Cut Throat (47 page)

‘True, but you managed to bash the back of your head somewhere along the way and we can't be too careful.' He looked at Ross thoughtfully. ‘So what's the story? Why the binge? Were you celebrating or trying to drown your sorrows?'

‘Neither. I don't drink. What I mean is – not like that.' An image almost settled in his mind's eye. ‘There was somebody else . . .'

‘Well, if there was, they should be shot for letting you drive like that,' the doctor remarked. ‘Let's just have another little look.'

He took the slim torch out of his bag again and, asking Ross to look straight ahead, shone it into his eyes.

‘Yes, that's okay,' he said after a moment. ‘You'll be right as rain just as soon as you get rid of that massive hangover you must have. I just hope it was worth it.' He put the torch away. ‘You're moving very stiffly. Let's take that shirt off and have a proper look.'

‘How did they find me?' Ross asked, obediently undoing buttons. ‘I remember being in a wood.'

‘Not when they found you,' the doctor said. ‘Member of the public reported a car in a ditch. We sent out and there you were.'

Ross shook his head. It didn't make sense. He stood up and let the shirt slip from his shoulders, catching it as it reached his hands.

The doctor frowned as his eyes flickered over Ross' colourful torso. Sucking his teeth, he moved round behind Ross and came back to face him. ‘You've been in the wars already, it would appear. How did that happen?'

‘Riding accident,' he said briefly.

Grey-hair looked sympathetic. ‘You're not having much luck,' he observed. Then the penny dropped. ‘Ah, yes. Now I've placed you. You're that American showjumper. I saw it in the paper. Nasty fall. Were you drinking to dull the pain?'

‘No. I told you. I didn't drink by choice,' Ross persisted. ‘There was someone else there. I was forced to drink.'

‘Ah, yes. So you said,' the doctor remembered. He finished his examination. ‘We get dozens of cases like yours in here every week and most of them have some story to tell. Accept it, lad. I'm afraid they have all the evidence they need. Blood-alcohol levels probably three or four times the legal limit. Found at the wheel of a vehicle on a public highway.' He shook his head. ‘Your driving days are over for a while, I'm afraid. In England that is,' he added as an afterthought, putting his instruments back in his bag. ‘You can put your shirt back on.'

‘What happened to the bottle? Fingerprint it, then you'll see,' Ross said desperately. ‘I never touched it.'

The doctor shook his head again, sadly. ‘Give it up, lad. I don't know what they've done with the bottle. They may have thrown it away by now, for all I know. You are all the evidence they need.'

‘Well, can you ask? Please?'

‘You're serious, aren't you?' The doctor regarded him thoughtfully. ‘Okay. I'll see what I can do, but don't get your hopes too high.'

‘Thanks,' Ross said gratefully. He didn't know if it was the hot tea, his groggy state or a combination of the two, but suddenly he had begun to feel shaky and a sweat broke out on his body. He sat down weakly on the bed and was starting to roll up his sleeves when the doctor put out a hand and caught his wrist.

‘What's this?'

Ross looked down. Both his wrists were red raw and slightly puffy. He frowned. ‘I can't remember. I don't know what happened.'

The doctor fished in his bag once more.

‘I think we should have a record of those,' he suggested, producing a camera. ‘In case your memory returns. They look like rope burns to me.'

Ross held his arms out to be photographed, trying to force his mind back past the blackout. It stubbornly refused to go.

‘When can I go home?' he asked, when the doctor had taken a number of shots from all angles.

‘That depends. The amount you had, you'll still be way over the limit, but you're rational, so as long as you don't intend to drive, I expect you'll be able to leave as soon as you've been charged. But it's really not up to me, I just advise.'

‘So when will that be? And what
is
the time, anyway?'

Ross' new watch had vanished, along with his wallet, belt and boots. To prevent him from doing himself an injury, he supposed. Like he had the energy.

The doctor lifted a wrist. ‘Just gone eight. The custody officer will be with you in ten minutes or so. You'll have to take a breath test, then he'll formally charge you and you'll be bailed to appear in court at a later date. We won't have the results of your blood test for a week or two. Oh, and you'll have to sign a form giving permission for that. If you refuse, that's an offence in itself.'

Ross nodded and sighed deeply, both of which he immediately regretted.

As the door closed behind the doctor, Ross lay back on the bed and pieced together what little he could remember with what he'd been told. Most of the previous evening remained a blank but one thing began to be depressingly clear.

He'd been neatly set up.

In due time the custody officer appeared and Ross, his boots returned to him, followed the officer and the young PC to the charge room. He was led across to what looked like a piece of office equipment, where he stood swaying dizzily until the constable fetched him a chair. He sank on to it gratefully and presently the room began to behave as a room should; that is, the floor stopped heaving and the walls looked more or less vertical.

‘Take a deep breath and then blow into this tube until I tell you to stop,' one of the policemen instructed him.

Ross complied, the effort making him light-headed once more.

Presently, the custody officer's voice penetrated the mists. He seemed to have started without Ross. ‘. . .  are charged that at twenty-three-hundred hours on the evening of Tuesday the second of August . . .'

They'll be finishing morning stables by now, Ross thought. What would they be saying? If he hadn't been missed the night before, they would certainly have discovered his absence by now. What would they be thinking? What had Franklin thought when he hadn't shown up last night?

The officer's voice drifted back, reciting the charge automatically from long experience: ‘. . .  on a road called,' he consulted his paperwork, ‘Sandy Lane, while the proportion of alcohol in your blood thereof exceeded the prescribed limit.'

A drunk driver, Ross thought, crushed. Oh, God! What would the Colonel say? And Lindsay? Would she believe him guilty?

‘Do you understand the charge?' the officer asked in the tone of one who has been obliged to repeat himself.

‘Yes,' Ross said dully. ‘But I wasn't driving. The jeep was parked.'

‘With its lights and ignition on,' the policeman said, glancing at the report. ‘Do you normally park in the hedge?'

‘If you'd just fingerprint the bottle,' Ross said desperately. He scanned the officer's face and gave up. He reached for the proffered pen. ‘Okay. Where do I sign?'

A few minutes later, the rest of his belongings restored to him, Ross found himself in the reception area trying to gather his rambling thoughts. In his pocket a printout from the station breathalyser recorded a reading more than twice the legal limit of thirty-five microgrammes of alcohol to one hundred millilitres of breath. It seemed the deciding factor in the matter of his early release was the lack of any previous record.

His jeep had apparently been left where the police had picked him up, which was, he was informed, current policy. The custody officer had offered to ring Oakley Manor and arrange for him to be collected but Ross declined. He decided a taxi would be infinitely preferable to Bill Scott's company, just at the moment.

His mobile phone hadn't been among his belongings and while he wavered between finding the payphone, and the altogether more tempting option of collapsing on to the nearest seat, an immaculately suited figure unfolded itself from behind a newspaper and stood up.

‘Well, I must say it's about time,' Roland said peevishly, coming forward. ‘I've been sitting here for absolutely ages and the coffee is diabolical.' He indicated a vending machine on the wall. ‘Bloody instant stuff! I say, do you feel quite well? You don't look at all the thing.'

Ross found Roland's idiotic chatter more than usually irritating.

‘Oh, I feel just tickety-boo,' he replied waspishly.

‘That's all right then,' Roland said, happily. ‘The car's outside, if you're ready to go.'

He put a supporting hand under the American's elbow, much as one would to assist an elderly relative, and steered him towards the door.

Ross would dearly have liked to have pulled his arm free and made his own way out but felt that falling flat on his face would rather rob the gesture of its effect.

Outside the door and squinting uncomfortably in the unsympathetic sunlight, Ross was assailed by four or five aggressive reporters bristling with microphones, tape-recorders and cameras. For a moment, he didn't associate their presence with his own but then the flashbulbs went off and the questions started.

Beside him, Roland tensed and swore.

‘Someone's been busy,' he muttered. ‘Don't say anything. Not a word!'

Taking him firmly by the arm, he guided Ross purposefully across the road to his parked car, jostled all the way by the predatory news-gatheres. Opening the passenger door, he propelled the American inside and then slid across the black bonnet with surprising agility and opened his own door.

Still standing, he held up a hand to silence the persistent voices.

‘I don't know what you've heard, but there's obviously been a mistake,' he announced, clearly and with authority. ‘There is no story. Go and report a church fête or something.'

He slid smoothly into the car, started the engine and drove away while the reporters were still looking at one another in disgust.

Glancing in his mirror, Roland laughed. ‘It wouldn't have worked on Fleet Street,' he said. ‘But with the local press . . .'

‘You've done that before,' Ross said thoughtfully. He was watching the Colonel's son closely and almost saw the upper-class-twit mask slip back into place.

‘Oh, all the time,' he agreed airily. ‘I used to manage a rock band, you know.'

Ross' eyes narrowed.

‘I don't believe you,' he said after a moment.

‘Quite right. I'm an inveterate liar,' Roland said cheerfully. ‘I shouldn't believe half of what I say, if I were you.'

Ross subsided into silence. He was in no fit state for verbal sparring. Besides, he remembered abruptly, he was sitting in the very same car he had worked so hard to lose the evening before.

‘Why were you following me last night?' he asked, with bluntness that a clearer head might have tempered.

Roland was not noticeably disconcerted. ‘I wanted to see where you were going,' he said reasonably, throwing the car into a right-angled bend with no perceptible slackening of speed.

‘I should have thought you already knew that,' Ross said, instinctively leaning into the bend.

‘That office door is thicker than you might think,' Roland observed unashamedly as the hatchback settled comfortingly back on to all four wheels.

Ross was speechless. He thought Roland might at least have had the decency to look a little embarrassed.

He glanced sideways and smiled disarmingly. ‘Ah, I see I've shocked you. Call it incurable nosiness, if you will. I've always suffered from it. Lamentable, I know, but we all have our faults. Don't we?' he added, almost as an afterthought.

Ross let that pass. A mile or two slid by and he closed his eyes, feeling lousy.

‘Just where did you abandon your jeep, exactly?' Roland asked after a few blissfully silent minutes.

Ross stirred and gave approximate directions. ‘The police said it was called Sandy Lane.'

‘Uncommonly helpful fellows, the police,' Roland said approvingly.

‘How did you know where I was? And how the hell did the press know?'

‘I don't know how the local press knew, unless some public-spirited individual saw you being brought in and told them,' Roland said, skilfully passing two cars and a crawling tractor in the teeth of an oncoming juggernaut.

Ross winced.

‘As for me,' Roland continued, ‘I'm here on Father's orders. He was woken at half-past seven this morning by an enthusiastic correspondent from the
Sportsman
, demanding to know if he was aware that his star employee was at that moment languishing in the local nick, faced with a drink-driving charge.'

Ross' heart sank. No chance then to break the news gently and plead his own, edited side of the story. Though quite what he could have said was debatable. There was no need to ask how the Colonel had received the news. His anger and disgust were all too easy to imagine.

‘You're very quiet,' Roland observed, seemingly unaware of the bombshell he had just dropped. ‘Probably just not a morning person, I expect.'

Ross couldn't be bothered to summon another withering look.

The jeep, when they came up with it, was exactly where it had been left the night before. It had no wheels, headlights or windscreen, and what was left was completely burnt out, but it
was
still there.

Ross stared at the blackened wreck and made the discovery that he was beyond feeling. With the news about the Colonel, he had touched rock bottom and there was nowhere lower to go.

‘Drunks, I expect,' Roland said judiciously. ‘There are a lot of them about.'