Pulse(88)

Thank God.

‘Call the police!’ I shouted.

‘What the hell is going on in here?’ said a voice behind me.

‘Call the police!’ I screamed again. ‘I’m being attacked.’

The door was pushed fully open causing me to have to take a step forward. Then I moved backwards through the opening, never taking my eyes off my assailants. It must be safer for me out of the medical room.

Suddenly I was gripped from behind in a bear hug, my arms pinned down by my sides.

My saviour, my knight in shining armour, was no such thing.

I tried to lash out behind me with the scalpels but the hug was too low and too tight. And I could hardly breathe let alone fight or shout. My resistance was over and the men in front quickly moved forward and twisted the blades out of my hands.

‘What’s wrong with you two?’ said the voice behind me crossly. ‘A feeble woman against two strong men. You should be ashamed of yourselves.’

‘Sorry, chief,’ said Big Biceps. ‘She’s a slippery one, that’s for sure.’

Chief? Indian chief?

Against two, I had held my own, but three were too many. The two in front and the one behind lifted me bodily onto one of the beds and pinned me there.

For the first time I saw the face of the third man.

Rupert Forrester, managing director of the racecourse. Geronimo, the English fixer. One and the same.

And he clearly wasn’t happy with the other two. Perhaps he’d hoped that he would remain in the shadows, unseen and unrecognised.

‘Get on with it,’ he snapped.

With what?

Nothing good, I thought, at least for me.

‘Did anyone else hear her shouting?’ Big Biceps asked.

‘No,’ said Forrester. ‘I sent everyone away and I’ve locked up. The rain is hammering on the roof anyway. No one’s about.’

Big Biceps pulled a small bottle from his trouser pocket, a little bigger than a spirit miniature but smaller than the quarter bottle they had obviously used last time. The bottle was half full with a pale golden liquid. More cocaine dissolved in whisky, no doubt.

I wasn’t going to just lie there and let them poison me. I managed to pull a hand free and tried to grab the bottle to throw it against the wall, anything to break it, but Forrester was too quick.

‘Get something to secure her hands,’ he said, forcing my arms back onto the bed.

They used a roll of white adhesive bandage tape that they found in the medical store, binding both wrists together behind my back so that I ended up lying on them. Now I really was in trouble.

Mike Sheraton was at the foot of the bed and I tried to kick out at him but he had his hands on my ankles and pushed them firmly down. With Forrester doing the same with my shoulders, I was almost totally immobilised.

But my head could still move.

I twisted my neck to my left and bit Forrester’s knuckles. I wanted to tear his flesh and draw his blood – to leave some evidence, perhaps some of his DNA between my teeth, something a pathologist could find on my cold dead corpse and deduce who was responsible for my death.

‘Bitch!’ he shouted, pulling his hand away and striking me across my face with his open palm.

‘No marks,’ Big Biceps said sharply. ‘Remember?’

Did they really think that a second cocaine-induced death at the racecourse would again be considered as misadventure?

Apparently so.

While Forrester and Sheraton held me down, Big Biceps attempted to pour the liquid down my throat.

Needless to say, I resisted.

First I turned my head from side to side so that he couldn’t get the bottle near my mouth.

‘For God’s sake, keep her bloody head still,’ Big Biceps said to Forrester.

He let go of my shoulders and held my head instead, placing one hand on my forehead and pressing down, while his other one gripped my hair.

Secondly, I kept my mouth firmly shut, clenching my teeth and lips together as if my life depended on it, which it probably did.

But one has to breathe and Big Biceps pinched my nose closed.

I tried to draw air through a tiny opening on one side but Big Biceps forced the top of the bottle into the gap while putting his free hand on my chin and forcing my jaws apart.

I could feel the sharp burning sensation of the alcohol in my mouth.

I spat out what I could but I could also feel a trickle go down my throat. What had the pathologist said at the inquest? Only a single teaspoonful of the liquid ingested orally would have been sufficient to cause death.

How much of it had I ingested? Not as much as a teaspoonful, I thought, but Big Biceps wasn’t finished yet. He forced the neck of the bottle back between my teeth and emptied the rest of the contents into my mouth. I could taste the sharpness of the alcohol and the bitterness of the cocaine, strangely mixed with an increasing numbness of my tongue and gums.

I tried to spit it out again but, this time, he was wise to that, gripping the base of my chin and forcing my jaws together.

Initially I didn’t swallow but I knew that both alcohol and cocaine were absorbed into the bloodstream much faster directly through the mucus membranes of the mouth than via the stomach and intestines.

What was best?

I was already beginning to feel the effects of the drug on my brain. The overhead lights of the medical room were dancing with shooting colours at their edges. They were sensations I had once welcomed as a distraction from the agony of my depression but now I was terrified by them.