Body Line

to you.’

And she was gone. Slider put down the phone. Had she been going to confess? Was she trying to find out if they were still following the sparkly lure of Frith? Was she protecting someone else? Or her own skin?

He shook his head at himself. You’re good at identifying the questions. How about finding some answers?

McLaren was back from a long session at Stanmore police station, and the news was mixed.

‘They bin watching Embry a long time, guv,’ he reported. ‘They’re pretty sure he’s up to something, but so far they’ve not got the evidence to move on him.’

‘Up to what sort of something?’ Slider asked.

‘His old game of ringing,’ McLaren admitted. ‘All right, that’s no use to us. But they’ve got word from their snouts that there’s something else going on. They think he could be dealing in stolen goods, or else smuggling – cigarettes is big in that part of the world. Things going in and out his yard in the boots of cars. It’s the perfect set- up for moving gear around – nobody goes to his yard on foot, do they? And nobody questions motors going in and out. Handy for the motorway, but out of the way enough—’

‘But they don’t have anything specific on him?’ Slider interrupted. ‘Presumably not, or they’d have moved by now.’

‘They want us to give them anything we get,’ McLaren said. ‘They’re assembling a dossier. They liked the number plate thing but want hard evidence on it. And,’ he added with an attempt at brightness, ‘they weren’t surprised when I suggested he might be shifting guns as well. He’s got some right tasty friends, and they said that would fit in with their profile of him.’

Slider sighed. ‘Has Fathom come up with anything?’

‘No. Firearms department don’t know him. But then they wouldn’t, if he was any good. But Stanmore’s gonna open a new line of enquiry. If he’s into firearms, they can get extra men on the case. It’ll go multi.’

‘Stop trying to soften my heart.’

‘One thing,’ McLaren offered, as if as a consolation prize, ‘when I showed them the picture of our suspect, Mick Lonergan – he’s the DS – said he was sure he’d seen him somewhere before, but he couldn’t place him.’

‘Hallelujah,’ Slider said.

‘He looked through his files, his most recent cases, but he couldn’t work out why he knows him, but he’s definitely ringing a bell,’ McLaren went on doggedly. ‘So he’s taken copies and he’s gonna put it round his snouts. We could still get a tickle, guv. He definitely sparked something – I could see in his face.’

‘All right,’ Slider said. ‘We’ll just have to hope. For now, though, it looks as though Embry’s a dead end. Keep in touch with Stanmore over it.’

‘Yeah, guv, will do. They’re really going for him – say he’s a blot on the landscape.’

‘Well, they can put more into it than we could,’ Slider said. But where do we look next, he wondered. Leads were all running out.

‘Guv,’ said Mackay from his desk as Slider passed through the CID room on his way back from the loo. ‘I’ve been wondering – do you think Stanmore could be Stansted?’

‘Too hilly,’ Atherton answered for him across the room. ‘You’d never find enough flat land for a runway.’

‘Have manners,’ Connolly rebuked him. ‘Let the man speak, willya?’

Mackay ploughed on patiently. ‘The Aude female said Rogers said he worked in a hospital in Stansted. I’m wondering if she misheard, or misremembered.’

‘Not the sharpest tool in the box, I understand,’ Atherton said. ‘Could be the next Mrs McLaren?’

‘Well, if she’d never heard of Stanmore – but everyone knows Stansted,’ Mackay offered. ‘Because of the airport.’

‘It’s a thought,’ Slider said. ‘Have you any other reason for supposing it?’

‘Well, guv, I keep looking as hospitals, in between other stuff, because it got me that there was no hospital in Stansted. I kept widening the search, and when I got to Stanmore I thought about the names sounding similar. And there are two hospitals there. There’s the Royal National Orthopaedic—’

‘Except that Rogers wasn’t an orthodpod,’ Atherton said.

‘We don’t know what he was,’ Hollis said, drifting up. ‘If he was a drugs rep he could have been visiting any hospital.’

‘But Rogers told Aude he was a consultant at a hospital.’

‘Sure God, he was trying to get the ride offa your woman,’ Connolly said with a bit of a gust. ‘He’ll tell her what’ll go down best. Consultant’s going to get him into her pants quicker than rep.’

‘But then why pick on Stanmore?’ Atherton said. ‘If he was going to lie he could have made it any hospital. Why not one she might have heard of, Bart’s or Thomas’s or Hammersmith Hospital?’

‘The point is,’ Mackay said loudly, trying to get the attention back, ‘like I said there are two hospitals in Stanmore, the Royal National Orthopaedic, and the Cloisterwood Hospital. That’s a private one. And it’s having a fund-raising Gala Day next month, with a garden party in the afternoon and a dinner and dance in the evening.’

Slider was there. ‘Aude said Rogers was going to take her to a big promotional party at his hospital.’

‘Yeah, guv.’

‘Well done. You could be on to something.’

Connolly was already clattering full speed at her own computer, calling up the hospital’s site. ‘Cloisterwood Private Hospital. It does cosmetic procedures—’

‘Plastic surgery to you and me,’ Hollis said.

‘Rogers was a plastic surgeon,’ Fathom said excitedly, trying to look over Connolly’s shoulder.

‘Until the GMC said he couldn’t touch patients any more,’ Atherton reminded him.

Connolly went on reading. ‘And it does gender reassignment.’

‘You what?’ said Fathom.

‘Saving Ryan’s Privates,’ Atherton clarified.

‘Sex change. Wouldn’t you like to go for that, Jez?’ Connolly said with a sweet smile. ‘They turn your lad inside out and stuff it up inside—’

Fathom went pale. ‘Shut up! That’s nothing to joke about!’

She went on reading from the screen. ‘And they do transplants. Kidney, corneal.’ She looked up. ‘Is that a bit of a strange combination, would you think? Plastic, sex-swap and transplants? As in, “Hello, I’m Doctor Death, the eye, nose and bladder man.”’

‘It’s a private hospital,’ Slider said, ‘and they’re all things that people are willing to pay big money for.’

‘Especially foreigners from countries where the culture is less laissez-faire,’ said Atherton. ‘Imagine being an Iranian wanting a sex-swap-op.’

‘You’d hop on a plane and bop along to the sex-swap-op-shop,’ Connolly said, still clattering.

‘Or countries where the very rich have scads of money, but the medical facilities aren’t so advanced,’ Atherton concluded. ‘Plenty of those.’

‘Here’s the staff,’ Connolly went on. ‘“Our illustrious consultants.” Smiling pictures – Janey Mackeroni, aren’t they the sinister crew? I wouldn’t let them take out a splinter. And . . . no David Rogers,’ she concluded, having scrolled to the end.

‘But there is – go back,’ Slider ordered. ‘There is one name we know. There, look. Director of Surgery, Sir Bernard Webber.’

‘Rogers’s pal,’ said Hollis.

‘And benefactor,’ said Atherton. ‘Which perhaps explained why the Cloisterwood leapt to mind when he was spinning a line to Ceecee St Clair.’

‘Maybe he did work there,’ said Hollis, ‘just not as a consultant. They don’t list all the staff. Maybe he was working in a lab or the mortuary.’

‘Or parking cars,’ Fathom offered.

Connolly rolled her eyes. ‘Yeah, they’d pay him highly for that, you gom!’

‘He could have been their PR man,’ Atherton said. ‘Didn’t someone say he took rich foreigners to that club? Showing them the hospitality. Maybe he was reeling in the customers. That would pay well.’

‘That would fit in better with the Rogers we know about,’ Slider said. ‘Being charming, wearing nice suits,