by Andrew Smyth
Finally she turned back to me. ‘But what happened to the IHG hospital? It was their drugs that killed my father. Isn’t anything happening to them?’
I shook my head. ‘It was a tragic accident. They were running two operations in parallel in Mumbai, the genuine and the counterfeit and I think someone made a mistake and they got mixed up. Like so many things I think it was a cock-up.’
‘So they kill my father and get off scot-free?’
‘Ed Carpenter told me they didn’t have enough evidence. He was with me when we found they’d cleared their shelves of the fakes so they didn’t have much to go on. They had your father’s prescription but it wasn’t enough. He says that they’ve made it clear to the top IHG management that they know what happened and insisted they introduce new safeguards.’
‘Safeguards? Is that what they’re called? Excuses, more like.’
I reached out and took her hand. ‘If we hadn’t discovered it thousands could have died, so good did come of it.’
‘I suppose so,’ she said reluctantly. ‘Bit I miss him so much. I still find myself wanting to tell him something and picking up the phone to call him.'
I said nothing and she took her hand back. I left her alone with her memories and went below to get some cognac. I brought it topside and held it out to her. ‘It’s VSOP.’ Greta nodded and I poured her out a glass. ‘More coffee?’
‘No thanks,’ she said and sipped her brandy. ‘It’s a difficult world out there and sometimes I want to shut it out and retreat into my shell.’ She said nothing and looked across at the lights. ‘This is a pretty good shell to retreat to. To a perfect host – the meal was wonderful.’ She held up her glass in a toast.
‘To the perfect guest,’ I said, and we clinked glasses. ‘And I can’t imagine anyone I’d prefer to spend the evening with.’
‘And the night?’ Greta said with welcome shamelessness.
‘Especially the night.’ I raised my glass again.
We sipped our brandies without saying anything, recognising that we had stepped over a threshold.
‘But you still haven’t told me who planted the files,’ Greta said.
I hadn’t told her about my final meeting with Ali and didn’t intend to just yet. There would be time for that in the future. ‘That all seems so long ago,’ I lied. ‘I’d almost forgotten about it.’
‘You were pretty sore at the time.’
‘I suppose I was, but once I’d worked out who’d done it, I sort of lost interest.’
Greta sat up in her chair. ‘So who was it?’
‘It was Ali. No one else had access to the files and to my quarters.’
‘But Ali was your best friend. Why would he do anything like that?’
‘I thought he was but I found out otherwise.’ I thought back to the enveloping dust of Afghanistan. ‘I’m not sure it matters now. If it hadn’t been for him, you would never have come looking for my help, so that makes it all worthwhile.’
‘If it hadn’t been for him, you wouldn’t have spent the past few weeks travelling the world like a knight on a charger.’
‘That’s me; a knight in armour putting right wrongs and rescuing the damsel from a fate worse than death.’ I put down my glass and stood up and held out my hand to her. ‘When I’ve finished working on the boat, what do you say to a holiday together? I know a very special island, fringed with palm trees with the Indian Ocean lapping its beaches.’
I’d let her find out about the bats when we got there.
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