Felix Francis - Dick Francis's Front Runner

Perhaps I shouldn’t have asked.

‘Plus, of course, the ECG electrodes that are stuck on your torso.’

Of course.

Everything was removed other than the single IV line in my right arm. According to the nurses, that was so I could receive any fluids and medication without the need for separate injections. I was all in favour of that.

‘Now it’s time to get you up and walking,’ said one of them.

They helped me first sit on the edge of the bed and then to stand up, one of them hovering on each side of me in case I keeled over. I didn’t, and I was soon walking around without any real problems other than the continuous throbbing that went all the way down my front where both the doctor and the knifeman had made their various incisions.

I was moved from the Critical Care Unit to a regular surgical ward on the ninth floor, where I was allocated a single room close to the nurses’ station.

‘For better security,’ I was told.

Security.

Thankfully, murder on a London street has not yet become so commonplace as to be unworthy of reporting. Therefore, with nothing in the media, I had to assume that my two assailants must be aware by now that they had failed to deliver a fatal blow.

They knew they had failed and, furthermore, they must believe I had seen their faces. So would they try again to complete the job and dispose of the witness?

I wasn’t at all sure that being in a single room was the most secure arrangement, especially as the door had no lock. I asked the nurses to leave the door open so I could see them at their desk and, more importantly, they could see me.

I also asked them to ensure that any visitors were announced and then accompanied unless I agreed otherwise, although, in fact, the nurses were all so busy that anyone could wander into my room unseen if they were careful to wait for the desk to be clear, as it was for at least half the time.

Indeed, my first visitor waltzed into my room, unannounced and unaccompanied, about an hour after I’d moved in.

‘It’s normally you visiting me in hospital,’ she said. ‘Not the other way round.’

‘Hello, my darling big sister,’ I said, smiling at her.

‘I told you to move away from Harlesden. It’s dangerous up there. Too many robberies. Can’t you live somewhere safer, like Richmond?’

‘Flats in Richmond cost more than twice those in Harlesden,’ I said.

‘There can be no price placed on one’s safety,’ she said with gravitas.

How true.

I decided against telling her that I wasn’t actually robbed of my wallet and watch, and that my attackers would have likely followed me all the way to Timbuktu if I’d lived there.

‘Nice room,’ Faye said, standing by the window and looking out at the spectacular view over London. She turned. ‘So what happened exactly? The policeman who called just said you’d been mugged.’

‘I was attacked by two men,’ I said in a deadpan voice, trying to play down the drama. ‘One of them held me while the other one stabbed.’

‘How many times?’ she asked.

I would have preferred not to tell her any of the grisly details as it would only make her worry, but I knew she wouldn’t stop asking until she got the answers she was after, and they would be better coming from me than from the doctors or the police.

‘Thirteen.’

‘Thirteen! Good God, Jeff, that’s unbelievable.’

‘You should see my chest and tummy. There are more stitches than in a fisherman’s jersey.’ I laughed.

‘It’s no laughing matter,’ Faye said sternly.

‘Yes, it is,’ I said. ‘Be happy that I’m still here to laugh at all.’

She didn’t look very happy.

‘Have the police caught the men?’

‘Not that I’m aware of,’ I said. ‘I hope they’re still looking for them.’

I wondered just how hard they were looking. After all, it was only an attempted murder, not the real thing. But my attackers had done their best to send me on a journey that would end six feet under, and they weren’t to know that Doctor Shwan would be on hand to open my chest in the nick of time to prevent it.

Surely they were equally culpable whether I had lived or died.

According to the law, as Quentin had said, the maximum term of imprisonment for attempted murder was life, the same as for succeeding, but, in reality, both the effort expended to apprehend and the sentences passed down on the guilty were usually much less.

‘How long are you going to be in here?’ Faye asked.

‘I should be out at the weekend. As long as I don’t develop an infection.’

‘Come and stay with us.’

‘Thank you, Faye, dear, but I’ll be fine at my own place.’

She tilted her head sideways and looked at me. ‘Are you sure?’

‘Absolutely,’ I said. ‘If this affair has taught me anything, it’s that life is more precious than I’d realized. When I thought I was dying, I was in total despair, and now that I’ve survived, I have every intention of living my life to the full. The moment has arrived to move on from Lydia.’

‘Hallelujah!’ she said, lifting her hands and eyes to the heavens. ‘And about time too.’

‘Has it been that bad?’ I asked with a smile.

‘Worse,’ she said. ‘Since she left, you’ve been about as cheerful as a fatted calf at an abattoir.’

‘Oh, thanks.’

‘It’s true,’ she said. ‘Do you realize that you sigh all the time?’

‘No.’

‘Well, you do. It’s like being around a penitent monk, but less fun.’

‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘Henceforth I will be happy and jolly. I promise.’

‘There’s no need to go that far. Just be your normal self.’

We laughed out loud, and we hadn’t done that together for a long time.

Faye departed just as DI Galvin arrived, this time without his sergeant sidekick.

‘Any news?’ I asked. ‘Any arrests?’

‘Sadly, no,’ replied the inspector. ‘But we have done a check on those telephone calls and, as I suspected, they were all made from public telephones. The first was made from Waterloo Station at 8.27 p.m. on the evening before you were attacked. The second was from a call box on the corner of Parliament Square at 11.32 p.m. the same evening. The other two, on the Sunday morning, were made from the only remaining phone box in High Street Harlesden.’

‘But that’s only round the corner from my flat.’

‘Indeed,’ he said. ‘And I suspect you are right in thinking they were checking up to see if you were in. Three more calls were made to your line from that number, one at 11.50 a.m., another at twelve noon and the third some ten minutes after that.’

‘I’d gone out by then.’

‘As they would have known.’

‘Is there any CCTV coverage of those public phones?’

‘We’re looking into that but I wouldn’t hold your breath. Waterloo Station or Parliament Square are our best bet — at least we can assume that the cameras will work there. Even if there are any cameras in High Street Harlesden, they will probably have been vandalized.’

Maybe Faye had a point.

‘So what else?’ I asked.

‘Have you remembered anything new about the assailants?’ he asked.

‘Not really,’ I said. ‘Sorry.’

‘Was the one that stabbed you the bigger or the smaller of the two?’

‘The smaller.’

I stared at him. ‘How did I know that?’

‘The subconscious mind often knows lots of things that the conscious mind doesn’t register until it receives a trigger. How much smaller was he?’

‘At least a couple of inches but he was stocky and made up for his lack of height with width. The other guy was taller but leaner.’

‘Taller than you?’