Body Line dibs-13

by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles

  Slider shook his head. ‘It’s going nowhere. Put it down.’

  ‘You don’t understand,’ Webber said with a touch of cold impatience. ‘This box contains human organs for transplant. I must get them into the proper storage facility.’

  Behind him, McGuinness had been relieved of his gun and was being searched, while two others of the team were looking in the car for any more weapons, Slider saw, while never taking his eyes from Webber’s.

  ‘You don’t understand,’ he said. ‘It’s over.’

  ‘Get out of my way!’ Webber ground out.

  ‘You’re under arrest,’ Slider said.

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Webber said, his colour high. ‘You can’t arrest me.’

  McGuinness, hands on head, was staring at Slider and Webber, watching the scene play out, as if ready for his cue to jump back in. Slider could smell his sweat, and Webber’s aftershave, sharp on the flat, oil-tainted car park air.

  ‘I have patients in there –’ Webber jerked his head towards the hospital building – ‘waiting for these organs. Waiting for a transplant that will transform their lives. Have you any idea of the suffering of these people? How long they’ve waited? How few organs there are available? And you want me to waste these? What are you, a man or a monster?’

  ‘That’s exactly what I was going to ask you,’ said Slider.

  Webber’s calm was suddenly fractured. ‘I’m not the villain here!’ he shouted. McGuinness stirred, and was still again. ‘I’m a surgeon!’

  ‘And I’m a police officer and I’m arresting you for the illegal importation of human organs,’ Slider said.

  ‘That’s just a technical violation. An excise law! We’re talking about people’s lives.’

  ‘I made a rough calculation,’ Slider said. ‘A million apiece for kidneys, half a million for corneas. Minimum. Six hundred million a year. Not a bad income, even if it is gross.’

  ‘Do you think that’s what this was about?’ Webber cried. ‘Money? Do you really think it was about money? I’m a humanitarian.’

  ‘You’ve cleared your conscience very nicely on that score,’ Slider said. ‘But what about David Rogers – your friend. And his girlfriend Catriona Aude. How do you justify killing them? How do you justify murder?’

  The word – murder – went home. Slider saw it jolt Webber. Had he believed they didn’t know? That he had got away with it? But suddenly here it was, on the air and in Slider’s face. And he quailed. His eyes flitted first one way, then the other, as though looking for escape. ‘I didn’t m–murder anyone,’ he said, and his voice jittered horribly.

  Slider pushed the knife home. ‘You’re finished, Webber,’ he said quietly. He looked at the great consultant with open contempt.

  Clumsily, still clutching the box, Webber swivelled on his shiny, expensive shoes. ‘I didn’t!’ he cried. His eyes found McGuinness. His voice was high with panic. ‘It was him. He killed them.’

  McGuinness looked, just for a moment, as if someone had punched him in the solar plexus. He gaped for air. ‘Shut your mouth, you fucking idiot!’ he hissed.

  But Webber seemed encouraged by the words. He grew eager, tried to point, hampered by the box. ‘I swear it! He did it! It was him!’

  McGuinness’s jaw gritted, his eyes narrowed. He didn’t say anything more, but he gave Webber a glittering look as kindly as black ice on a hairpin bend.

  Vaughan, the fourth in Corby’s team, was approaching with handcuffs. Webber saw them, and the last barrier of horrible realization was crossed. The humiliation made it all real. Under Slider’s eyes he actually seemed to shrink, his sleekness became somehow rumpled. His fine clothes, his money, his status, could not protect him now. He was just another grubby criminal.

  Slider’s adrenalin was high, singing through his blood of triumph. End of the trail. He had his man. It felt good – he felt good. He could leap high buildings in a single bound. But there were procedures to follow, and the lads could probably do with finishing up so they could get some breakfast. He could savage a bacon roll himself.

  ‘All right, let’s just have a look in that box, shall we?’ he said.

  Webber looked as though he might weep.

  What with debriefings, meetings, interviews, reports verbal and written, forms filled in, more meetings, even more meetings, and bringing various senior figures of increasingly head-spinning importance ‘up to speed’ on the case, the rest of the day disappeared into a confused kaleidoscope with all the hallmarks of a repetitive dream. Slider never did get a bacon roll. In fact, he couldn’t remember getting anything to eat at all, though tea undoubtedly entered his system at some point, and Porson thrust an electric razor at him when they were in the car together being driven to Hammersmith through the twilight to hobnob with the gods.

  One of said gods was Assistant Commissioner Congleton himself, head of the Specialist Crime Directorate, a man so senior you could get faint breathing the same air as him. Slider attributed to that the fact that he actually fell asleep in the ante-room when asked to wait outside for a few minutes. Porson, when he emerged, looked at him kindly as he struggled up to consciousness.

  ‘Not much longer,’ he said. ‘They want you to hang around a bit in case of questions – the AC’s briefing the Home Secretary on the phone at this moment in time – then you can get off and finish the paperwork. Everyone’s very chipper. Mr Congleton’s as pleased as a dog with two willies. He spoke to the head of the CPS while I was in there, and he says they’re definitely going to run with the murder charge against Webber. Public interest, plus it showcases a nifty bit of police work and does ’em all a bit of bon. So well done.’

  ‘I’m glad,’ Slider said, struggling to sound it. ‘They think we’ve got enough evidence?’

  Porson used his fingers. ‘The motive, hot and strong. Sturgess’s testimony that Rogers was going to pull the plunger and Webber saying he’d sort him out. McGuinness bang to rights and testifying on oath that it was all on Webber’s say-so – it was clever the way you got Webber to stuff him right in front of everybody,’ he said in parenthesis. ‘He’s as mad as a wronged wife. “After all these years, after all I’ve done for him,”’ he parodied in falsetto. ‘He’s singing like a canary on cannabis.’

  Slider nodded. He had read the first deposition. A phrase from it came swimming up from memory: ‘I’d have taken it for him if he’d kept his mouth shut. I owed him one. I would never have shopped him.’

  ‘Didn’t even have to offer him a deal,’ Porson gloated. ‘Says he just wants to make sure Webber goes down, the ungrateful bastard, eckcetera eckcetera.’

  ‘I know, sir,’ Slider said. ‘But I’m still a bit worried that it’s just his word against Webber’s.’

  ‘Of course, you don’t know. It must have been while you were with the IAB. McGuinness volunteered his bank statement. He’s on the Windhover payroll: basic salary – plus a bloody great bonus, one after Rogers got offed, and another after Aude. He’s willing to swear what they were for, and since Windhover is a one-man band, Webber has to explain it or suck it up.’

  ‘That’s good,’ Slider said reflectively. Webber was going down. But just for a moment he thought of those people waking up in Cloisterwood Hospital to be told that their transplant operation had been cancelled, that they were back on dialysis until they died. Everything had the defect of its virtues. But right was right and indivisible. And Helen Aldous was safe.

  ‘It’s enough,’ said Porson. ‘With everything else, they’ll make it stick, laddie, don’t you worry.’

  He turned away, and turned back. ‘Oh, and by the way, while they’re at it, Mr Wetherspoon says we should have a shot at the other two women, the secretary and the nurse, see if we can find enough evidence to bring them home to Webber as well.’

  ‘McGuinness hasn’t mentioned them, has he?’

  ‘Not yet, but if we work on him the right way . . .’

  Slider got his tired brain to grips. ‘It sounds as though they’
ve got it in for Webber.’

  Porson positively grinned. ‘Mr Wetherspoon met him once at a fund-raiser in Hammersmith Town Hall. Webber snubbed him.’ He lowered his voice to a conspiratorial whisper and accompanied it with a wink. ‘Not posh enough.’

  Crikey, Slider thought, impressed. Webber might be a cold-hearted murdering egomaniac, but it took some cojones to cut Mr Wetherspoon on his own turf.

  ‘You didn’t tell me there were going to be guns,’ Joanna said when he finally, finally got home. She looked at his grey face and red-rimmed eyes but she couldn’t help herself – she still had to say it. ‘You didn’t say there would be shooting.’

  ‘Thought it better not to,’ he said. ‘What would be the point of worrying you?’

  ‘I’m your wife. It’s my privilege to worry.’

  ‘Well, no one was hurt. And we got the baddies. Doesn’t that warrant a “well done, darling”?’

  She relented. ‘Of course. Well done, darling. Do you know what the time is? I thought you were never coming home. I don’t know what to offer you – tea, breakfast, lunch, dinner, a drink?’

  He didn’t need to think. ‘Tea,’ he said prosaically. ‘I seem to have been talking all day. My mouth’s like the bottom of the budgie’s cage.’ She went to put the kettle on, and he followed her into the kitchen. ‘I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you anything about it beforehand, but it was all deadly secret, in case the villains got wind of anything.’

  ‘I’m always tipping off villains,’ she said. ‘Well known for it.’ But she knew that wasn’t the point. She put out mug, tea bag, spoon, and then turned to put her arms round him. ‘Tell me about it.’

  So he told her.

  ‘I suppose Webber did have a point,’ she said when he got to the end. ‘He was doing good things, even if he went about them the wrong way. Excise rules are just local customs – excuse the pun. How does that stack up against human lives?’

  ‘He had two people murdered to protect his right to decide that the law didn’t apply to him,’ Slider said. ‘Probably another two as well, years ago. If he hadn’t been stopped, who knows how many more he would have had to eliminate?’

  ‘Point,’ said Joanna.

  ‘And then there are the original donors,’ Slider said. ‘China still has people executed for political dissidence, you know. Does holding up a placard outside Westminster mean your kidneys are automatically up for grabs?’

  ‘Point again. Pay no attention to me – I’m just flappin’ m’ gums.’

  He drew her closer. ‘Forget the gums, how about the lips?’

  ‘I thought you were tired?’

  ‘Never too tired for you.’ But he rested his head on her shoulder, cheek to her hair, eyes shut – not the pose of a rampant lover. ‘Do you know Hopkins’ poem, “The Windhover”?’

  ‘Only about the most beautiful poem ever written,’ Joanna said. ‘“A billion times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier.”’ She waited for elucidation, then said, ‘Never heard of it. Why?’

  ‘We say it’s always about love or money,’ he said, growing warm and comfortable behind his closed eyes. ‘This was both. Webber had the money, and Rogers had the love.’

  ‘You’re not making a whole lot of sense,’ she told him kindly. The kettle poured steam and she reached out to turn it off – carefully, not to disturb him.

  ‘He was a bit of an ass and a bit of a villain,’ Slider said. ‘But I’m glad he had some love. Not all the women, I don’t mean. The boat. Even if it didn’t have sails.’

  ‘In fact,’ Joanna said, ‘I just thought I’d mention that you are actually asleep at this point in time.’ He very nearly was. ‘By the way,’ she said, because he’d have to wake up to get himself to bed, ‘Atherton phoned.’

  ‘Hmm?’

  ‘He said to tell you they’re going to mount an operation on Embry’s yard next week. A multi-agency sting, he said. They’re going to shut him down for good.’

  ‘Good,’ said Slider, rousing himself. He opened his eyes, blinking at the brightness. And yawned cavernously. ‘God, poor old Stanmore! Another upheaval. Seek a better life in the suburbs, eh? I bet they’ll wish they really were Stansted.’

  ‘You’re still not making sense,’ Joanna complained.

  Slider shook his head. ‘You had to be there,’ he said.

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  Cynthia Harrod-Eagles

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