‘Then I need to know all that you know,’ said Shaw. Twine stood with his back to the ship’s hull, looking at Neil Judd, the carbine held level. Beyond the plastic doors, even against the background noise of the generators and coolers, Shaw could just hear the occasional top-of-the-spectrum clash of surgical instruments, like cutlery in a busy restaurant.
‘I helped load the Rosa many times,’ said Neil Judd. ‘Once, we did it in record time, so they said to come aboard to the mess. We drank, ate their food, talked about our different lives. One of the Filipinos was into martial arts, and they had this gym set up on the pontoon deck. So I worked out – showed him what I could do. I knew they wanted something – something back. But I thought I’d wait and see what it was, ’cos I’m not stupid.’
He adjusted the hearing aid in his left ear. ‘And they had girls too…’ The smile disfigured his face with the effort of trying to look weary of such vices. ‘Then one night they said there was a man living in the church hostel
Sweat seemed to suddenly spring from Judd’s young face, like jewels, so with one fluid movement he took off his T-shirt, then used it to towel his narrow chest and tattooed arm.
‘Two hundred quid a time, they paid me. Like I said, I didn’t need it. I’m OK. But Dad was getting worse, and even if he didn’t say as much, we knew he was dying. And that was crazy because they could help him if he’d just stop the booze. It was like Mum said it was going to be – that I was to watch out for – that he’d just self-destruct. It was what was on the inside that would get him. I promised her that wouldn’t happen. She said I was the man now, that it was down to me.’
Inside the operating theatre they could hear a suction pipe sucking liquid from an incision.
‘The mark,’ said Shaw. ‘The mark they left on the men – the candle?’ Judd’s eyes widened with the realization that this man knew more about his life than he thought was possible. Shaw saw an image then of Patigno’s Miracle at Cana on the wall of the Sacred Heart. The memento mori on the velvet drape – but in this version, unlike the original, the candle had been omitted.
‘Tell her,’ said Neil Judd. ‘Tell her it’s all over – but she can finish.’ The man looked at the carbine, the open hatch door.
‘Rey?’ said a voice within.
He retreated without a word.
Three uniformed officers came through the door to the hatch, all armed. Twine briefed them. They all waited, awkward, like nightclub bouncers.
Shaw squatted down in the dust, trying to see into Neil Judd’s unfocused eyes. ‘So you were the Organ Grinder?’
‘I didn’t know I had a name,’ he said. ‘But I knew they were afraid of me; the story was out there, like a legend. It helped, the fear, because it meant hardly anyone dared to say no. Before I did the work for them they had others. Sometimes they bungled the job – so the news had got out, but only whispered. When the ship came in I could…’ He rubbed his fingers together. ‘Feel the fear.’ The excitement made the biceps in his tattooed arm twitch.
‘But this time – the last time?’
‘They didn’t need me every time,’ he said. ‘I didn’t ask why. I saw the captain and we had some food, booze, but they didn’t want a donor. They had other sources – that’s what he always said. Then, that Sunday, the power went.’ He laughed bitterly, and again Shaw was struck that it wasn’t a genuine emotion, but a mimicked version, like a child copying an adult. ‘All because Dad wanted to keep his little vendetta going – because he thought it proved to
‘They had a client on board the Rosa – everything ready to go. They’d got a kidney out, ready. But once the juice went the temperature soared – the fridges too. It was chaos. That’s when Rey called. I had to find a donor. Really quickly. And that’s when I saw my chance. So I said I wouldn’t do it, that it was too dangerous, ’cos normally I had time to watch them, time to see if there was a routine that I could cut into. I said that, if they were really desperate I’d do it, provided they gave Dad the op. For free. We made the deal – right there on the mobile. Then they said they’d found me someone at the hostel, that he was called Blanket, and they’d marked up his coat.’
‘And you didn’t know who Blanket really was, did you?’
Judd ducked his head and threw up, a thin trickle of bile, his body convulsing in rhythmic waves like a cat being sick.
He started telling the truth before the rhythm had ceased, so that what he said came in broken phrases. ‘I threw the money at him… got him…’ He looked up suddenly and Shaw saw tears spilling out of his eyes. ‘Got my brother, by the scruff of the neck.’ He wiped a hand across his mouth. ‘I think he knew it was me, but I didn’t recognize him, or the voice. I was a toddler when he left home, so he’s a stranger – was a stranger. I hardly had a memory of him. I just thought – I have to do this. So I hit him.’
They both looked to the perspex door, as if the lost brother might walk out, large as life.
‘Down the alley, through the yard. Then there was a second problem. They got the engineer back on board but he was pissed-up, so they put the generator back arse about face and when the juice ran it blew the fridges – nearly all of them – so most of the stored stuff – tissue, tendons – it was all useless. They said they knew where Bry worked. That it was ideal, that I had to get him to do this, to put all the waste through the furnace, because they needed to clean out the fridges and it was too dangerous to drop that much at sea. So I said I’d go up and ask him, and I took the waste from the op they’d had to abandon – the kidney, the rest – I took that with me, to show him how easy it was, and because they wanted to clean up the theatre when the lights came back on. It was all in a Tesco bag, wrapped, sealed…’
He looked at Shaw for the first time, as if that one domestic detail had brought back the horror of what he’d done. ‘I went home ’cos I’d got his…’ He stopped, his throat filling with fluid. ‘Sean’s… blood, on my shirt. The lights were out so the street was chaos. One of Dad’s overalls was left hanging on the stairs where Ally leaves them, so I took those. Then I ran – up to the hospital.
‘I knew the layout up there from when I was a kid and I’d go up in the holidays – take Bry’s lunch up. And I knew he went out on the ledge for a smoke. So that’s where we talked. I was waiting for him. I told him how easy it was. Then we went inside ’cos I was going to show him. I picked another bag which was nearly empty, ripped the plastic, and stuffed my bag in.’
‘But he didn’t want to do it, did he?’ said Shaw.
‘What did you stab him with?’
He used both hands to roll up one of the legs of his jeans. A screwdriver was taped to his calf muscle, the head sharpened to a murderous point, like a snapshot from Taxi Driver. ‘The lights went out – a power cut – and he lunged for me in the dark. I threw him back, and I heard him crash into the metal instrument panel.’ He touched the back of his skull. ‘I knew he was dead – that he’d die – right then, because when the emergency lighting came on I could see him pinned to the metal, his arms jerking. He was gonna scream. I couldn’t let that happen. So I walked forward and put the screwdriver in his chest, just once, so he’d be quiet.’
Shaw let him have the euphemism unchallenged.
‘Why’s the skipper dead?’ he said.