Sam Bourne - The righteous men

'Killers, plural?'

'You don't think someone starts performing major surgery like that on their own, do you? They would have needed a team. Every surgeon needs a nurse.'

Will gave Bob Hill a ride back to his own cabin. He suspected that, though Hill's office might have been basic, his house was elsewhere — and not nearly so spare as Baxter's. The dead man was clearly an extreme kind of extremist.

They said their goodbyes, exchanged email addresses, and Will began the long drive on. Bob Hill was obviously a nut — DNA for dissidence indeed — but this business with the kidney was definitely strange. And why would Baxter's killers have given him an injection?

He pulled off Route 200 to fill up the car and his stomach.

He found a diner and ordered a soda and a sandwich. A TV was on, tuned to Fox News.

'… Dateline London now and more on the scandal threatening to topple the British government.'

There were pictures of a harried-looking Gavin Curtis emerging from a car to an explosion of flash bulbs and television lights.

'According to one British newspaper today, Treasury records show clear discrepancies which can only have been authorized at the very top. While opposition politicians demand a full disclosure of accounts, Mr Curtis's spokesman says only that "there has been no wrongdoing"

Without thinking, Will was taking notes, not that he would ever need them: Curtis's chances of heading up the IMF were surely slim to non-existent now. Watching the pictures of Curtis being shepherded past the baying press mob — a classic 'goatfuck' as the TV guys called them — Will's mind wandered onto trivial terrain. How come his car is so ordinary? This Gavin Curtis was meant to be the second most powerful man in Britain, yet he was driven around in what looked like a suburban sales rep's car. Did all British ministers live so modestly — or was this just a Gavin Curtis thing?

Will called the sheriff's office for Sanders County and was told that, for all the federal investigations and Unabomber inquiries, Baxter had no criminal record whatsoever. He had been under heavy surveillance, but it had yielded nothing: a couple of unexplained trips to Seattle, but no evidence of illegality.

He had never been convicted of anything. Will flicked back through his notebook. He had scribbled down all he could of the autopsy report, including the name at the foot of the document. Dr Allan Russell, Medical Examiner, Forensic Science Division, State Crime Lab. Maybe this Dr Russell would be able to tell him what Mr Baxter's militia comrades had not. How had Pat Baxter died — and why?

Wednesday, 6.51pm, Missoula, Montana

He had got there too late; the crime lab was shut for the day.

No amount of cajoling could alter that fact; the staff had gone home. He would have to come back tomorrow. Which meant he would have to spend the night in Missoula.

He was briefly tempted by the C'mon Inn, if only because the joke was too good to resist. But Will realized, he could still tell people about it in New York: he did not actually have to stay there. So he played safe and checked into the Holiday Inn for a third night of room service, the remote control and a phone call with Beth.

'You're making this too complicated,' she said, audibly getting out of the bath.

'But it is complicated. The guy has a kidney missing.'

'You need to see a medical history. Maybe — what's his name again?'

'Baxter.'

'Maybe Baxter had a history of renal problems. Any reference to that or to dialysis or kidney trouble of any kind, and that will give you an explanation.'

Will was silent.

'I'm ruining it, aren't I?'

'Well, if we're talking news value, the choice between the death of an old man with a past history of renal failure and an attempted kidney-snatching is very close. But, yeah, you might be right: the kidney-snatching probably just edges it.'

Will was relieved they were back into banter mode. Several days now stood between them and the row; the wound seemed to be closing.

Thursday, 10.02am, Missoula, Montana The next morning, Will was ushered into Dr Russell's office.

He saw it straight away, a certificate on the wall carrying an emblem Will recognized: an open book, inscribed with Latin words, topped off by two crowns.

'Ah, you were at Oxford. Like me. When were you there?'

'Several centuries before you, I suspect.'

'That can't be true, Dr Russell.'

'Call me Allan.'

At last, a lucky break. 'You know, Allan, I'm not even sure I'll write about it for the paper, but this Pat Baxter business does intrigue me, I must confess,' he began, as if settling down for an agreeable chat at high table. Will noticed his own English accent had become more pronounced.

'Let me have a look here,' Russell was saying, as he turned to his computer. 'Ah yes, "Severe internal haemorrhaging consistent with a gunshot wound; contusions of the skin and viscera. General remarks: needle mark on right thigh, suggestive of recent anaesthesia".'

'Now, how are you defining "recent" there, Allan?' Will hoped his tone was saying, Purely out of academic interest…

'Probably contemporaneous.'

'You see this, I have to say, is what intrigues me. Why would anyone anaesthetize someone before they kill them?'

'Perhaps they were trying to reduce the victim's pain.'

'Do murderers do that? It makes no sense. Unless-'

'Unless the killer was a medical man. Trained to give a shot before any procedure. Force of habit perhaps.'

'Or if he wanted to do something else before the murder.

Perform some other operation.'

'Like?'

'Well, I understand that Baxter was found minus one kidney.'

Russell began to laugh, in a way Will struggled to find funny. 'Oh, I see what you're driving at.' Russell was grinning.

'Tell me, Will. Have you ever seen a dead body?'

Instantly, Will remembered the corpse of Howard Macrae, under a blanket on that street in Brownsville. His first. 'Yes.

In my work it's hard to avoid.'

'Well, then you won't mind seeing another one.'

It was not as cold as he expected. Will imagined a morgue to be a giant fridge, like those cold storage rooms at the back of large hotels. This was more like a hospital ward.

The orderlies were moving a gurney into a curtained-off zone which Will took to be the examination area. With not even a moment's warning, Russell pulled back the sheet.

Will felt his stomach tighten. The body was stiff and waxy, a yellowish green. The stench was rancid; seeming to come his way in waves. For a second or two he would think it had passed, or that at least he had got used to it, and then it would strike again — inciting Will to empty his guts out on the floor there and then.

'It can take some getting used to. Apologies. Now take a look at this.'

Will moved closer. Russell was gesturing towards something in the stomach area, but Will was transfixed by Pat Baxter's face. The papers had run photos, but they were grainy — 'grabs' from TV footage mainly. Now he saw the weathered cheeks, chin, eyes and mouth of a man he would have identified as middle-aged, poor and white. He had a longish beard that, in a different context, might have looked elegant, even statesmanlike. (The face of Charles Darwin popped into Will's head). But the effect here was to give Pat Baxter the appearance of a homeless man, one of the winos found sleeping by trash cans in a park.

Russell was pulling back the sheet around Baxter's torso.

Will could tell he was trying to conceal one thing, probably the bullet wounds, and reveal something else. 'Look closely.

Can you see it?'

Will leaned forward to see Russell's finger tracing a line on the dead white flesh. That's a scar.'

'In the area of the kidney?'