I was hired to sit with a man the doctors said had five days left. One night I laid my teething baby on his chest — and his fingers moved. Then he whispered: don’t tell anyone I’m awake.

That is not a man executing a plan. That is a man avoiding a room.

Somebody else built the thing. Christo’s entire contribution was to not look, professionally, for two months, while signing whatever was put in front of him — which is a real thing to have done and which is worse than it sounds, because it is the part anybody can do.

There is a loan, secured against his expected inheritance, and it falls due in the April. He took it in 2023 to cover something that had already gone wrong.

Who lent him the money is the part that took the longest to establish and that is not mine to set out here.

Then there is Halloran, and this is the one I was not ready for.

He is not doing it for money. There is money, but the money is not why.

Eleven years ago the man in that bed ended that doctor’s career with one letter to a medical board.

And the letter was correct. I have read the summary and there is no version of it where Rendel was wrong.

Rendel does not know his face. He has never known his face; he wrote a letter about a hospital contract in 2014 and forgot it inside a fortnight.