Pulse(63)

The patient arrived and I set to work stabilising his condition and confirming that there was a detectable pulse in each foot. Next I sent him for X-rays as well as a full-body CT scan. It was clear from their positions that he had indeed broken both ankles, but it was vital to ensure that there were no other critical injuries, such as internal bleeding, which might be easily missed until it was too late. A fall from fifteen feet onto a hard surface would have resulted in large forces acting on all the major organs, maybe enough to cause a rupture.

Thankfully, however, the CT scan showed nothing out of the ordinary, no obvious further injuries.

I had already paged an orthopaedic specialist and together we now set about realigning the patient’s ankles and placing them in temporary plaster casts. There was every likelihood that he would require surgery to have one or both of them fixed properly but that would be for tomorrow, after the initial damage to the surrounding soft tissue had been given a chance to settle.

As the man was wheeled away to one of the hospital wards, I breathed a small sigh of relief. The first major trauma I’d dealt with in almost five months and I’d felt completely at home, with not a tingle detectable anywhere in my fingers.

‘Well done, Chris,’ Jeremy Cook said. ‘Good job. Exactly according to the book.’

I smiled.

I was back in business.

The following Monday I appeared as a witness at the reconvened inquest of the unnamed man at Gloucester Coroner’s Court.

Except that he was no longer an unnamed man. Police enquiries had finally produced a result.

‘Good morning, Dr Rankin,’ said DS Merryweather, meeting me in the glass vestibule of the brand-new coroner’s court complex. He was with DC Filippos and they shook my hand in turn.

‘Thank you for coming,’ said Constable Filippos. ‘How are you?’

‘I’m fine, thanks,’ I said. ‘I’m back at work.’

‘I’m delighted to hear it.’ He smiled as if he really meant it.

I wanted to ask him about all sorts of things, in particular, if he’d discovered who owned the long black Mercedes, but I’d promised Grant that I wouldn’t get involved. I’d assured him I would leave everything to the police and not ask any questions of anyone to do with the dead man or anything else that had happened at Cheltenham Racecourse.

So I was here only to answer questions from the coroner and not to ask any. As Grant had reminded me only that morning. But it didn’t mean I wasn’t interested. Perhaps I would just have to wait for information to be offered.

‘You may have heard that we have identified the dead man,’ said the detective sergeant.

‘So I believe,’ I replied. The summons I had received to attend had given the man’s name as Rahul Kumar but no further details beyond that.

‘As we had suspected, he was from India, from Delhi. The authorities there came up with a name and DNA comparison tests have confirmed it.’

An usher came into the vestibule and loudly announced the inquest for Rahul Kumar. The two policemen and I filed into the courtroom and took places on one of the rows of blue-covered seats at the back.

I’d attended many inquests before in my professional capacity but I never forgot the reasons why we were here. An inquest was held solely to ascertain the answers to four simple questions: who, what, where and when?

Who was the deceased? What caused him to die? Where did he die? And when did he die? Nothing else. Long gone were the days when an inquest could apportion blame to someone responsible for causing a death.

Unlike in a criminal court, where prosecution and defence counsel argue about the facts of the case in an adversarial system while the judge remains mostly silent, dealing only with points of law, the coroner’s proceedings were inquisitorial with the coroner asking questions of the witnesses from the bench in order to reach his conclusion.

Juries only sit at inquests under certain limited circumstances, for example if the deceased died while in custody or if the coroner considers that there is particular public interest.

In this case, neither of those applied and the coroner sat alone, calling DS Merryweather as the first witness to give evidence of identification.

‘The deceased’s name is Rahul Kumar,’ the sergeant said loudly and clearly from the witness box while consulting his notes. ‘He was an Indian citizen and his home was in Narela, in the northern district of Delhi. Positive identification was confirmed using DNA comparison with his mother and brother.’

‘Did he have any family other than a mother and brother?’ asked the coroner.

‘Yes, sir,’ said the sergeant. ‘Two sisters and various nieces and nephews.’

‘No children of his own?’

‘No, sir. Mr Kumar was unmarried.’

‘Is the family represented in any way at this hearing?’

‘No, sir,’ said the detective. ‘His family were unable to travel. Full details are included in the report we submitted to your office.’

‘Yes, thank you,’ said the coroner. ‘I have read the report. Most interesting. May I congratulate you, sergeant, on your efforts to discover who this man was. Quite a puzzle. Do you have any further information to add?’

‘I have, sir,’ he said. ‘Since the report was written, we have determined that Mr Kumar arrived in the UK seven days prior to his death on an Air India flight from New Delhi. His whereabouts during those seven days have yet to be determined and any belongings he may have brought with him have yet to be located.’