Pulse(14)

‘What does he want?’ Grant said with a degree of irritation in his voice.

I was worried that the Bristol police had changed their minds about allowing me home with Grant but it wasn’t that.

‘Dr Rankin?’ the man asked as we climbed out of the Audi.

‘Yes.’ Grant and I both answered together. He was a doctor too, with a PhD in mechanical engineering.

‘Dr Christine Rankin?’

‘That’s me,’ I said.

‘My name is Detective Sergeant Merryweather.’ He briefly held up a police identity card. ‘I would like to ask you some questions concerning a man found unconscious at the racecourse on Saturday evening who subsequently died at the hospital under your care.’

I didn’t know whether to run away or to hold my wrists out for the handcuffs.

‘Of course,’ I said, trying to keep the nervousness and panic out of my voice. ‘Come on in.’

The three of us went into the sitting room and sat down.

‘How can I help?’ I said.

‘We are treating this as an unexplained death,’ said the policeman. ‘We have had the preliminary results of the post-mortem that was carried out early this morning. There was no cause of death given in the report so we will have to wait for further analysis of the samples taken. But one of our constables told me that you did some blood tests while the man was still alive.’

I nodded. ‘PC Filippos.’

‘Yes, that’s right. He also said that you mentioned the possibility of a cocaine overdose.’

I nodded again. ‘One of my colleagues told me that the blood test showed cocaine in the man’s system. I didn’t actually see the results myself.’

I’d been too busy dealing with the sick and injured on Saturday night and had intended to look at them on Sunday evening, but other events had overtaken me.

‘Could you get those test results for me?’ asked the detective sergeant, ‘and also copies of the man’s medical file?’

‘Can’t you get them yourself, direct from the hospital?’

‘We only have your name as a contact and the hospital told us you were not working today. I have learned from experience that it is far better to approach a named individual than to try to navigate my way through health-service bureaucracy.’ He looked at me and raised his eyebrows.

‘I’ll see what I can do,’ I said. Not necessarily that easy when I was suspended from duty and barred from entering the hospital, but I wasn’t going to mention that if he didn’t. ‘Is that all?’

‘No, not quite,’ said the policeman. ‘We are still having difficulty putting a name to the dead man and wondered if you had any further clues to his identity.’

‘Like what?’ I asked.

‘Did you remove anything from him that could assist us? An identification bracelet or other jewellery, for example?’

I shook my head. ‘There was nothing at all on him. PC Filippos said that he had searched the man’s pockets while he’d been waiting for the ambulance. He took away the man’s clothes and shoes after he died.’

‘Yes, I am aware of that. We have someone trying to ascertain where the clothes were bought. They don’t appear to have been available for sale in this country.’

‘Have you checked a list of people who are missing?’ I asked.

DS Merryweather looked at me as if I were an imbecile.

‘That was our first line of inquiry. His DNA profile, photo, dental details and fingerprints have also been sent to Interpol and Europol but nothing has turned up so far.’

I felt sorry for the poor fingerprint officer who must have had to take the dabs from the dead man’s digits.

‘How about the betting slip?’

‘The betting slip?’

‘PC Filippos told me that the man had had a crumpled-up betting slip in his pocket. Have you asked the bookmaker?’

‘Not yet.’ He wrote something in his notebook. ‘Do you happen to know the bookmaker’s name?’

‘No, but it should be printed on the slip. They all are these days.’

He wrote it down then looked up at me.

‘Can you tell us anything else about the man that might be useful?’

I thought back to Saturday evening. The details were clearly etched in my memory. I had spent much of the previous night in Bristol going over and over the events of those hours, wondering if I should have done anything differently.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘He was in a coma when he arrived at the hospital and he never regained consciousness. Prior to the blood-test results, he gave all the indications of suffering from SVT – supraventricular tachycardia – and that is how we were treating him when I was called away by the arrival of two motorcyclists severely injured in a road-traffic accident. The man died shortly after that.’

He nodded as if he knew. Then he stood up.

‘Thank you for your time, Dr Rankin.’ He handed me a business card with his contact details. ‘Please give me a call when you have the blood-test results or if you think of anything else that might be useful.’

Grant showed him out of the house while I remained sitting on the sofa, shaking.

I had quite expected to be arrested.

The police obviously didn’t know about my suspension from work or else they wouldn’t have asked me to obtain the test results. Maybe they didn’t believe I was responsible for the man’s death. Or were they just waiting for the post-mortem toxicology results?