Dead Tomorrow

by Peter James

  Grace smiled too, then said, ‘For the immediate time being, the investigations will be done by this team. DI Mantle will head a dedicated group investigating this, and will decide whether a separate murder inquiry needs to be set up – to some extent dependent on what the post-mortem tells us.’

  He looked at her.

  ‘Yes,’ she replied. ‘I’d want you to be part of this team, Glenn, as you’ve already met Towers’s wife – widow.’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘We need to handle the press carefully on this one,’ Grace said. ‘Again, let’s wait and see what we learn from the post-mortem.’

  ‘I agree,’ DI Mantle said.

  Branson said, ‘I’m increasingly unhappy about Vlad Cosmescu. The DNA tests on the cigarette butts prove he was at Shoreham Harbour. Then the outboard—’

  ‘It’s evidence that he was there, Glenn,’ Roy Grace corrected him. ‘But not absolute proof. Someone else could have dropped them. You – everyone –’ he paused to look around his team – ‘we all need to be aware that if you say that something confirms or proves something, there is a big danger that in court you could be picked to pieces by a smart brief, who’ll accuse you of misdirecting the jury. The word to use is evidence, OK? Never say proved or proof. It’s the fast-track way to lose a case.’

  Almost everyone nodded.

  ‘So what else do you have on him, Glenn?’

  ‘We know he’s a Person of Interest to Europol and Interpol, in several inquiries they have running into human trafficking and money laundering.’

  ‘But no charges, and no convictions against him, on record?’

  ‘No, Roy.’

  ‘The Channel’s not turning out to be a very good hiding place, is it?’ Bella Moy commented. ‘If you want to hide a body or an engine, you’d do better to plonk it in the middle of Churchill Square. At least someone might nick it for you!’

  ‘I’d like to pull him in for questioning, get a search warrant, go through his residence, get his phone details,’ Branson went on.

  ‘Because of a couple of dog-ends at Shoreham Harbour and an abandoned outboard motor?’ Grace quizzed.

  ‘Because he was watching the Scoob-Eee through binoculars. Why was he doing that? It’s an old fishing boat, what was so special about it – before the dead teenagers were hauled up on to it? I have a hunch about this man, Roy.’

  ‘Is the boat salvageable?’ Grace asked.

  ‘Yes, but it would be a big operation, and extremely expensive. I went through it with Tania Whitlock. I think you’d have a hard time selling the cost to ACC Vosper.’

  ‘If your hunches are right, you’re going to need evidence he was on that boat – someone who saw him, or something forensic, or something belonging to him.’

  Branson looked pensive. ‘Perhaps they could dive on it again and do a thorough search.’

  Grace thought for some moments. ‘Do you have any ideas on what his involvement might be, Glenn?’

  ‘No, chief, but I’m certain he has a connection. And I think we should move on him quickly.’

  ‘OK,’ Grace agreed. ‘Get a search warrant, but you’ll need to beef up the application a bit. Then see if he’ll talk voluntarily – you might get more out of him that way than if you arrest him and he gets silenced by a brief. Take someone interview-trained. Bella.’ He looked at DI Mantle. ‘OK with you, Lizzie?’

  The Detective Inspector nodded.

  Grace glanced at his watch, doing a quick calculation. By the time Branson had filled in the search warrant paperwork, then found a magistrate to sign the warrant, it would be at least ten, if they were lucky. Thinking back again to his own sighting of Cosmescu’s Mercedes sports car, he said, ‘The man’s a night owl – you might have a long wait for him.’

  ‘Then we’ll just have to make ourselves comfy in his pad in the meantime!’ Branson said.

  ‘God help his CD collection,’ Grace replied.

  Branson had the decency to look embarrassed.

  ‘When you do catch up with him,’ Grace said, ‘I think you’ll find him hard work. He’s been around in the vice world of this city for a decade without being nicked once. You don’t do that unless you know how to play the game.’

  Then he glanced back at the agenda.

  ‘Yesterday we established a Mrs Lynn Beckett, whose phone number I was given by our German police contacts, has a daughter suffering from liver failure.’ He tapped the photocopied wodge. ‘These are phone call logs from the German company I went to see today, Transplantation-Zentrale. I’m not meant to have them, officially, so we’ll have to handle them a bit delicately, but that won’t hinder us.’

  He sipped his coffee, then went on.

  ‘I’ve found nine outgoing calls to Lynn Beckett’s landline number, and four incoming calls received from it, in the past three days, and a further two outgoing calls to her mobile phone.’

  ‘Do you have any recordings of the calls, Roy?’ Guy Batchelor asked.

  ‘Unfortunately not. They have similar privacy laws to us. But they’re working on authorization, which should come through any time now.’

  ‘Probably different in Adolf’s day,’ mumbled Potting.

  Grace shot him daggers, then said, ‘I met with a woman called Marlene Hartmann, head of the German organ broking firm, Transplantation-Zentrale, in Munich this morning. They’re doing business in England right under our noses! We need to find very urgently where they are operating here. This flurry of activity with Mrs Beckett indicates something’s brewing and—’

  Potting’s mobile phone suddenly rang, playing the Indiana Jones theme tune. Blushing, he glanced at the display, then stood up, muttered, ‘This might be relevant – Romania!’ and stepped out of the room.

  ‘And we probably have very little time to find where they are doing this,’ Grace continued. ‘I’ve been making some calls around the medical world, trying to understand exactly what would be needed for an organ transplant facility, whether temporary or permanent.’

  ‘A large team, Roy,’ Guy Batchelor said. ‘When we were interviewing Sir Roger Sirius, he said –’ he paused to flip a couple of pages back through his notebook – ‘you’d need a minimum of three surgeons, two anaesthetists, a bare minimum of three scrub nurses, and a 24/7 intensive care team including several trained in transplant aftercare.’

  ‘Yes, in total fifteen to twenty people,’ Grace said. ‘And they need a minimum of one fully equipped operating theatre and a full intensive care unit.’

  ‘So we have to be looking at a hospital,’ Nick Nicholl said. ‘Either a National Health or a private one.’

  ‘We can rule out the National Health. It would be virtually impossible to get an illegal organ like a liver through the system,’ said DI Mantle.

  ‘How sure are we of that?’ Glenn Branson asked.

  ‘Very sure,’ Lizzie Mantle said. ‘The system is pretty watertight. To slip an organ through the system, an awful lot of people would have to know about it. If it was just one person, that might be different.’

  Branson nodded pensively.

  ‘I think we’re looking at a private hospital or clinic,’ Grace said. ‘There must be drugs specific to human organ transplants – we need to identify what those are, who makes them and supplies them, and then take a look at the private hospitals and clinics they’re sold to.’

  ‘That’s going to take time, Roy,’ DI Mantle said.

  ‘There can’t be that many drugs, or suppliers of them, and not that many end users,’ Grace said. He turned to the researcher, Jacqui Phillips. ‘Can you make a start on that right away? I’ll get you some more helpers, if you need it.’

  Norman Potting came back into the room. ‘Apologies,’ he said. ‘That was a colleague of my contact in Bucharest, Ian Tilling.’

  Grace signalled for him to continue.

  ‘He is attempting to tail a young Romanian woman – a teenager called Simona Irimia – who, he believes, is in the process of being trafficked, imminently, possib
ly tonight or tomorrow, to the UK. His colleague has emailed me a set of police photographs of the person he believes to be her – taken when she was arrested for a shoplifting offence two years ago – when she gave her age as twelve. I’m just printing them out now. Can you give me a couple of minutes?’

  ‘Go ahead.’

  Potting went out of the room again.

  ‘If DS Batchelor and DC Boutwood are right in their suspicions of Sir Roger Sirius, we should consider surveillance on him. If we follow him he might lead us to the hospital or clinic,’ DI Mantle said.

  Grace nodded. ‘Yes, excellent point. Do we know what manpower the DIU have available?’

  ‘They have a major op on,’ Mantle replied. ‘So it might be tricky.’

  The Divisional Intelligence Unit was the covert surveillance arm of the CID. They focused mainly on drugs, but increasingly their work involved human trafficking as well.

  Potting returned after a few minutes and distributed several copies of the Romanian police photographs of the front, right and left profiles of Simona around the inquiry team.

  ‘According to Ian Tilling, this girl was collected earlier today from her home by a German woman who was taking her to start a new life in England. Some life, I’d say. Someone else’s new life, from what it sounds.’

  ‘Pretty girl,’ commented Lizzie Mantle.

  ‘She’ll look less pretty when she’s a canoe,’ said Potting.

  Canoe was crude police jargon for a body during a post-mortem after all the internal organs had been removed.

  From an envelope, Grace pulled out several photographs of Marlene Hartmann, taken with a long lens, and passed them around.

  ‘These are also from my LKA friends in Munich. Do you think this might be the woman, Norman?’

  Potting peered at them intently. ‘She’s a looker, Roy!’ he said. ‘Can see why you went to Munich!’

  Ignoring the comment, Grace said tersely, ‘Christmas is coming up fast. In my experience, people tend to want to get business concluded well in advance of the Christmas break. If this girl is coming in tonight, or tomorrow, to be killed for her organs, then I think we can assume that will happen fairly quickly after she gets here. We need more information on this Lynn Beckett woman. We’ve enough, from what Norman’s given us, to get a phone tap sanctioned, in my view.’

  The criterion for obtaining a phone tap order was evidence that a human life was in immediate danger. Grace was confident he could demonstrate that.

  ‘We need a signature from the ACPO and either the Home Secretary or a Secretary of State,’ DI Mantle said.

  The duty Acting Chief Police Officer rotated between the Chief Constable, the Deputy Chief Constable and the two Assistant Chief Constables.

  ‘It’s Alison Vosper this week,’ Grace said. ‘Won’t be a problem. She’s up to speed on everything.’

  ‘How fast can you get a Secretary of State to move?’ Bella Moy asked.

  ‘The system’s speeded up a lot recently. London will take the instruction on a phone call now.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘We should have consent and a tap on her lines live before midnight.’

  ‘This woman and the young girl might already be here now, sir,’ Guy Batchelor said.

  ‘Yes, she might. But I think we should still keep a lookout at ports of entry. Gatwick’s the most likely, but we need to cover Heathrow too – make sure that’s on our radar – and the Channel Tunnel and the ferry ports. I’ll call Bill Warner at Gatwick, get him to watch all incoming flights from Bucharest and other points of departure they might use.’ He was silent for a moment. ‘I’m afraid we’ve got a long night ahead of us. I don’t want another body turning up dead tomorrow.’

  96

  Normally, Lynn disliked the winter months, because that meant leaving the office in the dark. But tonight, with Reg Okuma parked just down the street, she was glad it was dark, even though the car was clearly illuminated by the street lighting. She could hear the music pounding out of its boom-box speakers when she was still fifty yards away from it, along with the burble from its drainpipe-size exhausts.

  It was an old, 3-Series BMW, in what appeared to be a shade of dark brown the colour of dung, but at least it had blackened windows. The engine was running, presumably, she thought, to provide the power for the amplifier.

  The door swung open for her and she hesitated for a moment, wondering if she was making a terrible mistake. But she was desperate for the cash he had promised to bring. Glancing around to check no one from work had seen her, she slipped into the front passenger seat and hastily pulled the door shut.

  The interior of the car was even more horrible than its exterior. The bass of the speakers, pounding out some abysmal rap song, physically shook her brain. A pair of furry dice, hanging from the interior mirror, were shaking too. There was a string of blue iridescent lights across the top of the dash that she thought for a moment might be an attempt at Christmas decorations, but which she then realized was there because Reg Okuma thought it was cool.

  And the dense reek of the man’s cologne was even more overpowering than the music.

  The pleasant surprise was the car’s occupant.

  Lynn always tried to form mental images of her clients, and the one she’d had of Reg Okuma, which was a cross between Robert Mugabe and Hannibal Lecter, was a long way off the mark now that, in the glow of the street lights and the blue iridescents, she could see him clearly for the first time.

  In his late thirties, she estimated, he was actually good-looking, with an air of strength and confidence about him that reminded her of the actor Denzel Washington. Lean and wiry, with a buzz-cut dome, he was fashionably dressed in a black jacket over a black T-shirt. His fingers were adorned with too many rings, a loose, chunky, gold-link bracelet hung on one wrist and the other sported a watch the size of a sundial.

  ‘Lynn!’ he said, with a big smile, attempting clumsily to kiss her.

  She pulled away, equally clumsily.

  ‘All day I have been hard, thinking about you. Are you juicy, thinking about me?’

  ‘Did you bring the money?’ she asked, glancing out of the window, terrified one of her colleagues might walk past and spot her.

  ‘It’s so vulgar to talk about money on a romantic date, don’t you think, my beautiful?’

  ‘Let’s drive off,’ she said.

  ‘Do you like my car? It is the 325 i.’ He emphasized the i. ‘It is the fuel-injection version. It is very fast. It’s not a Ferrari, right? Not yet. But that’s going to happen.’

  ‘I’m happy for you,’ she said. ‘Shall we go?’

  ‘I need to look at you first,’ he said, turning and staring at her. ‘Oh, you are even more beautiful in the flesh than in my dreams!’

  Then, mercifully, he moved the gear lever and the car shot forward.

  She looked behind her and saw a canvas bank bag, grabbed it and put it on her lap. Moments later she felt his strong, bony hand on her thigh.

  ‘We are going to have such beautiful sex tonight, my pretty one!’ he said.

  They stopped behind a long queue of cars at the New England Hill lights. She peered into the bag and saw bundles of £50 notes, held by elastic bands. A lot of them.

  ‘It’s all there,’ he said. ‘Reg Okuma is a man of his word.’

  ‘Not from my past experience,’ she said, emboldened by the fact there were cars in front of them and behind them. She took out one bundle, which she counted quickly: £1,000.

  His hand moved further up her thigh.

  Ignoring it as they crept slowly forward, she counted the bundles. Fifteen.

  Then suddenly he was pressing right up between her legs. She clenched her thighs and pushed his hand away, firmly. There was no way she was going to sleep with Okuma. Not for £15,000. Not for anything. She just wanted to take the money and get out of here. But even in her desperate state, she knew it was not that simple.

  ‘We are going to a bar,’ he said, ‘my sweet Lynn. Then I have booked a rom
antic table. We will have a candlelit dinner, and then we will make the most beautiful love.’

  His fingers pressed harder inside her.

  The lights changed to green and they crossed, turning left, up the hill. She gripped his hand, removed it and placed it on his own thigh.

  ‘You make me feel so sexy, Lynn.’

  *

  Twenty minutes later they were seated on the outside terrace of the Karma bar, on the boardwalk of Brighton Marina. Despite the fierce glow of the gas heater above them, she was freezing. Reg Okuma puffed on a huge cigar and she sat, huddled in her coat, sipping a whisky sour, which he had insisted she would like – and actually she did. She would have liked it a lot more, though, if they had been inside.

  A couple of other tables were also occupied by smokers, otherwise the roped-off terrace was deserted. Below them, in the watery darkness of the Marina basin, yacht rigging clacked and clanked in the biting wind.

  ‘So, my beauty,’ he said, lifting his glass to his lips, ‘tell me more about you.’

  ‘First tell me how you know that my daughter is ill,’ she said frostily, keeping up her guard.

  He puffed on his cigar and she caught a whiff of the rich, dense smoke. She liked the smell which reminded her of her father at Christmas, when she was a child.

  ‘Beautiful Lynn,’ he said, in a rich, chiding voice. ‘Brighton and Hove may be a city, but you know, in reality, it is just a small town. I was dating a teacher at your daughter’s school. One night I was picking her up, and I saw you. I thought you were the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. I asked her who you were. She told me about you. That made me desire you even more. You are such a caring person. There are not enough caring people in the world.’

  97

  Everyone drove on the left in Cyprus. Which made the country a ready marketplace for fencing stolen British cars. Of course, there were other countries as well, but Cyprus was the most lax at checking up on them. Provided you did a good job of filing off the numbers from the chassis and engine block, and replacing them and the documentation with good forgeries, you weren’t going to have a problem. Vlad Cosmescu had long known, from some of his acquaintances in this city, that if you wanted a car to disappear without trace, the most efficient method was to send it to Cyprus.