Comeback (38 page)

Dear heavens! I’d let that intention slip in unawares. When I married Annabel indeed! Much too soon, too soon for that.

A short while after we’d returned to the cottage, Ken telephoned.

“Where have you been?” he asked.

“Rioting in the town with Greg and Vicky.”

“That’ll be the day. Look”—he sounded awkward—“my mother’s been crying buckets. You let loose a logjam of grief. But by God I thank you. I don’t know how you know the things you know, but as far as I’m concerned, my father can rest in peace.”

“I’m glad.”

“Since I got home,” he said, “Carey phoned. He sounded pretty depressed. He wanted to know how things were going in the practice. I told him we needed him, but I honestly think he’s stopped caring. Anyway, I told him about the invoices and what we’d been doing.”

“What did he say?”

“Nothing much. Just that we’d done well. I couldn’t seem to get him interested. I think Oliver’s right after all. We’ll have to regroup and work something out for ourselves.”

“Probably best.”

His voice sounded purposeful. “I’m going to get all the others together to discuss it.”

“Good idea.”

“Anyway, thanks again,” he said. “See you tomorrow, no doubt.”

Maybe, I thought, as he disconnected, but tomorrow Annabel would be coming and I wanted a private, not a family, lunch.

 

 

SHE CAME ON the train nearest noon and we kissed a greeting as familiarly as if the eight days we’d known each other were eighty on a desert island. She wore a vast sweater of white stars on black over tight black stretchy trousers. Pink lipstick. Huge eyes.

“I’ve found a super pub for lunch,” I said, “but we’ve got to make a short stop on the way. A tiny bit of sleuthing. Won’t be long.”

“Never mind,” she said, smiling. “And I’ve brought you a present from Brose’s friend Higgins to help you along.”

She took an envelope from a shiny black handbag and gave it to me. It contained, I found, a list of three insurance companies that had paid out on horses that had died off the racecourse during the past year. Alongside each company was a name and number for me to get in touch with, and at the bottom Higgins had written, “Mention my name and you’ll get the real dope. More to come next week.”

“Wonderful,” I said, very pleased. “With these, we must be nearly home. I’ll start phoning in the morning. It was boring old paperwork that put Al Capone in jail, don’t forget. Paperwork’s damning, as everyone knows only too well in the service, when we get things wrong.”

“Never sign anything,” she said ironically, “and you’ll stay out of trouble.”

We climbed into my car and set off to the horse hospital.

I said, “Vicky took a message from the Superintendent who’s in charge of Scott’s death saying he wants to see me briefly late this morning. Ken and I have talked to him at the hospital every day lately. It’s getting to be a habit.”

“How are things going in general?”

“I’ll tell you over lunch if you like, though there are better things to talk about. How’s the bishop?”

“Cautious.”

I smiled. I was growing less cautious every time I saw her. The prospect of the spring and summer ahead, the feeling of life beginning, the shivering excitement deep down, all came together in a fizzing euphoria. Let it not be a mistake, I thought. In a few months we would know whether it would last forever, if the attraction had glue. I’d never come near to thinking in such terms before. Perhaps it was true that one could know at once, when one met the right partner.

Perhaps she knew too. I saw in her the same glimmering acknowledgment, but also the certainty of her withdrawal if she should judge it a mistake. A mixture of fun, competence and reserve, that was Annabel. I began worrying that when I asked her, she wouldn’t have me.

There was only one parked car by the front entrance of the hospital when we got there. Not Ramsey’s usual car, not a car I knew.

“I don’t think the Superintendent’s here yet, but someone is,” I said. “Care to come in and look round?”

“Yes, I would. I’ve only ever seen the arrangements at Newmarket, before this.”

We went into the entrance hall and down the passage to the office, which was empty of everyone, not just policemen.

“Let’s see how much is unlocked,” I suggested, and we continued on down the passage to the door of the theater vestibule. It opened to the touch and we went through, with me pointing out the changing rooms and pharmacy cupboard to Annabel and saying at least we didn’t need to bother with shoe-covers and sterility or any of that jazz.

We went into the theater and looked around. Annabel was enthusiastic about the hoist.

“In the place I saw in Newmarket they stand the horse beside a table thing and strap him to it while he is still standing upright, conscious though sedated. Then when they’ve given the anesthestic they flip the table over to the horizontal position and hey presto, start cutting.”

The sliding door to the padded anesthesia/recovery room was wide open to every passing germ. We went through there, Annabel exclaiming over the resilient floor and bouncing up and down a couple of times.

“What’s that wall for?” she asked, pointing.

“The vets stand behind that when the horse comes round,” I explained. “Apparently the patient thrashes around sometimes and the vets like to be out of kicking range.”

“Like bullrings,” she said.

“Exactly.”

There seemed to be no one about. We went on across the corridor and into the reception room with its array of equipment round the walls, all quiet and ready for use.

“Usually they’re so careful about locking everything,” I said. “The whole system’s coming to bits.”

“Poor people.”

I tried the door leading to the outside world. That at least was secure.

I began to feel vaguely uneasy. The entire theater area felt wrong, though I couldn’t analyze why. I’d grown familiar with the place and it all looked the same. The difference was that I was now pretty sure who had murdered Scott, and felt anxious to tell Ramsey immediately. It was unlike him not to be there already, though the “late morning” of his message hadn’t been pinpointedly precise.

Perhaps I should have told Ken, I thought, but the damage had been done. Perhaps it wasn’t such a good idea to be here on a Sunday morning.

“Let’s go back to the office,” I said abruptly. “I’ll phone Ramsey’s number and see how long before he gets here.”

“OK.”

I turned and led the way back through the padded room, heading for the passage. I went through into the theater with all its lifesaving and businesslike equipment and spoke over my shoulder.

“Have you ever been really ill in hospital?”

Annabel didn’t answer.

I looked back and was flooded with horror, feeling adrenaline pour hot through my blood like a drench. She was down on her knees, her arms making uncoordinated movements, her head hanging low. Even as I sprinted back to her, she fell forward unconscious onto the spongy floor.

“Annabel!” I was agonized, bending over her, kneeling beside her, turning her, not knowing what was wrong with her, not knowing what help to get her, frenzied with worry.

I heard only at the last minute the rustle of clothes behind me and turned my head too late, too late.

A figure advanced from a bare yard away, a figure in surgical gown, surgical gloves, surgical cap and mask. He carried a syringe, which he jabbed like a dagger at my neck.

I felt the deep sting of the needle. I grabbed towards his clothes and he skipped back a pace, the eyes like gray pebbles over the mask.

I knew too late that he’d been hiding behind the bullring wall, that he’d darted out to inject Annabel, that he’d hidden again and come out of the other end to creep up behind me as I bent over her.

I knew, while clouds swiftly gathered in my brain, I knew as I went to inexorable sleep, that I’d been right. Small comfort. I’d been foolish as well.

The man in surgeon’s clothes had murdered Scott.

An old gray man with all the veterinary knowledge in the world.

Carey Hewett.

I WAS LYING on the floor, my nose pressed to the padding, smelling a mixture of antiseptic and horse. Awareness was partial. My eyelids weighed tons. My limbs wouldn’t work, nor my voice.

The fact of being alive was in itself amazing. I felt as if awakening from ether, not death. I wanted to sink back into sleep.

Annabel!

The thought of her stormed through my half-consciousness and quickened my sluggish wits towards order. With an enormous effort I tried to move, seeming to myself to fail.

I must have stirred. There was a fast exclamation above me, more breath than words. I realized that someone was touching me, moving my hands, hastening roughly.

Instinctive fear swamped me. Logical fear immediately followed. There was clank of chains, and I knew that sound. The chains of the hoist.

No, I protested numbly. Not that. Not like Scott.

The physical effects of terror were at first an increase of the paralysis already plaguing me, but after that came a rush of useful bloody-mindedness that raced along like fire and set me fighting.

Flight was impossible. My limbs still had no strength. Equine padded cuffs had been strapped round my wrists. He clipped the chains onto the cuffs.

No, I thought.

My brain was one huge silent scream.

My eyes came open.

Annabel lay on the floor a few feet away, fast asleep. At least she looked asleep. Peaceful. I couldn’t bear it. I’d brought her into appalling danger. I’d taken the message to meet Ramsey to be genuine. I should have been more careful, knowing that Ken had told Carey how much we’d discovered. Regrets and remorse thudded like piledrivers, relentlessly punishing.

Muscles recovered faster. I stretched the fingers of one hand towards the buckles on the other wrist. The chains clinked from the movement.

Another exclamation from across the room and an impression of haste.

The hoist whined, reeling in the chains.

I couldn’t get the buckles undone. Undid one, but there were two on each cuff.

The shortening chains tugged my wrists upwards, lifted my arms, pulled up my body, pulled me to my feet, pulled me higher until I dangled in the air. I shook my head desperately as if that itself would undo the frightful leadenness in my mind and clear away the remaining mists.

Carey stood inside the theater and pressed the hoist’s buttons. Raging and helpless I began to travel along the rails towards the sliding door, through that towards the huge operating table. I lunged towards Carey with my feet, but he was out of range of my futile swings and grayly intent on what he was doing.

His mercilessness and lack of emotion were unnerving. He wasn’t gloating or cursing or telling me I shouldn’t have meddled. He seemed to be approaching just another job.

“Carey,” I said, pleading. “For God’s sake.”

He might as well not have heard.

“I’ve told Ramsey it was you who murdered Scott!” I yelled it, all at once without control, petrified, pathetic, in shattering fear, believing I was lost.

He paid no attention. He was concentrating on the matter at hand.

He stopped the hoist when I was still short of the table and put his head on one side, considering. It was almost, I thought, as if he wasn’t sure what to do next.

I understood as if in a revelation that he hadn’t intended or expected me to be awake at that point, that Scott hadn’t been watching him and shouting at him, that things weren’t going entirely to plan.

The syringeful of what I hoped against hope had been simple anesthetic had been at least half used on Annabel and he hadn’t been able to put me out for as long as he’d meant.

He must have been disturbed to find me not alone. I guessed that perhaps he’d intended to lure me into the theater by some noise or other and plump his needle in by surprise. Perhaps he’d thought I wouldn’t be alarmed by a surgeon, if I’d seen him. Perhaps anything.

He made a decision and crossed to one of the wall tables upon which lay a kidney dish. He picked up a syringe that had been lying there, held it up to the light and squirted it gently until drops oozed out of the needle.

I didn’t need telling that I was meeting the puffer fish.

Time really had come to an end if I just went on hanging there helplessly. He had to reach me with that needle to do any harm. All I had to do was stop him.

Imminent extinction gave me powers I would have said were impossible. As he started towards me, I bent my arms to raise myself and jackknife my body, bringing my knees to my chin, trying by straightening fiercely to get my feet onto the operating table to my left and behind me. The maneuver didn’t really succeed but I did get my feet as far as the edge of the table, which gave me purchase to swing out towards Carey and try to knock away the syringe with my shoes.

He skipped backwards, carefully holding the syringe high. I swung futilely in the air, feeling wrenched and furious.

After a moment’s thought he pressed a hoist button and moved me a yard farther from the table, towards him, towards the sliding door. Instantly, I repeated the jackknife, aiming this time straight at him. He retreated rapidly. My feet hit the wall where he had been and I pushed off from it violently, turning in the air, scything with my legs at the syringe.

I missed the high-held death but connected with Carey’s head, by some chance with one foot each side of it. I tried to grip his head tight but the pendulum effect swung me away again. All that happened was that his surgical cap and mask were pulled off. The mask hung round his neck but the soft cap fell to the ground.

In an extraordinary way it seemed to fluster him. He put the hand holding the syringe to his head and drew it hastily away again. He was confused, his expression not venomous or evil, but showing double the exhaustion of recent days. Not plain tiredness, but psychic disintegration from too much stress.