Dead Tomorrow

‘Target One’s on the move.’
    ‘Give me thirty seconds.’
    Grace jabbed a finger at DC Boutwood, and pointed at the door. He turned back to Lynn.
    ‘Think very carefully about what I just said.’
    Seconds later both detectives had gone, deliberately leaving the photograph behind. The front door slammed behind them.
    Lynn sank back down at the table and buried her face in her hands.
    Moments later she felt a pair of hands on her shoulders.
    ‘I heard that,’ Caitlinsaid. ‘I heard everything. There’s no way I’m going to have that liver.’

107
    The wrought-iron gates swung open and a black Aston Martin Vanquish rumbled slowly forward between the stone pillars, nosing cautiously out of the blind entrance. Then, with a blast of thunder from its tail pipes, it turned right and accelerated hard. Immediately, the gates began to close again.
    The driver would have noticed nothing different in the wooded country lane this morning from any other day. The two rural surveillance experts were well concealed. One was inside the hedgerow, the other, in camouflage clothing, was halfway up a conifer, and their vehicle was parked down a Forestry Commission track a quarter of a mile away.
    DS Paul Tanner, inside the hedge, had a clear line of sight and, despite the tinted glass and the car’s black interior, clocked the driver’s silver hair.
    Roy Grace, standing on the pavement outside Lynn Beckett’s house, radioed him back.
    ‘What information do you have?’
    ‘Index Romeo Sierra Zero Eight Alpha Mike Lima, sir. Heading east.’
    From Guy Batchelorand Emma-Jane Boutwood’s debriefing after their interview with the liver surgeon, Grace knew this was Sir Roger Sirius’s car. He also knew that these two Divisional Intelligence Unit surveillance officers were badly needed for another surveillance job on a major drugs operation that was currently taking place in Brighton today. A shortage of police manpower was a constant problem in the city.
    ‘Good work,’ he said. ‘Stay in situ for another thirty minutes in case he returns. If he doesn’t, then stand down.’
    ‘Stand down after thirty minutes, sir, yes, yes.’
    Grace ended the contact and called the Incident Room, instructing them to put an immediate ANPR out on the car and to see if the police helicopter was available.
    A network of Automatic Number Plate Recognition cameras covered many major arteries across the UK. Any number plate fed into the system would, in theory, enable a car to be tracked every few miles–so long as it stuck to main roads. Once the car pinged a camera or was spotted by an alert police officer, the helicopter would be sent to the area, and with luck follow the car, unseen, from the air.
    Then he turned to DC Boutwood and nodded back towards Lynn Beckett’s house.
    ‘What did you think?’
    ‘You’re right, she’s up to something. Are you going to arrest her?’
    He shook his head. ‘It’s not her I want. She’s a bit-part player. Let’s see what she does now–where she leads us.’
    ‘You don’t think she might abort?’
    ‘My guess is she’s going to make a few phone calls.’
    He unlocked thedoors to their Hyundai. Before climbing in, he raised a discreet finger of acknowledgement to the driver and passenger of the green Volkswagen Passat that was parked a short distance down the road.

108
    ‘Hello! Don’t you read the fucking newspapers? Have you been living under a stone for the last two weeks, Mother?’
    Mother?
    When the hell had she last called her Mother? Lynn wondered desperately, panic-stricken as a result of the police officers’ visit. The nightmare she was living was getting darker every second.
    ‘Like, we’re in the middle of the biggest organ-trafficking scandal of the century and somehow you kind of don’t know about it?’
    Lynn stood up, pushing the kitchen chair back behind her, and faced her daughter, astonished and delighted by how much stronger she seemed this morning. But also a little alarmed; Caitlin was almost hyper.
    ‘Yes, that’s right, I, like, kind of don’t know about it. OK?’
    Caitlin shook her head. ‘That’s so totally not OK . OK?’ Then she scratched each of her arms in turn furiously.
    ‘The police are lying, angel,’ she said. ‘There is no trafficking scandal, it’s just a wild theory.’
    ‘Yeah, right. Three dead bodies turn up in the Channel, missing their vital organs, and all the newspapers and TV news programmes and radio programmes are