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Chapter five

The doctor explains

Outside the room, the nurse stopped us. ‘Could you both wait in here a moment, please,’ she said. ‘I think the doctor would like to speak to you.’

We heard the nurse talking to the doctor outside the room for two or three minutes, and then the doctor came in. She smiled at me.

‘Good morning, Sergeant Fraser,’ she said to me. ‘You’ve been talking to Mr Jackson, haven’t you?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Poor man - he’s not very happy, I’m afraid.’

‘No, of course not,’ said the doctor. ‘Well, it was a nasty accident, wasn’t it? And he’s hurt his neck quite badly. But the rest of him is OK. He should be out of hospital in a few days.’

‘Yes.’ I looked at the doctor carefully. ‘Doctor, are you sure that he hasn’t hurt anything else? His head, perhaps?

You see, I don’t think he remembers the accident very well. He thinks he killed somebody who walked in front of the car, but he didn’t.

Nobody was killed, nobody walked in front of the car. And he doesn’t remember the second car at all.’

‘Yes, I know,’ she said. ‘I wanted to talk to you about that. Of course, people do forget accidents. That’s normal.

They often don’t remember anything about them. So I’m not surprised that he doesn’t remember the second car

. But it’s very unusual to remember something that didn’t happen.’ She stopped for a moment, and looked at me thoughtfully. ‘

So I thought– perhaps I shouldn’t say this, but I thought you should know. Last night this man had a small problem with his heart, a very unusual problem. For a few minutes it beat very slowly, it nearly stopped, and then it started again.

And people who have a heart problem like that aren’t usually allowed to drive, you know, because they might become ill for a couple of minutes, and then of course a car would stop suddenly.’

‘I see,’ I said. ‘So you think that perhaps he had a small heart attack yesterday, too?’

‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Maybe he had the attack because of the accident. I haven’t seen his doctor’s records, so I don’t know if he has ever had this problem before.’

‘I see,’ I said. ‘Well, thank you, Doctor. That’s very helpful.’