Dead Tomorrow

perhaps?’
    ‘Yes,’ Lynn said, her nerves shorting out. ‘Yes, please!’
    ‘Do you happen to know your daughter’s blood type?’
    ‘Yes, it is AB negative.’
    ‘AB negative?’
    ‘Yes.’
    There was a brief silence before the German woman spoke again.
    ‘Good,’ she said. ‘That is excellent.’

57
    ‘The timeis 6.30 p.m., Tuesday 2 December,’ Roy Grace announced. ‘This is the tenth briefing of Operation Neptune, the investigation into the deaths of three unknown persons.’
    He was seated in his shirtsleeves, tie loosened, at the table in the briefing room of Sussex House. Outside, it was a vile night. He stared, for an instant, through trails of rain slithering down the windowpanes, at the blackness beyond. Inside, it felt cold and draughty, with most of the heat coming from the bodies of his fast-expanding team, now twenty-eight strong, crammed around the table.
    On the flat surface in front of him were a bottle of water, a stack of newspapers, his notebook and his printed agenda. There was a lot to work through before he could get out of here tonight–and move on to his second, and much more pleasurable, agenda of the evening. One which involved the seriously expensive bottle of champagne lying in the boot of his car downstairs.
    On the wall-mounted whiteboard were sets of fingerprints and composite e-fit photographs of the three victims. He glanced up at them now. A DI colleague, Jason Tingley, currently in the Divisional Intelligence Unit, once commented that e-fits made everyone look like Mr Monkeyman and Roy had never been able to get that image out of his mind. He was looking at two Monkeymen and one Monkey-woman up there on that wall now.
    Dead.
    Murdered.
    Depending on him to bring their killers to justice.
    Depending on him to bring closure to their relatives.
    He flipped open the Independent newspaper, which was on the top of the pile. On page three was a stark headline: BRIGHTON AGAIN CRIME CAPITAL OF ENGLAND . This was a reference back to 1934, when Brighton was in the grip of its famous razor gangs and, within a short space of time, two separate bodies were found in trunks at Brighton’s railway station. Brighton had then earned the unwelcome sobriquet Crime Capital of England.
    ‘The new Chief’s not impressed,’ Roy Grace said. ‘He wants this solved, quickly.’
    He looked down at the notes Eleanor had typed for him.
    ‘OK, we now have further pathology evidence that the organs were removed from our victims under operating-theatre conditions. The labs have identified the presence of Propofol and Ketamine in the post-mortem tissues. These are both anaesthetics.’
    He paused to let the implications sink in.
    ‘I’ve been giving this organ-trafficking line some thought, Roy,’ Guy Batchelor said. ‘Purchase and sale of human organs are illegal in the UK. But because of shortages, there are people on the heart, lung and liver waiting lists who die before an organ becomes available. And there are people who wait for years, leading miserable lives, on the kidney transplant waiting lists. How are we getting on with our search for a disgruntled transplant surgeon?’
    ‘Nothing so far,’ DI Mantle said.
    ‘What about making every transplant surgeon in the UK a suspect?’ said Nick Nicholl. ‘There can’t be that many.’
    ‘What progress have we made on surgeons who have been struck off?’ Lizzie Mantle queried. ‘I really think thatwould be a good place to start. Someone angry who wants to buck the system.’
    ‘I’m working on that,’ Sarah Shenston, one of the researchers, said. ‘I hope to have a full list by tomorrow. There’s a lot of them.’
    ‘Good. Thank you, Sarah.’ Grace made another note. ‘I think we should make a list and visit all the human organ transplant facilities in the UK.’ He looked at Batchelor. ‘Something important to establish is the chain of supply of organs. How does an organ get from a donor to a transplant? Are there any windows of opportunity for a rogue supplier?’
    Batchelor nodded. ‘I’ll get that researched.’
    ‘I think we need to assume in the first instance,’ Grace said, ‘that there is a Brighton–or Sussex–connection with these victims. To my thinking, the fact that they were found close to the coast of Brighton indicates that. Does everyone accept that?’
    The entire team nodded agreement.
    ‘I think an important part of this jigsaw is to establish the identities of the victims–and we are making