Bloodline

13

‘And finally, will you all be upstanding and raise your glasses to join me in a toast to my favourite god-daughter — happy eighteenth birthday, Tatiana.’

‘Happy birthday, Tatiana,’ chorused the assembled guests.

We all sang ‘Happy Birthday to You’ as a magnificent cake with two rows of flaming candles was brought out by Nicholas. To rapturous cheers from her school friends, Tatiana blew out the eighteen candles, cut the cake, and then made a short speech of thanks to her parents with every second word being ‘amazing’.

‘Yours was a great speech. Well done,’ said Emily, again squeezing my hand.

‘Thanks.’

‘I hate speaking in public,’ she said. ‘I get so nervous.’

‘I do it for a living,’ I replied. ‘You get used to it.’

‘Yes, I know. I’ve seen you on television, but don’t you get one of those autocue things to read?’

‘Never,’ I said. ‘You only get those in a studio and I work exclusively on racecourses.’

At that moment the DJ decided to turn up the volume of the music from loud to ear-splitting, making further conversation difficult, if not impossible. I looked at my watch. It was already almost eleven o’clock.

‘Do you want to dance?’ Emily shouted into my ear.

‘Not really,’ I replied fortissimo into hers. ‘I need to go fairly soon. I’ve got an early start.’

‘I could come with you,’ she shouted, looking straight into my eyes. ‘If you want.’

Did I want?

‘I’m sorry, but not tonight,’ I said into her ear. ‘I am staying at my dead sister’s cottage. I think I’d rather be there alone. But thank you.’

‘We could go to my place.’

Was she being a tad too desperate?

‘I need to be at Newmarket racecourse at seven o’clock in the morning for the Morning Line, and it’s just a mile from my sister’s cottage. That’s why I’m staying there.’

‘I’ll take that as a no, then.’

‘Look, I’m sorry. It’s not that I don’t want to. It’s just that...’

‘You don’t need to explain,’ she said quickly. ‘It’s fine.’ But I could see from her expression that it wasn’t really.

‘I think I’d better go now.’ I leaned forward and gave her a brief kiss on the cheek. ‘It’s been lovely meeting you.’ It was a totally inadequate thing to say, and both of us knew it.

I stood up to go, but turned back to her.

‘Do you have a number?’ I asked. ‘Perhaps I could call you?’

She produced a pen from her handbag and wrote down a number on a scrap of paper, which she then handed to me.

‘Call me in the morning, after the programme,’ she said. ‘I’ll be watching.’

‘OK. I will.’

Was I being a fool? I’d already bemoaned to myself how lonely Clare’s cottage had seemed when I’d dressed there earlier, and here I was turning down the perfect opportunity not to have to spend the night there. But did I actually want to jump into bed with someone I’d only just met. Mind you, it wouldn’t have been the first time, not by a long way. But...

‘Go on, go,’ Emily shouted into my ear over the music. It was as if she knew what I was thinking. ‘Call me tomorrow.’

I went to find Angela and Nicholas to thank them for a lovely party. Angela was in the house, where it was, thankfully, much quieter.

‘Do you really have to go so soon?’ she asked.

‘I’m on the Morning Line,’ I said by way of explanation.

‘But what about Emily?’ she asked, looking over my shoulder.

‘She’s been very nice,’ I said.

‘But isn’t she going with you?’

‘No,’ I said.

‘Oh,’ she said, clearly disappointed.

‘Nice try, Sis,’ I said, giving her a kiss. ‘Enjoy the rest of the party. Where’s Nick?’

‘Trying to close the bar, I think. At least for a bit. Some of those girls are getting very drunk.’

I personally thought they’d been very drunk for ages. Long legs, short skirts and tipsy with it — some of the boys clearly thought that Christmas had come early this year, if only they themselves hadn’t drunk too much to make the most of the situation. I was quite glad that none of them were my concern.

‘Will you say goodbye to him for me?’ I said, collecting my coat. ‘And to Tatiana and the rest of the family. I don’t want to be a party-pooper by telling them I’m going so soon. I’ll call you tomorrow, but not too early.’

‘Early as you like,’ Angela said with a smile. ‘We’ve got fifty or so of Tat’s friends sleeping in the marquee tonight and we want them all out and gone by lunchtime.’

‘You must be mad,’ I said, opening the front door.

‘Totally. But thank God she’s only eighteen once.’

‘It’ll be her twenty-first next.’

‘Nope,’ she said. ‘This is the only one. She had the choice.’

‘Well, it’s a wonderful party, but I hope you have understanding neighbours.’

‘Both sides are here as guests. And Tatiana has been to all the houses in the street to tell them. The music will decrease in volume at one o’clock and stop completely by two.’

I gave Angela another kiss. ‘Tatiana’s a very lucky girl.’

‘Tell me about it.’ I could hear her laughing as she closed the door.

The music sounded significantly louder outside than in and, I thought, it wasn’t just those in this street Tatiana had needed to visit. The whole neighbourhood would be able to hear it.

I walked across and down the road to my car, which I’d parked about forty yards away.

Dammit, I thought. This was the first time for about six weeks I had been asked to be on the Morning Line, and it would just have to be the day after I wanted to stay out and play — or even stay in and play. There was no doubt that Emily had been willing, eager even. Had I made the wrong decision?

But I knew that I had to have some decent sleep if I was to be any good in the morning. Last year I’d been out late and had a few drinks the night before I was on, and I thought I’d been rubbish. Television is very unforgiving of puffy eyes and a pallid complexion. I knew of an ex-colleague who had arrived for a show slightly late and rather hung-over and he had never been invited on again. There are always those like Iain Ferguson standing in the wings waiting to take over when your star wanes, and I had no intention of giving anyone an easy ride into my seat.

I had started my old Ford and was reaching for the gear lever when something was thrown over my head and tightened around my neck. I grabbed at it but whoever was pulling was much too quick for me to get any fingers between the ligature and my skin.

My head was snapped back hard against the headrest. I tried to cry out but nothing happened. I couldn’t breathe, neither in nor out.

I began to panic and dug my fingers into my own neck trying to get them behind whatever was strangling me. But the harder I tried, the harder the person behind me pulled.

I reached back over my head but I couldn’t get my hands down far enough owing to the headrest.

I was dying. And I knew it.

I could feel my heart thumping extra fast, trying its best to pump blood to my ever-dulling brain. But the blood wasn’t getting there. There was a blockage at the neck.

My lungs were filling with carbon dioxide and they were bursting to breathe but there was no way out for the gas, and no way in for life-giving oxygen.

I thrashed around behind me with my hands but there was nothing to grab.

This was it. I was going. Unconsciousness and death were but seconds away.

I didn’t want to die.

I banged the steering wheel with my fist in anger and frustration, and I could hear the car horn sounding over the ringing in my ears.

The ignition must be on, I thought. Of course it was — I’d started the engine.

I reached forward with my left hand and, using the very ends of my fingers, I pushed the lever into first gear. Next I released the brake, then I positively stamped on the accelerator, released the clutch and hoped the car wouldn’t stall.

I couldn’t see — my vision had gone completely, but I felt the car lurch forward. I didn’t know where we were going but I didn’t care, I kept my right foot hard down on the gas, right to the floor.

It seemed an age before we hit anything but it was probably not more than a couple of seconds. There were two almighty crashes and another loud bang inside the car as the driver’s airbag deployed. Then everything went quiet, save for the music from the party.

But best of all, the pressure on my neck eased and I gasped in a huge gulp of night air. I leaned forward against the steering wheel holding my throbbing neck and trying to breathe in shallow breaths to reduce the excruciating pain.

Things began to return to normal in my brain.

My sight came back suddenly with a rush but all I could see was white. I realized my head was up against the now deflated airbag so I lifted it and looked through the windscreen.

We had bounced off another car and then hit Nicholas and Angela’s stone-pillar gatepost full on. The whole bonnet was crumpled. My dear old Ford looked to be mortally wounded, but it had clearly accelerated as well as any sports car.

I put my head back down again onto the steering wheel. It was more comfortable like that, but part of my re-oxygenated brain was suddenly screaming at me.

Danger! Danger!

The rest of my brain began to listen.

Someone was trying to kill me and they might still be here.

I quickly turned in the seat and looked behind me.

The back door on the driver’s side was open. Whoever had been there, whoever had tried to kill me, had now scarpered.

My sudden turning movement had resulted in a severe bout of dizziness so I rested my head once more on the steering wheel.

That was better.

In the distance, I could hear a wailing siren getting closer and closer.

‘He must be drunk,’ I heard a voice say. ‘Look at his suit. He’s been to that party.’

I wasn’t drunk. I’d only had a small glass of red wine with dinner and a sip of champagne for the toast. I tried to say so, but nothing came out. Instead, my neck went on hurting like hell, and I was having difficulty swallowing.

I opened my eyes and lifted my head a little. A uniformed policeman was crouching in the driver’s doorway.

‘Are you all right, sir?’ he asked.

I tried to say no, I wasn’t all right, but the words wouldn’t form in my throat. So I just shook my head slowly from side to side.

‘Sam, we need an ambulance,’ the policeman said.

‘It’s already on its way,’ said another voice out of my vision.

‘Oh my God, that’s Mark’s car.’ I could hear Nicholas. ‘Is he all right?’ Nicholas’s face appeared briefly through the car doorway.

‘Thank you, sir,’ said the policeman. ‘Now please stand back.’

‘But he’s my brother-in-law,’ Nicholas said, disappearing from the doorway and climbing into the car through the open back door. ‘Are you all right, Mark?’ he asked from somewhere near my left ear.

I started to turn my head round.

‘Keep still,’ ordered the policeman. ‘You can make neck or back injuries worse if you move.’

I kept still.

‘Has he been at this party?’ the policeman asked Nicholas.

‘Yes. It’s my daughter’s party. Mark here made a speech.’

‘Has he been drinking?’

‘No, I don’t think so. I mean. I don’t really know. I wasn’t sitting with him at dinner.’

Oh thanks, Nick, I thought. That’s just what I needed.

‘Can I help?’ Brendan had now climbed into the back alongside Nicholas.

The policeman looked at him. ‘We’re trying to determine if this man has been drinking.’

‘Can’t help you,’ Brendan said with a nervous laugh. ‘I know I have.’

‘I’m not drunk,’ I tried to say but nothing but a croak came out.

‘It’s all right, sir,’ said the policeman, looking back at me. ‘You rest now, the ambulance is on its way.’

I didn’t want to rest. I wanted to tell them that I wasn’t drunk, that someone had tried to kill me, and that I’d been strangled, but my voicebox and my mouth wouldn’t do what my brain was asking of them.

‘He must be drunk to have driven straight across the road into this gatepost at that speed,’ said the other policeman, the one I couldn’t see. ‘Blind drunk I shouldn’t wonder. Is he well enough to do a breath-test?’

I nodded at the policeman in the doorway but he didn’t immediately say anything. He just stared into my eyes. Then he shone a torch right into my face.

‘I don’t like the look of him.’

I thought that was quite personal.

‘In what way?’ asked Nicholas.

‘He’s got red spots on the whites of his eyes.’ I didn’t like the sound of that. ‘And there are some more on his face.’

More flashing lights and another siren signalled the arrival of the ambulance and a paramedic soon joined the policeman in the car doorway.

‘He seems unable to speak,’ the policeman said to the new arrival, ‘and I don’t like the look of his eyes.’

I looked at them both as they looked at me.

‘He may have had a stroke,’ said the paramedic.

I shook my head at them and made a gesture indicating I wanted to write something. The policeman removed a notebook from his pocket and passed it over with a pen.

I’ve been strangled, I wrote. Somebody tried to kill me. I handed the notebook back.

They both looked at what I had written and then up at my face.

I could tell from his expression that the policeman didn’t believe me.

‘They could be petechiae,’ said the paramedic.

‘What could?’ said the policeman.

‘The red spots. They could be petechiae. It’s the bursting of tiny blood vessels just under the skin and in the eyes. It can be brought on by asphyxia. He might well have been strangled.’ He gently tilted my head back and looked at my neck. ‘And there’s definitely some bruising around the larynx. That might be why he can’t speak.’

‘Bloody hell,’ said the policeman. ‘It’s a crime scene. Sam, get everyone back. You two,’ he said, pointing at Nicholas and Brendan over my head, ‘out of the car, now.’

It seemed like at least another half-hour before they lifted me out of the car, by which time some semblance of my voice had returned.

One of the paramedics insisted on going behind me to attach a large plastic brace round my neck in spite of me complaining that it hurt my windpipe at the front. Then they placed a board down my spine and strapped me to it. By this time the fire brigade had also arrived, and they proceeded to remove the whole roof of the car.

Meanwhile, in little more than a croak, I assured them that I was fine apart from my neck, which still hurt like hell.

‘You can’t be too careful,’ said one of the paramedics, although I believed they were being so, a sentiment clearly shared by the police in the shape of a plain-clothes detective who had been summoned to the scene by his uniformed colleagues.

He’d already tried to talk to me twice but had been sent away on both occasions by the ambulance staff as they had fitted me, first, with an oxygen mask over my nose and mouth, and then with a saline drip into a needle on my hand.

‘The extra fluid keeps your blood pressure up,’ the paramedic had explained, ‘and that helps deliver more oxygen to your brain.’

Finally, they were ready and I was lifted from the car and laid flat on a stretcher. I wouldn’t have minded so much if there hadn’t been such a large audience of young scantily clad party-goers, together with most of my family, including my mother and my father, all of them standing on the pavement shivering in the cool of the night.

I waved at them with my non-needled hand, much to the disapproval of the paramedic, who told me in no uncertain terms to lie perfectly still.

‘I’m all right,’ I said very croakily through the mask. ‘I really think I could walk.’

‘No chance,’ he replied. ‘Asphyxia patients can die hours later even if they seem wide awake and well. You stay put.’

I stayed put.

I was carried into the ambulance and the detective tried to climb in with me, but the medics were having none of it.

‘You can speak to him at the hospital,’ they said. ‘Once he’s stable.’

‘Which hospital?’

‘Addenbrooke’s, in Cambridge.’

One of the paramedics drove, while the other one connected me to blood pressure and heart monitors.

‘I feel fine now,’ I said. ‘It’s only my throat that hurts.’

‘Nevertheless, it’s better to get you checked out,’ he said, clipping wires to sticky pads on my chest. ‘Don’t want you dropping down dead on us now, do we?’

No, I thought, we did not.

‘You just relax and let us do the worrying.’

I wasn’t particularly worried, not about my health anyway. I was far more worried about who would want to kill me, and why.

‘So did you see who attacked you?’ asked the plain-clothes policeman, who had introduced himself as Detective Chief Inspector Perry.

‘No,’ I replied in my now familiar croak.

We were in a curtained-off cubicle of the accident and emergency department at Addenbrooke’s hospital, me lying on an examination couch and him sitting next to it on a chair.

‘Was the car locked when you arrived at it?’

‘I think so,’ I said. ‘But I suppose I don’t really know. I remember the car’s indicator lights flashing when I pushed the unlock button on the key, but it’s an old car, and it does that whether it’s locked or not. I know because I’ve left it unlocked outside my flat before now.’

‘But you definitely had the keys with you?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘They were in my coat pocket.’

‘And was the person already in the car before you got in?’

I tried to think back.

‘I would say so, yes. I don’t remember hearing any of the other doors open.’ But, in truth, my memory of the incident was hazy in places. The hospital doctor had said it might be. Oxygen starvation, it seemed, caused funny effects in the brain. It was why he wouldn’t let me go home yet.

So much for my relatively early night.

I was wide awake at two o’clock in the morning, still dressed in my party gear minus jacket and tie, answering endless questions.

‘Why do you think someone would want to kill you?’

‘I have absolutely no idea,’ I replied. It was the question I had been asking myself for the past three hours, and I hadn’t yet come up with any sensible answers. Was it something to do with Clare’s suicide, or Toby Woodley’s murder? Or had it merely been a botched attempt to steal my car?

Somehow, I doubted that.

For a start, my Ford was very old and hardly worth stealing and strangling the driver just to steal a car seemed rather excessive.

‘Did you find a rope?’ I asked.

‘So it was a rope?’ he said.

‘I’m not sure.’ I felt my neck. ‘It may have been some sort of material. Did you find anything?’

‘My men are searching the area. I haven’t heard yet what they found.’ He wrote something in his notebook. ‘Do you have any enemies?’ he asked, looking up at me.

‘No,’ I said. ‘Not really.’

But I thought of Mitchell Stacey. He was an enemy. And he knew my car.

The policeman must have read something in my face.

‘Yes?’ he asked. ‘Who is it?’

‘Someone did threaten me, that’s all.’

‘In what way?’

‘He told me that if I didn’t stay away from his wife, he’d kill me. But I don’t really believe that he meant he would actually kill me. It was just a figure of speech.’

‘And when was this?’

I worked it out. ‘Eight days ago, at Newmarket.’

‘And have you stayed away from his wife since then?’ asked the policeman in a deadpan voice.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Well... I bumped into her on Tuesday but it was an accident. We didn’t do anything, if that’s what you mean. We hardly even spoke.’

‘And does the lady’s husband know you saw her on Tuesday?’

I thought back to my encounter with Mitchell in the Stratford races car park. ‘Yes. He knows all right. He was there.’

‘I’ll need his name, sir.’

‘I’m sure he wouldn’t have done it,’ I said. But someone had. My throat still had the bruises to prove it.

‘His name?’ The chief inspector persisted.

‘Mitchell Stacey,’ I said. ‘He’s a racehorse trainer. He and his wife live in East Ilsley, near Newbury.’

I gave him the full address and he wrote it down in his notebook.

‘And is he the only irate husband who has threatened you recently?’

‘There’s no need for irony, Chief Inspector,’ I said. ‘And, yes, he’s the only one.’

‘I also need your full name and address. For the record.’

‘Mark Joseph Shillingford,’ I said, and I gave him the address of my flat in Edenbridge. He wrote it down.

‘Shillingford?’ he said. ‘Unusual name. Not related to that girl that killed herself, are you?’

‘She was my sister,’ I said. ‘My twin sister.’

‘Oh,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘Do you follow horse racing at all, Chief Inspector?’

‘Not really my thing,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘I’m a football man myself. Hornets fan.’

‘Hornets?’

‘Watford,’ he said.

We were interrupted by a nurse who came into the cubicle to take my pulse and my blood pressure, and also to look into my eyes with a torch.

‘When can I go home?’ I croaked at her.

‘The doctor will do his round soon,’ she said. ‘You can ask him then.’

The nurse went out again.

‘Right,’ said the chief inspector, closing his notebook and standing up. ‘I’m going home to my bed.’

‘Is that it?’ I asked, surprised.

‘You’ll have to give a full witness statement, of course, but that can be done in the morning. Call me around ten to fix it.’ He handed me a printed card with his details.

‘How about Mitchell Stacey?’

‘I’ll interview Mr Stacey after you’ve done your witness statement and after the forensic boys have examined your car. That will also take place in the morning.’

‘But what if he tries again?’ I asked.

‘Do you think he might?’

‘I’m not sure it was even him,’ I said. ‘But don’t I get police protection or something, just in case?’

‘I think you should be safe enough in here,’ he said rather dismissively.

‘But how about if I go home?’

‘Then I’d advise you not to get into a car without first checking the back seat.’

‘Oh, thanks a lot,’ I said sarcastically. ‘Why do I get the impression you’re not taking me seriously?’

‘I am taking you seriously, Mr Shillingford, very seriously, but I simply don’t have the resources to provide you with a personal bodyguard. Anyway, I believe that the person who tried to kill you is long gone. And I doubt that they’ll try again. I’ve studied a few criminals in my time and I think it’s highly likely that this was a one-off attack and the perpetrator will have second thoughts before trying anything like it again.’

A policeman who fancied himself as an amateur criminal psychologist was all I needed.

‘No,’ he said, ‘I think you’ll be perfectly safe from now on. I reckon if he’d really wanted to kill you then you’d have been in a morgue, not a hospital.’

I damn nearly had been.