by John Macken
‘This isn’t pain,’ Riefield grunted. ‘This is nothing. Do your worst, Maitland. I know what real pain is, and it’s a fuck of a lot less fun than this.’
‘So you lost a few fingers—’
‘You know fuck all! Fuck all at all!’ Riefield spat. ‘Scientists. What the hell do you know about anything that matters?’
Reuben kept up the pressure. All he could see was his two-year-old boy in a cold room. Joshua freezing to death, a tiny white corpse in the morning. He was barely listening.
‘Come on, do it. Pull my arms out of their sockets. It’s nothing.’
Reuben felt his vision narrowing, his control ebbing. He tugged as hard as he could. Let Riefield be so brave in a few seconds.
‘Where is he?’ he shouted. ‘Come on, where the fuck is he?’
Riefield started to yell. Reuben felt a loosening in the resistance. He had him, and he knew it.
‘Tell me,’ he said, ‘or I’m going to hang you up by your dislocated arms.’
‘No!’ Riefield screamed.
‘Come on!’
‘No! Fucking! Comment!’
Something in Reuben snapped. He slammed his boot into Riefield’s lower back, kicking him hard in the spine. And then the door flew open. Detective Harding and Sarah Hirst, their faces registering shock, bursting into the room. Harding wrestling with Reuben. Sarah shouting. Reuben starting to let go, falling away from Riefield, falling away from his son, falling away from the one chance to save him.
3
Reuben was woken up by an uncomfortable vibration in his lower back. He reached for the source of the irritation and found his mobile. Somehow he had been sleeping on it, wedged between his body and the leather of the sofa. He slid it open and it stopped vibrating.
‘Yes,’ he said, his eyes still closed.
‘It’s Sarah. Where are you?’
Reuben tried to open his lids. They felt dry and glued together. A couple of heavy blinks told him he was in Lucy’s living room. He had got back so late that walking upstairs had felt an overwhelming effort. ‘Lucy’s,’ he muttered. ‘Where are you?’
‘The place I virtually live these days. A charming residence with gated parking in NW1.’
‘GeneCrime?’
‘You guessed it.’
Reuben closed his eyes again, still lying on his back. ‘How late is it?’
‘It’s early. But I think you should hear this.’
‘Go on.’
‘Last night, a man called Philip Gower was murdered in West London. Fingertips removed, lots of red fluid, rats there to watch it all.’
Reuben sat up. His eyes were no longer heavy and tired. ‘Same MO?’
‘Exactly.’
‘What time?’
‘Based on witness statements and body temp we’ve narrowed it down to between nine p.m. and eleven p.m.’
‘Fuck.’
‘You want to hear some more?’
‘Not really.’
‘Philip Gower was a clinical trials coordinator based at the Hammersmith Hospital. Recently divorced, lived alone. Killed, we think, on the floor of his bathroom. Fingertips look sawed rather than chopped. Little other evidence of wounding.’
‘You’re saying this wasn’t a copycat.’
‘From the initial analyses, this looks too similar.’
‘And now you’re worrying about Daniel Riefield launching a suit for aggravated arrest?’
‘If he wasn’t borderline insane, yes.’
‘This doesn’t make him innocent, Sarah.’
‘And it’s a long way from making him guilty. Reuben, I need to know what evidence you had, what led you to Riefield.’
Reuben was quiet for a second. He felt his heart resume its recent gallop. Lying to DCI Hirst was a dangerous game. ‘I’ll get it to you later.’
‘Make sure you do. There’s something else as well.’
‘What?’
‘Simon Jankowski is handling the forensics on your son’s abduction, but he’s struggling. Says the DNA from the cigarette butts is pretty degraded. He’s profiled it anyway, but doesn’t know if he’s going to be able to use the traces. Half of them failed quality control.’
‘Fuck,’ Reuben said, knowing full well the reason why Simon was having difficulties. Probably, his own extractions had been more damaging than he had intended.
‘I’m sorry, Reuben. It’s taking time but he’s going to have another crack. I know this delays things and these are critical hours, but you have my word that we’re doing everything we can for your son.’
Reuben moved the subject on. ‘How do you want to proceed with the case?’ he asked.
‘Go over to the scene when you get a chance.’ Sarah gave him the address. ‘And then let’s meet back at GeneCrime.’
‘I think Veno wants to talk first. But as soon as that’s over, I’ll head to the scene.’
‘Mina’s rounding up a crew, so no immediate rush.’
Reuben ended the call, and spent a silent minute analysing how this could be possible. Riefield had been unequivocally matched to the murder scene and the kidnap. And then another death had happened while Riefield was locked up. He pinched the loose skin between the bridge of his nose and his forehead, the pain focusing his mind. Joshua wasn’t at Riefield’s flat. Riefield was clearly disturbed and unstable. He had known about the abduction, but maybe, like the rest of the capital, he watched the news now and again. It wasn’t exactly a secret. In fact, Veno’s squad were doing all they could to ram it down everyone’s throats.
Reuben stood up and stretched, his body suddenly restless, his thoughts grinding to a halt. He paced around for a few seconds before sitting down and trying again.
The killer stated that he had one more person to kill. He had taken Joshua to buy himself forensic immunity. Reuben began to mutter to himself. Let’s say Riefield was entirely innocent. That his DNA appeared at one of the crime scenes incidentally, that a cigarette butt with his DNA on it was dropped outside the newsagent that Lucy visited. So . . . so if Riefield isn’t the killer or the kidnapper, he must know who is. Either knowingly or unknowingly, Riefield knows this man.
Reuben blew air out of the side of his mouth. He cursed the fact that while forensics dealt only in certainty, the actions of people were universally ambiguous and difficult to define. Among the crash of ideas and images ricocheting around Reuben’s brain, he appreciated that one thing was certain: Riefield didn’t kill the clinical trials coordinator. The MO, as Sarah had outlined it, was exactly the same as the first two. If Riefield had been present at the first two deaths, he clearly hadn’t been needed there. Whoever had killed Philip Gower had done so perfectly well without Riefield’s assistance.
Reuben glanced at the TV. It stared back at him, dead, black, inert. He wondered whether the media would be running with last night’s breaking story. That the suspected kidnapper had been arrested. He frowned. News that was already probably wrong. At Reuben’s request, Sarah had kept the media away from the arrest of Riefield as the fingertip killer. Clearly, after the Gower murder, Riefield would soon be off the hook. But this was getting close to impossible. If anyone made the link between the kidnapping and the murders Reuben was finished and his son would be dead.
He stood up again, suddenly feeling caged. The perpendicular leather sofas, the tall bookcases, the jutting shelves, the overbearing pictures. Bars made from the angular items he and Lucy had once argued over in furniture shops. His head was closing in, tightening up. Everything he had done forensically had been correct. So why had it led him in the wrong direction? He thought again about Riefield, about his physical strength and mental weakness, his run-down flat, about the room Riefield hadn’t wanted him to go in, about the three people who had been killed, about the fact that Riefield was alive, but with fingertips which looked like those of the dead.
The doorbell rang and he padded into the hallway in his socks. He glanced up the stairs. Lucy was still asleep. He wondered for a second whether she
was in Joshua’s room, then he turned and walked to the front door. Through the spyhole, Detective Veno was reaching for the bell again, his thick-set torso magnified and widened. Reuben swore silently and pulled open the door before he got the chance.
4
Standing toe to toe with him, Reuben appreciated that Veno liked to use his gut as a weapon. He stuck it out, emphasizing his intrusion, his forcefulness, a hard extension of him that invaded your space. Reuben took him in as he spoke. The blond hair, the orange redness of his beard, the thick arms folded across his stocky chest. He was standing close, and although Reuben was three or four inches taller, he had the impression of being surrounded, looked down upon, overwhelmed.
‘We’ve got three tabloids running with the kidnap angle,’ he said. ‘Not mentioning Riefield by name, just a thirty-two-year-old man from the King’s Cross area of London. Caucasian, unemployed, lives alone, that sort of thing.’
Reuben cleared his throat. Next to him, Lucy was monitoring the comings and goings in the wide communal area of desks and chairs. Reuben hadn’t had a chance to talk to her on the way to the station. Veno had sat silently in the front seat of the squad car, scribbling notes, checking details. He wished to hell they’d had a couple of minutes alone. Lucy was scouring the station area for progress. It was almost as if she expected Joshua to be brought in at any moment. He needed to tell her what had transpired during the night, but all he could think as Veno continued to talk was that Sarah could soon be making the link. A slow dawning realization that the man Reuben had arrested was the same man being mooted as the kidnapper. And although Reuben had done all he could to throw her off the scent, she was bright and sharp and would not remain ignorant for much longer.
Veno was staring hard into him as if he expected Reuben to answer. ‘Well?’ he asked.
Reuben had a guess at what he’d been saying. ‘So you’re not releasing any specifics at all? Riefield’s name, address, previous record?’
‘Like I just said, not yet. Not till the detectives at the scene come up with tangible evidence that your son was there. If they do, then fine, it’s open season. Until then, the story is simply that police have apprehended a suspect.’
Reuben breathed a silent sigh of relief. The more circumspect CID were, the longer it would take Sarah to catch up. ‘Fine.’
‘Look, I’m still not sure how the forensics led you to Riefield’s address.’ Veno jutted his belly forward, hands now folded behind him, his head angled slightly back. ‘You feel like clearing that up for me?’
Reuben decided to keep it simple. ‘GeneCrime are coordinating the forensic sweep,’ he said. ‘We got some info which came through that. An early association.’
‘But you were driving this yourself? Surely GeneCrime don’t let you get directly involved in the search for your son?’
‘It’s a big unit and I’m on a different case. The fingertip killer.’ Reuben scanned the room. All around, coppers sat at desks, staring into screens, tapping information into databases, searching records and files. Information in and information out. ‘Your media liaison team might have read you the headlines?’
Veno sidestepped the dig. ‘So how does that relate to you tracking Riefield down?’
‘It doesn’t.’
‘So?’
‘It’s just the same team of forensic techs, that’s all. Standard police overlap.’
‘Standard police overlap,’ Veno repeated, the words slow and flat. He rocked back on his heels. ‘Huh.’
Reuben felt his phone vibrate somewhere deep inside his jacket. ‘Are you trying to make a point, Detective Veno?’
‘Simply this. People who have their kids taken rarely apprehend the kidnapper themselves.’
‘Surely,’ Lucy interrupted, ‘that’s because the vast majority of them aren’t leading forensic scientists?’
‘That’s not the point I’m making.’
‘Oh? And what is? That Reuben is able to catch bad guys while you’re thoroughly unable?’
Reuben fumbled for his phone. Leading forensic scientist. He would take that from Lucy any day. A dark frown descended across Veno’s brow. His ex-wife was deadly. Usually it was Reuben on the receiving end. It was great to see someone else suffer the sharp end of her legal tongue.
He turned away from Veno and answered the call. ‘Yes.’
‘You’ve broken our contract.’
Reuben instantly pinpointed the voice. Forty-eight hours ago, in the GeneCrime Command Room.
‘Meaning what?’ Reuben asked.
‘Meaning that you broke your word. That you assured me on your son’s life you wouldn’t come after me. But you still did. And that either makes you a liar, or someone who doesn’t care about his child.’
Reuben pushed the phone hard against his ear. He needed to hear every detail, every nuance, every background sound. Veno was staring at him. In every direction, CID officers and Missing Child squad members surrounded him in a blur of desks. Veno seemed to step closer. Reuben closed his eyes. He wanted to run out of the room but he was trapped. Instead, he retreated into the sound of breathing on the other end of the line. The man was moving, maybe walking somewhere. But he was inside. There was no traffic or commotion.
‘I said I needed one more person, and you said that would be OK. I said this wasn’t personal, that this was simply about control. But you tried to hunt me anyway. The man you arrested was my safeguard. If you arrested him then you were trying to arrest me. I told you I was setting a trap, and you ignored that. You didn’t care about the life of your only child.’
A door opened and closed. And that was when Reuben heard his son. Muffled sobs. High-pitched cries.
His eyes were suddenly wide, his jaw clenched, the phone squeezed so hard he thought he would crush it. He wanted to scream down the line, to call out to Joshua, to tell the man holding him that he was going to find him and hurt him. Instead Reuben focused on the middle distance, above Veno, over the heads of the coppers all around him.
‘Joshua,’ the man said. ‘Come here.’
There was a cry, a piercing sound that cut straight into Reuben, crushing his lungs, cramping his stomach, pricking his heart.
‘I said come here. Daddy wants to listen.’
Reuben fought for calm. Out of the corner of his eye, Veno was monitoring him closely.
There was another cry, and then silence for a moment. Reuben pictured Joshua being picked up.
‘That’s it, little boy. Don’t struggle so much. Your daddy wants to listen.’
Joshua repeated the word ‘Daddy’. Reuben heard it clearly. He looked around again, wanting to sprint out of the room, be anywhere but here. Lucy caught his eye. Reuben looked away.
‘I’m listening,’ he said.
There was another moment of silence, then a clear slap. Joshua began to scream. Reuben detected a second slap. His son ramped up the noise, a furious, frightened cacophony. Reuben was trembling inside his jacket, trying not to let it show. The yelling abated. The fucker was leaving Joshua, walking through into another room. He suddenly flashed to Riefield’s squalid flat, wondering if this place was as filthy. The noise of a door closing, Joshua’s suffering now out of earshot. Reuben wondered what was worse, hearing his son or not hearing him.
‘This changes things,’ the man said. ‘All bets are off. From now on there are no rules.’
He cut the line, and Reuben remained standing stock still in a room full of coppers, Joshua’s mother by his side, Detective Veno’s stocky frame an arm’s length in front, his hardened belly pushing forward, ever closer.
5
Reuben leaned close to Lucy in the station corridor, wedged between a coffee machine and a snack machine, slabs of square metal that brought relief to tired and hungry coppers. He blew across a thin plastic cup holding hot liquid. It was either strong tea or weak coffee, he couldn’t be sure. Lucy picked distractedly at a packet of crisps, a layer of orange flavouring sticking to the tips of her pale white fingers.
> ‘What does that mean, exactly, “all bets are off”?’ she asked. ‘This isn’t some sort of wager.’
Reuben tried the liquid, the heat scalding his tongue. He had already decided not to tell her that the man had hit their son. She was upset enough. ‘It means the end of our deal. A life for a life. Whatever it was he promised in the first place.’
‘So, what do we do?’
‘We have two options.’ Reuben craned his neck past Lucy and inspected the corridor. They were protected, the vending machines like bodyguards, shielding them from the members of Veno’s team milling about. ‘Option one, I ring Sarah now, tell her exactly what’s been going on, what I’ve been doing, what the real truth is. Option two, we stick to the current plan.’
‘So you tell Sarah you’ve been lying to her, and in fact the fingertip killer might just be the person holding Joshua?’
‘Something like that. Look, let’s say I’m your client. I’m in trouble with the law. What would you advise?’
Lucy gazed past him, thinking. ‘All that matters is Joshua, and what gives us the best chance of getting him back. What would Sarah do if you owned up to the fact you’ve effectively been misleading the UK’s most high-profile murder case?’
‘All Sarah cares about is catching killers. She’d play it as straight as she always does.’
‘Meaning?’
‘She’d throw it over to her boss, Commander Thorner. He would sack me on the spot.’
‘Sarah wouldn’t defend you? Or even keep it quiet?’
‘She’d have no choice. This would come out in the end, and her career – the thing that occupies almost all of her life – would be fucked.’
A CID officer that Reuben vaguely recognized slid a coin into the drinks machine next to them and pushed a couple of buttons. The guts of the machine whirred and clanked into life. Reuben smiled briefly, a tight contraction of his mouth. The officer raised his eyebrows, then stooped down, took his drink and walked away.
