‘Staff accommodation?’

  ‘For only fifty people, the others is living outside’.

  ‘We’ll find local buildings and convert them, as we did in England, and rent the rooms to our staff.’

  He nodded. ‘We think this, yes.’

  ‘And fire and safety?’ I pressed.

  ‘It is concrete, safety doors, like a hospital, heat sensor in every room, and we look at what you do in England.’

  ‘Don’t look at the places in Corsica,’ I told him, his staff laughing. ‘No beach here.’

  ‘No beach, just traffic and crime,’ he noted.

  ‘Bus service?’

  ‘Minibus and taxi, yes, to the city shops.’

  ‘And crime in this area?’

  He shrugged. ‘It is not so beautiful, but not many people live here, so … not so much the crime. For the crime, look for the tall apartment blocks, they is hell.’

  ‘In England as well, yes, which is why I want to pull them all down. Will one building be ready first?’

  He tapped the drawing. ‘We go west to east, this one ready first, old people come to live.’

  I nodded at that. ‘Some of the residents will have a bad view for six months. Don’t make the windows large.’

  He nodded. ‘But we have two builder groups here, morning and night, extra cranes, good budget; it will be quick, no builder sleeping.’

  ‘How long to complete the first nursing home?’ I asked.

  He shrugged and made a face. ‘Drains is OK, electrics is OK, a week to finish them. Then we make tall strong concrete pillars, thirty-two, and the floors hang off the pillars to start.

  ‘Then we use the plastic moulds like Corsica. Before we do similar, concrete made on site, but in panels - not mould together, so we make it quick. But we do not make such a nursing home before so … hard to say. Maybe four to five months to be done on first building.’

  ‘When it’s all done, you and your team can have one day off.’

  They laughed.

  ‘We need more than one day I think.’

  There was not much to see, but the arranged photographer got his shots, which was the main aim, to spread the word about the new nursing homes.

  Back at Ross Daniels’ offices we met his people first, some of the lady staff being very hot and wanting snaps with me, then we met my people, our consortium’s smartly-dressed French arm.

  Their offices all displayed huge technical drawings and 3-d images of what the sites might look like when ready, and they showed me the artist’s impressions of what both sites should look like when ready.

  ‘You’ve seen Frances House?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes, but this is not like that. And here we have extra floor, and more Phase One. Problem in Paris is in the minds of the old people, when Corsica look like paradise to them.

  ‘Here, when they have to go to nursing home they cry, and hide, and shoot at ambulance men sometimes. We need to show Phase One on the TV, and be spoken about in the families.’

  I nodded at that. ‘Hard to move old ladies in England as well, people who’ve been in a house fifty years and don’t want to give it up.’

  He faced me. ‘Many small nursing home here will close…’

  ‘I hope so, and we’ll buy some of them, convert the buildings and sell them. The truth is … I want them gone.’

  ‘They is bad place, yes, I want to be dead … not in such a place.’

  ‘You and everyone else, so book a room in Frances House ready.’

  ‘If I can holiday there, great.’

  We smiled.

  ‘You can holiday at one of my hotels, a business trip with your family.’

  ‘This I want to do in June, yes, we have been to Corsica many times. But land and houses is very expensive if we want to retire there.’

  I nodded at that. ‘Prices are rising thanks to me, now everyone knows about the island.’

  Our guest arrived ten minutes later with his posse, and we stood to be photographed with the same Social Services Minister I had met several times before. He had his photo for the media, and I had made sure that everyone now knew that the homes were being built.

  We showed him the artist’s impressions, and he was pleased that something would finally be done about Paris nursing homes; he was out of office in a few months.

  A Paris TV station had called Ross Daniels’ people, so after we had eaten upstairs I was escorted around to the studio. Make-up done, form signed - no fee for me this time, and on I walked, a taped show with a live audience since it would need subtitles added.

  I sat as the audience clapped, but I had no idea how a Paris crowd might greet me. And I had no idea if the selected audience even spoke English.

  My host, a lady in her forties, checked her cue cards. ‘Welcome Mister Roskov to TV One.’

  ‘Cardinal Roskov now.’

  ‘What?’ she puzzled.

  ‘The Vatican has now made me an honouree cardinal, with access rights to all Catholic facilities around the world, and the authority to investigate all priests and bishops.’

  ‘Oh. And how is that investigation going?’

  ‘It seems to be very dramatic on the TV screens, because we have this man Harry Stanulou attacking the Vatican with bombs. He used a car bomb to kill and wound priests, and he sent a priest into the Vatican with a bomb inside his stomach.’

  ‘Incredible, to do that, like in a movie.’

  ‘Harry Stanulou seems to have friends in foreign countries helping him, good friends and skilled friends.’

  ‘Libya?’

  ‘Yes, amongst others.’

  ‘And many bishops and priests were removed?’ she posed.

  ‘Yes, but the Vatican employs four hundred thousand people, so removing forty is a small number. But more will be dealt with, outside of Italy, and I intend to send many of them to prison.

  ‘In Rome, my agreement with the Vatican was that they get the report and deal with their people their own way. In Britain and Ireland that will not be the case, priests will be sacked from the church and sent to prison.’

  ‘And did you ever learn any more about Minister Demoine?’

  ‘A terrible case of suicide apparently.’

  The audience laughed as she shot me a look, so they did speak English.

  I added, ‘And I recently bought some of his land, searched it and found treasure, handed to the government in Corsica, and they’ll sell the treasure and build nursing homes for their own pensioners.’

  ‘You could have claimed that treasure and sold it yourself…’

  ‘I have all I need. The pensioners of Corsica will benefit from the treasure.’

  The audience applauded me.

  ‘And you found The Ark in Israel…’

  ‘With some help, yes. In Corsica we found a fragment of The Ark in a gold frame, same as the death warrant of Jesus, both created by Broderic. That ark fragment had been in water, running water, so we had a clue.

  ‘In Israel I asked about the old city, the first temple and where it sat, and where the running water was. We figured that The Ark was in a cave, that the cave had collapsed some, and that a flood had washed out a fragment.

  ‘An Israeli water engineer remembered a flood in 1984 and where water bubbled up, so he went to have a look and he found a second fragment, and a cave. He found The Ark, not me.

  ‘And the old writings said that The Ark, the second ark, was out in the desert, next to a spring. I asked if there were any springs with poisonous water, and there were, so the Israelis went to have a look. And there they found Crusader skeletons, Broderic’s men.’

  ‘The bodies come back here and they study them, to be buried soon,’ she informed me.

  ‘Those men tried to enter a cave with a poison well, and they died. I knew it was a trick, I found enough tricks around Corsica, so I had the Israelis dig opposite the poison caves, and they found a small cave entrance and the second ark inside, now in a museum.’

  ‘It has not aged they say, fantastic carvings on it, good as new.’

  My face soured some. ‘If I had known the reaction amongst the Palestinians … I would not have looked for it. That ark is not worth a single man dead, on either side.’

  The audience applauded me.

  ‘And today you looked at the new site for building a large nursing home…’

  ‘Yes, we met the builders and architects, and they’ve started work on the site, which will hold twelve thousand residents as well as offer a four-hundred-bed hospital for geriatric medicine.

  ‘At the moment, France is like Britain, and when someone is old but sick they tie up a hospital bed. My nursing home will offer an alternative bed, recovery rooms, and the ability to move straight into an apartment and stay there.

  ‘If any of the twelve thousand residents are sick they’re treated in their apartment or in the internal hospital, and that will save the taxpayers a great deal of money.’

  ‘But you will also create a nursing home for rich people?’

  ‘Not rich people, but people with some money. They can buy an apartment there and live in that apartment till they’re too sick to cope, and then just move next door.

  ‘When they die … the apartment is handed to their children, an investment, and the children can rent it out to residents if they like.’

  ‘Your nursing home in Corsica looks fantastic…’

  ‘It’s fully open now, and we’ll soon have a full complement of residents, most of whom were born on the island but worked here in mainland France.

  ‘That means that they know each other and have a lot in common, and the first few residents all had common friends and knew the same people, so they were relaxed to start with.

  ‘And that’s the key element, to have people in a nursing home that are happy not afraid, and the idea of Phase One is that they get used to the place and the staff.

  ‘The residents that we have now … they all look well enough, but their doctors gave them five years or less to live; some have cancer, some have advanced arthritis. So they could cope at home for another year or two, but with regular trips to the doctor.

  ‘The taxpayers save money by having such people - sick yet still mobile, all in the one place. And such people benefit from medical services a few yards away, nurses and doctors to visit them.

  ‘Here in Paris, as in Britain, an ambulance is sent to fetch a pensioner for treatment, they stay in hospital a week to recover then go home. We save money on that process, by treating people where they live.’

  ‘When you were young you helped local pensioners…’

  ‘I did, I rallied the local schoolchildren to visit old ladies. And those old ladies all had the same story; they were lonely and afraid. In my nursing homes they’ll be so busy with the activities and with their friends they’ll be asleep by 9pm!

  ‘And none of my residents will be broken into, or robbed as they walk to the shops - we deliver food and have a shop inside, we have strong walls and high fences, cameras and security staff. None of my residents will be the victim of crime.’

  The audience applauded.

  ‘And this comedy actor, Henri, is now a resident…’

  ‘And has already been told off twenty times for upsetting the female staff.’

  The audience laughed.

  ‘He has propositioned them?’

  ‘Asked them out on dates, and he’s seventy something years old. But if he keeps drinking the spring water he’ll be sixty years old again soon.’

  ‘The reports here say that it has fantastic effects on old people, and now cures cancer.’

  I gave her a flat hand. ‘We make no such claims, other people make those claims, we need years of data first. And some people remain unaffected by the water. It’s just too early to say.’

  ‘Will it be available here?’

  ‘It is already, and in Italy, but not cheap. Personally, I would like to see it used just for medical tests and then medical treatments, but my partners wish to sell it.

  ‘But one man in Corsica used it on his carrots, and they grow better.’

  The audience laughed.

  ‘Not a valuable use of such water,’ she complained.

  ‘Maybe someday they’ll know which minerals help sick people, and which help carrots to grow.’

  ‘And how many people will you have at your nursing homes in Corsica?’

  ‘The aim is to take a hundred thousand pensioners from mainland France, and to house a further hundred thousand here in mainland France.’

  The audience gasped.

  ‘Two hundred thousand residents?’ she queried.

  ‘Yes, maybe more. And keep in mind … that when the cost breakdowns are seen in years to come … small nursing homes will be forced out of business, and I hope they are. We need a better quality of care for our pensioners.’

  The audience applauded.

  I added, ‘Our pensioners deserve to be safe, and not lonely, and they deserve good medical care, but at the same time we save taxpayers’ money by having them all together.’

  ‘You have joined with the big pharmaceutical companies…’

  ‘Yes, and they’ll invest in nursing homes, and we’ll run drug programmes together, not least because I’ll be housing most of your pensioners.

  ‘But what I hope for … is for good computer analysis, so that in the future we know how many people will grow old and get sick, how to treat them, what it costs, and then we can plan for that, your government can plan for that – and save a great deal of money.’

  She nodded. ‘All these people who thought that the Templars had treasure were wrong…’

  ‘Seems that way, yes, The Ark was never taken by the Knights Templars, nor temple gold, but the Crusaders did steal whatever they could.’

  ‘And these Templars found in a cave?’

  ‘That’s a mystery still, since they were shipwrecked – the ship not found yet, they swam ashore and into the cave and just lay down and died, but some survived because the cave was partly sealed from the inside and partly from the outside.’

  ‘And they had treasure?’

  ‘They may have had silver coins, just that. We’re looking for the ship at the moment.’

  She nodded. ‘You signed up a young Parisian lady model, Gabrielle, and now she has a TV deal…’

  My heart skipped a beat, because I wanted Gabrielle hidden to the world. ‘She’s … proven to be popular with the clients, many photoshoots in Sweden and now a TV advert, yes.’

  ‘A French newspaper is certain that you were in the First World War…’

  ‘I may have been, the man was identical to me, even the same handwriting. But that doesn’t keep me awake at night or would cause me to change anything I’m doing, I’m very focused.’

  ‘And do you think you know the real reason that Demoine wanted to kill you?’

  ‘He knew there was treasure to be found in Corsica, as well as the stone tablets, and he wanted them for himself. He must have figured that I would find them eventually, and that I would hand them to your government – which I did.

  ‘If he had found the fragment of The Ark, and the death warranty of Jesus, it would have made him very rich. His ancestors had those items, but the Followers of Mary stole them and hid them in Corsica.’

  ‘And you were the chosen one, in the eyes of these Followers of Mary…’

  ‘Yes, I was left a vast fortune and treasure years before I was even born, treasure maps for Corsica.’

  ‘And you sleep well at night, you say?’

  ‘Well, no, the twins kick me often.’ The audience laughed. ‘And four in a bed is never going to make for a quiet night’s sleep.’ They laughed louder.

  ‘Are cardinals allowed to have four girls in a bed?’ she teased.

  ‘Are cardinals allowed to have sex with choirboys?’ I countered with, the audience laughing. ‘I think my sins are less.’

  ‘Yes, definitely less. Is the Vatican clean of corruption now?’

  ‘Yes, for the most part, we found all the men involved with financial corruption, and the civilian staff also involved with corruption, but now I’ll turn my attention to Britain and Ireland – and priests having sex with small boys.’

  ‘Many priests in Rome committed suicide…’

  ‘There were presented with the evidence against them, and asked to confess. They chose suicide instead, the easy way out. It will take many months, but we will end up with a clean church, and I plan on spending a great deal of money on that process for the sake of the victims, past and present.’

  ‘And here in France as well?’

  ‘Yes, my investigators will be busy here as well. Not for the sake of the church, but for the sake of the victims.’

  The audience applauded.

  I added, ‘If there’s anyone in France that knows of a priest that has abused children … then get in touch with me. And let me make myself clear to the bishops in France, or all faiths: if you cover up what your priests do I’ll hold you personally responsible.’

  The audience applauded again.

  ‘Ricky Roskov, thanks for coming on TV One.’

  The audience applauded loudly as I shook hands with my interviewer, subtitles to now be added.

  Back at the posh apartments, Ross Daniels now in a plane over the Atlantic, Bill had taken a call.

  Bill told me, ‘In Italy they investigate now these Mafia men in a van, their insides torn out. They know that the men were on the way to kill you at the hotel.’

  I took in the faces. ‘No evidence that I was involved with what happened to those men, it will look like a Mafia squabble, some reprisal hit.’

  ‘It’s getting many TV minutes,’ Bill warned. ‘Another mystery to solve. They may think you arranged it.’

  ‘They can think that, but they can’t prove that, and the Mafia boss’s wife will need a holiday.’

  ‘Why will she need a holiday?’ Gloria asked, and I had not given them the full story yet.

  ‘The men in the van lost their internal organs, those organs dumped onto the bed of the Mafia boss.’

  ‘Shit … what a mess,’ Bonza let out, Bill and Ted stood wide-eyed.

  ‘How?’ Gloria asked.

  ‘Some angelic assistance.’

  Gloria shook her head. ‘He couldn’t have just given them a flat tyre?’