High Stakes

6

Life came back in an incomprehensible blur.

I couldn’t see properly. Couldn’t focus. Heard strange noises. Couldn’t control my body, couldn’t move my legs, couldn’t lift my head. Tongue paralysed. Brain whirling. Everything disconnected and hazy.

‘Drunk,’ someone said distinctly.

The word made no sense. It wasn’t I who was drunk.

‘Paralytic.’

The ground was wet. Shining. Dazzled my eyes. I was sitting on it. Slumped on it, leaning against something hard. I shut my eyes against the drizzle and that made the whirling worse. I could feel myself falling. Banged my head. Cheek in the wet. Nose in the wet. Lying on the hard wet ground. There was a noise like rain.

‘Bloody amazing,’ said a voice.

‘Come on, then, let’s be having you.’

Strong hands slid under my armpits and grasped my ankles. I couldn’t struggle. Couldn’t understand where I was or what was happening.

It seemed vaguely that I was in the back of a car. I could smell the upholstery. My nose was on it. Someone was breathing very loudly. Almost snoring. Someone spoke. A jumbled mixture of sounds that made no words. It couldn’t have been me. Couldn’t have been.

The car jerked to a sudden stop. The driver swore. I rolled off the seat and passed out.

Next thing, bright lights and people carrying me as before.

I tried to say something. It came out in a jumble. This time I knew the jumble came from my own mouth.

‘Waking up again,’ someone said.

‘Get him out of here before he’s sick.’

March, march. More carrying. Loud boots on echoing floors.

‘He’s bloody heavy.’

‘Bloody nuisance.’

The whirling went on. The whole building was spinning like a merry-go-round.

Merry-go-round.

The first feeling of identity came back. I wasn’t just a lump of weird disorientated sensations. Somewhere, deep inside, I was... somebody.

Merry-go-rounds swam in and out of consciousness. I found I was lying on a bed. Bright lights blinded me every time I tried to open my eyes. The voices went away.

Time passed.

I began to feel exceedingly ill. Heard someone moaning. Didn’t think it was me. After a while, I knew it was, which made it possible to stop.

Feet coming back. March march. Two pairs at least.

‘What’s your name?’

What was my name? Couldn’t remember.

‘He’s soaking wet.’

‘What do you expect? He was sitting on the pavement in the rain.’

‘Take his jacket off.’

They took my jacket off, sitting me up to do it. I lay down again. My trousers were pulled off and someone put a blanket over me.

‘He’s dead drunk.’

‘Yes. Have to make sure though. They’re always an infernal nuisance like this. You simply can’t risk that they haven’t bumped their skulls and got a hairline fracture. You don’t want them dying on you in the night.’

I tried to tell him I wasn’t drunk. Hairline fracture... Christ... I didn’t want to wake up dead in the morning.

‘What did you say?’

I tried again. ‘Not drunk,’ I said.

Someone laughed without mirth.

‘Just smell his breath.’

How did I know I wasn’t drunk? The answer eluded me. I just knew I wasn’t drunk... because I knew I hadn’t drunk enough... or any... alcohol. How did I know? I just knew. How did I know?

While these hopeless thoughts spiralled around in the chaos inside my head a lot of strange fingers were feeling around in my hair.

‘He has banged his head, damn it. There’s quite a large swelling.’

‘He’s no worse than when they brought him in, doc. Better, if anything.’

‘Scott,’ I said suddenly.

‘What’s that?’

‘Scott.’

‘Is that your name?’

I tried to sit up. The lights whirled giddily.

‘Where... am I?’

‘That’s what they all say.’

‘In a cell, my lad, that’s where.’

In a cell.

‘What?’ I said.

‘In a cell at Savile Row police station. Drunk and incapable.’

I couldn’t be.

‘Look, constable, I’ll just take a blood test. Then I’ll do those other jobs, then come back and look at him, to make sure. I don’t think we’ve a fracture here, but we can’t take the chance.’

‘Right, doc.’

The prick of a needle reached me dimly. Waste of time, I thought. Wasn’t drunk. What was I... besides ill, giddy, lost and stuck in limbo? Didn’t know. Couldn’t be bothered to think. Slid without struggling into a whirling black sleep.

The next awakening was in all ways worse. For a start, I wasn’t ready to be dragged back from the dark. My head ached abominably, bits of my body hurt a good deal and over all I felt like an advanced case of seasickness.

‘Wakey, wakey, rise and shine. Cup of tea for you and you don’t deserve it.’

I opened my eyes. The bright light was still there but now identifiable not as some gross moon but as a simple electric bulb near the ceiling.

I shifted my gaze to where the voice had come from. A middle-aged policeman stood there with a paper cup in one hand. Behind him, an open door to a corridor. All round me, the close walls of a cell. I lay on a reasonably comfortable bed with two blankets keeping me warm.

‘Sobering up, are you?’

‘I wasn’t... drunk.’ My voice came out hoarse and my mouth felt as furry as a mink coat.

The policeman held out the cup. I struggled on to one elbow and took it from him.

‘Thanks.’ The tea was strong, hot and sweet. I wasn’t sure it didn’t make me feel even sicker.

‘The doc’s been back twice to check on you. You were drunk all right. Banged your head, too.’

‘But I wasn’t...’

‘You sure were. The doc did a blood test to make certain.’

‘Where are my clothes?’

‘Oh yeah. We took ’em off. They were wet. I’ll get them.’

He went out without shutting the door and I spent the few minutes he was away trying to sort out what was happening. I could remember bits of the night, but hazily. I knew who I was. No problem there. I looked at my watch: seven-thirty. I felt absolutely lousy.

The policeman returned with my suit which was wrinkled beyond belief and looked nothing like the one I’d set out in.

Set out... Where to?

‘Is this... Savile Row? West end of London?’

‘You remember being brought in then?’

‘Some of it. Not much.’

‘The patrol car picked you up somewhere in Soho at around four o’clock this morning.’

‘What was I doing there?’

‘I don’t know, do I? Nothing, as far as I know. Just sitting dead drunk on the pavement in the pouring rain.’

‘Why did they bring me here if I wasn’t doing anything?’

‘To save you from yourself,’ he said without rancour. ‘Drunks make more trouble if we leave them than if we bring them in, so we bring them in. Can’t have drunks wandering out into the middle of the road and causing accidents or breaking their silly skulls falling over or waking up violent and smashing shop windows as some of them do.’

‘I feel ill.’

‘What d’you expect? If you’re going to be sick there’s a bucket at the end of the bed.’

He gave me a nod in which sympathy wasn’t entirely lacking, and took himself away.

About an hour later I was driven with three other gentlemen in the same plight to attend the Marlborough Street Magistrates’ Court. Drunks, it seemed, were first on the agenda. Every day’s agenda.

In the interim I had become reluctantly convinced of three things.

First was that even though I could not remember drinking, I had at four a.m. that morning been hopelessly intoxicated. The blood test, analysed at speed because of the bang on my head, had revealed a level of two hundred and ninety milligrammes of alcohol per centilitre of blood which, I had been assured, meant that I had drunk the equivalent of more than half a bottle of spirits during the preceding few hours.

The second was that it would make no difference at all if I could convince anyone that at one-thirty I had been stone cold sober seventy miles away in Berkshire. They would merely say I had plenty of time to get drunk on the journey.

And the third and perhaps least welcome of all was that I seemed to have collected far more sore spots than I could account for.

I had remembered, bit by bit, my visit to Jody. I remembered trying to fight all three men at once, which was an idiotic sort of thing to attempt in the first place, even without the casual expertise of the man in sun glasses. I remembered the squashy feel when my fist connected with his nose and I knew all about the punches he’d given me in return. Even so...

I shrugged. Perhaps I didn’t remember it all, like I didn’t remember getting drunk. Or perhaps... Well, Ganser Mays and Jody both had reason to dislike me, and Jody had been wearing jodhpur boots.

The court proceedings took ten minutes. The charge was “drunk in charge”. In charge of what, I asked. In charge of the police, they said.

‘Guilty or not guilty?’

‘Guilty,’ I said resignedly.

‘Fined five pounds. Do you need time to pay?’

‘No, sir.’

‘Good. Next, please.’

Outside, in the little office where I was due to pay the fine, I telephoned Owen Idris. Paying after all had been a problem, as there had proved to be no wallet in my rough-dried suit. No cheque book either, nor, when I came to think of it, any keys. Were they all by any chance at Savile Row, I asked. Someone telephoned. No, they weren’t. I had had nothing at all in my pockets when picked up. No means of identification, no money, no keys, no pen, no handkerchief.

‘Owen? Bring ten pounds and a taxi to Marlborough Street Court.’

‘Very good, sir.’

‘Right away.’

‘Of course.’

I felt hopelessly groggy. I sat in an upright chair to wait and wondered how long it took for half a bottle of spirits to dry out.

Owen came in thirty minutes and handed me the money without comment. Even his face showed no surprise at finding me in such a predicament and unshaven into the bargain. I wasn’t sure that I appreciated his lack of surprise. I also couldn’t think of any believable explanation. Nothing to do but shrug it off, pay the five pounds and get home as best I could. Owen sat beside me in the taxi and gave me small sidelong glances every hundred yards.

I made it upstairs to the sitting-room and lay down flat on the sofa. Owen had stayed downstairs to pay the taxi and I could hear him talking to someone down in the hall. I could do without visitors, I thought. I could do without everything except twenty-four hours of oblivion.

The visitor was Charlie.

‘Your man says you’re in trouble.’

‘Mm.’

‘Good God.’ He was standing beside me, looking down. ‘What on earth have you been doing?’

‘Long story.’

‘Hm. Will your man get us some coffee?’

‘Ask him... he’ll be in the workshop. Intercom over there.’ I nodded towards the far door and wished I hadn’t. My whole brain felt like a bruise.

Charlie talked to Owen on the intercom and Owen came up with his ultra polite face and messed around with filters in the kitchen.

‘What’s the matter with you?’ Charlie asked.

‘Knocked out, drunk and...’ I stopped.

‘And what?’

‘Nothing.’

‘You need a doctor.’

‘I saw a police surgeon. Or rather... he saw me.’

‘You can’t see the state of your eyes,’ Charlie said seriously. ‘And whether you like it or not, I’m getting you a doctor.’ He went away to the kitchen to consult Owen and I heard the extension bell there tinkling as he kept his promise. He came back.

‘What’s wrong with my eyes?’

‘Pinpoint pupils and glassy daze.’

‘Charming.’

Owen brought the coffee, which smelled fine, but I found I could scarcely drink it. Both men looked at me with what I could only call concern.

‘How did you get like this?’ Charlie asked.

‘Shall I go, sir?’ Owen said politely.

‘No. Sit down, Owen. You may as well know too...’ He sat comfortably in a small armchair, neither perching on the front nor lolling at ease in the depths. The compromise of Owen’s attitude to me was what made him above price, his calm understanding that although I paid for work done, we each retained equal dignity in the transaction. I had employed him for less than a year: I hoped he would stay till he dropped.

‘I went down to Jody Leeds’ stable, last night, after dark,’ I said. ‘I had no right at all to be there. Jody and two other men found me in one of the boxes looking at a horse. There was a bit of a struggle and I banged my head... on the manger, I think... and got knocked out.’

I stopped for breath. My audience said nothing at all.

‘When I woke up, I was sitting on a pavement in Soho, dead drunk.’

‘Impossible,’ Charlie said.

‘No. It happened. The police scooped me up, as they apparently do to all drunks littering the footpaths. I spent the remains of the night in a cell and got fined five pounds, and here I am.’

There was a long pause.

Charlie cleared his throat. ‘Er... various questions arise.’

‘They do indeed.’

Owen said calmly, ‘The car, sir. Where did you leave the car?’ The car was his especial love, polished and cared for like silver.

I told him exactly where I’d parked it. Also that I no longer had its keys. Nor the keys to the flat or the workshop, for that matter.

Both Charlie and Owen showed alarm and agreed between themselves that the first thing Owen would do, even before fetching the car, would be to change all my locks.

‘I made those locks,’ I protested.

‘Do you want Jody walking in here while you’re asleep?’

‘No.’

‘Then Owen changes the locks.’

I didn’t demur any more. I’d been thinking of a new form of lock for some time, but hadn’t actually made it. I would soon, though. I would patent it and make it as a toy for kids to lock up their secrets, and maybe in twenty years time half the doors in the country would be keeping out burglars that way. My lock didn’t need keys or electronics, and couldn’t be picked. It stood there, clear and sharp in my mind, with all its working parts meshing neatly.

‘Are you all right?’ Charlie said abruptly.

‘What?’

‘For a moment you looked...’ He stopped and didn’t finish the sentence.

‘I’m not dying, if that’s what you think. It’s just that I’ve an idea for a new sort of lock.’

Charlie’s attention sharpened as quickly as it had at Sandown.

‘Revolutionary?’ he asked hopefully.

I smiled inside. The word was apt in more ways than one, as some of the lock’s works would revolve.

‘You might say so,’ I agreed.

‘Don’t forget... my bank.’

‘I won’t.’

‘No one but you would be inventing things when he’s half dead.’

‘I may look half dead,’ I said, ‘but I’m not.’ I might feel half dead, too, I thought, but it would all pass.

The door bell rang sharply.

‘If it’s anyone but the doctor,’ Charlie told Owen, ‘tell them our friend is out.’

Owen nodded briefly and went downstairs, but when he came back he brought not the doctor but a visitor less expected and more welcome.

‘Miss Ward, sir.’

She was through the door before he had the words out, blowing in like a gust of fresh air, her face as smooth and clean and her clothes as well-groomed as mine were dirty and squalid. She looked like life itself on two legs, her vitality lighting the room.

‘Steven!’

She stopped dead a few feet from the sofa, staring down. She glanced at Charlie and at Owen. ‘What’s the matter with him?’

‘Rough night on the tiles,’ I said. ‘D’you mind if I don’t get up?’

‘How do you do?’ Charlie said politely. ‘I am Charlie Canterfield. Friend of Steven’s.’ He shook hands with her.

‘Alexandra Ward,’ she replied, looking bemused.

‘You’ve met,’ I said.

‘What?’

‘In Walton Street.’

They looked at each other and realised what I meant. Charlie began to tell Allie how I had arrived in this sorry state and Owen went out shopping for locks. I lay on the sofa and drifted. The whole morning seemed disjointed and jerky to me, as if my thought processes were tripping over cracks.

Allie pulled up a squashy leather stool and sat beside me, which brought recovery nearer. She put her hand on mine. Better still.

‘You’re crazy,’ she said.

I sighed. Couldn’t have everything.

‘Have you forgotten I’m going home this evening?’

‘I have not,’ I said. ‘Though it looks now as though I’ll have to withdraw my offer of driving you to the airport. I don’t think I’m fit. No car, for another thing.’

‘That’s actually what I came for.’ She hesitated. ‘I have to keep peace with my sister...’ She stopped, leaving a world of family tensions hovering unspoken. ‘I came to say goodbye.’

‘What sort of goodbye?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Goodbye for now,’ I said, ‘or goodbye for ever?’

‘Which would you like?’

Charlie chuckled. ‘Now there’s a double-edged question if I ever heard one.’

‘You’re not supposed to be listening,’ she said with mock severity.

‘Goodbye for now,’ I said.

‘All right.’ She smiled the flashing smile. ‘Suits me.’

Charlie wandered round the room looking at things but showed no signs of going. Allie disregarded him. She stroked my hair back from my forehead and kissed me gently. I can’t say I minded.

After a while the doctor came. Charlie went down to let him in and apparently briefed him on the way up. He and Allie retired to the kitchen where I heard them making more coffee.

The doctor helped me remove all clothes except underpants. I’d have been much happier left alone. He tapped my joints for reflexes, peered through lights into my eyes and ears and prodded my many sore spots. Then he sat on the stool Allie 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.