Without hurrying, Jack went to the designated closet and wheeled out one of the chairs. It had a waffle-weave blanket folded on its seat, which he left in place. He took the chair to the elevators and brought it down to the basement. Once there, he wheeled it into the cooler with the two bodies and left it.

Returning to the front door of the hospital on the lobby level, Jack walked out into the parking area, climbed into the van that the Amal Palace Hotel concierge had arranged, and drove it around the back of the hospital and down the ramp. He parked it next to the hospital’s food-service vehicle with its rear butting up against the freight dock.

When he entered the hospital from the loading dock, he again smiled and said hello to the elderly guard. Jack was confident they were even better friends now. The guard’s toothless smile was even broader.

As he walked down the hall to the elevator, which was going to take him to the lobby so that he could get directions to Dr. Ram’s office, he took out his mobile phone and the piece of paper with Neil McCulgan’s number and dialed it.

“I hope I’m not waking you guys,” Jack said once Neil had answered.

“Not at all,” Neil said. “I’m in the gym riding the stationary bike. I’m supposed to meet up with Jennifer at nine.”

“You asked if you could help last night.”

“Absolutely,” Neil said. “What do you need?”

“I imagine they’ve already given Jennifer her grandmother’s belongings. What I need is a set of her clothes. Could you ask Jennifer for them and then run them over here to the Queen Victoria Hospital? Laurie and I will be in seeing Dr. Arun Ram. I don’t know where his office is, or I would tell you.”

“Clothes? What do you want clothes for?”

“She needs them, not me. She’s being discharged in an hour or so.”

When Veena had left the bungalow for work that day, Cal had given her specific instructions to artfully find out at some point what had transpired with Maria Hernandez’s body. He’d asked her to do this even though last evening he’d specifically told her, Samira, and Raj not to call attention to themselves in regard to their victims’ remains. But with the American forensic pathologists coming, he knew that it was going to be the critical day.

As he laced up his jogging shoes in preparation for a run, his mind was busy mulling over what Veena might tell him that evening. He hoped and was reasonably confident that the day’s events would be the end of the problem. He wanted to hear that the body was cremated or at the very least embalmed.