Dead and Buried (13 page)

Her bag was on the ground and she picked it up.

She stumbled around the corner and then went back into the hospital. She looked around for the toilet and headed there. It was a single cubicle and she locked the door and sat on the closed seat, making herself breathe slowly. She was thoroughly shaken up, her blood racing through her veins. The skin on her right arm was sore and she pressed on it with her other hand. She found herself rocking gently back and forward, a feeling of helplessness taking hold of her.

All she’d wanted to do was go out on a Friday night like other students. To have a few beers, a few laughs, maybe flirt with Jamie from Law. She’d even been enjoying herself, warmed up by the chatter and the music and the jokes. She’d felt comfortable in the Pink Parrot until Henry’s call had come. What if the policeman hadn’t been in the hospital? Hadn’t stumbled on Joshua being treated? What if she had never known that he was hurt? She might be still there in the pub or back at someone’s house for drinks or maybe walking back home with Jamie from Law, waiting for him to lean down and kiss her. Then Joshua would have been on his own and it wouldn’t have been anything to do with her. Not her responsibility.

Was there a little of her that wished this was true?

She stood up and leant over the tiny sink, cupping water from the tap and splashing it on her face. Then she looked into the mirror. At the point on her chin where Mikey’s knife had rested was a bubble of blood. It startled her.

The door handle moved.

‘Anyone in there?’ a woman’s voice called.

‘Just a minute,’ she said.

She got a wad of tissue and patted the blood. Her skin was clear for a second then it came again, bright red, scarlet. She held the tissue up to her chin and pressed it. She opened the door and without a word passed the woman who was waiting. She looked round. Joshua was over by the exit doors, looking for her. The sight of the dressings on his ear made her flinch. He looked like someone wounded in a war. He was in the checked shirt she had seen earlier, no coat. She walked towards him. He turned round to her. His face fell into a frown as she came closer.

‘What’s the matter?’ he said. ‘What’s happened? Has something happened?’

She took the tissue away from her chin.

‘I’ve seen Lev and Mikey,’ she said.

‘Rosie, you’re bleeding. What did they do to you?’

‘It’s nothing. Let’s get out of here.’

In the cab, on the way home, she sent a text to Anna and told her that Joshua had fallen off his bike and had been to A and E. She said that she was bringing him back to stay the night in the attic and that she hoped Anna wouldn’t mind.

She sat back and watched the lights of the city zip past her. It was late, almost two o’clock. Joshua was slumped against her. He felt hot and heavy. She put her arm around him and kissed his head.

‘Stay with me for a few nights,’ she whispered. ‘Sleep it off, get better. Then we’ll think about what to do.’

He looked up at her sleepily. The side of his face was covered with dressings and plaster. His lip was swollen.

‘What happened to your mouth?’ she said, lifting her finger and running it along the swollen part.

‘Punched.’

She winced and pictured Mikey and Lev Baranski marching Joshua along Hampstead Heath the same way they’d taken her from the front of the hospital, into the dark so that they could do what they wanted with him. She was filled with guilt. How could she have wished she’d not known about this?

She lowered her face and kissed his bruised lip. He stared at her.

‘We’ll sort this out,’ she said.

He put his arm around her and held her tight.

The taxi sped through the empty streets towards Belsize Park.

THIRTEEN

Joshua slept late. Rose went up to the attic periodically but each time he was still in the same position, the duvet at a slant, a corner of it touching the carpet. She stood and looked for a moment. His chest was rising and falling, his face slumped on the pillow, his bandages bright and startling against the bedding. It gave her a twinge of nausea to think of what he had been through at the hands of Mikey. She touched her chin. Her cut had dried up quickly. Still it had shaken her. The flick of a knife had given this man power to maim her. It made her angry as well, her fists clenching at the memory.

It was gone twelve when Joshua finally woke. Rose heard him moving about and she dashed up the stairs and found him sitting on the side of the bed. He was taking some tablets, one hand holding his ear where the dressings were.

‘I feel like someone hit me on the side of the head with a hammer,’ he said huskily.

‘Shall I get you some tea and toast?’

‘Just tea,’ he said. ‘I don’t feel much like eating. I’ll probably lie down again.’

‘OK.’

She brought the tea and then left him alone. She went down to her study and tried to get on with some work. From time to time she paused by the stairwell and listened then at just after five she heard the upstairs shower going. She waited and then crept up and knocked before opening the door very slightly.

‘Are you OK?’ she called.

‘Come in.’

He was dressed, sitting on the side of the bed, his head in his hands.

‘How are you feeling?’

‘A bit dopey. Painkillers,’ he said, pointing to a strip of tablets on the bedside cabinet. ‘Those are strong.’

She sat on the bed beside him. She put her arm round his shoulder. He lifted his hand and placed it on hers.

‘Will you come downstairs? Eat something?’

‘Yeah. I’d best have something.’

She stood up and pulled him to his feet. He turned towards her and seemed to flinch for a moment, raising his hand to cover his injured ear. She made a sympathetic face and they went downstairs.

Anna was shocked.

‘Good Lord, that looks dreadful!’ she said.

Her grandmother was getting ready to go out. She had tickets for a concert, Rose knew. She had on a woollen suit and very high heels. She was holding some cream leather gloves.

Rose retold the story about the bike accident. It rolled out easily and she added a few details about a car being involved and Joshua being taken to hospital in an ambulance.

‘What’s happened to the bike?’

Rose looked at Joshua.

‘It’s written off, I’m afraid.’

‘You’re insured?’

‘I think so.’

Anna nodded. ‘Stay here for a few days. Until you’re well.’

‘No, I’ll be fine.’

‘I insist. Just till you’re feeling better. Persuade him, Rose.’

Anna left them in the kitchen.

‘You should stay.’

‘Why? Baranski can find me here as well. He must know where you live. He’s not an idiot.’

‘Camden is so busy all the time it’s hard to see if anyone is watching you. Here it’s quiet. All the houses have good security and there are alarms. People would notice someone hanging round.’

Joshua didn’t answer but she sensed he understood her point.

‘I’d have to bring a few things. My laptop, files and stuff.’

‘Sure. The room’s private. Anna never goes up there.’

He nodded.

‘We could go now. Get a cab. Drive the Mini back.’

Joshua shook his head.

‘No, the Mini stays where it is.’

He said it sharply. She felt chastised as if she’d been insensitive. Of course he wouldn’t be able to drive. The injury to his head may have affected his confidence or his balance and then there were the painkillers that were making him drowsy.

‘OK. Why don’t we go now?’

Anna insisted on giving them a lift to Camden on her way to the Royal Festival Hall. The car smelled of polish and as they drove there was classical music playing. Anna drove slowly and carefully, leaning forward, both hands gripping the wheel. Eventually she pulled up outside Lettuce and Stuff, just beyond a double red line.

A car tooted angrily from behind.

‘Have a good evening,’ Rose called, shutting the door.

Lights were on inside the flat. Joshua saw her looking up to the windows.

‘Baranski grabbed me as I answered the door. They slammed it behind me. I didn’t have my phone or keys or anything. The lights, the TV, my computer, it’s all on up there. My beer bottle is sitting on the desk untouched. Wait here. I’ll get my spare key from the cafe.’

He went into the cafe and came back out moments later. When he opened the front door Rose could hear the television from upstairs. She followed him up.

‘Luckily I wasn’t running a bath,’ he said.

She went into the kitchen.

‘Just going to pack a few things,’ he said, heading off.

There were some dishes waiting to be washed and a jumper hanging over the back of a chair. The table had books and folders on it. Rose picked up one of them. It was a big battered paperback book,
A History of Engineering and Technology: Artful Methods.
It had several Post-its stuck to pages and a ruler lying through the middle of it like a bookmark. The kitchen still looked bare. The absence of Skeggsie’s things meant there were gaps everywhere.

‘Want me to pack up your college stuff?’ she called.

Joshua said something but he was in the next room and she couldn’t quite hear him. She went after him.

‘I said do you want me to pack . . .’

On the bed was a holdall that he’d been throwing things into.

‘No college stuff. College is on the back burner for the moment. I’ve got other things to think about.’

He had a large brown padded envelope in his hands. On the outside was written
Private and Confidential. Joshua Johnson.
It was the envelope that held the remainder of Frank Richards’ notebooks. It was the last thing they’d talked about before he sent her the email to say that he wanted a break from her.

He saw her looking at it.

‘Rosie, I need to tell you a few things. Maybe explain why I think Baranski came round to see me when he did. There’s some stuff I didn’t tell you about.’

Rose sat on the very corner of Joshua’s bed. Her legs were tightly together and she crossed her arms.

‘I know where Dad and Kathy are.’

She didn’t respond. The words seemed to fall around her. The same old story – we know where they are, no we don’t, yes we do.

‘I’ve been researching Macon Parker. He was the name on the empty notebook?’

‘I know. You told me before that he was a doctor and lived in Essex near Wickby.’

‘Macon Parker is forty-eight, born in Denver, came to this country in 2001 to work in University College Hospital in London. Worked on the Renal Unit and then worked for a while as part of a kidney transplant team. He did various placements and ended up at St Thomas’s in Westminster in 2006. He got a job there as a senior registrar and then a year or so later he went into private practice. Now he’s a businessman with interests in private health companies. He has a house in the US and France and he also owns a house in a small village called Two Oaks.’

Joshua paused but Rose didn’t say anything.

‘He has a company website, Quality Lifestyles. It’s an umbrella heading for a whole range of small companies to do with health. Anyway, that’s where his legal income comes from. But I also found this article. It’s from a Sunday newspaper supplement, just over three years ago. It’s about the harvesting of organs.’

‘What?’

‘It says that there is a flourishing trade in organs. People from Third World countries travel to Britain on some kind of student visa and while they’re here they sell an organ. They’ve been promised twenty thousand pounds for a kidney. Twenty thousand pounds is a fortune for these people – it’s like winning the lottery. They come here, undergo an operation and then they get a few hundred pounds for their trouble. The rest of the money goes towards their travel, visa arrangements, medical care and so on. They go home with a few hundred pounds and only one kidney. And that’s not the worst.’

‘What?’

Joshua shrugged. ‘Some of them don’t go back at all because they don’t just donate one kidney, they donate both, plus liver, plus anything else that’s needed. Look at this.’

He handed her a printout. It was a section from the Sunday supplement article. It showed what looked like a family photo of a teenage girl. She was standing beside someone but that person’s face was pixelated. The article was adjacent to the picture.

Polina Bokun, nineteen years old, from Belarus. The hairdressing student came to London on a student visa in 2002. She disappeared from her lodgings four weeks after her arrival. Months later her body was found in the Thames Estuary near Shoeburyness. A post-mortem showed that both kidneys and liver had been removed.

‘This is horrible.’

‘The article mentions Macon Parker by name. It says that one of his companies was involved in the visa scams and in organising travel and accommodation for these people. It hints that the British police were looking into his affairs.’