It was unlocked and she went through into what felt, and smelled like a hospital corridor. There was another door ahead, with a hand-cleansing unit, on the wall outside. Ignoring that, she opened the door and stepped in.
It was a small intensive care ward. There were six beds, three of them occupied, one by a long-haired man in his early forties, who might have been a rock singer, another by a boy of about Caitlin’s age and the third by a woman, in her late fifties Lynn estimated. All were three intubated with endotracheal and nasogastric tubes and plumbed into a forest of drip and monitoring lines from the battery of equipment surrounding each bed.
Three nurses, in the same white uniform as Draguta had been wearing, stared up at her with suspicion from behind the central station.
‘I’m looking for my daughter, Caitlin,’ she said. ‘Have any of you seen her?’
‘Please leave,’ one said in broken English. ‘No admission.’
She backed out quickly, checked for more doors, saw one and pulled it open. It was a canteen and sitting room. She ran across and checked another door, but that opened on to an empty bathroom. Then she looked at her watch again.
Less than five minutes.
Surely they could give her a little more time? She had to be here.
Had to.
She dialled Caitlin’s mobile phone, but it went straight to voicemail. Then she stumbled back down the stairs, through the office suite and out of another door. She ran along a short passageway, then pushed open another door and suddenly found herself in the vast, marble-floored entrance lobby of the spa.
There were people all around. Three women in white towelling dressing gowns and throw-away slippers were peering at a display of jewellery in a showcase. A man, similarly attired, was signing a form at one of the reception desks. Near him a woman in an elegant coat with a silk headsquare, her wheeled suitcase beside her, appeared to be checking in.
She swept the entire room with her eyes in just a few seconds.
No Caitlin.
Then the two halves of the electric front door slid open with a sharp hiss. Six solid and determined-looking police officers all wearing body armour entered.
She turned and ran.
119
‘The far end!’ Marlene Hartmann said to Grigore. ‘Down the end of the golf course, just past the eighth tee, there’s another exit. The police won’t know about it. It takes us out on to a lane. We can keep away from the main road for several miles. I know it works. I’ll direct you.’
She sat in the back of the brown Mercedes, hands gripping the top of the passenger seat, anxiously looking all around her, breathing heavily, cursing. Cursing the damned Beckett woman and her little bitch daughter. Cursing the police. Cursing the panicky surgeon, Sirius.
But mostly cursing herself. Her stupidity in thinking she could get away with this. Greed. It was like gambler’s folly. Not knowing when to quit.
In front of her, Vlad Cosmescu was silent. He was having similar thoughts. Always at the roulette table – well, almost always, anyway – he knew when to quit. To walk away. To go home.
He should have gone home last night. Then it would have been fine. Back home to Romania. He didn’t owe this woman anything. She just used him, the way everyone used him. The same way he used them. That was how the world worked, to him. Life wasn’t about loyalty, it was about survival.
So why was he here?
He knew the answer. Because this woman had a spell on him. He wanted to conquer her, wanted to sleep with her. He thought that by being brave it would attract her.
He swore silently. For ten years he had made money and kept free of the law.
Stupid
, he thought. Just so stupid.
The car slewed and bumped over a mound, then, to the fury of two male golfers, drove straight over a green, between the balls they were waiting to putt out. Marlene clung on as the car dipped steeply, its suspension bottoming out, her head striking the ceiling as the car bounced.
‘
Scheisse
!’ she said, but not from pain.
It was the sight of the white police van that was squarely parked across the rear exit to Wiston Grange, ahead of them, that made her swear.
‘Turn!’ she commanded Grigore. ‘We try the front.’
‘Maybe we are better on foot?’ Cosmescu said, as Grigore braked sharply, sliding the car around on the grass.
‘Oh sure, with the helicopter up there? No chance!’ She peered out of the side window, craning her neck up.
Then Grigore let out a yell and jabbed his finger over his shoulder. Marlene turned and, to her horror, saw a police Range Rover on their tail, lights flashing and gaining rapidly.
‘Want me to try?’ Grigore said. ‘I drive fast?’
‘No, stop. Don’t say anything. I’ll speak. I’ll try to bluff. Stop the car!
Halten
!’
Grigore obliged. The three of them sat in numb silence, for an instant, Marlene thinking hard.
Another police car was racing towards them. It pulled up nose to nose with the Mercedes, blocking them, its siren dying away. And as she looked at the occupants of the front seat, her heart sank even further.
The driver was a black officer she had never seen before, but his front seat passenger was someone she had very definitely met before. In her office in Germany.
Yesterday.
Now he was out of his car and walking towards her, his unbuttoned overcoat open and flapping in the breeze. Several uniformed officers in stab vests materialized from the Range Rover and stood close behind him.
‘Good afternoon,
Mr Taylor
,’ she greeted him coolly, as he opened her door. ‘Or would you prefer I call you Detective Superintendent Grace?’
Ignoring her comment, and unsmiling, he said, ‘Marlene Eva Hartmann, I’m arresting you on suspicion of trafficking human beings for organ transplantation purposes.’ He cautioned her and said, ‘Step out of the car, please.’
He gripped her wrist and held on as she climbed out, then nodded to one of the uniformed police officers, who stepped forward and handcuffed her. ‘Just hold her here for a moment,’ he instructed the PC, then he opened the front door and addressed Cosmescu.
‘Joseph Baker, otherwise known as Vlad Roman Cosmescu, I’m arresting you on suspicion of the murder of Jim Towers.’ Grace then cautioned him.
As Cosmescu was being handcuffed, Grace walked around to the driver’s side and opened the door. The man was staring at him bug-eyed and shaking. ‘So who are you?’ he asked.
‘Me, Grigore. I the driver.’
‘You have a last name?’
‘A what?’
‘Grigore? Grigore what?’
‘Ah. Dinica. Grigore Dinica!’
‘You’re the driver, right?’
‘Yes, just taxi driver, like taxi driver.’
‘
Taxi
driver?’ Grace pushed, brushing a fleck of sleet from his face. His radio crackled but he ignored it.
‘Yes, yes,
taxi
. I only driving taxi for these people.’
‘You want me to nick you for driving an unlicensed taxi, on top of what I’m about to charge you with?’
Grigore stared at him blankly, perspiration popping on his brow.
Telling Glenn Branson to arrest the man on suspicion of aiding and abetting human trafficking, Grace turned back to the woman.
Before he could speak, she said, ‘Detective Superintendent Grace, may I recommend that next time you pretend to be a customer interested in some services, you should be better briefed.’
‘If you’re so well briefed yourself, how come you’re nicked?’ he retorted.
‘I have done nothing wrong,’ she said adamantly.
‘Good,’ he said. ‘Then you’re lucky. English prisons are horribly overcrowded at the moment. I wouldn’t recommend a stay in many of them, especially the women’s ones.’ He brushed more flecks of sleet from his face. ‘Now, Frau Hartmann, do you want us to do this the easy way or the hard way?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘We have a search warrant signed for these premises, which is on its way – it’ll be here in a few minutes. You can give us the guided tour, if you like, or leave us to find our own way around.’
He smiled.
She did not smile back.
120
Lynn ran through a seemingly never-ending succession of rooms with a bewildering array of signs and names. Some she checked out, some she ignored. She didn’t bother with the sauna, or the steam room, or the aromatherapy room. But she peered into the yoga classroom, the Ayurvedic Centre, several treatment rooms, then the Rainforest Experience Zone.
Every few moments she looked over her shoulder for any sign of the police officers. But they were not following her.
Out of breath and disoriented by the geography of the place, she stumbled on. She was feeling clammy and jittery, a sign, she recognized through her distress, that she was low on sugar.
Darling. Caitlin, darling. Angel, where are you?
As she ran, she dialled Caitlin’s mobile for the third time, but it again went straight to voicemail.
The ten minutes were up. She stopped and, panting, dialled Shirley Linsell and pleaded for a few more minutes, giving a half-truth that she had taken her to a spa and she had wandered off. Reluctantly, the Royal’s transplant coordinator agreed to another ten minutes. But that would be it.
Lynn thanked her profusely, then stood still, her heart thumping, thinking desperately, worried out of her wits.
Please appear, Caitlin, please, please, please.
This place was too big. She was never going to find her without help. Trying to get a grip on her bearings, she ran back, following the signs to the front lobby, and arrived quicker than she had expected. One police officer was standing by the front door, as if guarding it, and the others had disappeared.
She went through the door which was marked private. no admittance, back into the office suite area, opened the door to Marlene Hartmann’s room and went in.
And froze in her tracks.
The German woman, her arms in front of her, handcuffed together, was looking sullen but dignified. Behind her stood two uniformed police officers. Beside her stood a tall, bald black man in a raincoat and, standing at her desk, riffling through papers, was the detective superintendent who had visited her earlier this morning. He turned his head to look at her and his eyes widened in recognition.
‘Brought your daughter here for a treat before her operation, have you, Mrs Beckett?’
‘Please, you have to help me find her,’ she blurted.
‘Do you have a good reason for being here at Wiston Grange?’ he responded sternly.
‘A good reason? Yes,’ Lynn said, venomously, suddenly angered at his attitude. ‘Because I want to look good at my daughter’s funeral. Is that enough of a reason?’
In the silence that followed, she covered her face with her hands and began sobbing. ‘Please help me. I can’t find her. Please tell me where she is.’ She looked at the German woman through her blurry eyes. ‘Where is she?’
The broker shrugged.
‘Please,’ Lynn sobbed. ‘I have to find her. She’s run off somewhere. We have to find her. They have a liver for her at the Royal. We have to find her. Ten minutes. Just have ten minutes. TEN MINUTES!’
Roy Grace stepped towards her, holding up a sheet of paper, his face hard.
‘Mrs Beckett, I am arresting you on suspicion of conspiracy to traffic a human being for organ transplantation purposes, and on suspicion of attempting to purchase a human organ. You do not need to say anything but it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something which you later rely on in court.’
Lynn could see what the sheet of paper was now. It was the fax she had sent, just a short while ago to her bank, instructing them to transfer the balance of the funds to Transplantation-Zentrale.
Her legs felt weak suddenly. She balled her hands, pressing them against her mouth, sobbing hysterically. ‘Please find my daughter. I’ll admit to anything, I don’t care, just please find her.’
She looked imploringly at the black man, who had a sympathetic face, then at the cold carapace of the German woman, then at the Detective Superintendent.
‘She’s dying! Please, you have to understand! We have a ten-minute window to find her, or the hospital will give her liver to someone else. Don’t you understand? If she doesn’t get that liver today, she will die.’
‘Where have you looked?’ Marlene said stiffly.
‘Everywhere – all over.’
‘Outside, also?’
She shook her head. ‘No – I-’
‘I’ll call the helicopter,’ Glenn Branson said. ‘Can you give me a description of your daughter? What is she wearing?’
Lynn told him, then he brought his radio to his ear. After a brief exchange, he lowered it.
‘They spotted a teenage girl who matches that description getting into a taxi about fifteen minutes ago.’
Lynn let out a shocked wail. ‘A taxi? Where? Where was – where was it going?’
‘It was a Brighton taxi – a Streamline,’ Glenn Branson said. ‘We should be able to find out, but it’s going to take more than ten minutes.’
Shaking her head in bewilderment, Lynn said, ‘Fifteen minutes ago, in a taxi?’
Branson nodded.
Lynn thought for a moment. ‘Look – look, she’s probably gone back to our house. Please let me go there. I’ll come back – I’ll come straight back, I promise.’
‘Mrs Beckett,’ Roy Grace said, ‘you are under arrest, and you are going to be taken from here to the Custody Centre at Brighton.’
‘My daughter is dying! She can’t survive. She will die if she doesn’t get to hospital today. I – have to be with her – I-’
‘If you like we’ll have someone go there and see how she is.’
‘It’s not that simple. She has got to go to hospital. Today.’
‘Is there anyone else who can take her?’ Grace asked.
‘My husband – my ex-husband.’