Dick Francis - Crossfire

Mr. Hoogland opened a notebook and made some notes.

"And what is your name?" he asked.

"Is that important?" I said.

"You can't go round making accusations anonymously."

"I'm not accusing anyone," I said. "I just asked you if you were sure it was Roderick Ward in that car."

"That in itself is an accusation of fraud."

"Or murder," I said.

He stared at me again. "Are you serious?"

"Very," I said.

"But why?"

"It just seems too easy," I said. "Late at night on a country road with little or no traffic, low-speed collision, contusion on the side of the head, alcohol, car tips into convenient deep stretch of river, no attempt to get out of the car, life insurance. Need I go on?"

"So what are you going to do about your theory?"

"Nothing," I said. "It's not me that has the client who's about to pay out a large sum in life insurance."

I could see in his face that he was having doubts. He must be asking himself if I was a complete nutter.

"You've nothing to lose," I said. "At least find out for sure if the deceased really was Roderick Ward by getting a DNA test done. Maybe the pathologist already has. Look in his report."

He said nothing but stared at a point somewhere over the top of my head.

"And ask the pathologist if he tested to determine if the water in the lungs actually came from the river."

"You do have a suspicious mind," he said, again looking down at my face.

"Did Little Bo Peep actually lose her sheep, or were they stolen?"

He laughed. "Did Humpty Dumpty fall, or was he pushed?"

"Exactly," I said. "Do you have a card?"

He fished one out of his jacket pocket and gave it to me.

"I'll call you," I said, turning away.

"Right," he shouted to my departing back. "You do that."

I woke in agony. And in the dark, pitch-black dark.

Where was I?

My arms hurt badly, and my head was spinning, and there was some sort of cloth on my face, rough cloth, like a sack.

What had happened?

It felt as if I was hanging by my arms and my shoulders didn't like it, not one bit. My whole back ached, and my head pounded as if there were jackhammers trying to break out of my skull behind my eyes. I felt sick, very sick, and I could smell the rancid odor of vomit on the cloth over my face.

How had I got here?

I tried to remember, but the pain in my arms clouded every thought. Being blown up by an IED had nothing on this. My upper body screamed in agony, and I could hear myself screaming with it. Whoever thought too much pain brought on unconsciousness was an idiot. My brain, now awake, clearly had no intention of switching off again. How much pain does it take to kill, I wondered. Surely it was time for me to die?

Was this just another bad dream?

No, I decided, this was no dream. This agony, sadly, was reality.

I wondered if my arms were actually being pulled from their sockets. I couldn't feel my hands, and I was suddenly very afraid.

Had I been captured by the Taliban? The very thought struck terror into my heart. I could feel myself coming close to panic, so I put such thoughts back in their box and tried to concentrate solely on the locations of my pain and its causes.

Apart from the ongoing fire in my back and arms, my left leg also hurt-in particular, my heel. "Concentrate," I shouted out loud at myself. "Concentrate." Why does my heel hurt? Because it's pressing on the floor. Now I realized for the first time that I wasn't hanging straight down. My left foot was stretched out in front of me. I bent my knee, pulled my foot back, and stood up. The searing agony in my shoulders instantly abated. The change was dramatic. I no longer wanted to die. Instead, I became determined to live.

Where was I? What happened? Why was I here? And how did I get here?

The same questions kept rotating over and over in my head.

I knew that I couldn't have been captured by the Taliban. I remembered that I was in England, not in Afghanistan. At least, I assumed I was still in England. But could I assume anything? The world had suddenly gone mad.

I felt dizzy. Why couldn't I stand up properly?

Then I remembered that too.

I reached down to the floor with my right leg. Nothing. My prosthesis was missing. I could feel the empty right trouser leg flapping against my left calf as I moved my leg back and forth.

Standing up, even on one leg, had vastly improved the pain in my back and shoulders, and feeling was beginning to return to my hands with the onset of horrendous pins and needles. But that was a pain I could bear. It was a good sign. In fact, it was the only good sign I could think of at the moment.

My head went on throbbing, and I continued to feel sick.

I turned my head from side to side, which did nothing to improve my nausea. Not a chink of light was visible at any point through the hood. I heel-and-toed myself through half a revolution and looked again. Still nothing.

I was at home in darkness, but even so, I closed my eyes tight. I had discovered many years ago that with my eyes firmly held shut I could somehow switch off that part of my brain that dealt with visual images and increase the concentration on my other senses.

I listened but could hear nothing, save for my own breathing inside the hood.

I smelled the air, but the overpowering stench of vomit clouded out almost everything. There was, however, a faint sweet smell alongside it. Glue, perhaps, I thought, or something like an alcoholic solvent.

With my now recovered and responsive fingers, I searched the space above my head. My wrists were tightly bound together by some sort of thin plastic, which was in turn attached to a chain. I followed the chain along its short length until I came to a ring fixed into the solid wall. The ring was set just over my head height, six-feet-six or so from the floor, and was about two inches across. I could feel that the chain was secured to it by a padlock.

I leaned forwards against the wall. There was something running horizontally that was sticking into my elbows. I couldn't quite get my hands low enough to feel it, so I used my face through the cloth. The horizontal bar ran in both directions as far as I could feel, with a small ledge above it. I banged on the wall with my arms, and suddenly I knew where I was.

I was in a stable. The horizontal bar and ledge that I could feel was the top of the wooden boarding that runs around a stall to protect a horse from kicking out at the unforgiving brick or stone. And the ring in the wall was there to tie up the horse, or to hang a hay net.

But which stable was I in? Was it in my mother's stable yard? Was Ian Norland asleep upstairs?

I shouted. "Can anyone hear me? Help! Help!"

I went on shouting for ages, but no one came running. I don't think the hood helped. My voice sounded very loud to me inside it, but I wondered if the noise had even penetrated beyond the stable.

I was pretty sure I wasn't at Kauri House Stables. When I stopped shouting to listen, it was too quiet. Even if there had been an empty stall in my mother's yard, there would be horses nearby, and horses make noises, even at night, and especially if someone is shouting their head off next door.

I was beginning to be particularly irritated by the hood, not least by having to breathe vomit fumes, even if it was my own vomit. I tried to hold the material and pull it off, but it was tied too tightly around my neck and I couldn't reach down with my hands far enough to untie it. I would just have to stand the irritation. It was nothing compared to the previous pain in my shoulders.

I stood on my one leg for a long time. Occasionally I would lean back against the wall, but mostly I just stood.

I wondered how long I had been here before I woke, and how much longer I was to remain. But that decision wasn't mine.