It was three days since his operation — the urgent ‘debulking’ of his brain — and he had been informed that his tumour had been removed along with the other tissue. His chemotherapy was underway and he could receive visitors. His wife, Meredith, had left five minutes before — trying to hide her tears but failing.
Currently, Lachlan McTurk sat heavily on his bed, helping himself to a toothglass of the malt whisky he had brought as a present.
“You’ll like this, Ingram,” McTurk said. “Speyside. Aberlour. I know you don’t enjoy West Coast.”
“Thank you, Lachlan. I look forward to it.”
McTurk topped himself up again.
“Who was your surgeon?” he asked.
“Mr Gulzar Shah,” Ingram said. He had popped in an hour previously, a tall, gaunt, softly spoken man with dark eye sockets, as if he had applied eye-shadow to them.
“Oh, very good man. Top man. Did he give you a final diagnosis?”
“Glioblastoma multiforme,” Ingram pronounced the words carefully. “I think that’s what he said.”
“Ah…yes…Hmmm. Oh, dear…Yes…”
“You’re wonderfully reassuring, Lachlan. Mr Shah said he wanted to wait for more biopsy results before he confirmed. But that was his provisional judgement.”
“It’s definitely something you don’t want to get, old son, is all I’ll say. Very nasty.”
“Well, I seem to have got it, by all accounts. I don’t have much choice.”
“Yes, I suppose so.”
“You’re my doctor, Lachlan — what’s your prognosis?”
Lachlan sipped his whisky, thinking, sucking his teeth.
“Well…If you follow the usual pattern you’ll probably be dead in three months. Don’t give up all hope, though. Ten per cent of glioblastoma multiforme sufferers experience remission — some have lived five years. Who can say? You might be the exception. You might prove medical science wrong: live a long, fulfilled life. It is a rare and virulent cancer, though.” Lachlan reached forward and patted his hand. “Exceptionally. Still, I’ll put my money on you, Ingram. At least five years.”
“Many thanks.”
There was a knock on the door.
“I’ll haste awa’, laddie,” Lachlan said in his best Rabbie Burns mode. He pushed the whisky bottle towards Ingram. “Do have a wee dram of this. No point in holding back, eh? Chin up.”
As he left he passed Ingram’s accountant, Chandrakant Das, coming in. Chandrakant was in an evident state of shock — he couldn’t speak for a while, his face pinched, his eyes moist, he gripped Ingram’s hand with both his hands, looking down and breathing deeply for a minute, composing himself.
“I feel surprisingly well, Chandra,” Ingram said, trying to put him at his ease. “I know everything is collapsing around me but I feel in sufficiently good health to want to enquire about the state of my finances. That’s why I asked you here. I do apologise.”
Chandra was finally able to speak. “It’s not good, Ingram. Not good, not good, not good, not good.”
Chandra explained. Calenture-Deutz shares were currently trading at 37 pence and heading south. Rilke Pharma had made a buy-out offer to the other shareholders of 50 pence a share but were reconsidering as the company rapidly devalued. Ingram had been voted off the board as chairman and CEO and it was only his ‘health crisis’ that was keeping the Serious Fraud Office at bay.
“But I didn’t make a penny from this fiasco,” Ingram said. “I’ve lost a fortune. So why are they after me?”
“Because your brother-in-law has absconded with £1.8 million,” Chandra said, anguished. “They can’t touch him in Spain so they’re after you. You obviously advised him to sell, they say. Clear case of insider dealing.”
“On the contrary. I explicitly advised him not to sell.”
“Can you prove it?”
Ingram fell silent.
“I don’t want you to worry, Ingram. Burton Keegan is holding everything together, keeping the police at bay. It would look very bad to arrest and prosecute a man so close to — so seriously ill.”
“Good old Burton.”
Chandra took his hand again and said with real feeling, “I’m so pleased to see you, Ingram. And I’m so sorry this has happened.”
Ingram frowned, gently releasing his hand from Chandra’s grip. “That’s the thing: I really don’t understand how it happened. That’s what bothers me: everything seemed on course, all was fine and dandy.”
Chandra shrugged, spread his hands. “Who are we to speak? To seek neat answers? Who can predict what life will bring us?”
“Very true.”
Ingram asked Chandra to pour him half an inch of Lachlan’s whisky. He sipped it — throat burning. He smelt burnt barley, peat, clear Scottish rivers. It emboldened him.
“I want to know where I stand, Chandra. Bottom line. Don’t spare me — now that everything’s gone pear-shaped.”
“I did some quick analysis before I came,” Chandra said, retrospective disbelief distorting his features for a moment. “It’s not good…Last month you were worth more than £200 million. Now…” He took out his phone and punched numbers into it. Ingram wondered for a moment if he was calling someone but he remembered you could do everything on a mobile phone now, everything.
Chandra held the phone away from him as if he were dubious of the reading he was receiving. “Now I would say your assets were worth £10 million — give or take £100,000 here or there. Baseball park figure.” Chandra smiled. “Of course, I’m not including your properties.”
“So there is some light in this darkness.”
“A gleam of light, Ingram. You can still live reasonably well. You are not a poor man. But you must be prudent.”
He handed Ingram a few documents for signature. Ingram might have well been signing his remaining assets away, for all he knew, but he trusted Chandra. And you couldn’t live in a world without trusting people, as he had so recently and callously discovered. Chandra would make sure he was all right, that Meredith and his family were all right with what remained. There might have to be some down-sizing, some belt-tightening, but, as Chandra said, he was not a poor man. Or so he hoped, he thought, suddenly less sanguine. Who could predict what life would bring us? — as Chandra had just reminded him.
Chandra gathered up his documents, shook Ingram’s hand and reassured him all would be well. As he left, a nurse poked her head around the door.
“Are you up for any more visitors, Mr Fryzer? Mr Shah said not to tire you out.”
“It depends who it is,” Ingram said, thinking that if it’s the Serious Fraud Office, I’m comatose.
“It’s your son.”
“Oh, well, that’s fine.” He called out: “Guy, come on in.”
Fortunatus stepped into the room.
“‘Fraid it’s me, Dad.”
He had a bunch of flowers in his dirty hand, dark purple flowers with waxy leaves that were already giving off a powerful scent, filling the room. Forty handed them over.
“What’re these?” Ingram asked, immeasurably touched.
“Freesias. My favourites. I just cut them for you. We do a garden not far from here.”
Forty looked as though he’d just come out of the front line — the usual filthy combat jacket over baggy, greasy jeans, his head now shaved egg-smooth. Ingram looked at him in wonder.