LITMIR.BIZ

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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 It was a miracle she’d survived the trip across Europe to start with and she’d grown more withdrawn with every man they sent into her bedroom.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

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