Peter James - Dead Tomorrow

‘Well,’ Emma-Jane cut in almost on cue, ‘it’s true, isn’t it, that around 30 per cent of patients in the UK who are waiting for a liver transplant will die before they get one?’

‘Where did you get that figure from?’ he asked with a frown.

‘I’m quoting you , Sir Roger. That was what you wrote in an article in the Lancet in 1998.’

Frowning again, he said defensively, ‘I write a lot of stuff. Can’t remember it all. Particularly not at my age! Last I heard, the official figure is 19 per cent – but, as with everything, that depends on your criteria.’ He leaned forward and picked up a silver milk jug. ‘Either of you take milk?’

‘Can’t remember it all. Particularly not at my age.’ But you still hold a private helicopter licence, so your memory can’t be that crap, Guy Batchelor thought to himself.

When he had sorted their coffees out, the DC asked, ‘Do you remember the article you wrote for Nature , criticizing the UK organ donor system, Sir Roger?’

He shrugged. ‘As I said, I’ve written a lot of articles.’

‘You’ve also worked in a lot of places, haven’t you, Sir Roger?’ she pressed. ‘Including Colombia and Romania.’

‘Gosh!’ he said, with what looked like genuine excitement. ‘You chaps have certainly boned up on me!’

Batchelor handed the three e-fit photographs of the dead teenagers across to the surgeon.

‘Could you tell us if you’ve ever seen any of these three people, sir?’

Sirius studied each of them for some moments, while Batchelor watched him, intently. He shook his head and handed them back.

‘No, never,’ he said.

Batchelor replaced them in the envelope.

‘Is it just coincidence that you chose those two countries to work in? The fact is that they are high on the list of known countries involved in human trafficking for organ transplantation.’

Sirius appeared to think carefully before answering. ‘You’ve both clearly done your homework on me, but I wonder – tell me something. Did your research show up that my darling daughter, Katie, died just over ten years ago, at the age of twenty-three, from liver failure?’

Shocked by this revelation, Batchelor turned to E-J. She looked equally taken by surprise.

‘No,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry – sorry to hear that. No, we didn’t know that.’

Sirius nodded, looking sad and bleak suddenly.

‘No reason why you should. She was one of those 30 per cent, I’m afraid. You see, even I couldn’t get around the donor system we have here in this country. Our laws are extremely rigid.’

‘We are here, Sir Roger,’ Emma-Jane said, ‘because we have reason to believe some members of the medical profession are flouting those laws in order to provide organs for people in need.’

‘And you think I may be able to help you to name them?’

‘That’s what we are hoping,’ she said.

He gave a wan smile. ‘Every few months you read on the Internet about some chap or other who gets drunk in a bar in Moscow and wakes up minus a kidney. These are all urban myths. Every organ supplied for donor surgery in the UK is governed by UK Transplant. No hospital in the UK could obtain an organ and transplant it outside this system. It’s a complete impossibility.’

‘But not in Romania or Colombia?’ Batchelor asked.

‘Indeed. Or China, Taiwan or India. There are plenty of places you can go to get a transplant if you have the cash and are willing to take a risk.’

‘So,’ Batchelor went on, ‘you don’t believe there is anyone in the UK who is doing such things illegally?’

The surgeon bristled. ‘Look, it’s not just a question of removing an organ and popping it into a recipient. You’d need a huge team of people – a minimum of three surgeons, two anaesthetists, three scrub nurses, an intensive care team and all kinds of specialist medical support staff. All of them medically trained, with all the ethics that go with the territory. You’re looking at around fifteen to twenty people. How would you ever stop that many from talking? It’s a nonsense!’

‘We understand there might be a clinic in this county doing just this, Sir Roger,’ Batchelor pressed.

Sirius shook his head. ‘You know what? I wish there was. God knows, we could do with someone bucking the system we have here. But what you are talking about is an impossibility. Besides, why would anyone take the risk of doing this here, when they could go abroad and obtain a transplant legally?’

‘If I can ask a delicate question,’ Batchelor said, ‘with your knowledge, why did you not take your daughter abroad for a transplant?’

‘I did,’ he said, after some moments. Then, venting sudden, surprising fury, he said, ‘It was a fucking filthy hole of a hospital in Bogotá. Our poor darling died of an infection she picked up in there.’ He glared at the two officers. ‘All right?’

Half an hour later, in the car heading back towards Brighton, Emma-Jane Boutwood broke the several minutes of silence between them that had persisted since they left Sir Roger Sirius, as both of them gathered their thoughts.

‘I liked him,’ she said. ‘I felt sorry for him.’

‘You did?’

‘Yes. He’s clearly very bitter about the system. Poor guy. What an irony to be one of the top liver transplant surgeons in the country and then to lose his daughter to liver disease.’

‘Tough call,’ Batchelor responded.

‘Very.’

‘But it also gives him a motive.’

‘To change the system?’

‘Or to buck it.’

‘Why do you say that?’

‘Because I was watching him,’ Batchelor said. ‘When he was looking at the e-fit photos, he said he didn’t recognize any of them. Right?’

‘Yes.’

‘He was lying.’

To the casual – and occasionally not-so-casual – observer, some men could instantly be pigeonholed. From their combination of a brutal haircut, muscular physique, badly fitting suit and strutting walk, they were unmistakably either coppers or soldiers in civvies. But, despite his close-cropped hair and his very busted nose, Roy Grace cut a suave figure that gave few clues about his occupation.

Dressed in his Crombie coat, navy suit, white shirt and quiet tie, and carrying his bulging briefcase, he could have been a company executive or an IT man on a business trip, or perhaps a Eurocrat, or a doctor or an engineer, heading to a conference. Anyone glancing at him might also have noticed his authoritative expression, the few small frown lines of worry and the slightly blank gaze, as if he was deep in thought, as he strode along the moving walkway.

Roy felt strangely nervous. The trip was straightforward. His old friend Kriminalhauptkommissar Marcel Kullen was collecting him from the airport, and taking him straight to the offices of the organ broker, whom he would see alone. So long as he was careful and didn’t screw up, it would be fine. One quick, cunning meeting and then back to England.

Yet his stomach was unaccountably full of butterflies. That same nervous excitement he used to feel when going on a date, and he was at a loss to understand why. Perhaps it was his brain reminding him of his expectations last time he had come to Munich. Or was it just tiredness? He had slept badly for several nights running now. He never really got a decent night’s rest during any murder inquiry he was running, and this one, in particular, seemed to have so many moving parts. And, on top of that, he badly wanted to impress the new Chief Constable.

Checking his watch, he quickened his pace, overtaking several people, then found his path blocked by a harassed-looking mother with a pushchair and four small children. The end of this walkway section was coming up, so he waited for a minute or so to reach it, then stepped around the family and hurried on to the next section.