‘For the tumour.’ I sucked on my sweet, turning it from one cheek to the other. ‘They did a biopsy. A bogus operation, like Lily’s. And he was on medication,’ I pointed out. ‘His daughter said something about it.’
‘To make him appear senile. He was healthy, he was one of their guinea pigs. Like Lily.’
‘Two lots of patients,’ I continued piecing it together, ‘the healthy ones who were made mad, then operated on, and the others the ones who really had Alzheimer’s.’ I paused. ‘Their brains went to Malden’s for research. Oh God.’ I felt sick. Barley sugar was supposed to be good for travel sickness, but what about other forms of nausea? ‘They were using material from those brains. That’s what he meant when he said they’d introduced tissue-diseased cells.’
‘They can do all sorts, can’t they nowadays, clone things, transplant things, use genetic material?’ She spoke softly.
‘Oh, Agnes, it’s horrible.’ My mind grappled with the scenario. Everything seemed to fit. ‘And if they can develop the disease, they can study it, see how it behaves.’
‘That’s what they do with animals, isn’t it? Grow tumours in mice and monkeys and what not.’
‘Do you remember when he was talking to his wife, that bit about the drug companies? That was what they were after. Research that would help them produce a drug. That pathologist I talked to, he said something similar, you’d make millions. Be like inoculations, everyone would want it. Oh, Agnes. Poor Lily.’
‘There must have been others too, like Lily and Philip Braithwaite. People they thought no one cared about very much, healthy people getting ill suddenly, having unexpected operations. Lily was their breakthrough, he said, she hadn’t rejected the…’ She stopped abruptly, emotion taking charge. She snuffled.
‘And no one would have been any the wiser if you hadn’t been so suspicious.’
‘Because we’re old, do you see? We’re not people, we’re pensioners or OAPs,’ she stretched the initials out, ‘old biddies. No one’s surprised if we get demented, it’s almost expected.’
‘Oh, come on..
‘You’d be surprised.’
‘And the donors.’ I shivered. ‘They were all transferred when they were very ill. Montgomery could send them to Simcock for scans…’
‘He would make sure there was plenty of material to harvest,’ she said bitterly.
‘And once they died the doctors could take the brains, ship them off here, to Malden’s. Get the cells they’d cultivate for use on the healthy patients. Yes. And I bet the relatives were only too happy to agree to samples being taken after death, hoping it would help someone in the future.’
I wondered which of the people involved had first come up with the idea for their covert experiments. And why? Had it started off as scientific interest, an altruistic desire to relieve suffering by finding a cure, or had the prospect of money been the beacon from the start? Had all four of them slept easy in their beds?
My toes had begun to go numb. I circled my ankle, trying to keep the blood moving.
‘Are you warm enough?’ I asked her.
‘Just about.’
‘I’m freezing. If only I had a mobile phone we could ring for help.’
‘Well, he wouldn’t have let you keep it, not if he’d known about it.’
‘What happened, before you rang me, when he came to your house?’
She told me how he’d barged in. He’d insisted Agnes ring me. She’d protested it was late but he was emphatic about it. ‘I sensed then that it all wasn’t as it should be – the atmosphere more than what he actually said. Then he took me through to the phone. I hoped he’d calm down once I’d made the call but he was so jumpy. He took some of those pills. I asked him to leave and he went completely barmy. Shouting and swearing, he pulled down the old creel, pulled off the rope…’
‘Tied you up.’ I stretched, the paper rustled, I started on the other ankle. ‘It must have been so frightening.’
‘And when he pulled the phone out.’ She tutted. ‘But do you know what went through my mind after fearing for my life? I thought, it’s going to cost ever such a lot of money to be reconnected.’ She gave a little laugh. ‘Isn’t that ridiculous?’
I smiled, began writing the alphabet with my foot. ‘If we’d only got the results sooner, got on to them sooner…’
‘Then maybe Lily wouldn’t have died. But we don’t know that. You did your best, Sal.’
‘But it wasn’t enough,’ I complained.
‘We didn’t save Lily but we have found out what’s going on. Once we get out of here they’ll be stopped, they won’t be able to do it to anyone else. They’ll be punished.’
‘I suppose so. But I am sorry, about Lily.’
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Once we get out of here, she’d said. If we get out of here. How would he try to kill us? Another injection? Did he really think he could get away with it if Agnes disappeared and I did too? There were several people who knew of our recent involvement with him: Moira, for a start, and the police she’d talked to; Matthew Simcock who’d been appalled by Goulden’s violence – he’d come forward, surely. Where was Goulden now? On his way back here? He said he’d hide our bodies. How? Bury them? Burn them? Chop them up?
There was silence for a while. The thick walls let little sound in from the outside world. I let my thoughts ramble. People at home would be worried about me. I’d left Agnes’ number but no address. How long would they wait until they called the police? And once they did, if they established the address they’d find an empty house and my abandoned car. No indication of where we might be.
How long till morning? Was Maddie fast asleep now or unsettled by the atmosphere as the grown-ups made excuses for my sudden absence?
‘You have a daughter?’ Agnes asked. Had I been talking aloud?
‘Yes, she’s five.’
‘And you’re by yourself?’
‘Yes, well, I’m not married. I’m a single parent but we live in a shared house.’
‘And the child, she’s happy?’
‘Yes, I think so. She’s never known anything else. She knows families come in lots of different combinations.’
‘Times change,’ she said, ‘and sometimes for the better.’
I waited.
‘My sister, Nora, she had a baby. She wasn’t married and in those days it was a terrible thing. You were shunned, completely ostracised. There was no mercy.’ She smoothed the paper across her knees, running her thumb over creases as she talked.
‘Was that before she went to Kingsfield?’ I asked.
‘That was why she went to Kingsfield. Morally inadequate, they called it. Pregnant and unmarried so they locked her up.’
‘Oh God. But your parents…’
‘Signed the forms. There was little hesitation. There were many girls like Nora. Young girls. She was only sixteen, little more than a child herself. She had the baby, a little girl, taken from her at birth, taken to be adopted.’
Agnes’ niece.
‘You never saw the baby?’
‘Oh, no. I visited Nora secretly. My mother thought it best to stay away.’
‘So Nora stayed there after she’d had the baby?’
‘Yes. I don’t think they ever said exactly how long she was expected to be there. It was a punishment, you see, rather than treatment. She’d broken the rules. There was no compassion.’ She tore a little strip off the edge of her paper sheet and began to roll it into a cylinder in her fingers. ‘Nora had been seduced by an older man, a business connection of my father’s. He continued to do well.’
‘So, they didn’t find him guilty of moral inadequacy.’
‘Oh, no,’ she said ruefully. ‘It was cold, very cold, the last time I visited her. There was no snow but one of those easterly winds that cuts right through you. I’d brought her cakes and a ribbon. It was a harsh regime. Most of the girls worked in the laundry, Nora worked in the kitchens.’