by John Macken
‘And the fucker who did all this?’
‘Maybe still active inside GeneCrime. Now that’s a scary thought with multiple other investigations going on every day.’
‘And how.’
‘I mean, they could be doing anything.’
Moray was only half listening, a wary eye trained on the man in the pinstripe suit talking earnestly on his mobile. He glanced back at his empty glass.
‘I don’t get it though. What would they gain from all this?’
‘It’s not necessarily about gaining anything.’
‘No?’
‘I reckon this is about hiding something.’
Moray stood up. The man in the suit had ended his call and was beginning to leave, his drink still half full. ‘That’s one for you to ponder, my friend,’ he responded.
Reuben watched Moray instantly change mode, from lugubrious Scotsman to trained security expert. Moray took out a cigarette, lit it, and made for the bar. ‘OK if I take this ashtray?’ he asked the barmaid, picking it up anyway. While she moved off to serve someone, he gathered the man’s discarded drink and carried it back to the table. ‘Here,’ he said, ‘quick favour. Can you profile this? I think there are some sterile plastic bags in the car. The rim should be clean.’
‘What are you now, a forensics expert?’
‘Fortunately, no,’ Moray answered, handing over his car keys. ‘Catch you later.’ He left the bar as swiftly as he could, heading after the man in the suit.
Reuben examined the glass for a second, noting the profusion of fingerprints on its surface. But as Moray had suggested, the rim would be where the DNA was hiding, buccal cells from the mouth caught up on the glass. He poured its contents into Moray’s empty pint, and walked out of the bar with the glass in his hand.
In Moray’s car, with its skeletons of discarded fingernails, Reuben carefully inserted the glass into a clear plastic bag. He tucked it away in the glove box, then drove back towards the lab, the afternoon traffic light and well behaved, large streams of hot exhaust gases churning in the wind.
He focused through the cars, buses and taxis around him, seeing back into the past, hunting down images of his previous life. He saw the other main laboratory of GeneCrime, gleaming and empty, save for Phil Kemp, leaning against a bench, short and stocky, his shirt tucked tight into his trousers, his collar un-ironed, his pallid skin haunted by a dark stubble which lurked deep in its pores. Phil Kemp chatting and smiling at Reuben, two friends who had become distanced by their career aspirations. Reuben blinked rapidly, retrieving the words that had passed between them, the deeds, the actions, moments that even now loomed large, hard-wired in, like all the millions of random events of a life, just needing a spark to light them up again.
Reuben pulled on to a long stretch of dual carriageway and accelerated hard, the big thirsty engine of Moray’s Saab relishing the attention. He frowned, picking through the options. Phil Kemp could have authorized the Final Evidence document himself. There would have been no need to fake Reuben’s signature, except to distance his own motives from it. The dial surged past eighty, and Reuben narrowed his eyes in concentration.
What he really needed to know now, though, was what was so fucking vital about Michael Brawn.
27
Judith Meadows pushed her head into her powder blue helmet, her matching scooter gleaming in the underground lighting of the GeneCrime car park. The helmet was tight, and as she forced it on, her ears filled with the scrape of the foam lining, and her chocolate-brown hair pulled taut against her scalp, falling over her face so that she had to stop and tuck it into place.
She was cold and tired. It had been another long shift, ten hours with only one break. Robert Abner had circulated an email asking for volunteers to work double shifts, and Judith had reluctantly offered to help the following day. The thought sapped her even further. She wanted to be home, curled up in front of the TV, avoiding the news, just relaxing like normal people did, ones who weren’t caught in the aftermaths of carnage on a daily basis. And with a potential rapist at large, and the investigation gathering pace, she felt the need for escape even more acutely than ever.
Judith knew that most of the details had been kept out of the press, but it would be big news soon. Evidence was falling into place. Profiling and pattern matching were confirming what the GeneCrime scientists intuitively knew already. The word ‘serial’ – which needed utter proof, rather than supposition, before investigations were scaled up – had begun to infect conversations in corridors, in offices and in laboratories. But still there was no DNA. Despite all the double shifts, all the technologies, all the insight and experience, the advanced methodologies were floundering. At least two, and probably three, of the cases were linked; everyone believed it. But proving it forensically was hurting.
Judith pulled her strap tight, feeling it bite into the skin beneath her jaw, sensing the heaviness as she tilted her head. A headache was beginning to gnaw its way through her cerebral cortex, and the compression of the helmet seemed to be engaging it in a battle for supremacy, pain pushing in and pushing out at the same time. The unit was under pressure, and these were the times when it showed its limitations. When a serial killer was active and successful, when bodies were coming in at the rate they were, then GeneCrime started to reveal its cracks, as it always had. Admittedly, Judith told herself, pulling on a glove, things were better than they had been. Commander Abner was instilling a sense of unity, pacifying the eager CID, mollifying the gifted but fragile scientists. Bringing GeneCrime closer to its original remit – a cutting-edge unit able consistently to push crime detection beyond what was currently believed feasible.
A door opened behind her, and Judith glanced around. DI Charlie Baker stood in the doorway, his arms folded. Judith had never been sure about Charlie. He was ambitious to the point of disruption, a copper who rattled the cages of all around him. He had a knack, doubtless developed from countless interviews, of unsettling people through the mildest, barely perceptible insinuation or suggestion.
‘Judith,’ he said. ‘Glad I caught you.’
Judith fiddled with her other glove, trying to pull it on. ‘Sir?’
‘You wouldn’t happen to have a whereabouts for Reuben Maitland, would you?’
‘No, sir.’ When you lie, Judith told herself, be decisive. ‘Why would I?’
‘I heard a rumour that you two were friends.’
‘Really?’
He watched her intently. ‘That’s what I heard.’
‘Well that’s the danger of rumours.’
DI Baker scowled, a sharp grimace partially hidden beneath his beard. ‘What about a fat Scotsman by the name of Moray Carnock?’
‘Like I said . . .’ Judith pushed the start button of her Italian scooter. The small engine put-putted away, fast and erratic at first, quickly settling down. She wanted to be the hell away from DI Baker and his remorseless stare as soon as she could.
‘You sure?’ he asked. His eyes narrowed and his mouth tightened. Something told Judith that getting on the wrong side of DI Baker was not an advisable course of action.
‘Like I said,’ she repeated.
DI Charlie Baker continued to monitor Judith for a couple of long seconds. ‘Well, if you do, you know where to find me.’ He furrowed his brow and turned round. Then, almost as if he’d practised it, he half turned back, seeming to remember something. ‘Maybe the cold air will jog your memory,’ he added, smiling coldly at her as the door shut on him.
Judith climbed on to her scooter, beginning to shiver slightly. She revved the machine up and squealed through the underground car park, out into the icy wind and on to the dark streets.
28
If he strained, Reuben realized he could actually see the snagged fibres from the cloth which had polished the front door since his last visit. This is what the gate to hell would look like, he thought. Black, lacquered, almost mocking. He closed his eyes and words from the three notes played across his retinas. Mi
chael Jeremy Brawn. False genetic identity. Your sacking from GeneCrime.
Reuben blinked rapidly, returning to the present. He rapped the knocker hard, anticipating trouble. Moments later, the door was pulled open. His ex-wife looked flushed and pretty, in a hassled kind of way. For a second, he longed to grab her, to hold her, to pull her close to him.
‘What do you want?’ she demanded. ‘I’m late for work already. I’ve got a big commercial suit pending.’
Reuben half smiled at the fact that his thoughts could be so far away from hers. This had not been an unusual occurrence, at least not towards the end of their marriage, when Lucy’s were presumably preoccupied with another man.
‘Let me drop him off at nursery,’ Reuben said. ‘I’ve got a couple of hours and thought—’
‘You can’t just turn up like this.’
‘I’m offering to help, Luce. What possible harm could there be?’
‘I’m serious. The answer is no. And he’s coming down with something again.’
‘Although he’s well enough to go to nursery?’
Lucy made a show of sighing out loud. ‘That’s my decision. My final decision. And if you don’t leave, I warn you, Reuben, I’ll call the police.’
‘Just this once.’ Reuben tried not to plead. ‘It’s just that I might not be around—’
‘If it was up to Shaun, we’d have called them a long time ago. I mean, what the hell do you expect? You DNA-profile him, have him arrested—’
‘You’re making it sound deliberate. His name just ended up on the wrong list. Things got out of hand.’
‘Then you keep turning up demanding to see Joshua, violating your exclusion order. Come on. We’re lawyers, for Christ’s sake. And you, I’m afraid, are breaking the law.’
‘Your law. Not mine.’
Lucy treated Reuben to the icy smile she reserved for the defining moments of arguments. He pictured her using it in court, and it scaring the shit out of the opposition. ‘Read the statutes, Reuben,’ she said. ‘Disgraced coppers don’t get to make the rules.’ She stepped smartly back and slammed the door.
Reuben remained where he was, bitter and resentful. In the background he could hear his son, somewhere behind the foreboding surface of the door. He knew it was the product of desperation, but he couldn’t suppress the notion that he had heard the word ‘Daddy’.
Reuben stepped away, walking quickly and angrily up the drive. He took out his mobile phone and dialled a number.
29
Sarah Hirst examined two depressing pieces of paper, both still warm from her printer. She could have read the information direct from her screen, but even in the twenty-first century, police departments ran on print-outs rather than pixels. The sheets quickly lost their heat as she held them up and read them again, and as they did so she sensed another trail go cold.
Everything pointed to the same man being responsible for at least three deaths. DI Tamasine Ashcroft. The unidentified female found after four weeks. And now Kimberly Horwitz. Everything except what really mattered. The MOs were identical: bodies discovered in the Thames or within half a mile of it, raped post-suffocation. But no DNA. And if GeneCrime couldn’t find DNA, there wasn’t any to discover.
Sarah pictured this for a second. Rape with no DNA. A condom – that was the easy part. But putting surgical gloves on first, without contaminating them, and then putting the condom on, seconds after killing, the body slowly cooling, becoming aroused but still being calm and careful enough to think clearly, not leaving hairs anywhere on the victim, no pubic hairs, no head hairs . . . This wasn’t just difficult. This bordered on the obsessional.
Both sheets of paper yielded negative results. On the first, no semen sample, no DNA found at any site on Tamasine Ashcroft’s body, internal or external. On the second, the stomach contents of Kimberly Horwitz had come back similarly pointless. The tripe consumed at some sort of buffet, mild alcohol residue, partially digested vegetables. No deposits or silt from the river. She had been killed somewhere close to her final resting place, and dumped in the river after death.
Sarah leaned back in her chair, its springs groaning as she pushed her feet up on to the desk. Soon they were going to have to go public with everything they had. The capital’s female population would be sent into panic. They would stay away from the river, avoid taking any risks at night, get chaperoned wherever they went, and the deaths would stop for a while. Sarah cursed. And then the killer would get even more careful, and would come back for more, and would be even more difficult to detect.
She shook herself, knowing that she had to stop thinking like this. People had died, and maybe others would as well. But still the detective urge made her see everything in terms of results instead of tragedy. Sarah was honest enough with herself to appreciate that this was a perennial failing. Being too hard-nosed. Breaking friendships in order to solve cases. Using people and spitting them out to achieve her ends. She thought guiltily of Reuben, of what had happened before, of what could happen in the future. The reason he would never truly trust her. Sarah frowned. One day she would kick back and relax, put friendships first, become well liked, open and honest. But until that day – when people stopped mutilating others, when women ceased being dragged out of cold rivers brutalized and battered, when police morgues were empty of the hacked and slashed – Sarah’s means would continue to justify her ends.
The phone erupted into close-spaced double rings, indicating an external call. Sarah leaned slightly forward, still with her stockinged feet on the desk, and poked at the speakerphone button with the end of her pen.
‘DCI Hirst,’ she said.
‘Sarah, it’s Reuben,’ came the reply.
‘I was just thinking about you.’
‘Should that worry me?’
‘Only slightly.’ Sarah squinted at the clutter in her office, telling herself again that catching bad guys was infinitely more important than treating people fairly. ‘So, what’s up?’
There was a crackly pause, Reuben’s breathing mixing with the background noises of hurried London movement. ‘Sarah, can you pull some strings for me?’
‘What kind of strings?’
‘Difficult ones. Illegal ones.’ He paused again. ‘Quiet ones.’
Sarah slid her feet off the desk and sat upright, her mouth closer to the phone. ‘How quiet?’
‘Silent. You, me and nobody else.’
‘Why?’
‘I’ve finally decided.’
‘What?’
‘There’s a couple of things I need to do. And then . . .’ His footsteps coming to a standstill. An audible breath. The stubble from his chin scraping against the mouthpiece.
‘Reuben?’
‘Pentonville.’ A clearing of the throat. ‘I’m going in.’
It was Sarah’s turn to be quiet. She chewed the inside of her cheek. Eventually, she said, ‘Why?’
‘Look,’ he said with a sigh, ‘there’s something in all this that concerns me. Something serious. Something we haven’t talked about.’
‘Go on.’
‘Let’s say you have a serial case. Let’s say the murders you’ve told me about are linked.’
‘They are. So?’
‘We know something in GeneCrime isn’t right. Someone, maybe working alone, or maybe with others, has already doctored official forensic evidence.’
‘But that was months ago. And it might have been Phil Kemp.’
‘I don’t think DCI Kemp did this. Or if he did, that he acted alone. Phil had the authority to pass Michael Brawn’s forensic evidence through the system, no questions asked.’
‘You’re saying, then, Dr Maitland, that a rogue scientist or CID officer or both got Michael Brawn sent down, and is now just sitting pretty in the middle of this advanced forensics unit?’ Sarah glanced over at the door, at its observation panel, the safety glass distorting the light from the corridor. ‘And none of us has noticed anything? None of the senior detectives, none of the experienced scien
tists, none of the multitude of people who are paid solely and professionally to detect wrong-doing?’
‘But not within. Not inside the division. You know how it is in the force. You’re always looking out, at the criminals out there, the ones who are perpetrating all the evil.’ He sighed down the line, in danger of losing momentum. ‘I’m saying that when you’re caught up in a manhunt, you don’t have time to look inwardly. Think about it. A rogue element slap bang in the centre of a big investigation.’
‘What could they have to gain though?’
‘That’s exactly the point. We don’t know. Michael Brawn willingly going to jail. A psycho murdering and raping women. And then person or persons unknown in the thick of it all. The question you need to ask yourself, DCI Hirst, is do you trust the way the manhunt is progressing? Why do you have no pattern matches at all? Why aren’t you picking up any DNA? How is the attacker evading the country’s most advanced forensics unit?’
Sarah let the words sink in. ‘You’re saying they could be deliberately fouling up a big investigation?’
Reuben inhaled a deep breath and took time over his words. ‘I’m saying anything’s possible. And the sooner we sort out who Michael Brawn is, and who put him away, the more faith we’ll have in the rape investigation. One rotten apple—’
‘Can do a lot of damage,’ Sarah answered, almost to herself.
‘Brawn was charged on false CID evidence. Someone wanted him in prison or out of the way. Whatever it is lies at the heart of what’s happening in GeneCrime. Maybe at this very minute.’
‘It’s a sobering thought. And the answer is?’
‘The only lead we have is Brawn. And that’s where I’m going to start. I need you to make the call straight away.’ Reuben’s footsteps started up again, movement and determination coming through the line. ‘I’ll talk to you later,’ he said. And before she could react, the connection was cut.
Sarah stared at the phone, which was making the sound TVs used to at the end of the evening, in the days when schedules actually stopped for the night. She let it continue, thinking hard, wondering about Reuben’s motives, deciding whether to help him, working through worst-case scenarios, reasoning whether she should inform anyone else, calculating what she would need to do to keep everything quiet, and all the time focusing on the negative pieces of evidence scattered across her desk.
