Bloodline

So we did, for what seemed like at least another five minutes until an array of bright blue flashing lights announced the arrival of an ambulance, and two green-clad paramedics came running over towards us followed by a sizable group of onlookers, some of them with camera phones held high.

One of the paramedics bared Toby’s chest and attached some sticky patches to his skin while the other connected leads to the patches and also to a yellow box with a small screen on the front. Even I could tell that the trace on the screen was flat and lifeless.

One of the paramedics pulled another box from his large green bag and soon had two metal plates placed either side of Toby’s chest.

‘All clear,’ he called, making sure no one was touching Toby. ‘Shocking!’

Toby’s body convulsed for a moment then lay motionless again. The trace on the screen, meanwhile, stayed completely flat.

‘All clear again,’ called the paramedic. ‘Shocking!’

He repeated the process another three times while his colleague injected something into Toby’s arm. That wouldn’t do much good, I thought, not without any circulation. For all their effort, the trace on the screen never even flickered.

The paramedics took over the mouth to mouth and chest compressions and went on for far longer than I would have expected but, each time they stopped, the line on the screen remained stubbornly flat. They shocked him again and shone a torch into Toby’s eyes.

‘No pressure,’ said one. ‘No vital signs. CPR terminated at...’ He looked at his watch. ‘Twenty-one forty-five.’ He began to pack up his equipment.

‘What happened?’ the other paramedic asked me, all urgency having suddenly evaporated.

‘He’s been stabbed,’ I said.

‘What with?’ he asked while pulling Toby’s shirt wider and looking down his abdomen. ‘And where?’

‘There’s blood on his back,’ I said. And, I realized, I was kneeling in the stuff. A great pool of it surrounded Toby’s body. All those chest compressions, I thought, had done nothing more than pump the blood out of him.

The police arrived in force and suddenly the atmosphere changed again. It was no longer just a racecourse car park, it had become a murder scene.

11

‘Now, Mr Shillingford, are you absolutely sure that Mr Woodley was alive when you first saw him in the car park?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Quite sure. He was leaning against the white van and he moved his head round to look at me when I spoke to him.’

I was sitting in a cubicle of a mobile police incident room that had been parked in a corner of the Kempton Park racecourse car park, well away from where a square white tent now stood over the spot where Toby Woodley had died.

And I was cold.

‘Can’t you get me something warmer?’ I asked the detective who was asking the questions. ‘I’m freezing in this.’ I fingered the white nylon coverall I had been given to put on when my clothes had been removed and bagged for forensic purposes. I had also been made to stand ignominiously shivering in my underpants as a masked forensic officer, also dressed from head to foot in white nylon, had examined my skin, hair, fingernails and mouth for any clues.

‘There’s a tracksuit on its way from the station,’ said the detective, ‘and a pair of trainers.’ He gesticulated at another policeman who had been sitting quietly listening to our conversation. The second policeman stood up and went out of the cubicle, closing the door behind him.

If the rest of me was cold, my feet were like ice blocks, resting as they were on the freezing metal floor of the glorified caravan.

‘Did Mr Woodley say anything to you?’ the detective asked once again.

‘No,’ I repeated. ‘I told you, he just slid down the side of the van and died.’

‘So why did you tell the paramedic that Mr Woodley had been stabbed?’

‘Because of the blood on the van,’ I said patiently. ‘I just presumed he’d been stabbed.’

‘I see,’ he said, making a note.

‘And was he?’ I asked.

‘Was he what?’

‘Stabbed?’

‘The post mortem examination will determine that, sir,’ the detective said formally.

The second policeman came back into the cubicle and sat down again on the same upright chair as before. He shook his head and I took that to mean the tracksuit and trainers were not yet here. I went on shivering.

‘When can I go home?’ I asked the detective.

‘That will be up to my superintendent,’ he replied unhelpfully.

I looked at my watch. It was well past eleven o’clock and nearly two hours since Toby Woodley’s life had expired.

‘Look,’ I said. ‘Could you please tell your superintendent that I need to go home now. I’ve got to be up tomorrow in time to go to work.’

‘And what is your work, sir?’ the detective asked.

‘I’ve already told you.’ My patience was beginning to run rather thin. ‘I’m a race commentator and TV presenter. I was commentating here tonight and I found Mr Woodley in the car park as I was leaving. I tried to help him but I couldn’t. He died in spite of another man and me giving him artificial respiration. That’s all I can tell you. And now,’ I said, standing up, ‘I’d like to go home.’