Dick Francis's Damage

by Felix Francis

  Damn it, I thought, it’s broken.

  I tried shouting.

  “Help! Help!”

  Nothing happened. No one came.

  I tried to shout again, but it hurt so much that my cries were little more than a whisper. The rain drumming on the garbage cans in my neighbor’s front garden was making more noise.

  I sat very still, and gradually the pain subsided from a totally debilitating 10 to a merely agonizing 9.

  Meanwhile, I was getting cold.

  The rain had completely soaked my clothes right down to the skin. Jumping fully clothed into a swimming pool could not have made me more wet.

  April was not the coldest month of the year, but, at half past eight in the evening, it was proving to be quite cold enough and I had begun to shiver uncontrollably. It may have been due to the cold, or maybe to the shock, or probably a bit of both, but it certainly did nothing to ease the severe ache that had gripped me right across my upper body.

  Still no one came. Anyone sensible was sheltering from the weather, not sitting in an ever-deepening puddle on a suburban street becoming hypothermic while waiting for nonexistent rescuers to arrive.

  The very last trace of daylight faded away into total darkness, with only the streetlight down the road providing any useful illumination. I looked at the plastic bag lying beside me that still contained the night vision monocular and wished it was a hot-water bottle.

  I needed to do something or else I would die here of the cold just ten small steps from my own front door.

  I decided to stand up, using my right hand to pull on my neighbor’s railing. The plan seemed to be fine in principle but not so good in execution. It required me to let go of my left wrist, which gravity then caused to hang down unsupported as I rose.

  I screamed and swayed precariously as a wave of nausea and dizziness swept over me. I steadied myself and again took my left hand in my right, which improved the situation slightly.

  Those ten small steps took me a good five minutes, but I made it.

  Finally, I leaned my head against the doorbell and kept it there.

  Lydia opened the door with thunder in her eyes that turned to instant shock and concern.

  “Oh my God!” she said. “What happened?”

  “I was hit by a car,” I croaked, removing my forehead from the bell.

  She steered me in through the front door and into our front room, where I perched on the arm of the sofa.

  “I’m calling an ambulance,” she said, running off to find her phone in the kitchen.

  I didn’t complain. An ambulance sounded just fine to me.

  “It’s on the way,” she said, coming back. “Just a few minutes.”

  I was still shaking with cold, so Lydia went to fetch the duvet from our bed and draped it around me. The weight of it on my left shoulder sent more spasms of pain shooting up into my neck, but the shivering diminished.

  “What happened?” she asked again. “Where’s the car?”

  That was a good question.

  The car hadn’t stopped. And, thinking back, I was sure that it hadn’t had any lights on despite the heavy rain and the gloom of a wet April evening in northwest London.

  The more I thought about it, the more certain I became.

  Someone had just tried to kill me.

  30

  According to one of the green-uniformed paramedics who arrived with the ambulance, my left arm wasn’t broken. It was my shoulder that had dislocated.

  “It’s more painful than a break,” he said.

  Tell me about it.

  The ambulance took me to the Emergency Room at Northwick Park Hospital, where I was forced to sit in a wheelchair and wait for over an hour while the trauma team dealt with a motorcyclist and his passenger who had come off their bike and used their heads as brakes.

  Lydia had come with me in the ambulance and she now sat next to me on a metal chair, muttering about how disgraceful it was that I had to wait so long.

  “How much longer?” I asked one of the passing nurses. “It bloody hurts.”

  “But it won’t kill you,” she replied. “I’m sorry, but there are others who need us more at the moment.”

  There was no arguing with that, so we waited in silence along with a whole host of other sick and injured members of humanity. Nine-thirty on a Friday evening was a busy time in the E.R.

  A uniformed policeman came into the unit and went over to the reception before making a beeline to me.

  “Mr. Hinkley?” he asked.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “The paramedics called me. They told me you claim to have been injured in a road traffic accident. Is that correct?”

  “Yes,” I said. “I was hit by a car on the road outside my house.”

  The policeman removed a notebook from his pocket and sat down on the chair next to me.

  “Did you speak to the driver?” he asked.

  “No,” I said. “The driver didn’t stop. In fact, I believe the driver tried to run me down on purpose.”

  That grabbed his interest. And Lydia’s as well.

  “Why do you think that?”

  “Well, for a start, because he didn’t stop. And I don’t remember the car having any lights even though it was quite dark. The driver just drove straight at me without slowing. In fact, he was still accelerating as he hit me.”

  The policeman leaned towards me slightly and sniffed.

  “Mr. Hinkley,” he said, “have you been drinking?”

  —

  EVENTUALLY someone came and wheeled me to a treatment room, but not before my notion of being an attempted murder victim had been completely trashed by the policeman.

  “Perhaps the driver just didn’t see you in the rain as you ran straight out in front of him.”

  He made it sound as if it were my fault.

  I suspected that he didn’t even believe I’d been hit by a car in the first place. I could tell from his attitude—he thought I’d had too much to drink and had simply fallen over in the street, dislocating my shoulder.

  Maybe he was right about the first bit—I probably had drunk too much—but I still knew exactly what had happened. And I was convinced that it had been deliberate.

  I had a developing bruise on my hip to prove it.

  —

  I SCREAMED a bit more, but, eventually, a doctor managed to get the ball at the top end of my humerus to slide back into its socket. It did with an audible clunk and, magically, it switched off the pain.

  From being in agony one moment, I was almost completely free of pain in the next. The relief was amazing and made me feel quite light-headed, although that might have had something to do with the bottle of sauvignon blanc that was still sloshing around in my system somewhere.

  “You’ll have to keep that arm in a sling for a while,” the doctor said. “The joint will be loose and the tendons need time to recover or it will be out again. And it will ache a bit for the next few days. Take some painkillers.”

  An ache I could cope with, and I’d happily keep it in a sling—anything to prevent it dislocating again.

  “Do you really think someone ran you down on purpose?” Lydia asked as we were in the taxi on our way home from the hospital.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “That policeman didn’t really believe you.”

  “He didn’t believe me at all,” I said. “But it’s true nevertheless.”

  “But why would anyone do that deliberately?”

  Why indeed?

  Was it just some maniac intent on hitting any random pedestrian or had I, Jeff Hinkley, been specifically targeted?

  If it were the latter, then who would want me dead?

  Leonardo?

  How could he have known where I lived? He clearly hadn’t followed me today as I�
��d come home by train and he’d been in a car, but it didn’t mean he hadn’t followed me on another day.

  Lydia and I were not in the phone book and we had chosen not to include our address in the public register of voters.

  Sure, the BHA knew where I lived, it would be on file in the personnel department and also in finance, but I didn’t think it was general knowledge among the staff.

  Not that finding someone’s address was really that difficult, I knew. I’d obtained lots of people’s addresses without their knowledge or permission.

  These days, one’s address is part of one’s identity. You are required to provide it to get anything from a credit card to a driver’s license, an income tax form to a drug prescription. Any form of insurance requires a home address, to say nothing of vehicle registration, online purchases or almost any other financial transaction.

  One is constantly being asked to provide a utility bill for everything from opening a bank account to obtaining a library card. Solely for someone to record your address.

  New money-laundering regulations have, bizarrely, made it easier for the unscrupulous few to gain previously private information about the law-abiding many, placing them at greater, not less, risk of identity theft, deception and fraud.

  And it wasn’t as if Jefferson Roosevelt Hinkley was a common name like John Smith or Harry Jones with which one could hide among the throng.

  Anyone who was capable of disrupting racing as effectively as Leonardo would have been able to find out where I lived in a heartbeat.

  But why take the risk of being spotted? As it was, I hadn’t seen the make or color of the car, but I could have, especially if it hadn’t been raining. Surely the risks involved outweighed any potential gain.

  And what did he have to gain by having me dead?

  Only that I would stop investigating. So what was it that I was doing that made it important enough to kill me?

  I was still pondering those questions when we arrived back in Spezia Road and I insisted on having a good look around before getting out of the taxi.

  Lydia and I made it safely to our front door and I checked it was properly locked behind us, rattling the door just to make sure. My sudden security concerns were making Lydia nervous.

  “Do you really think someone hit you on purpose?” she asked again.

  “Yes.”

  “But they’d have hit anyone, right? You just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

  “I’m not sure, but I don’t think so, no.”

  The implications of what I’d just said slowly registered and Lydia’s eyes widened with fear.

  “Are you telling me that someone tried explicitly to murder you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  Such a short question with such a long answer.

  “I don’t know. Obviously, I am doing something they don’t like.”

  “What?”

  “I wish I knew. Then I’d do more of it.”

  “You’re mad,” Lydia said without any humor. “You must go to the police.”

  “You saw what that achieved at the hospital. That policeman didn’t believe a single word I said.”

  “Then go and see someone more senior.”

  Would it make any difference? I couldn’t describe the car, not even its color, so what would the police have to go on? A car with a slight dent or scratch on its right front fender? There must be thousands of those, if not tens of thousands. And would they provide me with a twenty-four-hour bodyguard? Not a chance. They didn’t have the resources.

  “I’ll be careful,” I said. “No dark alleys or lonely parking lots.”

  I smiled at her, but it didn’t appear to reassure, not that I didn’t appreciate her concern.

  “Come on,” I said, “it’s late. Let’s go to bed.”

  Going to bed was one thing. Going to sleep was quite another.

  My aching left shoulder, together with my arm in the sling, prevented me from lying on my left side or on my tummy, as I normally did, and, in spite of the painkillers, the bruise on my hip ruled out lying on my right side. The most comfortable position, I discovered, was lying on my back, almost sitting up, with my head and shoulders supported by a stack of pillows.

  Between snatches of uneasy dozing, I thought back to exactly what had happened earlier, trying to recall any minor detail I might have missed.

  I remembered running down the sidewalk and then out between two cars parked on the far side of the road, opposite our front door. I must have instinctively glanced each way up and down the road to check it was clear, even though I couldn’t recall actually doing so. But I would never forget the total shock and disbelief that had accompanied my last-second awareness of the speeding car.

  I tried hard to think what had made me realize it was there. I knew that I had been aware of it fractionally before it hit me, long enough for me to register that a collision was inevitable. Perhaps it was the roaring noise of the engine. Or maybe some slight movement in my peripheral vision.

  Try as I might, I couldn’t recall anything about the car other than it hadn’t slowed down and seemed to be accelerating. That must have been due to the constantly rising note of the engine.

  However, I could vividly remember being tossed to one side by the impact, my legs being thrown up while my head went down.

  In that moment, as I’d hurtled face-first towards the concrete, I had thought undeniably that I was going to die.

  It is said that one’s whole life flashes before your eyes in that moment of realization of imminent death.

  But that didn’t happen to me.

  Far from being from the past, it was images of the future, and what I would be missing, that had materialized in my head: my wedding day, with Lydia walking down the aisle dressed exquisitely in white; the birth of a son; living in the country with a houseful of dogs and children playing in the garden.

  They had seemed so real, so clear.

  Was my subconscious trying to tell me something?

  I reached out with my right hand and touched the delightfully naked form of Lydia lying fast asleep beside me. I softly stroked her arm and shoulder with my fingertips and thanked my lucky stars that I hadn’t died.

  Yes indeed, it was high time I made an honest woman of her.

  —

  THE VISITATION ORDER arrived from Long Lartin Prison in the mail on Saturday morning as Lydia and I were having breakfast in our kitchen.

  Wow! I thought. That was quick.

  I had only sent in the request on Thursday and had imagined it would take several weeks to be processed.

  I immediately called the visitor’s booking number on the VO and was told that due to a cancellation, there was an available slot at two o’clock on the following afternoon. I took it.

  “What was all that about?” Lydia asked.

  “I have to go to prison tomorrow.”

  “Permanently?”

  “On a visit.”

  “Who to see? Should I bake a file into a cake for you to take with you?”

  “I’m going to see a man called Matthew Unwin. He killed that bookmaker at Cheltenham last month.”

  The humor drained out of her face.

  “Is that wise?” she said. “Please do be careful.”

  “I’m sure it will be quite safe. He has agreed to see me.”

  “Maybe only because he wants to kill you too.”

  It wasn’t him that I was worried about.

  31

  The lady at The Times had failed me dismally, as the announcement in the personal column failed to appear in the Saturday edition. I wasn’t particularly surprised. And, the way I felt, I didn’t particularly care.

  I spent the afternoon drugged up with painkillers, lying on the sofa in my front room, watching the racing on th
e television and wondering how I was going to get to Long Lartin in Worcestershire the following afternoon.

  My shoulder ached badly and I certainly didn’t fancy driving, even though, theoretically, I could have done it if I’d rented a car with an automatic gearbox. But I was too sore for that.

  I thought of asking Lydia to drive me there, but she had a long-standing commitment to go with her parents to visit her grandmother in Kent.

  In the end, I decided to take the train from Paddington to Evesham and get a taxi from there.

  I watched on the TV as a horse trained by Duncan Johnson won the second race at Ayr, the Future Champions Novices’ Chase.

  Duncan Johnson. He was someone else I needed to talk to.

  What connected Matthew Unwin, Duncan Johnson and Richard Young, other than they had all claimed that someone had demanded money not to dope their horses? And how about Graham Perry? Where did he fit into this jigsaw puzzle?

  Ian Tulloch had horses in training with both Duncan Johnson and Richard Young. I wondered if he had any connection to Matthew Unwin. If he had, it was something I’d not come across when I’d carried out the background check before Ian Tulloch had joined the BHA Board. Not that it would have been a problem—Matthew Unwin had been considered as a respectable member of the racing family prior to his horses testing positive for Dexedrine, in spite of his previous warning for administering Lasix.

  But had Tulloch had any dealings with Unwin since his appointment to the BHA Board?

  Next I speculated as to whether either of Ian Tulloch’s two teenage daughters had ever been treated for hyperactivity.

  How could I find out? Medical records were notoriously difficult to obtain legally, although I had a journalist friend who had claimed in the past that he could get them—for a hefty fee, mind, as bribery was involved.

  I was tempted to telephone the Tulloch family home and claim to be from a hyperactive support group to see if there was any reaction, but even I balked at such an invasion of their privacy. After all, Ian Tulloch was now chairman of the BHA, head of the organization for which I worked.

  I watched the big event of the afternoon, the Scottish Grand National from Ayr, more in dread that there would be another disruptive episode rather than in interest at which horse would win, but the race passed off without incident.