The two police detectives sat on a studded red leather sofa, while a raven-haired beauty, whom Sirius introduced as his wife, brought them coffee. Sirius was briefly distracted by his BlackBerry buzzing, and Batchelor and E-J used the opportunity to exchange a brief glance. The surgeon was clearly a complex character. Modest in appearance and manner, but not in ego – nor in his taste in women.
‘So, how can I help you?’ Sirius asked, after his wife had left the room, settling down into an armchair opposite them, across the oak chest that served as a coffee table.
Guy had already rehearsed this with E-J on the way over. Suddenly he was feeling badly in need of a cigarette but knew, from the fresh smell of the room and the total absence of ashtrays, that he had no chance. He would have to sneak one later, something he had become used to these days.
Watching the surgeon’s eyes carefully, he said, ‘This is a very beautiful house, Sir Roger. How long have you lived here?’
The surgeon reflected for a moment. ‘Twenty-seven years. It was a wreck when I bought it. My first wife never liked it. My daughter loved it here.’ His eyes went misty, suddenly. ‘It’s just a shame that Katie was never able to see it finished.’
‘I’m sorry,’ E-J said.
The surgeon shrugged. ‘A long time ago, now.’
‘You’ve been quoted many times in the press over your views on the UK organ donor system,’ Guy Batchelor went on, still watching his face intently.
‘Yes,’ he agreed, nodding vigorously, instantly animated by the subject. ‘Absolutely!’
‘We thought that you might be able to help us.’
‘I’ll do my best.’ He leaned towards them and, looking even more bird-like, smiled eagerly.
‘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?’