Europe in Winter (The Fractured Europe Sequence)(87)
He shook his head. “Doesn’t matter. Give me the pills.”
There were two pills, both of them small and round. One was blue, one was beige. He had no idea what they were. Ania gave him a little cup of water to wash them down with, then she busied herself tidying up the bathroom while they took effect. When she came out, stripping off her surgical gloves, he was already standing by the bed, waiting for her to help him dress. The pills helped him stand and walk about, but he was still stiff and awkward in the morning. He was just too damned old. It was embarrassing.
When he was dressed and his hair – at least he still had all his own hair and most of his teeth – was combed, he took up his cane and embarked on the long, slow trek along the walkway to the lift at the end. It was always a bit of an adventure early in the morning, but if he didn’t get down to the restaurant in fairly short order all the freshly-cooked food would be gone and he’d be left with stuff that had been sitting under heat lamps and he’d rather starve than eat that. He still had some standards.
He had to admit, grudgingly, that the food wasn’t bad. He was constantly plagued by nutritionists and well-meaning doctors wanting to get his cholesterol down, but within those parameters he actually ate quite well. He’d been quite plump when he first came here, but now his weight was down to a rangy sixty-five kilos and he couldn’t deny that it made getting about somewhat easier, even if the sight of his bony knees in the morning did annoy him out of all proportion.
There was a rack of communal pads by the entrance to the restaurant. He grabbed one as he went past and sat at his usual table, in a corner by one of the windows, far from the other early morning residents gumming their way through their cereal. One of the serving staff came to his table and he waved his phone so it could transmit his ID and dietary requirements.
When the waiter had departed, Johnny activated the pad and called up a menu of news sites. There were many things he hated about the modern world, but the internet was not among them. The communal pads had restrictions to stop the residents looking for porn, narcotics or firearms – all of which had caused problems in the past, some of the residents were pretty feisty – but the news wasn’t obviously censored. He was reading a piece about the Community’s delegation taking their seat at the United Nations when his breakfast arrived. Grapefruit, orange juice, a cup of coffee, rasher of grilled bacon, a grilled sausage, a small portion of scrambled eggs – obviously today was a day for lifting the foot off the anti-cholesterol pedal. The bacon wasn’t bad.
After breakfast, he returned to his apartment for his coat and scarf and went for a walk in the grounds of the hospital. It was a bright, chilly day, and his breath plumed in the cool air as he did a couple of circuits of the building. The grounds weren’t very large, and several other of the more ambulatory residents were also taking morning constitutionals in the hour or so before the wheelchair-bound started to emerge from the building and race each other awkwardly along the paths.
After his walk was an hour’s physio, which was... well, it passed the time, if nothing else.
He usually had a nap after physio. He found himself napping a lot, these days, which was irritating. He remembered a time when he could work all day and far into the night and wake up the next morning clear-headed and ready to start work again. These days he was lucky if he could make it to lunch without nodding off.
This morning, though, he had barely settled down when there was a knock on the door. When he answered it he found Ania standing outside with two men he had never seen before, and his heart thudded in his chest so hard that he thought for a moment that it was finally going to stop.
“You’ve got visitors, Johnny,” Ania told him. “From your lawyers.”
He looked at them. One was nondescript and had a cane; the other had prematurely-white hair and a hunted expression. They were both wearing expensive suits and carrying briefcases, but they were the least likely-looking lawyers he had ever seen.
“Sir,” the one with the cane said briskly in French, presumably hoping that Ania would not be able to follow, “my name is Smith, and this is my colleague, Mr Jones. We represent Leonidas & Parr of Tilbury, Essex. Please accept our identification.” And he took from his jacket pocket a small black and white photograph and held it out. Jean-Yves took it, and even now, after all these years, his eye first sought out not Woodrow Wilson and Lloyd-George and the other world leaders, but Roland’s face, in the background, stern and purposeful. He felt a great tiredness, like the shadow of a cloud.
“You’d better come in, then,” he said.
3.
THE FIRST THING he said, when Ania had gone and the two men were sitting on the sofa in his apartment, was, “You’re no more lawyers than I am.”
“No,” the one with the cane admitted. “No, we’re not. We’re not here to harm you, though, I assure you of that. My father was sole trustee of your fund.”
Jean-Yves tipped his head to one side and looked at the younger man’s face. “Yes,” he said. “I remember him. You look almost nothing like him, you know. I presume your presence here means he’s dead.”
“About eighteen months ago,” said Rudi. He paused, somewhat awkwardly. “There are some questions I must ask you, the first of which is, which one are you? Sarkisian, Tremblay, or Charpentier?”