Body Line

EIGHTEEN

Organ Involuntary

He followed her over the threshold and closed the door behind him. There were lights on all through the ground floor, and it seemed they must have been having supper when Atherton rang, because the dining table was only partly cleared and there was a smell of food fading away in the kitchen. She walked straight to a cupboard in the corner of the sitting-room and took out a bottle and two glasses.

‘I need a drink,’ she said tersely. ‘You?’

‘Thanks,’ he said.

She did not offer a choice, but poured whisky into both glasses and handed him one, innocent of ice or niceties. This was not a social occasion. It was the cowboy’s slug of hooch before prairie surgery. She shot her slug straight down her throat and refilled, not offering more to Slider. Then she seemed to see the untidiness of the kitchen, took two swift steps and switched off the lights in there. He was glad she still had the spirit to be house-proud. It gave him more to work with.

They sat in armchairs facing each other. Slider sipped. She looked at him coldly. ‘Well,’ she said. ‘What do you want to know?’

He didn’t need to think. He had his starting-place long thought out. ‘The Lescroit woman’s accusation. You were there that day. What actually happened?’

A spot of colour came into her cheeks. ‘What a thing to—! What makes you think I was there?’

‘Please,’ he said. ‘This is going to take forever if you go the “what makes you think?” route. I know nearly everything. You are going to tell me the rest – for the sake of your clients, remember, if not your own skin. What happened that day?’

‘The woman accused David of molesting her,’ she said rigidly.

‘But it wasn’t David, was it?’

She looked at him as if she would have liked to kill him, but she said, through gritted teeth, ‘No.’

‘It’s not the sort of thing David would do,’ Slider went on conversationally. ‘He could get all the women he wanted without that. It was Bernard Webber who was the bottom-pincher, the one who brushed up against the secretaries in confined spaces.’

She glared. ‘You don’t have to go on.’

‘Webber was out of his room – gone to the lavatory, apparently. But in fact he had slipped into the room where the woman was recovering.’ Her cheeks were scarlet, her eyes bright with mortification, or rage, or something. ‘She woke up, or half-woke. She said, “What are you doing, doctor?” ‘And he said, “Call me David.”’

‘I know!’ she cried.

‘How do you know?’

‘Because he told me.’

‘You were in his room when he came back in.’

She nodded, and swallowed, as if it were difficult for her to tell this part. ‘I’d just arrived. I was waiting for him. Then I heard the noise – the woman shrieking. He came in. He said, “There’s the devil to pay.” He said, “We can all still come out of it all right if you go along with whatever I say.”’

‘He asked you to cover up for him?’ Slider said. ‘Why did he think you would do that?’

She squeezed her eyes shut, and said, her lips rigid, ‘We were lovers.’

‘Ah,’ said Slider. It was the last piece in his jigsaw. He’d pretty much worked out what it would look like from the space it left, but coming from her, coloured with the shame she still felt, it was bright and compelling.

She opened her eyes and, as if having got over this hurdle there was nothing more to fear, she sat up straighter and began to talk.

‘We’d been lovers for some time. He was – still is – fantastically attractive; and things had been going badly between David and me. I told you before about his women. He couldn’t leave them alone. It wore me down. Bernard was sympathetic – an old friend I could lean on. At first that’s all it was. He was the only person I could really talk to, who knew David too, and liked him. But I was – lonely. And hurt. Sympathy drifted into comforting, the comforting became physical.’ She looked at him. ‘I’m not proud of it. I know I let myself down. I never intended to be unfaithful to David. But—’

‘These things happen,’ Slider said neutrally. He knew better than to offer her sympathy. ‘You’d gone there that day to see Webber?’

‘I told Stephanie – Bernard’s secretary – it was about fund-raising. Bernard was always generous with charities. I knew David had a procedure, so I’d be able to see Bernard alone. Then all this blew up.’

‘What made you go along with blaming David for the trouble?’

‘Oh!’ she said in frustration, ‘I know how it looks. But it was the only way. Bernard explained it all logically. He said the Lescroit woman was convinced it was David and wouldn’t change her mind. He said he had the influence and the money, he could get David off, but David couldn’t get him off. He said if he took the blame there would still be people who thought it had really been David all the time, because of his reputation. So they’d both be ruined, and his sacrifice would be for nothing.’

‘Sacrifice?’

She had the grace to blush slightly. ‘You must remember I was angry with David for what he had done. He was out of control around women. Even if he didn’t touch the Lescroit woman, it was only a matter of time before he had some kind of affair with a patient and got struck off.’

Slider nodded, as if accepting the point. ‘And what did David say to Webber’s arguments?’

‘David never knew,’ she said. She looked away from him. ‘He thought the woman had just been confused and imagined it all. He swore to me that he didn’t touch her, but he knew he was in trouble all the same. When Bernard said he believed him and promised to make it all right, David was – grateful.’

Slider thought she was ashamed of that: perhaps uniquely in the whole mess, was she ashamed that David had been grateful for being stitched up?

‘So he got David a lighter sentence from the GMC, and he got him a job,’ he said. ‘What did you get?’

She hardened her gaze. ‘Money,’ she said in a cold voice. Slider continued to look at her steadily, and she went on, ‘I was divorcing David. The Lescroit business was the excuse but I was going to anyway. I had to get away from him. I hated him by then. Oh, you don’t know, you can’t imagine what it was like for me! David had betrayed me and broken my heart. Bernard was my rock. He helped me through everything. And his money – a friend’s money – meant I didn’t need to take anything from David. I told him I would pay it back. But he laughed and said he wouldn’t hear of it.’

‘You were still Webber’s mistress?’

‘For a time. But after all the fuss died down, after the divorce came through, Bernard sold the practice, got a government contract and went abroad.’

‘How did Robin Frith fit in with all this? Weren’t you involved with him long before the divorce was finalized?’

She looked annoyed. ‘What business is it of yours?’

‘Everything is now my business,’ he said, unmoved. ‘I thought we had established that.’

‘I don’t see what it has to do with anything,’ she went on, with extra high dudgeon to compensate for co-operating, ‘but it was Bernard’s idea that I should cultivate Robin. Felicity – Bernard’s wife – was having suspicions about me, and he wanted to divert them. She thought I was divorcing David for him. Bernard had already decided to divorce Felicity and he wanted it to be amicable, otherwise it would have cost him dear. So she mustn’t think there was anything between Bernard and me. Robin was a smokescreen.’ She shrugged. ‘He’d always been in love with me, and I knew I could control him, so it worked very well.’

God, she was a cold one! Slider thought. ‘So Bernard wasn’t divorcing in order to marry you?’

‘God, no. He’d decided on it long before we were involved. And marriage was never on the cards between us. I wouldn’t have wanted it any more than him. He and Felicity separated just before he went abroad and I didn’t see him for almost two years.’

She stopped, her eyes inward. When he saw she was not going to resume unprompted, Slider said, ‘It was on his tour abroad that he got everything set up, wasn’t it?’

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?’

‘He said, “Don’t worry, I won’t let him spoil everything. Leave it to me, I’ll sort it out.”’

‘And you’ll swear to that?’

She looked at him whitely. ‘Does it come to that?’

‘It comes to that. It’s him or you.’

Her mouth hardened. ‘Then it’s him.’ And weakened again. ‘But, oh God, you don’t understand. We were lovers.’ Slider waited. She said, ‘I never imagined he’d kill him! I swear, I thought he was going to buy him off. It wouldn’t have been difficult. He could always make David do what he wanted.’

‘But he couldn’t leave David like that,’ Slider said. ‘A man who likes women and tells them things? He couldn’t take the risk. You don’t make weak links comfortable – you eliminate them. And when I came to tell you David was dead, you knew that was what had happened. Bernard had him killed.’

‘Yes,’ she whispered.

‘Then he had David’s latest girlfriend killed as well, just in case. Now he must be wondering whether you can safely be left, knowing everything, as you do, and perhaps having doubts – because whatever you thought about the transplants, you never expected it to come to murder. David’s death shocked you. Have you told Webber how you feel about that yet? Because if you have, I’m afraid time is running out fast for you.’

‘No,’ she said. ‘I haven’t said – anything. We’ve hardly spoken since – it happened. We’re not lovers any more – haven’t been for years. We’re just friends. We’ve only talked once or twice but – not – mentioned—’

‘You spoke with your friend and your husband’s murder wasn’t mentioned? Don’t you think that was odd?’ She bit her lip but didn’t answer. ‘If killing David was necessary, logic demands he has to kill you, too. Probably it’s because of your relationship that he’s even hesitated. Perhaps he’s fond of you. But he was fond of David, too.’

‘He’s a good man,’ she said. It sounded puzzled. ‘He’s a good man, a surgeon. He saves lives. He only ever wanted to do good. I don’t understand how he could get from there to killing David. His friend.’

Megalomania, Slider thought, though he didn’t say it aloud. When power allows you to sidestep the rules and decide for yourself what’s right and what isn’t, the logical end is defending that right to decide. If you are right, anyone who stands in your way is obviously wrong, and must be removed from the path of the greater good.

She was flagging now; her hands shook as she took a tissue to blow her nose. He must get her moving while he could.

‘Webber must be stopped, before there are any more victims,’ he said. ‘Whatever you think about the organ transplants, you know that murder is wrong. You must come with me now to the station and make a statement about this whole business – every detail.’

She looked up at him, startled out of some train of thought. ‘I can’t,’ she said.

‘You will,’ he said. ‘Only if you come in now, voluntarily, and tell us everything, help us to stop this man, can there be any hope for you to avoid implication in his crimes. We can protect you from him,’ he said. ‘And we may be able to save something from the wreck.’

‘My agency,’ she said. She sounded dazed.

‘But you have to come now. A full statement.’

It took her two attempts to get out of the chair. She seemed dead weary. He helped her find her handbag and coat, turn off lights. As they went towards the door, he thought of one other thing he had wanted to ask, and might perhaps not have another opportunity to do, because it was not likely that he would be the one to conduct the formal interview at the station, not with the international implications of the case.

‘Why did David call the boat the Windhover?’ he asked. ‘Was it because the company bought it for him? Did it come with the name? Or was it a joke?’

She didn’t seem to find the question odd. Probably she was beyond discriminating now. ‘No, he called it that. He loved that poem. We all did Hopkins at school in those days. “I caught this morning morning’s minion.” You know?’

‘I know,’ said Slider. ‘“Dappled dawn-drawn falcon in his riding.”’

‘He said it was a beautiful name. Windhover. He imagined the boat riding over the waves like a kestrel.’ She shook her head. ‘Idiotic! I could understand if it had been sailing yacht – a sloop or something. But it was only a motor-boat.’ She closed her eyes a moment in pain. ‘But he loved that boat, he really did. More than any woman.’

Commander Wetherspoon, their boss at Hammersmith, was a tall, thin man with grizzled, tufty hair that gave him a mysterious resemblance to an Airedale terrier. His squarish, chalky-pink face was fixed in lines of rigid disapproval and his eyes were frosty as he looked down his nose at Slider and said, ‘Well done.’

He disliked Slider intensely, as Slider well knew, and hated having to speak even two words of commendation. It was obviously at Porson’s insistence that he had brought himself to this sorry pass. He couldn’t find it in his heart to say more, so Porson had to take over the attaboy and do it properly.

‘Could have saved us a diplomatic incident,’ he concluded. ‘The Home Secretary’s relieved. Our European counterbands too – they’ll be grateful. We’ve got a whole new ball curve now.’

Wetherspoon gave Porson a scornful look – he didn’t like the old man either – and dismissed Slider with a curt nod. Slider removed his thorn from Wetherspoon’s side, closing the door quietly behind him, secure in the knowledge that he’d hear it all later.

The fact of the Chinese government’s involvement had, as Porson put it, opened up a whole new can of wax, as far as the European side went. Things got very hot very high up and very quickly. The Justice Commissioner had rushed into meetings with the High Representative and the two of them had bearded the head of Europol and the Excise Commissioner. The upshoot was, Porson explained, that Europe didn’t want to upset the Chinese so near the date of the next trade round. The elegant, feline EU Trade Commissioner had mopped his brow and pleaded on the one side, while the tough, swarthy Dutch Excise Chief had torn his hair and howled on the other. Then the Assistant Commissioner, Specialist Crime Directorate, Metropolitan Police and the Deputy Commissioner, Specialist Operations, Metropolitan Police, had had a word with the Commissioner, Metropolitan Police, who had a friendly chat with his Dutch opposite number and put the Home Secretary in to bat, with instructions to block everything until stumps.

The result was that the Euro lot were not going to scoop up Jaheem Bodeker until after he had done the exchange at sea, which meant that the Met and the SCD – the Specialist Crime Directorate – were going to have the chance to clean up their end after all.

It was, as Amanda Sturgess revealed during her night-long questioning, Jerry McGuinness who had taken over Rogers’s courier role. As Slider had guessed, there was a new boat, not quite as lovely as the Windhover, but adequate – the Marlin, an Albemarle 360XF sport-fishing power-craft, small but fast – and a new harbour, Maldon, slightly further from IJmuiden, but closer to London, and equally posh and irreproachable. McGuinness would have no difficulty in handling the boat, even if the sea was rough. He was the sort of man who could work any kind of machinery. Amanda had spoken of him, with a sort of shudder, as capable of anything, an invaluable right-hand man.

‘I’d like to keep her in custody,’ Porson said of Sturgess. ‘Best way to make sure she doesn’t tip off Webber. But if she doesn’t show up at her usual places, it’ll be a dead giveaway that something’s up. Do you think we can trust her not to blow the gaff?’

‘No,’ said Slider. ‘Maybe. I don’t know. She knows she’s in trouble but she half thinks we ought to leave Webber alone to get on with his good work.’

‘And they were lovers.’ Porson looked thoughtful. ‘Funny she didn’t mind about him fiddling with that Lescroit woman.’

‘I think she thought he was so wonderful that he was allowed the odd weakness.’

‘The great man must have his little procavities, eh? Well, I suppose we’ll have to take the chance. Make sure she knows that if she doesn’t keep it buttoned she’s for the high jump.’

‘Her agency seems to be the only thing she cares about protecting. I’ll work on that angle.’

But she seemed resigned to it now, and accepted her instructions with docility.

As the plans progressed, the Deputy Commissioner, Specialist Operations – who as a woman knew all about not being loved by her superiors – insisted that Slider should be allowed to be in on the operation; in fact, should be in at the kill. ‘It’s only fair,’ she said, as Porson reported to Slider. ‘Without him we’d have no chance of a crack at Webber, and Europol would be blundering into the Chinese end of the thing in blindfolds.’

It was a big operation, involving levels of co-ordination that had to be set up in an unusually short time – normally these things were planned for months, but since Bodeker was being taken out, it had to be this Wednesday or never. Surveillance teams would watch McGuinness all the way to Maldon on Wednesday night, see him go out in the boat, and eventually back in to harbour. Officers would be watching other ports up and down the coast in case the plan had been changed. An officer would be stationed at Hendon on the ANPR computer, reporting on the return journey of the car: it was thought too risky to tail it too closely. At that time of night, a professional like McGuinness would be all too aware of anything keeping a constant distance behind him.

Once he hit the Stanmore turn-off, a relay of motors would check that he did in fact end up at the hospital. Slider would be part of a group hidden in the grounds, who would move in once they had been told the car had gone down the drive. They would all be wearing Kevlar jackets and be armed.

‘I hope it won’t come to it,’ Porson said as he briefed Slider, ‘but there’s a lot at stake. This is a big money operation. They’ve offed two people already, and I wouldn’t be surprised if this McGuinness type went tooled-up as a matter of course. But keep it under your hat. Don’t want any whisper getting out we’ve got a big op going down.’

On the night, everything was in place. The hands-off surveillance worked: the Marlin went out and came back in to Maldon; McGuinness, driving the hospital Jaguar, drove back to the A12 and followed the same route Rogers had taken on his last run. He was clocked turning off towards Stanmore, and Slider, waiting in the chilly mist under the trees behind the staff car park, finally received the radio word that the target was on his way. The March dawn was still some way distant; it was black and cold and his stomach felt very peculiar, though that could have been hunger – he had been waiting for four hours, and it was an even longer time since supper. There were four of them strung out along that side, and the other three, who were all from specialist units, looked oddly at him from time to time, as if they were too polite to ask what a plod like him was doing mixed up in this big-boys’ game. His team leader, Corby, who was from the SCD, went so far as to advise him to hang back ‘when it went down’ and let them take the action. He meant it kindly.

There were another four officers on the other side, ready to close the trap once the car had passed through the visitor’s car park into the staff one. Because of the buildings, it was not possible for Slider to witness the car’s arrival – that was reported in terse radio bursts from the other team. But when the word came – Marlin’s in the net. Big Shark’s in the net (how they loved their codes!) Go, go, go! – Slider’s team were closer and were the first on the scene, emerging from between the buildings under the yellowish car park lights to where the Jaguar stood close to the annexe building. The fire door had been propped open, and behind the Jag were McGuinness, reaching into the open boot and lifting out what looked like a large, heavy cold-box, and Sir Bernard Webber.

The Big Shark, Slider thought, with a clutch of excitement. Supervising this last stage of the operation. But of course it would be. Doubtless always had been. The fewer people who were in on this end of the scheme, the safer they would all be. Webber would know that now if he never had before.

It was only a fleeting thought: Slider’s adrenalin was pumping as fast as his legs. As he pounded across the tarmac, he saw McGuinness turn his head, thrust the box into Webber’s arms, making him stagger, and reach under his leather jacket. The thought flicked through his mind: so he does go armed.

Corby, to Slider’s left, shouted, ‘Gun!’ almost at the same moment as the other team arrived from the other direction, and its leader, Nicholson, shouted, ‘Armed police! Stand still!’ There was a dull gleam in the lamplight as McGuinness brought out the gun. Slider’s stomach clenched. Webber had recovered his balance, turned towards the fire door with the box.

There were two explosions in quick succession. The first was McGuinness, firing at Corby’s team. Slider felt something pass him in the dark and out of the corner of his eye he saw Corby drop. Christ, he thought, with a jolt of his stomach. The second shot was from Nicholson, a warning. It struck the tarmac near McGuinness with a little puff of grit and pinged off the car’s wheel arch with a brutal sound that made Slider wince. Oi, not the Jag!

Nicholson’s voice was an adrenalin scream. ‘Armed police! Drop the gun! Stand still!’

Corby was up on his elbows, apparently unhurt: he had dropped in reaction. He was aiming his pistol at McGuinness. ‘Drop the gun!’ he yelled. ‘Don’t be a fool. You’re surrounded.’

It all seemed to be happening at once. McGuinness fired again at the same instant as Corby spoke. Slider had no idea where that shot went. Contrary to myth, it is extraordinarily difficult to hit a moving target, even one as big as a policeman. At the sound of it Webber stopped in his tracks, perhaps unsure if he was being shot at. Slider saw him swivel his head jerkily from one side to the other. Adams, on Slider’s right, had his gun on McGuinness too. McGuinness looked over his shoulder at the other team, then back. His gun moved, covering Slider for a breathless moment, then Adams, and then slid on and up as he raised his hands in surrender.

A cold sweat of relief bathed Slider as he left McGuinness to the others and ran, feeling clumsy with his unfamiliar Kevlar armour and sidearm, to get himself between Webber and the fire door. He wanted to make sure he caught him with the goods, red-handed.

Webber’s head flicked round at the movement, and his eyes widened slightly as he recognized Slider. ‘You,’ he said, with a sort of weary disgust; and then, ‘You don’t know what you’re doing.’

‘Put it down,’ Slider said.

Webber was horribly calm. ‘I’m not armed,’ he said. ‘I have to get this inside. Let me past, please.’

Slider shook his head. ‘It’s going nowhere. Put it down.’

‘You don’t understand,’ Webber said with a touch of cold impatience. ‘This box contains human organs for transplant. I must get them into the proper storage facility.’

Behind him, McGuinness had been relieved of his gun and was being searched, while two others of the team were looking in the car for any more weapons, Slider saw, while never taking his eyes from Webber’s.

‘You don’t understand,’ he said. ‘It’s over.’

‘Get out of my way!’ Webber ground out.

‘You’re under arrest,’ Slider said.

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Webber said, his colour high. ‘You can’t arrest me.’

McGuinness, hands on head, was staring at Slider and Webber, watching the scene play out, as if ready for his cue to jump back in. Slider could smell his sweat, and Webber’s aftershave, sharp on the flat, oil-tainted car park air.

‘I have patients in there –’ Webber jerked his head towards the hospital building – ‘waiting for these organs. Waiting for a transplant that will transform their lives. Have you any idea of the suffering of these people? How long they’ve waited? How few organs there are available? And you want me to waste these? What are you, a man or a monster?’

‘That’s exactly what I was going to ask you,’ said Slider.

Webber’s calm was suddenly fractured. ‘I’m not the villain here!’ he shouted. McGuinness stirred, and was still again. ‘I’m a surgeon!’

‘And I’m a police officer and I’m arresting you for the illegal importation of human organs,’ Slider said.

‘That’s just a technical violation. An excise law! We’re talking about people’s lives.’

‘I made a rough calculation,’ Slider said. ‘A million apiece for kidneys, half a million for corneas. Minimum. Six hundred million a year. Not a bad income, even if it is gross.’

‘Do you think that’s what this was about?’ Webber cried. ‘Money? Do you really think it was about money? I’m a humanitarian.’

‘You’ve cleared your conscience very nicely on that score,’ Slider said. ‘But what about David Rogers – your friend. And his girlfriend Catriona Aude. How do you justify killing them? How do you justify murder?’

The word – murder – went home. Slider saw it jolt Webber. Had he believed they didn’t know? That he had got away with it? But suddenly here it was, on the air and in Slider’s face. And he quailed. His eyes flitted first one way, then the other, as though looking for escape. ‘I didn’t m–murder anyone,’ he said, and his voice jittered horribly.

Slider pushed the knife home. ‘You’re finished, Webber,’ he said quietly. He looked at the great consultant with open contempt.

Clumsily, still clutching the box, Webber swivelled on his shiny, expensive shoes. ‘I didn’t!’ he cried. His eyes found McGuinness. His voice was high with panic. ‘It was him. He killed them.’

McGuinness looked, just for a moment, as if someone had punched him in the solar plexus. He gaped for air. ‘Shut your mouth, you fucking idiot!’ he hissed.

But Webber seemed encouraged by the words. He grew eager, tried to point, hampered by the box. ‘I swear it! He did it! It was him!’

McGuinness’s jaw gritted, his eyes narrowed. He didn’t say anything more, but he gave Webber a glittering look as kindly as black ice on a hairpin bend.

Vaughan, the fourth in Corby’s team, was approaching with handcuffs. Webber saw them, and the last barrier of horrible realization was crossed. The humiliation made it all real. Under Slider’s eyes he actually seemed to shrink, his sleekness became somehow rumpled. His fine clothes, his money, his status, could not protect him now. He was just another grubby criminal.

Slider’s adrenalin was high, singing through his blood of triumph. End of the trail. He had his man. It felt good – he felt good. He could leap high buildings in a single bound. But there were procedures to follow, and the lads could probably do with finishing up so they could get some breakfast. He could savage a bacon roll himself.

‘All right, let’s just have a look in that box, shall we?’ he said.

Webber looked as though he might weep.

What with debriefings, meetings, interviews, reports verbal and written, forms filled in, more meetings, even more meetings, and bringing various senior figures of increasingly head-spinning importance ‘up to speed’ on the case, the rest of the day disappeared into a confused kaleidoscope with all the hallmarks of a repetitive dream. Slider never did get a bacon roll. In fact, he couldn’t remember getting anything to eat at all, though tea undoubtedly entered his system at some point, and Porson thrust an electric razor at him when they were in the car together being driven to Hammersmith through the twilight to hobnob with the gods.

One of said gods was Assistant Commissioner Congleton himself, head of the Specialist Crime Directorate, a man so senior you could get faint breathing the same air as him. Slider attributed to that the fact that he actually fell asleep in the ante-room when asked to wait outside for a few minutes. Porson, when he emerged, looked at him kindly as he struggled up to consciousness.

‘Not much longer,’ he said. ‘They want you to hang around a bit in case of questions – the AC’s briefing the Home Secretary on the phone at this moment in time – then you can get off and finish the paperwork. Everyone’s very chipper. Mr Congleton’s as pleased as a dog with two willies. He spoke to the head of the CPS while I was in there, and he says they’re definitely going to run with the murder charge against Webber. Public interest, plus it showcases a nifty bit of police work and does ’em all a bit of bon. So well done.’

‘I’m glad,’ Slider said, struggling to sound it. ‘They think we’ve got enough evidence?’

Porson used his fingers. ‘The motive, hot and strong. Sturgess’s testimony that Rogers was going to pull the plunger and Webber saying he’d sort him out. McGuinness bang to rights and testifying on oath that it was all on Webber’s say-so – it was clever the way you got Webber to stuff him right in front of everybody,’ he said in parenthesis. ‘He’s as mad as a wronged wife. “After all these years, after all I’ve done for him,”’ he parodied in falsetto. ‘He’s singing like a canary on cannabis.’

Slider nodded. He had read the first deposition. A phrase from it came swimming up from memory: ‘I’d have taken it for him if he’d kept his mouth shut. I owed him one. I would never have shopped him.’

‘Didn’t even have to offer him a deal,’ Porson gloated. ‘Says he just wants to make sure Webber goes down, the ungrateful bastard, eckcetera eckcetera.’

‘I know, sir,’ Slider said. ‘But I’m still a bit worried that it’s just his word against Webber’s.’

‘Of course, you don’t know. It must have been while you were with the IAB. McGuinness volunteered his bank statement. He’s on the Windhover payroll: basic salary – plus a bloody great bonus, one after Rogers got offed, and another after Aude. He’s willing to swear what they were for, and since Windhover is a one-man band, Webber has to explain it or suck it up.’

‘That’s good,’ Slider said reflectively. Webber was going down. But just for a moment he thought of those people waking up in Cloisterwood Hospital to be told that their transplant operation had been cancelled, that they were back on dialysis until they died. Everything had the defect of its virtues. But right was right and indivisible. And Helen Aldous was safe.

‘It’s enough,’ said Porson. ‘With everything else, they’ll make it stick, laddie, don’t you worry.’

He turned away, and turned back. ‘Oh, and by the way, while they’re at it, Mr Wetherspoon says we should have a shot at the other two women, the secretary and the nurse, see if we can find enough evidence to bring them home to Webber as well.’

‘McGuinness hasn’t mentioned them, has he?’

‘Not yet, but if we work on him the right way . . .’

Slider got his tired brain to grips. ‘It sounds as though they’ve got it in for Webber.’

Porson positively grinned. ‘Mr Wetherspoon met him once at a fund-raiser in Hammersmith Town Hall. Webber snubbed him.’ He lowered his voice to a conspiratorial whisper and accompanied it with a wink. ‘Not posh enough.’

Crikey, Slider thought, impressed. Webber might be a cold-hearted murdering egomaniac, but it took some cojones to cut Mr Wetherspoon on his own turf.

‘You didn’t tell me there were going to be guns,’ Joanna said when he finally, finally got home. She looked at his grey face and red-rimmed eyes but she couldn’t help herself – she still had to say it. ‘You didn’t say there would be shooting.’

‘Thought it better not to,’ he said. ‘What would be the point of worrying you?’

‘I’m your wife. It’s my privilege to worry.’

‘Well, no one was hurt. And we got the baddies. Doesn’t that warrant a “well done, darling”?’

She relented. ‘Of course. Well done, darling. Do you know what the time is? I thought you were never coming home. I don’t know what to offer you – tea, breakfast, lunch, dinner, a drink?’

He didn’t need to think. ‘Tea,’ he said prosaically. ‘I seem to have been talking all day. My mouth’s like the bottom of the budgie’s cage.’ She went to put the kettle on, and he followed her into the kitchen. ‘I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you anything about it beforehand, but it was all deadly secret, in case the villains got wind of anything.’

‘I’m always tipping off villains,’ she said. ‘Well known for it.’ But she knew that wasn’t the point. She put out mug, tea bag, spoon, and then turned to put her arms round him. ‘Tell me about it.’

So he told her.

‘I suppose Webber did have a point,’ she said when he got to the end. ‘He was doing good things, even if he went about them the wrong way. Excise rules are just local customs – excuse the pun. How does that stack up against human lives?’

‘He had two people murdered to protect his right to decide that the law didn’t apply to him,’ Slider said. ‘Probably another two as well, years ago. If he hadn’t been stopped, who knows how many more he would have had to eliminate?’

‘Point,’ said Joanna.

‘And then there are the original donors,’ Slider said. ‘China still has people executed for political dissidence, you know. Does holding up a placard outside Westminster mean your kidneys are automatically up for grabs?’

‘Point again. Pay no attention to me – I’m just flappin’ m’ gums.’

He drew her closer. ‘Forget the gums, how about the lips?’

‘I thought you were tired?’

‘Never too tired for you.’ But he rested his head on her shoulder, cheek to her hair, eyes shut – not the pose of a rampant lover. ‘Do you know Hopkins’ poem, “The Windhover”?’

‘Only about the most beautiful poem ever written,’ Joanna said. ‘“A billion times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier.”’ She waited for elucidation, then said, ‘Never heard of it. Why?’

‘We say it’s always about love or money,’ he said, growing warm and comfortable behind his closed eyes. ‘This was both. Webber had the money, and Rogers had the love.’

‘You’re not making a whole lot of sense,’ she told him kindly. The kettle poured steam and she reached out to turn it off – carefully, not to disturb him.

‘He was a bit of an ass and a bit of a villain,’ Slider said. ‘But I’m glad he had some love. Not all the women, I don’t mean. The boat. Even if it didn’t have sails.’

‘In fact,’ Joanna said, ‘I just thought I’d mention that you are actually asleep at this point in time.’ He very nearly was. ‘By the way,’ she said, because he’d have to wake up to get himself to bed, ‘Atherton phoned.’

‘Hmm?’

‘He said to tell you they’re going to mount an operation on Embry’s yard next week. A multi-agency sting, he said. They’re going to shut him down for good.’

‘Good,’ said Slider, rousing himself. He opened his eyes, blinking at the brightness. And yawned cavernously. ‘God, poor old Stanmore! Another upheaval. Seek a better life in the suburbs, eh? I bet they’ll wish they really were Stansted.’

‘You’re still not making sense,’ Joanna complained.

Slider shook his head. ‘You had to be there,’ he said.