‘Impossible!’
She pulled a face at him. ‘Calling me a liar?’
He kissed her.
47
Glenn Branson lay wide awake in the spare room of Roy Grace’s house, which had now become his second home – or, more accurately at the moment, his main residence.
It was the same every night. He drank heavily, trying to knock himself out, but neither the booze nor the pills the doctor had prescribed seemed to have any effect. And his body, which he normally kept in shape by working out relentlessly at home or in the gym, was starting to lose muscle tone.
I’m bloody falling apart, he reflected gloomily.
The room had been decorated by Sandy in the same Zen minimalistic style as the rest of this house. The bed was a low, futon-style affair, with an uncomfortable slatted headboard that, because of his tall frame, he constantly bashed his skull on as he tried to stop his feet sticking out the other end. The mattress was as hard as cement and the frame of the bed felt loose, wobbling precariously and creaking every time he moved. He kept meaning to sort it out with a spanner, tightening the nuts, but away from work he was so despondent he didn’t feel like doing anything. Half his clothes, still in their zipped plastic covers, lay across the armchair in the small room – some of them had been there for weeks and he still had not got round to hanging them up in the almost empty wardrobe.
Roy was quite right when he told him he was turning the house into a tip.
It was 3.50 a.m. His mobile phone lay beside the bed and he hoped, as he hoped every night, that Ari might suddenly ring, to tell him she’d had a change of heart, that she’d been thinking it over and realized she did still love him, deeply, and wanted to find a way to make the marriage work.
But it stayed silent, tonight and every damn night.
And they’d had another row earlier. Ari was angry that he couldn’t collect the kids from school tomorrow afternoon, because there was a lecture she wanted to go to in London. That sounded suspicious to him, rang alarm bells. She never went to lectures in London. Was it a guy?
Was she seeing someone?
It was bad enough coping with being apart from her. But the thought that she might be seeing someone, start another relationship, introduce that person to his kids, was more than he could bear.
And he had work to think about. Had to focus somehow.
Two cats, fighting, yowled outside. And somewhere in the distance a siren shrieked. A response unit from Brighton and Hove Division. Or an ambulance.
He rolled over, suddenly craving Ari’s body. Tempted to call her. Maybe she was—
Was what?
Oh, God almighty, how much they used to love each other.
He tried to switch his mind to his work. To his phone conversation yesterday evening, with the wife of the missing skipper of the Scoob-Eee. A very distraught Janet Towers. Friday night had been their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary. They had a table booked at the Meadows restaurant in Hove. But her husband had never come home. She had not heard from him since.
She was absolutely certain he’d had an accident.
All she could tell Glenn was that she had contacted the coastguard on Saturday morning, who had reported back to her that the Scoob-Eee had been seen going through the lock at Shoreham Harbour at nine on Friday night, along with an Algerian-registered freighter. It was common for local fishing boats to enter the lock behind a commercial cargo vessel, enabling them to skip the locking fees. No one had paid any attention to the vessel.
Neither the boat nor Jim Towers had been seen since.
No accidents at sea had been logged by the coastguard, she had told Glenn. Jim and his boat had literally disappeared into thin air.
Suddenly, in his sleepless state, he remembered something. It might be nothing. But Roy Grace had taught him many important lessons about being a good detective and one of them was going around in his head now. Clear the ground under your feet.
He was thinking back to Friday morning, when he had been standing on the quay at Arlington Basin, waiting to board the Scoob-Eee. To a glint of light he had seen as they cast off, on the far side of the harbour, beside a cluster of refinery tanks.
*
At half past six that morning, Glenn pulled his unmarked police Hyundai Getz up, putting two wheels on the pavement of Kingsway, opposite a row of houses. He climbed out into drizzle and breaking daylight, eased himself over the low wall, then, clutching his torch, half slid and half ran down the grassy embankment behind the cluster of white petroleum storage tanks, until he reached the bottom. Across the far side of the dark grey water he could make out the timber yard, the gantry and, further up, the lights of the Arco Dee dredger, disgorging its latest cargo of gravel and sand. He could hear the rattle of its conveyor belt and the falling shingle.
He worked out the position where he had boarded the Scoob-Eee with the police diving team, right in front of that timber yard, and where he had seen that glint of light across the water, between the fourth and fifth tanks, and made his way to the gap.
A fishing boat, with its navigation lights on, was coming down the harbour, its engine put-put-putting in the morning silence. Gulls cried above him.
His nostrils filled with the smells of the harbour – rotting seaweed mixed with oil and rust and sawn timber and burning asphalt. He shone the beam of the torch directly at the ground beneath his feet. Then briefly up at the white cylindrical walls of the refinery storage tanks. They were much bigger now he was close up to them than they had appeared on Friday.
He checked his watch. He had just under an hour and a half before he needed to leave to get to the morning briefing in time. He pointed the beam back down on to the wet grass. Looking for a footprint that might still be there from Friday morning. Or any other clue.
Suddenly he saw a cigarette butt. Probably nothing significant, he thought. But those words of Roy Grace buzzed inside his head, like a mantra.
Clear the ground under your feet.
He knelt and picked it up with the neck of an evidence bag he had brought along – just in case. Printed around the butt were the words, in purple, Silk Cut.
Moments later, he saw a second one. It was the same brand.
To drop one cigarette butt here could have meant someone was just passing by. But two, that meant someone was waiting here.
For what?
Maybe, if he got lucky, DNA analysis would reveal something.
He continued to look for the next hour. There were no further clues, but he headed towards the morning briefing with wet shoes and a sense of achievement.
48
‘Please tell me you are joking?’ Lynn begged.
She was utterly exhausted after the sleepless night she had just spent in the chair beside Caitlin’s bed, in the small, claustrophobic room off the liver ward. A muted cartoon was playing on the small, badly tuned television bolted to an extension arm on the wall above the bed. A tap was dripping in the sink. The room smelled of poached eggs from breakfast trays out in the main ward, weak coffee and disinfectant.
It must have been like the kind of tense, desperate last night a prisoner spends before being executed at dawn, hoping for that last-minute reprieve, she thought.
Lights coming on and off. Constant interruptions. Constant examinations, injections and pills given to Caitlin, and blood and fluid samples being taken from her. The alarm handle dangling from a cord above her. The empty drip stands and the oxygen pump that she did not need.
Caitlin fretting, unable to sleep, telling her over and over again that she was itching and scared, and wanted to go home, and Lynn trying to comfort her. Trying to reassure her that in the morning everything would be fine. That in three weeks she would be leaving the hospital with a brand-new liver. If all went well, she would be home in time for Christmas, OK, not to Winter Cottage, but to the place that was now her home.
It would be the best Christmas ever!
And now this woman was standing in the room. The transplant co
ordinator. Shirley Linsell, with her English rose face and her long hair, and the tiny burst blood vessel in her left eye. She was wearing the same white blouse and knitted pink top and black trousers as when she had first met her, almost a week – that seemed like a million years – ago.
The only difference was her demeanour. When they had first met, she had seemed positive and friendly. But now, at seven o’clock this morning, although apologetic, she seemed cold and distant. Lynn stood facing her, glaring in fury.
‘I’m extremely sorry,’ she said. ‘I’m afraid these things happen.’
‘Sorry? You phoned me last night to say that you had a liver that was a perfect match, and now you are telling us you were wrong?’
‘We were informed a liver had become available which was a good match.’
‘So what exactly happened?’
The coordinator addressed Lynn, then Caitlin. ‘From the information we were given, it appeared that the liver could be split, with the right side to be given to an adult and the left side to you, Caitlin. When our consultant and his team went down to the hospital to collect the liver, in their assessment, it was healthy and suitable. We use a scale of size of liver against body weight. But this morning our senior consultant surgeon, who was to have performed the transplant, examined the liver more closely and found there was more than 30 per cent fat. He did a biopsy and made a decision that it would not be suitable for you.’
‘I still don’t understand,’ Lynn said. ‘So are you going to throw it away?’
‘No,’ Shirley Linsell said. ‘With this amount of fat, there is a danger it could take several weeks to function properly. Caitlin needs a liver that will function immediately. She is too ill to take the risk. It will be used for a man in his sixties with liver cancer. It will hopefully prolong his life for a few years.’
‘How great is that?’ Lynn said. ‘You’re bumping my daughter in favour of an elderly man? What is he? Some fucking alcoholic?’
‘I can’t discuss another patient with you.’
‘Yes, you can.’ Lynn raised her voice. ‘Oh yes, you damn well can. You’re sending Caitlin home to die so some fucking alcoholic, like that footballer George Best, can live a few more months?’
‘Please, Mrs Beckett – Lynn – it’s not like that at all.’
‘Oh? So what is it like, exactly?’
‘Mum!’ Caitlin said. ‘Listen to her.’
‘I am listening, darling, I’m listening really hard. I just don’t like what I’m hearing.’
‘Everyone here cares for Caitlin, a lot. It’s not just work in this unit – it’s personal for us all. We want to give Caitlin a healthy liver, to give her the best chance of a normal life, Mrs Beckett. There is no point in giving her a liver that might not work or that might fail in a few years’ time and put her through this ordeal a second time. Please believe me – the whole team here wants to help Caitlin. We’re very fond of her.’
‘Fine,’ Lynn said. ‘So when will this healthy liver be available?’
‘I can’t answer that – it depends on a suitable donor.’
‘So we’re back to square one?’
‘Well – yes.’
There was a long silence. ‘Will my daughter be at the top of the priority list?’ Lynn demanded.
‘The list is very complicated. There are a number of factors affecting it.’
Lynn shook her head vigorously. ‘No, Shirley – Nurse Linsell. Not a number of factors, just one as far as I am concerned. My daughter. She needs a transplant urgently – correct?’
‘Yes, she does, and we are working on that. But you have to understand, she is one of many people.’
‘Not to me, she isn’t.’
The woman nodded. ‘Lynn, I appreciate that.’
‘Do you?’ Lynn said. ‘What percentage of patients on your waiting list die before they get a liver?’
‘Mum, stop being so hostile!’
Lynn sat on the side of the bed and cradled Caitlin’s head in her arms. ‘Darling, please let me deal with this.’
‘You’re talking about me like I’m some retard in a box. I’m upset! Don’t you see that? I’m just as upset as you are – more – but it’s not going to help getting angry.’
‘Do you realize what this bitch is saying?’ Lynn exploded. ‘She is sending you home to die!’
‘You are being, like, so dramatic!’
‘I AM NOT BEING DRAMATIC!’ Lynn turned to the coordinator. ‘Tell me when another liver is going to be available.’
‘I’d be misleading you if I gave you a time or a date, Lynn.’
‘Are we talking twenty-four hours? A week? A month?’
Shirley Linsell shrugged and gave a wan smile. ‘I don’t know, that’s the honest truth. We thought we had got lucky, getting this liver so quickly, in a week with no matching recipient higher up the priority list than Caitlin. The donor was an apparently healthy thirty-year-old man, but clearly, it turned out, he had a drink or a diet problem.’
‘So this same shit could happen again, could it?’
The coordinator smiled, trying to placate Lynn and reassure Caitlin. ‘We have a very good record here. I’m sure that everything will be fine.’
‘You have a good record? What does that mean?’ Lynn said.
‘Mum!’ Caitlin implored.
Ignoring her, Lynn went on, ‘You mean you have a good record compared to the national average? That only 19 per cent of your patients die before they get a liver, compared to the national average of 20 per cent? I know about the National Health and your damn statistics.’ Lynn started crying. ‘You’ve gambled with my daughter’s life by giving some elderly alcoholic an extra few months of life because that will tick the right boxes for your statistics. I’m right, aren’t I?’
‘We don’t play God here, Mrs Beckett. We cannot say that one human being has more right to life than another because of their age, or because of how they may or may not have abused their bodies. We’re non-judgemental. We try our best to help everyone. Sometimes we have to make difficult decisions.’
Lynn glared at her. Never in her whole life had she hated anyone as much as she hated this woman right now. She didn’t even know if she was getting the truth or being fed some yarn. Had some rich oligarch with a sick child made a donation to the hospital for bumping Caitlin and getting his child saved? Or had there been a screw-up that she was trying to cover up?
‘Really?’ she sneered. ‘Difficult decisions? Tell me something, Shirley, did you ever lose a night’s sleep in your life over a difficult decision?’
The nurse kept calm, her tone gentle. ‘I care about all our patients very deeply, Mrs Beckett. I take their problems home with me every night.’
Lynn could see she was telling the truth.
‘OK, answer this for me – you just said that Caitlin would have got this liver, had it been OK, because there was no matching recipient higher up the list than her. That could change, right? At any moment?’
‘We have a weekly meeting to decide the priority list,’ Shirley Linsell replied.
‘So it could all change at your next meeting, couldn’t it? If someone in greater need than Caitlin – in your assessment – came along?’
‘Yes, I’m afraid that’s how it works.’
‘That’s great,’ Lynn said, her blood boiling again. ‘You’re like a firing squad, aren’t you? This weekly meeting to decide who is going to live and who’s going to die. It’s like you all pull the trigger, but one of you doesn’t have a bullet in the gun, just a blank. Your patients die and none of you has to take the damn blame.’
49
Simona lay on the examination couch, wearing just a loose dressing gown. Dr Nicolau, a serious, pleasant-looking man of about forty, strapped a Velcro sleeve around her arm and tightened it, plugged his stethoscope into his ears and pumped the rubber bulb until the sleeve squeezed her arm tightly. Then he looked at a gauge fitted to it.
After a few moments he released the sleeve, noddi
ng, as if everything was fine.
The German woman, who had told her that her name was Marlene, stood beside her. She was beautiful, Simona thought. She was dressed in a sleek, fur-trimmed black suede coat, over a light pink pullover, smart jeans and black leather boots. Her blonde, elegantly tangled hair cascaded around her shoulders, and she smelled of a wonderful perfume.
Simona liked and trusted her. Romeo had been right in his judgement of her, she thought. She was such a confident woman, kind and gentle. Simona had never known her mother, but if she could have chosen a mother, she would have liked her to be a person like Marlene.
‘Just going to take a little blood,’ the doctor said, removing the strap and producing a syringe.
Simona stared at it, cringing in fear.
‘It’s OK, Simona,’ Marlene said.
‘What are you doing?’ she asked, her voice tight.
‘We are giving you a full examination, just to make sure you are healthy. It’s a big investment for us to send you to England. We have to get you a passport, somehow, which is not so easy as you have no papers. And they won’t allow you to work there if you are not healthy.’
Simona shrank away as the needle approached. ‘No,’ she said. ‘NO!’
‘It’s OK, darling Simona!’
‘Where’s Romeo?’
‘He’s outside. He is having the same tests. Would you like him to come in here with you?’
Simona nodded.
The woman opened the door. Romeo came in, his saucer eyes becoming even wider when he saw Simona in her dressing gown.
‘What are they doing?’ Simona asked him.
‘It’s OK,’ Romeo said. ‘They won’t hurt you. We have to have this medical.’
Simona shrieked as she felt the prick in her arm. Then she watched in terror as the doctor drew up the plunger and the plastic barrel filled, slowly and steadily, with her dark red blood.
‘We have to have the certificates to get into the country,’ Romeo said.
‘It hurts.’