And if he’d said jump off a cliff? I didn’t reply. She coloured.
‘I’ll see myself out.’
The clouds had opened and gusts of wind made cycling a feat of endurance. The battery in my back light had gone all weedy and I prayed the weak red glow was visible to the cars that raced past me.
Somewhere in the darker corners of my imagination I’d been expecting to uncover some major systematic crime – Goulden doing nasty things with drugs to his patients. But Ernest Theakston didn’t fit my theory. He hadn’t had any medication to speak of. One of the other patients, Philip Braithwaite from Aspen Lodge, the one with the brain tumour, he’d been on something, I could remember his daughter telling me.
So what? I kept coming back to the bloody great hole in the argument – why? What possible reason could there be for making people ill instead of well? For kicks? Stories like that hit the press every so often but it was a pretty remote possibility. I should find out what had happened to Ernest Theakston. Maybe that would shed some light on things, connect what had happened to him with Lily’s situation, or with Malden Medical Supplies.
The most plausible scenario so far was that someone at Malden’s had ballsed up the prescription.
And the most Ken Goulden could be accused of was nepotism, a short temper and failure to recognise an adverse reaction to the medicines he’d prescribed. But something else about the Malden’s link hovered just beyond my consciousness. I tried to focus on it, something Harry had mentioned when he’d given me the information, a little thing…It was no good, I couldn’t bring it into view.
I was sure Mrs Knight had known nothing about the link between the doctor and Malden’s or that there was any problem with the drugs. She hadn’t tried to hide anything. She’d been stunned by my revelations. Her fear for her own reputation, fear of litigation, were at the forefront, not a fear of being found out. Strange woman, prickly but obviously scared of Goulden – and how odd the way she never smiled. Why had she gone into nursing? She didn’t seem particularly caring of people. For all her shock-horror expressions of concern she’d never once asked me how Lily Palmer was.
Nana Tello had come for tea. She was holding court in the kitchen as I walked in. Sheila, Maddie and Tom were at the table. Ray was at the cooker.
‘Hello, stranger,’ she interrupted her story to greet me. ‘You been on your bike?’
‘Yes.’ I peeled off my cagoule.
She shook her head, tutted, pulled a face. ‘It’s not safe. I don’t think it’s so good. The cars these days, they are so impatient.’