by Peter James
‘I don’t know,’ he said truthfully. He watched Humphrey struggling to pick up the wood again.
‘Tell me?’
‘Was it the Duke of Wellington who said that the only thing worse than losing a battle is winning one?’
She nodded.
‘That’s how I feel.’
‘Something I don’t understand,’ she said. ‘How were all those medical people kept silent for so long?’
‘A surgeon in Romania earns 4000 euros a year. Other medical staff even less. That’s how. They were all making a fortune at Wiston Grange, so they were happy as hell.’
‘And tucked safely away in the countryside.’
‘Most of them not able to speak English. So no gossiping with the locals. It was a smart set-up. Ship them in, let them all make a bundle, then ship them out again. They’re members of the EU, so no cross-border work restrictions, no questions asked.’
‘And Sir Roger Sirius?’
‘Big money. And he had his own moral justification.’
They walked on in silence for a while.
‘Tell me something, Grace – if that had been our child – that girl, Caitlin. What would you have done?’ With her free arm she patted her belly. ‘If it were to happen to this little person, sometime in the future?’
‘How do you mean?’
‘In the same circumstances, if our only option was to try to buy a liver to save our child, what would you have done – do?’
He shrugged. ‘I’m a policeman. My duty is to enforce the law.’
‘That’s what scares me about you sometimes.’
‘Scares you?’
‘Uh huh. I think I would take a bullet for my child. And I think I would be capable of killing for my child. Isn’t that what being a parent means?’
‘You think I was wrong, doing what I did?’
‘No, I suppose not. But I can understand why the mother did what she did.’
Grace nodded. ‘In one of the philosophy books you gave me, I read something Aristotle said: The gods have no greater torment than for a mother to outlive her child.’
‘Yes. Exactly. So how do you think that woman feels now?’
‘Is a Romanian street kid’s life less valuable than a middle-class Brighton kid’s? Cleo, darling, I’m not God, I don’t play God, I’m a copper.’
‘Do you ever wonder if sometimes you are too much a copper?’
‘Meaning?’
‘Enforcing the law at any cost? Hiding behind the human cost? Are you so constricted by your policeman’s view of the world that you can’t see outside it?’
‘We saved the life of that Romanian kid. That matters a lot to me.’
‘Kind of, job done, move on to the next?’
He shook his head. ‘No, never. That’s not how I work – or feel – ever.’
She held him tighter. ‘You’re a good man really, aren’t you.’
He smiled wistfully. ‘In a shitty world.’
She stopped and stared at him, smiling that smile that he truly would die for. ‘You make it a little less shitty.’
‘I wish.’
EPILOGUE
Lynn stood in Caitlin’s room, which had remained untouched for almost two and a half years. Now, amid all the mess of her daughter’s things, there was a stack of cardboard boxes from the removals firm.
What the hell did she keep and what did she throw away? There wasn’t much space in the tiny flat she was moving into.
With tears rolling down her cheeks, she stared around at the impenetrable tangle of clothes, soft toys, CDs, DVDs, shoes, make-up containers, the pink stool, the mobile of blue perspex butterflies, shopping bags and the dartboard with the purple boa hanging from it.
The tears were for Caitlin, not for this place. She wasn’t sorry to be leaving. Caitlin had been right all along, in her way. It had been their house but not their home.
She walked through into her bedroom. The bed was piled high with the contents of her wardrobe and cupboards. On the very top was her blue coat, still in the plastic zipper where she had sealed it after her first ‘date’ with Reg Okuma. Although it was her favourite coat, she had felt it was sullied, and had never worn it again. But Reg Okuma was all in the past now. Denarii had been good to her after Caitlin died, and had promoted her to manager. That had enabled her to write off his debt and adjust his credit rating on the computer system. No one had been any the wiser.
She slung the coat over her arm, went downstairs and out into the fine spring morning. Then she crammed it into the dustbin.
She was paying back Luke and Sue Shackleton from the money from the sale of the house. And some of Mal’s money, and her mum’s. There wouldn’t be much left after that, but she didn’t care. She needed to put the past behind her somehow.
And some of it nearly was. Her prison sentence, at any rate. Two years, suspended, thanks to an Oscar-winning performance by a barrister, or the luck of coming up in front of a judge with a heart – or maybe both.
The life sentence of grief for Caitlin was another thing. People said that the first two years were the worst, but Lynn was finding it didn’t really get any better. Several nights a week she would wake, in a cold sweat, crying bitterly over the decisions she had made and for the beautiful girl she had lost.
She would curse and kick herself that the legitimate transplant for Caitlin had been so close and she’d blown it out of sheer panic, out of sheer stupidity.
And the only thing that would calm her down and comfort her was the purring of Max, the cat, on the end of the bed, and remembering the smile of her daughter and those words she used to say that would so annoy her.
Chill, woman.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This book is a work of fiction, as are all my Roy Grace novels. But it is a sad truth that three people die every day in the UK because there are not sufficient organs for transplant available. It is also sad and true that there are over a thousand children living rough in Bucharest – some of them third-generation street kids – and over five thousand adults, a legacy of Ceauşescu’s monstrous regime. Some of these children do get trafficked for their organs.
There are many people who have given me so much help in creating this book, and without their immensely kind and generous support it would have been impossible to write with any sense of authenticity.
My first thank you is to Martin Richards, QPM, Chief Constable of Sussex, who has been immensely generous in his support for my work, and who has made so many helpful suggestions and opened so many avenues for me.
My good friend, former Detective Chief Superintendent David Gaylor, has, as ever, played an invaluable role, reading the manuscript as I go along, not just checking facts, but contributing constantly and wisely to every aspect of the story. I can genuinely say it would have been a much poorer book without his input.
So many officers of Sussex Police have given me their time and wisdom and tolerated me hanging out with them, as well as answered my endless questions, that it is almost impossible to list them all, but I’m trying here, and please forgive any omissions. Detective Chief Superintendent Kevin Moore; Chief Superintendent Graham Bartlett; Chief Superintendent Peter Coll; Chief Superintendent Chris Ambler; DCI Adam Hibbert; DCI Trevor Bowles; Chief Inspector Stephen Curry; DCI Paul Furnell; Scientific Support Branch Manager, Brian Cook; Stuart Leonard; Tony Case; DI William Warner; DCI Nick Sloan; DI Jason Tingley; Chief Inspector Steve Brookman; Inspector Andrew Kundert; Inspector Roy Apps; Sgt Phil Taylor; Ray Packham and Dave Reed of the High-Tech Crime Unit; Sergeant James Bowes; PC Georgie Edge; Inspector Rob Leet; Inspector Phil Clarke; Sgt Mel Doyle; PC Tony Omotoso; PC Ian Upperton; PC Andrew King; Sgt Malcolm (Choppy) Wauchope; PC Darren Balcombe; Sgt Sean McDonald; PC Danny Swietlik; PC Steve Cheesman; PC Andy McMahon; Sgt Justin Hambloch; Chris Heaver; Martin Bloomfield; Ron King; Robin Wood; Sgt Lorna Dennison-Wilkins and the team at the Specialist Search Unit; Sue Heard, Press and PR Officer; Louise Leonard; James Gartrell; and Peter Wiedemann of th
e Munich LKA.
And I owe an extremely special and massive thanks to the terrific team at the Brighton and Hove Mortuary, Elsie Sweetman, Victor Sindon, Sean Didcott. And also to Dr Nigel Kirkham.
Two people gave me the most extraordinarily personal insights into the world of liver failure and transplants – Zahra Priddle and James Sarsfield Watson – both recent recipients of new livers. Both Zahra and James’s wonderful family, Séamus Watson, Cathy Sarsfield Watson and Kathleen Sarsfield Watson added so much to this book.
I am indebted in my education into liver disease and related medical matters to the kindness of Professor Sir Roy York Calnes; Dr John Ramage; Dr Nick Vaughan; the wonderful Dr Abid Suddle of King’s College Hospital, who really helped me through some of the hardest technical parts of liver disease and the transplantation processes; Dr Walid Faraj; Gill Wilson; Linda Selves; Dr Duncan Stewart; Dr Jane Somerville; Dr Jonathan Pash; Coroner Dr Peter Dean; Forensic Pathologist Dr Benjamin Swift; Dr Ben Sharp; Christine Elding, Royal Sussex County Hospital Transplant Coordinator; Sarah Davies; and Dr Caroline Thomsett.
Thank you to Joanne Dale, who gave me great insights into the world of a teenager, and to Annabel Skok, who gave me great wisdom from the younger perspective.
Thanks also to Peter Wingate Saul, Adrian Briggs and Phil Homan; Peter Faulding of Specialist Group International; Juliet Smith, Chief Magistrate of Brighton and Hove; Paul Grzegorzek; Abigail Bradley and Matt Greenhalgh, Director of Forensics at Orchid Cellmark Forensics; Tim Moore, Ray Marshall and all crew of the Arco Dee dredger, especially Sam Janes, the supercook! Mel Johnson, Head of the Child Trafficking Unit at CEOP; STOP (Trafficking) UK (www.stop-uk.org); Samantha Godec of City Lights; and Sally Albeury. Very special thanks to Nicky Mitchell, and to Jessica Butcher of Tessera Group PLC. And to Graham Lewis, my lock-up garage specialist!
I owe a big debt to my team in Romania – my agent Simona Kessler; my wonderful publishers there, Valentin and Angelique Nicolau; Michael and Jane Nicholson of Fara Homes; Rupert Wolfe Murray; and thanks also for the passionate and invaluable enthusiasm of Ian Tilling MBE. And in Germany to Hans-Jürgen Stockerl and to Anette Lippert.
As ever, thank you Chris Webb of MacService for keeping my computer alive despite all the abuse I give it! Very big and special thanks to Anna-Lisa Lindeblad, who has again been my tireless and wonderful ‘unofficial’ editor and commentator throughout the Roy Grace series, and to Sue Ansell, whose sharp eye for detail has saved me many an embarrassment.
Professionally, once again, I have a total dream team: the wonderful Carole Blake representing me, together with Oli Munson; my awesome publicists, Tony Mulliken, Amelia Knight and Claire Barnett of Midas PR; and there is simply not enough space to say a proper thank you to everyone at Macmillan, but I must mention my brilliant new editor, Maria Rejt, and say a big thank you to her for her wisdom and experience. Stef Bierwerth was a hard act to follow.
As ever, Helen has been my rock, keeping me nourished with saintly patience and constant wisdom.
My canine friends continue to keep me sane. A big welcome to our new addition, the ever-cheerful Coco, who has now joined Oscar and Phoebe under my desk, waiting to pounce on any discarded pages of manuscript that should fall to the floor and dutifully shred them . . .
Lastly, thank you, my readers, for all the incredible support you give me. Keep those blog posts and emails coming!
Peter James
Sussex, England
[email protected]
www.peterjames.com