by John Macken
‘Stay away from me, Veno,’ Reuben answered.
Veno levelled the pepper spray. Head height, aiming for the eyes. ‘This is Child Protection protocol, Maitland. Do what the fuck I say or you’re going to get hurt.’
Reuben met his eye. ‘I’m armed. You come anywhere near my child and I promise I will shoot you.’
Veno stopped, unsure. Reuben watched as he noticed the blood pouring from his fingers. Veno seemed to shrink back. ‘What the fuck?’ he asked.
‘Call for a major incident squad. Get Sarah Hirst over to the scene. You got here quick enough. Hopefully they can do the same.’
Veno didn’t lower his aim. He seemed to be trying to take it all in. The unmoving child, the threat from a senior officer, the lacerated fingers. Reuben strained his eyes. Behind Veno, a long way down the street, a dark-coloured Audi was making rapid progress. And beyond that, an ambulance on a blue light was pounding towards them.
Veno finally lowered the spray. ‘This is career suicide, Maitland,’ he hissed.
‘We’re a long way past that,’ Reuben said.
His arm ached from holding his son so tightly, but he wouldn’t have let go for anything. ‘Hang on in there, little buddy,’ he said, nuzzling into Joshua’s hair.
The ambulance scraped past Veno’s car and pulled up. Reuben stepped towards it. Veno took out his mobile and dialled. As paramedics finally laid hands on Joshua, Reuben watched Veno, his face red, his brow knotted, his silent words angry and enraged.
18
‘No, no, no, no, no, no,’ Lucy said, hands in her hair, pulling hard, her mouth open. She was breathless from the stairs, her cheeks red, the rest of her face pale.
One of Veno’s team, a small sympathetic female, stepped out of her way.
Lucy stopped dead in front of the tiny hospital bed. Joshua was lying on his back. Two tubes entered his body, one in the crook of his elbow, the other on the back of his hand. A plastic thimble was taped to the tip of a finger. From it, a black wire led into a small machine with the flashing digits 98 lit up in red. His body was covered in an all-in-one that Lucy didn’t recognize. It was hospital blue with white bunnies on it. His face was pallid, his expression composed and still.
‘No,’ she whispered. ‘I don’t believe it.’
She hesitated for a second, then reached forward and touched his skin, kissed his face. He smelt different. Disinfectant. Soap. Antiseptic. He didn’t move, didn’t respond. There were no tears. Lucy was in shock. Her son. Alive. Lying motionless in a hospital bed.
She became aware of a movement, another figure in the curtained-off section of the ward. An Asian doctor with receding hair and a shiny forehead stepped closer to her.
‘We think he should be OK,’ he said.
‘I can’t . . . I just can’t . . . He looks so ill. So peaceful and so ill, almost like he’s not alive.’
‘He’s been through a lot.’ The doctor flicked through some notes, then bent down and listened to Joshua’s chest with a stethoscope. ‘You should have seen the man who brought him in.’
‘My husband. My ex. Well, you know, my husband.’
The doctor was quiet, undoing a button, sliding the end of the stethoscope over Joshua’s anaemic skin.
‘Look, how sure are you that my son will be all right?’ There was still panic in her voice, a sense that Joshua was not out of danger yet. ‘What are the odds?’
The doctor straightened, pulled the twin arms of his stethoscope out of his ears, let the device droop around his neck like a short scarf. ‘He’s had an overdose of barbiturates. Probably several days of heavy sedation from what we’ve been able to put together since he came in. He might sleep for another day or so. But the preliminary blood tests are OK. Slightly low red cell count—’
‘He’s in remission,’ Lucy interrupted, her hands wrapped around each other, not knowing what to do with them. ‘Acute lymphocytic leukaemia.’
‘So that’s to be expected. His core body temperature was low when he was admitted but it’s in the normal range now.’
‘Thank Christ,’ Lucy whispered. ‘I still can’t believe it.’ She glanced at the Missing Child officer, who smiled back. ‘I really can’t. This is the best thing. The worst thing and the best thing.’ And then Lucy began to cry. Holding on to the side of the bed and weeping. Large fat tears falling from her eyes. Quiet beads of desperate relief.
The officer placed her arm around Lucy’s shoulders. ‘It’s OK,’ she whispered. ‘It’s OK.’
Lucy didn’t fight the tears. She just let them seep out of her, taking with them the agony of the last five days. It had started with a children’s hospital and ended with one. Through the wet blur of her vision she focused on her son. In Joshua’s features she could see Reuben. His eyes, his ears, his nose, his mouth, budding through in small fragments. Joshua was nearly two, his facial characteristics starting to set. She had never really seen herself in him, only her ex-husband. She realized in that moment that every single day she looked at her son from now on she would think of Reuben.
She wondered how he was. He had phoned some time after he arrived. He’d sounded weak, drifting in and out. He hadn’t said much. Just the small number of words that Lucy would remember for ever: ‘I have our boy. I think he’s going to be OK.’
Detective Veno had called her a few minutes later. He had filled her in, given her the details of the hospital, which ward, which room, what to expect. Veno had been gruff, disappointed even, put out that he hadn’t found Joshua himself. Police envy. Lucy had raced over, screeching through the traffic, no seatbelt, leaning forward into the wheel, willing herself closer. From what she could gather, Reuben had brought Joshua in, then collapsed. He’d come round again, then phoned her.
Lucy ran an index finger under her eyes, feeling the cold wetness on her cheeks. She imagined her make-up had run along with her tears, streaking her skin. But she didn’t care. In front of her was everything that mattered.
The doctor patted her on the shoulder. ‘There’s nothing you can do for him at the moment,’ he said. ‘But when he wakes up, he’s going to want to see your face.’
Lucy dabbed at her eyes with the sleeve of her top. Black smudges stained the white cotton. ‘Not like this, he isn’t,’ she answered.
‘Either way, in this instance I think it’s vitally important.’
‘Will you stay here?’ the officer asked, her arm still round Lucy’s shoulder.
‘Try getting me to leave him again,’ Lucy said.
The doctor left, and Lucy sat down in a chair next to Joshua’s bed, gazing into his unmoving face. It was hypnotic, the peaceful sight of her son finally lying next to her. She wondered again how Reuben was, whether he would be strong enough to come up to the children’s section. He was in a ward in the general admissions unit, a separate building she would have to walk to. She’d heard he had lost a lot of blood, injured his hand badly. He was scheduled for surgery as soon as they could fit him in. Whatever the extent of his injuries, however, Lucy suspected that nothing would keep him away. For the time being, though, she wasn’t leaving Joshua.
19
Reuben sat in his office chair, his desk empty, his computer missing, sheets of paper lying at various angles on the floor. Everything was exactly as he had left it before he was escorted from the building four days earlier. In the middle of his desk, the cactus acted as if nothing had ever happened. Impervious, unmoved, unwavering in its existence. Standing upright and proud, doing nothing more than simply living.
Reuben studied it for a moment. For reasons he couldn’t immediately understand, he was still drawn to it. He reached forward and gripped the body of the cactus with his heavily bandaged left hand. As he squeezed, he sensed the tightness of the stitches, the restraint of the dressing beneath the bandage. This time there was no pain from the plant, the padding too thick for its spines to reach his flesh. Reuben pressed harder, then released his grip. A few spikes detached, embedding themselves in the gauze, hanging limp and useless. Reuben
suddenly felt immune from pain, his son safe, the killer taken care of.
The square grey phone on Reuben’s desk rang, long shrill notes, an internal call. He picked it up with his right.
‘I’m ready now,’ Sarah Hirst said. ‘My office, straight away.’
Reuben dropped the receiver. He stood up and stretched, a yawn washing through him as he extended his arms. He had done nothing but sleep for the best part of two days. Reuben checked the adjacent windows that cut into Gross Forensics and the DNA lab. In each room, scientists and technicians silently went about their business. He watched Mina for a second, handing a memory stick to Bernie, saying something inaudible. He wondered whether they were still tying up all the DNA samples from the fingertip killer. Matching Dion Morgan to the scenes, seeing how many hits they could get. Everyone seemed more relaxed. Paul Mackay was whistling, Simon Jankowski tapping something into his mobile phone. At this stage is was all about corroboration. There was no panic any more. Just building and building, layer upon layer, constructing the forensic case against Morgan until it was impregnable. Unseen behind the one-way glass, Reuben smiled at his team. He had betrayed them for reasons he couldn’t change, but still they had come through and nailed the forensics, tied one man to the deaths of five others.
As Reuben sauntered slowly towards Sarah’s office, he wondered whether he would ever see his team again. He was in no rush. Bollockings weren’t something he believed in hurrying. Let Sarah rehearse her words, try them on for size, practise her counterarguments. Make sure she was prepared, already in charge of the proceedings before he even entered the room. It was the way Sarah ticked, the way she had always ticked.
Reuben used his right hand to knock on Sarah’s door. As he walked in, he saw the office afresh, different to the way it had been a few nights back when he had rifled through her evidence file. A clock, no second hand. Five chairs, only two free from plant pots, a terminal rest home for dying foliage. And Sarah, upright behind her desk, a white blouse, pinned-back hair, arms resting in front of her, a thick brown folder between them. She smiled briefly at him, pointed with her eyes to a seat.
‘So,’ she said. ‘Thank you for coming in.’
‘I haven’t got a lot else to do,’ Reuben answered.
‘How are the fingers?’
‘Sore.’
‘They going to be OK?’
‘I don’t think I’ll be playing the piano for a while.’
Reuben watched Sarah shuffle in her chair, drum her fingers on the file. He could almost read the words in her mind. Enough of the small talk.
‘Look, I might as well tell you straight away. You have really fucked up this time, Reuben.’
‘Tell me something I don’t know.’
She stared at him, her eyebrows slightly raised, the rest of her expression unreadable. ‘But there’s also no escaping the fact that you found Morgan. Other people could have died by now. No one else had made the link. Then again, no one else possibly could. You never mentioned the small fact that the killer we were chasing was also the man who had taken your son.’
‘I know. And I’m genuinely sorry.’ Reuben didn’t meet her eye. ‘That’s something I think I will always regret.’
‘So why did you do it? Why didn’t you tell us?’
‘When a psychopath is holding your only child, maybe you don’t think as rationally as you might otherwise do. And when he’s asking you simply to divert the case temporarily, well, I did the only thing that felt right at the time.’
‘You’ve always preached total honesty, Reuben. What happened to that?’
‘The screams of my son happened to that.’
Sarah sighed, running a fine finger along the line of her eyebrow. It was something she often did when she was caught for something to say.
A few long moments of silence. The minute hand of the clock jerked on to its next resting place.
‘OK,’ Reuben said, ‘I’ve been a bad boy and I’ll happily take my punishment. But while I’ve been asleep for the last couple of days, what have you learned about the case? Is it sorted? Do we know everything we need to know?’
Sarah opened the thick brown folder. ‘We never know everything, Reuben. We might think we do, but until we find a way of stepping inside the killer’s body, I’m afraid most of it is guesswork and supposition. And when the killer is himself killed, well . . .’
Reuben was suddenly impatient, wanting to know. ‘So?’
‘This is what we’ve been able to put together. Dion Morgan and Amanda Skeen were promising medical students. He was a couple of years older, and infatuated. They got engaged but couldn’t afford to marry. The university hospital had a clinical trials unit, and Morgan spotted an easy way to get some cash for them to be married. He persuaded Amanda to sign up for the trial of . . .’ Sarah flicked through a couple of pieces of paper. ‘Vasoprellin. But the drug trial, as we know, went wrong. Amanda was left with physical and patho-psychological problems, it says here. Morgan was one of the placebos, so he got off scot-free.’
‘The control treatment,’ Reuben said quietly to himself, remembering Judith’s text message.
‘They don’t marry but eventually buy a house together in Amanda’s name. Hence we didn’t trace it as a property associated with Morgan. Meanwhile Amanda becomes bitter and ill, and the relationship flounders. Even if she hadn’t killed herself, she would have had a highly increased chance of future vascular illnesses – a life sentence, like the other trialists. However, we still don’t understand precisely what kick-started Morgan’s attacks, what set them off.’
Reuben rubbed his eyes. He was still tired, an amphetamine hangover of epic proportions. But he needed to put everything together. ‘Morgan said something to me about coming across the people who had run the trial. Medics, administrators, drug reps still in the clinical trials business, who had just moved on with their lives, swapping one institution for another, still testing new drugs out on hard-up patients.’
Sarah nodded. ‘And there’s this as well,’ she said, sliding a photocopied newspaper article across her desk.
Reuben scanned it. A quarter-page article from a broadsheet. Something in it resonated with what Francis Randle had told him. The victims and families had been offered just £8,000 in compensation after the manufacturer of Vasoprellin went bust, its investors dumping their shares, scared of huge lawsuits.
‘So as far as we can surmise, Morgan’s fiancée commits suicide, her family get offered a paltry eight grand, and in his medical capacity Morgan starts bumping into the men who have effectively killed his fiancée.’
‘I guess he must have started planning,’ Reuben said. ‘But then after two of the three people he really wants to kill – Ian Gillick and Carl Everitt – it all goes wrong. He gets stopped for probable drink driving, automatically gets a swab taken, one which is rapidly heading for the National DNA Database. He can’t just go ahead and kill Philip Gower, and he can’t just stop. He knows the power of forensics. Even being careful he will have contaminated the scenes of Everitt and Gillick.’
‘And then he has the good fortune to see you in the papers, to read that your son is being treated in the hospital he works in. From there it’s easy. Follows Lucy, snatches Joshua, leaves Riefield’s DNA at the scene. He knows you have the forensic authority to erase any evidence of the murders, given that you’re in charge of the case. Even has your contact numbers from Joshua’s hospital records.’
Reuben sat perfectly still, thinking it all through. He blinked rapidly, flashbacks of the last week of his life, trying to blot out the image of Morgan crouching over him, gripping the hacksaw tight, ripping it through his fingertips.
Sarah interrupted his line of thought. ‘You OK?’
‘Fine,’ he said.
‘You know, Commander Thorner and I have had three very long and very intense meetings about you over the weekend. To be frank, Reuben, I’m sick of hearing your name. Especially when I should be relaxing and putting my feet up.’
<
br /> ‘I can’t imagine you ever relax, Sarah.’
‘The outcome is, we’ve decided we’re not going to officially reprimand you. Yet.’
‘No?’ Reuben was genuinely surprised.
‘But we are going to suspend you from duty. Sick leave. Injured in the line of duty.’
‘How long?’
‘Until further notice. Or . . .’ Sarah looked at him and smiled.
‘Or what?’
‘Until we need you again.’
Reuben stood up. He stretched, the fingertips of his left hand throbbing once more. ‘Thanks,’ he said.
‘And let me give you some advice. Think long and hard about what happened a few days ago in that house. About who shot who. About who was in the room. About where the gun came from. Guys here in Gross Forensics are going to be examining the bullet fragments retrieved from Dion Morgan. They’re going to want to match them to a weapon. They’re going to want to find out where that weapon came from.’
‘Are you asking me to destroy evidence related to an official inquiry, DCI Hirst?’
Sarah flashed him a second quick smile. Reuben felt privileged. ‘Take some time off, Reuben. You’re going to need it for what’s heading your way.’
20
Reuben closed the front door behind him. Two press photographers had taken his picture as he crossed the small strip of grass in front of Lucy’s house. He blinked in the hallway, the flashes staying with him.
He called Lucy’s name. There was an echo, the house sounding empty. No Veno, none of his squad lounging around, soaking up the noise. He heard a shout from upstairs. He stood quietly for a second, his eyes still adjusting. He saw the small mirror he had mounted, the radiator cover he had screwed to the wall, the floor tiles he had fixed and polished. His superficial stamps on a house he no longer lived in.
There was movement above, Lucy coming into view as she thumped down the stairs. She squeezed past Reuben, pulled out a bunch of keys, rattled them in the door, rotating the keys twice, double-locking it.
