hospital in Liverpool or several new schools.”
“Any news on Shenington?” I asked him.
“No change,” he said. “And I doubt if there will be. The medics are now saying he has entered what they call a persistent vegetative state. It’s a sort of half-comatose, half-awake condition.”
“What’s the prognosis?”
“They say he’s unlikely ever to make any improvement, and he’ll certainly never stand trial. In cases of severe brain damage like this, if patients show no change for a whole year the doctors usually recommend to their families that artificial nutrition should be withdrawn to let them die.”
Ben Roberts would clearly have some difficult decisions to make in the months ahead. And I also wondered what effect the actions of his father might have on his planned life in politics. He would surely now become the Earl of Balscott rather earlier than he might have expected.
“Have you managed to identify the dead gunman as Dimitar Petrov?” I asked.
“We’re still working on it,” he said. “It seems that both Dimitar and Petrov are very common names in Bulgaria.”
“Can’t Uri Joram in Brussels help you?”
“Apparently, he denies any knowledge of anything,” he said. “Claims his e-mail address must have been used by others.”
“Why am I not surprised?” I said. “How about Shenington’s heavies at Cheltenham?”
“Not a sniff,” he said. “I expect they vanished into the night as soon as their boss ended up in the hospital.”
It reminded me of Billy Searle, who was now in fact out of the hospital, recuperating at home with the fixator on his broken leg. Officially, he was still denying any knowledge of who had knocked him off his bicycle, but he had confirmed to me privately that the nob responsible had indeed been Viscount Shenington. “I’m so glad the f-ing bastard got what was coming to him” had been his exact words when I’d told him of Shenington’s medical condition. And he had giggled uncontrollably and repeatedly punched the air.
The chief inspector and I rejoined the others.
“Rosemary says she’s lost her job,” said Claudia, sounding affronted on her behalf.
“Everyone at Lyall and Black have lost their jobs,” said Rosemary McDowd with bitterness.
Her tone also implied an accusation, and I took it to be towards me. Why was it, I wondered, that the blame often fell not on the wrongdoers but on the person who exposed them?
It wasn’t me who Mrs. McDowd should blame for the demise of Lyall & Black. It was Patrick Lyall, and maybe Gregory Black too, for not being sufficiently diligent in his management of the Roberts Family Trust.
And I surely had more right to be angry with her than vice versa.
After all, it had been she who had told Patrick that I’d been staying at my mother’s house, which had then allowed him and Shenington to send a gunman there to try to kill me.
“So what are you going to do now?” I asked her.
“I have absolutely no idea,” she said flatly. “How about you?”
“I thought I might try my hand at working in the movies or in the theater,” I said. “I’ve written to a few companies, offering my services as a funding specialist to help them find the production money for films and plays. I think it looks quite interesting.”
“But isn’t that a bit of a gamble?” she said.
I smiled at her.
With ovarian cancer, life itself was a bit of a gamble.
Heads you win, tails you die.
Dick Francis
Felix Francis
