Sister: A Novel Part 31

As William spoke to DI Haines, telling him everything he had told me, I wanted to yell at Dr Nichols. I want to hit him, blow after blow; I wanted to kill him actually, and the sensation was oddly liberating. At last my rage had a target and it was a release to give way to it - finally throwing the grenade you've been holding for so long, pin out, that's been threatening to destroy you, and you're freed of the burden and tension as you hurl it.

William hung up. 'He's asked us to go down to the police station but wants us to give him an hour to get the top bra.s.s in.'

'You mean he's asked you to go.'

'I'm sorry, Bee, coming in at the last minute, the Americans at the end of the war and all that.'

'But if we're being honest, they're the reason we won.'

'I think both of us should go. And I'm glad we have a little time to ourselves first.'

He reached over to my face and stroked a strand of hair away from my eyes.

He kissed me.

I hesitated. Could I step off my mountainside - or that moral tightrope you had me on?

I turned and walked into the flat.

He followed me and I turned and kissed him back. And I was grabbing the moment as hard as I could and living it to the full because who knew when it would be taken away. If all your death has taught me it is that the present is too precious to waste. I finally understood the sacrament of the present moment, because it's all we have.

He undressed me and I shed my old self. All of me exposed. The wedding ring was no longer hanging around his neck, his chest bare. And as my cool skin felt the warmth of him on me, my safety ropes fell away.

Mr Wright produces a bottle of wine from a carrier bag, with two plastic cups from the water dispenser at the CPS offices, and I think how like him it is to be so thoughtful and organised. He pours me a cup and I drink it straight down, which is probably not sensible. He doesn't comment on this, just as he didn't comment on me having s.e.x with William and I like him so much for not being judgemental.

We lay in your bed together, the low rays of early spring suns.h.i.+ne coming in through the bas.e.m.e.nt window. I leaned against him and drank the tea he'd made for me, trying to make it last as long as possible, still feeling the warmth of his skin against mine, knowing that we would have to get out of bed, re-enter the world again; and I thought of Donne chastising the busy old fool of a sun for making him leave his lover and marvelled that his poetry now applied to me.

For a moment the wine has boosted me a little, I can feel it warming my body.

'William went to the bathroom, and looked in the cupboard. He found a bottle of pills with a hospital label on them. It was the PCP. It had been there all the time. He said many drugs are illegal on the street but are legally prescribed by doctors for therapeutic reasons.'

'Did the label give the name of the prescribing doctor?'

'No, but he said the police could easily track it down to Dr Nichols through the hospital pharmacy records. I felt so stupid. I'd thought that an illegal drug would be hidden, not openly on show. It had been there all the time.'

I'm sorry; I'm starting to repeat myself. My mind is losing focus.

'And then . . . ?' he asks.

But we're nearly at the end, so I summon what remains of my mental energy and continue.

'We left the flat together. William had left his bike chained to the railings on the other side of the road, but it had been stolen, though they'd left the chain. He took that with us, and joked that we could report the theft of his bike at the same time.

We decided to walk through Hyde Park to the police station, rather than take the ugly road route. At the gates of the park there was a flower stall. William suggested we lay flowers where you'd died and went to buy some.

As he spoke to the stall-holder, I texted Kasia two words: 'odcisk palca' - and knew she'd understand that I was finally putting on my own fingerprint of love.

William turned to me, holding two bunches of daffodils.

'You told me they were Tess's favourite flower. Because of the yellow in a daffodil saving children's sight.'

I was pleased and surprised that he had remembered.

He put his arm around me and as we walked into the park together I thought I heard you teasing me, and I admitted to you that I was a big fat hypocrite. The truth is, I knew that the affair wouldn't last, that he'd stay married. But I also knew that I wouldn't be broken by it. I wasn't proud of myself but I did feel liberated from a person I no longer was or wanted to be. And as we walked together I felt small green shoots of hope and decided I would allow them to grow. Because now I had found out what had happened to you I could look forwards and dare to imagine a future without you. I remembered being here almost two months before, when I sat in the snow and wept for you amongst the lifeless, leafless trees. But now there were ball games and laughter and picnics and bright new foliage. It was the same place but the landscape was entirely changed.

We reached the toilet building and I took the cellophane off the daffodils, wanting them to look home-picked. As I laid them at the door a memory - or lack of one - tugged its way through, unbidden.

'But I never told you that she liked daffodils, or the reason.'

'Of course you did. That's why I chose them.'

'No. I talked about it with Amias. And Mum. Not you.'

I had actually told him very little about you, or me for that matter.

'Tess must have told you herself.'

Carrying his bunch of daffodils for you, he came towards me. 'Bee-'

'Stop calling me that.' I backed away from him.

He came closer then pushed me hard inside.

'He shut the door behind us and put a knife against my throat.'

I break off, shaking from the adrenaline. Yes, his call to DI Haines had been faked. He probably got the idea from a daytime TV soap, they're on the whole time in the wards - I remember that from Leo. Maybe it was sheer desperation. And maybe I was too distracted to notice anything very much. Mr Wright is considerate enough not to point out my ludicrous gullibility.

The teenagers have abandoned their loud game of soft-ball for raucous music. The office workers picnicking have been replaced by mothers with pre-school children; their high barely formed voices quickly turning from shrieks of happiness into tears and back again, a mercurial quicksilver sound. And I want the children to be louder, the laughter more raucous, the music turned up full volume. And I want the park to be crowded with barely a place to sit. And I want the suns.h.i.+ne to be blinding.

He closed the door of the toilets building and used the bicycle chain to fasten it shut. There had never been a bicycle, had there? Light seeped through the filthy cracked windows and was turned dirty by them, casting the gloom of a nightmare. The sounds of the park outside - children laughing and crying, music from a CD player - were m.u.f.fled by the damp bricks. Yes, it's uncanny how similar that day was to today in the park with Mr Wright, but maybe the sounds of a park remain the same, day to day, give or take. And in that cold, cruel building I also wanted the children to be louder, the laughter more raucous, the music turned up to full volume. Maybe because if I could hear them then there was a chance they could hear my screams; but no, it couldn't have been that because I knew if I screamed he would silence me with a knife. So it must have been simply that I wanted the comfort of hearing life as I died.

'You killed her, didn't you?' I asked.

If I'd been sensible maybe I should have given him a let-out, made out that I thought he had pushed me in there for some weird sort of s.a.d.i.s.tic s.e.x, because once I'd accused him was he ever going to let me go? But he was never going to. Whatever I did or said. I had wild thoughts racing through my head about how you're meant to make friends with your kidnapper. (Where on earth did that nugget of information come from? And why did anyone think the general population would need to know such a thing?) Remarkably, I did, but I couldn't make friends with him because he'd been my lover and there was nowhere for us to go.

'I'm not responsible for Tess's death.'

For a moment I thought that he wasn't; that I'd read him all wrong; that everything would play out the way I'd been so sure of, with us going to the police and Dr Nichols being arrested. But self-deception isn't possible with a knife and a chain on the other side of the equation.

'I didn't want it to happen. I didn't plan it. I'm a doctor, for G.o.d's sake. I wasn't meant to kill anyone. Have you any idea what it feels like? It's a living h.e.l.l.'

'So stop now with me. Please.'

He was silent. Fear p.r.i.c.ked my skin into a hundred thousand gooseb.u.mps, a hundred thousand tiny hairs standing to upright attention as they offered their useless protection.

'You were her doctor?'

I had to keep him talking - not because I thought anyone was on their way to rescue me, but because a little longer to live, even in this building with this man, was precious.

And because I needed to know.

'Yes. I looked after her all through her pregnancy.'

You'd never mentioned his name, just said 'the doctor', and I hadn't asked, too busy mult.i.tasking with something else.

'We had a good rapport, liked each other. I was always kind to her.'

'You delivered Xavier?' I asked.

'Yes.'

I thought of the masked man in your nightmarish paintings, dark with menace in the shadows.

'She was relieved to see me in the park that day,' William continued. 'Smiled at me. I-'

I interrupted. 'But she was terrified of you.'

'The man who delivered the baby, not me.'

'But she must have known it was you, surely? Even with a mask, she must have recognised your voice at least. If you'd looked after her for all her pregnancy, surely . . .'

Still he was silent. I hadn't realised that it was possible to be more appalled by him.

'You didn't speak to her. While she was in labour. When she gave birth. Even when her baby was dead. You didn't speak to her.'

'I came back and comforted her, twenty minutes or so later. I've told you. I was always kind to her.'

So he'd taken off the mask, switching personas back into the caring man you thought he was; who I'd thought he was.

'I suggested I phoned someone for her,' he continued. 'And she gave me your number.'

You thought I knew. All that time, you thought I knew.

Mr Wright looks at me with concern. 'You look pale.'

'Yes.'

I feel pale, inside and out. I think of that expression 'paling into insignificance' and think how well it fits me, a pale person in a bright world that turns me invisible.

Outside I could hear people in the bright afternoon suns.h.i.+ne, but in the toilets building I was invisible to them. He'd taken off his tie and used it to bind my hands behind my back.

'You called her Tess, the first time I met you.'

Still keeping him talking - the only way to stay alive. And still needing to know.

'Yes, it was a stupid blunder,' he replied. 'And it shows I'm not good at this, doesn't it? I'm useless at subterfuge and lies.'

But he had been good at it. He'd manipulated me from the start, guiding conversations and subtly deflecting questions. From my wanting your notes to asking who was in charge of the CF trial at St Anne's he'd made sure I had no real information. He'd even given an excuse, in case his acting wasn't convincing.

'Christ, it makes you talk like, I don't know, somebody else, somebody off the telly or something.'

Because that was what he was imitating.

'I didn't plan this. A vandal threw a stone through her window not me; she just thought it was targeted at her.'

He was using twine to tie my legs together.

'The lullabies?' I asked.

'I was panicking, just doing whatever came into my head. The CD was in the post-natal ward. I took it home, not really knowing what I was doing. Not thinking anything through. I never stopped to think she'd record the lullabies onto a tape. Who has an answerphone nowadays with a tape? Everyone's got an answer service with their telephone provider.'

He was lurching between the minutiae of the everyday and the large horror of murder. The enormity of what he had done ensnared in small domestic details.

'You knew Mitch's notes would be useless, because Kasia would never be believed.'

'The worst-case scenario was that you took her boyfriend's notes to the police. And made a fool of yourself.'

'But you needed me to trust you.'

'It was you who kept on going with this. Making me do this. You left me no other choice.'

But I'd trusted him before he produced Mitch's notes, long before. And it had been my insecurity that had helped him. I'd thought my suspicion of him was because of my customary anxiety around handsome men, rather than seriously suspecting him of your murder, and so had dismissed it. He was the one person in all this who'd been about me - not about you.

But I'd been thinking too long; I couldn't allow a silence to grow between us.

'It was you not Dr Nichols who was the researcher who found the gene?'

'Yes. Hugo's a sweet man. But hardly brilliant.'

His tale about Dr Nichols had been a boast as much as a deceit. I realised that he had been framing Dr Nichols from early on, carefully casting the shadow of guilt onto him so that it wouldn't fall on himself. The long-term planning was viciously calculated.

'Imperial College and their absurd ethics committee wouldn't allow a human trial,' continued William. 'They didn't have the vision. Or the guts to go for it. Imagine it, a gene that increases IQ, think of what that means. Then Gene-Med approached me. My only requirement was that they ran human trials.'

'Which they did.'

'No. They lied; let me down. I-'

'You really believe that? The directors of Gene-Med are pretty bright. I've read their biographies. They're certainly clever enough to want someone else to do their work for them. To take the rap in case it went wrong.'

He shook his head, but I could see I'd got to him. An avenue was opening up and I ran h.e.l.l for leather down it. 'Genetic enhancement, that's where the real money lies, isn't it? As soon as it becomes legal it'll be huge. And Gene-Med want to be ahead of the game, ready for it.'

'But they can't know.'

'They've been playing you, William.'

But I'd done it wrong, too scared to be as slick as I'd needed to be; I'd simply dented his ego and released new anger. He'd been holding the knife almost casually, now his fingers tightened around it.

'Tell me about the human trial, what happened?'