Dead Of Winter (Willis/Carter #1)(57)

‘It wasn’t just organs then?’ asked Carter.

‘The skin is an organ.’

‘I know but . . .’

‘No . . . not just . . . she has had sections of bone removed from her femurs the same as Silvia.’

‘Why sections of bone? What is that about?’ Carter asked.

‘There are stem cells in the marrow,’ answered Ebony as she stared across at Harding for confirmation of her thoughts. ‘Organs, corneas, skin and bone marrow?’

Harding nodded. ‘Yes. She wasn’t just murdered. She was harvested.’





Chapter 36


‘Bloodrunners. They’re gangs who sell human organs . . .’

A photo of a good-looking lad with his family came up on the screen. Robbo was in charge of the briefing; all of the murder squad were crowded into the conference room at ten the next morning.

‘. . . several countries have had scandals where people have had organs stolen. Profit is always behind it. This lad went on his gap year . . . to find long-lost relatives in Poland.’ The next shot was of his body wrapped in a sheet. ‘His body came back to the UK minus his organs and with a full denial of wrongdoing . . . just no one knew how he died or where the organs had gone. Bloodrunners harvest organs and tissue and body parts such as hands, limbs, hearts, livers, kidneys, faces even. People wake up minus a kidney.’ Photos of a hotel room and a woman’s dissected body. ‘In the current economic climate organ-harvesting has become a very profitable business.’ Robbo talked over the images. ‘Although it is not usually associated with the UK.’

‘I’ve heard of Bloodrunners but I’ve never seen gangs in action,’ said Carter.

Robbo continued the slideshow: the bodies of three children were being displayed; each one with a neat incision that cut the torso in half. ‘Because we have a system set up which means we trust the medical experts in this country to do the best job they can with the resources available. If they say your child is too weak for an organ transplant or we don’t have one suitable . . . then the child dies and that’s it. In other countries where you can buy human life much more easily, doctors are more likely to say: we can do it at a price.’

‘Can we find out what happened to Tanya’s organs? Is there any way we can access lists of people waiting that would match her?’

‘We can try,’ answered Harding. ‘But I doubt if these were sent to people waiting on the national register. More than likely her organs were sold on the black market. But it would all have to happen very quickly. Somewhere there will be patients recovering now.’

‘How long does the heart last from donor to receiver?’ Davidson asked Harding.

‘They must be a slick operation,’ said Harding. ‘It takes time to harvest someone on this scale. It must have taken more than one person to get it all done at the same time and end up with usable organs. With the heart, you have a small window of use conventionally, but there are other methods available now. There are a few ways of doing it. You can inject the heart with potassium chloride: that stops the heart beating before they take it out and then they pack it in ice. It can last four to six hours depending on starting condition. Or there is also a new machine which keeps the heart beating like it would in the body and it could last a relatively long time in that state, twelve hours even. Or they can perform a “beating” heart transplant, where the donor is still alive, technically, and their organs are transplanted directly into another. All of these operations would have to be done in a hospital.’

‘What about Blackdown Barn? Could they have operated in the house?’ asked Ebony.

‘In the master bedroom with the plastic on the floors and walls?’ Carter said.

Harding thought for a few seconds.

‘In theory, yes. But, the smaller the team of people around the surgeon the more equipment he will need to help him. It would have taken a lot of equipment and would have been a big task getting it all up to that floor. You’d be creating an intensive care unit in there . . . very tricky. The patient would need twenty-four-hour specialized care. Better to have made it on the ground floor, converting one of the rooms there to an operating theatre.’

‘Maybe the operation was done in a hospital and the recovery period took place in the house,’ said Carter. ‘What about the van, Robbo?’

‘If that’s the kind of van we’re looking at then it’s tall enough to stand up in,’ said Robbo. ‘Yes, it’s the right size and type to be an ambulance.’

‘You might be able to do emergency surgery in it,’ said Harding. ‘You could use it to transport a patient and keep them alive. You would need it to move a recovering patient. But not a heart and lung transplant.’

‘So if the operation was done in a hospital,’ said Davidson, ‘they could move the patient in the ambulance and put them into the sterile room in Blackdown Barn to recover.’

‘To recover or to wait,’ said Carter. ‘And not just the patient. Patient and donor. Blackdown Barn had it all – recovery room and holding pens. That’s why they picked that house. They really thought it through. Location-wise it’s close to London, close to the M25 to get to airports small and big. It’s a place where people don’t bother to talk to neighbours and it had an owner who never came near it.’