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‘Earlier today I had a shout. Called out to Stoke Mandeville hospital over in Aylesbury. Division thought it was a waste of time. Turned out it wasn’t.’
‘Another woman?’
‘No. This breaks the pattern. It was a man in his late twenties. Colin Harris. A primary-school teacher. His car was parked on the railway line and an InterCity express hit it full tilt.’
‘Ouch.’
‘Exactly. The train was travelling at well over one hundred miles an hour. Weighed four hundred metric tonnes. And even if the driver had slammed on the brakes as soon as he saw the car – it would have taken the train a mile and a half to stop. The Honda Accord had no chance and neither did Colin Harris.’
I took another swallow of my beer.
‘He was choppered into Stoke Mandeville hospital where a transplant patient was waiting. The incident had left him brain-dead. He was on the organ-donor register so when he had been certified as officially so, his heart was removed, transplanted and the life-support mechanisms were switched off.’
‘Suicide by Network Rail?’
Kirsty shook her head. ‘Somebody wanted us to think that. He had taken sleeping medication, left a note. But it turns out he didn’t commit suicide. He was put there and left to die.’
‘So what’s the connection with your Jane Doe times two?’
‘The third finger of his left hand was cut off at the second knuckle. Post-mortem.’
‘Which means it was done at the hospital?’
‘Yes.’
‘The same guy?’
‘Or group of them. It was a group who took Hannah Shapiro remember, Dan. What if the two cases really are connected?’
I shook my head. Given the exchange that was scheduled for tomorrow morning I thought it extremely unlikely.
‘It doesn’t feel connected to me. Seems like two different things going on here.’
‘What if someone is harvesting organs? People rich enough not to want to go on a waiting list?’
‘The old urban myth.’
Kirsty shrugged. ‘If people think of things, Dan, it can usually be done. You know that.’
I did know that but I didn’t want to think about it.
Kirsty finished her brandy and poured herself another healthy slug. By my reckoning, you got fourteen ordinary pub doubles out of a seventy-centilitre bottle of spirits. The one she had just poured was probably double that again. So I guessed that so far she had helped herself to about five hundred bucks’ worth of my brandy.
‘Hannah has disappeared into the ether. It’s been over twenty-four hours. If it was a kidnapping for ransom we would have heard something by now and we haven’t,’ she said.
I shook my head. She looked up at me sharply.
‘Unless you have heard something?’
I shook my head again – I was turning into one of those nodding dogs you see in the backs of cars. ‘No. All I know is her father gets here tomorrow morning. If they have contacted him, I don’t know about it.’
‘Right,’ she said, not sounding a hundred per cent convinced.
‘He lost his wife to kidnappers, Kirsty,’ I said. ‘She was raped and murdered in front of his daughter. If her abductors have told him not to speak to the authorities, I for one wouldn’t blame him if he just paid what they wanted and took her home. Would you?’
She took another hit of brandy. ‘I guess not.’
‘So where does Private come in?’ I asked. Changing the subject.
