Peter James - Dead Tomorrow

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Lynn Barrett is a single mother, trying to cope with life after divorce. And her life becomes an even bigger nightmare when daughter Caitlin is diagnosed with terminal liver disease. She is put on the transplant waiting list, but there is a world shortage and most patients will die while waiting. In desperation, Lynn turns to the internet and discovers an organ broker who can provide her with a liver but it will cost Lynn GBP250,000.To save her daughter she mortgages her home and borrows from family and friends to raise the money. A few days later the organ broker tells Lynn she has found a young woman, a perfect match for Caitlin, who is in a coma following a car smash in Italy. Meanwhile Roy Grace is working on the case of the remains of three young people recovered from the seabed off the coast of Brighton. These remains lead him to a Romanian trafficking organization of street kids from the Eastern bloc for the UK sex trade; some of them are also traded as organ donors…

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He was worried sick about Caitlin. What the hell mess had Lynn got into? Presumably it had to do with the liver she was trying to buy. He still had not told Jane about the money, but at this moment, that was a long way from his mind.

The police would not tell him anything, only that Caitlin had run off and her mother was desperately worried about her failing health – and the opportunity of a liver transplant, which had come up and she was in danger of missing.

A ghostly slab of white shone ahead, as they approached a clearing. It was Winter Cottage, once their dream home. And the end of the track.

He angled the car so that the lights were fully on the little house. In truth, behind the ivy cladding was an ugly building, a squat, square two-storey affair, cheaply built in the early 1950s out of breeze blocks to house a herdsman and his family. In the farming slump of the late 1990s they’d been made redundant and the farmer had put the place on the market to raise some cash, which was when he and Lynn had bought it.

It was the position that had appealed to them both. Utter tranquillity, with a glorious view of the Downs to the south, and yet it was only fifteen minutes’ drive to the centre of Brighton.

From the looks of it, the place was derelict now. He knew the couple of Londoners they’d sold to had big plans for the place, but they had then emigrated to Australia, which was why it had gone back on the market. It had clearly not been touched for years. Maybe no one else had come along with the cash or the vision. It certainly needed plenty of both.

He grabbed his torch off the passenger seat and climbed out, leaving the headlights on. The two police officers, DS Glenn Branson and DS Bella Moy, climbed out of their car too, each holding a switched-on torch, and walked up to him.

‘Don’t suppose you get many Jehovah’s Witnesses around here,’ joked Branson.

‘That’s for sure,’ Mal said.

Then he led the way, along the brick path he had laid himself, up to the front door and around the side of the house, under a holly archway that was so overgrown all three of them had to duck to avoid the prickles, and through into the back garden. The brick path continued past a rotting barbecue deck, and then on, along the side of a lawn that had once been his pride and joy and was now just a wilderness, through an almost-closed gap in a tall yew hedge, into what Caitlin used to call her Secret Garden.

‘I can understand why you needed to come with us, sir,’ Bella Moy said.

Malcolm smiled thinly. He felt a tightening in his gullet as the beam of his torch struck the wooden Wendy house. Then he stopped. Nervous suddenly.

In a way, he was surprised it was still there, and in another way, he wished it wasn’t. It was too much of a reminder, suddenly, of the pain of his split with Lynn.

The little house was made from logs and supported on stubby brick legs at each corner. He had rebuilt it himself as a labour of love for Caitlin. There was a door in the middle, with steps up to it, and a window either side. There was still glass in both of them, although the beam of his torch could barely penetrate the coating of dust through to the interior. He was pleased to see that the asphalt roof was still in place, although curling at the edges.

He tried to call her name, but his throat was too dry and nothing came out. Flanked by the two police officers, he walked forward, reached the steps, turned the wobbly handle and pushed open the door.

And his heart leapt for joy.

Caitlin was sitting on the floor at the back of the little house, all hunched up like a bendy doll, staring down into her own lap.

A tiny green glow came from her iPod, which rested on her thighs, and in the silence he could hear a refrain that went, ‘One… two… three… four…’

He recognized it. Feist. Currently one of her favourite singers. Amy liked her too.

‘Hi, darling!’ he said, trying not to dazzle her.

There was no response.

Something lurched inside him. ‘Darling? It’s OK, Dad’s here.’

Then he felt a restraining arm on his shoulder.

‘Sir,’ Glenn Branson cautioned.

Ignoring him, he hurried across, dropping down on to his knees, putting his face up close to his daughter’s.

‘Caitlin, darling!’

He cupped her face in his hands and was shocked how cold she was. Stone cold.

He raised her face gently, and then he saw that her eyes were open wide, but there was no flicker of movement in them.

‘No!’ he said. ‘No! Please, no! No! NOOOOOOOOO!’

Glenn Branson raised his torch, stared into her eyes, looking for any movement of the pupils or lids or lashes. But there was nothing.

Desperately, Mal laid Caitlin gently down, pressed his lips to his daughter’s and started giving her the kiss of life. Behind him, he heard the voice of the female detective radioing for an ambulance.

He was still frantically trying to resuscitate Caitlin twenty minutes later, when the paramedics finally arrived.

123

Ten days later the kindly woman PC and the female translator walked Simona across the apron at Heathrow Airport, towards the British Airways plane.

Simona clutched Gogu tightly to her chest. The officer had rummaged through all the wheelie bins at Wiston Grange and recovered him for her.

‘So, Simona, are you happy to be going home in time for Christmas?’ the PC asked chirpily.

The translator repeated the question in Romanian.

Simona shrugged. She didn’t know much about Christmas, other than that there were lots of people around with money in their bags and wallets, making it a good time to steal. She felt lost and confused. Shunted from place to place, room to room. She did not know where she was and did not want to be here any more. She just looked forward to seeing Romeo again.

She looked down at the ground, not knowing what to reply, and it still hurt to talk. It was from the breathing tube, they had told her, and it would get better soon.

She didn’t understand why they had put the breathing tube down her, nor why she was being sent back now. The translator told her that bad people had planned to kill her and take her insides away. But she did not know if she believed her. Perhaps it was just an excuse to send her back to Romania.

‘You’ll be fine!’ the PC said, giving her a final hug at the foot of the gangway. ‘Ian Tilling has arranged for someone to meet you at Bucharest Airport and take you to his hostel – he has a place for you there.’

The translator repeated the assurance.

‘Will Romeo be there?’ she asked.

‘Romeo is waiting for you.’

Simona climbed the steps forlornly, unsure whether to believe them.

Two stewardesses greeted her cheerily at the top, checked her boarding card, and led her to her seat, then helped to buckle her in. She stared in glum silence at the rear of the seat in front of her for most of the flight, clutching the passport document she had been told to present at the other end, and left her tray of food untouched. She just thought about Romeo constantly. Maybe he would be there. Maybe, when she saw him, things would be OK again.

Maybe they could find a new dream.

124

This had always been Roy Grace’s favourite walk, underneath the chalk cliffs, east from Rottingdean. As a child it was almost a Sunday ritual with his parents, and recently, at least on those Sundays when he didn’t have to work, it was becoming a ritual for himself and Cleo.

He loved the sense of drama, particularly on rough days, like this afternoon, when there was a blustery wind and the tide was high, and occasionally the sea surged right up the beach and sent spray and pebbles crashing over the low stone wall. And the signs that warned of the danger of falling rocks added to that drama. He loved the smells here too, the salty tang and the seaweed and the occasional whiff of rotting fish that would be gone in an instant. And the sight of cargo ships and tankers out on the horizon, and sometimes yachts, closer in.

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