She came back from her reverie. ‘Yes, of course. His government status opened all sorts of doors. He told me he saw the whole thing, complete, in one single flash, and after that it was just a matter of setting up the processes. It came to him one evening in Beijing. He was talking to some little Chinese government functionary, who told him about the state executions.’ She gave him a defiant look. ‘The Chinese government sells the organs quite openly, you know. They don’t make any bones about it. These are all condemned criminals. Why shouldn’t they repay their debt to society in a practical way?’
Slider didn’t get sucked into that. ‘He set up the Geneva Foundation. And the numbered Swiss bank account to handle the money. There’d be no questions asked or answered about either. But there had to be a British arm, so that end would look legitimate.’
‘The Windhover Trust. It was legitimate. Then he worked out the quickest route for the organs – Hong Kong, then Amsterdam by plane, and then by speed boat to England, exchanging at sea where there was no one to see it happen.’
‘And on his other travellings he was working up customers,’ Slider suggested. ‘The Middle East, India, South America . . .’
‘Of course. He had to have agents to direct the patients his way.’
‘And the last stage was to get the organs from the coast to Stanmore. He offered that job to David.’
‘Yes.’
‘Did you know he was going to do that?’
‘I was there at the meeting. That would be in the March of 2001. Bernard asked me over to his place one evening – his new place. He and Felicity were divorced by then, and we were seeing each other from time to time. When I got there, David was there too. I thought for one horrible moment he was trying to reconcile us. But it was a business meeting, not a social one. He had the whole network set up by then, except for the last leg. David hated his current job, so he jumped at it. Bernard would pay him a basic salary through Windhover, just enough not to rouse anyone’s suspicions, enough to pay tax on, and the rest he’d get in cash – lovely, untraceable cash. Plenty of it. David could live the kind of lifestyle he liked, and the work was negligible. Once a week, courier the goods to London, that was all. Later, Bernard asked him to entertain clients as well, but I always thought that was more to keep David occupied than because it was really necessary.’
‘Why did he offer the job to David? Was he uniquely qualified for it?’
‘Good Lord, no,’ she said scornfully. ‘In fact, Bernard has this chap – a sort of factotum—’
‘Jerry McGuinness?’
She raised her eyebrows. ‘Oh, you know about him?’
‘How did Bernard meet him?’
‘Jerry? Oh, he picked him up on his travels when he was doing his tour abroad. Got him out of some kind of trouble with the police in South America. Brought him home. Jerry’s forever grateful. Completely loyal.’
I am not the butcher, but the butcher’s dog, Slider thought.
‘Plus, of course, Bernard pays him well,’ she concluded indifferently.
‘So, why David, then?’
‘To keep him quiet. Bernard thought that sooner or later he was bound to work out what had really happened that day in Harley Street, and he wanted to have him thoroughly bound by unbreakable ties. I think he was wrong – I don’t think David would ever have suspected. He wasn’t sharp enough – and he loved Bernard, as a friend. He trusted him. But also,’ she said thoughtfully, ‘I think Bernard really wanted to do David a favour. He loved him, too, you know.’
‘And you were guaranteed money for your agency for ever.’
She looked sour. ‘You’re going to blame me for taking the money.’
‘Not at all. It’s perfectly understandable.’
‘We do good work.’
‘And Windhover gets a good cover story.’ She didn’t answer, only gave him a cross look as though he was taking unfair advantage. ‘But didn’t the illegality of the whole thing bother you?’
‘Illegality?’
‘You must know that it is illegal to import organs in that way.’
‘Oh! But that’s just a technicality. Why on earth shouldn’t we import organs? The government could change the law if it wanted to. When you think of the misery of people waiting for transplants . . . What Bernard does is good. He saves lives, and gives people the chance of a decent life.’
‘Only people who can pay large sums of money.’
She positively scowled. ‘Don’t you think rich people have the same right to life as anyone else? Do you measure a person’s worth by how much money they have? It’s not a moral virtue to be poor. It doesn’t make you a saint.’
‘Nor does being rich.’
‘Whoever said it did? But the government could just as well buy these organs if it cared so much about saving the poor. In any case, Bernard’s patients would all be on official waiting lists for organs if he didn’t help them. Taking them off the list moves everyone else up. Everyone benefits. Oh, a man can spend his money destroying his body with drink and cigarettes and overeating, and that’s his moral right! But if he spends it preserving his health he’s some kind of monster!’
She had thought about it, he saw, many, many times in the stilly watches of the night; had justified it to herself so that she could live with it for ten years, and never let out a word to a soul. In spite of her defiant words, she had a conscience, buried deep in there somewhere.
‘Not everyone benefitted,’ Slider said. ‘What about the donors?’
‘Condemned criminals? What would be the good of wasting the perfectly good organs? They would have died anyway.’
‘Are you quite sure of that?’ Slider asked in a deadly small voice.
The implications of the question could not have been new to her, but she must have shut them out in self defence. Now he saw the train of thought flitting through her face, taking the barriers with it. She sat rigidly upright in her chair, but her expression was a cry of desperation.
‘And then there were the people who had to die to protect Bernard’s secret,’ Slider went on. ‘Stephanie, Eunice, David, Catriona. They didn’t benefit.’
He thought of Helen Aldous as well – moved away from Cloisterwood when Rogers showed an interest in her. Framed for stealing drugs – she had had a lucky escape.
‘But it was—’ she began to protest, and then saw the futility of it. She closed her eyes. ‘Oh God,’ she said. ‘Oh God. What have I got myself into?’
‘You know very well,’ Slider said. ‘You knew the day I first came here and told you David was dead. You knew who had killed him, and you knew what your part in it was. I could see it in your face.’
Her eyes flew open. ‘He was going to blow the whistle on the whole scheme,’ she cried. ‘He rang me, he kept ringing me, and I kept trying to talk him out of it. He said he’d had a crisis of conscience. A crisis of cowardice, more like! He was afraid of getting caught, that was all. I told him there was no possible way he could be caught. But Bernard said he was a weak link, because of the women – he loved talking big to them and flashing his money. Sooner or later, Bernard said, he’d let something out.’
‘You told Webber David was going to blow the whistle?
She whitened. ‘I had to! I couldn’t let it all be destroyed. I thought he would take David off the job – retire him. Give him enough money to be comfortable. David wanted to sail round the world on that boat of his. It would have taken him right out of the way. When Bernard said he’d sort it out, that he’d make sure David didn’t spoil everything—’
‘Webber said that? What were his exact words?’