Dead Heat Part 16

'Caroline,' I called out loudly.

'Shhh,' said the nurse. 'You'll wake everyone up.'

'I'm here,' said Caroline, coming and crouching down to my level.

'The brakes on my car failed,' I whispered.

'I know,' she said. 'A policeman told the doctors they thought it was the brakes failing that caused the accident.'

'It wasn't an accident,' I said.

'What do you mean?'

'I think someone tried to kill me.'

'You're really serious, aren't you?' Caroline said.

'Never more so,' I said.

I had told her all about my car not being locked at Cambridge station and about my concerns that the brakes or the steering might not have been all right on Tuesday night.

'But you don't know for sure that someone had tampered with the brakes,' she said. 'You said that they seemed OK when you drove home.'

'True,' I said. 'But there's no escaping the fact that they did fail on Wednesday morning.'

'It might have been a coincidence,' she said.

I looked at her and raised my eyebrows.

'OK, OK,' she said. 'But coincidences do happen, you know.' She held my hand. I liked that. 'So what are we going to do about it?'

'I wonder if the police have someone who would look at the brakes on my car to see if they have been interfered with?'

'Don't they have accident investigators?' Caroline asked. She yawned. 'Sorry.'

'You need to go to sleep,' I said.

'I'm fine,' she said, yawning again.

I wanted to ask her to get into the bed and sleep next to me, but I thought the nurse wouldn't like it.

'You can't stay here all night,' I said.

'Nowhere else to go.'

'Go to my cottage,' I said. 'The key must be somewhere.'

She looked through my things, which someone had thoughtfully placed in a white plastic bag in the bedside locker. There was no key.

'I remember now,' I said. 'It's on the same ring as the car keys.' Probably still with the car, I thought.

'I don't want to go to your cottage on my own anyway,' said Caroline. 'Especially not if someone really is trying to kill you. I'll stay here, thanks.'

In the end, she slept in the chair next to my bed. It was one of those chairs that reclined so that bedridden patients could be lifted into it to have a change of posture. Caroline reclined in it, covered herself with a blanket from the bed, and was asleep in seconds.

I looked at her for a while thinking that it had been a strange recipe for romance: first poison your intended, next irritate with fatuous telephone calls, then stir thoroughly at dinner before frightening badly with a life-threatening car crash, finally serve with a conspiracy theory of intended murder.

It seemed to have worked a treat.

They let me go home the following day. Caroline had convinced the doctors that I would be fine at home if she was looking after me. And who was I to object to that?

A black and yellow New Tax taxi delivered us to my cottage about one o'clock. I had called my occasional cleaner to arrange for her to meet us with her key so we could get in. Lunch presented us with another problem. I rarely had much food in the house other than stuff for breakfast since I usually ate lunch and dinner at the restaurant. Caroline briefly inspected my premises and then she searched the kitchen for food.

'I'm starving,' she said. 'At least they gave you some breakfast in the hospital, I've had nothing since yesterday morning.'

She found some sugar-coated cornflakes in the cupboard and some milk in the fridge so we sat at my tiny kitchen table and had bowls of cereal for lunch.

Carl had phoned the hospital first thing to find out how I was and, as I expected, he had given the appearance of being mildly disappointed to find that I was not only alive but my brains were unscrambled and functioning properly. The hospital operator had put him through to my bedside telephone.

'So, you're still with us, then?' he had said with a slightly frustrated tone.

'Yeah, sorry about that,' I'd said. 'How are things at the Hay Net?'

'Doing well without you,' he had said. 'As always,' he had added rather unnecessarily, I thought. Cheeky b.a.s.t.a.r.d.

For all his seemingly bad grace about my wellbeing, I couldn't really imagine that Carl would have had anything to do with a conspiracy to kill me. Surely it was just his warped sense of humour. Tiresome as they could be at times, I didn't think there was anything truly sinister behind his little irritating comments.

In fact, the more I thought about it, the less likely it seemed that anyone would seriously want me dead. Perhaps the brake failure had been coincidence after all. Anyway, tampering with brakes didn't seem to me to be a particularly good way of trying to kill someone, not unless they were driving down a steep mountain road full of hairpin bends, and steep mountain roads were somewhat conspicuous by their absence in Newmarket.

After our cereal lunch, I lay on my sofa and called the restaurant, while Caroline explored upstairs.

'Had a relapse?' Carl asked hopefully when I said I wasn't coming in.

'No,' I said. 'I've been told by the doctors to take it easy for a few days. I'll see how I get on.'

'Don't hurry back,' said Carl in a dismissive manner.

'Look,' I said, 'what's eating you at the moment? Why are you being so d.a.m.n unpleasant?'

There was a longish pause at the other end.

'It's just my way,' he said. 'I'm sorry.' There was another pause. 'I will be delighted when you get back, I promise.'

'Now, don't go too far the other way,' I said with a laugh. 'I won't know if I'm coming or going.'

'Sorry,' he said again.

'Apology accepted,' I said. 'How was lunch?'

'So so,' he said. 'But we had a good one last night. About 80 per cent full.'

'Great.'

'Everyone asked where you were. Richard told them all about your accident, which was then the talk of the place,' he said. 'Lots of people sent their best wishes. And the staff are concerned about you too.'

'Thanks.' I wasn't sure that the overfriendly Carl wasn't more annoying than the surly one, but I decided not to raise the subject again. 'Tell everyone I'm fine and I'll be back at work as soon as I can, probably by the middle of next week.'

'OK,' said Carl. 'I've booked a temporary chef from that agency in Norwich to help over the weekend. I hope that's OK.'

'Good,' I said. 'Well done, Carl.' All this mutual admiration was too much. 'Now sod off and get back to work.' I could hear him laughing as I hung up. Carl was one of the good guys, I was sure of it. Or was I?

Next I telephoned the Suffolk police to discover what had happened to my car.

'It was towed by Brady Rescue and Recovery of Kentford,' they said. 'They'll have it there.'

'Has anyone inspected it?' I asked.

'The attending officer at the accident would have briefly inspected the vehicle before it was removed.'

'Apparently,' I said, 'someone from the police told a doctor at the hospital that the accident was due to brake failure.'

'I don't know anything about that, sir.'

'Is there any way I could speak to the policeman who attended the accident?' I asked.

'Can you hold, please?' I didn't have a chance to say either yes or no before I found myself listening to a recorded message telling me of the services offered by Suffolk Constabulary. I listened to the whole thing through at least three times before a live voice came back on the line.

'I'm sorry, sir,' it said. 'The officer is not available to speak to you.'

'When will he be available?' I asked. 'Can I leave a message for him to call me?' I gave my mobile number but I didn't hold out much hope that the message would get through. They were very busy, they said, but they would see what they could do.

I called the recovery company. Yes, they said, they had my Golf but it was not in great shape. Could I come and visit, I asked. Yes, they said, any time.

Caroline returned to the sitting room after her investigation of my property.

'Nice place,' she said. 'Better than my hovel in Fulham.'

'Do you want to move in?' I asked.

'Don't push your luck, Mr Moreton,' she said, smiling. 'I've been looking for where I would be sleeping tonight.'

'But you are staying?' I said, perhaps a touch too eagerly for her liking.

'Yes,' she said, 'but not in your bedroom. If that's not OK by you, then I will go back to London now.'

'It's OK,' I said. Not brilliant, I thought, but OK.

I took some painkillers for my throbbing head and then Caroline and I went by taxi to Kentford to see my car.

As the man from the towing company had said on the telephone, it wasn't in great shape. In fact, I had to be told which one of the wrecks was mine as I didn't recognize it. The roof was missing completely, for a start.

'What on earth happened to it?' I asked one of their men. My pride and joy for so long was now just a mangled heap.

'The fire brigade cut the roof off to get the occupant out,' he said. 'The car was on its side when I got there with my truck and the roof was already gone. Maybe it's still in the ditch next to where the car was.'

It didn't matter. Even to my eyes the car was a complete write-off. Not only had the roof disappeared, the front offside wing was completely ripped away and the wheel was sitting at a strange angle. That must have happened, I thought, when I hit the bus.

'Has anyone been to inspect it?' I asked him.

'Not that I'm aware of, but it's been sitting here since yesterday morning and I don't exactly keep guard.'

'Here' was down the side of the workshop, behind a pair of recovery vehicles.

'I was the driver,' I said to him.

'Blimey, you were lucky then. I thought it was a fatal when I first arrived.'

'Why?' I asked.

'Fire brigade and ambulance spent ages getting you out. That's never a good sign. Had you in one of those neck-brace things. You didn't look too good, I can tell you. Not moving, like. I thought you were probably dead.'

'Thanks,' I said sarcastically.

'No,' he said. 'I'm glad you're not, like. Easier for me too.'

'Why?' I said.

'If it had been a fatal,' he said, 'I would have to keep this pile of garbage here for the police inspectors and they take b.l.o.o.d.y ages to do their stuff. Since you're OK, I can get it off the premises just as soon as your insurance bloke looks at it. Also,' he added with a smile, 'since you're alive, I can now send you a bill for recovering it from the roadside.'

I made a mental note to phone the insurance company, not that they would give me much. I suspected that car was worth little more than the policy excess but it might just pay the wretched man's bill for getting rid of the wreck.

'I think the accident occurred because my brakes failed,' I said. 'Is there any way of checking that by looking?'

'Help yourself, it's your car.' He turned away. 'I've got work to do.'

'No,' I said quickly. 'I wouldn't know what to look for. Could you have a look for me?'

'It'll cost you,' he said.

'All right,' I said. 'How much?'

'Usual labour rates,' he replied.

'Can you look at it now?' I said. 'While I'm here?'

'Suppose so,' he said.

'OK,' I said. 'Usual rates.'