In fact, I was beginning to feel decidedly unwell—very sweaty, yet strangely cold at the same time. It was a feeling I had become quite used to during my time as a jockey, after a racing fall. It was the body’s natural reaction to trauma.

‘Perhaps you need an ambulance as well,’ Chico said.

I think he was probably right.

‘Emergency, which service?’ asked the operator.

‘Ambulance,’ I said.

There were a few clicks and a female voice came on the line. ‘Is the patient breathing?’

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘but with difficulty. I think he may have a fractured skull.’

‘Did he fall?’ she asked.

‘Something like that. Please hurry.’

She asked me for my name and also my location. I told her both.

‘An ambulance is on its way. Please stay on the line.’

But I decided not to, and disconnected.

Asquith suddenly sat up straight.

‘Give me the gun,’ he said.

‘You must be bleedin’ jokin’,’ Chico replied. ‘We’re not giving you anythin’, mate, other than an extremely long stretch in the slammer.’

‘Please give me the gun,’ he pleaded. ‘And a single bullet.’

We all knew what he wanted to do.

I looked across at Chico, and he shrugged his shoulders.

But after what had happened to Gary Bremner, I’d already looked up the law on suicide. It states that a person who aids or abets the suicide of another may be subject to imprisonment for up to fourteen years.

And who was to say he wouldn’t shoot me instead, with his single round.

‘Not a chance, Harry,’ I said.

CHAPTER

37

THE FIRST POLICE to arrive were not those we had heard in the distance coming by road.

One minute, all was quiet in the castle, and the next there was a cacophony of sound as a police helicopter suddenly appeared overhead, its brilliant searchlight illuminating the ground around us as if it was in full sunlight.

‘Stay right where you are,’ came an order from above.

We stayed right where we were.

Finally, lighting up the high walls, I could see a mass of blue flashing lights as the road posse arrived.

‘Now come on out with your hands up,’ said the voice from above.

Hands up? He’d be lucky. My right arm hung limply down at my side, now totally useless.

‘Come on, Harry,’ Chico said, giving him a kick on the ankle. ‘You’ve got a date with some handcuffs.’

Asquith clambered reluctantly to his feet.

‘And don’t try anythin’,’ Chico said, pushing Asquith ahead of him. ‘Or you’ll be back on the ground again in a flash, and I won’t be so bleedin’ gentle next time, neither.’

We left Valance lying where he was. He was definitely a customer for the paramedics, or even the undertakers.