Peter James - Dead Tomorrow

Caitlin, in her dressing gown, had spent much of the past hour going backwards and forwards to the toilet. But she was already looking a little better, Lynn was relieved to see, except she was scratching again. Scratching her arms so hard they looked as if they were covered in insect bites. At the moment, iPod in her ears, she was switching focus between an old episode of the OC playing silently on the muted TV and her purple mobile phone, on which she was texting someone, with furrowed concentration, while rubbing the itching balls of her feet on the end board of the bed.

Luke had been tapping away for nearly an hour now, working through Google, then other search engines, trying out different combinations of phrases and sentences containing the words organs , purchase, humans , donors, livers .

He had found a debate in the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly on the topic of human organ trafficking, and on another site had discovered the story of a Harley Street surgeon called Raymond Crockett, who was struck off the Medical Register in 1990 for buying kidneys from Turkey for four patients. And plenty more debates about whether organ donation should be automatic on death unless a person has opted out.

But no organ brokers.

‘Are you sure it’s not just an urban myth, Luke?’

‘There’s a website about part of Manila being called One Kidney Island,’ he said. ‘You can buy a kidney there for forty thousand pounds – including the operation. That site talked all about brokers-’

Suddenly he stopped.

On the screen, in clinical white against a stark black background, the words TRANSPLANTATION-ZENTRALE GMBH had appeared.

In a bar above were options for different languages. Luke clicked on the Union Jack flag and moments later a new panel came up:

Welcome to

TRANSPLANTATION-ZENTRALE GMBH

the world’s leading brokerage for

human organs for transplantations

Discreet global service, privacy assured

Contact us by phone, email

or visit our Munich offices by appointment

Lynn stared intently at the computer screen, feeling an intense, giddying frisson of excitement. And danger.

Maybe there really was another option to the tyranny of Shirley Linsell and her team. Another way to save the life of her daughter.

Luke turned to Caitlin. ‘Looks like we’ve – yeah – found something.’

‘Cool!’ she said.

Moments later Lynn felt Caitlin’s arms around her shoulders and her warm breath on her neck, as she too peered at the screen.

‘That’s awesome!’ Caitlin said. ‘Do you think there’s – like – a price list? Like when you go online shopping at Tesco?’

Lynn giggled, delighted that Caitlin seemed to be returning to some kind of normality, however temporary.

Luke began to navigate the site, but there was very little information beyond what they had already read. No phone number or postal address, just an email one: post@transplantation-zentrale.de.

‘OK,’ Lynn said. ‘Send them an email.’

She dictated and Luke typed:

I am the mother of a 15-year-old girl who is urgently in need of a liver transplant. We are based in the south of England. Can you help us? If so please let us know what service you can provide and what information you require from us. Yours sincerely,

Lynn Beckett

Lynn read through it, then turned to Caitlin. ‘OK, my angel?’

Caitlin gave a wistful smile and shrugged. ‘Yep. Whatever.’

Luke sent it.

Then all three of them stared at the mailbox in silence.

‘Do you think we should have sent a phone number?’ Caitlin asked. ‘Or an address or something?’

Lynn thought for a moment, her brain feeling scrambled. ‘Yes. Maybe. I don’t know.’

‘No harm, is there?’ suggested Caitlin.

‘No, no harm,’ her mother agreed.

Luke sent a second email, containing Lynn’s mobile number and the dialling code for England.

Ten minutes later, down in the kitchen making a cup of tea and preparing some supper for the three of them, Lynn’s phone rang.

On the display were the words, Private number.

Lynn answered immediately.

There was a faint hiss, then some crackle. After a fraction of a second’s time delay she heard a woman’s voice, in guttural broken English, sounding professional but friendly.

‘May I please speak with Mrs Lynn Beckett?’

‘That’s me!’ Lynn said. ‘Speaking!’

‘My name is Marlene Hartmann. You have just sent an email to my company?’

Shaking, Lynn said, ‘To Transplantation-Zentrale?’

‘That is correct. By chance, I have the opportunity to be in England tomorrow, in Sussex. If it is convenient, we could meet, perhaps?’

‘Yes,’ Lynn said, her nerves shorting out. ‘Yes, please!’

‘Do you happen to know your daughter’s blood type?’

‘Yes, it is AB negative.’

‘AB negative?’

‘Yes.’

There was a brief silence before the German woman spoke again.

‘Good,’ she said. ‘That is excellent.’

‘The time is 6.30 p.m., Tuesday 2 December,’ Roy Grace announced. ‘This is the tenth briefing of Operation Neptune, the investigation into the deaths of three unknown persons.’

He was seated in his shirtsleeves, tie loosened, at the table in the briefing room of Sussex House. Outside, it was a vile night. He stared, for an instant, through trails of rain slithering down the windowpanes, at the blackness beyond. Inside, it felt cold and draughty, with most of the heat coming from the bodies of his fast-expanding team, now twenty-eight strong, crammed around the table.

On the flat surface in front of him were a bottle of water, a stack of newspapers, his notebook and his printed agenda. There was a lot to work through before he could get out of here tonight – and move on to his second, and much more pleasurable, agenda of the evening. One which involved the seriously expensive bottle of champagne lying in the boot of his car downstairs.

On the wall-mounted whiteboard were sets of fingerprints and composite e-fit photographs of the three victims. He glanced up at them now. A DI colleague, Jason Tingley, currently in the Divisional Intelligence Unit, once commented that e-fits made everyone look like Mr Monkeyman and Roy had never been able to get that image out of his mind. He was looking at two Monkeymen and one Monkeywoman up there on that wall now.

Dead.

Murdered.

Depending on him to bring their killers to justice.

Depending on him to bring closure to their relatives.

He flipped open the Independent newspaper, which was on the top of the pile. On page three was a stark headline: BRIGHTON AGAIN CRIME CAPITAL OF ENGLAND. This was a reference back to 1934, when Brighton was in the grip of its famous razor gangs and, within a short space of time, two separate bodies were found in trunks at Brighton’s railway station. Brighton had then earned the unwelcome sobriquet Crime Capital of England .

‘The new Chief’s not impressed,’ Roy Grace said. ‘He wants this solved, quickly.’

He looked down at the notes Eleanor had typed for him.

‘OK, we now have further pathology evidence that the organs were removed from our victims under operating-theatre conditions. The labs have identified the presence of Propofol and Ketamine in the post-mortem tissues. These are both anaesthetics.’

He paused to let the implications sink in.

‘I’ve been giving this organ-trafficking line some thought, Roy,’ Guy Batchelor said. ‘Purchase and sale of human organs are illegal in the UK. But because of shortages, there are people on the heart, lung and liver waiting lists who die before an organ becomes available. And there are people who wait for years, leading miserable lives, on the kidney transplant waiting lists. How are we getting on with our search for a disgruntled transplant surgeon?’