24

THE END OF THE LINE

The bathroom in the hostel was going to be occupied for quite some time. Li was having the longest shower of her life.

Amber, Hex and Paulo sat in the bedroom discussing what she had told them.

‘That cool box had eyes in it?’ said Amber.

‘And Li saw Chopra with another lot of money,’ said Paulo. ‘So he’s selling the eyes of random bodies who turn up at the morgue.’

‘Why would anyone sell eyes?’ said Amber.

‘Why would anyone buy eyes?’ said Hex. He was already tapping on his keyboard. ‘There’s only one way to find out – Aha. Transplants. And there’s a huge shortage of donor eyes.’

Amber nearly gagged. ‘They transplant whole eyes?’

‘No,’ said Hex. ‘Just the cornea: the transparent flesh at the front. It covers the iris and the pupil. If it gets diseased you go blind. A cornea transplant literally opens the curtains again.’

Paulo was also finding the idea hard going. ‘But eyes from dead bodies? Bodies that have been in the water all night, or found in the street? Don’t donors have to at least be – er – fresh?’

Hex was reading from a website. ‘Harvesting an eye . . . blah blah blah . . . must be done within six hours of death. It can be done anywhere with simple instruments.’ He looked up. ‘So you don’t need an operating theatre. Just whip the eye out.’

Amber winced. ‘Yes, thank you, Hex, we get the picture.’

Hex noticed her discomfort. ‘Get a spoon. Ping. Out it comes like a billiard ball.’

‘Yes, thank you, Hex,’ said Amber, more fiercely.

Hex continued to paraphrase the website. ‘They can be stored in special eye banks. When a donor cornea is needed, it is carefully removed from the eye’ – he glanced at Amber – ‘with something like a potato peeler – and transported to—’

‘Stop, stop, stop!!’ She buried her face in her hands and shook her head.

Hex grinned at her and prepared to play his trump card, a gruesome picture on the website. But then his phone bleeped with a message. He looked at the screen. ‘It’s Alex . . . he’s on a train.’

‘A train?’ said Paulo. ‘Going where?’

‘He doesn’t say – must still be following the courier.’

‘How’s Alex getting lost going to help us find Bina?’ asked Amber.

‘Think about it,’ said Hex. ‘It’s part of the black market in organs, right? There’s Trilok, who sells kidneys, and there’s Chopra, who sells eyes. Chopra helps Trilok keep out of trouble. Now suppose Chopra is helping him hide Bina? Where would be a nice, secure, out-of-the-way place? A nice, secure medical establishment. Which is no doubt where the courier is headed.’

Li came in, combing her fingers through her wet hair. She was back in her normal clothes.

‘I get it,’ said Paulo. ‘The eye bank where Chopra makes regular deposits.’

Li sat on the bed. ‘But it might be miles away. Bina must be quite close to here because she has to be brought back for the operation.’

Hex texted Alex: ‘TRAIN 2 WHERE?’

He got an answer back promptly. ‘COLOMBO FORT. STOPPING TRAIN.’

Paulo spread a map on the bed. With his fingers he traced the railway line. ‘Chennai to Colombo Fort . . .’ He looked at Hex. ‘He can’t be. Colombo Fort is in Sri Lanka.’

For a moment the room was silent. Alex couldn’t be going all the way to Sri Lanka, surely?

Hex had a brainwave. ‘Wait a minute. Alex said it’s the stopping train. If the bike guy was going all the way to Sri Lanka he’d take an express. After all, he’s got to get his eyes in the fridge.’ Amber glared at him but he carried on. ‘But stopping trains are for people who aren’t going very far.’

Amber finished the thought for him. ‘He’s getting off at a local station. He’s not going very far at all.’

‘Exactly,’ said Hex. His phone bleeped again. Alex had sent another text: ‘TELL DRIVER RICKSHAW AT STN. KEYS WEDGED INSIDE SEAT COVER.’

‘Are we better off looking in Chennai or following Alex?’ asked Li.

Paulo said, ‘I think Alex will need backup. He shouldn’t go in there on his own.’

‘But we’d better keep an eye on what’s going on here too,’ said Li.

‘Well, I’ll have to stay here,’ said Hex, ‘because I can track Trilok. I can track you guys too.’

‘Who else is up for a mystery train ride?’ said Paulo.

Li and Amber both leaped to answer: ‘Me!’

Paulo looked from one to the other. If he had to choose, who would he take?

But Li could see Amber was bored after sitting around in the library. Unless specific skills were needed, they tried to share out the action equally. ‘You go,’ she said to Amber. Her mouth twitched. ‘Go and see the lovely eyes.’

It was easy to spot the courier: he had the blue plastic cool box balanced on his knee. Alex found a seat nearby and watched the drowned city slip past, then the peeling suburbs. The train stopped every ten minutes or so. By the second stop, the orderly squares of paddy fields were appearing; how quickly the city vanished. The water vanished too; no longer held on the surface by a layer of tarmac and concrete, it soaked away into the parched earth.

Just a few metres away, the courier sat, his trousers wet to mid shin, looking like an ordinary commuter.

Hex sent updates by text. Each one subtly changed how Alex was thinking about his target:

‘COURIER REMOVED EYES FROM MORGUE BODIES.’ Under that professional shirt and tie beat the heart of a grave robber.

‘FOLLOW 2 EYE BANK + SEARCH FOR B.’ I’ll follow you all right. I’m not letting you out of my sight. If I find you’ve got Bina . . .

‘P + A ON WAY.’ And I’ve got backup.

At the third stop, the courier got off. Alex waited, just in case the man knew he was being followed.

Then he sprang out as though he’d just woken up and found himself at his stop.

The platform had no roof. A small station building stood at one end and white cows swished their tails on the veranda. The air smelled of warm, wet vegetation and cow dung. Tufts of grass grew around a battered sign saying PERUNGALATTUR HALT.

Alex followed the courier through the station building and out to a corrugated-iron garage. He stayed well back, watching him with one eye while he texted the name of the station to the others. The courier unlocked a padlock on the garage door. He brought out a mud-spattered bicycle, fixed the cool box on the rack behind the seat and set off round the back of the shed.

Where was he going? There didn’t seem to be a road, although all around the ground was thick mud, so a road might have been hidden. Alex stepped cautiously towards the shed. Then he spotted a spur of railway track leading off the main track behind it. Tall weeds grew up between the sleepers; obviously it hadn’t been used for some years.

Alex texted another message to Paulo and Amber: ‘LOOK FOR SHED ON R. FOLLOW DISUSED SPUR.’

He hooked the phone back on his belt and set off on foot. His target was easy to follow; he kept to the spur line which sliced between the rice paddies. The sun was out and the paddies reflected a brilliant blue sky, but it was a lonely, featureless landscape. Only a few scrubby trees and bushes along the side of the track broke up the monotony of the view – they would just about provide cover if he needed it. Alex jogged at first to make sure he didn’t get too far behind, but once he was within two hundred metres of the target he slowed to a walk. That was far enough away to duck into the trees if the man looked back, but close enough to keep an eye on him.

The bike disappeared around a bend. What if it turned off while it was out of sight? Alex sprinted along in pursuit, his feet slipping on the muddy ground. But all was well: the track carried on in a straight line. In the distance stood a square building like a grey box. At first it looked tiny, like a shed, but as Alex drew closer he saw it looked like an old depot. An old depot that had been shored up – patched with new breeze blocks at the top and corrugated iron at the bottom. A window high up in the wall had been bricked up. The tracks ran up to a pair of rusted buffers in front of the building. The end of the line. Alex shuddered.

The target rode his bicycle round the side and disappeared. There must be a gate or an archway.

Alex crouched beside a tree and texted his new position to Paulo and Amber again. That done, he listened. There were no sounds of activity; no one came out to greet the courier. There seemed to be no security guards he had to get past. Most importantly, he wasn’t about to come straight out again – and run into Alex.

There was another, smaller building alongside the main one that hadn’t been refurbished. The corrugated iron was rusty and the brickwork old and decayed. It looked empty. Alex crept forwards and chanced a look into its dark interior. Just as he thought: bright patches of sky could be seen through holes in the roof. But it made an excellent observation point for the main building.

Alex crept in and hunkered down by a rusted hole in the corrugated iron wall. It was opposite the entrance. A square archway, big enough to admit a tall vehicle, led into a brick courtyard, where a couple of vans stood in front of a large set of doors. The vans bore a logo and a name: Vikram Medical Supplies. There was also a smaller copy of the logo beside the main front doors. The name seemed familiar. Why?

Then he realized. While he was waiting for Amber at the clinic, he had seen one of those vans making a delivery. That was an interesting connection. Of course, they might deliver to a lot of places, but it was a link nevertheless. And it obviously did more than collect eyes. What else might it collect?

Alex decided he had seen all he could from this observation point. He still hadn’t found a way to get in. He needed to look at some of the other faces of the building.

He ran across to the corner of the main building and peered round. A few metres away was an open window, at ground-floor level. Alex slid along the wall, moving quietly. A few metres away he stopped and listened very carefully. No sound came from inside the building. The room was probably empty. Alex decided he could chance it.

He peeked round the window frame. It was a lab – benches with microscopes, piles of papers and other assorted scientific equipment. And, next to the window, a white lab coat hanging on the back of a chair.

It would make an excellent disguise. Alex peered further into the room, looking for movement, shadows. There might be someone bent over one of those benches, working silently. But no one was there. Alex reached in through the window and grasped the coat. He hooked one shoulder off the chair, then the other. The door opened.

He was past the point of no return now. He whipped the coat out of the window and scooted away to the end of the building where no one could see him. Had he been spotted? He’d soon hear. He kept the coat rolled up in a bundle under his arm. But no one triggered any alarms.

He put the coat on, took several deep breaths and then confidently, calmly, walked in through the archway.