They raced along the corridor.  The commotion had woken John and Ruth.  Ruth was shouting, asking them what was happening.  John was banging the cell door, wanting out to see what was going on.  He’d heard someone mentioning the Police Surgeon. 

“What have you done to him?”  John was screaming.  Ruth was yelling for him to calm down.  Officers were trying to get them both to be quiet.  Millar could barely hear what he was being told over the noise of their shouting and thumping on cell doors.

“For Christ’s sake get the woman to go in there and calm her brother down,” he ordered, his tiredness and irritation showing.

In the cell, the teenager had been taken down from the window. 

“He tore up the pillow case Sir.”  The officer looked worried.  He had been on watch.

“What state’s he in?”

“Shallow breathing.  Slow pulse rate.  Swelling in the neck.  We’re getting an ice pack to see if that helps.”

“Have you called an Ambulance?”

“Yes.  And the Police Surgeon.  They’re both on their way.”

The boy’s lips were blue and there was blood around his nose and mouth.  His tongue protruded a little from his wide open mouth, looking swollen.  There was bruising above his Adam’s apple, the thyroid cartilage.  Little haemorrhages had made round brownish marks around his eyes and on his neck.  His airway seemed severely restricted.  He seemed to have had second thoughts about it as his fingernails had been damaged and two of his fingertips had been bleeding. 

“He must have panicked and been trying to get the noose off again,” the D.I. pointed out.  “Look at his hands.”

The Police Surgeon arrived and had to conduct an emergency tracheotomy.

“The prisoner is very weak and needs hospitalised immediately.  I’ll follow the ambulance in my own car and will finish the work for my report at the hospital,” he said, noting the urgency.

Eventually, Millar got off home.  He was almost falling asleep at the wheel.

Millar threw his car keys onto the hall table, as usual, and noticed that his answering machine had a message on it.  “Shit!  I forgot to phone!”  He remembered his son’s urgent message.  Pressing the button, he heard his voice.