I suppose I had asked.
‘It is that one that almost killed you,’ he said. ‘It caused substantial bleeding into the chest cavity, which compromised your breathing and also filled the space around the heart with blood, giving it no room to beat.’
‘But I was fine for a while. I was even able to run.’
‘Yes, but all the time the chest cavity was slowly filling. Only when the blood got to a critical level did you suffer any symptoms. Usually, by then, it’s too late to save the patient. You had a cardiac arrest as you arrived at A & E and I had to perform an emergency thoracotomy right there and then to get your heart pumping again. There wasn’t even time to get you to the operating theatre. As I said, you’re a very lucky boy.’
‘Very lucky to have you around when I needed it.’
‘I don’t know about that,’ he said with a smile. ‘Yours was the first chest I’ve ever opened. I’ve only ever seen it done by others. I’m an Accident and Emergency doctor, not a heart surgeon. But needs must, and it seems to have worked.’ He made a movement as if to mop sweat from his brow.
I knew from my time with the army in Afghanistan how extreme situations could require desperate solutions well out of one’s comfort zone. And how it takes immense courage not to wait for someone with the right experience but to make the decision to do it yourself, because to wait would be to fail.
‘Thank you, Doctor Shwan,’ I said, meaning it.
‘Don’t thank me yet,’ he said. ‘Give it another forty-eight hours or so. A trolley in A & E is not the most sterile of environments to perform heart massage or to repair a major artery. I’m just hoping you won’t get an infection. We are delivering antibiotics direct to your heart cavity, yet we can never be sure. And then there’s the rupture of your bowel. I repaired that as well but there’s always a chance of peritonitis.’
‘Well, thank you anyway,’ I said, ‘for what you’ve done so far.’
‘You need to rest now. Give your body the chance to heal itself.’
The morphine was finally beginning to work. I closed my eyes.
‘The police are outside and they’re keen to speak to you,’ he said. ‘I’ll tell them they have to wait.’
Good idea, I thought. Let them wait.
There would be plenty of time later to think about why I’d been attacked and who would have done such a thing to me.
Twice in eight days, someone had tried to kill me.
I just hoped it wouldn’t be third time lucky.
The police in the form of two plain-clothes detectives were finally allowed in to question me the following evening, by which time the pain in my chest had subsided a little from an unbearable level 10 to an almost manageable 8.
Thankfully, my throat was nearly back to normal and the oxygen mask over my face had been replaced by two little tubes that jutted up into my nostrils. Hence two-way communication was much improved.
‘Mr Hinkley,’ one of the policemen said, ‘I’m Detective Inspector Galvin of the Metropolitan Police Homicide and Serious Crime Command, and this is my sergeant, DS Gibb.’
They sat down on two chairs, one either side of the bed.
‘You’ve been causing quite a stir,’ said the detective inspector. ‘The Commissioner has been getting calls from the chairman of the horseracing authority demanding to know who tried to kill his senior investigator.’
Blimey, I thought. I hadn’t had that sort of response the previous week. Probably because I’d played it down. And also because of the death of Dave Swinton.
‘I’m glad somebody cares,’ I said.
‘Tell me what happened on Sunday evening,’ said the detective.
I went through the whole thing as best I could remember, from the moment I turned the key in the lock of my front door, right up to the time of the arrival of the ambulance, and the sergeant wrote it all down in his notebook.
‘According to the constable who attended the scene, you told him you didn’t know your attackers,’ said the inspector. ‘Is that correct?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Quite correct.’
‘But you were unable to give him a description of the men.’
‘I became too ill.’
‘Can you give me one now?’
I had thought of little else for the preceding twenty-four hours. Over and over again, I had gone through the whole thing in my head trying to conjure up the image of the two faces, but with very limited success.
‘I was concentrating on the knife,’ I said. ‘I know that the men were white and I must have seen their faces well enough to realize I didn’t recognize them, but I’m afraid I can’t help you.’
‘Did they say anything?’
‘Not that I remember. It all happened so quickly. One of them grabbed me and the other started stabbing as soon as I walked through the door.’
‘So they were waiting for you?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I am sure they were. I was careless. I checked the bushes in the front garden and never imagined that anyone would be inside.’
The sergeant looked up at me from his notebook. ‘Were you expecting to be attacked?’ he asked.
‘Not exactly expecting it, no. I’m just naturally vigilant. And it isn’t the first time. Someone tried to kill me only a week ago.’
Both the policemen looked at me in surprise.
‘Was it the man with the knife?’ the inspector asked.
‘No,’ I said. ‘Not unless he’s risen from the dead.’
I told them all about being shut in the sauna, my escape, and the subsequent discovery of Dave Swinton’s body in the burning car. They’d heard about that.
‘You can speak to Detective Sergeant Jagger from Thames Valley Police if you need to. He’s the investigating officer.’
DS Gibb wrote it down.
‘How did the men get into my flat?’ I asked.
‘They forced open a window in your kitchen,’ said the sergeant. ‘It’s now been screwed shut.’
They must have come down the lane that ran along the back of the garden.
‘Was anything stolen?’ I asked.
‘You’ll have to answer that yourself, Mr Hinkley, when you go home. There certainly wasn’t the usual mess we find when villains have been searching for valuables. No drawers turned out or anything.’
That seemed to confirm that it had definitely been me they were after, not my meagre worldly goods.
I leaned back on the pillow and closed my eyes. I was getting tired.
‘We will leave you now to rest,’ said the inspector, standing up, ‘but we’ll be back with some mugshots for you to look at when you’re a little better. Is there anything you need?’
‘You could contact my sister for me,’ I said. ‘She’ll be wondering why I didn’t call when I got home on Sunday, as I usually do.’
I gave them Faye’s phone number.
‘No problem,’ said the inspector. ‘I’ll call her as soon as I’m outside.’
‘Please don’t worry her,’ I said. ‘Ask her to come in tomorrow.’
They started to leave.
‘Hold on a moment,’ I said, opening my eyes again. ‘There were some telephone calls.’
‘What calls?’
‘On Saturday night and Sunday morning, I received four calls on my landline but no one spoke. I am sure there was someone on the line because I could hear noises in the background, but they didn’t say anything, they just listened for a few seconds and then hung up. I now wonder if the calls were made simply to find out if I was there.’
‘Are you ex-directory?’ the inspector asked.
‘I don’t really know,’ I said. ‘I hardly ever use the landline. It was my former girlfriend who liked it. I just transferred the number to my new flat when we sold the old one. I need the broadband that comes with it.’