by John Macken
It can’t be right, he told himself. A placebo on the trial with nothing to gain or lose. A doctor in a decent hospital. No record, no skeletons in the cupboard. He tapped his knuckles against his forehead. Seconds passed. The engine continued to clatter, echoing around inside his skull. He picked through his options. GeneCrime had obviously lost interest in Dr Morgan. He scanned the street. No uniform, no CID, no unmarked squad cars. This was a false lead. A wild-goose chase based on the testimony of an unreliable witness.
‘Look,’ the taxi driver said, ‘if it was up to me, you could stay here all day. But it’s not. I’m sorry, really I am, but you got to decide what you want to do.’
Reuben thought for another few long seconds. The door of the house Morgan had entered remained closed. He considered calling for back-up. Waiting for a couple of uniform to arrive. Knocking politely on the door, a routine search of the property. Ruling it out, just for the sake of ruling it out. But Sarah had warned him off. And suspended staff didn’t get to request manpower for wild hunches.
Reuben chewed his teeth. Each and every second counted. Joshua’s chances of survival were ebbing fast. Wherever he was in the capital, the quicker he got to him the greater the chance of saving him. But Morgan just didn’t add up. Having seen him in the flesh, having visited his place of work, having followed him here, all fuelled by amphetamine and a need for action, Reuben suddenly wasn’t sure of anything any more. He was crashing, falling apart, paying the price for so much frantic activity.
‘Just give me one more minute,’ he muttered to the driver.
‘You want to go somewhere else?’
Reuben didn’t answer. He just sat forward in his seat, head in his hands, paralysed by indecision. Outside the house of a placebo on the trial who had nothing to gain and everything to lose. A man who worked in a paediatrics department, for fuck’s sake.
The engine rattled on. Reuben remained utterly static.
12
Judith parked her pram at the security desk. She unclipped the small detachable car seat from the body of the pram and carried Fraser by its handle, swinging him slightly as she walked. On her back was a compact rucksack stuffed with enough paraphernalia to survive any amount of fluid expelled from any part of her eight-week-old son. As she made her way along the brutal corridors of GeneCrime, she felt more like a beast of burden than a forensic scientist. Years of chasing along the very same hallways with vital evidence on serial killers and rapists, rushing to Reuben or Mina or Sarah, and here she was padding along with her newborn, struggling under the weight of him and his accoutrements, trying not to wake him.
Judith found her co-workers crammed into Sarah’s office. Suddenly, she felt like an intruder. The way Sarah glanced up at her then quickly away made her feel it was a mistake to have come.
‘Can you give us a second?’ Sarah said. ‘We’re just wrapping up.’
‘Sure,’ Judith replied. ‘Sorry.’
She peered around the room. Sarah seated, Mina and Bernie standing, Leigh Harding leaning against a wall, Simon on one of the two chairs that wasn’t supporting a plant, Paul Mackay on the other, Birgit Kasper standing stolidly in the corner, her arms folded. Mina and Bernie smiled at her, and raised their eyebrows. Judith understood the gesture. Sarah is giving us a pep talk. Judith glanced down at Fraser. He was asleep, unconscious, oblivious.
‘So I want people going back and checking through,’ Sarah continued. ‘Even though we have a DNA profile for our killer, we need to keep trawling through databases, hunting for links, cross-referencing the scenes. You know how this works. The more threads we assemble, the more difficult it becomes to unravel our case. Mina, the familial matching has to speed up. We need to know whether we can tie the killer’s DNA to members of his wider family. All of this adds volume, momentum, weight, the things you need to convince juries. The sheer mass of data required to overwhelm the practised counter-arguments of those infernal defence lawyers. Although we’re closing in on our man, we have to keep accumulating fragments of proof, things we can come back to, even information that doesn’t seem particularly important at the time.’
Sarah ran her brilliant blue eyes around the room.
‘And as well as bulking up our evidence, it goes without saying that we need to catch this sicko. Otherwise we’re looking at another death any day. This man isn’t going to just give it up. He’s on a mission, and you people are the only people who can stop him. I want you to think about that. Out there, outside these walls, someone is going to die unless you catch the killer and tie him unequivocally to the murders. I don’t care if you’re tired, or out of ideas, or what. This is more important than anything else in your life at this moment. Anything.’
‘But the familial matching only works if—’
‘There are no buts, Mina. This is literally life, and this is literally death. The difference comes down to you. Collectively.’
No one else said anything for a few seconds. Judith considered that maybe she should leave, come back another time. She had phoned, several of Reuben’s lab had been keen to meet the newborn, yet Judith appreciated her timing probably wasn’t ideal. Not that there ever was a good time to visit the unit.
Sarah shuffled through some papers in silence. The clock on her wall lacked a second hand, but ticked anyway, a hidden internal mechanism counting to sixty, waiting to shuffle the minute hand forward a notch. Birgit glanced down at Fraser and looked away again.
‘OK,’ Sarah said, her tone softening, ‘we all know what we’ve got to do. Look at every angle, check through every link, hope to Christ that CID and surveillance can protect all the other potential victims.’ She double-clicked her mouse, focused on her screen, spoke down into her laptop. ‘Now, I received something important a few minutes ago, something that I want you all to take a good look at.’
She spun the laptop round so that its screen was visible to the room. Judith caught her eye. Sarah mouthed the word ‘sorry’. Judith was touched for a second. Sarah was tough and ambitious, but not immune to being human from time to time.
‘This is CCTV of our main suspect, Francis Randle,’ she continued. ‘You will recall that he is the father of Martin Randle, who died on the trial, and that he spent several years in various military outfits. Not someone for the general public to approach under any circumstances. His whereabouts until recently haven’t been known. However, what I’m about to show you is footage taken less than half a mile from the scene of Daniel Riefield’s murder yesterday. We have been able to place Randle in the vicinity at the right time. And this, everybody, gives us enough probable cause to have him picked up.’
‘And if we pick him up, we can swab him?’ Leigh Harding asked, standing up from the wall. ‘Match his profile with Riefield’s crime scene?’
‘With all the crime scenes,’ Mina said.
‘Correct.’ Sarah pressed the space key of the computer, leaning over it. ‘And it also means that if we’re quick we can keep him in custody long enough to process the samples. Now, as you’ll see, Randle is in a hurry. That isn’t the walk of someone out for a casual evening stroll.’
Along with everyone else, Judith was watching the screen. The image was surprisingly crisp. Randle was stocky, wide, intense. He looked like he knew he was being observed, jerky in his movements, his musculature not quite relaxed. He disappeared from view. The screen was empty for a second, then it blinked back on. Black and white footage this time, taken from a lower elevation. Francis Randle pacing down a side street, time, date and camera ID number in the top right corner. Another gap in his progress, then a colour shot, even lower, almost street level. It felt to Judith like they were slowly swooping down on him. Sarah pressed the space bar again. Randle froze, a close-up of his face, lips tight, eyes narrowed, a man on a mission.
‘What happened to the rest of his ear?’ Bernie asked.
Sarah squinted into the screen. There was something almost sickening about the way Randle’s ear had been sliced straight across, just abo
ve its aperture. ‘No idea. He’s ex-military, so anything’s possible.’
‘Why haven’t we picked him up yet?’
‘He’s been under twenty-four-hour surveillance. But we don’t have an address for him. We need him to lead us to where he lives, search for evidence of rats, a saw, gloves, all the things he’s been using in his killings.’
‘So why not arrest him, take DNA, then bail him? The CCTV gives us probable cause. At least then we’d have him off the streets for a few hours. In the meantime we try to get a match with one of the crime scenes, and if we do, put his identity out across the capital. We’d find his address pretty quick.’
Sarah sighed, a tight breath squeezed out through frustration. ‘CID have lost him. He gave them the slip this morning. Must have known he was being followed. Apparently ducked through a shop and out of its loading bay.’
Simon Jankowski polished his glasses on the bright pattern of his shirt. ‘What else do we have to put Randle as the killer?’
Judith watched Sarah turn slowly to face the junior forensic scientist. ‘You mean aside from motive, hurrying away from the scene of a crime, losing CID and having been professionally trained to kill people?’
Simon held his nerve. ‘Yes, ma’am.’
Sarah raised her eyebrows at Paul Mackay, who had been unusually quiet. ‘Paul?’
‘We managed to get our hands on Randle’s military record. Shoe size matches those of the imprints left behind at Philip Gower’s house. The Footwear Intelligence Agency at the FSS reckon that less than two per cent of the male population has size twelve and a half.’
Sarah stood up, her arms straight on her desk, leaning slightly forward, looking at everyone in turn. Judith watched her, sensing that Sarah revelled in the power she could convey through subtle alterations in the shape of her body. ‘So this is the plan. As soon as CID locate Randle he’s going to be picked up. We can only risk leaving him out there for so long. The second we take him in, I want a team of Forensics ready. We caution him, swab him and, as Bernie suggested, drag his DNA through reference samples from all five scenes. If we have an address, another team goes straight there, bags and swabs whatever it can.’ Sarah glanced down at the worn grey phone on her desk. ‘They are going to call it through. And then, like I said, it’s action stations.’ She turned her attention to Judith, and Judith felt herself blush, uncomfortable caught in the stare. ‘Now, anything else, before we all tell Judith how undoubtedly beautiful her baby is?’
Leigh Harding cleared his throat. ‘Just some minor bits and pieces, ma’am, that came from questioning Syed Sanghera.’
Without looking at him, Sarah said, ‘Put them on the board with all the other facts that need cross-checking. The rest of you, feel free to coo away. But make it quick. We’ve got a killer to catch.’
The office seemed to relax as one, an exhalation of tightly held breaths, a drooping of rigid shoulders. Mina came over and kissed Judith on the cheek. Bernie stood behind her, slightly awkward, rubbing his thick beard. Mina picked Fraser’s car seat up for a general inspection.
‘So this is what’s keeping you awake at night?’ Bernie said.
Mina yawned. ‘Beats trawling through endless databases,’ she said, rubbing her eyes behind her glasses.
Judith smiled. ‘He sleeps wonderfully during the day,’ she muttered. She’d been away from GeneCrime for ten weeks, but it felt longer. She watched Leigh scrawl a few lines of text on the office whiteboard with a green pen. Simon and Paul loitered a couple of paces back, unsure of the alien object in the room. Sarah didn’t come over. Judith suspected she wasn’t one for babies.
‘So, when are you coming back?’ Simon asked.
Judith didn’t answer immediately. Something that Detective Harding had written had caught her attention. Green squeaks on a white surface. Something Reuben had told her on the phone. Then her heart missed a beat, and her lungs drew in a quick breath. ‘A few weeks,’ she answered finally, pulling out her mobile.
Sarah seemed to hesitate, then began to walk over. At that moment the phone on her desk rang, a shrill double note. A pause, then another. Sarah swung back and picked it up. She spoke quietly, her hand cupping the receiver, her mouth invisible behind her slender fingers. Conversation in the room stopped. Everyone turned to watch Sarah. Fraser opened his eyes and began to gripe. Judith bent down and unstrapped him. He was in a white all-in-one, and she cradled him to her with her left arm, rocking him gently.
After a couple of seconds, Sarah put down the phone. ‘Right,’ she said, ‘they think they’ve spotted him. Residential area south of the river. They’re going to swoop but they want us there. Go get yourselves ready. Equipment in squad cars, gloves and face masks in your pockets.’ Sarah seemed to come alive, her cheeks reddening, her eyes widening, her petite frame swelling. ‘No fuck-ups. Let’s go and get this psycho.’
Judith stepped away from the door. A couple of CID officers almost knocked her flying. Mina winked at her on the way out. Bernie said, ‘Wish us luck.’
With her right hand, and turning away from Sarah and the rest of the office, Judith used her thumb to type a rapid text message.
13
‘Look, fair’s fair, mate. Now, what do you want me to do?’
Reuben read the permit on the back of the driver’s partition. Leonard Park. Licence number 25584. Authorized to carry up to five passengers within Greater London. He was half turned again, his thick neck creased, dark hairs trapped in the diagonal folds of his flesh.
‘I’ve got jobs stacking up all over the place. The sat nav keeps a record of where I am. I’ll be for the bloody high jump if I’m not moving soon.’
Reuben’s mobile vibrated in his pocket, a faster frequency than the all-pervasive engine. But he continued to ponder, lost in contradictions and grey areas. Always grey areas. Crime was never black or white. It was opinion, circumstance, intuition, luck, guesswork. That was what had first fuelled his interest in forensics. That the science was inarguable. A positive match, a statistical value, a quantifiable absolute. What came before it, however, the tracking of criminals, the assessment of behaviour, the understanding of motives, that was all a murky grey mess. And at this frozen moment in time, he felt this more acutely than he ever had in the fifteen years of his CID career.
‘I can drive you somewhere else,’ the driver tried. ‘Just say the word.’
Reuben straightened in his seat. He had to do something, had to fight the paralysis which had ground him to a halt. Indecision, a lack of solid information, a sense that he was on the verge of the wrong course of action. He reached his arm through the gap in the cage, squeezed the man’s thick shoulder. ‘You’ve done enough already.’
Reuben opened the door, stepped on to the street and pulled out his mobile. A text message, from Judith: visiting genecrime with fraser. sarahs office. cant talk. have news but dont no what it means. Reuben scrolled down. That was all.
The taxi pulled off. Leonard Park beeped his horn, and Reuben waved.
What news? He pictured Judith taking Fraser into GeneCrime to show her colleagues, that first moment, introducing the new baby, distracting the failing manhunt for half an hour. Judith in Sarah’s office, overhearing something, texting him with the thumb of one hand, the other arm holding her son. He imagined Sarah, uncomfortable around the newborn, passing up the opportunity to hold him. He saw it like he was there, in the building he should still be working in, among the team he should still be commanding. Once more, he knew he had betrayed them. He had put the life of his son above everything else he held dear. He had made a series of small but critical mistakes. But under the same set of circumstances, he didn’t doubt he would do it all again.
His mobile buzzed, and he opened the message almost instantly: control engaged. amanda skeen. He stared into the small black letters, trying them on for size. Control, Amanda Skeen. Something clicked. Scientific terminology. Judith being subtle and furtive under the nose of Sarah Hirst. Wonderful Judith, suddenly coming up
with something that only she understood the relevance of.
Control.
He put the phone away. Walked down the street. Blew air into his hands, tightened his jacket against the cold. He strode slowly up to the detached house. Stopped just beside it. Silently opened the front gate. Stood outside the door for a second. Felt the squeeze of the long rows of terraces on either side. Checked again that he had understood the coded words. A deep breath. Sensing the final wrap of speed in his trouser pocket. The final burst of energy should he need it. For now, he would manage without.
A stretch of the neck. A clench of the fists. A coldness in the stomach.
Only one way to find out.
14
Reuben kicked the door in at the second try, just like he had at Riefield’s flat. An unfurnished living room. Cold, unheated, his breath hanging visible in the air. The walls bare unpainted plaster. The floor unpainted wood. A shell of a space, a void, a nothingness. He spotted a letter on the floor addressed to Ms Amanda Skeen. He quickly understood. A hospital residence, and also a private one. An address CID hadn’t connected him to.
Reuben strode through the room, tearing open the internal door. A second room, as cold and vacant as the first. The place had been stripped, everything laid bare. Wallpaper, carpets, curtains ripped out. A room scorched back to its bare bones. Badly painted red walls, stained wooden boards underfoot. And something in the space left behind that stopped him dead.
A wooden cot.
A small boy face down, head buried in the mattress.
Not moving.
Not moving at all.
Reuben leapt forward. A grubby strap tethered the child to one of the bars of the cot. He reached for the strap and fumbled to untie it. All the time his eyes locked on the small form in front of him. He was still wearing the brown coat, the one from the missing child posters, the one he had spilled his drink down. He touched the back of the child’s head. Cold. Freezing cold. His hand recoiled from the shock. ‘Joshua, Joshua, Joshua,’ he said under his breath. My son. My one and only son. Nothing. No movement. Just the frozen form of a two-year-old in a stark and hostile room. Reuben shook him, repeating his name over and over again. But the child didn’t budge, his face pressed into the filthy mattress.
