I had to do was whack him and keep cool and I'd have everything I
wanted."
"Who?" Michael demanded. "Who was with you?"
"Gave me ten thousand pounds anyway. Nowhere close to the million we
were going to ask for the kid, but a nice tidy sum. Just had to keep
cool and let him handle it. The kid was dead, and the girl didn't
remember. Tkaumatized, he called it. Little Emma was too traumatized
to remember. Nobody would ever know and he was going to see I made it
to the top. On McAvoy's coattails."
He laughed again and fought for breath.
"You'll have to leave now, Detective."
Michael shook the doctor off. "A name, goddammit. Give me a name. Who
set it up?"
Blackpool opened his eyes again. They were red and watery and still
malicious. "Go to hell."
"You're going to die for this," Michael said between his teeth. "Either
here in this bed, or breathing in a lungful of poison gas, nice and
legal. But you're going to die. You can go alone, or you can take him
with you."
"You'll take him down?"
"Personally-11 With a smile, Blackpool closed his eyes again. "It was
Page. Pete Page. Tell him I'll see him in hell."
EMmA WATCHED GRIPS RAISE and lower the sliding doors at the rear of the
stage. In a few hours, she realized, she would walk through the one on
the right and go to the microphone. "I'm nervous," she told Bev. "It's
silly. All I have to do is stand there and read the cue cards and hand
out the awards."
"Hopefully to your father and Johnno. Let's go into the dressing room.
They're too busy to use it."
"Don't you want to go out front?" Emma glanced at her watch. "They'll be
starting in ten minutes."
"Not yet. Whoops, sorry, Annabelle."
Emma cursed herself for not having brought her camera. It was quite a
sight, Lady Annabelle tucked into hot pink silk that dripped with
sequins, changing a diaper.
"Don't worry. He's nearly decent." She picked young Samuel Ferguson up
to cuddle. "We just nipped in here for a quick feed and change. I
couldn't leave him with the nanny. It didn't seem fair that he should
miss his papa's big night."
Emma looked at the baby's sleepy eyes. "I don't think he's going to
make it."
"Just needs a little nap." She nuzzled again, then laid him on the sofa.
"Would you mind standing guard for a few minutes? I need to find P.M."
"You could twist our arms," Bev murmured, bending down to stroke the
baby's head.
"I won't be more than ten minutes." Annabelle hesitated at the door.
"Are you sure? If he wakes up-"
"We'll entertain him," Bev promised.
After one last look, Annabelle shut the door quietly behind her.
"Who would have imagined the ditsy Lady Annabelle as a devoted mother?"