She hung up, feeling dizzy and sick with excitement – and fear.
92
It was too cold to search on foot, so they sat in Ian Tilling’s Opel, peering through the holes they rubbed in the condensation on the windows as the car slithered along the slushy streets close to the cafe. It was just after half past four and the light, beneath the grim snow clouds, was fading rapidly.
They had already stopped and investigated several holes in the road, but so far none of them appeared to have been occupied. Backtracking, they once more passed the mini-market, the cafe, the butcher’s, then an Orthodox church covered in scaffolding. Two large dogs, one grey, one black, were busily ripping open a garbage bag.
Raluca, on the back seat, calm now after her fix, suddenly stiffened and leaned forward. Then she shouted excitedly, ‘Mr Ian! There, over there, see! Stop the car!’
At first all he could see in the direction she was pointing was a wide strip of wasteland, with several derelict cars, and a cluster of drab, high-rise tenement buildings, with dozens of satellite television dishes littering the outside walls, like an infestation of barnacles.
He pulled over abruptly, bumping through a rut, then sliding to a halt. Behind him an ancient truck gave him a furious blast of its horn and thundered past, missing ripping off the side of the car by a whisker.
Raluca pointed through the windscreen at three figures who had emerged from a jagged hole in a patch of concrete. Because of the light and the covering of snow it was impossible to tell whether it was the edge of the road or the pavement. Close to the hole, Tilling saw a makeshift kennel, fashioned from a section of collapsed fencing. A dog lay inside it, chewing on something, impervious to the weather. A short distance away, its engine running, thick vapour rising from its exhaust pipes, was a large black Mercedes.
One of the trio was a tall, elegant woman, wearing a fur hat, long dark coat and boots. She was gripping the hand of a bewildered-looking brown-haired girl who was dressed in a woollen hat, a blue puffa over a ragged, multicoloured jogging suit and trainers, hopelessly inadequate footwear for this snow. The third person was a boy, in a hooded top and jeans, also wearing trainers, who just stood by the hole, watching them, looking lost.
The woman was guiding the girl towards the car. The girl turned her head forlornly and waved. The boy waved back and called out something. Then the girl turned and waved at the dog, but the dog wasn’t looking.
The wind was whipping the snow into a blizzard.
‘That’s her!’ screamed Raluca. ‘That’s Simona!’
Ian Tilling threw himself out of the car, the snow stinging his face like buckshot. Andreea hurled herself out of the passenger door, followed by the others in the rear.
Another truck thundered past, dangerously fast, and they had to wait. Then, sprinting through the slush, Tilling yelled as hard as he could, ‘Stop! Stop!’
The woman and the girl were more than fifty yards ahead and right by the car.
‘Stop!’ he yelled again. Then, to the boy, ‘Stop them!’
Hearing his voice, the woman glanced round, hastily pulled open the rear door of the car, pushed the girl in and threw herself in after her. The Mercedes pulled away before the rear door was even closed.
Tilling continued to sprint after it for another hundred yards or so, until he fell flat on his face. Clambering to his feet, puffing, he began running back to his Opel, calling out for Raluca, Ileana and Andreea to get back in. Then he stopped by the boy and saw he had a withered hand
‘Was that Simona?’
He said nothing.
‘Simona? Was that Simona?’
Again the boy said nothing.
‘Are you Romeo?’
‘Maybe.’
‘Listen, Romeo, Simona is in danger. Where is she going?’
‘The lady is taking her to England.’
Tilling swore, ran over to his car, climbed in and accelerated, following the direction the Mercedes had taken.
Within a few minutes he realized they had lost it.
But then he had another thought.
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
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,
‘No.’
‘You should be. A new life!’
Quietly, to herself, Marlene Hartmann was thinking,
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.
94
Come on, come on, come on! Damn traffic! Damn fucking traffic!
Ian Tilling drove on his horn, but it made no difference. During the evening rush hour the whole centre of Bucharest and its suburbs turned into one joined-at-the-bumper gridlock. Tonight the snow had made things even worse, extending the rush hour well into the night.
The only consolation was that the car with Simona in it would be stuck in this too.
Damn you, you lazy bastard, Subcomisar Radu Constantinescu, Tilling thought, yet again wiping condensation off the inside of the windscreen, staring at the red blur of tail lights from a stretch Hummer limousine in front of him. For forty minutes he had been repeatedly trying the mobile and direct office lines of the one powerful Bucharest police officer that he knew. Both phones rang on interminably, neither answered nor going to voicemail. Had the man already left the office for the day? Was he in a meeting? Taking the world’s longest shit?
Almost certainly, he reckoned, the German woman would be taking Simona to one of Bucharest’s two international airports. The more likely, which he had tried first, was the larger one, Otopeni. But they were not there. Now he was battling towards the second airport. He desperately needed to get hold of the Subcomisar, and have them picked up, or at least prevented from leaving the country – if the officer would even agree.
The traffic inched forward and halted again, and he braked sharply, almost rear-ending the Hummer. He was running low on petrol and the temperature gauge was rising to a dangerously high level. He dialled Constantinescu’s number again and, to his surprise and relief, this time it answered on the first ring. He heard the police officer’s gravelly voice.
‘Yes?’
‘It’s Ian Tilling. How are you?’
