by Peter James
Caitlin opened her eyes. ‘You know what?’ she slurred. ‘Liver disease rocks.’
‘Rocks?’ Lynn said, astounded.
‘Yeah, why not?’ Luke retorted.
‘Why does it rock?’ Lynn stared quizzically at Luke, as if somehow she was going to find the answer in his inane face.
‘This transplant waiting list, yeah?’
‘What about it?’
‘There’s a way around it.’
‘What way?’
‘Yeah, well, I’ve been looking on the Net. You can buy a liver.’
‘Buy a liver?’
‘Yeah, it’s whack.’
‘Whack? I’m not sure I’m on your planet. How do you mean, buy a liver?’
‘Through a broker.’
‘A what?’
‘An organ broker.’
Lynn stared at him, thinking for a moment this was his idea of humour. But he looked deadly earnest. It was the first time she had ever seen him remotely animated.
‘What do you mean by an organ broker?’
‘Someone who will get you whatever organ you want. On the Net. They’re selling anything you could want for a transplant. Hearts, lungs, corneas, skin, ear parts, kidneys – and livers.’
Lynn stared at him in silence for some moments. ‘You are serious? You can buy a liver on the Internet?’
‘There’s a whole bunch of sites,’ Luke went on. ‘And – this’ll interest you – I found a forum about waiting lists for organs. It says the waiting list for liver transplants in some countries is even worse than in the UK. Something like 90 per cent of people on the list in the USA will die before they get a new liver. Sort of puts our 20 per cent into the shade.’
Unless one of that 20 per cent happens to be your daughter, Lynn thought, staring hard at Luke. One of the three people a day in the UK who die waiting for a transplant.
She was sick with worry and all twisted up inside with rage. Thinking. Thinking about Shirley Linsell. Her change from warmth to coldness. Caitlin was just another patient to her. In a year or two’s time, she probably wouldn’t even remember her name – she would just be a statistic.
Lynn was not going to take that chance.
‘I’m going to the chemist. When I get back, I’d like you to show me about these organ brokers,’ she said.
*
On the way, she stopped at a newsagent’s, went inside and scanned the Argus for any further news on the story about the three bodies. On the third page was a long article, headlined police remain baffled by channel bodies. She stared at the sanitized photographs of the three dead teenagers’ faces. Read the speculation that they might be organ donors. Read the quotes from Detective Superintendent Roy Grace, whoever he was.
Something dark stirred inside her. Leaving the paper on the rack, not wanting Caitlin to see it, she bought a packet of ten Silk Cut cigarettes, then went back out to her car and smoked one, thinking again, hard, her hands shaking.
55
Some years ago, when he was a detective sergeant, Roy Grace had attended a break-in at a small wine merchant’s premises up on Queens Park Road, close to the racecourse and the hideous edifice of Brighton and Hove General Hospital.
The proprietor, Henry Butler, a drily engaging, shaven-headed and impeccably spoken young man, appeared more upset at the quality of the wines the thieves had taken than at the break-in itself. While the SOCOs went about their business, dusting and spraying for fingerprints, Butler bemoaned the fact that these particular specimens of Brighton’s broad church of villainy had no taste at all.
The Philistines had taken several cases of his cheapest plonk, leaving all the fine wines, which in his view would have been far better drinking, untouched. Grace had liked him instantly, and whenever he needed a bottle for a special occasion, he had always returned to this shop.
At four o’clock on Tuesday afternoon, taking a quick, late lunch break, he pulled up the unmarked Ford Focus on double yellow lines outside the small, unassuming shop front of the Butler’s Wine Cellar and dashed inside. Henry Butler was in there now, head still shaved, sporting a gold earring and a goatee beard, dressed in dungarees and a collarless shirt, as if he had just been out picking grapes.
The door pinged shut behind him and Roy instantly breathed in the familiar, sour, vinous smell of the place, mixed with the sweeter scent of freshly sawn timber from the wooden cases.
‘Good afternoon, Detective Superintendent Grace!’ Butler said, putting down a copy of The Latest. ‘Very nice to see you. All crimes solved now, so you’re free to partake of my libations?’
‘I wish.’ Grace smiled. ‘How’s business?’
Butler gave a shrug at the empty shop. ‘Well, with your arrival, I would say the day just got better. So what can I tempt you with?’
‘I need a rather special bottle of champagne, Henry,’ he said. ‘What’s the most expensive bottle you have?’
‘Good man! That’s what I like to hear!’ He disappeared through a doorway into a tiny, cluttered back office and then clattered down some stairs.
Grace checked a text that just pinged in, but it was nothing important, a reminder about his haircut appointment tomorrow at the Point, the hair salon his self-appointed style guru, Glenn Branson, insisted he go to for his monthly close-crop. He stared around at the displays of dusty bottles flat on their sides on shelves and stacked in wooden boxes on the floor. Then he glanced at the headline of the Argus: BRIGHTON REGAINS DRUG DEATH CAPITAL OF ENGLAND STATUS.
A grim statistic, he thought, but at least it kept his case off the front page today.
A couple of minutes later, Henry Butler reappeared, reverently cradling a squat bottle in his arms. ‘Got this rather seductive Krug. One sip and anybody’s knickers will hit the ground.’
Grace grinned.
‘Two hundred and seventy-five quid to you, sir, and that’s with 10 per cent discount.’
Roy’s smile fell into a black hole. ‘Shit – I didn’t actually mean quite that expensive. I’m not a Russian oligarch, I’m a copper, remember?’
The merchant gave him a quizzical, mock-stern look. ‘I have a luscious Spanish cava at nine quid a pop. It’s what we drink at home in summer. Gorgeous.’
‘Too cheap.’
‘There you go, Mr CID – ’ which he pronounced Sid – ‘I never did take you for a cheapskate. I do have a rather special house champagne, seventeen quid for you, sir. A massive, buttery nose, long finish, quite a complex, biscuity style. Jane MacQuitty did her tonsils over it in the Sunday Times a while ago.’
Grace shook his head. ‘Still too cheap. I want something very special, but I don’t want to have to take out a mortgage.’
‘How does a hundred quid sound?’
‘Less painful.’
The merchant disappeared down into the bowels of his emporium and re-emerged. ‘This is the dog’s bollocks! Roederer Cristal, 2000. Best vintage of the decade. Last one I have, bin-end price. A beaut! Normally one hundred and seventy-five – I’ll flog it to you for a hundred, as it’s you.’
‘Done!’
‘Diamond geezer!’ Henry Butler said approvingly.
Grace pulled out his wallet. ‘Credit card OK?’
Butler looked like he had been kicked in the nuts. ‘You know how to squeeze a man when he’s down – yeah, all right.’ He shrugged. ‘Very special occasion, is it?’
‘Very.’
‘Give her this and she’ll love you forever.’
Roy smiled. ‘That’s kind of what I’m hoping.’
56
Lynn sat on Caitlin’s bed, staring at the computer screen. Luke, hunched on a stool in front of the cluttered dressing table, was busily pecking away at the keyboard of Caitlin’s laptop, using just one finger and, apparently, just one eye.
Caitlin, in her dressing gown, had spent much of the past hour going backwards and forwards to the toilet. But she was already looking a little better, Lynn was relieved to see, except she was scratching again. Scratching
her arms so hard they looked as if they were covered in insect bites. At the moment, iPod in her ears, she was switching focus between an old episode of the OC playing silently on the muted TV and her purple mobile phone, on which she was texting someone, with furrowed concentration, while rubbing the itching balls of her feet on the end board of the bed.
Luke had been tapping away for nearly an hour now, working through Google, then other search engines, trying out different combinations of phrases and sentences containing the words organs, purchase, humans, donors, livers.
He had found a debate in the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly on the topic of human organ trafficking, and on another site had discovered the story of a Harley Street surgeon called Raymond Crockett, who was struck off the Medical Register in 1990 for buying kidneys from Turkey for four patients. And plenty more debates about whether organ donation should be automatic on death unless a person has opted out.
But no organ brokers.
‘Are you sure it’s not just an urban myth, Luke?’
‘There’s a website about part of Manila being called One Kidney Island,’ he said. ‘You can buy a kidney there for forty thousand pounds – including the operation. That site talked all about brokers—’
Suddenly he stopped.
On the screen, in clinical white against a stark black background, the words TRANSPLANTATION-ZENTRALE GMBH had appeared.
In a bar above were options for different languages. Luke clicked on the Union Jack flag and moments later a new panel came up:
Welcome to
TRANSPLANTATION-ZENTRALE GMBH
the world’s leading brokerage for
human organs for transplantations
Discreet global service, privacy assured
Contact us by phone, email
or visit our Munich offices by appointment
Lynn stared intently at the computer screen, feeling an intense, giddying frisson of excitement. And danger.
Maybe there really was another option to the tyranny of Shirley Linsell and her team. Another way to save the life of her daughter.
Luke turned to Caitlin. ‘Looks like we’ve – yeah – found something.’
‘Cool!’ she said.
Moments later Lynn felt Caitlin’s arms around her shoulders and her warm breath on her neck, as she too peered at the screen.
‘That’s awesome!’ Caitlin said. ‘Do you think there’s – like – a price list? Like when you go online shopping at Tesco?’
Lynn giggled, delighted that Caitlin seemed to be returning to some kind of normality, however temporary.
Luke began to navigate the site, but there was very little information beyond what they had already read. No phone number or postal address, just an email one: [email protected].
‘OK,’ Lynn said. ‘Send them an email.’
She dictated and Luke typed:
I am the mother of a 15-year-old girl who is urgently in need of a liver transplant. We are based in the south of England. Can you help us? If so please let us know what service you can provide and what information you require from us. Yours sincerely,
Lynn Beckett
Lynn read through it, then turned to Caitlin. ‘OK, my angel?’
Caitlin gave a wistful smile and shrugged. ‘Yep. Whatever.’
Luke sent it.
Then all three of them stared at the mailbox in silence.
‘Do you think we should have sent a phone number?’ Caitlin asked. ‘Or an address or something?’
Lynn thought for a moment, her brain feeling scrambled. ‘Yes. Maybe. I don’t know.’
‘No harm, is there?’ suggested Caitlin.
‘No, no harm,’ her mother agreed.
Luke sent a second email, containing Lynn’s mobile number and the dialling code for England.
*
Ten minutes later, down in the kitchen making a cup of tea and preparing some supper for the three of them, Lynn’s phone rang.
On the display were the words, Private number.
Lynn answered immediately.
There was a faint hiss, then some crackle. After a fraction of a second’s time delay she heard a woman’s voice, in guttural broken English, sounding professional but friendly.
‘May I please speak with Mrs Lynn Beckett?’
‘That’s me!’ Lynn said. ‘Speaking!’
‘My name is Marlene Hartmann. You have just sent an email to my company?’
Shaking, Lynn said, ‘To Transplantation-Zentrale?’
‘That is correct. By chance, I have the opportunity to be in England tomorrow, in Sussex. If it is convenient, we could meet, perhaps?’
‘Yes,’ Lynn said, her nerves shorting out. ‘Yes, please!’
‘Do you happen to know your daughter’s blood type?’
‘Yes, it is AB negative.’
‘AB negative?’
‘Yes.’
There was a brief silence before the German woman spoke again.
‘Good,’ she said. ‘That is excellent.’
57
‘The time is 6.30 p.m., Tuesday 2 December,’ Roy Grace announced. ‘This is the tenth briefing of Operation Neptune, the investigation into the deaths of three unknown persons.’
He was seated in his shirtsleeves, tie loosened, at the table in the briefing room of Sussex House. Outside, it was a vile night. He stared, for an instant, through trails of rain slithering down the windowpanes, at the blackness beyond. Inside, it felt cold and draughty, with most of the heat coming from the bodies of his fast-expanding team, now twenty-eight strong, crammed around the table.
On the flat surface in front of him were a bottle of water, a stack of newspapers, his notebook and his printed agenda. There was a lot to work through before he could get out of here tonight – and move on to his second, and much more pleasurable, agenda of the evening. One which involved the seriously expensive bottle of champagne lying in the boot of his car downstairs.
On the wall-mounted whiteboard were sets of fingerprints and composite e-fit photographs of the three victims. He glanced up at them now. A DI colleague, Jason Tingley, currently in the Divisional Intelligence Unit, once commented that e-fits made everyone look like Mr Monkeyman and Roy had never been able to get that image out of his mind. He was looking at two Monkeymen and one Monkeywoman up there on that wall now.
Dead.
Murdered.
Depending on him to bring their killers to justice.
Depending on him to bring closure to their relatives.
He flipped open the Independent newspaper, which was on the top of the pile. On page three was a stark headline: BRIGHTON AGAIN CRIME CAPITAL OF ENGLAND. This was a reference back to 1934, when Brighton was in the grip of its famous razor gangs and, within a short space of time, two separate bodies were found in trunks at Brighton’s railway station. Brighton had then earned the unwelcome sobriquet Crime Capital of England.
‘The new Chief’s not impressed,’ Roy Grace said. ‘He wants this solved, quickly.’
He looked down at the notes Eleanor had typed for him.
‘OK, we now have further pathology evidence that the organs were removed from our victims under operating-theatre conditions. The labs have identified the presence of Propofol and Ketamine in the post-mortem tissues. These are both anaesthetics.’
He paused to let the implications sink in.
‘I’ve been giving this organ-trafficking line some thought, Roy,’ Guy Batchelor said. ‘Purchase and sale of human organs are illegal in the UK. But because of shortages, there are people on the heart, lung and liver waiting lists who die before an organ becomes available. And there are people who wait for years, leading miserable lives, on the kidney transplant waiting lists. How are we getting on with our search for a disgruntled transplant surgeon?’
‘Nothing so far,’ DI Mantle said.
‘What about making every transplant surgeon in the UK a suspect?’ said Nick Nicholl. ‘There can’t be that many.’
&nb
sp; ‘What progress have we made on surgeons who have been struck off?’ Lizzie Mantle queried. ‘I really think that would be a good place to start. Someone angry who wants to buck the system.’
‘I’m working on that,’ Sarah Shenston, one of the researchers, said. ‘I hope to have a full list by tomorrow. There’s a lot of them.’
‘Good. Thank you, Sarah.’ Grace made another note. ‘I think we should make a list and visit all the human organ transplant facilities in the UK.’ He looked at Batchelor. ‘Something important to establish is the chain of supply of organs. How does an organ get from a donor to a transplant? Are there any windows of opportunity for a rogue supplier?’
Batchelor nodded. ‘I’ll get that researched.’
‘I think we need to assume in the first instance,’ Grace said, ‘that there is a Brighton – or Sussex – connection with these victims. To my thinking, the fact that they were found close to the coast of Brighton indicates that. Does everyone accept that?’
The entire team nodded agreement.
‘I think an important part of this jigsaw is to establish the identities of the victims – and we are making headway here.’ He looked down at his notes again. ‘We have an interesting piece of information from the laboratory, Cellmark Forensics, where we sent DNA samples of the victims. Their US laboratory, Orchid Cellmark, has done an enzyme and mineral analysis of the DNA from the three victims. It indicates they had a diet compatible with that of southeastern Europe.’
He took a swig from his bottle of water, then went on.
‘Now, this tallies with the toxicology report from the path labs. All three victims have small traces of a Romanian-manufactured metallic paint, known as Aurolac, in their blood. According to the pathologist’s information, this substance is inhaled by Romanian street kids, having an effect similar to sniffing glue. Now, supporting this, Nadiuska returned to the mortuary last night to carry out a further examination and discovered traces of metallic paint in the nostrils of the victims.’ He looked at Potting. ‘Norman, would you like to bring us up to speed on Romania?’