“I’ve been desperate,” she said. “I thought you’d be so cross.”
“Don’t be so silly. The only thing I’m cross about is that you didn’t tell me straightaway. It must have been dreadful for you, bottling it all up, with no one to talk to.”
“My doctor has been wonderful,” she said. “He gave me the name of a cancer counselor.” She produced a crumpled business card from the pocket of her gown. “And she’s been an absolute rock. I’ve called her so many times now, I know her number by heart.”
I looked at the business card. The number was the much-called one I had copied from her mobile phone bill.
How, I asked myself again, could I have got things so wrong?
“Tell me,” I said, “what did the doctor say?”
“I first went to my GP because I didn’t feel very well, and I could feel that my tummy was bloated.” She smiled. “I actually thought I might be pregnant, but I’m on the pill and I’d just had my period.”
“And?” I prompted.
“He asked me if I had any back pain, and I said yes, so he sent me to see a cancer specialist who did some scans and other tests and they came back positive.”
Back pain.
I inwardly chastised myself for my earlier thoughts.
“So what is actually wrong with your ovaries?” I asked.
“I have a tumor in the left one,” she said. “It’s what is apparently called a germ cell tumor.”
“Is it malignant?” I asked, dreading the answer.
“Yes, I’m afraid it is,” she said. “But it’s fairly small, about the size of a peanut.”
That didn’t sound that small to me. I thought whole ovaries themselves were not much bigger than that.
“And the oncologist is hopeful that it hasn’t spread. But he will find out for sure about that on Tuesday.”
“Where are you having the op?” I asked.
“University College Hospital,” she said. “It’s where I’ve been seeing the oncologist and having tests all this last week. I was there most of the day today having MRI scans so they know exactly to the millimeter where the cancer is and how big, ready for the operation.”
With her phone turned off.
“Overall, I’ve been lucky they found it so soon. Apparently, it’s quite usual for such tumors to go undetected until it’s too late because many GPs dismiss the symptoms or confuse them with other problems.”
“What can I do to help?” I asked.
“Nothing,” she said. “Just be here.” She smiled. “I love you so much.”
I felt a fool and a charlatan. How could I have been so stupid?
“I love you so much more,” I said, kissing the top of her head. “Do you need to go to bed?”
“I’m not feeling ill,” she said, turning and looking up at me with a smile. “Or were you thinking of something else?”
I blushed. It must have been the gin.
“I wasn’t,” I said. “However, I could be persuaded. But, I mean, are you all right?”
“For sex?” she said. I nodded. “Absolutely. The oncologist told me on Thursday that it wouldn’t make any difference.”
It made a difference to me.
I lay awake in the dark of the small hours, trying to get my head around this new problem.
I had feared so much the thought of losing her to another man that the news of the cancer had almost been a relief, a reprieve. But this was now a much more serious battle with the unthinkable outcome of losing her altogether if the fight was lost.
Claudia had gone to sleep around ten o’clock, and I had then spent the next couple of hours at my computer, researching ovarian cancer on the Internet.
My initial results had been far from encouraging.
Overall, ovarian cancer five-year survival rates were only about fifty percent.
That was not good, I thought. It was like tossing a coin. To live, you had to correctly call heads.
However, Claudia had said that the oncologist thought that the cancer hadn’t spread. For Stage 1a ovarian cancers, those that were confined within the affected organ only and which hadn’t spread to its surface, the survival rate was nearly ninety-two percent.
That was better.
Throw two dice. Score eleven or twelve, and you die. Anything else, you live.
For germ cell cancer, the rates were even better. Women with only Stage 1a germ cell tumors had a near ninety-seven percent chance of survival at five years.
Throw those dice again. You are dead now only with a double six.
Slightly worse than the statistical survival rate for a space shuttle flight (ninety-eight percent), much better than for a heart transplant (seventy-one percent at five years).
I could hear Claudia’s rhythmic breathing on the pillow next to me.
Funny, I thought, how it often takes a crisis to reveal one’s true feelings. Since coming home from the races I had been through the whole gamut from resentful anger to perilous joy, with apprehension, fear and overwhelming love coming in late on the side.
I was exhausted by it all, but still I couldn’t sleep.
How close had I come to making a complete fool of myself?
Too close. Much too close.
Sunday morning dawned bright and sunny, both in terms of the weather and my disposition.
I looked at Claudia soundly asleep beside me and, in spite of the uncertainty of her future treatment, I thanked my lucky stars. True, I had been tempted by Jan’s extraordinary behavior, but I had resisted. In fact, it had been Jan’s very behavior that had strengthened my resolve to sort out a problem with Claudia that in the end hadn’t existed.
Suddenly, the other problem, the coming battle against the cancer, while not easy, somehow seemed now manageable. Especially as Claudia and I would both be fighting on the same side.
I got up quietly, leaving her sleeping, and went downstairs to the kitchen, and to my computer.
I pulled up the e-mails from Uri Joram onto the screen and read them again. I wondered what I should do about them.
A hundred million euros was an awful lot of money, but it was a mere drop in the ocean compared to the European Union total budget of more than a hundred and twenty-five billion. But if the European Court of Auditors, the body that had refused to sign off on the annual audit of the EU budget for each of the past umpteen years, had themselves been unable to make a single major fraud charge stick, what chance did I have?
I decided that it simply wasn’t my fight. Claudia and I now had more pressing things on our minds. If Jolyon Roberts needed to ask any further questions about his investments, then he’d have to speak directly to Gregory.
I meanwhile turned to other matters, in particular the copies of the statements from Herb’s twenty-two credit cards.
I ordered them by date, and noticed that four of them were due for payment in the coming week. I wondered what the law was on outstanding credit card debt at death. One thing I was absolutely certain about was that none of the banks would, out of the kindness of their hearts, cancel debt. But it was the interest that I was most concerned about. Ninety-four thousand six hundred and twenty-six pounds and fifty-two pence would, if left unpaid, attract a substantial interest charge each month, not to mention late-payment fees, and it might take many months before probate was granted and I was able to pay off the debts from other assets in Herb’s estate.
I had to find the cash.
Even the eighteen thousand he collected from the MoneyHome agents the week of his death would not be enough to pay off these four most urgent ones.
And that would not be all.
The ninety-seven separate individuals who were using Herb’s accounts for their Internet and casino gambling probably didn’t know Herb was dead. If the past was anything to go by, they would be racking up further charges.
All gambling requires a degree of trust, but surely Herb must have required an up-front cash advance from each of the ninety-seven in order to allow them to operate the
system. That meant the debt of ninety-four thousand six hundred and twenty-six pounds and fifty-two pence that existed on the credit cards statements may have only been the start of it. How much more did he owe?
I had to find the cash.
I decided that the very first thing I had to do was to cancel the cards so that no more charges could be made on them.
Each of the statements had a phone number on the back, and I set about calling them. Many of them did not answer because they were not open on Sundays and those that did were mostly in India and, in truth, could have been more helpful.
As soon as I said that Mr. Kovak was dead, they all required me to contact them in writing enclosing an original death certificate.
“Fine,” I said to one man called Ashwin, making a mental note to ask the police chief inspector for twenty-two originals of Herb’s death certificate. “But could you, in the meantime, make a stop on any future charges?”
“Cut up the cards,” Ashwin said, “and then there can’t be any more charges, can there?”
How, I wondered, should I explain to him that the cards themselves hadn’t actually been present when any of the charges on the statements had been made?
“There are some regular payments,” I said. “Where the card is not actually present for the transaction. Online payments. Can you stop those?”
“You will have to contact the payee,” he said unhelpfully.
All five hundred and twelve of them, I thought.
Next I tried impersonating Herb to cancel one card, but this didn’t work either as I didn’t have the card—it was in Hendon—and I had no idea of the expiration date or the pin number. Anyway, I was firmly told, I couldn’t cancel a card until I had paid off the outstanding balance.
Dead end.
I just had to find that cash.
Claudia came downstairs in her blue dressing gown.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“Oh, nothing,” I said, closing the lid of my laptop onto the credit card statements. “Nothing for you to worry about anyway.”
“Look here,” she said, putting on a stern face, “I told you my troubles, so now you have to tell me yours.”
“It’s just something to do with Herb Kovak,” I said. “In his will he appointed me as his executor.”
“And what does that mean, exactly?” she asked.
“It means,” I said, “that I have to sort out all his bloody affairs when I should be looking after you.”
“Quite right,” she said, coming over and sitting on my lap. She put her arms around my neck. “Naughty boy.”
I smiled.
Life was back to normal—or almost.
During the afternoon, I called Detective Chief Inspector Tomlinson on the mobile number he had given me.
“Hello,” a voice said, sounding sleepy.
“Chief Inspector Tomlinson?” I asked.
“Hello, yes?” he said, this time more alert.
“Sorry to wake you,” I said. “This is Nicholas Foxton.”
“Just resting my eyes,” he said. “How can I help you?”
“I think it’s me who’s going to help you,” I said. “Herb Kovak’s sister has turned up.”
“Really,” he said. “When?”
“Well, actually, on Thursday morning, not long after you’d left his flat. But so much has been happening since then, I forgot to tell you.”
“Yes,” he said. “I did hear that you’ve been kept rather busy.”
“Yes,” I agreed. “Thank you for giving me an alibi.”
“You don’t have to thank me,” he said. “I simply told them there was no way, short of using a helicopter, that anyone could travel the seventy miles from Baydon to Hendon in fifty-five minutes at that time of day. Especially someone who’d just had an ingrown toenail removed. I could hardly walk with mine for weeks.”
I stifled a laugh. Good old Mrs. McDowd and her fertile imagination.
“Well, thank you nevertheless,” I said. “Now, I have some other information for you.”
“Yes?” he said.
“I think I may have solved the riddle of the credit cards.”
“Go on,” he said.
“I think that Herb Kovak was allowing other people to use his credit card accounts to gamble on the Internet, probably fellow Americans because it’s illegal to gamble in most states over there.”
“What evidence do you have?” he asked.
“Not much,” I said. “But I think I’m right. There are five hundred and twelve different entries on those statements. But there aren’t five hundred and twelve different individuals because many of them bet or play on more than one Internet site.”
“Do you have any idea who these people are?”
“No,” I said. “But we do have ninety-seven different sets of initials. They’re on those sheets you showed me. I think they refer to ninety-seven different people.”
“So you’re saying that you think ninety-seven different people, who all live somewhere in the United States, were using Herb Kovak’s credit card accounts to bet on the Internet.”
“Yes,” I said. “And to play in online casinos. I found some MoneyHome receipts that show Herb collected large amounts of cash during the week before he died. I believe that cash was to pay off some of the credit card debts.”
“And are you telling me this has something to do with why he was killed?”
“Not necessarily,” I said. “I have no idea why he was killed. I thought that was your job.”
He didn’t rise to my bait. There was just silence from his end.
“I’ve been trying to cancel the credit cards,” I said finally, “but they all need an original death certificate. Can you get me some? I’ll need at least twenty-two.”
“No death certificate has been issued as yet,” he said. “All unnatural deaths are subject to an inquest, and that would usually follow any criminal trial. The death certificate would be issued only after the inquest was complete.”
“But that will be months, if not years, away,” I said with a degree of exasperation. “There must be some official piece of paper that shows that he’s dead. I need something to show the damn credit card companies.”
“As his executor, you can apply for probate before the death certificate is issued.”
“How?” I said. “I’ve got nothing to show he’s even dead.”
“The inquest was opened and adjourned last Tuesday,” he said. “The Liverpool Coroner will issue you with a letter. I’ll arrange it.”
“Thank you.”
“So where can I find Mr. Kovak’s sister?” the chief inspector asked.
“At his flat, I think. She was there on Friday afternoon.”
“Right,” he said. “Does she know her brother was murdered?”
“Yes,” I said. “I told her.”
“Good. I’ll be in touch so she can make an official identification.” Poor girl, I thought. “Anything else?”
“Yes,” I said. “Have you any idea who killed him?”
“Not as yet,” he said.
“Any leads at all?”
“No. None. The gunman seems to have disappeared completely.”
At least he was honest.
“How about the note I found in Herb’s coat pocket?” I asked.
“Nothing to go on,” he said. “The paper was just common copy paper available from any stationer or office supply store, and the only discernible fingerprints were either yours or Mr. Kovak’s.”
“How could you tell?” I asked.
“We checked yours against the sample set you gave me, and I arranged for Mr. Kovak’s to be taken from his body.”
I wished I hadn’t asked.
“So where do you go from here?”
“I think I had better take another look at those lists,” he said. “And I want to see those MoneyHome receipts. I’ll arrange to have them collected from your office.”
“I may not be in the office this week,” I s
aid. “Can you collect them from my home?” I thought for a moment. “In fact, I have two receipts here but the three from last week are still at Herb’s flat.”
“I may need to go and see Mr. Kovak’s sister. I’ll call you back later when I know my movements.”
“Sherri,” I said.
“What?”
“Sherri,” I repeated. “Sherri Kovak. Herb’s sister. They were twins.”
“Oh,” he said.
Somehow, being twins made it worse.
Claudia and I went out to dinner at Luigi’s, a local Italian restaurant, and managed to spend the whole meal talking without once mentioning the “C” word.
We both skirted around it on purpose, like a game, but it did mean we discussed all sorts of other things, many of which we had bottled up over the past couple of weeks.
“My mother sends her love,” I said.
“Oh thanks,” Claudia replied. “How is she?”
I wanted to say she was in need of grandchildren, but I didn’t. My mother would have to take her chances on Tuesday with the surgeon’s knife, like the rest of us.
“Fine,” I said. “She loves her little cottage, and she’s been busy with the local village historical society.”
“Perhaps we can go down and see her together,” Claudia said. “After.”
After the operation, she meant.
“I’d better call Jan Setter in the morning and tell her we won’t be able to make the opening night on Wednesday.”
“You go on your own,” Claudia said. “You’ll enjoy it.”
Sitting next to Jan in a theater all evening, with her hands wandering all over me in the darkness? No thanks.
“No,” I said. “I’ll tell her that neither of us will be there.”
Claudia smiled at me. I knew it was what she really wanted.
“It saved me buying a new dress anyway.”
We laughed.
That was the closest we came all evening to discussing her surgery, and presently I paid the bill and took my girl home to bed.
She had to go into the hospital the following evening, ready for the procedure on the Tuesday morning. Hence our lovemaking was passionate and full-on, as if we both realized that this might be our last time together with Claudia as a fertile woman.
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