Free Blood Money by Chris Ryan Page B

you all the details we can. Can I borrow a pen?’
    Li spotted a biro beside the telephone. ‘There’s one.’ The policeman picked it up, slowly took the cap off and handed it over. Then he disappeared through the door again. Li glared at his sweat-marked back.
    Alex took charge of the form and they filled it in. A short time later the sergeant returned. ‘Have you finished?’
    Alex handed the papers over in a neat pile. The sergeant put them straight into a basket on the desk.
    ‘What will happen now?’ said Alex.
    Sergeant Chopra folded his hands in front of him on the counter. He looked like a Buddha. ‘We’ll look into it.’
    Li butted in. ‘There’s somewhere you could look right now. We think she’s here in Chennai. We saw something belonging to her at St Thomas’s Clinic – a friendship bracelet we gave to her. We think that’s where she is.’
    Sergeant Chopra maintained his implacable pose. ‘We’ll get someone onto it,’ he said. ‘Thank you. You can go now.’
    The five friends were all dying to talk, but they made sure they were well away and out of earshot before they let rip.
    Hex got his comment in first. ‘Ever had the feeling that someone wasn’t very interested?’
    Li practically exploded. ‘He didn’t even look at the forms we filled in.’
    ‘Do you know what else is odd?’ said Alex. ‘He never asked if we had a picture of her.’
    ‘That’s right!’ added Amber. ‘I was just about to show him the picture and then I got this hunch. I thought I’d wait and see if he asked for it. Don’t you think there was something really odd about him? He gave me the creeps.’
    Paulo was a little more laid back. ‘Maybe that’s just the way they operate in this country.’
    Li snorted. ‘Perhaps we interrupted his morning nap, but if we don’t find Bina fast, someone else is going to be operating.’
    Alpha Force weren’t the only people who didn’t want to be overheard. Sergeant Chopra watched them disappear, had a quick look around the station to make sure no one else was nearby, then got out his mobile and pressed a speed-dial key.
    The phone was answered briskly. ‘Yes?’ It was the kind of ‘yes’ that says the speaker already knows who the caller is.
    ‘Trilok,’ said the sergeant, ‘you’ll have to move the girl.’

14
    U NDERCOVER
    ‘We have to go back to the clinic,’ said Li. ‘Bina’s friendship bracelet was in the bin outside, and yet they’re denying they’ve seen her. Paulo and I have already been there, so it’ll have to be one of you guys.’
    They sat in a large formal garden – Alex’s original RV point. Behind them a big domed building gleamed like a white meringue in the sun.
    Paulo was lying on his back, eyes closed. He looked as if he was asleep, but he was thinking as hard as anyone else. ‘We need to get further than reception. There’s nothing there. We need to really search the place; go where Mootama went.’
    ‘They’ve got those bars on the windows,’ said Alex. ‘That’s going to make a covert approach tricky.’
    ‘And I bet there are alarms too,’ added Hex. He was lying on his side, looking at the manicured grass and picking out stray long bits the mower had missed.
    ‘Why don’t we take the bull by the horns?’ said Amber. ‘Ask if we can see someone about selling a kidney? They might show us around.’
    ‘Whoa, whoa.’ Hex put his hands up to stop the runaway thought before it became too bizarre. ‘Reality check: only poor villagers sell kidneys. None of us look remotely like one of those.’
    ‘Good point,’ said Alex. ‘No matter what we do we’ll look like tourists. Although there are quite a lot of those around.’
    ‘I’ve got it!’ said Amber. ‘Backpackers. They’re all over the place. We could be backpackers in trouble – run out of money or something.’
    Alex nodded slowly. ‘That sounds good.’
    ‘Better if it’s just one backpacker on their own,’ said Hex. ‘Stranded or robbed after