by Sibel Hodge
I grabbed a pair of skinny jeans, a black jumper, my standby pair of UGGs—since the others still smelt of cat wee—and my Wonder Woman knickers, just in case. I headed silently for the shower, taking a last look over my shoulder to admire Brad's sleeping form. Boy, he must've been really tired if he hadn't even stirred yet.
I shrieked when I caught sight of my hair in the bathroom mirror. A combination of half a ton of hairspray in aid of backcombing, being singed by Marie's stupid candle, and a cat on my head made me look like something out of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. There was no denying it—my hair was downright scary.
I dived in the shower, shampooed and conditioned as if my life depended on it, and scrunched my hair dry with the hairdryer. I peered closer to the mirror to survey the finished look. Better. Much better. Unless you counted the fact that one side was still very much shorter than the rest. I teased it around, trying to make it less conspicuous.
Damn. Nothing worked. The only way to hide it was to get some layers put in, but the luxury of a hairdresser was something I didn't have time for. I had some missing girls to find. I settled for stuffing it under a flat cap instead.
Despite the steamy shower and coiffeuring overdose, I still hadn't woken up properly by the time I came out of the bathroom, and Brad hadn't even stirred. I drove through slitty eyes to Hi-Tec's office in zombie mode. Agh! Don't mention the Z word! Okay, scratch that. I drove to the office in half-asleep mode. I needed a monster-sized Starbucks latte with extra caffeine to wake me up, but it was too early for them to be open. Agh! Don't mention the monster word either!
Hacker was already at his desk, engrossed in something on one of his computer screens with the remains of last night's dinner scattered around him.
"Have you been here all night?" I dumped my rucksack on the desk and unzipped it.
"Pretty much. In a few minutes I think I'll have cracked the Holbrook Clinic's system." He grinned.
"Someone left me a present last night."
"Another one?"
I nodded grimly, handing him to the two dolls.
He stared at them but didn't take them. He shook his head, his plaits quivering, eyes wide. "No way am I touching those."
"What do you think the pins mean?" I gnawed on my lip, waiting for his answer.
"Well, sometimes a pin in the head represents gaining knowledge about something, but in this case…" He tore his eyes away from the dolls and back to me. "Probably not. It can't mean anything good, that's for sure. A pin in the heart can mean death or a broken heart or some sort of love curse."
"Shit. That's what I thought you'd say." I quickly wrapped them back up and threw them in the bin by the side of my desk. There. If I couldn't see them, I could just be in denial about them, and nothing would happen. "Emily Jacobs might've had a phone call from the Holbrook Clinic the day she disappeared, telling her to go to the clinic for an appointment. Can you check Emily's phone records for the twenty-seventh of March?"
"Sure. Give me a sec." He swiveled in his chair to a keyboard and monitor on the opposite side of his desk.
Since Starbucks wasn't open at this ungodly hour, I made an instant coffee for me with three heaped spoonfuls, and a peppermint tea for Hacker while I waited for him to come up with some info. I sniffed his tea. Blah! It wasn't quite as bad as Marie's, but it was close. I'd bet it would taste a hell of a lot better with half a tin of hot chocolate thrown in.
Ten minutes later, he took a printout of his screen and highlighted a number in yellow marker pen. He handed it to me. "That number phoned Emily at twelve thirty p.m. on the twenty-seventh. The number's registered to the Holbrook Clinic."
So my theory was right. They must've called Emily shortly after Cassie had gone out for milk. Maybe they told her there was a cancellation and wanted to see her as soon as possible. Whatever they said, I was pretty certain the call had lured her to her death.
One of the monitors on Hacker's desk beeped and he turned his attention to it. He looked up, a huge grin on his face. "I'm into the Holbrook Clinic's records."
I sat on the edge of his desk as he scrolled through pages and pages of information. Doing weird computer commands that looked like gobbledygook, we moved through patient and staff records and financial spreadsheets.
Two hours later, I knew exactly what was going on, and it was even scarier than anything I could've imagined.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
I struggled to get my words out for a moment, which was pretty amazing for me. The last time I stopped talking was when I was asleep.
I glanced at Hacker, a shiver of horror working its way up my spine.
His eyebrows shot up to his plaits in shock, his eyes as wide as dinner plates.
"Omigod!" I finally said. "They're murdering people for their organs." I'd seen a lot of horrible things in my seventeen years as a police officer, but this was just pure evil.
The Holbrook Clinic had been performing organ transplant operations for the past year. If you wanted a kidney, no problem—a transplant would cost you a cool £150,000. A heart transplant went for three hundred thousand. A cornea, fifty thousand. A new set of lungs was £250,000. But they didn't limit their operations to the major organs. Skin, tendons, intestines, veins, limbs—anything was possible for a fee. If it could be transplanted, the Holbrook Clinic would oblige. The clinic offered "Transplant Tourism" with an "All-inclusive Package" that included the operation, drugs, any medical tests required, and a two-week convalescent stay at their five-star facilities. Their recipient patients came from all over the world: Israel, the Middle East, Russia, America, UK, Iran, Europe. The list of donors was huge, and I was betting a lot of them weren't willing participants. Emily Jacobs, Mary Parker, Dana Little, Claire Turner, Lucy Sawyer, and Liza Bennet were all listed amongst the donor files.
I shook my head sadly. "They've got the ideal setup. Andrew Scott refers these girls to the clinic. And the beauty of it for them is they're picking people that no one will miss. Society doesn't care about missing prostitutes. Except Liza Bennet, of course. I suspect she was intending to blow this story sky high, and now she's dead, too. These women think they're going in for a termination, but the reality is they're never going to wake up from the operation." I paused, letting it all sink in. I shook my head. "Chantal's name isn't on their list. Does that mean they're keeping her alive somewhere until they need her organs harvested?"
Hacker's forehead crinkled in a frown of disgust. "That is some nasty shit."
I couldn't have put it better myself.
"But why kill them for their organs? Aren't there plenty of willing donors available?" he said.
"I don't know." I turned to my laptop and Googled organ donations. It didn't make for pleasant reading.
"There's a global shortage of available organs for transplants," I said. "Each country has a never-ending list of patients awaiting organ donors. Allocations for the organs are usually based on a points system—time on the transplant waiting list, patient's age, health status, and compatibility of the organ. Some patients would never make it on the list for health or other reasons, meaning they have no chance of receiving a donor organ legitimately. It's basically an organ lottery. Those who can afford it are taking advantage of the big boom in transplant tourism and going to private centers like the Holbrook Clinic."
"I guess that makes sense. Patients waiting for a donor or those who've been refused are going to do all they possibly can to stay alive."
"A natural survival instinct, I guess. In most countries, it's illegal to sell organs, so with no incentive to donate them, demand is outweighing supply in the majority of the world. Other countries put further obstacles in the way for patients by requiring that the donor and recipient are related. There are basically not enough donors to go round." I glanced up at Hacker. "Which is why organ trafficking seems to be such a big business."
Hacker let out a slow whistle.
I clicked on another site and read. "In China they legally take organs from dead pris
oners. It's estimated that ninety percent of organs come from this source, and yet there's still a shortage. In India six private transplant centers have opened up in the last decade that offer transplant tourism because the market for it is booming. In Pakistan there were two thousand renal transplants in 2005 and two-thirds of them were estimated to be for foreign recipients. In South Africa between 2001 and 2002, more than a hundred thousand illegal transplants were done in hospitals. An investigation revealed the existence of a massive organ-trafficking syndicate. The donors were mainly from Brazil, Russia, Moldova, and Romania, and were paid around ten thousand dollars for their kidneys. The recipients were from America, Israel, and Iran, and paid $120,000. In the Philippines there are whole slums of people who specialize in selling their body parts. It's even estimated that thirty to fifty percent of UK patients are going abroad for commercial kidney transplants because they can't get one here."
"So Andrew Scott and the Holbrook Clinic open up a niche market just at the right time."
"Exactly, but it's not just them." I leaned closer to the screen, clicking on different sites. "An NGO human rights group called Organ Watch did a study that uncovered an astonishing worldwide system of organ and tissue trafficking. And get this, a lot of people from poorer areas in Iraq, Turkey, Eastern Europe, Brazil, and Peru, are selling their organs for just a thousand dollars, which is a small fortune for them."
"You don't need to be a mathematician to realize the profits involved by the organ traffickers and illegal clinics performing the operations, then."
"Yep." I nodded. "But some of the donors aren't even willing participants. Some are tricked into thinking they're going abroad for a job, and when they arrive, they're held against their will and operated on. Some people are just being abducted from slums and having their organs harvested. It seems like organ thefts and abductions are rife."
Hacker let out a disbelieving snort. "Why pay a donor when you don't have to? No wonder they're killing these women."
"It also says here that some religions prohibit organ harvesting from cadavers, so recipient patients want live donors to harvest. Also, the success rate of transplants is higher with live donors rather than cadavers." I swiveled in my chair, taking it all in. "This has been going on for years and yet I've never even heard about it in the media." I shook my head. "So the Holbrook Clinic is probably keeping these women alive until they operate, then harvesting all viable organs, which kills them anyway. Plus, they don't have to pay them and no one will notice they're missing." I reached for the phone. "I need to call Brad and tell him." I glanced at my watch: ten a.m. "Where is he, anyway? He's normally in way before this."
I punched in his mobile number but it went to voicemail. I left a breathless, excited message and hung up, then I tried the landline at home. Ditto.
"Did he tell you he had a meeting?" I asked Hacker.
"No," he said as my mobile rang.
I glanced at the caller display, expecting it to be Brad. Instead, it was Dad.
"Hey, Dad. How's the case going?"
"Slowly." He let out a loud sigh. "I'm sick of being here. I come home stinking of burgers, and the smell is making your mum feel ill."
"What, more ill than when you were disguised as a tramp?"
"I thought we'd come to an agreement about me doing part-time neighborhood watch jobs. Now she's insisting that I give it all up again." Another big sigh. "I can't just sit around and do nothing all day. What am I going to do if I can't catch criminals?"
Bless him. When he'd retired from the police force, he'd been bored out of his skull. It was only my suggestion about volunteering for the neighborhood watch that got him out of his mini-depression. Although, yes, sometimes I had to admit he took things a teensy bit too far, but he always got a result.
"Why don't you set the wedding date and that will take the heat off me for a while?" he said.
"Dad! I can't just set the date to get Mum off your back."
"Go on," he pleaded. "Please, love."
I glanced up at the ceiling and did a sigh of my own. "Is that why you phoned up? To badger me into getting married?"
"No. I've been going through the CCTV cameras at Burger Land to see if there are any clues as to who's stealing the money, and I've found something you definitely want to see."
"Ooh, intriguing." I glanced at my watch. Ten past ten. "And great timing, since I haven't even had breakfast yet. Are you still doing bacon and egg breakfast burgers?"
"No, they finish at ten."
"Bummer. I'll be there in twenty."
"Okay."
When I put the phone down, I stretched and rolled my shoulders that were knotted up from too many hours leaning over a computer screen. My ass was in snooze-land, too. I stood slowly to wake it up and grabbed my rucksack. "Do you want me to get you a veggie burger or something?" I had a sudden thought. "Actually, maybe I'll get one, too. Veggie burgers are healthy, aren't they?" I'd never actually tried one, but how gross could they be?
Hacker scrunched up his face in disgust. "Do you know what they've got in them?"
"Er…vegetables?"
"They're not real vegetables. They're only pretend vegetables."
"Right. How can you tell the difference?" What did I know? I hardly ever ate them, so I wouldn't recognize a pretend one if it poked me in the eye. Well, apart from asparagus. I think I'd definitely recognize those freaky little stick things again.
"The vegetables you get in the burgers are processed to oblivion and pumped full of preservatives. They've got no nutritional value left in them at all." He shook his head at me.
"Okay, great. So I'd actually be better off eating a big, fat, juicy cheeseburger, then?" I asked hopefully.
"There's no hope for you, is there?"
I grinned. "If you see Brad, can you get him to call me?"
"Sure."
Tia breezed into the office wearing a brown miniskirt, a lime-green polo neck, and a brown scarf. Lime-green boots and hooped earrings finished off her Dayglo look. Actually, in today's getup she kind of looked like a mint chocolate truffle. Damn. I had chocolate on the brain again. Giving it up was so bad for my mental health.
"Morning!" She kissed Hacker on the cheek. "I missed you last night. Have you been here all the time?"
"Yep." He grinned back at her with a dopey look on his face.
Young love.
"You're very perky today," I said. "How's the cold?"
"It's completely gone!" She threw her arms in the air in a dramatic fashion as if she were just about to do a star jump in the middle of the office. "Hacker did some reiki on me and it vamoosed! How cool is that?" She draped an arm around his shoulder with pride. "I'll never have to go to a doctor again."
I grinned at her enthusiasm, especially the use of the word "vamoosed," which tickled me for some reason. Maybe it was an Americanism. "Well, I'm glad you're better."
"Any news on the case?" Tia asked.
"Yep, and it's pretty unbelievable, but I've gotta run. I'll let Hacker fill you in. You want anything from Burger Land?"
"No, I'm good, thanks."
I glanced between them, watching their crackling chemistry. At this rate, they'd be getting married sooner than me.
"Okay." And, like Tia's cold, I vamoosed.
* * *
I pulled up at the drive-through window of Burger Land, perusing the menu. Maybe I should try something different. Chicken was probably a healthier option.
"Can I help you, please?" the familiar voice echoed through the microphone.
"Can I have half a dozen chicken nuggets, please?" Oh, wait. Did nuggets mean the chicken wasn't real chicken? I glanced at the menu again. Damn Hacker for getting me all worked up about it. All this wedding diet business was messing with my head. "Actually, I'll have half a dozen chicken premium breast strips instead, please." Breast strips sounded much more like real chicken.
"Sorry, we don't have half a dozen. We only have six, nine, or twelve."
Hmmm. I s
hook my head. "So I can't have half a dozen but I can have six?"
"Yes."
"Okay, I'll have six, then. And large fries."
"Would you like fries with that?"
"Do you mean extra fries or the ones I just ordered?"
"Pardon, madam?"
"Do you mean do I want two large fries or one?"
"Yes, do you want fries with that?"
"I don't want fries with the fries, but I want fries with the chicken."
"Okay, anything to drink?"
"A chocolate thickshake, please."
"Do you want fries with that?"
"No, thanks. Just fries with the chicken."
"Thank you. Please drive to the pickup window."
I drove up, wondering what the hell I was going to actually get. Dad's eyes lit up when I got there.
"I'll meet you in the car park in a minute," he whispered to me as he handed me my bag of food. "Amber, don't you think three portions of fries is a bit much, even for you? Think of the wedding dress!"
I undid the bag and peered inside. Bloody people. How difficult was it to order a meal these days? If I got fat, it would be all their fault. "I only ordered one portion!" I rolled my eyes at him. "You need some new staff. They haven't got a clue."
He leaned on his elbow, sighing. "Tell me about it."
"Do they get commission on the amount of fries they sell, or something?" I asked.
He nodded. "There's an all-out chip war going on between the staff at the moment."
Any other time, extra fries would be welcome, but now I was on a diet—well, sort of a diet (hey, it was a start!)—I didn't appreciate any fries wars going on when I was at the drive-through. If they were there, you just had to eat them, didn't you? I mean, it would be a complete waste of food otherwise.
