Дик Фрэнсис - High Stakes

‘What did you say?’

I tried again. ‘Not drunk,’ I said.

Someone laughed without mirth.

‘Just smell his breath.’

How did I know I wasn’t drunk? The answer eluded me. I just knew I wasn’t drunk... because I knew I hadn’t drunk enough... or any... alcohol. How did I know? I just knew. How did I know?

While these hopeless thoughts spiralled around in the chaos inside my head a lot of strange fingers were feeling around in my hair.

‘He has banged his head, damn it. There’s quite a large swelling.’

‘He’s no worse than when they brought him in, doc. Better, if anything.’

‘Scott,’ I said suddenly.

‘What’s that?’

‘Scott.’

‘Is that your name?’

I tried to sit up. The lights whirled giddily.

‘Where... am I?’

‘That’s what they all say.’

‘In a cell, my lad, that’s where.’

In a cell.

‘What?’ I said.

‘In a cell at Savile Row police station. Drunk and incapable.’

I couldn’t be.

‘Look, constable, I’ll just take a blood test. Then I’ll do those other jobs, then come back and look at him, to make sure. I don’t think we’ve a fracture here, but we can’t take the chance.’

‘Right, doc.’

The prick of a needle reached me dimly. Waste of time, I thought. Wasn’t drunk. What was I... besides ill, giddy, lost and stuck in limbo? Didn’t know. Couldn’t be bothered to think. Slid without struggling into a whirling black sleep.

The next awakening was in all ways worse. For a start, I wasn’t ready to be dragged back from the dark. My head ached abominably, bits of my body hurt a good deal and over all I felt like an advanced case of seasickness.

‘Wakey, wakey, rise and shine. Cup of tea for you and you don’t deserve it.’

I opened my eyes. The bright light was still there but now identifiable not as some gross moon but as a simple electric bulb near the ceiling.

I shifted my gaze to where the voice had come from. A middle-aged policeman stood there with a paper cup in one hand. Behind him, an open door to a corridor. All round me, the close walls of a cell. I lay on a reasonably comfortable bed with two blankets keeping me warm.

‘Sobering up, are you?’

‘I wasn’t... drunk.’ My voice came out hoarse and my mouth felt as furry as a mink coat.

The policeman held out the cup. I struggled on to one elbow and took it from him.

‘Thanks.’ The tea was strong, hot and sweet. I wasn’t sure it didn’t make me feel even sicker.

‘The doc’s been back twice to check on you. You were drunk all right. Banged your head, too.’

‘But I wasn’t...’

‘You sure were. The doc did a blood test to make certain.’

‘Where are my clothes?’

‘Oh yeah. We took ’em off. They were wet. I’ll get them.’

He went out without shutting the door and I spent the few minutes he was away trying to sort out what was happening. I could remember bits of the night, but hazily. I knew who I was. No problem there. I looked at my watch: seven-thirty. I felt absolutely lousy.

The policeman returned with my suit which was wrinkled beyond belief and looked nothing like the one I’d set out in.

Set out... Where to?

‘Is this... Savile Row? West end of London?’

‘You remember being brought in then?’

‘Some of it. Not much.’

‘The patrol car picked you up somewhere in Soho at around four o’clock this morning.’

‘What was I doing there?’

‘I don’t know, do I? Nothing, as far as I know. Just sitting dead drunk on the pavement in the pouring rain.’

‘Why did they bring me here if I wasn’t doing anything?’

‘To save you from yourself,’ he said without rancour. ‘Drunks make more trouble if we leave them than if we bring them in, so we bring them in. Can’t have drunks wandering out into the middle of the road and causing accidents or breaking their silly skulls falling over or waking up violent and smashing shop windows as some of them do.’

‘I feel ill.’

‘What d’you expect? If you’re going to be sick there’s a bucket at the end of the bed.’

He gave me a nod in which sympathy wasn’t entirely lacking, and took himself away.

About an hour later I was driven with three other gentlemen in the same plight to attend the Marlborough Street Magistrates’ Court. Drunks, it seemed, were first on the agenda. Every day’s agenda.

In the interim I had become reluctantly convinced of three things.

First was that even though I could not remember drinking, I had at four a.m. that morning been hopelessly intoxicated. The blood test, analysed at speed because of the bang on my head, had revealed a level of two hundred and ninety milligrammes of alcohol per centilitre of blood which, I had been assured, meant that I had drunk the equivalent of more than half a bottle of spirits during the preceding few hours.

The second was that it would make no difference at all if I could convince anyone that at one-thirty I had been stone cold sober seventy miles away in Berkshire. They would merely say I had plenty of time to get drunk on the journey.

And the third and perhaps least welcome of all was that I seemed to have collected far more sore spots than I could account for.

I had remembered, bit by bit, my visit to Jody. I remembered trying to fight all three men at once, which was an idiotic sort of thing to attempt in the first place, even without the casual expertise of the man in sun glasses. I remembered the squashy feel when my fist connected with his nose and I knew all about the punches he’d given me in return. Even so...

I shrugged. Perhaps I didn’t remember it all, like I didn’t remember getting drunk. Or perhaps... Well, Ganser Mays and Jody both had reason to dislike me, and Jody had been wearing jodhpur boots.

The court proceedings took ten minutes. The charge was “drunk in charge”. In charge of what, I asked. In charge of the police, they said.

‘Guilty or not guilty?’

‘Guilty,’ I said resignedly.

‘Fined five pounds. Do you need time to pay?’

‘No, sir.’

‘Good. Next, please.’

Outside, in the little office where I was due to pay the fine, I telephoned Owen Idris. Paying after all had been a problem, as there had proved to be no wallet in my rough-dried suit. No cheque book either, nor, when I came to think of it, any keys. Were they all by any chance at Savile Row, I asked. Someone telephoned. No, they weren’t. I had had nothing at all in my pockets when picked up. No means of identification, no money, no keys, no pen, no handkerchief.

‘Owen? Bring ten pounds and a taxi to Marlborough Street Court.’

‘Very good, sir.’

‘Right away.’

‘Of course.’

I felt hopelessly groggy. I sat in an upright chair to wait and wondered how long it took for half a bottle of spirits to dry out.

Owen came in thirty minutes and handed me the money without comment. Even his face showed no surprise at finding me in such a predicament and unshaven into the bargain. I wasn’t sure that I appreciated his lack of surprise. I also couldn’t think of any believable explanation. Nothing to do but shrug it off, pay the five pounds and get home as best I could. Owen sat beside me in the taxi and gave me small sidelong glances every hundred yards.

I made it upstairs to the sitting-room and lay down flat on the sofa. Owen had stayed downstairs to pay the taxi and I could hear him talking to someone down in the hall. I could do without visitors, I thought. I could do without everything except twenty-four hours of oblivion.

The visitor was Charlie.

‘Your man says you’re in trouble.’

‘Mm.’

‘Good God.’ He was standing beside me, looking down. ‘What on earth have you been doing?’