Front Runner (10 page)

“OK,” I said. “Is eleven o'clock early enough?”

“Eleven would be great. Thanks so much. I'll see you in the morning.”

She hung up.

Was the highlight of my day to be acting as a servant to my brother-in-law and a bunch of his barrister friends? I suppose it might make a pleasant change from having someone try to kill me, as had happened the previous Sunday.

I wish.

T
wice more my home phone rang and no one spoke on the other end. And twice more I dialed 1471 to get the number. Each time, it was different. My gas bill envelope now had all three numbers written on it and each of them, when called back, produced the
No incoming calls
message.

The second call was made as I was getting into bed on Saturday evening and the third woke me at seven o'clock on Sunday morning. I was convinced someone was there, listening, because the line didn't sound completely dead, and at one point I was sure I could hear some traffic in the background.

The calls made me feel a little uneasy, as if someone was stalking me.

And it wouldn't be the first time. Over the years, I had investigated a number of less than agreeable characters, some of whom had taken against me personally for exposing their own wrongdoing. I had been threatened, beaten up and, on one occasion, knocked down by a speeding car.

Most had been attempts to prevent me from carrying out an investigation, but a couple had been out of revenge for getting someone banned from racing.

I couldn't think of anyone in particular that I had recently upset by getting them disqualified or excluded from the sport. There might be, however, somebody who'd ended up in prison as a result of their fraud and was now released and bent on settling an old score.

I would have to just get on with my life as usual and watch my back, as I always did, avoiding dark alleyways and dimly lit multistory parking lots.

—

M
Y
PHONE
RANG
once again just after ten o'clock as I was putting on my overcoat to leave for Richmond and my waiting duties at Faye and Quentin's house.

“Hello?” I said.

No reply.

“Who are you?” I asked.

No reply.

“What do you want?”

No reply.

The line went dead. I again dialed 1471 and this time the number was the same as for the previous call. Again, I tried to call it back, but, as before, there was nothing but the disembodied message
No incoming calls
.

Annoying, I thought.

If I'd had more time and it hadn't been a Sunday, I might have contacted the phone company to have my number changed. But it was so irritating to have to go through the whole rigmarole of informing everyone of the change in number. Although, come to think of it, not many people knew my number in the first place.

I'd had the number transferred from the apartment I'd shared
with Lydia. Nowadays, the only person who called me on that line was Faye. I tended to use my cell for all work calls, incoming and outgoing, and the only friends who had used the landline phone had departed from my life at the same time Lydia had.

Could it be Lydia? Pining after the sound of my voice?

I thought it most unlikely. The last I'd heard, she and her new man were blissfully happy together. But that had been from a friend of hers who had seemingly wanted to rub my nose in the fact that she had left me, so it might not have been very accurate.

I had a careful check outside as I locked my front door. There was no one hiding in the bushes waiting to attack me.

I was intending to take the train from Willesden Junction to Richmond, but I set off in a direction directly away from the railway station, doubling back along two side streets and retracing my path twice, just to check that there was nobody intent on following me.

There wasn't.

I smiled at myself. I must be getting paranoid.

—

T
HE
BUFFET
LUNCH
went off without a hitch and I even found I enjoyed it.

It was a revelation to me to discover that not all the Queen's Counsel in Quentin Calderfield's chambers were as stuffy, bigoted and boring as he. In fact, some of them turned out to be fun, and they were far more proficient at taking the mickey out of their host than I had ever dared to be.

“Come on, Quentin, give us a song, show us your yang side,” one of them said, laughing loudly. “All we ever see is your yin.”

From the look on his face, I'm not sure that Quentin had ever heard of yin and yang, which was somewhat of a surprise considering he always saw things distinctly as right or wrong, white or black, light or dark, just like Paul Maldini.

Needless to say, Quentin didn't break into song.

“Do you think it's going all right?” Faye asked when I went to the kitchen to fetch yet another bottle of red wine.

“It's fine,” I said. “I never realized lawyers could drink so much and still speak so eloquently.”

“Practice,” she said. “All those liquid lunches they have, then back into court to argue for a man's freedom, or his life. Most lawyers' livers were given a welcome rest when the old Wig and Pen Club closed down. Q used to have lunch there almost every day. He was distraught when it shut.”

—

I
T
WAS
totally dark by the time the last of their lunch guests departed.

Faye collapsed into a deep armchair in the living room. “I'm pooped,” she said.

“What a great lunch,” said Quentin, slumping down on the sofa and putting his feet up.

“Thank God. it's not our turn every year,” Faye said with her eyes closed.

“Right, then,” I said. “I'll leave you two and get back home.”

“You're very welcome to stay,” said Faye. “We're only going to veg out in front of the telly with some cheese and crackers. That's if you'd like the company.”

“Thanks for the offer, but I should be getting back. I have things I must do before tomorrow morning.”

Did I have things to do? Not really. It was just my silly subconscious telling me that, for some reason, I would be better off on my own—like a leper.

“Suit yourself,” Faye said, and she started to get up.

“Don't move,” I said. “I can find my own way out. Thank you for a great lunch.”

“Thank
you
for your help.”

I leaned down and gave her a kiss. “Look after yourself, sis. Getting this tired is not good for you.”

“Tell me about it.”

I waved at Quentin, who was already half asleep. He briefly lifted a hand in response.

I let myself out into the cold night and walked to Richmond town center across the green. Only when I started down Brewers Lane did I remember about not walking down dark alleyways on my own.

I spun round. No one was following me. Why should there be?

I turned up my coat collar and dug my hands deep into the pockets against the icy northerly wind and made it safely to the station to catch the train to Willesden Junction. Once there, I decided against taking the shortcut home along the gloomy trackside path, rather keeping to the longer, well-lit streets. I did it not out of any worry that it would be me in particular that might be targeted but because there had been reports of several recent muggings on the path during the dark winter evenings and I had no real wish to be added to those statistics.

I checked the deep shadows around the bushes outside my front door for lurking rogues and villains and of course there were none, so I let myself in.

The rogues and villains were already inside.

There were two of them and they were not making a social call.

—

I
T
WAS
their haste that saved me.

They were waiting for me just inside the front door. One of the men grabbed my arm as soon as I stepped through and slammed me up against the wall, sending my cell phone spinning out of my hand, while the other one tried to make mincemeat of my insides with a thin, sharp carving knife, stabbing repeatedly at my abdomen and chest.

If they had just waited until I'd removed my overcoat, I would have been far more vulnerable. As it was, the thick woolen folds and the twin rows of large bone buttons of my double-breasted, military-style greatcoat, together with my tweed jacket underneath, dampened or deflected the lethal thrusts to the extent that the blade seemed to barely make it through to my skin.

And I fought back with all the strength of the condemned and terrified.

I kicked out at the knifeman, catching him hard in the crotch. Then I flung his accomplice off my arm across the hallway, where he tripped over one of the still-packed cardboard boxes, falling halfway through my bedroom door.

I don't think they had expected such resistance. They must have hoped to catch me by surprise and deliver a mortal wound before I had a chance to respond.

I may not be that big in either height or bulk, but I was once a serving officer in Her Majesty's Armed Forces and I had enjoyed, more than most, the grueling physical regimen of my year at Sandhurst. I had tried to sustain a fairly high level of basic
fitness ever since. Even during the recent dark months of my life I had still managed to maintain a daily routine of fifty push-ups and a hundred crunches before bed every night.

So I was strong and agile. And I was angry—bloody angry.

Who did they think they were, breaking into my home and attacking me?

However, in the face of superior numbers, I decided that retreat was probably the best policy, so I ran for my still-open front door. But my two would-be murderers were not giving up that easily and I could both hear and feel them right behind me as I ran out into the street.

I ran down the center of the road, shouting for assistance.

“Help! Help!” I screamed at the top of my voice. “Murder! Murder! Somebody help me.”

Not one of my neighbors came to my aid. Not even a curtain twitched. Perhaps I would have had more response if I'd shouted,
Money! Money! Get some free money
.

A car turned into the road at the far end and came toward me, its lights shining brightly. I ran straight down the middle of the road toward it, waving my arms wildly above my head, until it slowed and finally stopped with my legs up against the hood.

The assassins wavered in their pursuit and then took off in the other direction, disappearing into the shadows.

“Call the police,” I called breathlessly to the driver of the car.

“Call them yourself,” he replied bad-temperedly through his open window. “And get out of the bleeding way, will you? I could have knocked you down, easy. Running down the middle of the road in a dark coat is asking for trouble.”

“Someone is trying to kill me,” I said.

“Yeah, yeah,” he said in obvious disbelief, “and I'm the Queen of Sheba.”

I stepped back a pace, unbuttoned and opened the front of both my coat and jacket. The white shirt beneath was blood red and glistening wet in the light from the car's headlights.

“Fuck me,” he said.

“
Now
will you call the police?”

A
police car and an ambulance turned up together, both with multiple bright blue flashing lights that lit up the street and hurt my eyes.

It became clear that a stabbing in a London street was not sufficiently unusual for either the police officers or the ambulance crew to get too excited. In fact, I found the perceived indifference to apprehending my assailants to be frustrating.

“Can't you get the helicopter up?” I urged the police as soon as they arrived.

“Helicopters cost money,” one of them replied, shaking his head. “Especially on Sunday evenings.”

I was carried on a stretcher, half sitting, half lying, into the back of the ambulance and we set off, with one of the policemen sitting on a chair near my head, just as I had done the previous day with Bill McKenzie.

“My front door is wide open,” I said. “The key is still in the lock.”

“Don't you worry about that,” said the policeman. “My colleague will look after your house.”

The paramedic cut my shirt away and raised his eyebrows in surprise.

“You have at least a dozen stab wounds on your torso,” he said. “How come you're still alive?”

The policeman suddenly took a slightly greater interest.

“I don't think they're very deep,” I said. “My overcoat saved me.”

The paramedic placed several electrodes on the bits of my chest with no knife punctures and wired them up to a metal box above my head. Next, he slipped a blood-pressure cuff over my arm. He also attached a sort of bulldog clip to my finger and then inserted a needle into a vein on the back of my hand to set up a drip.

“To stop dehydration,” he said when I looked at him quizzically. “You've lost a fair amount of blood.”

“So who stabbed you?” the policeman asked.

“There were two of them,” I said. “They were waiting for me in my apartment.”

“Associates, were they?” he asked in a tone that implied he didn't care much. It dawned on me why.

“No,” I said to him. “They were
not
associates and I am
not
a drug dealer. I am a senior investigator for the Integrity Service of the British Horseracing Authority. I
am
the horseracing police and two men have just tried to kill me. I would like, please, to speak to a higher-ranking officer.”

The policeman swiftly changed his tune, asking me for a description of the men so he could put out a call.

A description?

“I spent most of the time with my eyes glued to the knife,” I said. “I didn't really look at their faces.”

“But you saw them well enough to know they were not associates,” he said.

“Yes.” Funny how the mind works. I couldn't remember seeing their faces, yet I must have. Enough, anyway, to realize I didn't know them.

“White or black?” he asked.

“White,” I said with certainty. The overhead light in my hallway had been off, but there had been enough illumination from the one in the open porch.

“Masks and gloves?”

“Gloves, yes,” I said. “Leather gloves. But no masks.”

“They obviously didn't expect you to survive long enough to provide us with a description.”

I was beginning to feel seriously unwell and I was having great difficulty breathing. I leaned my head back on the pillow.

“Blues and twos,” the paramedic shouted at his colleague who was driving. “Blood pressure's dropping and his O saturation has fallen below ninety.”

I heard the ambulance's siren start up. It couldn't go quick enough, as far as I was concerned.

The medic put an oxygen mask over my nose and mouth, which made me feel marginally better, but I was so tired—I could hardly keep my eyes open.

“Stay with us,” the paramedic said loudly into my ear. “Stay with us.”

He briefly disconnected the drip from the needle in the back of my hand and replaced it with a full syringe. “Adrenalin,” he said, pushing the plunger, but I was barely listening. I was drifting off.

“Don't go to sleep,” said the paramedic, leaning over me and
putting his face close to mine. “Come on, Mr. Hinkley, you must stay awake.”

I forced my eyes open and was not greatly heartened by the worry lines on his forehead as he listened to my chest with a stethoscope.

“I need you to sit up some more,” he said, placing his arm around my shoulders and pulling me. The move helped a little, but my breathing was becoming more and more labored as I gasped for air, and still I felt so extraordinarily fatigued.

I was going to sleep and there was nothing I could do to prevent it.

In my last conscious moment before oblivion, I thought with despair,
This is it—I'm dying
.

—

I
WOKE
UP
lying on a hospital bed with all my senses switching back on at once.

I stared at the light fixture on the ceiling, could hear a beep-beep somewhere over my head that I took to be a heart monitor, and I could smell the typical sweet aroma of hospital disinfectant.

My sensory nerves were fully operational as well, with my chest feeling like someone was driving nails into it. My abdomen was on fire, and my throat felt like it had been rebored with a wire brush.

And I was thirsty.

I tried to speak, but my tongue seemed to be stuck to the roof of my mouth. All that I could manage was a groan.

“Ah, you're awake,” said a voice.

I swiveled my eyes away from the ceiling and looked at a
pretty young woman standing at the foot of the bed dressed in a blue nurse's tunic.

“Water,” I tried to say through the oxygen mask that covered my nose and mouth. I'm not sure it came out quite right, but she seemed to understand because she nodded and disappeared, returning with a cup and a straw. Nothing ever tasted better.

For a few moments when I'd first awakened, I had wondered where I was, then I remembered everything up to and including the hopeless feeling of impending death that I'd experienced in the ambulance.

I wasn't dead—I was alive and in the hospital.

Unless, of course, this was the afterlife.

I reckoned that it wasn't, not unless this pain constituted Hell itself. I did consider that seriously for a few seconds but came to the conclusion that Lucifer probably was unlikely to have pretty nurses on hand to fetch water for the inmates.

I was still alive and I was glad about it.

“Do you know your name?” asked the nurse, holding the oxygen mask away from my face.

“Jeff Hinkley,” I said, my voice still coming out as a croak.

“How are you feeling?”

“I hurt.”

“I'll fetch you something for that.”

She replaced the mask and disappeared from view, returning in a few moments with a small plastic cup containing some clear liquid.

“Morphine,” she said. “This will help.”

She held the mask away from my face again and helped me raise my head slightly to drink it down. Only then did I realize that I had a multitude of wires and tubes coming out of the side of my neck below my right ear.

A man came into sight. He was wearing scrubs.

“So, Mr. Hinkley, you're still with us?” I wasn't sure if it was a question or a statement. “I'm Dr. Shwan. It's Egyptian, like
swan
only with an
h
. I'm the doctor that operated on you. You're a very lucky boy. Very lucky indeed. I thought we'd lost you, but we managed to bring you back.” He smiled.

He'd called me a boy yet he was hardly older than I.

“I feel like I've been hit by a truck,” I said. “I'm so sore.”

“I'm not surprised. I had to open both your chest and your abdomen.”

“And my throat?” I asked. “That hurts as well.”

“We had to insert a tube down your throat in order to ventilate your lungs with oxygen during surgery. Normal breathing isn't possible with the chest wall open. The tube tends to cause some minor discomfort for a while afterward.”

It didn't feel minor to me.

“You rest,” said the doctor. “I'll tell you everything later.”

“Tell me now,” I said. I was never one for waiting.

“You have thirteen separate stab wounds, most of which are superficial. Two of them, however, are deep. One penetrated the abdominal muscle wall and punctured your bowel, while the other, the most serious, passed between your second and third ribs on the left side, causing a laceration of the aortic arch just above your heart.”

I suppose I
had
asked.

“It is that one that almost killed you,” he said. “It caused substantial bleeding into the chest cavity, which compromised your breathing and also filled the space around the heart with blood, giving it no room to beat.”

“But I was fine for a while. I was even able to run.”

“Yes, but all the time the chest cavity was slowly filling. Only
when the blood got to a critical level did you suffer any symptoms. Usually, by then, it's too late to save the patient. You had a cardiac arrest as you arrived at the ER and I had to perform an emergency thoracotomy right there to get your heart pumping again. There wasn't even time to get you to the operating room. As I said, you're a very lucky boy.”

“Very lucky to have you around when I needed it.”

“I don't know about that,” he said with a smile. “Yours was the first chest I've ever opened. I've only ever seen it done by others. I'm an emergency room doctor, not a heart surgeon. But needs must, and it seems to have worked.” He made a movement as if to mop sweat from his brow.

I knew from my time with the Army in Afghanistan how extreme situations could require desperate solutions well out of one's comfort zone. And how it takes immense courage not to wait for someone with the right experience but to make the decision to do it yourself because to wait would be to fail.

“Thank you, Dr. Shwan,” I said, meaning it.

“Don't thank me yet,” he said. “Give it another forty-eight hours or so. A gurney in the ER is not the most sterile of environments to perform heart massage or to repair a major artery. I'm just hoping you won't get an infection. We are delivering antibiotics direct to your heart cavity, yet we can never be sure. And then there's the rupture of your bowel. I repaired that as well, but there's always a chance of peritonitis.”

“Well, thank you anyway,” I said, “for what you've done so far.”

“You need to rest now. Give your body the chance to heal itself.”

The morphine was finally beginning to work. I closed my eyes.

“The police are outside and they're keen to speak to you,” he said. “I'll tell them they have to wait.”

Good idea, I thought. Let them wait.

There would be plenty of time later to think about why I'd been attacked and who would have done such a thing to me.

Twice in eight days someone had tried to kill me.

I just hoped it wouldn't be
third time's the charm
.

—

T
HE
POLICE
in the form of two plainclothes detectives were finally allowed in to question me the following evening, by which time the pain in my chest had subsided a little from an unbearable level 10 to an almost manageable 8.

Thankfully, my throat was nearly back to normal and the oxygen mask over my face had been replaced by two little tubes that jutted up into my nostrils. Hence, two-way communication was much improved.

“Mr. Hinkley,” one of the policemen said, “I'm Detective Inspector Galvin of the Metropolitan Police Homicide and Serious Crime Command and this is my sergeant, D.S. Gibb.”

They sat down on two chairs, one either side of the bed.

“You've been causing quite a stir,” said the detective inspector. “The Commissioner has been getting calls from the chairman of the Horseracing Authority demanding to know who tried to kill his senior investigator.”

Blimey, I thought. I hadn't had that sort of response the previous week. Probably because I'd played it down. And also because of the death of Dave Swinton.

“I'm glad somebody cares,” I said.

“Tell me what happened on Sunday evening,” said the detective.

I went through the whole thing as best I could remember, from the moment I turned the key in the lock of my front door right up to the time of the arrival of the ambulance, and the sergeant wrote it all down in his notebook.

“According to the constable who attended the scene, you told him you didn't know your attackers,” said the inspector. “Is that correct?”

“Yes,” I said. “Quite correct.”

“But you were unable to give him a description of the men.”

“I became too ill.”

“Can you give me one now?”

I had thought of little else for the preceding twenty-four hours. Over and over again, I had gone through the whole thing in my head trying to conjure up the image of the two faces but with very limited success.

“I was concentrating on the knife,” I said. “I know that the men were white and I must have seen their faces well enough to realize I didn't recognize them, but I'm afraid I can't help you.”

“Did they say anything?”

“Not that I remember. It all happened so quickly. One of them grabbed me and the other started stabbing as soon as I walked through the door.”

“So they were waiting for you?”

“Yes,” I said. “I am sure they were. I was careless. I checked the bushes in the front garden and never imagined that anyone would be inside.”

The sergeant looked up at me from his notebook. “Were you expecting to be attacked?” he asked.

“Not exactly expecting it, no. I'm just naturally vigilant. And it isn't the first time. Someone tried to kill me only a week ago.”

Both the policemen looked at me in surprise.

“Was it the man with the knife?” the inspector asked.