Front Runner Read Online Free PDF Page B

if the heat were still on.
    And now the sliver of light was definitely bigger.
    â€”
    I T TOOK ME nearly an hour to make a hole large enough for me to get a finger through.
    I put my eye up to the hole and looked out, but there wasn’t much to see, just the far wall of the garage and a space where the Mercedes had been when I’d arrived. But it lifted my spirits no end that I could at last see beyond the walls of the sauna.
    I went back to my hammering at the edges with the pointed rock and it wasn’t that long before the hole had grown sufficiently for me to get my hand outside.
    I then used one end of a floor slat as a sort of crowbar and gradually split the planking farther, both above and below the hole, until there was space enough for me to stick my head out.
    By this time the sauna walls had no chance against me. I attacked the hole like a man possessed, kicking away the planking, and before long I was out, standing in the garage.
    I walked around to the sauna door.
    A garden fork had been jammed between the door and the garage wall with such force that the tines had dug grooves in the brickwork.
    I picked up my coat from the handlebars of the bicycle and removed my phone from the pocket.
    The missed call had indeed been from Faye.
    I held the phone in my hand and wondered what to do.
    Should I call the police?
    There was no doubt in my own mind that Dave Swinton had tried to kill me, but I was worried that no one else would believe it.
    I went over everything again in my head. Was there any way it could have been a mistake or an accident?
    I glanced over at the garden fork, still in position holding the sauna door firmly closed. The placing of that had been no accident, no mistake. And the person who put it there had to have been aware that the sauna was switched on.
    No one could have driven away from that garage and not have expected the man left in the sauna to die. The fact that I hadn’t died had simply been down to dogged determination on my part and good luck.
    I dialed 999 on my phone.
    â€œEmergency, which service?”
    â€œPolice,” I said. “I wish to report an attempted murder.”

5
    T hey did believe me—just—in the end.
    Initially, two young uniformed policemen arrived in a patrol car. They listened intently as I described what had happened and their eyes widened slightly when I showed them the garden fork. They widened even more when they saw the hole I had made in the wall of the sauna to escape. But it was when they discovered that I was accusing one of the country’s most well-known and best-loved sporting celebrities of attempted murder that reinforcements were summoned in the shape of a plainclothes officer who introduced himself as Detective Sergeant Jagger from the Thames Valley Police Major Crime Unit.
    â€œSo, Mr. Hinkley,” said D.S. Jagger, “why do you think Mr. Swinton wanted to kill you?”
    Why did part of me still feel a need to keep confidential what Dave had told me yesterday? I surely was under no obligation to do so. I must be absolved from any promise I had made to him to try to forget what he had said. After all, he had tried to kill me.
    â€œI knew that he had purposely lost a horse race and I think he tried to kill me to stop me saying something to the authorities.”
    The detective clearly thought it was a poor motive for murder.
    â€œAre you really telling me that Mr. Swinton would risk a murder charge over something so trivial?”
    I tried to point out to the policeman that purposely losing races was not trivial for a professional jockey, but he wouldn’t believe it. And part of me agreed with him. Why would Dave risk a lifelong prison sentence when he knew I didn’t have any real evidence that he’d stopped a horse anyway? Especially as I didn’t even know which horse or race was in question.
    Had he expected to come home from Towcester that evening to find me dead, remove the garden fork