“I’ve found out who’s in charge of the cystic fibrosis trial at St. Anne’s. Can I come in? I don’t think we should be …”
His normally measured voice was rushed and uneven. I opened the door and he followed me inside.
There was a moment before he spoke. I heard Granny’s clock tick twice into the silence.
“It’s Hugo Nichols.”
Before I could ask any questions, William turned to me, his voice still quick, pacing now.
“I don’t understand. Why on earth has he been putting babies without cystic fibrosis in the trial? What the hell’s he been doing? I just don’t understand.”
“The CF trial at St. Anne’s has been hijacked,” I replied. “To test out another gene.”
“My God. How did you find that out?”
“Professor Rosen.”
“And he’s going to the police?”
“No.”
There was a moment before he spoke. “So it’ll be up to me then. To tell them about Hugo. I’d hoped it would be someone else.”
“It’s hardly telling tales, is it?”
“No. It’s not. I’m sorry.”
But I still couldn’t make sense of it. “Why would a psychiatrist run a genetic therapy trial?”
“He was a research fellow at Imperial. Before he became a hospital doctor. I told you that, didn’t I?”
I nodded.
“His research was in genetics,” continued William.
“You never said.”
“I never thought—my God—I just never thought it was relevant.”
“That was unfair of me. I’m sorry.”
I remembered William telling me that Dr. Nichols was rumored to have been brilliant and “destined for greatness,” but I’d thought the rumor must be wrong, believing instead my own opinion that he was scruffily hopeless. Remembering my view of Dr. Nichols, I realized that I’d dismissed him as a suspect not only because I’d thought him too hopeless to be violent, nor even because I’d thought he had no motive, but because of my entrenched belief that he was fundamentally decent.
William sat down, his face strained, his hands drumming the arms of the sofa. “I spoke to him about his research once, years ago now. He told me about a gene he’d discovered and that a company had bought it from him.”
“Do you know which company?”
“No. I’m not sure he even said. It was a long time ago. But I do remember some of what he said because he was so passionate, so different from how he usually is.” William was pacing again now, his movements jerky and angry. “He told me it had been his life’s ambition, actually no, he said it was his life’s
“Fingerprint on the future?” I echoed, repelled, thinking of your future being cut from you.
William thought I didn’t understand. “It meant he wanted to get his gene into the germ cells so it would be passed to future generations. He said he wanted to ‘improve what it is to be human.’ But although the animal tests went well, he wasn’t allowed to test his gene on humans. He was told it was genetic enhancement and it’s illegal to use that in people.”
“What was ‘his’ gene?” I asked.
“He said it increases IQ.”
William said that he hadn’t believed him because it would have been such an extraordinary and astonishing achievement, and he was so young, and something else but I wasn’t really listening. Instead I remembered my visit to Chrom-Med.
I remembered that IQ was measured by fear.
“I thought he had to have been making most of it up,” continued William. “Or at least embellishing it a hell of a lot. I mean, if his research really was that glittering, why on earth leave it to go into humdrum hospital medicine? But he must have become a hospital doctor deliberately, waiting all this time for the opportunity to test out his gene in humans.”
I went into the garden as if I needed more literal space to accommodate the hugeness of these facts. I didn’t want to be alone with them and was glad when William joined me.
“He must have destroyed Tess’s notes,” William said. “And then fabricated the real reason why the babies died, so that their deaths couldn’t be connected to the trial. And somehow he managed to get away with it. Christ, it makes you talk like, I don’t know, somebody else, somebody off the telly or something. This is Hugo I’m talking about for God’s sake. A man I thought I knew. Liked.”
I’d been talking in that alien language since your body was found. I understood the realization that your previous vocabulary can’t describe what is happening to you now.
I looked at the little patch of earth where Mum and I had decided to plant the winter-flowering clematis for you.
“But someone else must have been part of this?” I said. “He can’t have been with Tess when she had her baby.”
“All doctors do six months obstetrics as part of their training. Hugo would know how to deliver a baby.”
“But surely someone would have noticed? A psychiatrist delivering a baby, surely someone …?”
