He departed back to his home in north London, again looking nervously from side to side. I was left to ponder whether I was any further on in finding out how, and why, Julian Trent had his fingers into the Scot Barlow murder.
Steve Mitchell’s trial was now less than a week away and we still had almost nothing to use in his defence except to claim that he definitely didn’t murder Scot Barlow, that someone else did – someone who was making it appear that our client was responsible. A classic frame-up, in fact, that no one else could see, not least because Steve Mitchell was not the most likable of characters and people didn’t seem to care enough whether he was convicted or not. But I cared. I cared for the sake of justice, and I also cared for the sake of my personal survival. But were the two compatible?
I could foresee that the trial was unlikely to fill the two weeks that had been allocated for it on the Oxford Crown Court calendar unless we came up with something a bit more substantial, and quickly.
After a sandwich lunch at my desk, I took a taxi to University College Hospital to see an orthopaedic surgeon, with my left leg resting straight across the back seat. Seven whole weeks had now passed since I had woken up in Cheltenham General Hospital with a pile-driver of a headache that had made my skull feel as if it were bursting. With a return to consciousness had also come the discovery that I had to remain flat on my back, my left leg in traction, with a myriad of tubes running from an impressive collection of clear plastic bags above my left shoulder to an intravenous needle contraption in my forearm.
‘You are lucky to be alive,’ a smiling nurse had cheerfully informed me. ‘You’ve been in a coma for three days.’
My head had hurt so much that I had rather wished that I had remained so for another three.
‘What happened?’ I had croaked at her from inside a clear plastic mask that had sat over my nose and mouth and which, I’d assumed, was to deliver oxygen to the patient.
‘You fell off your horse.’
I had suddenly remembered everything – everything, that is, up to the point of the fall.
‘I didn’t fall off,’ I had croaked back at her. ‘The horse fell.’ An important distinction for every jockey, although the nurse hadn’t seemed to appreciate the difference.
‘How is my horse?’ I had asked her.
She had looked at me in amazement. ‘I have no idea,’ she had said. ‘I’m only concerned with you.’
Over the next few hours my headache had finally succumbed to increasing doses of intravenous morphine and the roaring fire in my throat had been extinguished by countless sips of iced water via a green sponge on a stick.
Sometime after it was dark, a doctor had arrived to check on my now-conscious form and he had informed me of the full catalogue of injuries that I had sustained, first by hitting the ground at thirty miles and hour and then having more than half a ton of horse land on top of me.
My back was broken, he had said, with three vertebrae cracked right through but, fortunately for me, my spinal cord was intact, thanks probably to the back protector that I had been wearing under my silks. Four of my ribs had been cracked and one of those had punctured a lung that had subsequently partially collapsed. My head had made hard contact with something or other and my brain had been badly bruised, so much so that a neurosurgeon had been called to operate to reduce the pressure inside my skull by fitting a valve above my right ear that would drain away the excess fluid. My left knee had been broken, the doctor had explained, and he himself had operated to fix it as best he could, but only time would tell how successful he had been.
‘So will I live?’ I had asked him flippantly.
‘It was a bit touch and go for a while,’ he had replied seriously. ‘But I think you will. There was no real damage to your main internal organs other than a little bruising to the left kidney, and a small tear in your left lung that will heal itself. Yes, I think you’ll be fine in time, especially now you are conscious and there doesn’t appear to be any major damage to your brain either.’
‘And will I ride again?’ I’d asked him more seriously.
‘More difficult to say,’ he’d replied. ‘Again, time will tell. I suspect it will depend on how mad you are. I personally think that all you jump jockeys have a screw loose. The same ones come in here year after year to be patched up and plastered.’ He shook his head. ‘They’re completely bonkers.’
‘How about my horse?’ I had asked him.
‘I don’t know,’ he’d said. ‘But surely it wasn’t your own horse you were riding?’
‘Yes it was,’ I’d said. I had tried explaining about being an amateur jockey and the Foxhunter Chase but he hadn’t really been interested, and he had no idea whether Sandeman had been injured or not, or even if he was alive. It had only been when Paul and Laura Newington had come to see me later that evening that I had heard the full story of the disaster.
They had been watching the race from the stands and they were just getting excited about the prospect of another famous win when Sandeman and I had so spectacularly disappeared in a flurry of legs, and then we had both lain prostrate and unmoving on the turf.
Paul, it seemed, had run the half-mile from the grandstands, down the course, to where we had both been hidden from the sight of the thousands of spectators behind hastily erected green canvas screens. Sandeman, it appeared, had been badly winded and had also damaged his back. He had taken a full fifteen minutes to get gingerly to his feet and only Paul’s personal intervention had prevented the racecourse vet from putting him down there and then. Fortunately for me, no questions had been asked about whether or not to shoot the jockey. Paul told me that I had been lying on the turf being attended to by the paramedics and the racecourse doctor for nearly an hour before being lifted ever so carefully into an ambulance and driven away at a snail’s pace. The following race had been required to bypass the fence and was nearly abandoned altogether.
‘There was someone else down there as well,’ he had said. I had thought he must have meant Julian Trent but I’d been wrong. ‘Agirl. Ran all the way down the course in high-heeled shoes. Nice looker. Called herself Eleanor. Do you know her?’
I’d nodded to him.
‘She seemed a bit cut up about you,’ he’d said, almost surprised. ‘I thought she must have the wrong guy but she was certain it was you. She said she had met me before at that do at Newbury in December but I don’t remember.’
‘What happened to her?’ I’d asked him.
‘I think she went in the ambulance with you but I don’t know. I was so busy trying to get Sandeman sorted out.’
‘How is he?’ I’d asked him.
‘Not great,’ he’d said. ‘He was taken straight to the equine hospital in Lambourn. They are treating him for a badly strained back and severe bruising.’
I’d laughed at him. ‘Eleanor is a vet at that hospital.’
‘What a coincidence,’ he’d said laughing back.
But I didn’t like coincidences.
‘I think that cast can come off your leg,’ said the orthopaedic surgeon. ‘The X-rays show the knee mending well and there’s no reason why it needs to be immobilized any longer. How long is it now?’
‘Seven and a half weeks,’ I said.
‘Mmm,’ he pondered. ‘Should be fine, but you will need to keep using the crutches and just put a little weight on it for a while. Build up the weight over the next few weeks.’
‘What about my back?’ I asked him.
‘The scans show that the bones are mending slowly but you still need to keep that straightjacket on for another six weeks at least.’
He was referring to the hard white plastic shell that I wore to prevent me bending my back. The damned thing reached from just below my neck almost to my groin in the front and from my shoulder blades to the top of my buttocks behind. It was very uncomfortable and made sitting at a desk near impossible, but wearing it had at least allowed me to walk around. Without it I would probably still be lying flat on my back.