The German woman shrugged. ‘OK, sure, we can ask. I don’t know.’
‘There’s kind of like one other thing I want to know,’ Caitlin said.
Lynn stared at her in alarm. She seemed to be having breathing difficulties when she spoke.
‘Tell me?’
‘This liver I’m getting – who is it coming from?’
Without any flicker of hesitation, the woman responded, ‘From a poor little girl about your age who was killed in car accident yesterday.’
Lynn glanced anxiously at her daughter, signalling with her eyes not to probe further.
‘Where was she killed?’ Caitlin asked, ignoring her mother. Her voice suddenly sounded stronger.
‘In Romania – outside a town called Brasov.’
‘Tell me more about her, please,’ Caitlin said.
This time, Marlene Hartmann shrugged defensively. ‘I’m afraid I have to protect donor confidentiality. I cannot give you any more information. Afterwards, you may write, through me, to thank her family, if you wish. I would encourage this.’
‘So it’s not true what the police-’
‘Darling!’ Lynn interrupted hastily, sensing what was coming. ‘Frau Hartmann is right.’
Caitlin was silent for some moments, looking around, her eyes searching as if they were having difficulty focusing. Then, speaking weakly, she said, ‘If – if I’m going to agree to have this liver, I need to know the truth.’
Lynn looked at her, bewildered.
Suddenly, the door opened and the nurse called Draguta came back in.
‘We are ready.’
‘Please, Caitlin, you go now,’ the broker said. ‘Your mother and I have business to conclude. She will be with you in a few minutes.’
‘So the photograph the police brought round – that’s not true?’ Caitlin persisted.
‘Darling! Angel!’ Lynn implored.
Marlene Hartmann looked at them both stonily. ‘Photograph?’
‘It was a lie!’ Lynn blurted, close to tears. ‘It was a lie!’
‘What photograph is this, Caitlin?’ the broker asked.
‘They said she was not dead. That she was going to be killed for me.’
Marlene Hartmann shook her head. Her lips formed into a rigid, humourless line and there was astonishment in her eyes.
Very gently, she said, ‘Caitlin, this is not how I do business. Please believe me.’ She smiled warmly. ‘I don’t think your English police are happy with anyone doing something to – how do you say it? – buck their system. They would rather people died than obtain an organ by paying for it. You have to trust me on this.’
Behind them, the nurse said, ‘Now you come, please.’
Lynn kissed her daughter. ‘Go with her, darling. I’ll follow you in a few minutes. I just have to make the final payment. I’ll fax the bank while you’re getting ready.’
She helped Caitlin to her feet.
Swaying unsteadily, her eyes looking very unfocused, Caitlin turned to Marlene Hartmann.
‘Feist,’ she said. ‘You’ll ask the surgeon?’
‘Feist,’ the German woman said, with a broad smile.
Then she took a step towards her mother, looking scared. ‘You won’t be long, Mum, will you?’
‘I’ll be as quick as I can, darling.’
‘I’m frightened,’ she whispered.
‘In a few days’ time you will not know yourself!’ the broker replied.
The nurse escorted Caitlin from the room, closing the door behind them. Instantly, Marlene Hartmann’s eyes narrowed into a glare of suspicion.
‘What is this photograph that your daughter is talking about?’
Before Lynn could answer, the German woman’s attention was diverted by the sudden clatter of a helicopter, low overhead. She leapt up from her chair, ran across to the window and looked out.
‘
115
Back in the tiled corridor, the nurse ushered Caitlin into a tiny changing room with a row of metal lockers and a solitary hospital gown hanging on a peg.
‘You change,’ she said. ‘You put clothes in locker 14. I wait.’
She closed the door.
Caitlin stared at the lockers and swallowed, shaking. Number 14 had a key with a rubber wrist-band sticking out of the lock. It reminded her of public swimming baths.
Swimming scared her. She did not like being out of her depth. She was out of her depth now.
Feeling giddy, she sat down, harder than she had intended, on a wooden bench and scratched her stomach. She was feeling tired and lost and sick. She just wanted to stop feeling sick. To stop itching. To stop feeling scared.
She had never felt so scared in her life.
The room seemed to be pressing in on her. Squeezing her. Crushing her. Spinning her around with it. Thoughts came into her head, then went. She had to be quick, to try to grab them before they faded.
Things were being hidden from her. By everyone. Even by her mother. What things? Why? What did everybody know that she did not know? What right did anyone have to keep secrets from her?
She stood up and tugged off her duffel coat, then sat back down, hard, the room spinning even faster. Her stomach was hurting again. She felt as if a thousand mosquitoes were biting her all at once.
‘Fuck off!’ she gasped suddenly, out loud. ‘Just fuck off, pain.’
Fighting the giddiness, she stood up again, then opened the locker and was about to put her coat in, when she hesitated. Instead, she laid it down on the bench seat and opened the door.
The corridor was deserted.
She stepped out unsteadily, closing the door behind her, checked both directions warily, her vision a little blurry, and walked a short distance to her right. On her left she saw a door. A sign on the outside read STRICTLY NO ADMISSION WITHOUT STERILE CLOTHING. She squinted at it until she could read it clearly.
Then she opened it and stumbled through into a narrow, windowless room that looked like it was a store for medical supplies. There was a steel gurney on wheels, which she bumped into, banging her thigh, a floor-to-ceiling cupboard with glass doors, the shelves stacked with surgical equipment, a row of oxygen cylinders on the floor, one of which she knocked over, cursing, and several pieces of electrical monitoring equipment. At the far end was a door with a circle of glass in it, like a porthole. Caitlin made her way across to it.
And froze.
Through it, she could see into a very high-tech-looking operating theatre. It was crowded with people attired in green surgical scrubs, elasticized hats, white masks and flesh-coloured gloves. Most of them were standing around a brightly illuminated steel table, on which lay a naked girl, who looked prepped for surgery. From all the time she had spent in hospital herself, and hours of watching her favourite medical dramas, House and
An elderly-looking man was holding a scalpel, talking to a younger man, tracing lines on the body with a gloved finger, where he was clearly about to make incisions.
Even though the girl’s face was distorted and inert, Caitlin recognized her instantly.
It was the Romanian girl in the photograph the two detectives had brought to the house this morning.
The girl that the German woman said had been killed in a car crash in Romania yesterday. Surely, Caitlin thought, her view of the girl improving as someone moved aside, if you were in a car accident bad enough to kill you, there would be marks on your body, wouldn’t there? Cuts, bruises, abrasions, at the very least.
This girl just looked as if she was asleep.
Caitlin squeezed her eyes shut, then opened them again, trying to focus more sharply. She could not detect a mark on her body.
The words of the Detective Superintendent replayed in her head.
Her name is Simona Irimia. So far as we know she is still alive and healthy. She has been trafficked to England and will be killed so that your daughter can have her liver.
And now she realized he had been telling the truth.
The German woman was lying.
Her mother was lying.
They were going to kill this girl. Maybe she was already dead.
Suddenly, behind her, she heard a furious voice, shouting in broken English, ‘What do you think you are doing?’
She turned and saw Draguta lumbering towards her.
Frantically, Caitlin pushed the door, but it would not budge. Then she saw the handle, yanked it open and stumbled in. Anger surged inside her. Anger, and hatred at all these people. At their masked faces.
‘Stop!’ Caitlin croaked, crashing through the two gowned figures immediately in front of her. She lunged at the surgeon and grabbed the scalpel from the startled man’s hand, feeling it cutting into her fingers as she did so. ‘Stop right now! You’re evil!’
Then, standing between him and the younger man, she stared down hard, scrutinizing, in a few split seconds, every visible inch of the girl’s body. There was no sign of any trauma injury at all.
‘Young woman, please leave immediately,’ the older man said, in a very posh voice muffled by his mask. ‘You are contaminating the theatre. Give me that back at once!’
