Sister

“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 postnatal 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 answering machine nowadays with a tape? Everyone’s got voice mail through 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’d take her boyfriend’s notes to the police. And make 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’d 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 I 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 and 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 realized 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 Chrom-Med approached me. My only requirement was that they run human trials.”

“Which they did.”

“No. They lied, let me down. I—”

“You really believe that? The directors of Chrom-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 hell 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 Chrom-Med wants 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?”

His fingers were still gripping the knife, but the knuckles were no longer white, so he wasn’t gripping as hard. In his other hand he held a flashlight. He had come equipped for this: knife and flashlight and bicycle chain, a grotesque parody of a Boy Scout trip. I wondered what else he’d thought to bring.

Mr. Wright holds my hand and I’m again overwhelmingly grateful, not brushing away kindness anymore.

“He told me that in humans his IQ gene codes for two totally different things. It affects not only memory capacity but also lung function. It meant that the babies couldn’t breathe when they were born.”

I’m so sorry, Tess.

“He told me that if the babies are intubated immediately after they’re born, if they’re helped to breathe for a while, they’d be fine. They’d live.”

He had made me lie on the floor, on my left side; the damp cold of the concrete was seeping into my body. I tried to move, but my limbs were too heavy. He must have drugged me when he gave me the tea. I could only use words to stay alive.

“But you didn’t help them to breathe, did you? Xavier. Hattie’s baby.”

“It wasn’t my fault. It’s a rare lung disorder and someone would ask questions. I just needed to be left alone. Then there would be no problems. It’s other people, crowding around me, not giving me space.”

“So you lied to them about what really killed their babies?”

“I couldn’t risk people asking questions.”

“And me? Surely you’re not going to stage my suicide, the way you staged Tess’s? Frame me for my own murder like you did my sister? Because if it happens twice, the police are bound to be suspicious.”

“Staged? You make it sound so thought out. I didn’t plan it—I told you that. You can see that because of my mistakes, can’t you? My research and my trial I planned in meticulous detail, but not this. I was forced into doing this. I even paid them, for God’s sake, not stopping to think that it might look suspicious. And I never thought they might talk to each other.”

“So why did you pay them?”