118
Alarmed by the abrupt, panicky departure of the organ broker from the room, Lynn went over to the window to see what was causing the incessant, clattering noise. Her gullet tightened as she looked up at the circling helicopter and read the word police.
It was circling low overhead, as if looking for something – or someone.
Herself?
Her stomach felt as if a drum of ice had been emptied into it.
Please, no. Please, God, no. Not now. Please let the operation go ahead. After that, anything.
Please just let the operation go ahead.
She was so tensed up, watching it, at first she didn’t hear the sound of her phone ringing. Then she fumbled inside her handbag and pulled her phone out. On the display it read, Private Number.
She answered.
‘Mrs Beckett?’ said a woman’s voice she recognized but could not place.
‘Yes?’
‘It’s Shirley Linsell, from the Royal South London Hospital.’
‘Oh. Yes, hello,’ she said, surprised to hear from the woman. What the hell was she calling about?
‘I have some good news for you. We have a liver which may be suitable for Caitlin. Can you be ready to leave in an hour’s time?’
‘A liver?’ she said blankly.
‘It’s actually a split liver from a large person.’
‘Yes, I see,’ she said, her mind spinning. Split liver. She couldn’t even think what a split liver meant at this moment.
‘Would one hour’s time be all right?’
‘One hour?’
‘For the ambulance to collect yourself and Caitlin?’
Suddenly, Lynn felt boiling hot, as if her head was about to explode.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘Pardon?’
Shirley Linsell patiently repeated what she had just said.
Lynn stood in numb silence, holding the phone to her ear.
‘Hello? Mrs Beckett?’
Her brain was paralysed.
‘Mrs Beckett? Are you there?’
‘Yes,’ Lynn said. ‘Yes.’
‘We’ll have an ambulance with you in one hour.’
‘Right,’ Lynn said. ‘Umm, the thing is…’ She fell silent.
‘Hello? Mrs Beckett?’
‘I’m here,’ she said.
‘It’s a very good match.’
‘Right, good, OK.’
‘Do you have some concerns you’d like to talk about?’
Lynn’s brain was scrambling for traction. What the hell should she do? Tell the woman no thanks, that she was now sorted?
With a police helicopter overhead.
Where had Marlene Hartmann gone, almost running from the room?
What if the wheels fell off, despite the payment she had made? Maybe it would be more sensible, even at this late stage, to take the offer of the legitimate liver?
Like the last time, when they had been bumped for some sodding alcoholic?
Caitlin would not survive if they got bumped again.
‘Can we talk through your concerns, Mrs Beckett?’
‘Yep, well, after the last time – that was a pretty damn tough call. I don’t think I could put Caitlin through that again.’
‘I understand that, Mrs Beckett. I can’t give you any guarantees that our consultant surgeon won’t find a problem with this one either. But, so far, it looks good.’
Lynn sat back down at one of the chairs in front of Marlene Hartmann’s desk. She desperately needed to think this through.
‘I have to call you back,’ Lynn said. ‘How long can you give me?’
Sounding surprised, the woman said, ‘I can give you ten minutes. Otherwise I will have to pass it to the next person on the list, I’m afraid. I really think you would be making a terrible mistake not to accept this.’
‘Ten minutes, thank you,’ Lynn said. ‘I’ll call you. Within ten minutes.’
She hung up. Then she attempted to weigh the pros and cons in her mind, trying not to be influenced by the money she had paid over.
A certain liver here at this clinic, versus an uncertain liver in London.
Caitlin should be part of this decision. Then she looked at her watch. Nine minutes to go.
She hurried out across the carpeted area and through the door into the tiled corridor. Ahead on her right she saw a door ajar and peered in. It was a small changing room, with lockers and a bench seat. Lying on the seat was Caitlin’s duffel coat.
She must be somewhere near, she thought. A short distance further along was another open door, to the left. She walked down and looked in, and saw a storeroom with a gurney on wheels and what looked like an operating-theatre door, with a glass porthole, at the far end.
She hurried across and peered through the glass. An unconscious, naked girl, not Caitlin, lay intubated on the operating table. Several masked people, in green scrubs, were heaving a huge, unconscious nurse, covered in blood, up off the floor. As they staggered around under her weight, Lynn saw, to her shock, it was the nurse, Draguta, who had taken Caitlin off.
She felt a sudden fear catching her throat. Something was terribly wrong. She pushed the door open and went in.
‘Excuse me!’ she called out. ‘Excuse me! Does anyone know where my daughter is? Caitlin?’
Several of them turned to stare at her.
‘Your daughter?’ said a young man, in broken English.
‘
The surgeon glanced at the nurse, then back at Lynn. ‘I don’t think so,’ he said. ‘Not now.’
‘Where is she?’ she said, almost yelling at him, her fear rising. ‘What’s going on? Where is she?’ She jabbed a hand at Draguta. ‘What’s happened?’
‘I think you should speak with your daughter,’ he said.
‘Where is she? Please, where is she?’
He shrugged. ‘I don’t know.’
She glanced at her watch. Seven minutes left.
She turned and ran, panic-stricken, from the room, back out into the corridor, shouting loudly, ‘Caitlin! Caitlin! Caitlin!’
She flung open a door, but it was just a laundry room. Then another, but it contained only an MRI scanner and was otherwise empty.
‘CAITLIN!’ she screamed desperately, running further along the corridor, then outside into the deserted yard and the freezing air. She looked around frantically, shouting again, ‘CAITLIN!’
Choked with tears, she went back in and ran along the corridor into the office suite, throwing open door after door. There were just offices. Startled administration staff looked up from their work stations. She opened another door and saw a small back staircase. She sprinted up it and at the top saw a heavy fire door with the words STERILE AREA. STRICTLY NO UNAUTHORIZED ADMITTANCE across it.
It was unlocked and she went through into what felt, and smelled like a hospital corridor. There was another door ahead, with a hand-cleansing unit, on the wall outside. Ignoring that, she opened the door and stepped in.
It was a small intensive care ward. There were six beds, three of them occupied, one by a long-haired man in his early forties, who might have been a rock singer, another by a boy of about Caitlin’s age and the third by a woman, in her late fifties Lynn estimated. All were three intubated with endotracheal and nasogastric tubes and plumbed into a forest of drip and monitoring lines from the battery of equipment surrounding each bed.
Three nurses, in the same white uniform as Draguta had been wearing, stared up at her with suspicion from behind the central station.
‘I’m looking for my daughter, Caitlin,’ she said. ‘Have any of you seen her?’
‘Please leave,’ one said in broken English. ‘No admission.’
She backed out quickly, checked for more doors, saw one and pulled it open. It was a canteen and sitting room. She ran across and checked another door, but that opened on to an empty bathroom. Then she looked at her watch again.
Less than five minutes.
Surely they could give her a little more time? She had to be here.
She dialled Caitlin’s mobile phone, but it went straight to voicemail. Then she stumbled back down the stairs, through the office suite and out of another door. She ran along a short passageway, then pushed open another door and suddenly found herself in the vast, marble-floored entrance lobby of the spa.
There were people all around. Three women in white towelling dressing gowns and throw-away slippers were peering at a display of jewellery in a showcase. A man, similarly attired, was signing a form at one of the reception desks. Near him a woman in an elegant coat with a silk headsquare, her wheeled suitcase beside her, appeared to be checking in.
She swept the entire room with her eyes in just a few seconds.
No Caitlin.
Then the two halves of the electric front door slid open with a sharp hiss. Six solid and determined-looking police officers all wearing body armour entered.
She turned and ran.
