Body Line

by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles

  ‘And Windhover gets a good cover story.’ She didn’t answer, only gave him a cross look as though he was taking unfair advantage. ‘But didn’t the illegality of the whole thing bother you?’

  ‘Illegality?’

  ‘You must know that it is illegal to import organs in that way.’

  ‘Oh! But that’s just a technicality. Why on earth shouldn’t we import organs? The government could change the law if it wanted to. When you think of the misery of people waiting for transplants . . . What Bernard does is good. He saves lives, and gives people the chance of a decent life.’

  ‘Only people who can pay large sums of money.’

  She positively scowled. ‘Don’t you think rich people have the same right to life as anyone else? Do you measure a person’s worth by how much money they have? It’s not a moral virtue to be poor. It doesn’t make you a saint.’

  ‘Nor does being rich.’

  ‘Whoever said it did? But the government could just as well buy these organs if it cared so much about saving the poor. In any case, Bernard’s patients would all be on official waiting lists for organs if he didn’t help them. Taking them off the list moves everyone else up. Everyone benefits. Oh, a man can spend his money destroying his body with drink and cigarettes and overeating, and that’s his moral right! But if he spends it preserving his health he’s some kind of monster!’

  She had thought about it, he saw, many, many times in the stilly watches of the night; had justified it to herself so that she could live with it for ten years, and never let out a word to a soul. In spite of her defiant words, she had a conscience, buried deep in there somewhere.

  ‘Not everyone benefitted,’ Slider said. ‘What about the donors?’

  ‘Condemned criminals? What would be the good of wasting the perfectly good organs? They would have died anyway.’

  ‘Are you quite sure of that?’ Slider asked in a deadly small voice.

  The implications of the question could not have been new to her, but she must have shut them out in self defence. Now he saw the train of thought flitting through her face, taking the barriers with it. She sat rigidly upright in her chair, but her expression was a cry of desperation.

  ‘And then there were the people who had to die to protect Bernard’s secret,’ Slider went on. ‘Stephanie, Eunice, David, Catriona. They didn’t benefit.’

  He thought of Helen Aldous as well – moved away from Cloisterwood when Rogers showed an interest in her. Framed for stealing drugs – she had had a lucky escape.

  ‘But it was—’ she began to protest, and then saw the futility of it. She closed her eyes. ‘Oh God,’ she said. ‘Oh God. What have I got myself into?’

  ‘You know very well,’ Slider said. ‘You knew the day I first came here and told you David was dead. You knew who had killed him, and you knew what your part in it was. I could see it in your face.’

  Her eyes flew open. ‘He was going to blow the whistle on the whole scheme,’ she cried. ‘He rang me, he kept ringing me, and I kept trying to talk him out of it. He said he’d had a crisis of conscience. A crisis of cowardice, more like! He was afraid of getting caught, that was all. I told him there was no possible way he could be caught. But Bernard said he was a weak link, because of the women – he loved talking big to them and flashing his money. Sooner or later, Bernard said, he’d let something out.’

  ‘You told Webber David was going to blow the whistle?

  She whitened. ‘I had to! I couldn’t let it all be destroyed. I thought he would take David off the job – retire him. Give him enough money to be comfortable. David wanted to sail round the world on that boat of his. It would have taken him right out of the way. When Bernard said he’d sort it out, that he’d make sure David didn’t spoil everything—’

  ‘Webber said that? What were his exact words?’

  ‘He said, “Don’t worry, I won’t let him spoil everything. Leave it to me, I’ll sort it out.”’

  ‘And you’ll swear to that?’

  She looked at him whitely. ‘Does it come to that?’

  ‘It comes to that. It’s him or you.’

  Her mouth hardened. ‘Then it’s him.’ And weakened again. ‘But, oh God, you don’t understand. We were lovers.’ Slider waited. She said, ‘I never imagined he’d kill him! I swear, I thought he was going to buy him off. It wouldn’t have been difficult. He could always make David do what he wanted.’

  ‘But he couldn’t leave David like that,’ Slider said. ‘A man who likes women and tells them things? He couldn’t take the risk. You don’t make weak links comfortable – you eliminate them. And when I came to tell you David was dead, you knew that was what had happened. Bernard had him killed.’

  ‘Yes,’ she whispered.

  ‘Then he had David’s latest girlfriend killed as well, just in case. Now he must be wondering whether you can safely be left, knowing everything, as you do, and perhaps having doubts – because whatever you thought about the transplants, you never expected it to come to murder. David’s death shocked you. Have you told Webber how you feel about that yet? Because if you have, I’m afraid time is running out fast for you.’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘I haven’t said – anything. We’ve hardly spoken since – it happened. We’re not lovers any more – haven’t been for years. We’re just friends. We’ve only talked once or twice but – not – mentioned—’

  ‘You spoke with your friend and your husband’s murder wasn’t mentioned? Don’t you think that was odd?’ She bit her lip but didn’t answer. ‘If killing David was necessary, logic demands he has to kill you, too. Probably it’s because of your relationship that he’s even hesitated. Perhaps he’s fond of you. But he was fond of David, too.’

  ‘He’s a good man,’ she said. It sounded puzzled. ‘He’s a good man, a surgeon. He saves lives. He only ever wanted to do good. I don’t understand how he could get from there to killing David. His friend.’

  Megalomania, Slider thought, though he didn’t say it aloud. When power allows you to sidestep the rules and decide for yourself what’s right and what isn’t, the logical end is defending that right to decide. If you are right, anyone who stands in your way is obviously wrong, and must be removed from the path of the greater good.

  She was flagging now; her hands shook as she took a tissue to blow her nose. He must get her moving while he could.

  ‘Webber must be stopped, before there are any more victims,’ he said. ‘Whatever you think about the organ transplants, you know that murder is wrong. You must come with me now to the station and make a statement about this whole business – every detail.’

  She looked up at him, startled out of some train of thought. ‘I can’t,’ she said.

  ‘You will,’ he said. ‘Only if you come in now, voluntarily, and tell us everything, help us to stop this man, can there be any hope for you to avoid implication in his crimes. We can protect you from him,’ he said. ‘And we may be able to save something from the wreck.’

  ‘My agency,’ she said. She sounded dazed.

  ‘But you have to come now. A full statement.’

  It took her two attempts to get out of the chair. She seemed dead weary. He helped her find her handbag and coat, turn off lights. As they went towards the door, he thought of one other thing he had wanted to ask, and might perhaps not have another opportunity to do, because it was not likely that he would be the one to conduct the formal interview at the station, not with the international implications of the case.

  ‘Why did David call the boat the Windhover?’ he asked. ‘Was it because the company bought it for him? Did it come with the name? Or was it a joke?’

  She didn’t seem to find the question odd. Probably she was beyond discriminating now. ‘No, he called it that. He loved that poem. We all did Hopkins at school in those days. “I caught this morning morning’s minion.” You know?’

  ‘I know,’ said Slider. ‘“Dappled dawn-drawn falcon in his riding.”’

  ‘He said it was a
beautiful name. Windhover. He imagined the boat riding over the waves like a kestrel.’ She shook her head. ‘Idiotic! I could understand if it had been sailing yacht – a sloop or something. But it was only a motor-boat.’ She closed her eyes a moment in pain. ‘But he loved that boat, he really did. More than any woman.’

  Commander Wetherspoon, their boss at Hammersmith, was a tall, thin man with grizzled, tufty hair that gave him a mysterious resemblance to an Airedale terrier. His squarish, chalky-pink face was fixed in lines of rigid disapproval and his eyes were frosty as he looked down his nose at Slider and said, ‘Well done.’

  He disliked Slider intensely, as Slider well knew, and hated having to speak even two words of commendation. It was obviously at Porson’s insistence that he had brought himself to this sorry pass. He couldn’t find it in his heart to say more, so Porson had to take over the attaboy and do it properly.

  ‘Could have saved us a diplomatic incident,’ he concluded. ‘The Home Secretary’s relieved. Our European counterbands too – they’ll be grateful. We’ve got a whole new ball curve now.’

  Wetherspoon gave Porson a scornful look – he didn’t like the old man either – and dismissed Slider with a curt nod. Slider removed his thorn from Wetherspoon’s side, closing the door quietly behind him, secure in the knowledge that he’d hear it all later.

  The fact of the Chinese government’s involvement had, as Porson put it, opened up a whole new can of wax, as far as the European side went. Things got very hot very high up and very quickly. The Justice Commissioner had rushed into meetings with the High Representative and the two of them had bearded the head of Europol and the Excise Commissioner. The upshoot was, Porson explained, that Europe didn’t want to upset the Chinese so near the date of the next trade round. The elegant, feline EU Trade Commissioner had mopped his brow and pleaded on the one side, while the tough, swarthy Dutch Excise Chief had torn his hair and howled on the other. Then the Assistant Commissioner, Specialist Crime Directorate, Metropolitan Police and the Deputy Commissioner, Specialist Operations, Metropolitan Police, had had a word with the Commissioner, Metropolitan Police, who had a friendly chat with his Dutch opposite number and put the Home Secretary in to bat, with instructions to block everything until stumps.

  The result was that the Euro lot were not going to scoop up Jaheem Bodeker until after he had done the exchange at sea, which meant that the Met and the SCD – the Specialist Crime Directorate – were going to have the chance to clean up their end after all.

  It was, as Amanda Sturgess revealed during her night-long questioning, Jerry McGuinness who had taken over Rogers’s courier role. As Slider had guessed, there was a new boat, not quite as lovely as the Windhover, but adequate – the Marlin, an Albemarle 360XF sport-fishing power-craft, small but fast – and a new harbour, Maldon, slightly further from IJmuiden, but closer to London, and equally posh and irreproachable. McGuinness would have no difficulty in handling the boat, even if the sea was rough. He was the sort of man who could work any kind of machinery. Amanda had spoken of him, with a sort of shudder, as capable of anything, an invaluable right-hand man.

  ‘I’d like to keep her in custody,’ Porson said of Sturgess. ‘Best way to make sure she doesn’t tip off Webber. But if she doesn’t show up at her usual places, it’ll be a dead giveaway that something’s up. Do you think we can trust her not to blow the gaff?’

  ‘No,’ said Slider. ‘Maybe. I don’t know. She knows she’s in trouble but she half thinks we ought to leave Webber alone to get on with his good work.’

  ‘And they were lovers.’ Porson looked thoughtful. ‘Funny she didn’t mind about him fiddling with that Lescroit woman.’

  ‘I think she thought he was so wonderful that he was allowed the odd weakness.’

  ‘The great man must have his little procavities, eh? Well, I suppose we’ll have to take the chance. Make sure she knows that if she doesn’t keep it buttoned she’s for the high jump.’

  ‘Her agency seems to be the only thing she cares about protecting. I’ll work on that angle.’

  But she seemed resigned to it now, and accepted her instructions with docility.

  As the plans progressed, the Deputy Commissioner, Specialist Operations – who as a woman knew all about not being loved by her superiors – insisted that Slider should be allowed to be in on the operation; in fact, should be in at the kill. ‘It’s only fair,’ she said, as Porson reported to Slider. ‘Without him we’d have no chance of a crack at Webber, and Europol would be blundering into the Chinese end of the thing in blindfolds.’

  It was a big operation, involving levels of co-ordination that had to be set up in an unusually short time – normally these things were planned for months, but since Bodeker was being taken out, it had to be this Wednesday or never. Surveillance teams would watch McGuinness all the way to Maldon on Wednesday night, see him go out in the boat, and eventually back in to harbour. Officers would be watching other ports up and down the coast in case the plan had been changed. An officer would be stationed at Hendon on the ANPR computer, reporting on the return journey of the car: it was thought too risky to tail it too closely. At that time of night, a professional like McGuinness would be all too aware of anything keeping a constant distance behind him.

  Once he hit the Stanmore turn-off, a relay of motors would check that he did in fact end up at the hospital. Slider would be part of a group hidden in the grounds, who would move in once they had been told the car had gone down the drive. They would all be wearing Kevlar jackets and be armed.

  ‘I hope it won’t come to it,’ Porson said as he briefed Slider, ‘but there’s a lot at stake. This is a big money operation. They’ve offed two people already, and I wouldn’t be surprised if this McGuinness type went tooled-up as a matter of course. But keep it under your hat. Don’t want any whisper getting out we’ve got a big op going down.’

  On the night, everything was in place. The hands-off surveillance worked: the Marlin went out and came back in to Maldon; McGuinness, driving the hospital Jaguar, drove back to the A12 and followed the same route Rogers had taken on his last run. He was clocked turning off towards Stanmore, and Slider, waiting in the chilly mist under the trees behind the staff car park, finally received the radio word that the target was on his way. The March dawn was still some way distant; it was black and cold and his stomach felt very peculiar, though that could have been hunger – he had been waiting for four hours, and it was an even longer time since supper. There were four of them strung out along that side, and the other three, who were all from specialist units, looked oddly at him from time to time, as if they were too polite to ask what a plod like him was doing mixed up in this big-boys’ game. His team leader, Corby, who was from the SCD, went so far as to advise him to hang back ‘when it went down’ and let them take the action. He meant it kindly.

  There were another four officers on the other side, ready to close the trap once the car had passed through the visitor’s car park into the staff one. Because of the buildings, it was not possible for Slider to witness the car’s arrival – that was reported in terse radio bursts from the other team. But when the word came – Marlin’s in the net. Big Shark’s in the net (how they loved their codes!) Go, go, go! – Slider’s team were closer and were the first on the scene, emerging from between the buildings under the yellowish car park lights to where the Jaguar stood close to the annexe building. The fire door had been propped open, and behind the Jag were McGuinness, reaching into the open boot and lifting out what looked like a large, heavy cold-box, and Sir Bernard Webber.

  The Big Shark, Slider thought, with a clutch of excitement. Supervising this last stage of the operation. But of course it would be. Doubtless always had been. The fewer people who were in on this end of the scheme, the safer they would all be. Webber would know that now if he never had before.

  It was only a fleeting thought: Slider’s adrenalin was pumping as fast as his legs. As he pounded across the tarmac, he saw McGuinness turn his he
ad, thrust the box into Webber’s arms, making him stagger, and reach under his leather jacket. The thought flicked through his mind: so he does go armed.

  Corby, to Slider’s left, shouted, ‘Gun!’ almost at the same moment as the other team arrived from the other direction, and its leader, Nicholson, shouted, ‘Armed police! Stand still!’ There was a dull gleam in the lamplight as McGuinness brought out the gun. Slider’s stomach clenched. Webber had recovered his balance, turned towards the fire door with the box.

  There were two explosions in quick succession. The first was McGuinness, firing at Corby’s team. Slider felt something pass him in the dark and out of the corner of his eye he saw Corby drop. Christ, he thought, with a jolt of his stomach. The second shot was from Nicholson, a warning. It struck the tarmac near McGuinness with a little puff of grit and pinged off the car’s wheel arch with a brutal sound that made Slider wince. Oi, not the Jag!

  Nicholson’s voice was an adrenalin scream. ‘Armed police! Drop the gun! Stand still!’

  Corby was up on his elbows, apparently unhurt: he had dropped in reaction. He was aiming his pistol at McGuinness. ‘Drop the gun!’ he yelled. ‘Don’t be a fool. You’re surrounded.’

  It all seemed to be happening at once. McGuinness fired again at the same instant as Corby spoke. Slider had no idea where that shot went. Contrary to myth, it is extraordinarily difficult to hit a moving target, even one as big as a policeman. At the sound of it Webber stopped in his tracks, perhaps unsure if he was being shot at. Slider saw him swivel his head jerkily from one side to the other. Adams, on Slider’s right, had his gun on McGuinness too. McGuinness looked over his shoulder at the other team, then back. His gun moved, covering Slider for a breathless moment, then Adams, and then slid on and up as he raised his hands in surrender.

  A cold sweat of relief bathed Slider as he left McGuinness to the others and ran, feeling clumsy with his unfamiliar Kevlar armour and sidearm, to get himself between Webber and the fire door. He wanted to make sure he caught him with the goods, red-handed.