Peter James - Dead Tomorrow

Grace nodded.

‘Well, the national database people at Birmingham say it’s a perfect match to someone they have recently put on the database at the request of Europol. He goes under two different names. Here he calls himself Joe Baker, but his real name is Vlad Cosmescu – he’s Romanian.’

Grace thought for a moment. Joe Baker. The man who owned the black Mercedes he had clocked on his early-morning run. A coincidence, or more?

‘That’s interesting,’ Bella Moy said. ‘His name just popped up last night – pimping two girls, recent arrivals from Romania.’

‘Clearly the Man of the Moment,’ Grace said, sliding some papers out of a brown envelope. ‘The wizards in our fingerprint department managed to pull a clear set of dabs off an outboard that had been submerged in the sea using some equipment they’re trialling – and they got a match from Europol this afternoon. Guess who?’

‘Our New Best Friend, Vlad the impaler?’ ventured DS Batchelor.

‘Right on the money!’ Grace said.

‘Are we going to bring him in?’ Norman Potting asked. ‘They’re all villains, these Romanians, aren’t they?’

‘That’s very racist,’ Bella said acidly.

‘No, it’s just a home truth.’

‘What grounds do you want to arrest him on, Norman?’ Grace said. ‘Smoking a cigarette? Dropping an outboard motor in the sea? Or for being a Romanian?’

Potting lowered his eyes and made an indecipherable grumbling sound.

‘Did the Scoob-Eee have an outboard, Glenn?’ E-J asked.

‘I didn’t see one, no.’

‘Do we know where this man, Baker/Cosmescu, lives?’

Bella replied, ‘He’s been a part of the brothel scene for some years, Roy. We should be able to track him down fairly easily.’

‘Do you want someone to interview him?’ DI Mantle asked.

‘No, I think we’ll just log him as a Person of Interest. I don’t think we should talk to him at this stage. If he’s up to anything it will just alert him. We might think about putting surveillance on him.’ He looked down at his notes. ‘OK, so how are we are we doing on the actions?’

‘We’ve had two DCs out going round all suppliers of PVC sheeting in the area. Nothing so far,’ said David Browne.

‘Nick and I covered twelve brothels last night,’ Bella Moy said, reaching for a Malteser.

‘You must be shagged out, Nick!’ Norman Potting said.

Nicholl blushed and gave a half-hearted smile. Grace suppressed a grin. Potting had been quieter than normal in recent days, which he imagined was due to the man’s marriage problems. It was a relief. Potting was a good detective, but on a couple of recent cases when they had worked together Grace had come perilously close to having to fire the DS for his offensive remarks.

Turning to Bella, he asked, ‘And? Anything?’

Glancing at Nick Nicholl for confirmation, she replied, ‘Nothing, beyond Cosmescu. We didn’t find any girls who seemed in distress.’

‘Good to know that our brothels are such happy places,’ Grace commented sarcastically.

‘We’ll carry on today,’ she said.

Glancing at his notes again, Grace turned to Potting. ‘Anything from your man in Romania?’

‘I had an email from Ian Tilling an hour ago. He’s following up a lead tonight. I may have some information by the morning.’

Grace made a note.

‘Good. Thank you. How about people who were on a transplant list but dropped off?’

‘I’ve been working on that all day, Roy,’ Potting said. ‘I suspect we’re on a hiding to nothing there. First thing we’ve got against us is the Hippocratic Oath – good old patient confidentiality. Second thing is the way the system works. These transplant lists aren’t cut and dried. I spoke to a helpful liver consultant at the Royal South London, one of the main liver transplant hospitals. He told me they have a weekly meeting, every Wednesday at midday, when they review the list. Because there is such a shortage of donors they change priorities from week to week, according to urgency. We’re talking about hospitals all over the UK. We’d have to go to court on every individual to get their records. What we need is a medical insider on our team.’

‘What kind of insider?’ Grace asked.

‘A tame transplant surgeon whom medics would trust,’ said Potting. ‘Someone who might have an overview.’

‘I have something that may be of interest,’ Emma-Jane Boutwood said. ‘I’ve been trying to find disaffected transplant consultants or surgeons on the web. Someone who’s openly critical of the system and has gone public.’

‘Openly critical in what way?’ DI Mantle quizzed.

‘Well – for instance, a surgeon who doesn’t think it is unethical to buy human organs,’ the young DC said. ‘And I’ve found someone – his name is Sir Roger Sirius – and he pops up on several different links.’

She looked at Grace, who nodded encouragement for her to continue.

‘A number of things about Sirius are interesting. He trained under one of the pioneers of liver transplant surgery in the UK. Then he was the senior consultant at the Royal South London Hospital for some years. He actively campaigned for a change in the organ donor laws – advocating an opt-out system – meaning that people’s organs would automatically be harvested on death unless they had requested otherwise. It’s the system they have in Spain, for instance. Now, where it gets even more interesting, is that he took early retirement from the Royal after a row about this. Then he went abroad.’

She stopped and looked at her notes.

‘He appears on some websites involving Colombia – which is a country heavily involved in human organ trafficking. It seems he worked out there for a while. Then he pops up in Romania.’

‘Romania?’ Grace said.

E-J nodded, then went on, ‘He’s into a big lifestyle. Flies his own helicopter, flash cars, and a huge mansion in Sussex, near Petworth.’

‘Interesting,’ DI Mantle said. ‘About Sussex.’

‘Four years ago he went through a very acrimonious and expensive divorce – and he’s now married to a former Miss Romania. That’s all I have so far.’

There was a long silence, then Grace said, ‘Good work, E-J. I think we should go and have a chat with him.’

He thought for a moment. From his limited experience of senior medics, they tended to be upmarket, pompous people. Guy Batchelor, who’d had a public school education, might be the kind of person a man like Sir Roger Sirius would feel comfortable with. It also fitted with what Batchelor had been working on.

He turned to the DS. ‘Guy, this is the terrain you were actioning. I think you should go with E-J.’

‘Yes, chief.’

‘Tell him we are investigating three bodies we believe are connected with an organ trafficking ring and ask him if he could give us his wisdom about where to look for such people. Flatter him, massage his ego – and watch him like a hawk. See how he reacts.’

Then he turned back to his notes. ‘The phone number I was given from Germany. Who’s working on that?’

One of the researchers, Jacqui Phillips, raised a hand. ‘Me, Roy. I obtained an address in Patcham and the name of the subscriber. But there was something else, which I gave to DI Mantle.’

Picking up from this, Lizzie Mantle said, ‘It was good observation, Jacqui. The house owner is a Mrs Lynn Beckett. Jacqui spotted that’s the same surname as one of the crew members of the Arco Dee dredger which found the first body. It was myself and Nick who took the original statements from the crew members, so we went back this afternoon, when it was in harbour, discharging its cargo. We got it confirmed that this Lynn Beckett is the former wife of the chief engineer, Malcolm Beckett. One of his fellow crew members told me that he’s quite depressed at the moment, because his daughter is ill. He wasn’t sure exactly what the problem is, but it was something to do with her liver.’