Pulse(89)

I managed to eject quite a lot more of the liquid by blowing it through my teeth and allowing it to dribble down the outside of my cheek onto the bed, but I still swallowed far too much, not out of choice but as a natural reflex that eventually I couldn’t resist.

I wasn’t sure exactly how much I’d consumed, but probably more than the single teaspoonful required for a fatal dose.

‘How long?’ I heard Rupert Forrester ask. ‘I have to go. I’m speaking at a charity dinner at the Queens Hotel in town. I’ve got to change yet and I’m late already.’

‘Not very long,’ Big Biceps replied. ‘She had it in her mouth for ages. That will speed things up. She’ll be unconscious soon and dead in an hour.’

‘Dead?’ Sheraton said with some alarm. ‘I thought we were just frightening her.’

‘Shut up,’ Forrester said. ‘You’re in this as much as we are. We need to silence her permanently. And there’ll be no damn cleaner to find her alive this time. This place won’t be cleaned now until tomorrow and I’ll be in by then anyway. But I want us to get out. Security will be locking the gates soon.’

Good old security, I thought. Where were they when you needed them?

I closed my eyes but that didn’t stop the bright lights exploding in my brain like fireworks on New Year’s Eve.

But I could still think.

Play dead, I told myself. They have to get out before the gates are locked. The sooner they think I’m unconscious, the quicker they will go.

I forced all my muscles to relax and Sheraton must have felt the change in my legs.

‘She’s going,’ he said.

‘Untie her hands,’ said Forrester, releasing his grip on my head and hair.

They rolled me over and I sensed the tape being removed from my wrists. Then I felt Big Biceps take my fingers and wrap them round the empty bottle.

Fingerprints, I thought.

‘Right,’ said Forrester. ‘Let’s get out of here.’

‘Are you sure you really want to kill her?’ Sheraton asked. He was clearly in this way over his head.

‘I told you to shut up,’ Forrester said sharply. ‘It’s too late now anyway. There’s enough cocaine in her system to kill a horse. She’s already dead.’

Someone lifted my right eyelid.

It was as much as I could do not to look at him. I had rolled my eyes up in the fraction beforehand and I concentrated on keeping them there, only seeing him peripherally. It was Big Biceps.

‘Definitely unconscious,’ he said. ‘Dead soon.’

‘OK,’ Forrester said. ‘Let’s go.’

I heard the door open and their footsteps receding but I continued to lie as still as I could. However, if I didn’t move soon, I really would be unconscious and dead soon after.

I opened my eyes and swivelled my head.

They had gone.

I was euphoric. It felt like a victory. But I wasn’t so far gone that I didn’t realise that the euphoria was more to do with the drug rather than any sense that I was now safe.

I wasn’t. Far from it.

I was in mortal danger and I could already feel a quickening of my heart and a rise in my body temperature. If I didn’t do something very soon, I would be dead for sure when the cleaners arrived to find me in the morning.





33


Perhaps there was nothing I could actually do to save myself but I wasn’t going to die without trying.

My first instinct was to rid my body of the toxin.

Everyone knows the old wives’ tale that a concentrated salt solution is an emetic, that is it makes you vomit. But, not only is excess salt an extremely dangerous poison in itself, any emetic effect due to surplus sodium takes far too long to occur – up to thirty minutes rather than the immediate response as depicted in a James Bond movie.

I would probably be dead in thirty minutes.

As every sufferer of bulimia knows, the only sure-fire method of making oneself instantly sick on demand is to use the gag reflex.

I inserted my forefinger into my mouth and, stretching it in as far as I could, I pressed down hard on the back of my tongue.

I retched and threw up the meagre contents of my stomach into the washbasin in the corner.

Then I washed my mouth out, drank some water from the tap and repeated the whole process twice more until I was sure nothing remained in me.

But had I been in time? Had too much of the drug already passed through the intestinal membrane into my bloodstream?

The physical effects were certainly becoming more noticeable.

I was sweating profusely, my heart was racing and I was experiencing slight chest pain as a result.

I had been here before.

What had Rahul Kumar taught me that I could use to save myself, whereas I’d been unable to save him?

Cocaine is a short-acting SNDRI, a serotonin–norepinephrine–dopamine reuptake inhibitor. Hence, a cocaine overdose is a double whammy. Not only is the drug a powerful stimulant but it also restricts the body’s natural ability to regulate its metabolic rate. So my body had gone into overdrive and, with the brakes also removed, it was running downhill out of control. Whether my heart would give up the struggle first or my other organs would fail due to increased body temperature was anyone’s guess.

Either way, I’d be dead. And soon.