Control

by John Macken

  Reuben followed the Mondeo through a tight T-junction. Inside it, the support officer was sitting in the back, her two male colleagues up front. He chose his words carefully. ‘I had a phone call shortly after Joshua went missing.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘From the man who has him.’

  ‘Someone’s got him?’ Lucy scanned his face. Reuben knew the look. It was a desperate search for hope. ‘Is he safe?’

  Reuben focused on the road. ‘No.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean that the man who has him is anything but safe. He has killed twice and wants to kill again.’

  ‘Not Joshua?’ Lucy’s usual self-possession was long gone. Now, her reaction to every word and implication appeared instantly across her face. ‘Please, not Joshua?’

  ‘No.’ Reuben spoke softly and without emotion. ‘He has Joshua, and all I have to do to get him back is to allow him to kill a third person, who he says deserves to die. This is not about us. This is about control. Joshua is a . . .’ Reuben tried to recall the precise coldness of the killer’s words. ‘A bargaining position.’

  Reuben watched something approaching relief wash across Lucy’s face. ‘So . . .’

  ‘So this is a problem. He is the man I’ve been tasked with catching. The one currently exciting the tabloids, the one who has been removing the fingertips from his victims.’

  ‘But, Reuben, you can do this, can’t you? Fail to apprehend him so that we get our boy back? What harm would it do?’

  ‘An innocent person dies so that our son lives?’

  ‘Our son, Reuben. A two-year-old boy with his whole life ahead of him, a born survivor who has already come through leukaemia against the odds. Our own flesh and blood, for Christ’s sake.’

  Reuben slowed for a roundabout, changing down through the Volvo’s heavy gears. ‘It’s not that simple.’

  ‘No? Well, explain to me how the life of your child is complicated.’

  ‘I mean, can we trust him? GeneCrime have profiled him as a smart and resourceful sadist, and one who has killed twice already. He has snatched our boy, torn him away from us. Think about that. Is this the kind of person we can put our faith in?’

  Lucy’s cheeks flushed, her arms now firmly crossed in front of her. ‘And what other option might we have, exactly?’

  Reuben was silent for a few moments, the only noise the rise and fall of the engine. They were close to Tottenham Court Road. A couple of minutes and they would be at the station. They had to get this sorted now, before everything got complicated.

  ‘Subverting a manhunt is not something I really want to do,’ he said.

  ‘But you have the authority?’

  ‘The killer obviously thinks so.’

  ‘So could you?’

  ‘Yes,’ Reuben answered slowly. ‘In theory.’

  ‘Or what’s to stop you lying to him? Keep the case going, keep trying to find him, keep trying to find our son, but pretend you’re not.’

  ‘That’s the obvious course of action.’ Reuben scratched the back of his neck. ‘I can’t do that, though.’

  ‘Why not?’ Lucy demanded.

  ‘He’s set a trap. He said he will know if we’re getting close to him.’

  ‘What kind of a trap? Is that even possible?’

  The police car turned sharply off the street and came to a stop in front of a set of large grey metal gates. Reuben pulled in behind, the engine idling, his brain racing. ‘I don’t know,’ he said, ‘I really don’t. But, Luce, we’ve got about thirty seconds to decide what we’re going to do.’ The gates swung open and the Mondeo entered, Reuben close behind. ‘Quick.’

  Lucy massaged her temples with her thumb and middle finger. When she looked up at Reuben she was serious again, like she had reverted to the corporate seriousness her law firm had insidiously breathed into her over the years. Her voice was tight and focused. ‘Right, we don’t tell the police about the phone call. Ever. We watch our words in front of the support officer and everyone else. If the killer has set a trap for you I guess we don’t gamble with our son’s life. We trust nothing but our own instincts. The only option as I see it is for you to actively mislead your team in the hunt for this man. There’s no guarantee you would catch him anyway before he commits another murder. We take it one day at a time. And then we get our son back safe and well.’

  Reuben aimed for a parking space, taking his time over backing in. The three officers were already emerging from their car and starting to head over.

  ‘You sure that’s what you want to do, Luce?’

  ‘No. But it’s the best plan we’ve got. And at least we know our boy is alive. That’s the thing we have to cling to, Reuben. This is about regaining control. I think the killer has made a mistake.’

  Reuben straightened the wheel and killed the engine. He turned to his ex-wife, wondering when they had last sat in the front of a car together. She was right. They had no other option. She had said exactly what he had been thinking. He also wondered when that had last happened. Probably not for a couple of years. He glanced round at the support officer, who had her hand out and was reaching for the door handle.

  ‘You ready for this?’ he asked quietly.

  ‘Of course not,’ Lucy answered. ‘How could you ever be ready for this?’

  Reuben undid his seatbelt and began to climb out. ‘Because this isn’t going to be pleasant.’

  11

  As he walked through the rear entrance and into the operational heart of the police station in Paddington Green, Reuben saw the building in a very different light. He had visited the station a handful of times on police business and knew its layout fairly well. An unwelcoming reception area, scruffy and tired-looking, the walls festooned with crime posters to hide the poor paint job. A front desk, worn from its interaction with countless agitated pairs of hands, its lower surface scuffed through contact with shoes and trainers. A long corridor through a thick door to the right. Small cramped offices with no direct sunlight, opening out into a large communal area of tables and chairs. A canteen upstairs, along with changing rooms, the cells and the toilet block below, accessed via a different door in the main reception. But now Reuben was viewing it like a member of the public would. It had ceased to be yet another police station housing men to take DNA samples from. It was now a building that was going to make life very awkward for him.

  Reuben and Lucy were led into the open-plan office, and pointed towards a couple of chairs. The sick feeling was still gnawing into Reuben’s gut, refusing to abate. He checked his watch against a large metal clock on the wall. It had been three hours since Joshua was taken; it felt like days. Beside him, Lucy was silent, staring into the cheap laminate flooring.

  He continued to think. The situation was changing all the time, the police taking control, discussing tactics. All three officers in the Mondeo had been on and off their mobiles. It felt weird not to be involved. Usually Reuben was the one making the strategic calls. In fact that was exactly what he should be doing now at GeneCrime, coordinating forensic approaches, visiting crime scenes, reviewing the evidence.

  Reuben’s phone vibrated and he pulled it out. The caller ID read ‘Sarah’. ‘Hello,’ he said.

  ‘I’ve been trying to contact you. What’s going on?’

  ‘Sorry, had my phone switched off.’

  ‘You muttered something serious about Joshua before you ran off. Are you OK?’

  Reuben scanned the empty room, listening to the background drone of activity coming from one of the offices down the corridor. ‘Not really. Joshua has gone missing. We think he could have been snatched by someone.’

  ‘Fuck.’ Sarah fell silent. From the sounds, Reuben guessed she was walking along a street, maybe outside GeneCrime, taking a break to grab lunch. ‘You OK?’

  ‘Have a wild guess.’

  ‘Look, you need any extra support? Any manpower?’

  ‘We’re fine. Haven’t met the team yet but I’ve a feeling we’re
about to. Meanwhile squads of uniform are patrolling the streets.’

  ‘Fuck,’ Sarah said again. ‘Look, I’m sorry to cut to the chase, but what about the investigation here?’

  ‘No change. I’ll be in later. Nothing else I can reasonably do except wait for some news. And that’s killing me.’

  ‘You sure?’

  Reuben was utterly certain. If he didn’t discover all he could about the killer, he might never see his son again. ‘Like I said, there’s not a lot else I can do.’

  ‘Well, if anyone can help us catch the sick bastard who’s removing people’s fingers then I guess it’s you.’

  ‘I’ll see what I can do.’ Reuben glanced up as several people approached along the corridor, a dark blur of uniform in his peripheral vision. ‘Look, Sarah, I’ll catch up with you later, fill you in on everything. But I’ve got to go.’ Reuben recognized one of the group and suppressed a grimace. ‘Shit,’ he said quietly. ‘Looks like I’ve been assigned Paul Veno.’

  ‘Veno? DI Charlie Baker’s old mate?’ Sarah snorted, a noise of derision and pity. ‘You lucky boy.’

  ‘Thanks for your support. I’ll talk to you later.’

  Reuben ended the call and watched the lead officer picking his way through the tables and chairs of the elongated room. He was five ten, blond-haired, with a dense beard that turned redder the closer he got. He had the sort of fat that seems to solidify, a firm round stomach as hard as a bowling ball. Above his gut he was stocky, his arms folded, his walk driven through his shoulders, making him look unnervingly robotic. Reuben sensed that if he saw him coming along the pavement, he would move the hell out of his way. But then, Reuben had other reasons for wanting to avoid Detective Paul Veno.

  ‘So, the famous Dr Reuben Maitland,’ he said, stopping just in front. ‘The man who spends almost as much time investigating his fellow officers as catching the bad guys.’

  ‘They’re sometimes the same thing, Detective Veno.’

  ‘Word is you’d shop your own team if you could. How many CID have you put behind bars now? Ten? Twenty?’

  ‘Four. And surely you’re not condoning corrupt police officers?’

  ‘I’m not condoning anything. I’m just pointing out the rich irony of the man who arrests coppers now asking for their help.’

  Reuben glanced across at Lucy, who was staring with undisguised hatred at Detective Veno. ‘I can assure you this is not a situation I would wish on anybody.’ He bored into the face looking down at him. ‘Now, are you going to help us or not?’

  Paul Veno pulled up a chair, and his team did likewise. ‘I’ve been assigned to run the case, Dr Maitland.’ He sighed and stretched, rotating his neck as if it was stiff. ‘I will endeavour to put past events behind me. Bottom line is that we don’t have anything. Nothing at all. A couple of vague witness statements, people who thought they might have seen a man loitering, dropping a cigarette in the street, pushing a buggy away. But no description of the man. No other sightings. A total of twenty-three officers out there meeting and greeting, and no luck at all.’ The detective acknowledged Lucy for the first time, and gave her a look intended to convey sympathy. ‘It’s what we do from now on that matters. But I need to ask you a few questions first.’

  ‘Go on,’ Reuben said.

  ‘Have you had any contact with anyone?’

  Reuben suddenly thought about mobile phone records, how easy it was to trace numbers and conversations. It would only take seconds. They could determine that he had received a call from a number his phone hadn’t recognized half an hour after Joshua was taken. ‘Spell it out, detective.’

  ‘Have you had a ransom demand, or anything similar?’

  ‘No, we have not,’ Lucy said flatly.

  The legal profession, Reuben thought. You couldn’t beat it for bare-faced lying.

  ‘Have you any reason to suspect someone would snatch your son? Any unusual communications with anyone?’

  ‘Nothing,’ Lucy said.

  ‘OK, so no one has contacted you, and nothing unusual has happened in the last few days.’

  ‘That’s correct.’

  ‘And where were you, Dr Maitland, when you found out that your son had been taken?’

  Reuben filtered his response for a second, quickly checking for inconsistencies, as Detective Veno stared into his face, watching him closely. ‘I was at GeneCrime. First day back, coordinating a manhunt into the—’

  ‘Ah yes,’ Veno said, cutting him off, ‘I heard. The force reinstating you, in its wisdom.’ He glanced around at the three silent members of his team for support. ‘London’s only serving CID officer with a criminal record. Would have loved to have been in that fucking meeting.’

  ‘Look, are you going to help us or not, Veno?’ Reuben couldn’t help but shout, the anger and frustration bursting out of him. He thought briefly of calling in a few favours, getting Veno taken off the case and replaced with someone who wasn’t so actively hostile. But Reuben knew he would need to save his favours for what lay ahead. And besides, distrust of Reuben was by no means confined to one Metropolitan officer. He immediately tried to calm down. ‘Can’t we just get on with this,’ he said more quietly.

  Veno turned to Lucy. ‘So we can rule out kidnapping. Which leaves us with not a lot. The random abduction of a two-year-old boy. Just an opportunistic strike. The bad news is that witnesses suggest a male perpetrator. Could be sexual. Profiling would suggest probably not, given your child’s age and sex, et cetera, but we can’t rule it out. What we have to hope is that whoever took him is now sweating over it, and in the cold light of day realizes they’ve made one hell of a mistake.’

  ‘So what do we do?’

  ‘The only thing we can. We have to appeal to him, get the message across that there is a way out of this. And failing that, we have to jog someone’s memory, make someone come forward who has seen something or knows something.’ Detective Veno scratched his beard. ‘And I’m afraid that means TV.’

  Reuben shuddered. The press conference. Tearful parents staring bleakly out into the stroboscopic flashing of cameras. Viewers at home watching every nuance, taking it all in. The sorrow, the tragedy, but also the nagging suspicion. Are these people telling the truth about their child? Are they really what they seem? Did they actually deserve this? Are the police asking them to do the press conference just to witness their demeanour, their behaviour, their reaction? The modern age. Trial by media. The innocent never really innocent. The guilty deserving everything they get.

  Reuben shuddered again. This was fucked up, and quickly getting worse.

  12

  ‘No, I don’t want to do my bloody make-up,’ Lucy spat, directing her wrath at the media liaison officer. ‘I’m not here because I want to look good on television. My child has been taken, for Christ’s sake.’

  ‘That’s great,’ the media liaison officer said. ‘I’m relieved.’

  Reuben glared up at him. ‘Why?’

  ‘You should see what some of them want to look like before they go on air.’

  ‘Some of who?’

  ‘Some of the parents.’

  Reuben took him in. He was well groomed, effeminate, wouldn’t last ten minutes on the beat. Then he cursed himself. He recognized the first signs of turning into the sort of grizzled CID dinosaur you found in police bars, drinking hard, complaining about the state of the modern force.

  ‘Well, let’s show them the real you. The paleness, the nervousness, the desperation. The “I’m a parent and all I want is my child back” look.’ The media liaison officer placed his hands on Lucy’s shoulders. ‘That’s what we want, and that’s what really captures the public imagination.’

  Reuben decided suddenly that maybe the dinosaurs had a point. ‘Get the hell away from my wife,’ he growled.

  The media liaison officer raised his eyebrows, his head tilting back. He surveyed Reuben for a second and removed his hands from Lucy’s shoulders. Then, very slowly, a look of disdain on his face, he turned and
walk away.

  When he had gone, Lucy looked at Reuben and raised her own eyebrows. ‘That would be ex-wife,’ she said.

  Reuben nearly mustered a smile. ‘I mean, the I-want-my-child-back look. For fuck’s sake.’

  ‘He’s only doing his job.’

  ‘And I should be doing mine. You ready for this?’

  ‘Are you trying to be serious?’

  ‘Just a little.’

  ‘This is going to be horrible.’

  ‘Well, remember what we’re doing it for. We’re going to reassure the psycho who has our son that everything is OK. And we’re also trawling for witnesses, people who know something. Any information that gets us closer to Joshua.’ Reuben’s left leg was shaking rapidly, a nervous habit he had, an involuntary tick that implied the accumulation of pent-up energy. He stopped it and turned to Lucy. ‘Remember, as well as several million people sitting on their sofas, the police are going to be watching us.’

  ‘Meaning what, exactly?’

  ‘Classic missing child stuff. Support and suspect the parents in equal measure. See how they perform in front of the camera.’

  ‘But that’s what we’re doing, isn’t it? Performing. We know who has our child. We are lying to the whole nation. Look, Rube, are you sure about this?’

  Reuben spotted Detective Veno heading their way down the corridor. He had left them alone for the past three hours, making calls, keeping track of the investigation, coordinating the media liaison, briefing the corporate communications officer, keeping the force incident manager up to speed. Reuben and Lucy had spent the time separately with different officers, answering, Reuben suspected, the same questions over and over again. But now, in the determination of Veno’s walk, in the way he leaned his body forward, pointing towards them, Reuben sensed it was finally about to happen.

  ‘I’m not sure about anything, Luce,’ he said quietly. ‘But it’s what I do for a living. React to events, adopt strategies, keep track of the information and devise a plan.’

  ‘And what about me?’