Pulse(83)

He threw his hands up in frustration. ‘There you go again. It’s none of your bloody business. Leave it alone.’

He turned away from me and leaned on the sink.

But it surely was my bloody business.

As a doctor, I was obliged to call in the police if I suspected a patient had been the subject of serious abuse or assault. That didn’t apply in this case but, as a responsible citizen, was it not at least my moral duty to report wrongdoing to the authorities?

‘I don’t want you going back to the racecourse tomorrow,’ Grant said without turning round.

‘I have to,’ I said. ‘Adrian Kings says they need me. There were only three doctors there today and that’s the absolute minimum required by the rules. Without me, there will be no racing.’

‘Then there will be no racing,’ he said adamantly, turning back to face me. ‘You’re not going.’

‘Oh yes, I am,’ I said equally adamantly. ‘I have to. My reputation will be ruined if I don’t.’ To say nothing of my prospects of ever being asked to be a racecourse doctor again.

‘What if you were ill?’ he said. ‘Then what would they do?’

‘But I’m not ill.’

‘I don’t care. Call in sick. You’re not going, and that’s final.’

How dare he tell me what to do?

I bit my lip not to answer him back. It would have only fanned the flames.

We didn’t normally argue. In eighteen years, only twice had we gone to bed without speaking and, for both of those occasions, neither of us could now even remember why.

But something about this current row made me apprehensive.

Was Grant finally getting fed up with me?

Would it actually be best if we took some time away from each other?

Best for whom? For him? Or me? Certainly not for the boys. I had seen too many friends break up with early-teenage children and it all too often ended in disaster. Happy, confident youngsters became insular and withdrawn and neither parent ever regained the trust of their children that they had enjoyed previously.

Maybe that would be a step too far, but inside I was seething with annoyance that Grant thought he could order me not to do what I wanted.

However, he may be right.

Perhaps it would be better if I didn’t go to the races the following day. But I resented him laying down the law in such a manner, and he knew it.

For the third time in our married life, we went to bed without speaking.

Not that I could get to sleep.

I kept churning things over and over in my head, trying to decide what to do, and not just whether I should defy Grant and go to the racecourse the following morning.

I still couldn’t get the dead man out of my mind.

Dick McGee had simply corroborated what I already believed to be the case, and Jason Conway’s reaction had only confirmed it further. There was no question in my mind that he and Mike Sheraton had been involved in spot-fixing races by jumping the first fence in front on instruction from the man in the black Mercedes.

That knowledge, and the fact that Rahul Kumar had been an investigator for a racing authority in India, where gambling on anything was endemic, plainly threw the ‘misadventure’ verdict of the inquest into doubt.

Misadventure implied accidental death precipitated by unintentional, ill-advised or reckless actions of the deceased. It certainly didn’t cover murder and, the more I thought about it, the more convinced I became that Rahul Kumar had been killed to prevent him exposing the corruption.

So what should I do about it, if anything?

No one else seemed to think that anything untoward was going on in the first place. But that was surely the key feature of the most ingenious frauds – no one even noticed they were happening.

Things were hardly better in the morning.

Breakfast was a very quiet affair with both the boys sensing that Grant and I were at loggerheads. Either that or they’d heard the exchanges the previous evening and had decided that keeping quiet was the best policy.

My mobile phone rang to break the silence.

It was Adrian Kings.

‘You are coming in today, aren’t you?’ he said with a touch of panic in his voice. ‘I managed to get a fourth doctor, from Warwick, but Jack Otley has now called me. He’s been ill all night and he’s unable to make it so we are back down to the minimum.’

I looked across at Grant.

‘Hold on a minute,’ I said to Adrian.

I covered the microphone with my hand.

‘They desperately need me at the racecourse today,’ I said. ‘One of the other doctors is sick.’

Grant wasn’t happy but he waved a hand dismissively, which I took to be a reluctant acceptance.

‘OK,’ I said to Adrian. ‘I’ll be there.’

He was relieved. ‘Great. I’ll still try and get someone else but it’s such short notice and in school holiday time too. Try and be here by twelve. The first race is at one-fifty.’

We disconnected.

‘What about the boys?’ Grant said acidly.

‘They’re at a cricket coaching course all afternoon,’ I said. ‘I’ll take them in early before going on to the races. Can you collect them after?’

‘Do I have a choice?’

‘They could wait for me like last night.’