Dead Of Winter (Willis/Carter #1)(94)

‘Jo . . . how are you?’

Funny how the sound of someone’s voice could evoke such a mix of feelings, thought Harding.

‘I’m great, thanks. Over-worked, underpaid but people will keep dying on my shift.’

‘Ha-ha . . . you were a bad girl in your last life; it’s payback time.’

‘You could be right. I saw James Martingale the other day. He said you were head boob man.’

‘Hey . . . it’s a dirty job but someone’s got to do it. Not many men get to look at women’s breasts all day.’

‘And draw a line over them saying: “cut here”.’

‘Ha-ha . . . So . . . Miss “Acid Tongue”, to what do I owe your recent communication?’

‘Chrissie Newton’s death. We were going through a divorce at the time.’

‘I recall that . . . yes.’

‘At that time you were a surgeon at St Bloom’s?’

‘Yes.’

‘Did anyone ever ask you to perform an organ transplant in a private hospital and you thought to yourself, there’s something not quite right about this?’

‘Not sure I understand what you’re saying. You know the procedure as well as I do. There’s a lot goes on behind the scenes to free up an organ and match someone from the transplant lists. That part of it is someone else’s responsibility. What’s this about?’

‘Have you seen the news about Bloodrunners?’

‘I thought it was just the gutter press sensationalizing.’

‘No. There’s a lot more and it gets a lot worse than even they could imagine. People are being harvested to order. Bloodrunners offer a “made to measure” service. They hunt down a blood type, a body type, a lifestyle match – they offer anything the wealthiest require. Someone, somewhere pays big money for a bespoke service. We think they harvested Chrissie Newton thirteen years ago.’

‘Does Martingale know?’ Simon’s voice was breaking. He coughed.

‘He knows. The thing is, Simon, I need your help to make a list of all those surgeons who you worked with at the time, who you think have the expertise to carry out complicated transplants.’

‘I told you, procedures are in place. It just wouldn’t happen.’

‘And you have to remember that it did and it still does. There are surgeons out there who are operating on living donors without knowing that they are perfectly healthy. They are taking life from one to give to another without ever realizing what they’re part of.’

‘Alright . . . okay . . . I get the point. I will help, of course.’

‘I don’t want Martingale informed.’

‘No . . . I agree. Of course. Anyway, I value my job here. I’ll email the names and what details I have over to you. But keep my name out of it.’





Chapter 65


Ebony looked at the postmark on the small padded envelope that had arrived at Fletcher house with no MIT number. It was simply addressed to DC Ebony Willis, Murder Squad and had been posted from a post box on the street outside. It had been franked at the main sorting office in London.

Ebony picked up the envelope and was about to tear the top open when Carter walked into the meeting room.

He was carrying a box-shaped exhibits bag in his arms, resting on a tray of files.

She tore off the top and slid out the plastic bag inside. Then she stood and walked down the corridor to Robbo’s office.

‘I’ve had a present in the post.’

He looked at her face first – she was pale; then he looked at what she had in her hands. The flesh was still soft and wet. The packet smeared with the blood: ten fingertips, severed at the knuckle joint.

‘There’s a note attached. It says: Check for a match . . .’

‘Take it to Bishop.’

Bishop had just finished filling the bag around Tanya’s shoulders with smoking Superglue. It had evaporated now and he took away the polythene and dusted her upper body with ink. The Superglue had stuck to the latent prints. He photographed the prints where someone had held her down. He was just feeding them into the PC when Ebony arrived.

‘What have you got for me?’ He waited until she pulled out the packet from a brown crime-scene envelope. ‘Christ, is this how they teach you to take someone’s fingerprints these days?’ He grinned.

Harding emerged from the cold storage and came to look over his shoulder. ‘Where did you get those?’

‘They arrived in the post.’ Ebony answered as Bishop went over to wash his hands and change his gloves and then he took the package from Ebony. He took them over to his lab table and filled a palette with saline. Then he took out the fingers from the paper they were wrapped in and dabbed each fingertip into the water until it was clean of the dried blood. ‘Cut using wire clippers I would guess,’ he said, examining the knuckle end of each digit as he dried them gently by dabbing the flesh. He rolled the washed and dried fingertips in ink and then onto the Cellophane. Then he fed the images into the computer.

Firstly he checked them with the crime scene at Blackdown Barn and with the print next to Sophie. Then he looked at the results both from Tanya and from the fingertips.

Harding and Ebony stood by and waited. He turned to them after several minutes.

‘We have the person who murdered Sophie Carmichael and the person who murdered Tanya. Or rather, we have his fingers.’