Dead Tomorrow

The room had been decorated by Sandy in the same Zen minimalistic style as the rest of this house. The bed was a low, futon-style affair, with an uncomfortable slatted headboard that, because of his tall frame, he constantly bashed his skull on as he tried to stop his feet sticking out the other end. The mattress was as hard as cement and the frame of the bed felt loose, wobbling precariously and creaking every time he moved. He kept meaning to sort it out with a spanner, tightening the nuts, but away from work he was so despondent he didn’t feel like doing anything. Half his clothes, still in their zipped plastic covers, lay across the armchair in the small room – some of them had been there for weeks and he still had not got round to hanging them up in the almost empty wardrobe.

Roy was quite right when he told him he was turning the house into a tip.

It was 3.50 a.m. His mobile phone lay beside the bed and he hoped, as he hoped every night, that Ari might suddenly ring, to tell him she’d had a change of heart, that she’d been thinking it over and realized she did still love him, deeply, and wanted to find a way to make the marriage work.

But it stayed silent, tonight and every damn night.

And they’d had another row earlier. Ari was angry that he couldn’t collect the kids from school tomorrow afternoon, because there was a lecture she wanted to go to in London. That sounded suspicious to him, rang alarm bells. She never went to lectures in London. Was it a guy?

Was she seeing someone?

It was bad enough coping with being apart from her. But the thought that she might be seeing someone, start another relationship, introduce that person to his kids, was more than he could bear.

And he had work to think about. Had to focus somehow.

Two cats, fighting, yowled outside. And somewhere in the distance a siren shrieked. A response unit from Brighton and Hove Division. Or an ambulance.

He rolled over, suddenly craving Ari’s body. Tempted to call her. Maybe she was-

Was what?

Oh, God almighty, how much they used to love each other.

He tried to switch his mind to his work. To his phone conversation yesterday evening, with the wife of the missing skipper of the Scoob-Eee. A very distraught Janet Towers. Friday night had been their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary. They had a table booked at the Meadows restaurant in Hove. But her husband had never come home. She had not heard from him since.

She was absolutely certain he’d had an accident.

All she could tell Glenn was that she had contacted the coastguard on Saturday morning, who had reported back to her that the Scoob-Eee had been seen going through the lock at Shoreham Harbour at nine on Friday night, along with an Algerian-registered freighter. It was common for local fishing boats to enter the lock behind a commercial cargo vessel, enabling them to skip the locking fees. No one had paid any attention to the vessel.

Neither the boat nor Jim Towers had been seen since.

No accidents at sea had been logged by the coastguard, she had told Glenn. Jim and his boat had literally disappeared into thin air.

Suddenly, in his sleepless state, he remembered something. It might be nothing. But Roy Grace had taught him many important lessons about being a good detective and one of them was going around in his head now. Clear the ground under your feet.

He was thinking back to Friday morning, when he had been standing on the quay at Arlington Basin, waiting to board the Scoob-Eee. To a glint of light he had seen as they cast off, on the far side of the harbour, beside a cluster of refinery tanks.

*

At half past six that morning, Glenn pulled his unmarked police Hyundai Getz up, putting two wheels on the pavement of Kingsway, opposite a row of houses. He climbed out into drizzle and breaking daylight, eased himself over the low wall, then, clutching his torch, half slid and half ran down the grassy embankment behind the cluster of white petroleum storage tanks, until he reached the bottom. Across the far side of the dark grey water he could make out the timber yard, the gantry and, further up, the lights of the Arco Dee dredger, disgorging its latest cargo of gravel and sand. He could hear the rattle of its conveyor belt and the falling shingle.

He worked out the position where he had boarded the Scoob-Eee with the police diving team, right in front of that timber yard, and where he had seen that glint of light across the water, between the fourth and fifth tanks, and made his way to the gap.

A fishing boat, with its navigation lights on, was coming down the harbour, its engine put-put-putting in the morning silence. Gulls cried above him.

His nostrils filled with the smells of the harbour – rotting seaweed mixed with oil and rust and sawn timber and burning asphalt. He shone the beam of the torch directly at the ground beneath his feet. Then briefly up at the white cylindrical walls of the refinery storage tanks. They were much bigger now he was close up to them than they had appeared on Friday.

He checked his watch. He had just under an hour and a half before he needed to leave to get to the morning briefing in time. He pointed the beam back down on to the wet grass. Looking for a footprint that might still be there from Friday morning. Or any other clue.

Suddenly he saw a cigarette butt. Probably nothing significant, he thought. But those words of Roy Grace buzzed inside his head, like a mantra.

Clear the ground under your feet.

He knelt and picked it up with the neck of an evidence bag he had brought along – just in case. Printed around the butt were the words, in purple, Silk Cut.

Moments later, he saw a second one. It was the same brand.

To drop one cigarette butt here could have meant someone was just passing by. But two, that meant someone was waiting here.

For what?

Maybe, if he got lucky, DNA analysis would reveal something.

He continued to look for the next hour. There were no further clues, but he headed towards the morning briefing with wet shoes and a sense of achievement.

48

‘Please tell me you are joking?’ Lynn begged.

She was utterly exhausted after the sleepless night she had just spent in the chair beside Caitlin’s bed, in the small, claustrophobic room off the liver ward. A muted cartoon was playing on the small, badly tuned television bolted to an extension arm on the wall above the bed. A tap was dripping in the sink. The room smelled of poached eggs from breakfast trays out in the main ward, weak coffee and disinfectant.

It must have been like the kind of tense, desperate last night a prisoner spends before being executed at dawn, hoping for that last-minute reprieve, she thought.

Lights coming on and off. Constant interruptions. Constant examinations, injections and pills given to Caitlin, and blood and fluid samples being taken from her. The alarm handle dangling from a cord above her. The empty drip stands and the oxygen pump that she did not need.

Caitlin fretting, unable to sleep, telling her over and over again that she was itching and scared, and wanted to go home, and Lynn trying to comfort her. Trying to reassure her that in the morning everything would be fine. That in three weeks she would be leaving the hospital with a brand-new liver. If all went well, she would be home in time for Christmas, OK, not to Winter Cottage, but to the place that was now her home.

It would be the best Christmas ever!

And now this woman was standing in the room. The transplant coordinator. Shirley Linsell, with her English rose face and her long hair, and the tiny burst blood vessel in her left eye. She was wearing the same white blouse and knitted pink top and black trousers as when she had first met her, almost a week – that seemed like a million years – ago.

The only difference was her demeanour. When they had first met, she had seemed positive and friendly. But now, at seven o’clock this morning, although apologetic, she seemed cold and distant. Lynn stood facing her, glaring in fury.

‘I’m extremely sorry,’ she said. ‘I’m afraid these things happen.’

‘Sorry? You phoned me last night to say that you had a liver that was a perfect match, and now you are telling us you were wrong?’

‘We were informed a liver had become available which was a good match.’

‘So what exactly happened?’

The coordinator addressed Lynn, then Caitlin. ‘From the information we were given, it appeared that the liver could be split, with the right side to be given to an adult and the left side to you, Caitlin. When our consultant and his team went down to the hospital to collect the liver, in their assessment, it was healthy and suitable. We use a scale of size of liver against body weight. But this morning our senior consultant surgeon, who was to have performed the transplant, examined the liver more closely and found there was more than 30 per cent fat. He did a biopsy and made a decision that it would not be suitable for you.’

‘I still don’t understand,’ Lynn said. ‘So are you going to throw it away?’

‘No,’ Shirley Linsell said. ‘With this amount of fat, there is a danger it could take several weeks to function properly. Caitlin needs a liver that will function immediately. She is too ill to take the risk. It will be used for a man in his sixties with liver cancer. It will hopefully prolong his life for a few years.’

‘How great is that?’ Lynn said. ‘You’re bumping my daughter in favour of an elderly man? What is he? Some fucking alcoholic?’

‘I can’t discuss another patient with you.’

‘Yes, you can.’ Lynn raised her voice. ‘Oh yes, you damn well can. You’re sending Caitlin home to die so some fucking alcoholic, like that footballer George Best, can live a few more months?’

‘Please, Mrs Beckett – Lynn – it’s not like that at all.’

‘Oh? So what is it like, exactly?’

‘Mum!’ Caitlin said. ‘Listen to her.’

‘I am listening, darling, I’m listening really hard. I just don’t like what I’m hearing.’

‘Everyone here cares for Caitlin, a lot. It’s not just work in this unit – it’s personal for us all. We want to give Caitlin a healthy liver, to give her the best chance of a normal life, Mrs Beckett. There is no point in giving her a liver that might not work or that might fail in a few years’ time and put her through this ordeal a second time. Please believe me – the whole team here wants to help Caitlin. We’re very fond of her.’

‘Fine,’ Lynn said. ‘So when will this healthy liver be available?’

‘I can’t answer that – it depends on a suitable donor.’

‘So we’re back to square one?’

‘Well – yes.’