Dead Tomorrow

for work. Caitlin was not happy about being here and was in one of her strange moods, more angry than afraid. If she left her, she was scared her daughter might check herself out. She glanced at her watch. It was ten to one. On the screen, the man was in a house, making angry faces and puffing himself up. He ran out, straight through the front door, taking the whole front of the house with him. Despite herself, Lynn grinned. She’d been a sucker for cartoons all her life.
    Caitlin was now tapping keys on her phone.
    ‘I’m sorry, darling,’ her mother said. ‘I drifted off.’
    ‘Don’t worry about it,’ Caitlin said, grinning suddenly, without taking her eyes from her phone. ‘Old people need their sleep.’
    Despite her woes, Lynn laughed. ‘Thanks a lot!’
    ‘No, really,’ Caitlin saidwith a cheeky grin. ‘I just saw a programme about it on television. I thought about waking you, cos you ought to see it. But, you know, as it was about old people needing their sleep, I thought it was better not to!’
    ‘You cheeky monkey!’ Lynn tried to move, but both her legs had stiffened up.
    There was a grinding roar of construction machinery outside. Then the door opened and the transplant coordinator they had met last night came in.
    Today, rested and in daylight looking even more the English rose, Shirley Linsell was wearing a blue sleeveless cardigan over a white blouse and dark brown slacks.
    ‘Hi,’ she said. ‘How are we today?’
    Caitlin ignored her, continuing to text.
    ‘Fine!’ Lynn said, resolutely rising to her feet and pounding her dead thighs with both fists. ‘Cramp!’ she said, by way of explanation.
    The transplant coordinator gave her a brief, sympathetic smile, then said, ‘The next test we are going to do is a liver biopsy.’ Walking across to Caitlin, she went on, ‘You are busy–got a lot of messages?’
    ‘I’m sending out instructions,’ Caitlin said. ‘You know, like what to do with my body and stuff.’
    Lynn saw the shock on the coordinator’s face and the quizzical look on her daughter’s, that expression she so often had where it was impossible to tell if she was joking or being serious.
    ‘I think we have plenty of options for making you better, Caitlin,’ Shirley Linsell said in pleasant tone that did not patronize Lynn’s daughter.
    Caitlin pressed her lips together and looked up with a wistful expression. ‘Yeah, well. Whatever.’ She shrugged. ‘Best to be prepared, right?’
    Shirley Linsellsmiled. ‘I think it’s best to be positive!’
    Caitlin rocked her head sideways a few times, as if weighing this up. Then she nodded. ‘OK.’
    ‘What we’d like to do now, Caitlin, is to give you a small local anaesthetic, then we will take a tiny amount of your liver out with a needle. You won’t feel any pain at all. Dr Suddle will be here in a minute to tell you more about it.’
    Abid Suddle was Caitlin’s consultant. A youthful, handsome thirty-seven-year-old of Afghan descent, he was the one person who, in Lynn’s view, Caitlin always seemed comfortable with. But he wasn’t always around, as the medical team were constantly being rotated.
    ‘You won’t take too much, will you?’ Caitlin asked.
    ‘Just the tiniest amount.’
    ‘You know, like, I know it’s fucked. So I sort of need whatever I’ve got left.’
    The coordinator gave her a strange look, again uncertain whether Caitlin was joking.
    ‘We’ll take the absolute minimum we need. Don’t worry. It’s a minute amount.’
    ‘Yep, well, I’ll be pretty pissed off if you take too much.’
    ‘We don’t have to take any,’ the coordinator assured her gently. ‘Not if you don’t want us to.’
    ‘Right, cool,’ Caitlin said. ‘That would mean Plan B, right?’
    ‘Plan B?’ the transplant coordinator queried.
    Caitlin spoke, still staring at her phone. ‘Yep, if I decide I don’t want your tests.’ Her expression was blank, unreadable. ‘That would be Plan B, wouldn’t it?’
    ‘What do youmean exactly, Caitlin?’ Shirley Linsell asked gently.
    ‘Plan B means I die. But, personally, I think Plan B is a pretty crap plan.’

30
    After the post-mortem onUnknown Male, Roy Grace drove back to CID headquarters. He spent the entire journey talking on his hands-free to Christine Morgan, the Donor Liaison Sister at the Royal Sussex County Hospital, learning as much as he could about the human organ transplant process, in particular the administration of the supply of organs