Dead Tomorrow

90

Vlad Cosmescu was a worried man. He sat at his desk with his computer in front of him, no longer enjoying the view out across the Brighton seafront. Every half-hour or so he checked the latest online news on the local paper, the Argus.

He had been smarting ever since that phone call last week.

You’ve screwed up.

For years this city had been a great gig for him. Awash with money and girls. Providing him with the cash to keep his handicapped sister in a nice home. And the income to keep him in a lifestyle he could once only have dreamed of.

He did not like to be told he had screwed up.

He had always been obsessively careful. Gaining the trust of his employees. Steadily building up his business empire here. The massage parlours. Escort agencies. The lucrative drug deals. And, more recently, the German connection. The organ trade was the best business of all. Every successful transplant put tens of thousands of pounds in his pocket. And from there, straight into his Swiss bank account.

If he had learned one thing about his adopted country, it was that the police were focused on the trafficking of drugs. Everything else took a back seat. Which was OK by him.

Everything had worked just fine. Until Jim Towers.

Maybe the boatman had made a genuine mistake in putting those bodies in a dredge area. But he did not think so. Towers had tried to screw him – whatever his motive. Morality? Blackmail?

Suddenly his phone pinged with an incoming text.

It was from his biggest source of money, Marlene Hartmann, in Munich.

Like himself, to make it harder for the police to monitor her, she acquired a new pay-as-you-go mobile phone each week.

The text said: Do you know this man?

Two photographs were attached. He opened them. Moments later, he was reaching for a cigarette.

When he had first set up shop here, he had made it his business to learn the face of every police officer who might be interested in him. He had followed the career path of this particular detective, thanks to the Argus newspaper, for several years, watching his rise up the ranks.

He dialled her number. ‘Detective Superintendent Roy Grace from Sussex CID,’ he informed her.

‘He has just been in my office.’

‘Maybe he needs an organ?’

‘I don’t think so,’ she said humourlessly. ‘But I think you should know I just received a phone call from Sir Roger Sirius. The police went to interview him at his home just now, this morning.’

‘What about?’

‘I think it was just a fishing trip. But we should put Alternative One into operation right away. Yes?’

‘Yes, I think so.’

Fishing trip. The words make him squirm.

‘I’m bringing everything forward. Please be on standby,’ she ordered.

‘I am ready.’

She terminated the call with her usual abruptness.

Cosmescu lit his cigarette and smoked it nervously, thinking hard, going over the list for Alternative One in his mind. He did not like it that the police had been to see the surgeon and the organ broker – and on the same day. Not good at all.

Then he was distracted by a news item that suddenly appeared in front of him.

CHANNEL TRAWL PRODUCES FOURTH BODY, the headline shouted.

He read the first few lines of the story. A police diving team, searching for the missing Shoreham-registered fishing boat, Scoob-Eee, recovered a body from its wreckage.

Futu-i! he thought. Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit.