Free The Veteran by Frederick Forsyth Page A

reference to beefy young men with shorn heads being ‘two a penny’ had scored with Mr. Stein. He, too, watched television and saw coverage of football hooligans at play.
    Mr. Carl Bateman was purely technical. He simply described the arrival of the unconscious man at the Royal London and all he had done for him before the patient went to neurosurgery.
    Nevertheless, when he had finished, Vansittart rose.
    “Just one very brief issue, Mr. Bateman. Did you at any point examine the right fist of the patient?” Bateman frowned, puzzled.
    “Yes, I did.”
    “At the time of admission or later?”
    “Later.”
    “Was this at someone’s request?”
    “Yes.”
    “And whose, pray?”
    “Detective Inspector Burns.”
    “And did Mr. Burns ask you to look for knuckle damage?”
    “Yes, he did.”
    “And was there any?”
    “No.”
    “How long have you been in Accident and Emergency?”
    “Ten years.”
    “A very experienced man. You must have seen the results of many violent blows delivered with the fist, both to the human face and to the fist itself?”
    “Yes, I believe I have.”
    “When a human fist delivers a blow of such force as to shatter the nose of a much bigger man, would you not expect to find knuckle damage?”
    “I might.”
    “And what would be the chances of such damage occurring?
    Eighty per cent?”
    “I suppose so.”
    “Abrasions to the skin of the knuckles? Bruising over the metacarpal heads, the thin and fragile bones that run up the back of the hand between the knuckles and the wrist?”
    “More likely the metacarpal bruising.”
    “Similar to the Boxer’s Injury?”
    “Yes.”
    “But there was none on the right fist of the man now tragically dead?”
    “No.”
    “Thank you, Mr. Bateman.”
    What Carl Bateman could not know was that when the limping man smashed Price in the face, he did not use a bunched fist, but a much more dangerous blow. He employed the hard heel of the hand, driving upward from the waist, hammering into the nose from the underside. Had Price not been of almost ox-like strength and an accustomed brawler, he would have been knocked flat and possibly senseless.
    The brain surgeon, Mr. Paul Willis, gave his evidence and left the witness box with no questions from Vansittart, but not Dr. Melrose of St. Anne’s Road hospital.
    “Tell me, Dr. Melrose, when you examined Mr. Price’s nose between five and five thirty on the afternoon of last Tuesday fortnight, was there blood in the nostrils?”
    “Yes, there was.”
    “Crusted or still liquid?”
    “Both. There were crusted fragments near the end of the nostrils, but it was still liquid further up.”
    “And you discovered the nose bone to be fractured in two places and the cartilage pushed to one side?”
    “I did.”
    “So you set the bone, reshaped the nose and strapped it in order to let nature take its course?”
    “Yes, I did.”
    “If the patient, before coming to the hospital, had very foolishly and despite the pain tried to reset his own nose, would that have caused fresh bleeding?”
    “Yes, it would.”
    “Bearing that in mind, can you say how many hours before you saw the nose the injury had been inflicted?”
    “Several hours, certainly.”
    “Well, three? Ten? Even more?”
    “That is hard to say. With complete accuracy.”
    “Then let me put to you a possibility. A young man goes out on the Monday evening, gets lamentably drunk in a pub, and on the way home wishes to urinate in the gutter. But, stumbling over an uneven paving stone, he falls heavily forward and smashes his nose into the tailboard of a jobbing builder’s lorry parked by the kerb. Could that have inflicted the injury you saw? The previous night?”
    “Possibly.”
    “Well, Dr. Melrose, yes or no? Is it possible?”
    “Yes.”
    “Thank you. Doctor. No further questions.”
    Vansittart was speaking to Jonathan Stein; in code, but it came through loud and clear. What he said was: that is exactly my client’s story and if