Emily returned with the doctor. I knew from personal experience that saying no to Emily was difficult, in fact, I now fervently wished I’d said yes to her. It might have saved all this bother.
‘How are you feeling?’ asked the doctor.
‘Fine,’ I croaked. ‘Apart from a sore neck and a croaky voice.’
‘Your vitals are good and stable,’ he said, looking at the chart. He came forward and examined my neck. ‘You were very lucky. Your larynx is only bruised and not fractured. I see no reason why you can’t go home, but you shouldn’t be left alone for the next twelve hours or so. Asphyxia patients can sometimes develop cerebral oedemas and they are very dangerous.’
‘What’s a cerebral oedema?’ Angela asked him.
‘A fluid build-up that causes the brain to swell in the skull. It’s very nasty and often the last person to realize they have one is the patient. But I don’t think you’ll have a problem. I would have expected to see something by now if you were.’
‘We’ll look after him,’ Emily said, holding my hand.
‘Fine,’ said the doctor. ‘I’ll get the discharge papers. But get him back here immediately if he starts to act strangely or slurs his words.’
The doctor went out of the cubicle and I swung my legs over the side of the couch. I looked at my watch. It was a quarter past three.
‘Come on,’ I said. ‘Let’s get out of here.’
‘Where to?’ Angela asked as we sat in her Volvo in the hospital car park. She was in front while Emily and I were sitting together in the back and, yes, I had checked the car was empty of potential stranglers before we’d opened the doors.
‘You can’t come back to our house. We’re full with Brendan and Gillian, and their boys. Not unless you want to sleep in the marquee with Tatiana and her friends.’
‘We’ll go to my place,’ Emily said decisively. ‘I’ll look after him.’
I could see Angela giggling via the rear-view mirror. I suspected that this had been a rehearsed exchange.
‘Where is your place?’ I asked Emily.
‘In Royston,’ she said. ‘About a mile from Nick and Angela.’
‘I need to be at Newmarket racecourse in under four hours, and Royston’s in totally the wrong direction.’
‘But surely you’re not going to do the show now,’ said Angela.
‘Why not?’ I said. ‘As long as my voice doesn’t get any worse, I’ll be fine.’
‘But someone has just tried to kill you.’
‘All the more reason for going on.’
‘You’re crazy.’
‘Maybe I am,’ I said. ‘But I’ll be damned if I am going to sit back and do nothing. Someone tried to kill me tonight and I’m bloody well going to find out who it was.’ I yawned, which I discovered was not very pleasant when one had a sore windpipe. ‘Please take me to Clare’s cottage. I’ll try and get some sleep, and I’ll order a taxi to collect me in the morning. I need to change my clothes anyway. I can hardly go on the Morning Line wearing this.’
I saw Angela look at Emily in the mirror. Their little plan was falling apart and I could tell that they didn’t particularly like it.
‘Look,’ I croaked. ‘I am not trying to be evasive. I promise. I would more than happily go to Emily’s place under different circumstances but, right now, I’d like to go to Clare’s cottage.’
‘One of us would have to stay with you,’ Angela said. ‘The doctor was pretty insistent.’
‘It had better be me who stays with Mark,’ Emily said. ‘Nick will be wondering where you are already.’ She laughed. ‘He’s probably in the marquee trying to keep those drunken randy boys away from Tatiana.’
‘Don’t even joke about it,’ Angela said. ‘All right, Mark, you win. Clare’s cottage it is.’
She started the Volvo and pointed it towards Newmarket.
In the end, all three of us stayed at Clare’s cottage, Angela having been assured by Nicholas on the telephone that all was well both at their house and in the marquee, where Tatiana was safely cocooned amongst her girlfriends.
Angela and Emily slept together in the guest room while I settled down on the sofa in the sitting room downstairs. I suppose it would have been all right to use Clare’s bed but I sensed an air of collective relief when I had volunteered to be on the sofa.
Even though it was almost four o’clock by the time I turned out the light, I found it difficult to sleep. My mind was racing with too many unanswered questions, the uppermost ones being who had tried to kill me and why.
I had told DCI Perry about Mitchell Stacey, but did I really believe he could be responsible? He had certainly shown an ugly side to his nature in the car parks both at Newmarket and at Stratford, but he was a bull-in-a-china-shop sort who would surely confront me man to man rather than sneaking up and trying to strangle me to death anonymously.
But what other suspects did I have?
None.
And what could anyone else gain by killing me?
Surely Iain Ferguson didn’t imagine that his career would advance more quickly if I was, quite literally, taken out of the picture?
I must have drifted off to sleep eventually because the next thing I knew I was wide awake and listening hard for the noise that had awakened me.
There had been a metallic clank. Or had I dreamed it?
I lay in the dark, listening. There it was again, and it was outside.
I quietly stood up from the sofa and went over to the window, my heart again pounding hard inside my chest.
I pulled back the heavy curtains to find that it was daylight and people were already up and about. Racing folk start work early and the metallic clanks had been the sound of Geoffrey Grubb’s stable staff fetching metal buckets of water for the horses.
I laughed at myself. I must be getting paranoid.
I looked at my watch. It was half past six, I’d been asleep for only about two hours. But it was high time I got myself moving if I wasn’t going to be late.
I went into the kitchen and made myself a cup of instant coffee, which went some way to waking me up properly. Then I made two more cups and took them up to the guest bedroom.
Angela and Emily were both still fast asleep, and it took me about a minute of gentle prodding to wake one of them.
‘Go away,’ Angela said, putting her head under the pillow.
‘I need to go in ten minutes,’ I said. ‘Shall I take your car? I could be back by ten past nine.’
‘Do what you like,’ she murmured.
I collected some clothes and my electric razor from my suitcase and went into the bathroom to shower, shave and dress. A feeling of lumps in my throat that had persisted all the previous night had finally begun to ease and my voice seemed a little more normal. And the little red spots in my eyes and on my face had almost faded away to nothing.
I emerged from the bathroom to find Emily standing there wrapped in a sheet, hopping from foot to foot.
‘We’re both coming with you,’ she said. ‘Though God knows why. Angela’s said something about dropping you off and then going home.’
‘But I need to go right now.’
‘So do I. I’m bursting.’ She grinned, pushed past me and closed the bathroom door.
I laughed. I decided I could get to like Emily, maybe to like her a lot. Just as long as someone didn’t succeed in killing me first.
‘What do you mean, someone tried to murder you? That’s the worst excuse I’ve ever heard for someone being late.’
‘It’s not an excuse,’ I said. ‘It’s true.’
I could tell that Lisa, the Morning Line producer, didn’t believe a word I’d said and she was clearly not happy. I’d only been five minutes late but there was another crisis going on with the programme’s main guest, who was going to be much later.