by Dick Francis
“No promises and no strings,” I agreed.
“OK.” She sounded excited. “What time and where?”
“Come as early as you like, and I’ll pick you up from Cambridge station.”
“Isn’t there a station at Newmarket?” she asked.
“There is, but you have to change at Cambridge anyway and it’s not great service.”
“OK,” she said again. “I’ll look up the train times and call you back. At this number?”
“Yes,” I said. I was elated at the thought of seeing her again so soon.
“What do I wear?” she said.
“Anything,” I said.
Even the prospect of being prosecuted under the 1990 Act couldn’t dampen my spirits as I skipped down the stairs. I laughed out loud and punched the air, as I collected my coat and went out to the car. Caroline was coming to dinner! At my restaurant! And she was staying the night! Pity it wasn’t going to be at my cottage.
The brakes of my Golf failed at the bottom of Woodditton Road.
I was feeling good, and my speed, probably like my expectation, was rather too high. I put my foot on the brake pedal and nothing happened. I pushed harder. Nothing. The car actually increased in speed down the hill, towards the T junction with Dullingham Road at the bottom. I suppose I could have been quicker in my thinking. I suppose I could have tried the handbrake, or maybe downshifted the gears to slow me down. I suppose, as a last resort, I could have turned the car through the hedge on the left and into the field beyond. Instead, I gripped the steering wheel tightly in panic and kept pushing the useless brake pedal harder and harder into the floor.
In a way, I was lucky. I didn’t hit a truck carrying bricks head-on like my father. My dear little car was struck by a fifty-three-seat, fully air-conditioned passenger coach, with individual video screens built in. I knew this because the Golf ended up on its side around the back of the bus, and I could read the details of their service, as advertised, in large white letters painted on a red background. Funny how the mind works. I remembered the words as my consciousness slowly drained away: fifty-three seats.
10
I was being wheeled on a hospital gurney along a gray corridor. I could see the lights in the ceiling. But they weren’t the usual bright rectangular panels; they were different. They were round glass globes. And there were windows, lots of bright, sunlit windows. And voices too, lots of voices, both male and female.
“I think he’s come round again,” said one male voice above me.
“Hello,” called a female voice on my left. “Mr. Moreton, can you hear me?”
A face came into view. The face smiled at me.
“Mr. Moreton,” said the face again. “You’ve had a bit of an accident, but you are going to be just fine.”
That was a relief, I thought.
Nothing seemed to hurt much, but my body, strangely, didn’t feel attached to my head. I felt like I was looking down on somebody else’s corpse. Oh no, I thought, surely I haven’t broken my back?
I began to panic and I tried to sit up.
“Just lie back and rest,” said the female voice, a restraining hand placed firmly on my shoulder. She looked into my face. “You’ve had a nasty bang on the head.”
Oh God, I must have broken my neck.
I tried to wiggle my toes and was rewarded with the sight of the blanket moving. Waves of relief flowed over me. I lifted my hand to my face and wiped the cold sweat from my forehead. All was well, I thought, even if the sensations were a bit unusual.
“You’re probably concussed,” she said. “You’re on your way now to have a brain scan.”
I hoped they’d find one.
I wondered where I was. I knew that I was in the hospital, but where? And why was I in the hospital? The questions were too difficult for my befuddled brain, so I decided to take the easy option and do as I was told. I laid my head back on the pillow and closed my eyes again.
FOR THE NEXT few hours, I was dimly aware of being lifted and poked, of being talked about but not talked to. I just let the world get on without me.
I couldn’t remember why I was here. Rather worryingly, I couldn’t remember very much at all. Who am I? I wondered, and was comforted by at least knowing that it mattered. I decided that I probably wasn’t crazy. Surely, I thought, if I was crazy I wouldn’t know to ask myself the question in the first place. But what was the answer?
Thoughts drifted in and out of my consciousness without any threads of connection. Come on, I said to myself, sort it out. There were clearly some priorities to set. Who am I? Why am I here? And where is here?
“Mr. Moreton? Mr. Moreton?” a woman called from my left, and someone stroked my arm. Was Mr. Moreton me? I suppose it must be. Did I really want to come back into the land of the living just yet? I supposed I should.
I opened my eyes.
“He’s back again,” said the woman. “Hello, Mr. Moreton, how are you feeling?”
I tried to say that I was fine, but it came out as a croak. The woman obviously thought it was a good sign that I had reacted at all. She leaned over me and smiled into my face. “Well done,” she said. “You are going to be all right.”
Why did I think that she was trying to convince herself as much as she was trying to convince me?
I tried again to speak. “Where am I?” I croaked.
“Addenbrooke’s hospital,” she said. “In Cambridge.”
I knew I knew something about Addenbrooke’s hospital, I thought. What was it? Memory circuits in my head flipped and flopped and came up with an answer: Addenbrooke’s hospital was where the food-poisoning victims went.
Why did I think that? Who were the poison victims? Would they be OK? I decided not to worry about them. They would be all right, I said to myself. The woman had said so, and I believed her. I closed my eyes again. I wasn’t yet ready to participate in the world any further.
WHEN I WOKE next, it was dark. There was a window to my right and it was black, with the exception of a couple of yellow streetlights visible in the distance. I lay there, looking out. I remembered I was in the hospital. Addenbrooke’s hospital, in Cambridge. But I couldn’t remember why. Then I wondered what was happening at the restaurant.
“Hello, Max,” said a voice on my left.
I rolled my head over. It was Caroline. I smiled at her.
“Hello, Caroline,” I said. “How lovely.”
“You know who I am, then,” she said.
“Of course I do,” I said. “I may be in the hospital, but I’m not stupid.”
“The doctor warned me that you might not remember who I was. He said that earlier you appeared not to remember who you were either. Seems you have been drifting in and out all day. How do you feel?”
“Better, for seeing you,” I said. “But why am I here?”
“You had an accident,” she said. “You were hit by a bus and you banged your head. They think it must have been on the side window of your car. They say that you are just a bit concussed, but you should be fine in a few days.”
I couldn’t remember an accident or a bus. “How did you know I was here?” I asked her.
“I called your cell to tell you the time of the train I was coming on and a nurse answered it. She told me you were in the hospital, so I came straightaway.” Caroline smiled.
That’s nice, I thought.
“What time is it?” I said.
“About two o’clock,” she said.
“In the morning?”
“Yes.”
“I’m sorry about dinner,” I said. “Where are you staying?”
“Right here,” she said. That was nice too. “It took a bit of persuasion, but, in the end, they let me stay.”
“But you must have somewhere to sleep,” I said.
“I’m happy right here.” She smiled at me. I was so glad. “I’ll find somewhere to sleep in the morning.”
Wow, I thought.
“Are you still suing me?” I asked.
“Absolutely,” she said, and she laughed. Her laughter turned to tears that streamed down her face. She was laughing and crying at the same time. “Oh God, I’m so relieved you are all right. Don’t you ever do that to me again.”
“Do what?” I said.
“Don’t you ever frighten me like that again. When I called your phone, they told me you were having a brain scan to check for any pressure buildup. They told me that they didn’t yet know of the extent of any permanent brain damage.” She was crying from the memory. “I don’t want to lose you, not when I’ve only just found you.”
“I thought it was me who found you.”
“Yes,” she said, choking back the sobs. “So it was. How was that, exactly? Perhaps it’s better I don’t know.” She leaned forward and kissed me on the forehead. Then she kissed me gently on the lips. I could get used to that, I thought.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “It’s not a convenient time, but I really need to go to the bathroom.”
“I’ll get a nurse,” she said, and disappeared. She came back with a large, middle-aged woman wearing a blue nurse’s tunic.
“Ah, you’re back with us again, Mr. Moreton,” said the nurse. “How are you feeling now?”
“Not too bad,” I said. “I’ve got a bit of a headache, and I need to go to the bathroom.”
“Bottle or bedpan?” she said. It took me quite a few seconds to understand what she meant.
“Oh,” I said. “Bedpan. But can’t I go to the bathroom?”
“I’ll see if I can find a wheelchair,” she said. “I don’t want you walking yet after such a bang. You have a concussion, and your balance may be affected.”
She returned with the wheelchair and helped me out of bed and into it. I was wearing what could only be described as a nightshirt with an opening down the back. It did nothing for my modesty, since my rear end was exposed for all to see as the nurse lowered me gently into the chair. My balance indeed wasn’t very good, and the maneuver could hardly be described as elegant. I hoped very much that Caroline hadn’t been watching.
The nurse pushed me down the corridor to the bathroom. I was getting rather urgent and I started to get myself out of the chair and onto the toilet.
“Just a minute,” said the nurse. “Let me put the brakes on first.”
The brakes? Wasn’t there something else about brakes? I tried to remember what it was.
As if wearing a gap-backed nightshirt wasn’t bad enough, the nurse insisted on standing next to me and holding my shoulders throughout the procedure in case I toppled off the toilet and onto the floor. Being in the hospital, I concluded, did nothing for one’s dignity.
Feeling much better but still embarrassed by the process, I was wheeled back to my bed by the nurse. She applied the brakes of the wheelchair. I sat there. Why was it that I hoped the brakes wouldn’t fail again?
“Caroline?” I called out loudly.
“Shhh,” said the nurse. “You’ll wake everyone up.”
“I’m here,” said Caroline, coming and crouching down to my level.
“The brakes on my car failed,” I whispered.
“I know,” she said. “A policeman told the doctors they thought it was the brakes failing that caused the accident.”
“It wasn’t an accident,” I said.
“What do you mean?”
“I think someone tried to kill me.”
“YOU’RE REALLY SERIOUS, aren’t you?” Caroline said.
“Never more so,” I said.
I had told her all about my car not being locked at Cambridge station, and about my concerns that the brakes or the steering may not have been all right on Tuesday night.
“But you don’t know for sure that someone had tampered with the brakes,” she said. “You said that they seemed OK when you drove home.”
“True,” I said. “But there’s no escaping the fact that they did fail on Wednesday morning.”
“It might have been a coincidence,” she said.
I looked at her and raised my eyebrows.
“OK, OK,” she said. “But coincidences do happen, you know.” She held my hand. I liked that. “So what are we going to do about it?”
“I wonder if the police have someone who would look at the brakes on my car to see if they have been interfered with?”
“Don’t they have accident investigators?” Caroline asked. She yawned. “Sorry.”
“You need to go to sleep,” I said.
“I’m fine,” she said, yawning again.
I wanted to ask her to get into the bed and sleep next to me, but I thought the nurse wouldn’t like it.
“You can’t stay here all night,” I said.
“Nowhere else to go.”
“Go to my cottage,” I said. “The key must be somewhere.”
She looked through my things, which someone had thoughtfully placed in a white plastic bag in the bedside locker. There was no key.
“I remember now,” I said. “It’s on the same ring as the car keys.” Probably still with the car, I thought.
“I don’t want to go to your cottage on my own anyway,” said Caroline. “Especially not if someone really is trying to kill you. I’ll stay here, thanks.”
In the end, she slept in the chair next to my bed. It was one of those chairs that reclined, so that bedridden patients could be lifted into it to have a change of posture. Caroline reclined in it, covered herself with a blanket from the bed and was asleep in seconds.
I looked at her for a while, thinking that it had been a strange recipe for romance: first poison your intended, next irritate her with fatuous telephone calls, then stir thoroughly at dinner before frightening badly with a life-threatening car crash, finally serve up a conspiracy theory of intended murder.
It seemed to have worked like a charm.
THEY LET ME go home the following day. Caroline had convinced the doctors that I would be fine at home if she was looking after me. And who was I to object to that.
A black-and-yellow NewTax taxi delivered us to my cottage about one o’clock. I had called my occasional housecleaner to arrange for her to meet us with her key so we could get in. Lunch presented us with another problem. I rarely had much food in the house, other than for breakfast, since I usually ate lunch and dinner at the restaurant. Caroline briefly inspected the premises, and then she searched the kitchen for food.
“I’m starving,” she said. “At least they gave you some breakfast at the hospital, I’ve had nothing since yesterday morning.”
She found some sugarcoated cornflakes in the cupboard and some milk in the fridge, so we sat at my tiny kitchen table and had bowls of cereal for lunch.
Carl had phoned the hospital first thing to find out how I was, and, as I expected, he had given the appearance of being mildly disappointed to find that I was not only alive but my brains were unscrambled and functioning properly. The hospital operator had put him through to my bedside telephone.
“So, you’re still with us, then?” he had said with a slightly frustrated tone.
“Yeah, sorry about that,” I’d said. “How are things at the Hay Net?”
“Doing well without you,” he had said. “As always,” he had added rather unnecessarily, I thought. Cheeky bastard.
For all his seemingly bad grace about my well-being, I couldn’t really imagine that Carl would have had anything to do with a conspiracy to kill me. Surely it was just his warped sense of humor. Tiresome as his little irritating comments could be at times, I didn’t think there was anything truly sinister behind them.
In fact, the more I thought about it, the less likely it seemed that anyone would seriously want me dead. Perhaps the brake failure had been coincidence after all. Anyway, tampering with brakes didn’t seem to me to be a particularly good way of trying to kill someone, not unless they were driving down a steep mountain road full of hairpin bends, and steep mountain roads were somewhat conspicuous by their absence in Newmarket.
After our cereal lunch, I l
ay on my sofa and called the restaurant, while Caroline explored upstairs.
“Had a relapse?” Carl asked hopefully when I said I wasn’t coming in.
“No,” I said. “I’ve been told by the doctors to take it easy for a few days. I’ll see how I get on.”
“Don’t hurry back,” said Carl in a dismissive manner.
“Look,” I said, “what’s eating you at the moment? Why are you being so damn unpleasant?”
There was a longish pause at the other end.
“It’s just my way,” he said. “I’m sorry.” There was another pause. “I will be delighted when you get back, I promise.”
“Now, don’t go too far the other way,” I said with a laugh. “I won’t know if I’m coming or going.”
“Sorry,” he said again.
“Apology accepted,” I said. “How was lunch?”
“So-so,” he said. “But we had a good one last night. About eighty percent full.”
“Great.”
“Everyone asked where you were. Richard told them all about your accident, which was then the talk of the place,” he said. “Lots of people sent their best wishes. And the staff are concerned about you too.”
“Thanks.” I wasn’t sure that the overfriendly Carl wasn’t more annoying than the surly one, but I decided not to raise the subject again. “Tell everyone I’m fine and I’ll be back at work as soon as I can, probably by the middle of next week.”
“OK,” said Carl. “I’ve booked a temporary chef from that agency in Norwich to help over the weekend. I hope that’s OK.”
“Good,” I said. “Well done, Carl.” All this mutual admiration was too much. “Now, sod off and get back to work.” I could hear him laughing as I hung up. Carl was one of the good guys, I was sure of it. Or was I?
Next I telephoned the Suffolk police to discover what had happened to my car.
“It was towed by Brady Rescue and Recovery of Kentford,” they said. “They’ll have it there.”
“Has anyone inspected it?” I asked.
“The attending officer at the accident would have briefly inspected the vehicle before it was removed.”