Peter May - The Killing Room

‘He was in the news in the States a couple of years ago when he was investigated by the FBI on suspicion of trading in organs. He insisted he was just an honest broker, taking a small commission for bringing together needy US recipients and legally available organs around the world. They couldn’t find any evidence to the contrary.’

Mei-Ling said, ‘But you think he has been trading with Cui Feng?’

Margaret said bleakly, ‘If we accept that Cui Feng’s people have been murdering girls here for their organs, the only reason they would have a direct link to Al Gardner’s website would be to sell them.’

‘How would that work?’ Li asked.

Margaret shrugged. ‘They’d have organs from a girl with a specific blood type and HLA tissue type, they’d go on to Gardner’s website and look for specific matches on the recipient list. Once they’d found the matches, presumably they’d contact Gardner and he’d bring organ and recipient together.’

‘Here?’

‘I guess. Though possibly also in some third, neutral country. India, maybe, or somewhere in the Middle East.’

Li was frowning. ‘There is something I am missing here,’ he said. ‘These recipients … who would they be?’

‘I guess, people who’re going to die without a transplant and have the money to pay for an organ, no questions asked.’

‘Americans?’ Li said.

Margaret was puzzled by the question. ‘I suppose most of them would be. If not all.’

Li glanced at Mei-Ling. ‘But Cui’s clinic was full of Japanese.’

‘Japanese?’ Margaret was caught completely off balance.

‘That is what Cui told us,’ Mei-Ling said.

Tiny electrical charges went sparking off between nerve endings in Margaret’s brain. She could almost feel them, seeking to build bridges between deeply buried memory and conscious recollection. Fragments emerging from the deep started locking together in partially assembled pieces of a subconscious puzzle. And as she began to recognise and catalogue some of these pieces, her brain told her heart that it needed more oxygen, and her heart started beating faster. Finally, it all found expression in a whispered oath. ‘Jesus Christ!’ she said under her breath.

Li was startled. ‘What!’

She remembered reading something a couple of years ago. Some report on international traffic in organs. A task force who had found no proof of anything. And then there was David. That night in the sushi restaurant in Chicago. What was it he’d said? They got this weird religion in Japan. Shinto. They have a pretty strange view of the sanctity of the dead body . And something else … She fought to remember, and then suddenly it came to her. Because, of course, he was a cardiac consultant. Last time a doctor over there performed a heart transplant was in nineteen sixty-eight, and he got charged with murder . Then the name she’d been searching for came to her. ‘The Bellagio Task Force,’ she said. ‘That’s what they were called.’

‘Margaret, what are you talking about?’ The frustration in Li’s voice was clear.

‘Bear with me,’ she said, and she turned back to the computer and called up an Internet search engine to try to find what it was she was looking for. It only took a couple of minutes before she had the report up on the screen. THE BELLAGIO TASK FORCE REPORTON TRANSPLANTATION, BODILY INTEGRITY, ANDTHE INTERNATIONAL TRAFFICIN ORGANS. She scrolled quickly through the pages, and then stopped suddenly. There it was. ‘Listen to this.’ And she read, ‘ Asian concepts of bodily integrity, the respect due elders, and objections to a standard of brain death, practically eliminate cadaveric organ donation in such countries as Japan. Despite an embrace of most medical technologies and deeply ingrained habits of gift-giving, transplantation from cadaveric sources is rare. Heart transplantation is not performed at all and the limited number of kidneys donated come from living related persons .’ She turned to Li and Mei-Ling, wide-eyed, almost exultant. ‘You see? If you’re Japanese and you need a heart transplant or a new liver, or a kidney, the chances are you’re not going to get it in Japan. Even if you have all the money in the world. And you’re not going to get it in the States either, because there’s more than sixty thousand people in the queue ahead of you.’ She paused, considering for herself the implications of what she was saying. ‘So you’re going to die.’

Li was still toiling to take all this on board. ‘But why can they not get organs in Japan?’ he said. ‘Are they not one of the most technologically advanced nations in the world?’

‘And one of the most religious and superstitious,’ Margaret said. David’s words came back to her again. ‘Shinto,’ she said, and she turned and entered the words Shinto plus Transplants into the search engine. Within twenty seconds she was spoiled for choice. Dozens of documents came up. She picked one at random. In Shinto, the dead body is considered to be impure and dangerous, and thus quite powerful . She clicked on another. In folk belief context, injuring a dead body is a serious crime . And another. It is difficult to obtain consent from bereaved families for organ donation, or dissection for medical education, or pathological anatomy … the Japanese regard them all in the sense of injuring a dead body .

And in a moment of absolute clarity, she knew exactly what had happened, and why these women had become unwitting donors.

‘Oh, my God,’ she said. ‘The man is a monster.’ She turned to Li. ‘These women weren’t picked at random to have their organs stolen. They were exact matches for specific Japanese recipients with the money to pay for them.’

‘How would he know these women were exact matches?’ Li asked, puzzled by this sudden leap.

‘Because they’d all had abortions at his clinics,’ Margaret said. ‘Three hundred thousand women a year pass through his clinics. That’s one-and-a-half million since he started. And nothing would be easier than to tissue-type them when they came in for the procedure. He must have the most comprehensive list of organ donor matches in the world. Only, these women were never donors, they had their organs taken without consent. As soon as Cui had a client, some wealthy Japanese facing certain death, he could consult his files and find an exact match. They’d snatch the girl and take the organ.’ She stopped, as another revelation struck her. ‘That’s why they went after the girl in Beijing. Jack’s sister. Because her HLA DQ-alpha gene was almost unique in China. She must have been a rare, but perfect match for some Japanese. Only, she turned out to be a junkie and they killed her for nothing.’

She stood up and walked towards the window, hands clutching her head. Every nerve-end was tingling, every fibre of her straining to come to terms with her revelation. She saw her reflection in the window and thought she was staring at a mad woman. She spun round to face the others.

‘And do you know what’s really sick? The thing that I could never understand? They were keeping them alive to meet the needs of some Japanese religious or superstitious fear of violating the integrity of a dead body. It didn’t matter that they were killing a living person in the process.’ She threw back her head and stared up at the ceiling. ‘Jesus, life’s always so much cheaper, isn’t it?’ She lowered her head again and stared wild-eyed at Li and Mei-Ling. ‘Cui Feng was offering a unique service. Life-saving organs from a living body. Maybe one could be charitable and suggest that perhaps the recipients didn’t know that the donors were ultimately paying with their lives. But, then, you don’t take someone’s heart and expect that they’ll still be alive. Do you? Jesus …’ She leaned forward on the desk and shook her head, blinking back tears of shock.