Still, she was a bit flustered, a bit hot and not in the best of tempers when she returned to the surgery.
She had left her mobile to charge and there were three missed text messages on it waiting for her return, and one voice-recorded message.
As Penelope listened to the message the fragments of any remaining hope of a better day vanished quickly. The phone fell from her hand to clatter on the hard floor of the dental surgery’s staffroom.
Her colleague Debra Brooking turned in surprise as she poured hot water from the kettle into a Pot Noodle.
‘Everything all right, Penelope?’ she asked. ‘Not bad news, is it?’
Penelope nodded, her face ashen. ‘It’s my brother. He’s just been run over by a train.’
Chapter 48
HALF AN HOUR later Penelope Harris was standing in front of the reception desk at the Stoke Mandeville hospital, her face flushed with anger.
‘What do you mean, I can’t see him? He’s my brother!’
‘I know that,’ said the increasingly flustered receptionist on the general admissions desk. ‘You are aware of the circumstances of the accident?’
‘His car was on the railway line. A train hit him.’
‘Yes. I’m sorry.’
‘I know he was badly mutilated. But I should still be able to see the body.’
‘It’s not so straightforward, I’m afraid.’
‘Why the hell not?’
The receptionist reddened and shrugged apologetically as a man in his fifties, wearing a white coat and with the obligatory stethoscope round his neck, appeared. ‘It’s okay, Maureen,’ he said. ‘I’ll take this.’
Penelope turned to him. ‘Are you in charge here?’
‘I’m Mister Ferguson, one of the surgical registrars,’ he said.
‘Good. I want to see my brother.’
Ferguson nodded. ‘Please come with me.’ He gestured with his hand and led Penelope into a small room with a couple of sofas and a cold-water dispenser.
‘I don’t understand. Why can’t I just go and see him?’
‘He’s in surgery, Miss Harris.’
Penelope stepped back. ‘What are you talking about? They told me he’s dead.’
‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to confuse you. He had a donor card. His heart was viable. He’s going to save a young woman’s life.’
Penelope shook her head, not believing what she was hearing.
‘I understand that your brother was a teacher. The young lady receiving his heart is a gifted young pianist. She’s recently been given a musical scholarship to Corpus Christi College at Cambridge University.’
‘No,’ said Penelope.
‘I’m sorry?’
‘My brother would never have carried a donor card. We have discussed this.’
The surgical registrar gestured apologetically. ‘I can assure you that he had a card in his wallet …’ He hesitated. ‘And he left a note.’
‘What note?’
‘I’m sorry, Miss Harris, but your brother committed suicide.’
‘No … there’s been some mistake. It’s not my brother. You’ve got the wrong person.’
‘The man had your brother’s wallet and was driving his car.’
Penelope shook her head again. ‘Maybe they were stolen.’
The registrar didn’t respond and Penelope tilted her chin defiantly. ‘Well, if it is him, then I don’t want the transplant to go ahead. He wouldn’t have wanted it – I know that for a fact.’
‘It’s too late, Miss Harris.’
‘I refuse. Let us be very clear about this: I am not giving you permission.’
‘The girl’s heart has already been removed. They are in the process of replacing it with your brother’s now.’
‘Well, I want it stopped!’
Chapter 49
SAM TURNED THE steering wheel and glanced across at me.
‘Friends in high places, Dan?’
‘Seems that way. Jack Morgan has, at least.’
‘The Foreign Office?’
‘Homeland Security stateside contacted their opposite numbers here. They arranged the passport for Hannah Shapiro in the first place. All above board.’
‘The ex not too pleased, I take it?’
‘Actually, Kirsty was fine with it. Her boss wasn’t quite so.’
‘Shame.’
‘Shame indeed.’
My phone rang and I looked at the caller ID. It said withheld. ‘This better not be a bloody marketing company,’ I said and clicked the green telephone on. ‘Dan Carter.’
A mechanical voice spoke. ‘Be at your office in two hours. We’ll give you instructions then. If you have just been speaking to the police you’ve signed her death warrant.’
The line went dead.
Sam looked across. ‘That them?’
I nodded.
‘What’s the plan?’
‘They’re calling back in a couple of hours with details.’
‘What did he sound like?’
I shrugged. ‘They used a voice distorter.’
‘How did they get your number?’
‘I would imagine Hannah gave it to them. She knows who we are, after all.’
‘They say anything else?’
‘They said if I’d been speaking to the police about it all bets were off.’
‘They knew you’d been arrested?’
‘Yup.’
‘Sophisticated operation, then?’
‘Maybe.’
‘Which is a good thing, I guess.’
‘I guess so too,’ I agreed. Thinking that Hannah Shapiro already knew only too well how messy things could get with amateurs.
A short while later Sam pulled the car to a stop in the car park of one of the CUL sports grounds. It was based off the city centre and had a brick-built single-storey clubhouse and two rugby pitches. One of them was being used by the CUL squad who were running training exercises.
We walked over to the sidelines and watched for a while. Suzy had learned that they would be playing later that afternoon, in the annual grudge match between them and UCL. Just like the annual boat race between Oxford and Cambridge. If you added the victories up, then Chancellors would be slightly ahead, but UCL had beaten them in the last two encounters and they were keen to redress the balance, as I explained to Sam.
‘They’re so keen to redress the balance,’ replied Sam, ‘you’d think they wouldn’t be out partying the night before.’
I looked at him and grinned. ‘College boys. They have a quicker recovery time. You’re getting old, is all.’
‘Old nothing. I could give those silver-spoon-eating bookworms a two-minute start and still beat them over a mile.’
He probably could have, too.
‘You ever play rugby?’
‘Rugby? Are you out of your Caucasian mind?’ Sam said, laying it on thick. ‘I went to the college of hard knocks, my friend. We don’t got no rugby in that particular school.’
I smiled. I knew for a fact that he had gone to a Catholic grammar school, could have gone to a university of his choice. He’d chosen Hendon Police College instead. Something about growing up on an estate with limited life expectancy, I reckon. Where he’d watched two of his brothers getting themselves killed. Like I said earlier, he could have gone either way. Lucky for us he chose as he did.
The practice session finished and the young men started walking towards the clubhouse. I jogged across to join them.
‘Hold up a minute.’
They stopped and looked at me curiously. One of them, a tall guy – taller than me at least, but not as tall as Sam – stepped forward. He was about twenty-three had corkscrew-curly hair cut short, and a jagged scar on his forehead. Made him look like Harry Potter’s barbarian cousin. The guy who had been paying a lot of attention to the girls as they left the bar last night. Ashleigh Roughton, according to the details that Lucy had forwarded to my BlackBerry.
‘Don’t tell me,’ he said, giving me an unimpressed look. ‘You’re scouting for the Saracens and want to sign us up.’
‘No. I want to talk to you about the three girls from your university who were attacked last night.’
‘You the filth?’
I smiled. Hard not to. He was trying to sound tough and down with it. But his accent was preppier than an Abercrombie and Fitch crew-neck sweater – in pastel.
‘In a manner of speaking, Ashleigh. In the private sector.’
‘You know who I am?’
‘We know who all of you are. We’re not here without sanction.’
‘You’re not the police, then we got nothing to say to you! We’ve already told the proper authorities all that we know. Which is nothing.’
He turned his shoulder and nodded to his teammates. I stepped up quickly, put my hand on his shoulder and turned him back.
‘Hang on, I’m not done here.’
‘Get your hands off me,’ he said, brushing my hand away.
‘Like I said, I’ve got a couple of questions,’ I replied, stepping forward, getting into his face.
‘Hard to ask questions with a mouthful of broken teeth.’
I laughed. ‘That supposed to be a threat?’
He took a step back. A cocky smile playing on his lips. ‘What? You don’t think I could take you.’
‘You might be able to take a couple of the Wendys from the backs on your rugby squad there. But I hit people for a living, son.’
Which wasn’t true, but hey – truth is always the first casualty in a conflict, isn’t it? That was what I’d heard. The ‘son’ bit had the desired effect. Maybe I should have said ‘I push buttons for a living’. His shoulder hunched forward and he might as well have written on a postcard what he was about to do and mailed it to me yesterday.
Chapter 50
I TILTED MY head back so that Roughton’s roundhouse punch sailed past my chin, and as he struggled to keep his balance I stepped forward quickly and jabbed my first two fingers hard into his solar plexus.
He doubled up, making a sound like a broken washing machine, and fell on his side to the floor, his face turning purple.
His teammates stepped forward and I held my hand up. ‘He’s just winded. He’s going to be fine.’
‘More than you’re going to be, mate.’ One of them had found his voice. Another preppie trying to sound tough.
Sam took off his jacket. ‘Any of you care to hold this for me?’
The guy who had spoken up was Tim Graham, according to my notes – five foot eleven and half the weight of Sam, by the looks of him. Graham stared across at my partner, his expression suddenly not so confident.
I held my hands up, placatingly. ‘Hold on, now. You lot could rush us and – who knows – eventually you might take us down. But not before some of you get hurt. I mean seriously hurt.’
I looked down as Ashleigh Roughton got to his feet, breathing deeply, moisture in his eyes.
‘You’re only winded,’ I said to him. ‘I sucker-punched you.’
He nodded. I hadn’t done any such thing, of course, but I figured it might help defuse the situation if I gave him some of his face back. I wasn’t going to be doing much good finding Chloe’s attackers if I was in an intensive-care bed myself.
Another guy stepped forward, five nine but enormous. I figured him for a hooker. Rugbywise that was. He had the kind of face that even a mother would find hard to love.
‘You the Riddler?’ he asked, ignoring me and looking straight at Sam.
‘I never liked that nickname much,’ he replied.
The ugly man’s face broke into a grin. ‘My dad took me to see you fight once. Years ago. You were awesome. Met Police against the RAF. You won.’
‘I remember. Who was your dad?’
‘Chief Superintendent Patrick Connolley. He’s retired now.’
‘He was a good man.’
The guy nodded, still grinning. ‘Awesome,’ he said again.
I sensed a shift in mood. I held my hands out. ‘What say we just ask you all a few questions? Then you can channel your aggression into kicking ten shades of crap out of UCL this afternoon.’
Half an hour later we had spoken to each member of the team and were heading out of the sports ground, back to Sam’s car.
‘Well, we didn’t learn much from that,’ he said.
I jumped in the car and pulled my seat belt across. But Sam was wrong, I figured we had learned something. Something important.
The guy I’d floored, Ashleigh Roughton, had something to hide or my name wasn’t Dan Carter. I was very far from smiling but things were starting to get shifting now. The opposition had the next move but I could feel the tide turning. So far they’d been calling all the shots. I intended to change that.
Chapter 51
MISTER ALISTAIR LLOYD gestured to his assistant, a thirty-year-old Canadian woman.
‘Close her up, Michaela,’ he said.
As he walked out of the theatre he was surprised to see a couple of police officers, his colleague John Ferguson, and an animated young woman with an unhappy expression on her face waiting to see him.
‘There’s a bit of a problem, Alistair,’ said Ferguson.
‘Oh?’
‘My brother would never have signed a donor card. There’s been a mistake,’ said Penelope Harris.
‘I’m sorry? I don’t follow.’
‘I want the operation stopped.’
The surgeon shrugged. There wasn’t much apology in the gesture. ‘It’s too late, I’m afraid. The transplant has been done. It was clearly what your brother wanted.’
‘I don’t believe it. I want to see him.’
‘Of course. You have to understand that he was in a serious accident. He suffered major injuries.’
‘I know that. I need to know it’s him.’
One of the police officers stepped forward. ‘We need a formal identification.’
‘Of course you do. Come with me, then.’
A short while later Alistair Lloyd nodded at the mortuary assistant who slid open the drawer and revealed the body. The dead man had suffered considerable trauma but his face, although lacerated, was recognisable. Penelope gasped holding a hand to her mouth. Then she nodded, unable to speak.
The surgeon gestured to the assistant to close the drawer again. As he did, Penelope’s brother’s left hand flopped loose from the covering sheet.
‘What happened to his hand?’ Penelope asked, puzzled.
John Ferguson looked down, shocked. The third finger of the dead man’s hand had been severed at the second knuckle.
‘It wasn’t like that when he came in,’ he said.
Chapter 52
SAM WAS PARKING the car as I jogged up the stairs to our office.
There was some activity in the offices of Chambers, Chambers and Mason. But not a great deal of it. Lawyers, it seemed, were not always on the case. Not on Saturday afternoons, at any rate.