‘Advice and clients. You were lining up clients for Mr Tan and taking a cut of the proceeds. You were working on commission. How much did he give you for each kidney he managed to sell? There was five thousand pounds in the envelope. That must have been very expensive consultancy work.’

Monty Loveday spoke without looking at his interrogator, ‘We really have nothing more to say. We admit we met Mr Tan and we’ve told you why–he wasn’t a well man and we were offering him medical advice. We can’t know the business of everyone we deal with. Lots of people from the world of big business require confidentiality, and that’s what we give them. Admittedly we should have been more careful about the way in which we were paid, but I really can’t believe that you put us through all this just because we were avoiding VAT.’

Gary looked at Sarah. ‘Cool customers aren’t they? Bloody cool.’

‘Is he right?’ asked Sarah. ‘Have they really got no more to go on?’

‘No. We didn’t tape the conversation so we can’t get them on that. We couldn’t get anyone in close enough.’

‘So are we stuffed?’

‘Looks like it,’ said Gary. ‘We might have put the wind up them because we’re on to them, but they’re not going to crack.’ Then his mood changed. ‘Hang on a minute.’ He left the room. Sarah wondered where he had gone. She half expected him to appear in the interview-room to see if he could do any better. Instead, a few minutes later, another figure came through the interview-room door. It was a woman with a tray containing the possessions of the two men. She whispered to one of the agents who then put it down on the table.

‘You can have these back now,’ he said.

The relief on the faces of Cummings and Loveday was plain to see. There was nothing to incriminate them. They were about to be released. Each leaned forward and scooped up their respective belongings, putting them into their jacket pockets and standing up in readiness to leave.

Sarah heard the door open behind her. Gary came in, carrying his mobile phone and a visiting card.

‘What are you doing? Gary this is hardly the time to be making personal calls. And they seem to be letting them go. What can we do?’

Gary held up the visiting card. ‘Mr Tan gave me this. This was to be my–Dr Wilson’s–contact whenever he needed body parts.’

The card had nothing on it except a mobile telephone number. Gary punched in the numbers. Through the loudspeaker they could hear the ringing of another mobile phone, and through the glass they saw Randall Cummings put his hand into his jacket pocket.

Tiger was sitting in his chair by the window, and Gary was looking out over the cathedral close.