In the Frame - By Dick Francis Page 0,45

for me: and he came only because he wanted to ask me to buy a lemon to go with the Cinzano, if I had not gone already.

‘Jesus Christ Almighty,’ Jik’s voice, low and horrified, near my ear.

I heard him clearly. The words made sense.

I’m alive, I thought. I think, therefore I exist.

Eventually, I opened my eyes. The light was brilliant. Blinding. There was no one where Jik’s voice had been. Perhaps I’d imagined it. No I hadn’t. The world began coming back fast, very sharp and clear.

I knew also that I hadn’t imagined the fall. I knew, with increasing insistence, that I hadn’t broken my neck and hadn’t broken my back. Sensation, which had been crushed out, came flooding back with vigour from every insulted tissue. It wasn’t so much a matter of which bits of me hurt, as of finding out which didn’t. I remembered hitting the tree. Remembered the ripping of its branches. I felt both torn to shreds and pulverised. Frightfully jolly.

After a while I heard Jik’s voice returning. ‘He’s alive,’ he said, ‘and that’s about all.’

‘It’s impossible for anyone to fall off our balcony. It’s more than waist high.’ The voice of the reception desk, sharp with anger and anxiety. A bad business for motels, people falling off their balconies.

‘Don’t… panic,’ I said. It sounded a bit croaky.

‘Todd!’ Sarah appeared, kneeling on the ground and looking pale.

‘If you give me time…’ I said. ‘… I’ll fetch… the Cinzano.’ How much time? A million years should be enough.

‘You sod,’ Jik said, standing at my feet and staring down. ‘You gave us a shocking fright.’ He was holding a broken-off branch of tree.

‘Sorry.’

‘Get up, then.’

‘Yeah… in a minute.’

‘Shall I cancel the ambulance?’ said the reception desk hopefully.

‘No,’ I said. ‘I think I’m bleeding.’

Alice Springs hospital, even on a Sunday, was as efficient as one would expect from a Flying Doctor base. They investigated and X-rayed and stitched, and presented me with a list.

One broken shoulder blade. (Left).

Two broken ribs. (Left side. No lung puncture).

Large contusion, left side of head. (No skull fracture).

Four jagged tears in skin of trunk, thigh, and left leg. (Stitched).

Several other small cuts.

Grazes and contusions on practically all of left side of body.

‘Thanks,’ I said, sighing.

‘Thank the tree. You’d’ve been in a right mess if you’d missed it.’

They suggested I stop there for the rest of the day and also all night. Better, they said, a little too meaningfully.

‘O.K.’ I said resignedly. ‘Are my friends still here?’

They were. In the waiting room. Arguing over my near-dead body about the favourite for the Melbourne Cup.

‘Newshound stays…’

‘Stays in the same place…’

‘Jesus,’ Jik said, as I shuffled stiffly in. ‘He’s on his feet.’

‘Yeah.’ I perched gingerly on the arm of a chair, feeling a bit like a mummy, wrapped in bandages from neck to waist with my left arm totally immersed, as it were, and anchored firmly inside.

‘Don’t damn well laugh,’ I said.

‘No one but a raving lunatic would fall off that balcony,’ Jik said.

‘Mm,’ I agreed. ‘I was pushed.’

Their mouths opened like landed fish. I told them exactly what had happened.

‘Who were they?’ Jik said.

‘I don’t know. Never seen them before. They didn’t introduce themselves.’

Sarah said, definitely, ‘You must tell the police.’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘But… I don’t know your procedures here, or what the police are like. I wondered… if you would explain to the hospital, and start things rolling in an orderly and unsensational manner.’

‘Sure,’ she said, ‘if anything about being pushed off a balcony could be considered orderly and unsensational.’

‘They took my room key first,’ I said. ‘Would you see if they’ve pinched my wallet?’

They stared at me in awakening unwelcome awareness.

I nodded. ‘Or that picture,’ I said.

Two policemen came, listened, took notes, and departed. Very non-committal. Nothing like that had happened in The Alice before. The locals wouldn’t have done it. The town had a constant stream of visitors so, by the law of averages, some would be muggers. I gathered that there would have been much more fuss if I’d been dead. Their downbeat attitude suited me fine.

By the time Jik and Sarah came back I’d been given a bed, climbed into it, and felt absolutely rotten. Shivering. Cold deep inside. Gripped by the system’s aggrieved reaction to injury, or in other words, shock.

‘They did take the painting,’ Jik said. ‘And your wallet as well.’

‘And the gallery’s shut,’ Sarah said. ‘The girl in the boutique opposite said she saw Harley close early today, but she didn’t see him actually leave. He goes out