Felix Francis - Dick Francis's Gamble

“You really think this must have something to do with Herb’s murder?” I asked.

“Don’t you?” he said. “We’ve no other leads to go on. You never know, perhaps Mr. Kovak was blackmailing one of his ‘clients,’ threatening to tell the U.S. authorities about their illegal gambling. So they killed him.”

“There goes that suspicious mind of yours again, Chief Inspector.”

“Suspicion is all we have at the moment,” he said seriously. “And there’s precious little of that in this case.”

There was a heavy knock at the front door.

“That will be my sergeant,” the chief inspector said. “He’s come to drive Miss Kovak and me to Liverpool.”

Claudia and I watched them go.

“That poor girl,” Claudia said, holding my hand. “Her family are all dead. She’s alone in the world.”

At least she’s healthy, I thought. How typical of my gorgeous Claudia to think of others when she had enough of her own troubles to worry about.

“Do you fancy going out to lunch?” I asked.

“Lovely,” she said.

“Luigi’s again?”

“It’s a bit unimaginative,” she said. “But, why not? I like it there.”

I drove us home and we again walked around the corner to our favorite restaurant. On this occasion the proprietor, Luigi Pucinelli, was present.

“Ah, Signor Foxton and the lovely Signorina Claudia. Buongiorno … welcome,” he said, being his usual effusive self. “Table for two? Bene. Follow me.”

He showed us to our favorite table in the window.

“We don’t often see you for lunch,” Luigi said in his Italian accent, adding an eh to every word that ended in a consonant.

“No,” I said. “It’s a special treat.”

“Eccellente,” he said with a flourish, giving us the menus.

“Grazie,” I said to him, playing the game.

Luigi was no more Italian than I was. I had met his mother one night in the restaurant and she had told me with a laugh that Luigi Pucinelli had been born Jim Metcalf in a hospital just up the Tottenham High Road, not five miles away.

But good luck to him, I thought. The food and service at Luigi’s were superb, and his restaurant thrived, authentic Italian or not.

Claudia chose the antipasto for us to share as a starter, with saltimbocca alla pollo to follow, while I decided on the risotto al funghi .

We ate the antipasto in silence.

“Speak to me,” Claudia said. “This is not the last meal of the condemned, you know.”

I smiled at her. “No, of course not.”

But we were both nervous.

Nervous of what tomorrow morning would bring.

Iordered a taxi to take us to the hospital that evening at seven o’clock.

“Why do you need to go in the night before?” I asked Claudia as we made our way down the Finchley Road.

“Something about wanting to monitor me overnight before the operation so they have something to compare the readings with afterwards.”

“What time is the op in the morning?” I asked.

“The surgeon said it would be first thing, just as soon as he’s finished his early-morning rounds.”

That meant it could be anytime, I thought.

In my experience, and I had plenty of it from my racing days, doctors and surgeons were about as good at time keeping as a London bus in the rush hour.

“At least we won’t have to wait all day,” I said, smiling at her.

She gave me a look that said she would be quite happy to wait all year.

“It’s better to get it done, and then at least we will know what we’re up against.”

“I know,” she said. “But I’m frightened.”

So was I. But now was not the time to show it.

“Everything will be OK,” I said, trying to sound reassuring. “You said they’ve found it early, and I’ve researched everything on the Internet. You’re going to be just fine. You’ll see.”

“Oh, Nick,” she said, grasping my hand very tight. There were tears in her eyes.

I pulled her close to me, and we sat in silence as the taxi maneuvered through Regent’s Park and out onto the Euston Road.

It was a difficult evening, and night, for both of us.

Claudia was checked into the hospital by the admissions staff, for whom it was a regular routine to be completed with brisk efficiency. They didn’t mean to be uncaring, but quite a few times they made us feel uncomfortable and even foolish.

I kept having to wait in the corridor outside her room as nurses and technicians came to perform some procedure or other. Swabs were taken from up Claudia’s nose and inside her mouth, and then others were then taken from more intimate areas. Blood was drawn for this, and urine was tested for that.

After a couple of hours they finally said that she was ready for the morning and left us in peace. I turned off the bright overhead lights and dimmed the reading light to a much more subdued level. Suddenly, everything did not look quite so stark and antiseptic. Much better.

I sat on a chair by her bed and held her hand.

“You ought to go home,” Claudia said. “I’ll be fine.”

“Unless they physically throw me out,” I said, “I’m not going anywhere.”

Claudia laid her head back on the pillow and smiled. “Good,” she said.

I still couldn’t believe how badly I had read the situation between us. What a fool I had been, and what a greater fool I might have become. Just thinking about it caused me to break out in a cold sweat.

“You get some sleep now, my love,” I said to her. “You’ll need all the strength you can get for tomorrow.”

“This bloody bed is so hard, it makes my back ache.”

I spent a few minutes using the electric bed control, lifting the head or feet, trying to make her more comfortable. It didn’t really work.

“Why can’t they have bloody beds that are comfortable to lie on?” Claudia complained. “You’d think that would be the first priority.”

I recognized what was happening. She was getting irritated by the slightest little thing. It was a sign of the nervous condition she was in. I would just have to smile gently and agree with her.

“Yes, darling,” I said. “Please try and close your eyes and get some rest.”

“You try resting on this bloody thing,” she snapped, turning herself over once again to face away from me.

In the end, she settled, and in time I could tell from the sound of her breathing that she was asleep. I settled down into the chair and closed my eyes.

One of the nurses came into the room and snapped on the overhead lights.

“Time for your vitals,” she said loudly.

And so it went on through the night, with temperature, pulse and blood pressure being measured in two-hour intervals, each time accompanied by the Blackpool Illuminations. Hospitals were clearly never designed for relaxation and recovery.

No one told me to go home, so I didn’t, although I had to admit it was not the best night’s sleep I’d ever had.

Breakfast wasn’t eaten by Claudia, or even offered, there being a large NIL BY MOUTH sign hanging on a hook by the door, so I went down to the hospital lobby at about six a.m. in search of coffee and a bun for myself while the patient had a shower.

At about eight-thirty, Dr. Tomic, the surgeon, arrived, wearing light blue scrub tunic and trousers, all set for the operating room. He brought with him some paperwork and a thick marker pen, which he used to draw a big black arrow on the left side of Claudia below her belly button.

“Don’t want to take out the wrong one, now do we?” he said.

That, somehow, wasn’t very encouraging.

“What, exactly, are you going to do?” I asked.