Front Runner (27 page)

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.

H
enri and I ordered a taxi and, with the help of a couple of calls from my cell, we eventually found our way to Derrick and Gay Smith's house for drinks at six o'clock on Boxing Day evening.

They lived on the wonderfully named Conch Point Road in a large house set well back from the road, out of sight behind a stone wall, and with no name shown on the unpretentious gateway. Hence, we had driven past the house twice without realizing it.

“Welcome,” Gay said, meeting us at the front door. “Well done, finding us. We like to keep a low profile. Come on in.”

We were ushered out to a covered veranda, with its magnificent view northeastward toward the sea.

We were not their sole guests.

Peter Darwin, the Governor, and his wife Annabel were there ahead of us.

“You should have much in common with Peter,” Gay said to me. “He loves his racing.”

“Just my luck to be posted to a country without a racetrack,” Peter said with a laugh. “When I was told I was being sent to the
West Indies, I secretly hoped it would be Barbados. I've always fancied going racing on Garrison Savannah.”

“Wasn't that a horse?” I asked, dragging up a distant memory.

“Yes indeed,” he said. “It won the Cheltenham Gold Cup back in the nineties. But it was named after the racetrack on Barbados.”

“I'm so sorry Cayman is such a disappointment to you,” Derrick said, handing around glasses of champagne.

“I've got over it,” Peter said with another laugh. “I keep in touch with things on the Internet as much as I can and we go racing whenever we're back home on leave. Don't we, darling?”

“As much as possible,” Annabel agreed. “We always try and get to the Cheltenham Festival in March. Peter, effectively, grew up on Cheltenham racetrack.”

“There are worse places,” he said, laughing.

“And we adore going racing at Stratford,” Annabel said, looking lovingly at her husband. “That's where Peter and I met.”

“How romantic,” Henri said. “Jeff and I met at Sandown races.”

“In my box,” Derrick said, all smiles.

Annabel beamed at us, her big blue eyes positively sparkling with delight.

“Peter's father was a jump jockey, and I once worked for the British Jockey Club.”

“Jeff, don't you work for the Jockey Club?” Gay asked.

“Not quite,” I said. “But I do work for the racing authorities.”

Derrick again recounted the story of how I had saved his horse from being stolen at Ascot. I'd given up trying to tell him it was meant to be confidential. But if you couldn't tell someone in the diplomatic service a secret, who could you tell? Diplomats were
meant to be good at keeping secrets. But they were also meant to be fairly proficient at lying for their country as well.

“When was your father a jockey?” I asked Peter.

“Back in the sixties,” he said. “He wasn't famous or anything. He rode only four winners—ever. He'd just started out on his career when he was killed in a car accident.”

“How awful,” I said.

“I was only an infant at the time. I don't remember him at all.”

“I'll look him up in the records. What was his first name?”

“Paul,” Peter said, pleased that I had taken some interest. “He was actually Paul Perry. I only became a Darwin when I was twelve and my mother remarried.”

“Any relation to . . . ?” I asked.

“None,” he replied quickly with one of those wan smiles that told me that he'd been asked that too many times before and he was bored with it.

We watched as the last of the daylight faded away and then marveled as the full moon seemed to emerge straight out of the water, its orange disk appearing unnaturally large and almost frighteningly close.

“Magnificent,” Peter said. “Quite enough to drive a man mad.”

“Lunatic,” I said.

“Exactly so.”

—

T
HE
SIX
OF
US
went for dinner at the Calypso Grill at Morgan's Harbour.

It was everything I had expected, except that there was no sign of Harry Belafonte, and the music being played through the sound system was more steel drum than true calypso. But the bright
blues, reds and burnt orange colors, together with the laid-back
No problem, man
atmosphere, were authentically Caribbean.

We were shown to a table out on the open terrace, right alongside the lapping water, and I found myself sitting next to Annabel Darwin and across from Gay Smith.

“How lovely,” I said. “I don't think I have ever sat out under the stars for dinner on Boxing Day.”

“I hate the winters in England,” Gay said. “Give me the warmth any day.”

“Doesn't it get too hot here in the summer?” I asked.

“Not too hot,” Gay said. “But it does get very humid and it rains a lot. We tend to go away from May to September.”

“To England?”

“Mostly, yes, to see the grandchildren. But up to now, we've not been able to spend the whole summer in England. There's a limit on the number of days we're allowed, so we also go to Ireland. And anywhere else that takes our fancy.”

“What's the
limit
for?” I asked.

“Oh, it's something to do with residency and tax, but I leave all that to Derrick. The British government has just changed the rules and I think it's now better for us. We used to be able to stay in England for only ninety days per year, but in the future we can stay one hundred and twenty. Something like that.”

I chose the chicken liver pâté, which was spectacular, and then the Jamaican curried shrimp, which was hot as hell but delicious.

“I love their crab cakes,” Gay said. “They make them fresh from local crab caught right here in Morgan's Harbour.”

“Is it named for the pirate Captain Henry Morgan?” I asked. “As in the rum?”

“Probably,” she said. “But I suspect it's more for the American tourists than because he ever came here.”

We laughed.

I liked Gay Smith.

—

H
ENRI
AND
I
were offered a lift back to the Coral Stone Club from the restaurant with the Governor and his wife in their official limousine.

“Are you sure it's allowed?” I asked.

“Positive,” Peter said. “But one of you will have to sit in the front. Neither Annabel nor I are allowed to. Protocol. Strange, I know, but there you have it.”

I sat up front with the driver, a Cayman Islands policeman in uniform, while Henri was between the Darwins in the back.

“Do you fancy a nightcap, Jeff?” Peter asked during the journey. “I seem not to have spoken to you much all evening.”

I turned my head, receiving a nod of agreement from Henri.

“That would be lovely,” I said.

“Take us to Government House, please, Christopher,” Peter said to the driver.

The driver did as he was asked and he soon stopped the car under the canopy in front of the Governor's residence. He was the first out of the car, opening the rear door for Peter and standing smartly at attention as the Governor stood up.

“Christopher, here, will wait and take you home,” Peter said.

“I'm sure we could get a taxi,” Henri said.

“We could even walk,” I said. “It's less than half a mile.”

“I will wait for you, sir,” the driver said firmly, putting a stop to our shilly-shallying.

“Thank you,” I said to him. “We won't be long.”

“Take your time, sir,” he said. “I'll be here.”

Peter and Annabel went into the house and Henri and I followed.

“Seems like a nice chap,” I said to Peter, indicating the driver over my shoulder.

“All the police here are,” he said. “They mostly have a good relationship with the community.”

“I'm told there's not much crime in the islands.”

He sighed. “There's a lot more than I'd like,” he said. “Opportunist burglary is the real menace, but we've also had a minor drug war going on recently between some rival gangs. We like to think we're clear of that sort of thing, but we're not.”

How about attempted murder, I thought.

Henri and Annabel had a brandy each, while Peter and I chatted amicably about racing over a couple of glasses of port.

“I see that Duncan Johnson trained another King George winner,” Peter said. “He seems to have a knack of winning the big races.”

“Yes, he does have a remarkable record.” I'd watched the race on my laptop. Bill McKenzie had finished a creditable fourth. “Dave Swinton would have probably ridden the winner if he'd still been with us. He rode the horse last time out, when it won at Haydock in November.”

“His death is a huge loss to the sport,” Peter said. “Personally, I am extremely saddened by it. He was so exciting to watch, even when he rode a raw novice over hurdles. He seemed to have a sensitivity for the horses unlike any other jockey. He could easily have gone on to be the champion for many more years, to become one of the super-greats.”

“I agree,” I said.

But did I really?

For me, Dave's superhero reputation had been tarnished somewhat by his greed in demanding extra payments from the owners and trainers and then his nondisclosure of such payments to the tax man, while maintaining the pathetic excuse that the payments were merely
gifts
.

Not that he deserved to be murdered for it.

I wondered if his almost godlike standing with the racing public might take a hit when all the sordid details came out at his inquest, or at the trial of Leslie Morris and son, as they surely would. But I wasn't about to burst Peter Darwin's bubble of admiration just yet.

Henri and I finished our drinks and departed, arriving back at our apartment in the back of the Governor's official car, albeit without the Union Jack flying from its pole on the hood, as had been the case earlier.

“Would
Your Excellency
like to come to bed with me for some rumpy-pumpy?” Henri said in an ultraposh voice as we went in.

“I may not be that
excellency
tonight,” I said with a nervous laugh. “Not after all that booze.”

“Let me be the judge of that,” she giggled.

A little while later, she didn't complain.

—

I
WOKE
AGAIN
in the middle of the night, the bedside clock showing me it was three-thirty.

It was unlike me to suffer so much from jet lag and I wondered if the hyperbaric treatment was somehow to blame.

Or maybe it was just that my inquisitive mind was running on overdrive.

Something that Gay Smith had said over dinner had struck a chord.

I gently eased myself out of bed and went into one of the other bedrooms and closed the door.

I used my cell to call Faye and Quentin.

“I thought you'd call us on Christmas Day,” Faye said with a degree of reprimand in her voice.

“I'm sorry,” I said. “I was out all day and carelessly didn't have my phone with me.” I had decided not to tell her of my diving adventures for fear of unduly worrying her. “Did you have a good day?”

“Quiet,” she said. “In fact, it was just the two of us. Kenneth made a late decision to go to France with a new friend.”

I don't think she was actually
trying
to make me feel guilty, even though she had.

“Sorry,” I said.

“Are
you
having a nice time?” she asked.

“Lovely, thank you,” I said. I told her all about the private jet and the fabulous apartment.

“Don't get ideas you can't afford,” she said, ever concerned about my welfare.

“Yes, Mother.” We laughed. “How are
you
feeling?” I asked.

Such a simple question with so many unspoken overtones attached.

“Fine,” she said. “A little tired, as always.” She laughed again. “I've been using that as my excuse to get Quentin to do all the dishes.”

We chatted a bit more about what we had both been doing.

“How's it all going with Henrietta?” she asked.

“Great,” I said. “Very happy.”

“Quentin was very taken with her.”

I knew. I'd noticed.

“Is he there? I'd like to have a word with him.”

I waited while she found him.

“What the hell time is it with you?” Quentin said as he came on the line.

“Half past three,” I said. “I couldn't sleep.”

“Got a guilty conscience?”

“Slightly,” I said. “But that's not why I called. Do you remember you told me about the man who sold his printing business and didn't pay the capital gains tax?”

“Of course. What about it?”

“How did he claim to be a tax resident of the Channel Islands and why did you think he wasn't?”

“He bought a house in Guernsey and established residency there, but he spent too many days in London. He was a fool to think that no one would bother to count.”

“What's the limit on days?” I asked.

“They've introduced a new system and I'm not sure of the latest rules, but it used to be if someone spent more than one hundred and eighty-three days in the UK during any one year, or more than an average of ninety days a year during the current and previous three years, then he or she was considered a resident for tax purposes. Those were the rules that applied in this case.”

Unlike for American citizens, who are obliged to file an annual IRS tax return wherever they live in the world, the British are required to do so only for years when they are actually resident in the United Kingdom.

“How can you find out how many days someone spends in the UK?”

“It's not as straightforward as you'd think. Passports are now scanned on the way into and out of the country, but that didn't
used to be the case. Until very recently, there was no record made when anyone left. Airline passenger lists could tell you, provided they went by air. But there were no passenger lists on the ferries or on the trains through the Channel Tunnel. Then, of course, there's Ireland. There are no passport checks whatsoever for UK citizens going either way across the Irish Sea or when crossing the border on land between Northern Ireland and the Republic. That's where my Guernsey man went—he used cash to buy a ferry ticket from Liverpool to Belfast, took a bus to Dublin, and then returned to London by air, later claiming he'd been in Ireland for two whole weeks. The tax people reckoned he'd gone there and back in a single day. He couldn't produce any hotel receipts or even say where he'd stayed.”