Dick Francis's Front Runner

32

An uneasy truce was established between Henri and myself, helped in part by the Chanel № 5 Christmas present, which she adored.

‘It’s my favourite,’ she said, kissing me. ‘Thank you so much.’

However, she was still cross with me, not so much for my initial accusation, but for then not agreeing with her that it was ridiculous, and for not apologizing to Martin.

We had been invited by Theresa to go up to their place for a light supper and some Christmas games. But I was not really in the mood for party games. And especially not for Murder in the Dark.

‘You go,’ I said. ‘I’ll stay here and watch the television. I could do with the rest.’ I leaned my head back on the sofa and put my feet up on the footstool.

‘I’m not going without you,’ she said adamantly. ‘I’m not letting you sulk here like a spoilt schoolboy. So move your blooming arse and get yourself changed.’

I was still wearing the baggy tracksuit I’d been lent by the hospital to come home in.

‘OK, you win.’ I dragged myself upright. ‘Do you know what happened to the shirt I had with me on the boat? And also my phone is missing.’

‘Sorry, I’ve no idea,’ Henri said. ‘I was too busy worrying about you. But I’m sure they’re safe somewhere. Carson Ebanks probably has them.’

I hoped so. Even though I occasionally backed up everything from my phone to my laptop, I hadn’t done it for a while and I’d hate to lose the photos taken on this trip.

As it was getting dark, we walked along the road to the Reynard residence to avoid being bitten by the sand flies on the beach.

Martin’s welcome was less than enthusiastic and his anger simmered just below the surface for most of the evening. He pointedly did not offer me a drink when we arrived, even though he poured a glass of wine for Henri.

Fortunately, Henri noticed, giving me her glass before fetching another for herself. It saved a minor diplomatic incident.

I didn’t care. I could cope with his spiteful little actions with ease. He wasn’t likely to walk up behind me and blow my brains out, as I’d suspected of some of the hosts with whom I’d been a houseguest in Afghanistan. At least, I hoped he wasn’t.

Remarkably, no one asked me if I was all right. In fact, the morning’s incident was not spoken of at all. It was as if the whole thing had never occurred. I soon realized that it was not just my poisoning they were not prepared to discuss; none of them appeared to want to talk to me about anything. Apart from Henri, they were even avoiding eye contact. I put it down to their embarrassment that such a thing could happen to a guest but, nevertheless, I found their behaviour somewhat bizarre.

Only Theresa said anything to me, and that was to ask if I’d enjoyed my Christmas lunch.

‘Yes, thank you,’ I replied. ‘Very thoughtful of you.’

‘I’m sorry there was no Christmas pudding with it,’ she said. ‘That was still steaming when Henrietta left.’ She forced a smile. ‘But you can make up for that tonight. There’s plenty left over.’

During yet another awkward gap in the conversation, I asked if anyone knew the whereabouts of my mobile phone.

There was a collective shaking of heads.

‘Then does anyone have Carson Ebanks’s home telephone number?’

Martin reluctantly gave me the number and I called it using the phone in the kitchen.

‘Sure, man,’ said Carson in his deep resonant voice, ‘I got it.’

That was a relief.

‘Your shirt too, man,’ he said. ‘You OK now?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Fully recovered. Thank you.’

‘Had me worried, there, man,’ he said. ‘First person to pass out on me.’ He sounded anxious. ‘I keep oxygen on the boat, man, in case. First time I used it.’

‘What happened wasn’t your fault,’ I said to him. ‘In fact, it was your prompt action in giving me the oxygen that probably saved me.’

I could hear his relief down the phone line that I wasn’t blaming him.

‘Where do you live?’ I asked. ‘I’ll come by to pick up my phone.’

‘No, man,’ he said. ‘I’ll bring it. You staying with Mr Martin?’

‘No, I’m at the Coral Stone Club,’ I said. ‘Unit number one.’

‘I know it, man,’ Carson said. ‘I’ll get the phone back there.’

‘Thank you,’ I said, and hung up.

‘Any luck?’ Henri asked me when I went back to the others.

‘Yes. Carson Ebanks has my phone and my shirt. He’s going to drop them back to the apartment.’

‘Great.’

The atmosphere improved little throughout the evening as we ate some supper and then played charades, each of us in turn drawing a book, film, song or play title from a hat and trying to get the others to guess it by mime alone.

I thought there was going to be a slightly awkward moment when I drew Agatha Christie’s A Murder is Announced out of the hat, but no one else seemed to notice.

Sir Richard was particularly good at guessing, even getting the tricky title True Grit from some rather strange and obscure miming by Bentley Robertson. I could easily understand how Reynard Shipping Limited had grown to be the market leader under his astute leadership. There seemed to be nothing going on that escaped his sharp and insightful scrutiny.

Hence, I couldn’t imagine that he was unaware of the ongoing antagonism directed at me by his son — an antagonism that intensified in direct ratio to the amount of red wine Martin consumed, which was considerable. But Sir Richard made no attempt either to stop it, or to apologize to me in any way.

In contrast to her husband, Lady Mary was not the sharpest needle in the sewing basket, getting hopelessly confused by the game and being totally unable not to speak when she shouldn’t. But even she was not as affable towards me as she had been in the Range Rover at Luton Airport.

Bentley wasn’t being very pleasant either. He took every opportunity to put me down. Whenever I made a wrong guess, he would roll his eyes and make some comment or other about how stupid I had been. But at least I could understand the reason why he was so ill-disposed towards me — she was sitting next to me on the sofa.

I had what he wanted.

What I couldn’t fathom was why Martin had been so blatantly unfriendly ever since I’d arrived on Cayman.

It couldn’t only be because I’d accused him of purposely poisoning me with carbon monoxide, although that in itself would have probably been enough, and it certainly hadn’t helped.

There had to be more to it.

Perhaps he didn’t approve of me as the boyfriend of his cousin.

But he’d actually been unduly hostile towards me right from when we’d been first introduced by Gay Smith on the balcony of the box at Sandown, which had been before I’d even met Henri.

Everything pointed to the fact that it must have something to do with me overhearing him being so crudely castigated by Bentley at Newbury. Perhaps he was embarrassed that I’d seen him being spoken to in that manner by someone I would consider as his subordinate.

My shirt and phone were waiting for us on the doorstep when Henri and I arrived back at our apartment just before midnight.

Our truce from earlier was still holding and we went to bed and converted it into a full-blown peace treaty.

But I couldn’t get to sleep afterwards.

Henri, meanwhile, went straight off, and she was soon snoring gently beside me. I continued to toss and turn for what seemed like an age before, finally, getting up and going through to the kitchen to make myself a cup of tea. Perhaps that would help.

I put on some shorts and took my tea outside to the beach. It was a beautiful night with an almost full moon casting sharp shadows of the palm trees on the sand. I walked down near to the water’s edge.

I was troubled.

Coming away for Christmas with Henri’s relations had been a mistake. My presence now seemed to be resented by all of them. Maybe it was because Christmas is such a family-orientated time and I was an interloper, here to take one of their number away from them. Or had my first instinct been right all along — she was out of my league.

I wandered along the beach in the moonlight.

All was in darkness at the Reynard residence.

My naturally inquisitive instincts drew me closer. Was there a rubbish bin handily placed that I could rummage through to discover Martin’s darkest secrets?

I knew there wasn’t.

Henri had already shown me how all the trash was mechanically compacted into tightly compressed bales before being placed in a dumpster ready for collection. Great for reducing its volume but not much good for snoopy investigators like me.

Nevertheless, I walked off the beach onto the Reynard terrace as if somehow being close by might help me to understand what was going on in Martin’s mind.

I wondered if there were any CCTV cameras watching me. I couldn’t see any. Martin had already said how safe he felt on Cayman and that crime was rare. However, I would have expected some sort of security at such a valuable property, especially as Martin and Theresa were away so much in Singapore.

I finished my tea and was about to walk out onto the beach on my way back to bed when I heard a noise — a door being opened.

I silently stepped into the shadow beneath one of the casuarina trees and watched as Theresa padded along the path in bare feet from the main house towards the guest cottage. She was wearing a thin white housecoat that billowed open slightly as she moved, revealing her nakedness beneath.

So I had been right about the body language on the plane. Theresa and Bentley were lovers.

As she walked, she held her hand to her mouth and furtively scanned from side to side, as if she knew precisely how dangerous was this particular Christmas game she was playing. It didn’t matter how drunk her husband had become after all that red wine, there was no guarantee he wouldn’t wake up and discover her missing from their marital bed.

I smiled to myself as I walked back down the beach to the Coral Stone Club. There was definitely a measure of schadenfreude in me knowing that my tormentor from the previous evening was being cheated on by his own wife, and right under his nose. And with the creepy Bentley Robertson, too.

Henri might be pleased that Bentley’s lecherous leanings were currently directed elsewhere. Not that I’d tell her.

She was still sleeping soundly as I slipped back between the sheets beside her, and now I quickly joined her in the Land of Nod.

In spite of my nocturnal sojourn, I was awake early and I left Henri asleep while I went into the kitchen.

I opened my laptop and checked for any new e-mails but, unsurprisingly over the Christmas holiday, there weren’t any.

Horseracing paused for just two days before Christmas and also on the big day itself, then it restarted with fervour on Boxing Day with eight or nine different meetings, the most prestigious being at Kempton Park for the annual running of the King George VI Chase.

The London office of the BHA took the more usual British approach to the Christmas period, closing from Christmas Eve right through until the New Year. Not that all the BHA staff had the time off. Far from it. Integrity officers, clerks of the scales, stipendiary stewards and many others were still working on the racecourses, checking horse identities, monitoring weighing rooms and carrying on the other regulatory functions of the Authority.

Indeed, this was the first time since I’d joined the BHA that I had not been working on Boxing Day.

I logged on to the Racing Post website to see the declared runners for the King George. Unlike the Hennessy, this race was not a handicap but a Grade 1 championship race, where past form made no difference to the weight a horse had to carry. It was an even test, won without question by the best horse on the day.

This year, there were ten runners going to post, all of them top-class chasers aged between six and nine, each due to carry a weight of eleven stone ten pounds over the three miles and eighteen fences.

I noted that Bill McKenzie had been declared to ride a horse called Special Measures. His collarbone must have mended sufficiently for him to have been passed fit to ride by the medics.

I looked at my watch. It was just gone seven in the morning in Cayman — midday at Kempton. The crowd would already be gathering in their droves at the west-London track. The big race was the fifth of the afternoon, due off at ten past three London time, ten past ten here. I could imagine the anticipation of the owners, trainers and jockeys in the run-up to start time, to say nothing of the betting public who would be eagerly selecting their preferences, if they had any money left to wager after all that Christmas shopping.

I had always been excited by the electric atmosphere that exists at a racecourse on a major event day, and part of me wished I were at Kempton to enjoy it.

I would have to make do with watching the race on my computer, via the internet, steeplechasing not being rated highly enough to be shown live on the American TV channels available in Cayman.

I made some tea and took a cup through to Henri.

‘Go away,’ she said, turning over and burying her head beneath the pillow. ‘I’m still asleep.’ Martin clearly wasn’t the only one to have drunk too much wine the previous evening.

I went back to my laptop and connected it to my iPhone to download the photos I didn’t want to lose.

It took just a few seconds to complete and I scanned through the files to check that they had transferred safely without being corrupted.

That’s strange, I thought.

The photo I had taken of Martin Reynard and Bentley Robertson during their heated discussion at Newbury on Hennessy Gold Cup day didn’t appear to have made the transition from iPhone to laptop.

I looked through the ‘Camera Roll’ on the phone.

It wasn’t there.

I checked again but there was no mistake.

The photograph had been deleted.