Private London (Private 4)

‘Kirsty Webb.’

‘You’d better come with me.’

The DI walked off briskly and Kirsty followed her into the hospital, through reception and down a series of corridors.

The body had been moved to a small side room. A young uniformed officer was standing guard outside. DI James gave him a cursory nod and opened the door, leading Kirsty in.

The corpse was lying on a gurney and had been covered once more with a sheet.

‘His car was hit by a high-speed train going at full tilt. Brain death would have been near-instantaneous.’

‘I can well imagine.’

‘And his body took a considerable amount of trauma.’

‘So the injury to his hand could have happened at the same time?’

‘We thought so at first,’ said the grey-haired detective. ‘But a pathologist took a closer look. The top half of his finger was definitely severed post-mortem. No blood loss, et cetera. There’s no doubt about it.’

The DI lifted the blanket covering the left side of Colin Harris’s body and showed Kirsty the mutilated hand.

Kirsty shook her head, not quite believing it. ‘Do we know what was used?’

‘We think a scalpel.’

‘Right.’

‘I understand you have some similar cases?’

‘Kind of. Only ours were two women. Early to mid-twenties. Both as of yet unidentified.’

‘And both had the same finger chopped off.’

‘The wedding-ring finger. Half of it, anyway. And they both had organs removed.’

‘What the hell is going on?’ The DI was obviously a little rattled. You weren’t supposed to have serial killers in Buckinghamshire.

‘I don’t know, inspector. But we’ve got a break in the pattern here. That could be significant.’

‘How could somebody have known, though? Then sneak into our morgue and cut a finger off a dead body in broad daylight!’

‘Who was it who authorised the transplant? What’s the procedure?’

The DI pulled out a small black book and consulted her notes. ‘First of all, brain death has to be established by two independent doctors.’

‘Independent of the hospital?’

‘No, of the doctors involved with the donation or the transplantation team.’

‘So brain death was established by two independent doctors. And then what happened?’

‘The body was kept alive by life-support machinery, the heart removed and transplanted into the recipient.’

‘And the sister maintains that her brother was vehemently against being a donor.’

‘It’s what she says. Although she also says she had become estranged from her brother. They hadn’t talked in quite a few years.’

‘Why was that?’