‘What something?’ I said.
‘You will have to talk to DS Jagger. It’s his case — at least, it is at present.’
‘At present?’ I echoed. ‘What do you mean by that?’
‘It might be allocated to someone more senior, probably a DCI.’
Detective chief inspectors didn’t usually get called in for routine suicide cases, not even those involving high-profile personalities.
‘What did the forensics discover?’ I asked him again.
‘Ask DS Jagger.’
‘I’m asking you,’ I said. ‘I think I have a right to know. After all, he nearly took me with him.’
The detective inspector hesitated. There was no way I was going to let him go away now without telling me.
‘Tell me,’ I insisted. ‘After all, you and I are in the same business. I am a member of horseracing’s police force. We’re both detectives.’
‘All I know is that the Thames Valley forensic team discovered evidence of bodily fluids in the unburned section of the boot of the Mercedes, including traces of blood from Mr Swinton.’
‘In the boot?’
‘Yes.’
One couldn’t drive a car from the boot.
Someone else had to have been there, and suicide is a solitary affair.
So if it wasn’t suicide, was it murder?
17
By Thursday morning I was more than ready to be discharged. For a start, I was getting fed up with hospital food, and I was not sleeping very well. Not that it was a bad thing — I had one eye always open for a short stocky man with a carving knife in his hand.
‘Can I please go home?’ I asked Doctor Shwan, who popped in to see me at seven thirty on his way to his day shift in A & E.
‘We need to give things a little longer to heal with you resting here,’ he said.
‘I can rest at home,’ I pointed out.
‘But would you? It’s only been four days since I had your heart actually beating in my hand. I’ll admit you’ve made remarkable progress so far, but you must give your body a chance to recover from having had both your chest and your abdomen opened, otherwise you’ll be back here in worse shape. I’ve said that you might be able to go home on Saturday, but that’s really too soon. The sutures won’t come out until the middle of next week and, while they remain, there’s always a risk of infection.’
‘I’ll take that as a no, then,’ I said.
He smiled and nodded. ‘You do that.’
‘Can you give me something to help me sleep? I’m lying awake for hours every night.’
‘It’s not unusual for open-heart patients to complain about having insomnia after their surgery, but I’m loath to give you sedatives. They can slow the healing process. If it’s pain that’s keeping you awake, we can give you something for that.’
‘It’s not so much pain as the bloody itching of the wounds. It’s driving me crazy, especially in the quiet of the night when it seems to come on the worst.’
‘Itching is actually a good thing,’ he said. ‘It means you’re mending. However, try not to scratch as that can cause infection. When they’ve healed a bit more you can use a cream. But not yet. Sorry.’
The doctor departed and I went back to studying the ceiling of my room while trying hard not to rub at the incisions on my chest and abdomen.
I was frustrated.
I had promised Faye that I would get on and live my life to the full. Instead, I was stuck here in a hospital room, marking time.
There were things I wanted to do. Not least, finding out who had tried to kill me.
Thursday turned out to be a day full of visitors.
Next to arrive was DS Jagger from Thames Valley Police, who walked into my room unannounced just after nine o’clock as I was looking through some of the mugshots on the iPad.
‘Recognize any of them?’ he asked. ‘We’ve got plenty more of those at Thames Valley.’
‘None so far,’ I said, putting the iPad down. ‘I hear you have some news for me.’
‘Have I?’ he said, pulling up a chair.
‘Concerning Dave Swinton’s car?’
‘How did you hear that?’ he asked.
‘On the grapevine.’
He wasn’t pleased. ‘I have some questions for you,’ he said.
‘Fire away.’
‘On the morning when you were shut in the sauna, did you actually see who pushed you in there?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘I told you that I didn’t. I was pushed in and the door slammed shut before I could turn round.’
‘Do you think it could have been someone other than Mr Swinton?’
‘I suppose it could have been anyone,’ I said. ‘I assumed it was Dave but I didn’t actually see him. Whoever it was didn’t say anything when I called out, even though they had to have heard me. Why do you ask?’
‘We now think it may be possible that Mr Swinton was not responsible.’
I waited for him to go on but he didn’t, so I prompted.
‘What did you find in the boot of his Mercedes.’
‘Plastic cable ties,’ he said.
It was not what I’d been expecting. ‘What about them?’
‘At least one of them had traces of David Swinton’s blood on it. The DNA proved it.’ He paused, as if deciding whether or not to continue. ‘The back end of the car was never fully enveloped by the fire. We found bloodstains on the boot carpet that survived the inferno. These too matched Mr Swinton. There were also traces of urine in the carpet, although we cannot be sure who it came from, as urine doesn’t contain any DNA.’
‘Are you implying that Dave Swinton may have been tied up in the boot of his own car with cable ties?’
‘Yes, I am,’ the sergeant said. ‘That is the possibility we are now investigating. And we are formally treating his death as unexplained.’
‘Not as murder?’ I asked.
‘No, not yet. We still have more tests to make on both the car and the ties, and also on Mr Swinton’s remains before we are sure. Officially, suicide still remains an option.’
‘But you don’t believe it?’ I said.
‘No.’
‘Was he even still alive when the fire started?’ I said.
‘Yes, he was, otherwise we would know for sure it wasn’t suicide. There was evidence of deep internal burns that are consistent with him breathing in superheated air and flames. There were also some petrol residues found in his lungs.’
Too much information.
‘I suppose he may have been unconscious,’ I said, wishing for a more agreeable mental picture in my head. ‘Otherwise, why would he sit meekly in a car while someone else set fire to it?’
‘Maybe he was forced into that position. A couple of cable ties to secure his hands to the steering wheel would do it. The plastic would fully burn away in a fire of such intensity. There’d be no trace. If it hadn’t been for the prompt arrival of the fire brigade, we would never have recovered those left in the boot.’
I shivered once again at the memory of the video images of Dave sitting bolt upright in the burning Mercedes. To think that he might have been tied up, alive and alert, while someone poured petrol into the car and then set it alight, was unimaginably awful.
‘Now,’ he said, ‘you told me at Lambourn that you thought Mr Swinton had tried to kill you because you were aware that he had purposely lost a horse race and he didn’t want you telling anyone.’
‘Yes.’
‘If it wasn’t David Swinton who shut you in the sauna, can you think of anyone else who would want you dead.’
I looked at him and raised my eyebrows. ‘Why do you think I’m in here?’
He smiled. ‘Yes, of course. But can you think of anyone who might have wanted both you and Mr Swinton dead?’