfied that there wasn’t, I’d still made him drive slowly past my apartment three times until I was sure that no one was waiting in the bushes for my arrival.

  Remembering what had happened last time, I’d been even more wary as I’d put the key into the lock, stepping back from rather than through the open front door as I’d done before.

  There’d been nobody lurking inside, with or without a carving knife.

  Quentin had parked the car on the road outside and come in with me to carry my stuff. It was also the first time he had been to my new apartment and I don’t think he’d been particularly impressed as he’d stepped over the boxes in the hallway.

  “You’re even more untidy than Kenneth and that’s saying something.”

  Kenneth was his son by a previous marriage.

  I’d gathered up my laptop computer and some more clothes, which I’d stuffed into a carryall.

  I’d never realized how happy I would be to get into Quentin’s BMW and drive away from my home. Not that it had stopped me from insisting that he make two complete circuits of Hanger Lane gyratory to check we weren’t being followed.

  “You’re paranoid,” Quentin had said.

  “You would be too, if you were me. There have been three failed attempts on my life in the last two weeks alone. I have no desire for another that succeeds.”

  I wondered if he was now having second thoughts about having me stay at his house.

  —

  ON MONDAY MORNING, with my phone and laptop fully recharged, I sat at Faye’s dining-room table and started making calls and replying to the backlog of e-mails that had accumulated in my in-box.

  I was back in business.

  I e-mailed Paul Maldini asking for an update of where things stood with respect to Bill McKenzie and requesting that the investigation be handed back to me.

  His response was less than encouraging. A date had been set in the middle of January for a disciplinary panel hearing into the running of Wisden Wonder at Sandown, and also into the betting pattern of Leslie Morris on the same race.

  “But who’s to say that the investigation will be complete by then?” I said to Paul when I called him.

  “We can always postpone the panel if we need to.”

  Maybe, I thought, but it seemed like the wrong way around to me. I was a firm believer in doing a full investigation first, preferably without the target knowing that his behavior was being looked into.

  “Has anyone interviewed McKenzie or Morris?”

  “Not yet,” Paul said. “But they will have both received the letter by now requiring them to attend the disciplinary panel. They can be questioned at that time. They have also both been told to produce their phone records for the past six months.”

  So Morris would, by now, know that we were on to him. That was a shame. It meant that there was little hope that we would ever learn the identity of the mysterious excluded person for whom he had allegedly been placing bets. Not unless he’d been foolish enough to use a phone to call Morris that was registered in his own name.

  Increasingly, all dodgy betting conspirators, together with most other villains and terrorists, used pay-as-you-go cell phones. Bought for cash, with a false name, and thrown away immediately after use—tracing who had made a particular call was almost impossible.

  I logged on to the BHA database remotely, which told me that Mr. Leslie Morris was a sixty-six-year-old retired accountant and that he was the registered owner of one moderately rated racehorse.

  An accountant. Now, was that a coincidence?

  I also used the database to look up where he lived.

  The address on his owner registration was in Raynes Park near Wimbledon, just down the A3 from Sandown Park races and only a handful of miles from where I was in Richmond.

  I wondered if paying Mr. Morris a visit might be helpful. He’d probably be on the defensive at the official panel and would most likely have a lawyer with him to advise what he should say and, more important, what he should not say. At home, alone, he might be less guarded, especially if I caught him unawares.

  “Do you ever use a local taxi company?” I asked Faye.

  “Where do you want to go?” she asked in reply.

  “I need to go and see someone,” I said.

  “Not to do with your work?”

  I nodded.

  “But you’re meant to be resting and recovering, not working.”

  “I only want to go and speak with him,” I said. “I’m not going to chase him anywhere.”

  At least, I hoped not.

  “Where does he live?” Faye asked.

  “Raynes Park.”

  “I’ll drive you, if you like,” she said. “I’m not doing anything else.”

  My first instinct was to say no. My work was my work and my family was my family. I didn’t mix the two. Largely because Faye would not have approved of everything I did in my work. However, the way things had been going recently, I thought it could be reassuring to have someone waiting for me outside when I went in to see Leslie Morris.

  “OK,” I said. “That would be great.”

  —

  TO SAY THAT Leslie Morris was not pleased to see me would be an understatement. As I introduced myself as a BHA investigator, he tried to close his front door, but I had my foot against the frame, preventing it.

  “Move your foot,” he demanded through the six-inch gap.

  I didn’t budge. “No.”

  “What do you want?” he asked without releasing the pressure on the door.

  “I want to talk to you about Bill McKenzie’s riding of Wisden Wonder at Sandown.”

  He didn’t ask me what it was about Bill McKenzie’s riding that I was interested in. He knew.

  “I don’t want to talk to you,” he said. “Now, remove your foot.”

  I still didn’t budge.

  “Aggravated trespass is against the law,” he said.

  “So is defrauding the betting public,” I replied.

  There was no response other than an increased pressure on the door.

  “You’ll have to talk about it sometime,” I said. “Or shall I pass the file over to the police? The Fraud Squad won’t just put their foot in your door, Mr. Morris, they’ll break it down and then they’ll arrest you. Is that what you want? Do you fancy a cold night in a cell shared with some drug addicts?”

  He was rattled. I could see it in his eyes.

  “Mr. Morris,” I said. “This is your last chance. Either you let me in now or you had better go pack your toothbrush and get ready for the arrival of the boys in blue. It’s your choice.”

  I was pretty sure that the police would not be sufficiently interested to hotfoot it to his door with an arrest warrant, and they certainly wouldn’t have put him in a cell with anyone else, but was Leslie Morris prepared to take the risk?

  Obviously not, as he slowly opened the door wide.

  “Who is that?” he asked, looking over my shoulder toward Faye, who was sitting in the car parked in his driveway.

  “My assistant,” I said. “She’ll wait there for me.”

  He led me through to the kitchen.

  “Now, what is all this about?” he asked, nervously pushing his fingers through his whit
e hair while trying his best to exude an air of innocence.

  “How well do you know Bill McKenzie?” I asked.

  Again, movement in his eyes indicated a rising degree of concern.

  “I’ve heard of him,” Morris replied. “I’ve seen him riding, of course. But I don’t know him personally.”

  “That’s strange, because he seems to know you.”

  More concern.

  “I can’t think how,” Morris said. “I don’t believe he’s ever ridden my horse.”

  I’d already checked for that in the BHA records.

  “Tell me about the bets you made at Sandown Park races on the Friday of the Tingle Creek meeting,” I said, changing tactics.

  There was a distinct tightening of the muscles around his eyes and his breathing became shallower, sure signs that rising concern was nearing the slide into panic.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he replied, trying his best to control his breathing.

  “You made multiple bets on the race where Wisden Wonder was the favorite.”

  “I think you must be mistaken,” he said.

  I took my iPhone out of my pocket and showed him one of the photographs I had taken on that day at Sandown. It clearly showed him in his distinctive blue fedora handing over a substantial wad of cash to a bookmaker. In the background, plainly discernible, was a bookie’s brightly lit price board showing the names of the eight horses in the race including Wisden Wonder, offered at six-to-four.

  “I am not mistaken,” I said slowly. “You made over thirty large bets on that race. I watched and filmed you.”

  I looked around, hoping that his little red notebook in which he’d recorded his bets would be conveniently lying on the kitchen countertop. No such luck.

  “But not a single one of your bets was on the favorite,” I said. “Why was that?”

  Now he was really anxious. He showed all the signs of increased adrenaline in his system—wider pupils, bunched muscles, rapid breathing. His body was ready for fight or flight, but his mind was still in control.

  “I obviously didn’t think the favorite would win,” he said calmly. “And it wasn’t good value at such a short price.”