Peter James - Dead Tomorrow

‘Where are we going?’ Lynn asked.

‘Quick!’ he replied.

‘I need to sit down,’ Caitlin said.

‘In minute you sit. OK?’

They stumbled out into the drop-off area beside the car park exit, past several waiting cars and taxis, and reached a dusty brown Mercedes. He popped open the boot, hefted their bags in, then opened a rear door and manoeuvred Caitlin inside. Lynn clambered in on the far side. Grigore jumped into the driver’s seat, started the car and drove like a demon away from the station.

The surveillance officer, DC Peter Woolf, stood and watched in horror, sensing his promotion prospects disappearing down that ramp, and frantically radioed his colleague in the Passat to get round to the car park exit.

But the Passat was stuck on the far side of the station in a queue of frustrated drivers, waiting for the imbecile in an articulated lorry that was blocking the entire street to complete his reversing manoeuvre.

Marlene Hartmann anxiously paced her office on the ground floor of the west wing of Wiston Grange, one of the six clinics that Transplantation-Zentrale quietly owned around the world. Most of the pampered clientele who came here for its spa, as well as surgical and non-surgical rejuvenation facilities, were wholly unaware of the activities that went on behind the sealed doors, marked PRIVATE NO ACCESS, to this particular wing.

There was a fine view towards the Downs from her window, but whenever she came here she was normally too preoccupied to notice it. As she was today.

She looked at her watch for the tenth time. Where was Sirius? Why were the mother and daughter taking so long?

She needed Lynn Beckett here to fax instructions to her bank to authorize the transfer of the second half of the funds. Normally she would wait for confirmation that the cleared funds were in her account, in Switzerland, before proceeding, but today she was going to have to take a risk, because she wanted to get the hell out of here as quickly as possible.

Sunset was at 3.55 p.m. Shoreham Airport closed then for landings and take-offs. She needed to be there for half past three at the latest. Cosmescu would be coming with her, with the remains of the Romanian girl. The team she left behind would be fine, looking after Caitlin. Even if the police did find out it was this place, by the time they turned up the operation would be completed and they would struggle to recover evidence. They might not be happy, but they could hardly cut Caitlin open to check if she had any new organs.

She left her office and walked through into the changing room, where she gowned up in surgical scrubs, boots and rubber gloves. She then opened the door to the operating theatre and entered, nodding acknowledgement to Razvan Ionescu, the Romanian transplant specialist, the two Romanian anaesthetists and the three Romanian nurses.

Simona lay naked and unconscious on the table, beneath the brilliant glare of the twin octopus overhead lights. A breathing tube had been inserted down her throat, connected to the ventilator and the anaesthetic machine. An intravenous cannula in her wrist, connected to a pump fed from a drip bag hanging from a pole beside the table, kept her under with a continuous infusion of Propofol. Two more pumped in fluids to keep her organs well perfused, for maximum quality.

On the flat state-of-the-art computer screen on the wall was a steady readout of her blood pressure, heart rate and oxygen saturation levels.

‘ Alles ist in Ordnung? ’ Marlene Hartmann asked.

Razvan stared at her blankly. She forgot he spoke no German.

‘You are ready?’ she said, in Romanian this time.

‘Yes.’

She looked at her watch again. ‘You want to harvest the liver now?’

Despite his experience, Razvan said, ‘I would prefer to wait for Sir Roger.’

‘I’m worried about time,’ she replied. ‘You could make a start with the kidneys. I have orders from Germany and Spain for these.’

Suddenly her radio beeped. She answered and listened for a moment. Then she said, ‘OK, super!’

Mrs Beckett and her daughter would be here in twenty minutes.

An embarrassed DC Woolf radioed in a somewhat sheepish report that Whiskey Seven Nine Six Lima Delta Yankee was a total loss. The brown Mercedes, containing Lynn and Caitlin Beckett, had given them the slip.

Great , Roy Grace thought, seated at his cramped work station in MIR One. How fucking great is that?

All he could do now was hope to hell it pinged an ANPR camera.

A phone was ringing, unanswered. They were being deluged with calls at the moment, following all the media publicity, and were struggling to keep up. Even so, there were twenty-two people in this room and only a dozen of them were on the phone, the rest were reading, or typing.

‘Can someone answer the sodding phone!’ he called out.

Then Grace glanced down at the post-mortem report on Jim Towers, which had just landed on his desk. The cause of death was asphyxiation caused by water inhalation. Hypoxia and acidosis, resulting in cardiac arrest. Cutting through Nadiuska De Sancha’s pages of technical notes, he now knew that the Scoob-Eee ’s skipper had drowned. All the man’s internal organs were intact.

But even so, despite the difference from the three dead teenagers, Grace’s instincts told him these deaths were connected. He would need to make a decision about whether to argue the case for having the wreck of the Scoob-Eee , now officially a crime scene, recovered. But he hadn’t time to start getting his head around that now.

He tapped out a command on his keyboard to bring up a mapping screen. Moments later, from their on-board transponders, he had the positions of the police helicopter and the two cars that were tailing Sirius’s Aston Martin. They were only a few miles south of the M25 now. At least with the number of ANPR cameras there, it would be easy to keep track of him.

Then a call came through from the Control Centre. Whiskey Seven Nine Six Lima Delta Yankee had just been spotted on the A283, west of Brighton.

He jumped up with excitement and dashed over to the map. Then he frowned. The purple circles closest to the vehicle’s position were Southlands Hospital, in Shoreham, a National Health hospital which had already been marked as unlikely, and a health and beauty spa, Wiston Grange, also marked as unlikely. However, more significantly, this road led to the same roundabout at Washington, just north of Worthing, from where Sirius’s car had headed up the A24.

Returning to his work station, he phoned Jason Tingley, the Division Intelligence Unit inspector, and asked if by chance he had a surveillance unit in the Washington area. But Tingley replied apologetically that he hadn’t.

Ten minutes later, there was still nothing from the car.

Which meant, almost certainly, he was wrong about the direction. All he could hope was that an alert patrol officer spotted it.

Another phone was ringing on, unanswered. Answer it, for fuck’s sake, someone! he thought.

To his relief, someone did.

His nerves were becoming increasingly frayed. Alison Vosper wanted an update and Kevin Spinella from the Argus had left four messages, wanting to know when the next press conference would be held.

He pulled up a police map of Sussex on his screen and stared at it, wondering desperately what he might be missing.

Then, suddenly, the police observer in the helicopter radioed him, updating him. The Aston Martin was pulling into a petrol station.

Grace thanked him. Seconds later, one of the unmarked units radioed him, informing him they had pulled up at adjoining pumps and requesting instructions.