to pay,’ Jean-Paul said.
‘But the chance of having all the recipients ready at the same time – at best within a day and a half of one another. That seems …’ Callanach stared grimly into the half-empty abdominal cavity, ‘well, difficult, given that we’re talking about an off-the-grid transplant.’
‘You don’t understand how professionally these operations are set up,’ Jean-Paul told him. ‘They run fully staffed clinics that look completely above board. Take the donor, have patients ready. It’s last chance for most of them. They’re too far down the waiting list to have a realistic shot at getting a donor through normal channels, or they don’t fit the right model because of lifestyle or genetics. Those people, if they have the money, will try literally anything. The more desperate the patient, the fewer questions they ask. Most have some idea there’s criminality involved, but if it’s that or death, then the thought of prison isn’t so daunting.’
‘If it’s that well-financed and professional they should have been able to find a better method of disposing of the body than dumping this boy on the street,’ Callanach said.
‘Not on the street. In a building site. Perhaps they were planning for him to be concreted in, then got disturbed.’ Jean-Paul stripped off his gloves as he stepped away from the body. ‘These people get other people to do the dirty work. Hired thugs. They were probably paid to dispose of the body securely but got lazy or thought they were being observed and just ditched him the first chance they had.’
‘That doesn’t explain what a twenty year old from Scotland is doing here. It would have been quicker and less risky to have abducted someone locally,’ Callanach said.
‘Maybe he was a good match for one particular donor and they decided to harvest everything else that was usable to justify bringing him over,’ the pathologist suggested. ‘You should have your Scottish colleagues gather all his medical and personal information. Anything that might have made him a target.’
‘Of course,’ Callanach agreed, knowing that meant having to contact DCI Ava Turner. Wanting to and wishing he didn’t have to at the same time. He and Ava had been dancing around the edges of a relationship for a couple of years. Just when it had finally seemed about to start, he’d screwed up and Ava had lost faith in him. Since then they’d barely spoken. Now, a phone call was inevitable. An international abduction and a death under these circumstances meant she would want to visit the victim’s family personally.
‘You coming?’ Jean-Paul asked from the doorway.
Callanach hadn’t even noticed him moving across the room. ‘Sure,’ he said, taking one last look at Malcolm Reilly’s incomplete face and catching an odour on the waft of air-conditioning. ‘Can you smell that?’ he asked the pathologist.
The two of them bent over the body, breathing deeply. The top notes were all gassy – sulphur and rot – with the metallic twang of old blood, but then came something earthier, nutty with a hint of spice.
‘All I’m getting above the normal odours is latex, and we don’t use that in our gloves,’ the pathologist said. ‘I agree, there’s something unusual.’
Callanach started to sniff around Malcolm’s face, moving around to the crown of his hair, putting his nose as close to the hair as he dared without risking contamination. ‘It’s strongest here,’ he said.
The pathologist took his place and breathed in deeply. ‘I’m not sure what that is. I’ll swab the hairs again to see if we can trace any chemicals.’
‘Can you keep the body sealed in an air-tight container so we don’t lose the smell and we’ll arrange for an aromachologist to come in and see what they pick up?’ Callanach asked.
‘No problem. That was a good call. I’m very careful about using my sense of smell during postmortems but I missed that one. Can you have the expert here within the next twenty-four hours? The scent will begin to fade if we leave it longer than that.’
Callanach looked to Jean-Paul for confirmation. Interpol wasn’t his to make demands of any more. Everything he needed had to be assessed and confirmed by someone else. Jean-Paul nodded, then looked at his watch.
‘We should go,’ Jean-Paul said.
Callanach said goodbye to the pathologist and followed Jean-Paul to the car, trailing a few paces behind the man who had once been his closest friend, in and out of work, who had travelled with him, got drunk and partied with him, and who had unintentionally set him up on a date with a woman who later falsely accused him of rape. His reputation in tatters and his career at Interpol crushed – notwithstanding the fact that the case had never gone to trial – Callanach had left France and made a new start in his father’s home country, Scotland. Jean-Paul had disappeared from his life when Callanach had needed him most, ensuring the stain of potential guilt hadn’t rubbed off on him by association. Since he’d left France, they’d spoken only once about a case, managing polite professionalism but nothing more, the gulf between them unbridged.
‘Still top of your game then, Luc,’ Jean-Paul muttered as he climbed into the driver’s seat of his old Maserati – handed down from his father, as Callanach recalled. Jean-Paul had always found it an excellent way to attract women’s attention. A certain type of woman, anyway. It wasn’t a judgement. In his twenties, Callanach had regarded almost every part of his life as disposable. Women had shifted in and out of his life like a tide. These days the opposite was true. Every decision he made was measured and careful, and he was an expert on consequences.
‘Just luck,’ Callanach replied, pulling a Gauloises cigarette from the pouch in his pocket and dragging on it, unlit, tasting bonfires and sunsets, and a thousand different red wines. He didn’t bother lighting it. Smoking, like so many other pleasures, was one he had to forego these days. His move from France to Scotland had prompted a number of changes. Giving up smoking was the most public one. Away from work, he drank less wine and spent more time at the gym. But the real change since the rape allegation was post-traumatic impotence. That one was proving much harder to come to terms with.
‘It was never luck with you,’ Jean-Paul said, pulling away roughly from the kerb. ‘You were always in the right place at the right time. You always overheard exactly the phrase we needed for all the pieces to fall into place. I often wondered if moving to Scotland had changed you. Apparently not.’
Callanach stared at his former friend’s face as he drove. His chin had slackened and there was grey showing prematurely in his muddy blond hair. Jean-Paul had aged considerably since they’d last seen one another, his mid-thirties proving unkind.
‘Let’s not do this,’ Callanach said.
‘Do what?’ Jean-Paul laughed. ‘Be honest with each other? Be real? You’ve barely said a word to me since you came back to Interpol. Are we supposed to act like we don’t know one another – all polite bullshit and small talk? Screw that.’
‘What is it you’re angry about, Jean-Paul?’ Callanach asked, winding down the window and letting the weak sun warm his arm.
Jean-Paul laughed, but his face was all bitter after-taste. ‘You think I’m angry? Jesus, Luc, are you ever going to forgive me for what happened? Astrid Borde is dead. You watched her die. I know you went through some bad shit, but the woman who accused you of rape is gone. It’s time to move on.’
‘I have,’ Callanach said quietly.
‘Like fuck you have. You know what? I messed up. I didn’t know what to do when Astrid accused you, but I’ve said sorry. Do you think I haven’t spent the last couple of years regretting what happened?’
‘Jean-Paul, Astrid Borde played me, and you, even my mother. She was smart, devious, and the evidence she set me up with was overwhelming. Was I angry that you seemed to dump me? Damned right I was, for a long time too. But hindsight’s no bad thing. If a woman you’d been out on a date with turned up with bruises, scratches, internal injuries for fuck’s sake, and you’d lied about what had happened on your date, I’d have done exactly what you did. It’s