Perfect Kill

Now she had no plan. All she could do was follow her instincts. Turning left, she raced through an alleyway between the block she’d left and another that sat at a right angle to it. Put some distance in place first, then consider what to do, she told herself. Several of the street lights were broken. Sometimes during the day she heard the sounds of rocks being thrown, the odd cheer when there was a hit. The darkness provided both shelter and a disadvantage. Her pursuers knew the area well. A line of terraced houses was on one side, the rear of another block of flats on the other. She couldn’t see a main road, which was what she’d been hoping for. Flagging down a car would be her fastest way out of the area, and it wasn’t as if there was any definable risk of being raped. Not after twelve different men had been allowed into her room already that day. There were rewards and penalties depending on your behaviour. If you wanted to eat, you did what you were told without complaint. If you didn’t want to be beaten raw, you did what you were told. If you didn’t want to be injected with heroin against your will, you did what any man asked you to, without moaning and without tears. Unless they wanted to see you cry. Several of them did.

She wasn’t sure exactly what time it was, but it had to be after 2 a.m. That was when the stream of customers began to tail off. Few lights shone from the windows of the houses. Pausing to get her breath – it had been several weeks since she’d walked more than a few paces in one go – Elenuta considered her options: stand in the middle of the housing estate and scream like a banshee to attract maximum attention and scare off her pursuers, or run from door to door hoping some kind person would open up, immediately believe what she told them, and protect her until the police arrived.

A slammed door, cursing, then a shout from behind her helped make her mind up. She needed to buy more time. If they saw her, they’d be on her in a matter of seconds. The front doors weren’t worth the risk. Dipping low, she headed for the rear of the properties, knowing the problem would be dogs in the back gardens, but discounting the danger. She’d been throttled, beaten, drugged and assaulted more ways than she’d known were possible since being kidnapped in her native Romania. Getting into a fight with a bullmastiff looked like a clean exit from her perspective. If they barked, they were going to give away her location. That was a risk she had no choice but to take.

Her whole body ached. The adrenaline of escape wouldn’t last much longer. Tiredness was setting in, partly through sheer terror, partly because her food had been rationed to weaken her. It was working. She took the first fence easily enough, scratching the inside of her leg on the chicken wire. Didn’t matter. Just one more injury to add to the multitude of others.

The next garden had a higher wooden construction. She looked longingly at the back door, wondering if she could risk giving up running and starting to wake people. The problem was that back doors didn’t have doorbells. She would have to knock and call out if she was going to rouse people at that time. She steeled herself. Better to be cautious and make sure she was safe before revealing her presence. It seemed wiser to get at least four houses in before starting to hammer on a door. Climbing first onto a wheelbarrow, then a barbecue, she took the high fence, making it over the top then losing her hold and falling to the ground, a tool of some sort smashing into her ribs. Still she didn’t cry out. The worst of the noise was soaked up by the mud and wet grass she landed in but there was nevertheless a dull thud as she hit the earth. She’d learned the hard way recently how to stay silent and endure pain. It turned out to be a useful lesson now. Light-headed and suddenly overwhelmed with nausea, she stayed where she was before daring to move.

A light came on in the upstairs window, attracting her attention, and undoubtedly also alerting her pursuers to her whereabouts. This was it then. Just two houses in, and that would have to do. She was hoping a woman would live there, maybe fifty years old, mature enough to know desperation when she saw it, and compassionate enough to want to help. It shouldn’t be a family with young children. They wouldn’t want to invite her in and wait for the police to attend. No one in their right mind would want someone as battered and unclean as her in the same house as their babies. Rolling onto her stomach and pushing herself up, she knew she looked awful. There weren’t any mirrors in the flat, mainly because it would be too easy to break them and create a weapon. It had the benefit of stopping the women from realising how dreadful they looked, but imagination worked just as well.

Elenuta began banging the back door with both hands, with her fists curled one around the other, kicking it at the same time. The owner was already awake. She just had to get them downstairs.

‘Please,’ she shouted. ‘Help me. Need help. Call police. I am kidnapped.’ Her English was good but not perfect. Enough to make herself understood which was all she needed.

An upstairs window slid open at the house next door. ‘Would ye shut yer fuckin’ hole, wench?’

‘Help me …’ she screeched. The window slammed shut.

‘She’s in the gardens,’ a man shouted. ‘Chunky, get over there and shut her up.’

They were coming. Last chance.

‘Which house?’ another man yelled in response.

‘Second one in, I reckon …’

Not going back. I’m not going back.

‘Somebody help, please?’ she screeched into the sky. ‘Call police! Police! Help!’

Bending down, she grabbed a large stone frog from the path, turning her head aside to avoid the shrapnel, and lobbed it through the glass pane in the back door. It shattered instantly, and lights were suddenly blazing in the kitchen. A man’s hand, then his leg, appeared over the wooden fence.

The door opened. ‘Get in here!’ a man hissed, grabbing her by the arm and yanking her into the kitchen, shutting the door behind her just as heavy boots thumped down into the dirt.

‘Please, you must call police,’ Elenuta said. ‘They will take me.’

‘Don’t you worry yerself,’ the man said. ‘I know all about it. Finlay, is this what you were looking for?’

Finlay Wilson appeared in the kitchen doorway. Five foot four, skin and bones, with tiny wide-set eyes that made him appear more reptilian than human.

‘Aye, that’s ma skank,’ he grinned. More teeth were missing than not, and those that remained were a shade of yellow usually reserved only for dog vomit. ‘Good man, Gene. We’ll be out of your way now.’

Elenuta looked from Finlay to the man she’d assumed was about to save her, to the huge figure – presumably the man called Chunky – who was outside the back door ensuring she couldn’t escape into the garden. There was going to be no escape, no police rescue, no return to her home and family. Served her right for falling for such an old trick. The promise of a better job, flattery, more money. Just a job interview to go through. Then there was the back of a truck, a gag over her mouth, ropes around her wrists and feet. Days of travelling like that, lumped in with a few other women, in a wooden box in the centre of a cattle transport. It didn’t matter how much noise they tried to make. They never had a hope of being heard. From there, they’d been transferred into a lined cargo container and lifted onto a ship. Insufficient water had left them all dehydrated. At some point she’d lost hope that they would survive. When they’d reached land, she’d begun to wish they hadn’t. She’d given it her best shot. There wouldn’t be another chance to escape. That left only one option.

Throwing herself forward, she grabbed a knife from the block next to the sink, diving into the opposite corner of the room and holding it to her own throat.

‘I rather die,’ she said, her hand shaking fiercely enough that the blade was already leaving a ragged trail over her skin.

‘Would you now?’ Finlay asked, stepping forward, a smile playing at the corner of his lips. ‘That’s as may be. But what’ll your wee friend back at the flat do without you? There’s a special event on soon, see, and I’ve had my eye on you for it. Problem is, if you act like a little bitch right now and mess up my plans, there’ll be a vacancy.’ He got up close into Elenuta’s face. ‘What’s that kid’s name? Anika, that’s it. I was touched by how you looked after her on her birthday last week. Sweet sixteen. That’s a bit younger than the girls I normally race, but if you fuck with me, I’ll make an exception.’

Elenuta lowered the knife. She didn’t need any time to think about it. Finlay had proved multiple times in the last month that he never joked about anything. Whatever race he was talking about, Anika wouldn’t survive it. It was a miracle she’d survived the trip across Europe to start with and she’d grown more withdrawn with every man they sent into her bedroom.

Not your problem, a wormy voice whispered in her ear. End it now. Better like this. Only that wasn’t her. Anika reminded her of her little sister. It could as easily have been her trapped like a tiny bird in the disgusting cage on the fourth floor of flats, all of which seemed to be controlled by Finlay and his men.

‘Sensible girl,’ Finlay whispered, taking the knife from her compliant hand and getting a grip on her upper arm, ready to march her out.

‘Fin … man … do I no’ get a free suck-off at least, seeing as I told you she was in my garden? After she broke my window too,’ Gene whined.

‘You’ve got your right hand. That’ll have to do. This girl and I have business to sort out.’

Finlay dragged her towards the front door.

‘Am I supposed to pay for the broken window? You fuckin’ wanker. Is that all the thanks I get? I should call the bloody polis on you, see how you like that. Treating everyone round here like shite, thinkin’ yer the big man.’

Elenuta caught the single nod Finlay issued to the man who’d been guarding the back door and who was now standing with his hand through the glass she’d so recently smashed.

‘Well, I’m no’ scared of you. You’ve got some paying back to do. Did you really think we’d all stay quiet about what you’ve got going on up the road?’ Gene continued, oblivious.

There was a single gunshot, more whoosh than bang. The louder noise was the splatter of blood and bone fragments hitting the wall.

Staring at the mess, Elenuta came to terms with what she’d already known, even if her stubborn brain had kept on trying to see a light at the end of the tunnel. She’d left one shoe inside the container on that ship. One of her best shoes, that she’d thought she was wearing to the job interview that would change her life and her family’s fortunes. With it, she’d left behind both hope and her faith in human nature. In every way that mattered, she was already dead. Finlay dragged her across the broken glass and through the back door into the garden. She didn’t even feel the shard that pierced her heel.

Chapter Three

Malcolm Reilly would have been staring at the ceiling of the mortuary if his eyes were still in their sockets. Detective Inspector Luc Callanach found it harder to stare at the young man’s face than the bodies he’d seen before. There was something so macabre, so alien, about a face without its eyes. And that wasn’t all that was missing.

‘Eyes, heart, liver, lungs, pancreas …’ the French pathologist listed, ‘gall bladder, kidneys and testicles.’

‘But the penis is still there?’ Jean-Paul asked. As the Interpol agent heading up the investigation in conjunction with French police, Jean-Paul was in charge.

That was fine with Callanach. He was only in France as Scottish liaison officer to Interpol temporarily, or so he’d been told on arrival three months earlier. After nearly two years in Scotland, he was still more accustomed to hearing English than French, and his head was performing a bizarre unnecessary translation between the two. He’d spent the previous twelve weeks trying to trace human traffickers who were allegedly moving women from Eastern Europe to the west, and from Spain and Portugal up as far as Denmark and Scotland. Now the body of a Scottish national had been found in the housing projects at Flandres, north-east of Paris’ city centre, and it had made sense for Callanach to attend. Local police had reported a corpse. The truth was that only a shell remained.

‘See for yourself,’ the pathologist told them, peeling down the sheet. The body was one long open wound, cut from sternum to groin, with a cross cut below the ribcage.

‘You didn’t make any of these cuts?’ Callanach clarified.

‘I didn’t need to. Whoever opened him up didn’t make any effort to sew him back up. This was how he was found. The incisions were made with a scalpel, though, and with some care. The cuts were deep enough to allow entry but no organs would have been damaged. I’d imagine the organs themselves were removed cleanly. There’s little additional trauma, technically speaking. Whoever did this knew their way around the inside of a human body.’

‘You think we’re looking for a doctor?’ Jean-Paul asked.

‘I wouldn’t insult my profession by calling whatever maniac killed this boy a doctor, but someone with medical knowledge, certainly.’

‘So all the organs were removed in a single operation then?’ Jean-Paul clarified.

‘I would say so.’

‘What else can you tell us about his death?’ Callanach asked, taking photos he wished he wouldn’t have to print out and stare at on a police station wall several hours a day. What most people didn’t understand about a crime scene wall was that the photos weren’t simply there for evidential purposes. Those visuals also ensured that you would work every single minute just so you could take them down again.

‘His stomach was half-full when he died, and he would have been an average weight. His external skin was clean. Save for the removal of his eyes – also surgical in nature – there are no scratches or contusions on his face, nor the rest of his body, save for some old bruising on his knuckles. Chafing on one of his ankles suggests that a restraint was used at some point but that it was padded. It’s hard to talk about cause of death without the major organs to examine, but there’s insufficient other trauma for me to conclude that this young man died from anything other than the result of this surgery.’

‘Given the attempt to dispose of the body, I guess we can discount any legitimate form of organ transplant surgery,’ Jean-Paul commented.

‘I’d say that was a fair assumption,’ the pathologist agreed. ‘There’s no brain trauma, and no signs of long-term illness, but I’m severely limited in reaching conclusions. Superficially, he seems to have been healthy.’

‘Someone looked after him,’ Callanach said. ‘They wanted him in good shape.’

‘It must be organ harvesting,’ Jean-Paul intervened. ‘Except for the testicles, obviously.’

‘No, even those can be transplanted actually,’ the pathologist said. ‘It’s rare, but feasible.’

‘Interpol helped close down an international operation like this two years ago. Most of those involved are now imprisoned, but there were inevitably a few who escaped, mainly on the administrative side. We’ll review the case. It might give us somewhere to start.’ Jean-Paul started texting something on his phone as Callanach stepped up to take a closer look inside the body cavity.

‘How long do organs last outside the body before they absolutely have to be transplanted into the new host?’ Callanach asked.

‘Depends on the organ,’ the pathologist said. ‘Typically a maximum of thirty hours for a kidney, up to twelve for the liver or pancreas, no more than six hours for lungs. Recent developments with storage boxes have meant that we can now keep a heart functioning outside the body for up to twelve hours but you’re talking about having access to the very best technology.’

‘Not a problem if someone’s willing to pay,’ Jean-Paul said.

‘But the chance of having all the recipients ready at the same time – at best within a day and a half of one another. That seems …’ Callanach stared grimly into the half-empty abdominal cavity, ‘well, difficult, given that we’re talking about an off-the-grid transplant.’

‘You don’t understand how professionally these operations are set up,’ Jean-Paul told him. ‘They run fully staffed clinics that look completely above board. Take the donor, have patients ready. It’s last chance for most of them. They’re too far down the waiting list to have a realistic shot at getting a donor through normal channels, or they don’t fit the right model because of lifestyle or genetics. Those people, if they have the money, will try literally anything. The more desperate the patient, the fewer questions they ask. Most have some idea there’s criminality involved, but if it’s that or death, then the thought of prison isn’t so daunting.’

‘If it’s that well-financed and professional they should have been able to find a better method of disposing of the body than dumping this boy on the street,’ Callanach said.

‘Not on the street. In a building site. Perhaps they were planning for him to be concreted in, then got disturbed.’ Jean-Paul stripped off his gloves as he stepped away from the body. ‘These people get other people to do the dirty work. Hired thugs. They were probably paid to dispose of the body securely but got lazy or thought they were being observed and just ditched him the first chance they had.’

‘That doesn’t explain what a twenty year old from Scotland is doing here. It would have been quicker and less risky to have abducted someone locally,’ Callanach said.

‘Maybe he was a good match for one particular donor and they decided to harvest everything else that was usable to justify bringing him over,’ the pathologist suggested. ‘You should have your Scottish colleagues gather all his medical and personal information. Anything that might have made him a target.’

‘Of course,’ Callanach agreed, knowing that meant having to contact DCI Ava Turner. Wanting to and wishing he didn’t have to at the same time. He and Ava had been dancing around the edges of a relationship for a couple of years. Just when it had finally seemed about to start, he’d screwed up and Ava had lost faith in him. Since then they’d barely spoken. Now, a phone call was inevitable. An international abduction and a death under these circumstances meant she would want to visit the victim’s family personally.

‘You coming?’ Jean-Paul asked from the doorway.

Callanach hadn’t even noticed him moving across the room. ‘Sure,’ he said, taking one last look at Malcolm Reilly’s incomplete face and catching an odour on the waft of air-conditioning. ‘Can you smell that?’ he asked the pathologist.

The two of them bent over the body, breathing deeply. The top notes were all gassy – sulphur and rot – with the metallic twang of old blood, but then came something earthier, nutty with a hint of spice.

‘All I’m getting above the normal odours is latex, and we don’t use that in our gloves,’ the pathologist said. ‘I agree, there’s something unusual.’

Callanach started to sniff around Malcolm’s face, moving around to the crown of his hair, putting his nose as close to the hair as he dared without risking contamination. ‘It’s strongest here,’ he said.

The pathologist took his place and breathed in deeply. ‘I’m not sure what that is. I’ll swab the hairs again to see if we can trace any chemicals.’

‘Can you keep the body sealed in an air-tight container so we don’t lose the smell and we’ll arrange for an aromachologist to come in and see what they pick up?’ Callanach asked.

‘No problem. That was a good call. I’m very careful about using my sense of smell during postmortems but I missed that one. Can you have the expert here within the next twenty-four hours? The scent will begin to fade if we leave it longer than that.’

Callanach looked to Jean-Paul for confirmation. Interpol wasn’t his to make demands of any more. Everything he needed had to be assessed and confirmed by someone else. Jean-Paul nodded, then looked at his watch.

‘We should go,’ Jean-Paul said.

Callanach said goodbye to the pathologist and followed Jean-Paul to the car, trailing a few paces behind the man who had once been his closest friend, in and out of work, who had travelled with him, got drunk and partied with him, and who had unintentionally set him up on a date with a woman who later falsely accused him of rape. His reputation in tatters and his career at Interpol crushed – notwithstanding the fact that the case had never gone to trial – Callanach had left France and made a new start in his father’s home country, Scotland. Jean-Paul had disappeared from his life when Callanach had needed him most, ensuring the stain of potential guilt hadn’t rubbed off on him by association. Since he’d left France, they’d spoken only once about a case, managing polite professionalism but nothing more, the gulf between them unbridged.

‘Still top of your game then, Luc,’ Jean-Paul muttered as he climbed into the driver’s seat of his old Maserati – handed down from his father, as Callanach recalled. Jean-Paul had always found it an excellent way to attract women’s attention. A certain type of woman, anyway. It wasn’t a judgement. In his twenties, Callanach had regarded almost every part of his life as disposable. Women had shifted in and out of his life like a tide. These days the opposite was true. Every decision he made was measured and careful, and he was an expert on consequences.

‘Just luck,’ Callanach replied, pulling a Gauloises cigarette from the pouch in his pocket and dragging on it, unlit, tasting bonfires and sunsets, and a thousand different red wines. He didn’t bother lighting it. Smoking, like so many other pleasures, was one he had to forego these days. His move from France to Scotland had prompted a number of changes. Giving up smoking was the most public one. Away from work, he drank less wine and spent more time at the gym. But the real change since the rape allegation was post-traumatic impotence. That one was proving much harder to come to terms with.

‘It was never luck with you,’ Jean-Paul said, pulling away roughly from the kerb. ‘You were always in the right place at the right time. You always overheard exactly the phrase we needed for all the pieces to fall into place. I often wondered if moving to Scotland had changed you. Apparently not.’

Callanach stared at his former friend’s face as he drove. His chin had slackened and there was grey showing prematurely in his muddy blond hair. Jean-Paul had aged considerably since they’d last seen one another, his mid-thirties proving unkind.

‘Let’s not do this,’ Callanach said.

‘Do what?’ Jean-Paul laughed. ‘Be honest with each other? Be real? You’ve barely said a word to me since you came back to Interpol. Are we supposed to act like we don’t know one another – all polite bullshit and small talk? Screw that.’

‘What is it you’re angry about, Jean-Paul?’ Callanach asked, winding down the window and letting the weak sun warm his arm.

Jean-Paul laughed, but his face was all bitter after-taste. ‘You think I’m angry? Jesus, Luc, are you ever going to forgive me for what happened? Astrid Borde is dead. You watched her die. I know you went through some bad shit, but the woman who accused you of rape is gone. It’s time to move on.’

‘I have,’ Callanach said quietly.

‘Like fuck you have. You know what? I messed up. I didn’t know what to do when Astrid accused you, but I’ve said sorry. Do you think I haven’t spent the last couple of years regretting what happened?’

‘Jean-Paul, Astrid Borde played me, and you, even my mother. She was smart, devious, and the evidence she set me up with was overwhelming. Was I angry that you seemed to dump me? Damned right I was, for a long time too. But hindsight’s no bad thing. If a woman you’d been out on a date with turned up with bruises, scratches, internal injuries for fuck’s sake, and you’d lied about what had happened on your date, I’d have done exactly what you did. It’s important to believe victims, even when the accused is a friend. You did the right thing. I’m not angry with you. I’m just sick of thinking about it – of it being a part of my life. That’s why I left Lyon and Interpol, only now I’ve been sent back. It wasn’t my choice. I’m not trying to punish you. This just isn’t where I want to be.’