‘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…’