Way too late the penny dropped as I recalled the tiny bit of information that Harry had passed on to me: Angela Montgomery was a qualified pharmacist (BPharm, MRPharmS). The letters after her name had meant nothing when Harry had reeled them off. She’d know everything there was to know about making the tablets.
‘Bit bloody late for such penetrating insight now, isn’t it?’ He was scathing.
‘If you hadn’t lost them none of this-’
‘I didn’t bloody lose them. Look, I can’t talk now.’
‘What do you mean? Where are you, Ken? The police want to see you. We need to sort our story out.’
‘I know they want to see me,’ he spoke through clenched teeth, ‘of course they want to see me. I was the prescribing physician, wasn’t I? Christ!’
‘What are you going to say?’
‘Well, if the pharmacy cocks it up, wrong dosage…’
‘You don’t think they’ll believe that?’ Her voice was shrill now. ‘They’re bound to wonder why you used my lab. They’ll keep on snooping and sooner or later they’ll start to ask about other things. Don’t you see, we have to talk? Come home, I’ll meet you there, or here. They won’t come back here today. And we need to talk to Matthew. I bet he could come up with something. Tell them it was a blind trial, part of a study.’
‘They won’t swallow that,’ he scoffed.
‘Ken, I don’t know what to do.’ The fight had gone from her. ‘I’m scared, come home-’
He cut her off. He took another of his tablets. Then he thumped the steering wheel several times.
At last we reached the main road. He swung on to it, accelerated too fast and had to brake sharply to avoid a cyclist. ‘Get off the fucking road,’ he cursed. The phone bleeped again, he poked it.
‘Ken,’ she pleaded, ‘don’t be like this.’
‘Don’t be like this.’ His mimicry was savage.
‘You used me,’ she complained.
‘Hah!’ he snorted. ‘That’s rich. I used you. You were up to your eyeballs in it, darling, and don’t pretend you weren’t. You could see Malden’s up there with the big boys, couldn’t you? Patents left, right and centre. When we found the lesions on this last one you were over the bloody moon. You couldn’t wait to get your hands on those tissue samples.’ He swerved violently again to avoid a bollard and fell back behind a bus. ‘Couldn’t wait to get those under your microscope, could you? Well, it’s all over now, sweetie -just when we seemed to be getting somewhere, finito.’ He cut her off again, gunned the engine and overtook the bus. He caught the wing mirror on the orange and white paint, it bounced back but didn’t shatter. I could see Agnes’ hand, white knuckles gripping the edge of her seat.