Front Runner by Felix Francis

occur to him that some of his more old-fashioned views on modern life, in particular to do with sexuality and race, may have been a factor in his current omission from the bench.
    â€œAnd were you noticed?” I asked.
    Quentin clearly didn’t like the tone of my voice, which, in truth, was slightly mocking. “We will have to wait and see,” he said, tight-lipped. He then excused himself and went back to his study.
    â€œI wish you two got on better,” Faye said after he’d gone.
    â€œWe get on all right,” I said, although it wasn’t true. “And I’ll definitely call him if I ever need a lawyer.”
    â€œDo you think that you will need a lawyer?” she asked.
    â€œProbably one day.”
    She pulled a face at me. She didn’t like my line of work.
    â€œDo you want to stay for supper?”
    I knew that she was only asking because she felt sorry for me. Lydia’s departure had been almost as big a disappointment for Faye as it had been for me. She desperately wanted me to be happy and saw it as her job to get me married off before she succumbed to the cancer. In her eyes, Lydia would have made the perfect sister-in-law.
    â€œThanks, but no thanks. I’d better get back.”
    I wondered why I’d said that. My apartment would be cold and lonely. I’d become used to domestic life as a couple and I missed the homey comforts of having a mate, especially one who enjoyed cooking as much as Lydia had.
    â€œYou’re welcome to stay,” Faye said. “We’re only having pasta and pesto. I can easily make enough for three.”
    â€œOK,” I said. “Pasta and pesto would be lovely.”
    â€”
    D AVE S WINTON ’ S apparent suicide was the only topic of conversation at the BHA offices on Monday morning and there was genuine sadness among the staff.
    Dave had been popular with everyone in racing, not least because of his famed good looks together with the humility that had accompanied his stunning ability on a horse. The previous December there had been a huge surge of support from the racing community to vote for him in the Sportsman of the Yearcontest and it had carried him to an easy victory. It was something that had given the whole of racing a boost.
    There was not only sorrow for his loss but also bewilderment that he could kill himself, and especially in such a horrendous fashion.
    â€œBut why would he do such a thing?” said one of the young female receptionists, who was in tears. “He surely had everything to live for.”
    I decided not to enlighten her about Dave’s attempt to kill me. Not so much out of any sense of not wishing to speak ill of the dead or to add to her pain, but more because I doubted that she would believe me. In fact, I reckoned that no one would believe me, so I kept quiet.
    While the collective grief caused others to spill out into corridors and stairwells to share their anguish, I shut myself away in my office and spent the morning studying the videos of all the races that Dave Swinton had ridden in but not won during the preceding week.
    I thought back to what he had said to me in his Jaguar at the Newbury races:
I had twenty-eight rides and ten winners last week, so I lost eighteen races
.
    Finding the eighteen races was easy using the BHA database and I watched the RaceTech video recordings of each of them.
    Dave had finished second in six, third in four and had not placed in the other eight, falling in two of them, once at the last fence when clear in front.
    I watched all the available footage, including the side and head-on angles, but there was nothing I could see that indicated that a horse had been prevented from winning on purpose. That was not to say it hadn’t happened. Dave Swinton was a genius inthe saddle and I was sure that if he had wanted to lose a race deliberately, he could have done so in such a manner that no one would have easily been able to spot it.
    I