Go Not Gently (25 page)

‘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.’

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.’

Her hand stole to the brooch on her lapel, kneaded at it through the paper, then returned to work at the frills of paper on her lap.

‘I arrived just after lunch. They’d finished clearing up. Someone suggested I try the dormitory. She had a bed by the window – huge great windows they had, covered in bars. If she wasn’t there I’d put the cakes under her pillow and hope no one stole them. It was quiet up there. The place was deserted.’ She cleared her throat.

‘Nora was there. She was hanging from the curtain rail. She’d torn her apron into strips and her dress. She just had her shift on. A thin cotton shift. I remember thinking she must be so cold up there, with her poor bare arms, so cold.’

I shivered. I thought of all the mother’s daughters. Nora, whose mother had agreed to her incarceration; Nora’s girl child, who would never know the circumstances of her birth; Olive, who had died in infancy and who Lily had called for in her last waking moments; Tina, whose death had been sudden and brutal. And now in the depth of the night there’d be mothers bearing daughters and daughters mourning mothers, and those railing at each other’s shortcomings, and I wanted to be home and warm with my own daughter close by while we still had the chance.

We talked a lot that night. Agnes told me most of her life story; we made ourselves hungrier fantasising about food. We talked about families, holidays, Manchester, politics, and tentatively about relationships.

‘I do get lonely,’ I said, ‘now and then. I wonder whether I’ll ever meet anyone. Wonder if this is it. If it’ll feel different the longer I’m on my own.’

‘I’ve been very happy,’ she said, ‘but then I had Lily.’

I turned to look at her. Her dark eyes were soft, faraway.

I heard the car first. My stomach lurched and I staggered to my feet. ‘He’s coming.’ I wriggled out of the paper that rustled around me and took my position by the door, the fire extinguisher between my feet ready to be lifted. Agnes divested herself of paper and settled the dummy body across her knees. I saw her take a steadying breath. She smiled at me. I swallowed. I could hear the shutter door being unrolled. What if it wasn’t Goulden? Perhaps it was the caretaker opening up. Maybe it was morning. My heart leapt with hope. We’d be safe. We could go home.

Footsteps across the concrete floor. My ears were buzzing with the strain of concentration. The scrape of a key in the lock. I could feel my pulse in the roof of my mouth. I prayed, a wordless, soundless plea for help.

The door swung open. Stopped a couple of inches from hitting me. My knees bent, my hands grasped the black handle at the top of the cylinder.

‘Get up,’ he said quietly.

Come into the room, step forward.

‘I can’t,’ said Agnes, her voice thin and reedy. ‘It’s Sal, I can’t wake her. She’s collapsed. I don’t know what’s wrong.’ Her words were laced with panic. I was convinced. But Goulden?

‘Christ!’ he swore.

‘I’m sorry,’ Agnes went on, ‘I can’t lift her. She’s too heavy for me. I don’t have the strength.’

I heard the tap of his shoe as he stepped nearer. I swung the extinguisher up and myself out from behind the door.

He must have caught the movement out of the side of his eye. He wheeled round, instinctively lifting his arm to protect himself.

I clung tight to the handle as the cylinder plunged down, the weight was so great I lost control, no opportunity to aim with any accuracy. It skewed to the left, wrenching my wrist. It slammed his arm back and cracked his head. He folded under the impact, tipping forward. Blood spurted, from his head, bright, metal-scented. It hit my leg, hot and wet.

I fought the impulse to flee, cut off the growing sense of horror at what I’d done.

He lay face down, arms and legs splayed awkwardly. Blood bubbled out of his head. I pulled my sweatshirt off, bundled it over the crimson fountain. The copious flow made it impossible to see what damage I’d done. Head wounds always bleed a lot, I tried to reassure myself.

Agnes was at my side. I was kneeling in his blood, which was pooling around him, congealing quickly in the cold air.

‘I’m going to try turning him over,’ I said, ‘check his breathing. Keep this pressed down.’

She put her hands on the sweatshirt, I arranged his limbs and hauled him on to his back. I bent low, my ear by his mouth and nose listening, my eyes watching his chest for motion. It was hard to tell. I turned my head to look at him. His eyes flew open and his hand grabbed my throat. I screamed and scrabbled to get away, clawing at his hand with my own. His grip weakened and I pulled free. I scrambled to my feet, slipped in his blood and nearly fell on him. I regained my balance and fought to slow my breathing. His eyes were shut again.

I struggled to remember first aid. There was something about raising the wound above the heart – or was that only legs and arms? ‘I’ll go for help,’ I said. ‘Here,’ I pulled my jacket from the dummy and fashioned a cushion, ‘lift his head, put this underneath. Will you be all right?’

Agnes nodded, her face was blank with shock. ‘Go on,’ she said.

It didn’t take me long to establish that there were no offices in the warehouse, no phones. Outside dawn was breaking, the light hurt my eyes. I could see Goulden’s car and across the yard the main building. Steel shutters covered all the doors and windows. No one was at work yet. There was a heavy dew, the world was soaked and there was a powerful smell of fertiliser.

It was hard to think straight. Where could I get help? Looking about I could see fields, trees and pylons but no other buildings. The land was flat, the sky dominating most of the view, grey to the east where the day was beginning but still dark behind me. I listened for traffic. I thought I could make out a distant drone but I couldn’t tell if it was in my head or out there.

If I’d had my wits about me I might have taken his car or used his car-phone to summon help but I’d lost all sense somewhere in the fear and the bleeding, and the only thing that occurred to me was to walk until I found someone.

I set off jogging slowly down the narrow road that led to Malden’s. It was laid with white gravel, like the stones that Hansel dropped. I wanted to lie down and sleep. I wanted to hide somewhere far away where they’d never find me.

Guilt. Fear. Had Tina Achebe’s killer felt it? Had he been drenched in blood. Beaten to death she’d been, how many blows? She was a tiny woman, nothing like Goulden with his broad shoulders, his big bones. Had Tina’s murderer used a weapon or just his fists? There’d never been anything in the papers about a weapon. Had her head burst like Goulden’s?

To the rhythm of my steps I chanted a mantra:
Don’t let him die, please, don’t let him die. 
He may have been a grade A dickhead but I didn’t want to be his murderer.

The road led to a T-junction. A quaint black and white signpost told me that I was five miles from Northwich and one and a half from Little Leigh. One and a half. Waves of pity nudged me. It wasn’t fair. How could I walk another mile and a half? I was tired and thirsty. So thirsty. I had a sudden vivid memory from childhood, morning walk to school, trailing my fingers through the privet hedges sucking dew from my fingertips.

I stepped up to the hedge. Full of hawthorn and brambles. I felt like throwing a tantrum. There was a little grass growing beneath the hedge. I ran my hands through a clump, washing away the worst of the rusty bloodstains. Then I found a fresh patch and ran my hands through it, licking the droplets of dew from my palms and fingers. There was a large spider’s web in the hedge, strung with silver beads of dew, diamonds. Perfect. I got to my feet shivering. Aware again of how weak I felt, how much I ached. A mile and a half then.