I returned to the medical room more slowly to find that the two beds were now empty.
‘What happened to our patient?’ I asked the nurse.
‘She went for a sauna. She said it would ease her aches and pains.’
I smiled.
Jane Glenister was clearly quite a girl.
Cheltenham Racecourse hadn’t yet run to a separate sauna for the lady jockeys, the only one being in a corner of the male toilets. Perhaps Jane’s knowledge of the over-endowment of the Gold Cup winner had been acquired in appropriately steamy surroundings.
The day concluded with Adrian giving his debrief about an hour after the last race. I had already called Grant to ensure he hadn’t forgotten about picking up the boys from their cricket course.
‘Of course I haven’t forgotten,’ he’d said rather tetchily. ‘What time will you be home?’
‘Seven to seven-thirty,’ I’d replied.
‘Did you get my steak?’
The route to a man’s heart.
‘It’s in the fridge. I went to the butcher’s early.’
After the debrief, I switched my racecourse doctor’s coat for my anorak and went into the jockeys’ changing room to find Whizz. He and the other valets were busy finishing the loading of all the equipment into three huge wicker baskets.
‘Where tomorrow?’ I asked.
‘These two are for Fontwell,’ he said, indicating towards the baskets nearest to him, ‘and the other one’s for Southwell for evening racing. I just hope I get the right stuff in each.’
I was confident that he would.
‘I gave your bags to Dick McGee and Jason Conway,’ I said.
‘I know. Jason discharged himself from hospital and was here first thing to collect his car keys.’
‘How is he?’ I asked, not that I cared much.
‘Like a bear with a sore head,’ Whizz said. ‘And still a bit confused, I reckon. I didn’t fancy him driving so I arranged for my lads to drive him home. He only lives in Cirencester. But, I tell you, he’s not happy with you medics. He’s furious that he can’t ride for seven days.’
One had to wonder why, after such heavy falls, jockeys were so keen to do it all over again. But that was what they were all like.
‘Seven days is the absolute minimum after a concussion,’ I said. ‘He’ll have to pass two separate assessments including one with a consultant neurologist. Ten to fourteen days is much more likely, or even longer.’
‘Don’t tell him that,’ Whizz said. ‘He’s angry enough already.’
Didn’t I know it.
The medical team all went for tea together in one of the tented restaurants near the exit to the car park.
The season at Cheltenham was almost over for another year, with just the Hunter Chase evening meeting to come in another week or so, when the jockeys would all be amateurs and the horses have to qualify by spending days out hunting. The course would soon hibernate for the summer, with only the Best Mate enclosure being used as a caravan park, before racing returned in October.
I sat at the table for quite a long time relaxing and drinking tea, while the others ate ham, egg and cucumber sandwiches and slices of a delicious-looking fruit cake.
I just watched.
Not that I wasn’t hungry. I was. Very.
It was a state I was used to. I spent most of my life these days being desperately hungry but trying to blot it out of my mind.
Yet, in spite of my hunger, I still couldn’t eat anything because the voice in my head was telling me not to. It told me that terrible things would happen if so much as a single mouthful passed my lips. The house would burn down. Or Grant would leave me. Or my boys would get run over by a long black Mercedes.
I called Grant to check again that he’d picked them up and all was fine.
‘Safe and sound,’ he said. ‘Oliver’s up in his room playing computer games and Toby has gone along to the village sports ground for a team practice before their last game of the season on Saturday.’
‘You let him go on his own?’ I asked incredulously.
‘Why not?’
Why not!
‘Please collect Oliver and both of you go down to the sports ground to watch Toby.’
There must have been a degree of desperation in my voice because Grant didn’t argue.
‘All right,’ he said. ‘We’ll go right away.’
‘Please call me when you’re there. I’m going to leave here now and I’ll come straight to the ground.’
I disconnected and stood up to go.
‘Oh, Chris,’ Adrian Kings said, putting a hand on the arm of my anorak. ‘I’ve just had a call from the weighing room. Seems our lady jockey, Jane Glenister, is now not feeling very well. She’s asked if you could go back and see her.’
Now what did I do? I wanted to leave, to get to Gotherington, to check on my babies.
‘Can’t you go?’ I asked.
‘She apparently asked specifically for you and I promised my wife I’d be home early.’
Hell, I thought.
Grant would be at the sports ground before me anyway, even if I drove there at breakneck pace. It would be all right, I told myself. I’d eaten no sandwiches nor any cake so Toby would be fine. Surely he’d be safe with all the other members of the football team around him?
‘OK,’ I said with resignation. ‘Where is she?’
‘She’s waiting in the changing room.’
I hurried back towards the weighing room.
It was now raining hard with the few remaining racegoers hurrying to their cars with coat hoods pulled up against the elements. I skipped up the steps into the weighing room and went to collect the keys to the medical room from the key-safe in the Clerk of the Course’s office.
They weren’t there.
How odd, I thought.
I went through into the changing room, which was deserted. The jockeys and valets had all gone home. The door to the medical room was wide open and the lights were still on. Adrian must have forgotten to lock up.
I walked over and went in.
The blue privacy curtains were pulled around one of the beds.
‘What’s wrong, Jane?’ I asked, pulling the curtains open.
But it wasn’t Jane Glenister in there.
So preoccupied had I become with the safety and security of my sons that I had neglected my own and walked straight into a trap.
Behind the curtains was the man I’d last seen sitting in the long black Mercedes, the driver with the bulging biceps.
32
I turned to run back out into the changing room but Big Biceps and I were not alone.
Mike Sheraton had been standing behind the door and he now pushed it closed.
And he was smiling.
‘You’re a real bloody menace, you are,’ he said.
I rushed towards the door, mistakenly thinking that I had a better chance against the smaller man. But jockeys are probably the strongest sportsmen around, pound for pound. If Mike Sheraton could control half a ton of horse with just his hands and heels, an alarmingly underweight doctor should be a pushover.
But that didn’t mean I wouldn’t fight.
I was still wearing the heavy hiking boots that I habitually used to run around on the muddy racecourse, and I kicked Mike Sheraton with one, hard onto the point of his right knee, exactly where he’d had the stitches inserted the previous afternoon.
He screamed with pain, clutching his leg while I made a dive for the door.
If I thought he was angry before, he was more so now, and his chum arrived as reinforcement, grabbing me round the neck from behind with his arm across my throat in a chokehold.
I kicked back at him too, but I couldn’t get the leverage. He simply tightened his grip, so much so that I was worried he would strangle me.
Physical assault is an unfortunate occupational hazard for emergency staff in our hospitals and, consequently, there were many self-defence courses available for doctors and nurses to
attend. In my younger years, I’d been on two of them, and how to get out of a chokehold had been at the forefront. But this was the first time I’d had to put the theory into practice in a real life-or-death situation.
I took a deep breath; then, as I’d been instructed, I turned my head away from the man’s elbow and bent down, moving my legs backwards and rotating my body so that my head slipped out below his shoulder and I ended up behind him.
It worked!
But that was only the start of my troubles.
Two strong men against an undernourished female should have been a ‘no contest’, but desperation delivers resources beyond logic.
And I fought dirty.
I kicked and punched at places on their bodies not permitted under Queensberry rules, I elbowed and headbutted, scratched and even bit.
Their plan seemed to be to prevent me reaching the door but, otherwise, to let me run out of steam, which would be pretty soon at this rate.
‘Don’t mark her,’ Big Biceps said at one point, which I took to be both an encouragement and a concern. What other torment did they have in mind?
If I couldn’t get out the door, what else could I do?
Phone for help?
My mobile was in my anorak pocket.
I pulled it out and got as far as dialling the second of three nines before Big Biceps made a lunge forward and knocked it out of my hand, then he stamped on it in his size twelves. Even if the gubbins inside still worked, the touchscreen had shattered into a thousand pieces, rendering it useless.
How about the landline?
Every racecourse medical room had to have a dedicated landline, one that couldn’t be blocked by an incoming call, in case of an emergency.
Surely this was an emergency.
The phone here at Cheltenham was attached to the wall beneath the television monitor and I took my eyes off the two men for just a fraction of a second to look at it.
‘She’s after the phone,’ Mike Sheraton said, and he inched further to his right to prevent me reaching it.
So, there would be no summoning up the cavalry, not yet anyway.
Slowly but surely, they were forcing me back to the far side of the room such that my back was almost up against the medical store cupboard.
I reached behind me and opened it.
Big Biceps made a move towards me and I aimed a kick at his groin. He reached down and tried to catch my foot but I was wary of that, pulling it away sharply.
I was losing this game of cat and mouse, I thought, and I was certainly the mouse. One of the men would come forward and, while I was dealing with him, the other would try to outflank me. It would be only a matter of time before they succeeded.
I reached behind me into the cupboard.
I knew what I was after and I found it immediately without having to look. A box of ten size-11 disposable scalpels.
We’d only recently been required to have them, in case we had to perform an emergency tracheotomy on a jockey who had an obstruction to the airway.
I ripped open the pack and suddenly I had a scalpel in each hand.
Now it was the men who were on the back foot as I waved the highly honed blades at their faces. The scalpels may have only been short, but what they lacked in length they made up for in sharpness.
Now I began to circle, working my way back towards the door.
And, if I couldn’t use the phone because it took two hands, I could at least use my voice.
‘Help!’ I shouted as loud as I could muster. ‘Help! Help!’
I went on shouting, the noise bouncing loudly off the walls of the room. Surely someone must hear me? Why didn’t Whizz and the other valets come to my rescue? Because they were already on their way home in a van full of wicker baskets.
By now I had my back to the door but I daren’t turn round or let go of one of the scalpels to open it. The two men were getting inventive, with one of them using a pillow from the beds to try to smother the blade in my left hand, while the other had picked up a wooden leg splint and was using that to try and hit the one in my right.
I shouted even louder, terror causing the frequency to rise.
‘Help! Help! Somebody please help me!’
The door opened against my back.
Thank God.
‘Call the police!’ I shouted.
‘What the hell is going on in here?’ said a voice behind me.
‘Call the police!’ I screamed again. ‘I’m being attacked.’
The door was pushed fully open causing me to have to take a step forward. Then I moved backwards through the opening, never taking my eyes off my assailants. It must be safer for me out of the medical room.
Suddenly I was gripped from behind in a bear hug, my arms pinned down by my sides.
My saviour, my knight in shining armour, was no such thing.
I tried to lash out behind me with the scalpels but the hug was too low and too tight. And I could hardly breathe let alone fight or shout. My resistance was over and the men in front quickly moved forward and twisted the blades out of my hands.
‘What’s wrong with you two?’ said the voice behind me crossly. ‘A feeble woman against two strong men. You should be ashamed of yourselves.’
‘Sorry, chief,’ said Big Biceps. ‘She’s a slippery one, that’s for sure.’
Chief? Indian chief?
Against two, I had held my own, but three were too many. The two in front and the one behind lifted me bodily onto one of the beds and pinned me there.
For the first time I saw the face of the third man.
Rupert Forrester, managing director of the racecourse. Geronimo, the English fixer. One and the same.
And he clearly wasn’t happy with the other two. Perhaps he’d hoped that he would remain in the shadows, unseen and unrecognised.
‘Get on with it,’ he snapped.
With what?
Nothing good, I thought, at least for me.
‘Did anyone else hear her shouting?’ Big Biceps asked.
‘No,’ said Forrester. ‘I sent everyone away and I’ve locked up. The rain is hammering on the roof anyway. No one’s about.’
Big Biceps pulled a small bottle from his trouser pocket, a little bigger than a spirit miniature but smaller than the quarter bottle they had obviously used last time. The bottle was half full with a pale golden liquid. More cocaine dissolved in whisky, no doubt.
I wasn’t going to just lie there and let them poison me. I managed to pull a hand free and tried to grab the bottle to throw it against the wall, anything to break it, but Forrester was too quick.
‘Get something to secure her hands,’ he said, forcing my arms back onto the bed.
They used a roll of white adhesive bandage tape that they found in the medical store, binding both wrists together behind my back so that I ended up lying on them. Now I really was in trouble.
Mike Sheraton was at the foot of the bed and I tried to kick out at him but he had his hands on my ankles and pushed them firmly down. With Forrester doing the same with my shoulders, I was almost totally immobilised.
But my head could still move.
I twisted my neck to my left and bit Forrester’s knuckles. I wanted to tear his flesh and draw his blood – to leave some evidence, perhaps some of his DNA between my teeth, something a pathologist could find on my cold dead corpse and deduce who was responsible for my death.
‘Bitch!’ he shouted, pulling his hand away and striking me across my face with his open palm.
‘No marks,’ Big Biceps said sharply. ‘Remember?’
Did they really think that a second cocaine-induced death at the racecourse would again be considered as misadventure?
Apparently so.
While Forrester and Sheraton held me down, Big Biceps attempted to pour the liquid down my throat.
Needless to say, I resisted.
First I turned my head from side to side so that he couldn’t get the bottle near my mouth.
‘For God’s
sake, keep her bloody head still,’ Big Biceps said to Forrester.
He let go of my shoulders and held my head instead, placing one hand on my forehead and pressing down, while his other one gripped my hair.
Secondly, I kept my mouth firmly shut, clenching my teeth and lips together as if my life depended on it, which it probably did.
But one has to breathe and Big Biceps pinched my nose closed.
I tried to draw air through a tiny opening on one side but Big Biceps forced the top of the bottle into the gap while putting his free hand on my chin and forcing my jaws apart.
I could feel the sharp burning sensation of the alcohol in my mouth.
I spat out what I could but I could also feel a trickle go down my throat. What had the pathologist said at the inquest? Only a single teaspoonful of the liquid ingested orally would have been sufficient to cause death.
How much of it had I ingested? Not as much as a teaspoonful, I thought, but Big Biceps wasn’t finished yet. He forced the neck of the bottle back between my teeth and emptied the rest of the contents into my mouth. I could taste the sharpness of the alcohol and the bitterness of the cocaine, strangely mixed with an increasing numbness of my tongue and gums.
I tried to spit it out again but, this time, he was wise to that, gripping the base of my chin and forcing my jaws together.
Initially I didn’t swallow but I knew that both alcohol and cocaine were absorbed into the bloodstream much faster directly through the mucus membranes of the mouth than via the stomach and intestines.
What was best?
I was already beginning to feel the effects of the drug on my brain. The overhead lights of the medical room were dancing with shooting colours at their edges. They were sensations I had once welcomed as a distraction from the agony of my depression but now I was terrified by them.
I managed to eject quite a lot more of the liquid by blowing it through my teeth and allowing it to dribble down the outside of my cheek onto the bed, but I still swallowed far too much, not out of choice but as a natural reflex that eventually I couldn’t resist.
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