Dead Tomorrow

93

Already she was missing Romeo and Artur. The sad expression on the dog’s face when she had given him that bone. As if he knew, and could sense they were parting forever.

She had promised Artur she would be back one day. Put her arms around his mangy neck and kissed him. But he looked at her as if he did not believe it. As if there were goodbyes and goodbyes, and he understood the difference. The dog carried the bone off into his makeshift kennel without looking back at her.

The dog she could live without, she realized. The dog was a survivor and would be fine. But she could not live without Romeo. Her heart was crying out for him. Tears rolled down her cheeks as she pressed Gogu, the small, mangy strip of fake fur that was the only possession she carried with her, to her cheeks.

In the back of the black limousine, with its darkened windows, and the rich smells of leather and the German woman’s perfume, she had never felt so alone in her life. The woman talked constantly on her mobile phone, and occasionally looked anxiously out of the rear window into the darkness. They were driving slowly, on a slushy, salted road, in stop-start traffic. And every few minutes she stared at the neck of the man who was driving.

The man with his hair cropped to a light fuzz. With the tattoo of a snake, its tongue forked as if striking, rising out of the right side of his white shirt collar, which she had seen a couple of times when the woman had put on the interior lights, to make notes in her diary.

She shivered. Scared of him despite the fact the woman was here with her, looking after her.

He was the driver for the man who had saved her from the police at the Gara de Nord and then raped her, who had tried to have sex with her as he drove her back home. The man she had bitten and hurt.

In the mirror she caught his eyes, repeatedly glaring at her. Giving her a signal that he was not yet finished with her. That he had not forgotten. She tried to stop looking at the mirror, but every time she weakened, his eyes were there, fixed on her.

She wished she had hurt him more. Bitten his damn thing right off.

Finally, the woman ended her call.

‘When will Romeo come?’ she asked forlornly.

‘Soon, meine Liebe!’ The woman patted her cheek with her leather gloved hand. ‘You will be together again very soon. You will like England. You will be happy there. You are excited?’

‘No.’

‘You should be. A new life!’

Quietly, to herself, Marlene Hartmann was thinking, In fact, three new lives.

It was a shame to waste the heart and lungs, but she had no one matching in the UK on her books, and she did not want to take the risk of delaying, in the hope of a suitable recipient turning up. Not with the police poking around, and those organs would not survive long enough out of the body to be transported overseas. As with a liver transplant, it was best, if at all possible, to have the donor and recipient close to each other, for the least possible delay between death and transplantation. The girl was too small for them to be able to do a split liver, but one on its own was quite profitable enough.

Kidneys had a reasonable shelf life, up to twenty-four hours if properly kept. She had buyers for Simona’s kidneys lined up and waiting, one in Germany, one in Spain. In other countries she would have sold the girl’s skin, eyes and bones, but the margin was low on these and it was not worth the trouble to export them from England. She would clear 100,000 euros’ profit on the two kidneys, and 130,000 net after costs on the liver.

She was very happy.