‘Did she know about his other little sideline?’
‘She said not. She thought the nursing home was paid for by Medicare. She is absolutely furious with Bob about that too.’
So Bob Wade had lost his job, his benefits, his pension, his marriage and his right foot, but not his liberty.
Was it enough?
It seemed it would have to be.
I flew back overnight to London on a British Airways super-jumbo.
‘Mr Hinkley, you’ve been upgraded to first class,’ said the man behind the check-in desk.
‘Thank you,’ I said, and wondered if Tony had anything to do with it. I expected so. For someone who could arrange a Green Card in twenty-four hours and spirit an inmate out of Rikers Island, fixing an upgrade would have been child’s play.
I relaxed into my first-class seat with a glass of chilled champagne and thought about my future.
Would I stay with the BHA?
I wasn’t sure.
Paul Maldini had been keen to have me back — stay for as long as you need, provided you come back eventually.
I’d been away for over five weeks — five weeks of excitement and danger. Would I be able to settle back into my old routine?
I put off the decision by taking a week’s leave, spending much of it with my sister. The renewed chemo had made Faye feel ill again and her skin looked pale and almost transparent when I first went to see her. But her spirits were high.
‘It is good news,’ she said, forcing a wan smile. ‘My doctor thinks we caught it just in time.’
Good, I thought. But both of us knew it would be back, and that we wouldn’t always manage to catch it just in time.
The following week I went back to work at BHA headquarters in High Holborn.
‘Had a good holiday?’ asked one of the admin staff.
‘Great, thanks,’ I said.
I went along the corridor to my office and sat down at my desk.
There were hundreds of unopened emails in my inbox. I sighed and set to work replying to some of the most urgent.
At noon, the phone rang.
‘Hello,’ I said, answering.
‘Hi, Jeff,’ said a familiar voice. ‘How are things?’
‘Great, Tony, thanks.’
‘Did you see the Belmont on Saturday?’
‘Sure did,’ I replied. ‘It was on late here.’
I had watched the race live on television. Fire Point, now trained by Sidney Austin and ridden by Jimmy Robertson, had won the Belmont Stakes by five lengths from Amphibious, going away.
‘Makes you think, eh?’ Tony said.
‘It sure does.’
The irony was not lost on either of us that maybe, just maybe, Fire Point had been good enough all along to win the Triple Crown without the need for George Raworth and Charlie Hern to nobble the opposition. Perhaps they would then have deserved the kudos and won the five-million-dollar trainer bonus fair and square. As it was, they were facing financial ruin due to the expected lawsuits from the owners of the five EVA-infected horses, plus a long stretch on Rikers Island for fraud and animal cruelty.
‘Any other news?’ I asked.
‘Angie Wade has officially filed for divorce.’
She who would take Bob for everything she could.
‘Anything else?’
‘Yes. One other thing. I thought you might be interested in the following piece that appeared in today’s New York Times.’
He read it out to me:
Irishman Patrick Sean Murphy, aged 33, indicted and awaiting trial for the first-degree murders of fellow Belmont Park groom Diego Manuel Ríos and Federal Special Agent Stephanie Dean, was found hanged in his cell at Sing Sing Prison, Sunday morning, in a suspected suicide. Murphy was pronounced dead at the scene. Police sources confirm that no one else is being sought in connection with the murders.
But you should never believe anything you read in the newspapers.
‘So Patrick Sean Murphy is officially no more,’ I said. ‘Is the case now closed?’
‘Indeed it is,’ Tony replied. ‘How are you settling back into life as Jefferson Roosevelt Hinkley?’
‘I’m working on it.’