As I think about Dad, I suddenly understand why you didn’t ask Emilio to take any responsibility for Xavier. Your baby was too precious, too loved, for anyone to turn him into a blemish on their lives. He should never feel unvalued or unwanted. You weren’t protecting Emilio but your child.
“The payments weren’t large,” I continue. “But I thought they could have been an inducement to Tess and to Kasia to take part.”
“Tess hadn’t told you about the payment?”
“No. She always saw the best in people, but she knew I was more skeptical. She probably wanted to avoid the lecture.”
You’d have guessed my bumper-sticker warnings: “There’s no such thing as a free lunch”; “Corporate altruism is a contradiction in terms.”
“Did you think it was the money that persuaded her?” asks Mr. Wright.
“No. She believed the trial was her baby’s only chance for a cure. She’d have paid them to be on the trial. But I thought that maybe whoever had given her money didn’t know that. Like Kasia, Tess looked in need of cash.” I pause while Mr. Wright makes a note, then continue. “I’d researched the medical side of the trial thoroughly when Tess first told me about it, but I’d never looked at the finances. So I started doing that. On the Net, I discovered that people are legitimately paid in drug trials. There are even dedicated websites that advertise for volunteers, promising the money will ‘pay for your next holiday.’ ”
“And the volunteers on the Chrom-Med trial?”
“There was absolutely nothing about their being paid. Chrom-Med’s own website, which had a lot of detail about the trial, had nothing about any payments. I knew that the development of the genetic cure would have cost a fortune, and three hundred pounds was a tiny amount of money in comparison, but it still seemed strange. Chrom-Med’s website had e-mail addresses for every member of the company—presumably, to look open and approachable—so I e-mailed Professor Rosen. I was pretty sure it would go to a minion but thought it was worth a try.”
Mr. Wright has a copy of my e-mail in front of him.From: Beatrice Hemming’s iPhone To: professor.rosen@chrom-med.com
Dear Professor Rosen: Could you tell me why the mothers on your cystic fibrosis trial are being paid £300 to participate? Or perhaps you would prefer me to couch it in the correct language, “compensated for their time.”
Beatrice Hemming
As I’d predicted, I didn’t hear back from Professor Rosen. But I carried on searching on the Net, still wearing my coat from when I’d got in from visiting Kasia, my bag just dumped at my feet. I hadn’t switched the light on and now it was dark. I hardly noticed Todd coming in. I didn’t even wonder, let alone ask, where he’d been all day, barely glancing up from the screen.
“Tess was paid to take part in the CF trial, so was Kasia, but there’s no record of that anywhere.”
“Beatrice …”
He’d stopped using the word
“But that’s not the important thing,” I continued. “I hadn’t thought to look at the financial aspect of the trial before, but several reputable sites—the
It would have been in the papers, but since your death I had stopped reading them. Chrom-Med’s flotation was a crucial bit of news to me, but Todd didn’t react at all.
“The directors of Chrom-Med stand to make a fortune,” I continued. “The sites have different estimates, but the amount of money is enormous. And the employees are all shareholders, so they’re going to get their share of the bonanza.”
“The company will have invested millions, if not billions, in their research,” Todd said, his voice impatient. “And now they’re having a massively successful trial, which is payback time for their investment. Of course they’re going to float on the stock market. It’s a completely logical business decision.”
“But the payments to the women—”
“Stop. For God’s sake, stop,” he shouted. For a moment both of us were taken aback. We’d spent four years being polite to each other. Shouting was embarrassingly intimate. He struggled to sound more measured. “First it was her married tutor, then an obsessed weirdo student and now you’ve added this trial to your list—which everyone, including the world’s press and scientific community, has wholeheartedly endorsed.”
“Yes. I am suspicious of different people, even a trial. Because I don’t know yet who killed her. Or why. Just that someone did. And I have to look at every possibility.”
“No. You don’t. That’s the police’s job, and they’ve done it. There’s nothing left for you to do.”
“My sister was murdered.”
“Please, darling, you have to face the truth at some point that—”
I interrupted him. “She would never have killed herself.”
