Pulse(96)

I watched as he asked something of a man sitting on the table nearest to the door. Then he looked over towards Rupert Forrester, who was now being helped up onto a chair by the paramedics. Big Biceps clearly hadn’t seen the two uniformed policemen who had made their way to the back of the room.

He walked over towards the dais and now the hairs all over my body were standing up as the adrenalin teemed into my veins. My caveman flight-or-fight reflex was running at full power.

‘That man tried to kill me earlier this evening,’ I said clearly and quietly to DC Filippos, hardly able to contain an urge to stand up and run.

The detective turned and looked, and only at that point did Big Biceps notice me sitting there.

The colour drained out of his face like sand out of an egg timer, from top to bottom, only faster, and he stumbled.

He looked quickly from me to Forrester and back again, and then he saw the two uniformed policemen.

He turned for the door and ran.

‘Stop that man!’ shouted DC Filippos loudly, leaping to his feet.

The two uniformed officers were too far away but still Big Biceps didn’t make it. Three men from the table near the door stood up and blocked his way. Their evening had already been ruined and they were in no mood for forgiveness.

The man turned round and round twice, looking for an alternative escape route, and then aimed for the nearest door to the kitchen but he was too late, far too late.

DC Filippos caught him from behind when he was still several yards away from it, dragging him down to the floor.

But he wasn’t giving up that easily.

Big Biceps punched the young detective full in the face and threw him off as if he were a child, before starting again for the door to the kitchen.

By now the other two officers had responded and, between them, they managed to manhandle Big Biceps back to the floor.

It took all three policemen to cuff Big Biceps’s hands behind his back but he was still not giving up, kicking out at them as they dragged him over to one of the robust-looking central-heating radiators to which they shackled him using a second set of handcuffs. Even then, he tried to escape by attempting unsuccessfully to pull the radiator off the wall.

When the officers eventually stood up they received a rousing round of applause from all the guests in the room who had witnessed it all. More entertaining, I thought, than listening to the racecourse managing director.

I, meanwhile, had been watching Rupert Forrester’s face, searching for some reaction to the fact that his muscular sidekick was captured, but there was only hopelessness and despair written into his features.

‘Now,’ said DC Filippos, dabbing with a handkerchief at a trickle of blood coming from his nose. ‘What the hell is this all about?’





36


I spent almost the next three hours with the police, first in the hotel and then at the police station where I was formally arrested on suspicion of assault causing actual bodily harm.

I had my fingerprints taken and the inside of my cheek swabbed to provide a DNA profile. I also insisted on being seen by a police medical examiner to have samples taken of my blood and urine.

DC Filippos had called in his boss, DS Merryweather, and he in turn had requested the presence of a detective chief inspector. The incident at the charity dinner was clearly deemed important enough to bring in the top brass.

The four of us sat together in an interview room, I having waived my right to a solicitor in order to speed things up. Why did I need legal representation when I had nothing to hide?

DS Merryweather started the recording equipment.

‘Now, Dr Rankin,’ said the chief inspector, ‘please tell us why you assaulted Mr Rupert Forrester.’

I told them the whole story from the time I’d arrived back at the racecourse medical room right up to the instant I’d stuck the needle into Forrester’s neck.

I could tell that none of them believed any of it.

They didn’t actually say that my story was far too implausible and far-fetched to be true, but I knew it was exactly what they were thinking.

‘I am not making it up,’ I said yet again. ‘And I’m not mad.’

I implored them to go to the racecourse and do a forensic search. I told them they’d find traces of cocaine-laced alcohol on the bed in the medical room where I had managed to spit out some of the deadly stuff, plus the small empty bottle with my fingerprints on it.

I even showed them the faint marks on my wrists where I’d been tied up with the bandage tape.

Gradually, after more than an hour of trying, during which I had to go through the whole story at least four more times, I began to feel that some of what I’d said was at last breaking through their scepticism.

‘Get my blood results,’ I said. ‘It will have cocaine in it. Or there will be benzoylecgonine in my urine, which will prove I’ve had cocaine in my system. And why did Forrester’s driver try to run if it hadn’t happened? He obviously had something to hide.’

They didn’t answer but DC Filippos nodded in agreement.

He knew.

He had been there, and he’d received a black eye and a bloodied nose for his trouble. And he had also witnessed the colour-draining reaction when Big Biceps had first seen me.

The three policemen left me alone in the interview room for quite a long while as they went outside for a conference.

I thought back to what had happened in the Regency Suite after Big Biceps had been restrained.