High stakes - By Dick Francis Page 0,32

had brought, and pinched his nose.

‘Concussion,’ he said. ‘Go to bed for a week.’

‘Don’t be silly,’ I protested.

‘Best,’ he said succinctly.

‘But the jump jockeys get concussion one minute and ride winners the next.’

‘The jump jockeys are bloody fools.’ He surveyed me morosely. ‘If you’d been a jump jockey I’d say you’d been trampled by a field of horses.’

‘But as I’m not?’

‘Has someone been beating you?’

It wasn’t the sort of question somehow that one expected one’s doctor to ask. Certainly not as matter-of-factly as this.

‘I don’t know,’ I said.

‘You must do.’

‘I agree it feels a bit like it, but if they did, I was unconscious.’

‘With something big and blunt,’ he added. ‘They’re large bruises.’ He pointed to several extensive reddening patches on my thighs, arms and trunk.

‘A boot?’ I said.

He looked at me soberly. ‘You’ve considered the possibility?’

‘Forced on me.’

He smiled. ‘Your friend, the one who let me in, told me you say you got drunk also while unconscious.’

‘Yes. Tube down the throat?’ I suggested.

‘Tell me the time factors.’

I did, as nearly as I could. He shook his head dubiously. ‘I wouldn’t have thought pouring neat alcohol straight into the stomach would produce that amount of intoxication so quickly. It takes quite a while for a large quantity of alcohol to be absorbed into the bloodstream through the stomach wall.’ He pondered, thinking aloud. ‘Two hundred and ninety milligrammes… and you were maybe unconscious from the bang on the head for two hours or a little more. Hm.’

He leaned forward, picked up my left forearm and peered at it closely, front and back. Then he did the same thing with the right, and found what he was looking for.

‘There,’ he exclaimed. ‘See that? The mark of a needle. Straight into the vein. They’ve tried to disguise it by a blow on top to bruise all the surrounding tissue. In a few more hours the needle mark will be invisible.’

‘Anaesthetic?’ I said dubiously.

‘My dear fellow. No. Probably gin.’

‘Gin!’

‘Why not? Straight into the bloodstream. Much more efficient than a tube to the stomach. Much quicker results. Deadly, really. And less effort, on the whole.’

‘But… how? You can’t harness a gin bottle to a hypodermic.’

He grinned. ‘No, no. You’d set up a drip. Sterile glucose saline drip. Standard stuff. You can buy it in plastic bags from any chemist. Pour three quarters of a pint of gin into one bag of solution, and drip it straight into the vein.’

‘But, how long would that take?’

‘Oh, about an hour. Frightful shock to the system.’

I thought about it. If it had been done that way I had been transported to London with gin dripping into my blood for most of the journey. There hadn’t been time to do it first and set off after.

‘Suppose I’d started to come round?’ I asked.

‘Lucky you didn’t, I dare say. Nothing to stop someone bashing you back to sleep, as far as I can see.’

‘You take it very calmly,’ I said.

‘So do you. And it’s interesting, don’t you think?’

‘Oh very,’ I said dryly.

7

Charlie and Allie stayed for lunch, which meant that they cooked omelettes for themselves and found some reasonable cheese to follow. Out in the kitchen Charlie seemed to have been filling in gaps because when they carried their trays into the sitting-room it was clear that Allie knew all that Charlie did.

‘Do you feel like eating?’ Charlie asked.

‘I do not.’

‘Drink?’

‘Shut up.’

‘Sorry.’

The body rids itself of alcohol very slowly, the doctor had said. Only at a rate of ten milligrammes per hour. There was no way of hastening the process and nothing much to be done about hangovers except endure them. People who normally drank little suffered worst, he said, because their bodies had no tolerance. Too bad, he’d said, smiling about it.

Two hundred and ninety milligrammes came into the paralytic bracket. Twenty-nine hours to be rid of it. I’d lived through about ten so far. No wonder I felt so awful.

Round a mouthful of omelette Charlie said, ‘What are you going to do about all this?’ He waved his fork from my heels to my head, still prostrate on the sofa.

‘Would you suggest going to the police?’ I asked neutrally.

‘Er…’

‘Exactly. The very same police who gave me hospitality last night and know for a certainty that I was so drunk that anything I might complain of could be explained away as an alcoholic delusion.’

‘Do you think that’s why Jody and Ganser Mays did it?’

‘Why else? And I suppose I should be grateful that all they did was discredit me,