Even though the girl’s face was distorted and inert, Caitlin recognized her instantly.

It was the Romanian girl in the photograph the two detectives had brought to the house this morning.

The girl that the German woman said had been killed in a car crash in Romania yesterday. Surely, Caitlin thought, her view of the girl improving as someone moved aside, if you were in a car accident bad enough to kill you, there would be marks on your body, wouldn’t there? Cuts, bruises, abrasions, at the very least.

This girl just looked as if she was asleep.

Caitlin squeezed her eyes shut, then opened them again, trying to focus more sharply. She could not detect a mark on her body.

The words of the Detective Superintendent replayed in her head.

Her name is Simona Irimia. So far as we know she is still alive and healthy. She has been trafficked to England and will be killed so that your daughter can have her liver.

And now she realized he had been telling the truth.

The German woman was lying.

Her mother was lying.

They were going to kill this girl. Maybe she was already dead.

Suddenly, behind her, she heard a furious voice, shouting in broken English, ‘What do you think you are doing?’

She turned and saw Draguta lumbering towards her.

Frantically, Caitlin pushed the door, but it would not budge. Then she saw the handle, yanked it open and stumbled in. Anger surged inside her. Anger, and hatred at all these people. At their masked faces.

‘Stop!’ Caitlin croaked, crashing through the two gowned figures immediately in front of her. She lunged at the surgeon and grabbed the scalpel from the startled man’s hand, feeling it cutting into her fingers as she did so. ‘Stop right now! You’re evil!’

Then, standing between him and the younger man, she stared down hard, scrutinizing, in a few split seconds, every visible inch of the girl’s body. There was no sign of any trauma injury at all.

‘Young woman, please leave immediately,’ the older man said, in a very posh voice muffled by his mask. ‘You are contaminating the theatre. Give me that back at once!’

‘Is she still alive?’ Caitlin screamed at him, using every remaining ounce of her strength to power her voice.

Rows of meaningless waveforms travelled across the flat, wall-mounted screen just beyond the table. More symbols and numbers flickered on smaller screens on free-standing monitoring equipment behind the young girl’s head.

‘What the hell does this have to do with you?’ he exploded, the visible parts of his face turning puce.

‘Quite a lot, actually,’ Caitlin said, breathing heavily. She jabbed her chest with her free hand. ‘I’m meant to be getting her liver.’

There was a moment of stunned silence.

Draguta shouted a command for her to come out, as if she were shouting at a dog.

‘She’s alive, at this moment, yes,’ the younger man said enthusiastically, as if this was something Caitlin wanted to hear.

She lunged forward, grabbed at the drip lines that were in Simona’s arm with her left hand and jerked them free, then grabbed the ones out of the neck and tore at the cardiac monitor pads.

The surgeon seized Caitlin by her shoulders. ‘Are you crazy, little girl?’

Caitlin responded by biting his hand, hard. The surgeon cried out in pain and she wriggled free, twisting, staring at pairs of eyes behind masks, all of them in shock, uncertain what to do. Then she saw the nurse marching towards her.

She raised the scalpel, holding it by the handle like a dagger, brandishing it at everyone, beyond caring.

‘Get her off that table!’ she said, her voice cracking. ‘Get her off that table now!’

The entire theatre team stood motionless, staring at her in shock.

Except the big nurse, who pushed through, grabbed Caitlin’s free arm and yanked her so hard she almost fell over. Then she jerked her back across the room to the door, Caitlin’s trainers sliding on the tiled floor as she tried, with her failing strength, to resist.

‘Let me go, you ugly fucking cow!’ she hissed.

The nurse stopped to push open the door, then jerked Caitlin hard again. She stumbled forward, falling, and as she shot out her arm to cushion herself, the blade of the scalpel, still gripped tightly in her hand, sliced through the top of the woman’s cheekbone, cleanly through her right eye and the bridge of her nose.

The woman let out a terrible howl, her hands shooting to her face, blood jetting in every direction. She staggered against someone, wailing like a banshee, and several of the team rushed over to help and to stop her falling.

In the commotion, no one noticed Caitlin stumbling out.

Marlene Hartmann was striding anxiously down the tiled corridor, her normal steely composure already shot to pieces, when she heard the screams. She broke into a run, then saw what looked like utter mayhem spilling out of the operating theatre.

She stormed through the supplies room and saw her theatre team frantically trying to restrain the massive nurse, who had blood gouting from her face and spurting all over her white tunic. She was lashing out with all her considerable strength and screaming hysterically as, blood-spattered, Sir Roger Sirius and two junior surgeons, the anaesthetists and the scrub nurses all wrestled with her. Simona lay on the operating table, wires and lines all around her, oblivious to everything.

‘Gottverdammt, what is happening?’

‘The girl went crazy,’ Sirius said, panting.

Then, before he could say anything further, Draguta’s meaty fist smashed into his cheek, sending him reeling backwards and crashing on to the hard floor.

Marlene ran over to him, knelt and helped him to his feet. He looked dazed.

‘There’s a police helicopter here!’ Marlene yelled at him. ‘We need to do a lock-down! Pull yourselves together! Do you understand?’

Draguta fell, with several green-gowned members of the team crashing down on top of her.

‘I’m blind!’ she screamed in Romanian. ‘God help me, I’m blind!’

‘Get her sedated!’ commanded Marlene. ‘Shut her up! Quickly!’

A junior anaesthetist grabbed a syringe, then scrabbled around on the trolley and picked up a vial.

One of the nurses said, ‘We need to get Draguta to an eye hospital.’

‘Where’s the English girl? Caitlin? Where is she?’

Blank, dazed eyes stared at her.

‘WHERE IS THE ENGLISH GIRL?’ Marlene Hartmann shouted.

The roundabouts were getting worse. Caitlin, freezing cold, sleet tickling her face every few seconds, bumped against the wall, pushed herself away and almost fell over. It was an effort to move her feet. She dragged one, then the other. She was almost at the front of the building now. She could see a car park. Rows and rows of vehicles.

They came in and out of focus.

She stumbled through a flowerbed and nearly fell. Her iPod, dangling from a wire, tapped against her knee. She itched terribly.

They’re going to be angry with me. Mum. Luke. Dad. Gran. Shit, they’re going to be angry with me. Shit. Angry. Shit. Angry.

Above her was a terrible, loud, clattering roar.

She looked up, furiously scratching her chest. A few hundred feet above her head she saw a dark blue and yellow helicopter, like a huge mutant insect. And she saw the word police along its side.

Shit. Shit. Shit. They were coming to arrest her for stabbing the nurse.

She pressed against the wall, gulping air, fighting for every breath. The wall was moving, swaying. She inched forward. Saw the circular driveway. The helicopter swept away, making a wide arc. Then she saw a taxi, the same turquoise and white colours as the one that had brought them here.