The Blurt of Richard Davies

Chapter Thirty Nine

Epilogue.

A year later I'm just checking to make sure the original content of this blurt remains unaltered. It ought to be given the hardlocking I applied to it, but you can never can tell... Even now there are still people who would try to discredit the facts of the story by altering the source documentation.

As you might imagine a lot has changed, yet paradoxically remained the same in the year which has passed. It still seems incredible to me it was I who experienced at first hand those events, and was for a short time at the centre of the controversy which followed. But as much of the contentiousness has subsided for the time being I think it would be a good idea to update what became of me and the other dramatis personae in the narrative.

The next few days were a blur with me being treated and debriefed in a luxurious government guest apartment before being let go. As expected the Irish goverment were publicly noncommittal about my exposé. My arrival in the Republic hadn't gone unnoticed with there being a short-lived media furore surrounding me for a while when I resurfaced into the public domain. For a short time I had the pro bono services of a professional media relations person, and I did the rounds of interviews with anyone who would listen; but eventually the fuss died down as interest in my story waned. News still ages as fast as it ever did and there being no impetus for any change, the story soon withered. Someone tried to identify the man who was run over by the bus, but there were no autopsy or mortuary records to be found; the data appears to have been lost as a result of Black Dragon activity, so we're told. Despite my button cam image of him and the other would-be abductors being run through multiple facial databases nothing came up. To all intents and purposes he and they never existed; sanitised as effectively as the plot itself. My footage was dismissed as a failed robbery attempt.

As expected the Fed sought my extradition on criminal charges but were given short shrift. The cheeky bloody Albans even offered me asylum but there's no way I'd ever go there, I'm not mad or masochistic! In any case it was all rather immaterial by then; the NRP had cemented itself in place as the de-facto adminstration and would remain so for the forseeable future. There was a slight counter-reaction against them when the second round of polling took place in October to fill the seats left unfilled by the Consensus Party whose MPs were by then languishing in Rehabilitation on remand. But who has any confidence in the result of a Fed election now? Quietly setting aside any scruples regarding their legitimacy, the international community recognised the new regime in London. Realpolitik triumphed again as it always does.

So I was alive, free, but broke and wondering what I should do with the rest of my life. As had been suggested I employed a professional writer to ghost my book, and supplemented my meagre income with engagements on the speaking circuit. The expat Fedder community here is split fifty-fifty between those who regard me as a hero or a traitor, but there was still enough interest and goodwill among them to provide me with the moral and material support which I so desperately needed then. I also have a small but vociferous international network of my supporters and they have proved more valuable than I could ever have imagined in defending my reputation and getting the word out. But I didn't want to spend the rest of my life as a failed whistleblower, I needed to move on.

It was during my settling in process I met Àine and moved in with her. So far our relationship is going well but she says I still act like a haunted fugitive; that's probably because I still consider myself to be one. My life isn't at risk; and why should it be as the Fed media have already done an excellent job in assassinating my character? No, killing me now would only lend a posthumous credibility to my story, but I know if I were to return to the Fed my life would be made an utter misery: There are outstanding warrants for my arrest in regard to the Vauxhall incidents, and though it should be technically possible to extract me from the Rehabilitation service within a few months I've no confidence in what passes for the justice system in the Fed. Besides, I've nothing to go back to. My pension and flat were sequestered to pay for the medical costs and compensation of the accident victims; and I was summararily dimissed from IMS. So what life I had there is gone for good. Lisa Burrows has taken over my post. I wish her well, but I think she'll find as I did that the job is a poisoned chalice.