Every time you thought you had seen it all, Roy Grace mused, some new horror would surprise you. He had read about people in Turkey and South America who got talking to beautiful women in bars and then woke up hours later in bathtubs full of ice, with sutured incisions down one side of their body and missing a kidney. But until now he had dismissed such stories as urban myths. And he knew the importance of never jumping to conclusions.
But three young people at the bottom of the sea with their vital organs professionally removed…
The press would have a field day. The citizens of Brighton and Hove would be worried when this news came out, and he already had two – as yet unreturned – urgent messages on his mobile phone to call the Argus reporter, Kevin Spinella. He would need to orchestrate the press carefully, to maximize public response in helping to identify the bodies, without causing any undue distress. But equally, he knew that the best way to grab the public’s attention was with a sensational headline.
Press conferences were not popular at weekends, so he could buy himself some time until Monday. But he was going to have to throw a few titbits to Spinella – and as a starting point the Argus, with its wide local circulation, could be the most helpful in the short term.
So what was he going to tell him? And, equally importantly, what was he going to conceal? He had long learned that in any murder inquiry you always tried to hold back some information that would be known only to the killer. That helped you eliminate time-waster phone calls.
For the moment, he put the press out of his mind, concentrating on what he could learn from the three bodies recovered so far. In his notebook, he jotted down Ritual killings? and ringed the words.
Yes, a very definite possibility.
Could they possibly have been organ donors who had all wanted to be buried at sea? Too unlikely to be considered seriously at this stage.
A serial killer? But why would he – or she – bother with the careful suturing after removal of the organs? To put the police off the scent? Possible. Not to be dismissed at this stage.
Organ trafficking?
Occam’s razor he wrote next, as the thought suddenly came into his mind. Occam was a fourteenth-century philosopher monk who used the analogy of taking a razor-sharp knife to cut away everything but the most obvious explanation. That, Brother Occam believed, was where the truth usually lay. Grace was inclined to agree with him.
Grace’s favourite fictional detective, Sherlock Holmes, held to the dictum: When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.
He looked at Glenn Branson, who was standing in a corner of the room with a worried expression on his face, talking on his mobile phone. It would do him good to have a challenge, Grace thought. Something to get his teeth into and distract him from all his nightmarish legal problems with Ari, who, privately, Grace had never liked.
Walking over to him, and waiting for him to finish a call, Grace said, ‘I need you to do something. I need you to find out everything you can about the world of trafficking in human organs.’
‘Need a new liver, do you, old-timer? I’m not surprised.’
‘Yeah, yeah, very funny. Get Norman Potting to help you. He’s good at researching obscure stuff.’
‘Dirty Pretty Things!’ Branson said. ‘See that movie?’
Grace shook his head.
‘That was about illegal immigrants selling kidneys in a seedy hotel in London.’
Suddenly he had the Detective Superintendent’s attention. ‘Really? Tell me more.’
‘Roy!’ Nadiuska called out. ‘Look, this is interesting!’
Grace, followed by Glenn Branson, walked over to the corpse and stared down at the tiny tattoo she was pointing to. He frowned.
‘What’s that?’
‘I don’t know,’ she said.
He turned to Glenn Branson. The DS shrugged and then, stating the obvious, said, ‘It’s not English.’
37
Romeo clambered down the steel ladder, holding a huge grocery bag under one arm. Valeria was sitting on her old mattress, leaning against the concrete wall, rocking her sleeping baby. Tracy Chapman was singing ‘Fast Car’ yet again. Again. Again. The fucking song was starting to drive him crazy.
He noticed three strangers, in their mid-teens, on the floor, slouched against the wall opposite Valeria. They were just sitting there, looking strung out on Aurolac. The tell-tale squat plastic bottle with its broken white seal and the yellow and red label bearing the words LAC Bronze Argintiu lay on the floor in front of them. The rank smell of this place hit him, as it did each time, and with particular force now in contrast to the fresh, windy, rainy air outside. The mustiness, the fetid body smells, dirty clothes and the soiled-nappy stench of the baby.
‘Food!’ he announced breezily. ‘I got some money and I bought amazing food!’
Only Valeria reacted. Her big, sad eyes rolled towards him, like two marbles that had run out of momentum. ‘Who gave you money?’
‘It was a charity. They give money to street people like us!’
She shrugged her shoulders, uninterested. ‘People who give you money always want something back.’
He shook his head vigorously. ‘No, not this person. She was beautiful, you know? Beautiful inside!’ Then he walked over to her and opened up the bag for her to inspect the contents. ‘Look, I bought you stuff for the baby!’
Valeria dug her hand in and pulled out a tin of condensed milk. ‘I’m worried about Simona,’ she said, turning it around and reading the label. ‘She hasn’t moved all day. She just cries.’
Romeo walked over and squatted down beside Simona, putting an arm around her. ‘I bought you chocolate,’ he said. ‘Your favourite. Dark chocolate!’
She was silent for some moments and then she sniffed. ‘Why?’
‘Why?’
She said nothing.
He pulled out a bar and put it under her nose. ‘Why? Because I want you to have something nice, that’s why.’
‘I want to die. That would be nice.’
‘You said yesterday you wanted to go to England. Wouldn’t that be nicer?’
‘That’s a dream,’ she said, staring bleakly ahead. ‘Dreams don’t come true, not for people like us.’
‘I met someone today. She can take us to England. Would you like to meet her?’
‘Why? Why would she take us to England?’
‘Charity!’ he replied brightly. ‘She has a charity to help street people. I told her about us. She can get us jobs in England!’
‘Yeah, sure, as erotic dancers?’
‘Any kind of jobs we want. Bars. Cleaning rooms in hotels. Anything.’
‘Is she like the man I met at the station?’
‘No, she is a nice lady. She is kind.’
Simona said nothing. More tears trickled down her cheeks.
‘We can’t stay like this. Is that what you want, to stay like this for all our lives?’
‘I don’t want to be hurt any more.’
‘Can’t you trust me, Simona? Can’t you?’
‘What is trust?’
‘We’ve seen England on television. In the papers. It’s a good country. We could have an apartment in England! We could have a new life there!’
She started crying. ‘I don’t want a new life any more. I want to die. Finish. It would be easier.’
‘She’s coming by tomorrow. Will you at least meet her, talk to her?’
‘Why would anybody want to help us, Romeo?’ she asked. ‘We’re nothing.’