Pulse(99)

I was literally shaking with fear.

I threw the knife as soon as I saw his head, wanting to catch him unawares before he had a chance to shoot me.

He was surprised, so much so that he jerked the gun up in front of his face to protect himself, loosing off both the barrels as he did so.

The noise in the confined space of the kitchen was horrendous and debilitating. The lead shot slammed into the wall above the window, detaching huge chunks of plaster and totally destroying the kitchen clock. But the knife had failed to reach its mark too, falling harmlessly to the floor.

I stared at him as he dug into his coat pocket for more cartridges to reload, snapping the gun closed before I even had a chance to react.

‘What’s happening, Dad?’ one of the boys shouted down from the landing, the terror clearly audible in his voice.

Forrester half turned towards the sound.

‘Go back into your room and stay there,’ I shouted back.

Forrester continued to turn.

‘No. No!’ I screamed at him. ‘It’s me you want, not my boys.’

I rushed him, grabbing his arm and pulling hard.

He turned back and threw me off him with such force that I ended up sprawled on the kitchen floor.

‘I’ll kill them too when I’m done with you,’ Forrester said, sending an icy chill down my spine.

Oh God.

I started to cry, not so much for my own death but for theirs.

He raised the gun and pointed it straight at me so that I could clearly see down the barrels. At least I wouldn’t feel anything. The shot at this range would probably take my head clean off.

I stared straight up at him. If he expected me to cower away or to beg for mercy, he would be disappointed.

He closed one eye to aim, looking right down the length of the gun.

This is it, I thought.

Goodbye, world.

There was suddenly a primeval shriek from behind him.

‘Noooooooo!’ screamed Grant as he charged through the open front door and down the hallway with one of his golf clubs held high above his head.

Rupert Forrester started to turn to meet this new threat but he was too slow, much too slow. The long barrels of the shotgun made it unwieldy and they got stuck in the doorway as he turned. And so intent was he on keeping hold of the weapon that he didn’t even raise his arms in self-defence.

The toe end of the golf club caught him just behind his right ear and Grant had put all his considerable strength into that one shot. The cracking noise of the impact was impressive. Indeed, I was surprised that the metal hadn’t gone right through the skull and embedded itself deep into Forrester’s brain.

Now who thought golf was a silly sport?

Not me.

For the second time in only three hours Forrester’s legs folded beneath him and he went down onto the kitchen floor like a rag doll.

Grant stood over him hyperventilating, the golf club ready in his hands in case a second swing was needed.

It wasn’t.

Rupert Forrester was totally unconscious and he had blood coming from his right ear – a sure sign of major problems inside.

I stood up and carefully removed the gun from his senseless hands, breaking it open and removing the cartridges. I amazed myself with my calmness and control, not just now that it was over, but also when I’d been convinced I was about to die.

Where was a panic attack when you expected one?

I went back down on my knees next to him and felt gently around the point of impact. The bone moved under my fingers.

‘His skull is fractured,’ I said. ‘And the blood from his ear indicates a likely brain injury beneath. He will probably die without immediate hospital treatment. Call an ambulance.’

‘Are you crazy?’ Grant shouted at me. ‘The man just tried to kill you. Let him die.’

‘No,’ I said firmly. ‘I’m a doctor. Saving lives is what I do.’





PART 4

October





37


Horseracing at Cheltenham returned for what was known as the Showcase meeting in late October but the talk of the town did not concern the horses.

The revelations, currently appearing on a daily basis from the trial of one Fred Harris, known on the streets of east London as Crusher Harris and by me as Big Biceps, were making all the headlines in the Gloucestershire Echo.

Harris’s defence strategy was simply to blame everything on Rupert Forrester, a tactic almost guaranteed not to be questioned by the man himself.

Forrester had survived the brain injury caused by the golf club, due to the prompt arrival of an ambulance and his immediate transfer to hospital.

If survival was the right word.

An initial CT scan of his head had shown severe bruising to the right side of his brain and a critical swelling within the cranium cavity.

Emergency surgery had removed a section of his skull in order to relieve the pressure in his head but not before it appeared to have caused major damage to the part of the brain that juts down through the foramen magnum, the hole in the base of the skull where it joins the spine.

Forrester had remained completely unconscious in an induced coma for almost two weeks before the swelling had subsided and the neurosurgeons had decided to try to wake him up.

And he had woken up, after a fashion, insofar that his eyes had opened and he was able to move them up and down.