Coffin Dodgers (11 page)

I don't, of course. I wait for her to come back to Earth. Eventually, she does.

"Okay," Amy says. "It's safe to say Burke isn't going to do anything, and if he won't help us then we've no chance of the police helping us. So we're on our own. But there's still stuff we can do."

"We've still got the bug coming," I tell her.

"Any sign of it?"

"Site said this week. If it doesn't turn up by tomorrow I'll chase it."

"Okay. So we've got that, and we know that someone called Sansom is involved, somehow."

"Dave was looking into that," I say.

"Anything?"

"I don't think so. He'd have said."

"Maybe he's looking in the wrong place," Amy says. "I'll see if I can think of other ways to track him down. Oh, and Matt?"

"Yes?"

"Thanks for the cake." Amy grins and devours it in a single bite.

I wave goodbye and wait until Amy's out of sight before trudging up the stairs to my apartment. I open the door and find a "sorry, you were out" card on the door mat. I grab it, turn around and walk to the sorting office. After the usual rigmarole -- pressing the buzzer and waiting while the staff play cards, smash frogs with hammers, summon minor demons from the outer circle of Hell or whatever it is they do when you're waiting; showing my ID and then waiting another eternity for a bored clerk to locate the package and slam it down on the counter with enough force to turn a house brick into confetti -- I'm walking home with a box under my arm. Assuming it hasn't been destroyed by the sorting office staff, we have our bug.

Back in my apartment I open the box. Miraculously the contents seem to have survived. I skim the instructions, but they might as well be in Greek for all the sense they make to me. Not to worry. Dave will suss it out.

"Want to know how it works?" Dave asks.

"Not really."

"I'm going to tell you anyway."

"Do you have to?"

The bug is in two parts, one big and one small. This much I understand. Dave waves the smaller of the two at me. "This is the actual bug," he says. "It's voice activated, so it'll only broadcast when there's something happening."

He puts it down and grabs the larger part. "This is the receiver," he says. "It picks up the broadcast from the mic and records it. But the really cool thing is that it connects to the net. As long as it's near a wireless network, you can access it from anywhere that you can get online. So we'll hook it up to the casino network."

"Doesn't that have security stuff on it? Passwords, stuff like that?"

"No, not the internal network -- that's like Fort Knox. I mean the public one, the one that the guests get to use."

"Doesn't that have passwords too?"

"It does. If only we knew someone who worked in security."

"I swear to God, Dave, there are times when I could happily hit you with a shovel, bury you in a ditch and do a happy dance."

"Yeah, but you'd regret it the following morning," he says.

"You're right. I'd probably pull a muscle from dancing so much."

Dave blows me a kiss. "I'll put this in tomorrow."

"Think it'll work?"

"I think the bug will work," he says. "Whether we'll get anything from it?" Dave shrugs. "Who knows? But it's worth a try."

Suddenly Dave goes rigid. "Did you hear that?"

"Hear what?"

"That noise."

"What noise?"

"It sounded like a voice."

"Really?"

"I've heard it before."

"What is it?"

"It's the beer in your fridge! It's trapped! It wants me to save it!"

I give him the finger.

"Want one?" he says.

"Of course I do. And when I've finished it, I'm going to use the bottle to beat you to death."

"Good plan," Dave says. "Amy coming over?"

"Not tonight. Late shift."

Dave grimaces. Of all the shifts we work, the late shift is the worst. It doesn't finish until two a.m., by which point the customers are drunk. Or angry. Or both. It's bad enough for me on the bar, but it's even worse for the waitresses.

"Seeing her tomorrow?"

"Yeah."

Dave gives me a serious look. "You really need to do something, you know."

"About what?"

Dave isn't fooled. "You know what. If you won't do it for yourself, do it for me."

"I don't follow you."

"Matt, you're a pain in the arse with all of this. When she's not around you spend your whole time moping. And you're getting worse."

"This just isn't the right time."

"How long have you been saying that? Three years? Four?"

"Maybe." It's probably longer. A lot longer.

"It's never the right time," Dave says. "You've always got some reason why right now isn't a good time. You're going to end up in a home somewhere, your teeth in a glass, a hundred years old, telling me that you don't want to move too fast."

"It's complicated."

"It's only complicated because you make it complicated," he says. "You like her. She likes you. What's complicated about that?"

I just stare. Dave isn't usually this direct.

"For God's sake, Matt. For a smart guy you're really thick sometimes."

We drink a few more beers and talk about other things, but the night never really recovers.

CHAPTER NINE

It's 6.53am and somebody is buzzing my apartment. I stumble out of the bedroom, stubbing my toe on a rogue shoe, and mumble into the intercom. Amy's face fills the screen.

"It's me. I need to talk to you."

If Amy hasn't won the lottery, invented a cure for cancer, found the Holy Grail in the glovebox of the Dentmobile or decided to rip off her clothes and ravish me, we're going to have words.

Amy is barely through the front door before she's talking, her eyes like saucers and her arms waving. "I know what they're doing!"
 

I zombie-walk to the coffee machine and pour two mugs. I drain mine and refill it before taking the mugs over to Amy. She's sitting on the very edge of the sofa, looking very much like a coiled spring.

"Matt, I know what they're doing. I know why they're killing people."

"Couldn't this have waited a few hours?"

Amy ignores me. "It's about organs. It's the only explanation that makes sense."

"It's about what?"

"Organs. They're doing it for organs. Think about it."

"Think? Think o'clock is later. Right now, I should be in bed."

"Seriously, Matt. All that stuff about needing two people, the way the pairs were all the same gender, the same race, the same age, it all makes sense. If they just have one, it might not work. The second one's a backup."

"Backup?"

"In case there's a problem with the first one -- they might not get to them in time, or the organs they need are damaged, or there's some kind of rejection. Something like that."

"Someone tried to kill me because they want my kidneys?"

"No, not exactly."

"You just said it was all about organs."

"Yeah, I think it is. But I don't think the people who want whatever bits are doing the dirty work themselves. I think this is a business. Somebody's taking orders."

"Great. I'm a takeaway."

"Pretty much. The conversation you heard, they talked about getting names from somebody called Sansom. I think whoever he is, he's helping them find the donors. But somebody else is finding the clients and arranging the accidents, and they're doing it for a lot of money."

"Sleazy Bob?"

"Maybe. I don't know."

"Wouldn't he be better off skimming the casino? That'd be a lot easier."

"That would bring in, what? A few thousand? That's pocket money compared to this. Remember the fuss a couple of years ago when they made organ donations opt-out rather than opt-in?"
 

I shake my head.

"Really? It was all over the news."

"Nope."

"You're useless."
 

"So what was all the fuss about?"

"Too many patients, not enough donors. The way it used to work, as I'm sure you know --" Amy arches an eyebrow -- "is that hospitals wouldn't be able to use people's organs if they weren't registered donors. Problem was, hardly anybody registered. So they changed it."

"To opt-out?"

"Yeah. If you're on your last legs and you haven't registered to say that you don't want to be a donor, they're slicing and dicing before you're even cold."

"You've lost me. If they've changed the rules, why do you think that's what Sleazy Bob's doing?"

"Changing the rules wouldn't make that much difference. As long as you've got more old people than young people you're going to have loads of people needing organs and not getting them. If I'm right, and I'm sure I am -- I know I am -- then finding a way around that is going to involve serious, serious money. The sort of money that makes IVF look cheap."

Amy's up and pacing around. "You've seen the money the IVF guys make," she says. I have. Of all the casino customers, they're the ones with the most cash. Insufferable arses the lot of them, of course, but without them my tips would be a lot lighter. "This is the same, times a hundred. Desperate old people with loads of money chasing something only a few young people can provide, so the price goes into orbit. The difference is, with IVF people will sell what they've got, because they'll still be around to spend the money. You can't really do that with a heart, or a liver, or stuff like that. So anyone who can provide those things can name their price."

Amy's in full flight now. "You're old, and you're rich, and you're dying because some important bit or other has worn out. Meanwhile, somebody's walking around with just the thing you need. What are you going to do? Do you hang around, praying and crossing your fingers, hoping that the right person has a really nasty accident before it's too late and that it's your number the hospital calls? Or do you use some of your money to speed things up?"

"It's like a website. Pay extra for guaranteed delivery by whenever."

"Yep," Amy says. "Pretty much the same thing, but instead of 1-Click it's 1-Kill."

By the fourth cup of coffee the caffeine is finally working its magic. For the next ten minutes I try to find a flaw in Amy's argument, but she's ahead of me every time. If there's another explanation, neither of us can even imagine what it might be.

"Okay," I say. "We know why it's happening. What we don't know is who's doing it. We know Sleazy Bob's involved, and we know somebody called Sansom is giving them names. But there are at least two other people, the ones Dave and I overheard at the golf course."

"Can you remember anything else about them? An accent, maybe? Anything that'd help us work out who they are?"

"No, I don't think so. But one of them was definitely the brains, the one in charge, because the other two seemed to be intimidated by him. The other guy sounded like he was muscle, or maybe the guy who organises the muscle. Maybe the bug will help us work out who they are."

"Maybe. But I don't think we should just sit on our hands and wait either. We need to try and find out who Sansom is."

"Dave's on it. I'll ask him when I see him tonight."

We talk some more, but we're both tired and we're both working tonight. Amy leaves and I go back to bed, but I'm too full of coffee to sleep.

"I wish Amy had come up with this a few days ago. It would have saved me a lot of hassle." Dave looks tired, but compared to me he's bright eyed and bushy tailed. We're sitting in the security office, drinking coffee.

"There are five Sansoms in the customer files," Dave says. Customer files are massive. To become a member you need to provide all kinds of information, and if you want to run a tab you need to provide even more. The casino knows things about people that even their nearest and dearest don't know.

"Five?" I ask. "I didn't think Sansom was a common name."

"It is round here. But I think of the five, there's only one we really need to think about. Andrew Sansom. File says he's a hospital administrator."

"Which hospital?"

"Mercy."

Mercy Hospital is on the edge of town, and it's the place everybody goes to. When I was a kid I was there all the time. Sprained ankles, broken arms, foreign objects stuck in nostrils, the usual kid stuff. And more recently, Mercy was where I ended up after the car crash.

"If you need somebody to find possible donors, you can't do much better than a hospital administrator," Dave says.

"Sansom's going through people's medical records to find matches."

"If Amy's right, then I think so."

"Isn't that a pretty good job, though?"

"Yep. Why?"

"I'm trying to work out why he'd be involved. If he's just finding names, he's not going to be getting an equal share of any money, is he? The guys we overheard didn't make him sound like an equal partner, so the money he's getting can't be that much." I drain my coffee. "Why would he risk losing a good job?"

"I think I can answer that one," Dave says. He slides his notepad towards me and flicks it into life. "Have a look at this."

It's a statement with some serious numbers on it. Andrew Sansom owes the casino money. A lot of money. Think your credit card bill is scary? Double it, then triple it, then add a couple of zeroes to the end.

I'm halfway through my shift before Amy comes over, but there are too many customers for us to talk. We arrange to meet at my place after the shift ends. I'm so tired I'll probably fall asleep mid-sentence, but I know it's not a conversation that can wait until morning.
 

I wasn't sure how Amy would react to Dave's discovery. Outraged, maybe, or furious at the thought of Sansom merrily signing people's death warrants. I didn't expect delighted.

"This is brilliant." Amy beams at us. "Absolutely brilliant."

"Amy, we've hardly cracked the case," I say.

"I know that," Amy says, not letting me tarnish her mood. "But we've got something important. It's like a loose thread. If we yank it hard enough, the whole thing's going to unravel."

"Amy, did you just compare a whole bunch of murders to an old jumper?"

"You know what I mean. When you had your crash, we thought there was something weird going on -- but we didn't have a clue what was happening, or any idea of what we should be looking for. Now, we know exactly what's going on and we know how people are being targeted. That's big. That's really big."