Trial by Blood

by John Macken

  Tony cleared his throat, most prisoners having already switched their attention back to the screen. ‘Michael Brawn,’ he announced, ‘you’ve got a phone call.’

  Tony watched Michael Brawn stand up. He was slow in his movements, almost compellingly so. He recalled the first time he had seen him, nearly a year ago. Tony had been mesmerized from the start, unable to keep his eyes off him. They were drawn to Michael Brawn, fascinated, incapable of moving away. Moths to flames, rabbits to headlights. Tall, lean and intense. A bony hardness about his face. Calm, ordered, in control, and extremely psychopathic. The kind of man who unnerved prison warders, whom they tried to stay on the right side of.

  Michael Brawn looked Tony in the eye, standing still in front of him. Tony nodded at the waxen face, pale and gaunt, almost stripped of expression, something unbreakable in the boniness of the cheeks and forehead. He saw the impression of power, almost inviting Tony to try him, and that was what unsettled him. His silent confidence. Tony knew that Brawn rarely spoke, seldom even acknowledged those who talked to him. He just watched them with fixed eyes, and a slight twitch of the eyebrows. As Brawn stepped forward, Tony appreciated that there was intellect there as well. You knew that this man saw into people, understood their motives, read their body language, sized them up before they were even aware of the scrutiny. And that this man had been in situations. He had been beaten, kicked and threatened. He knew what pain and suffering were, and what effect they had on other people.

  Michael Brawn passed close, the air from his tall, lean body breezing across Tony’s face. Tony turned and followed him, a couple of yards back. Brawn walked briskly along light green corridors and through sets of prison doors. Tony watched from behind, taking in the expressions of prisoners as Brawn passed them. He was no body language expert but had spent enough of his career observing the interactions of criminals to know that Michael Brawn didn’t just worry the guards.

  They entered a wider corridor housing a series of wall-mounted phones, each with its own graffitied metal hood. Tony watched Brawn snatch the receiver, glance up and down the walkway, and listen intently. He sauntered past, stopping to pass the time of day with a fellow officer. Swivelling slightly, he continued to monitor Brawn. He was hunched over, his head pressed hard into the metal hood, extracting all the privacy he could from it. And then he began to speak, slowly and deliberately, his accent dry and Mancunian. Tony strained to hear over the bland nothingness his colleague was spouting.

  ‘Yeah?’ Michael Brawn whispered. ‘December. The seventh. Third Sunday. Second Monday. The fourth. Tuesday. August seventeenth. May twelfth . . .’

  The other guard continued his spiel, and Tony turned back to him momentarily. ‘But the governor wants an anti-smoking initiative, apparently. Some national scheme. And him on, what, sixty a day? Easy. Like to see him come down on to the shop floor reeking of fags and booze and try and implement that one.’

  But Tony wasn’t really listening. Once again, Michael Brawn was dragging him away, his very presence captivating. This time, it wasn’t simply his indefinable difference from the other prisoners. Tony had just learned something new: Brawn was passing code out of the prison.

  He watched him hang up and walk nonchalantly back the way he had come. Tony Paulers ended his half conversation with a noncommittal smile, and headed off to his office. He had a phone call of his own to make.

  11

  He was breathing quickly, but this was good. He liked to feel his lungs expand in his chest, cold with the ache of stretching slightly too hard. The second one had been easy. She had made it possible, had put herself in the right position, given him her vulnerability on a plate. The only problem had been the mugger, the scumbag who had wanted her purse, or whatever he was after. He spat out a wet, sour-tasting ball of phlegm. Wankers like that made him mad. And when he was mad, there was no one who could harm him. When he was angry, truly angry, he was on fire. Untouchable.

  The mugger had seen it, and had turned and fled. Half of him had wanted to chase him, hunt him down, punish him for scaring the woman half to death. But then again, the mugger had presented him with an opportunity he couldn’t overlook. He had almost made the decision for him. Sometimes all it took was a small nudge, and suddenly you were standing on the other side of the line that most people won’t cross. And with the first and second decisions, a series of events was now inevitable.

  He watched and waited. The thing was timing, not availability. Lots of women were available. It was not being seen. In a city of eight million pairs of eyes, there were eight million chances to get caught. You had to be selective. Many nights he would go home having accomplished nothing. Having taught no one any lessons at all. But remaining at liberty, free to try again another night.

  He knew things would change. At the moment, it was straightforward. No one was hysterical yet. But give it two or three more, the police would finally link them, they would begin to understand what they were up against. Then different rules would have to apply.

  Lights bounced off the Thames, dulled by their association with the browny grey mass of water. He watched it silently flowing by, cold and uncaring, keeping a chill wind tightly wrapped around it like a scarf. On the opposite side were new blocks of flats, supposedly interesting in shape – wedged or curved – designed to seduce the eye rather than assault it. Not like the blocks where he had grown up. Big, straight, towering monstrosities, most of which had now folded in on themselves, dynamited to make way for the smoother shapes of designer living. But at least the old blocks had character. You knew who you lived next to. No need for video phones or remote entry. Just flats full of people getting on with their lives while the Thames quietly went about its business.

  He heard a horn . . . then he shook himself round, glancing at his watch in the gloom. Not quite a black-out. Just a few seconds of tuning out, being elsewhere. Small wedges of time which seemed to go missing occasionally. Where they went he didn’t know. He didn’t physically move anywhere or do anything, his mind just wandered. A side-effect, the doctor had called it. She had said a lot of things about side-effects. But he had kept his cool. The medical profession didn’t understand much about living, about being truly and utterly alive. They were more concerned with lessening symptoms, patching you up, making you feel that you were better. Not with actually making you better. There was a difference, a large difference, which seemed to be lost on the GP. Being good and feeling good, being healthy and feeling healthy, being alive and feeling alive.

  And she had spoken names. Big, ugly, strung-together medical names. Words like car crashes, smashed into long pile-ups. Hypothalamogonadal-pituitary axis. Follicle-stimulating hormone. Hypogonadotrophic-hypogonadism. A leaflet spelling it all out. He had looked the terms up, Googled them on his computer, learned how to say them, and what they meant. He repeated them rapidly under his breath, waiting and watching. Follicle-stimulating hormone . . .

  He shook his head, his hair damp, cold against his face as it moved. Back again. More lost seconds somewhere. The burning itch that needed to be scratched brought him round. He checked his watch. One thirty-four. Very few people around now. Just the odd one or two shuffling home, or looking for cabs, or drawn to the Thames. He stamped his feet. Keep moving, stay ready, be alert. His breathing was still quick. He was excited and on edge.

  He closed his eyes and listened. Noises across the water, drifting, swirling in the air, being blown from who knew where. He blinked. Among them the hypnotic tick-tock of high heels. He clenched his teeth, rolled his neck, opened his eyes wide and stepped back into the shadows, ready.

  12

  ‘Mock fucking Tudor,’ Moray groused, his voice as rough as the gravel drive which stretched before them.

  ‘Who’d have guessed?’ said Reuben, his footsteps crunching in unity with Moray’s, echoing their arrival.

  ‘You coming in?’

  ‘I’ll lie low. Let you earn your money.’

  ‘Great,’ Moray replied. He examined
the house in more detail. ‘Footballers. Was there ever a group of people less deserving of over-payment?’

  ‘Lawyers?’

  ‘Ach,’ Moray said with a grin, ‘the familiar sound of Dr Maitland’s axe being ground.’

  Reuben smiled back. ‘I’ll wait here.’

  ‘Cheers.’

  Moray pulled an envelope out of his coat and tramped towards the front of the house. As he did so, he swore under his breath. An eight-bedroom mock-Tudor Barratt home. No class, no character, no soul. He stopped by the door, which had a dark glass panel at head height. Moray quickly glanced away from the reflection of his untidy form. Below was a spotless doormat, inviting him to clean his shoes before he entered. Moray inspected his tatty footwear for a second, sighed, and rang the oversized doorbell. After a couple of moments it was pulled open by a man in smart jeans, a tight jumper and pristine shoes. Moray took in the square jaw and the highlighted hair, the post-ironic mullet and the previously broken nose.

  ‘And?’ the man asked, holding a large black remote control in his hand like a weapon.

  ‘I’ve got your results.’ Moray nodded towards the envelope, which he was swinging between his forefinger and thumb. ‘Can I come in, Mr Accoutey?’

  Inside the lounge, an enormous flatscreen TV was illuminated green. Figures in red and yellow tussled across its shallow glassy surface. Jeremy Accoutey pointed his remote at the screen, freezing the image. Moray glanced from the TV to Jeremy and back. On the screen, Jeremy Accoutey was in the process of taking a penalty kick in front of a packed crowd. The ball remained frozen, stopped midway on its trajectory towards the goalmouth, oval and distorted in its movement.

  ‘You like to watch yourself play?’ he asked.

  Jeremy grunted. ‘Depends on the result. Do you want a drink?’

  Moray shook his head.

  ‘You sure? I’ve just opened a bottle.’

  ‘No thank you, Mr Accoutey.’

  Jeremy hesitated, then picked a bottle of Courvoisier off a coffee table and poured some into his glass.

  ‘So,’ he said, swirling his drink, ‘you’ve got my answer.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘And?’

  Moray pushed the envelope towards him. ‘Inside you’ll find screen-shots of all our analyses. Everything should be self-explanatory.’

  ‘So what does it say?’

  ‘It’s best you read the full report. But any questions, contact us via the usual PO box.’ Moray let go of the envelope, allowing Jeremy to take it. ‘And we’ll need the remaining three and a half thousand.’

  Jeremy Accoutey snatched the envelope, his fingers immediately moving to tear it open. Then he stopped, his jaw twitching, appearing to change his mind. He walked over to a dark office desk which sat brooding in the corner, surrounded by lighter Scandinavian furniture. Moray pictured the desk lurking in an antiques shop somewhere, solid and defiant, happily gathering dust. Jeremy unlocked a drawer and pulled out a bundle of notes.

  ‘Should be all there,’ he said, passing it to Moray. ‘Three and a half.’ Jeremy then reached into his jeans, and with a practised movement pulled out a couple of additional twenties. ‘And here, this is for you and your partner. Get yourselves a drink or something.’

  Moray didn’t look up from leafing through the wad of notes and silently counting them. ‘We don’t do this for the tips,’ he said.

  ‘So what do you do it for?’

  ‘It’s a long story, Mr Accoutey. And just as we respect your privacy, we expect the same in return.’ Moray finished counting, and glanced at Jeremy, who was still holding the purple and blue notes, unsure what to do with them, unused to having his money refused. ‘A two-way street,’ Moray added with a smile.

  ‘Right.’

  ‘And remember, if you have any questions, you know how to get hold of us.’

  Moray made his way to the door, past the screen image of Jeremy Accoutey – his penalty kick in mid-flight, an instant of expectation pixilated and frozen – and walked out, crunching back up the sandstone drive.

  Behind him, and with the door still open, Jeremy stared hard at the envelope. He closed his eyes for a second and crossed himself. He took a heavy swig of his drink, baring his teeth as it burned its way down. He took a deep breath which stretched the ribbing of his jumper. And then he tore at the envelope with trembling fingers.

  13

  DCI Sarah Hirst hesitated for a second, her arm stopping mid-motion. Rules and regulations, a voice whispered.

  ‘I shouldn’t really,’ she said.

  Reuben stared through the windscreen. A thin rain was falling, mist-like, layering the glass with a film of almost imperceptible droplets. He counted four seconds between sweeps of the intermittent wipers.

  ‘Do you want my help or not?’

  Sarah allowed her arm to complete its journey, handing the photograph over to Reuben. ‘OK, but prepare yourself. Some of these aren’t nice.’

  ‘Compared with what I’ve seen recently . . .’ Reuben began, but then he stopped. The colour photo showed a naked female corpse with strangulation bruising and a sick pallor which spoke of a breathless death.

  ‘We’ve tried extracting from all six of the blue regions here.’ Sarah pointed with slender unpainted fingers. ‘But no joy. We’re absolutely stumped.’

  Reuben focused into the picture, examining the blue spots of negative DNA testing. She was lying on her back on a cold white table, lifeless and inert. Sometimes all it took was a photograph, and he was there. In it, seeing it, feeling it. The arteries gorging, the muscles clenching, the airways fighting, the heart spasming. Alive and thrashing, the single most animated instant of life always in the seconds before death.

  ‘The body was discovered in water?’

  ‘The Thames, no less.’

  ‘And for how long?’

  ‘We think she’s been dead for three or four weeks. This is just a hunch, but she could be linked to the DI a few days back.’

  ‘Tamasine Ashcroft?’

  ‘That’s the second time you’ve mentioned her by name. Did you know her?’

  ‘Not really. Think I might have met her once or twice on an investigation a few years back.’ Reuben cleared his throat. ‘Up-and-coming DI taken out in her prime. Any connection between her profession and her death?’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Could she have been working on something . . .’

  ‘Nothing that checks out. Some paedophile stuff, but it doesn’t look to be linked. Even coppers end up in the wrong place at the wrong time.’

  ‘Yeah, well.’

  Sarah reached for the picture, holding her hand out, palm upturned. ‘Could I?’

  Reuben passed it back, frowning. ‘You’re saying it might have been the first?’

  ‘I’m not saying anything. But you’re aware what happens with first-time murders.’

  ‘Like first-time lovers. Don’t really know what they’re doing till they’ve done it and it’s over.’

  ‘So this could be important.’

  ‘If it’s linked.’ Reuben rewound to the case that still haunted him. No mistakes then with the first one. Just slow, methodical torture and death as Reuben’s career fell apart and his marriage disintegrated. ‘But it doesn’t always work like that. You remember?’

  Sarah half turned in her seat. The bad memory was still raw. ‘Sorry . . .’

  The wipers dragged again across the windscreen, shuddering and screeching in protest. It had stopped raining. Reuben blinked a couple of slow blinks. It was amazing. You could stare through a windscreen for long sluggish minutes and not notice that the wipers were still flicking back and forth, the wetness having dispersed, the glass no longer needing clearing. The brain and its ability to miss the obvious and lose itself in memories you hoped you’d buried.

  ‘Sometimes,’ Reuben said after only a brief pause, ‘if they’ve been in the water a while, particularly where there are boats, you get this weirdly impenetrable mix of oil and
algae.’

  ‘Oil?’

  ‘From outboard motors. This is good because it preserves the DNA, but bad because it makes it almost impossible to get at.’

  ‘So what do we do?’

  ‘Ask the lab to try again using a dilute ethanol solution. Then precipitate with sodium acetate and re-sequence. Might need five per cent glycerol in the PCR mix as well.’

  ‘You think it will work?’

  ‘It’s the only thing that stands a chance.’

  Sarah frowned. ‘We’ll give it a shot. Thanks. Now, I’ve got something for you.’ She pulled another colour photo out of the pocket of her charcoal jacket. ‘Have a look at this one. Recognize him?’

  Reuben squinted at the mugshot of a dark-haired Caucasian prisoner taken at the time of arrest. ‘Possibly . . .’

  ‘You did carry out your predictive phenotyping on those samples last night?’

  ‘You’re joking. This is Michael Brawn?’

  ‘None other.’

  Reuben patted the pockets of his denim jacket, then slid out his pheno-fit of Michael Brawn. He searched the digitized features: the shallow nose, the rounded pudgy cheeks, the distended earlobes, the anterior curve of the chin, the slight overbite. But mostly Reuben stared into the blackness of the face, with its dark pigmentation, pure-line Afro-Caribbean, unmistakable in its ethnicity. He placed the picture next to Sarah’s mugshot, shoulder to shoulder, head to head.

  ‘White Michael Brawn, meet black Michael Brawn.’

  The wiper juddered across the dry screen again, and Sarah finally turned it off.

  ‘There’s something else, something more important than this,’ she said.