Front Runner by Felix Francis

Author:Felix Francis
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2015-09-23T16:00:00+00:00

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.

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