by John Macken
Valdek performs a similar movement on the left. It is more difficult, Brawn now aware of what he is doing, the element of surprise gone. Up, back and out, rotating at the end. Ten seconds of struggle before Brawn is off balance, hurting from the first one, with no leverage or means of protection. He feels a satisfying pop through the sleeve of Brawn’s jacket, the gun falling down, his arm hanging loose at the shoulder. Brawn is unable to rub his eyes. His coat hangs long, his arms closer to his torso, his hands lower down his body than normal, his shoulders baggy at the sides. Double dislocation. A move that has proved useful to Valdek over the years. No need to tear people to pieces. With both arms out of their sockets, very few men persist in lying to you.
Valdek strides over towards Maitland. He looks pretty bad, a lot of blood, an arm almost at right angles to where it should be. Maitland grimaces up at him, and Valdek fights the urge to make eye contact. Kieran is dead, and the ex-copper is involved somehow. He wonders for a second what to do to him, whether to dislocate his undamaged arm, or whether to leave him alone. Cunts like that who come round asking questions deserve everything they get. And then the words from earlier eat into him, washing around his ringing skull. The rape and murder of young women in the capital.
Valdek ponders his options. Brawn is shouting and screaming, blindly pacing around, yelling Maitland’s name, still desperate to destroy the fucker. Valdek walks up to him. He glances at the gutting table. It is boiling and alive, a whitish vapour hovering over it. Valdek guesses it is acid or something similarly nasty. Part of him wants to grab Brawn by the hair and push his face into the liquid, hearing it fizz, listening to him drowning and choking. Instead, he pulls his fist back and punches Brawn clean in the face, watching him fall to the floor, no arms to stop him, crashing into the concrete with a thud, the screaming instantly over.
He glances down at Maitland again, fighting old loyalties and ingrained suspicions. With Kieran dead, Valdek realizes the rules have just changed. He could stamp on the copper’s head, throw him into the bath, see what it did to him. But something tugs at Valdek, something strong and new. Maitland is pulling himself up, surveying Brawn’s unconscious form, picking up a small aluminium object shaped like a gun and slotting it into his pocket. He straightens to face him, eyeball to eyeball. The ex-copper looking at him, emotionless and calm. This time, Valdek returns the gaze.
‘That address,’ Valdek says quietly. ‘You remember it?’
Maitland nods. He taps the side of his head with his good hand. ‘Up here,’ he answers. ‘You got a phone?’
‘Don’t push it,’ Valdek answers.
He watches Maitland struggle to get his mobile out of his pocket and make a call, listens to his short description of events, clenches and unclenches his fists, telling himself he is doing the right thing.
When Maitland has finished, Valdek says, ‘He won’t be there for a while.’
‘It’s OK. They’ll pick him up when he gets back.’
‘What about that fucker?’ He kicks his leg towards Brawn.
‘They’re on their way. A couple of ambulances as well. Get that head sorted.’ Maitland scowls, supporting his broken arm. ‘So, what made you suspect?’
Valdek is quiet. The left side of his vision is closing in around the edges. Fucking coppers. Can’t help themselves but ask questions. He chews his teeth, angry, but not knowing what else to do but spit it out. If the copper wants the truth, that’s what he’s going to get, like it or not.
‘It’s all been about you, helping Kieran. Giving him ideas, learning the ropes. Without you, he’d have been caught a long time ago.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘He sees your gloves, your shoe covers, what you look for on a body and where you check. He watches you, talks to you . . . I reckon he learned how not to get caught from you.’
Maitland stares at Valdek, almost sad, as if he already suspects this. ‘But what did he actually do that made you think—’ He winces in pain. ‘I mean, you beat Ethan de Groot to death.’
‘Nathan, not me. Always had a bit of a temper. Kieran called me to come in and clean up. He went crazy at him before you got there. Sent him out to cool off, get his act together.’
Valdek falls silent. The factory as he had seen it that day less than three weeks ago. The Dutchman lying ruined on the floor, Nathan gripping the bar tight, red with someone else’s blood, Kieran asking Valdek to tidy up. Nathan. His weights partner and buddy for six years. Calm, popular, well liked. But getting stranger and more erratic. Flying off the handle, pounding fuckers to death, Valdek having to come in and mop up the pieces, dispose of the bodies. Talking about night-time black-outs. The things he let slip, seeing the way he was around women, the interest he took in the Thames Rapist story, the nights he went missing.
‘You know, a lot of gym guys do stacking, but Nathan’s been taking it even further. Oral and injections. He’s been obsessed. And there are side-effects. I don’t need to spell it out.’
Maitland nodded. ‘Increased desire, decreased performance.’ He made eye contact to force his point across. ‘And sexual aggressiveness.’
Valdek heard the sirens coming. He was dizzy on his feet, a lot of blood loss, aware that he was rambling slightly, his thoughts coming and going in snatches, but letting it out anyway.
‘And see, Nathan’s missus, I’ve only met her a couple of times, she’s a bit of a one. Big girl, if you know what I mean. Not averse to giving Nathan a tongue lashing, putting him in his place. I just—’
Valdek stops. Something tells him that he has said enough. The far door opens. There is a sense of relief, of things coming to a head, of difficult decisions being broached, of a bottled suspicion finally out in the open. He glances back at Maitland. Less cuntish than most police, but still . . .
‘Look, nothing personal,’ he says. ‘I just fucking hate coppers.’
A female officer approaches. She is pretty, dressed in jeans and a tight jumper. She ignores him and goes straight to Maitland. Valdek is unsteady on his feet again. He knows he needs treatment. The back of an ambulance, some stitches, maybe a couple of units of blood. He thinks again of Nathan and Kieran. One about to be put away, the other dead. Valdek stumbles towards a medic who is running into the factory, and wonders where the hell his life goes from here.
26
Three hours in casualty, in the sister hospital to the one Joshua was in. At least there had been gas and air. So much, in fact, that he had almost begun to hallucinate, his voice coming out in a deep echo, the pain not so much eradicated as floating away somewhere just out of reach. But Sarah had sat with him the whole time, sometimes quiet, other times pressing him for information. And then the phone call had come through, Nathan Bardsmore returning home, and Sarah had left in a hurry. There had been an anxious look in her eye as she walked away, glancing back over her shoulder. As Reuben waited for someone to examine his Xray, he had allowed himself to imagine that the concern was for him.
Later, after the bones had been set under general anaesthetic, Sarah had returned. A small part of Reuben enjoyed the quiet, coming round from the operation, lying in a pastel-coloured room, surrounded not by gangsters, minders or policemen but by slowly convalescing people leafing through magazines and waiting for relatives. Reuben had been told he could leave when he felt up to it, the plaster on his arm shielding the damage beneath, but he was in no hurry. For the first time in as long as he could remember, everyone around ignored him, wanted nothing from him. The anonymous health service. There was no substitute.
Judith had come then, quickly followed by Moray. They felt like his family, the closest thing he had, aside from Aaron and Joshua. Judith was quiet and reticent, Moray talking too loudly, asking about the food, wondering if Reuben wanted a bottle of something smuggling in. And then Judith finally said it, softly and without fanfare.
‘I’m pregnant. Five or six weeks, early days. If it’s a boy we’re going to call it . . .’
She stared down at R
euben’s face.
‘What?’ he asked.
‘Anything but Reuben. We want him to have a quiet life.’
The old Judith was breaking through, and Reuben sensed that given time she would recover from the attack.
‘Are you sleeping any better?’
‘A little. In a funny way it’s a comfort knowing it wasn’t just a random attack. Nathan knew I had a swab and was going to DNA-test him for exclusion, because of the photo of Kieran Hobbs they found on Ethan de Groot.’
‘And then he panicked that you might make a connection to the case?’
‘A psycho is a psycho. But that’s my best guess at why he chose me to . . .’ Judith smiled sadly. ‘Well, you know.’
Reuben held her hand for a moment. ‘I know,’ he said.
When Sarah arrived again, she was grinning, a warm, toothy smile that normally spelled danger. Now, however, Reuben didn’t care. He was officially an invalid for the time being, and no good to anyone.
‘Charlie’s fuming,’ she said as she perched herself on the bed. ‘You should see him. The oldest trick in the book, and he fell for it. I mean, did he not think, I’m about to arrest a man whose twin brother is in the same room, I should be slightly careful?’
Reuben allowed himself a grunt of laughter. ‘Good old Aaron. Quickest haircut he’s ever had. And without him—’
‘You’d be fucked. Wormwood Scrubs and no way out. Disappearing for a long time.’
‘But what is it with Charlie?’
‘You should try working with him.’
‘I mean, do you think Charlie and Abner were in collusion?’
Sarah put her index finger to her lips and shushed him. ‘I don’t think anything.’ She glanced in the direction of the bedside cabinet. ‘No one send you a card? Flowers? Nothing? For helping me catch the Thames Rapist?’
‘Mail me an invite to your promotion,’ he muttered.
‘I’ll see what I can do.’
Reuben sat up.
‘So, how did it pan out?’
‘Fairly routine, in the end. We spent a couple of hours staking out his flat, waited for him to finally turn up and go in, then we were straight through the door. Heavy back-up, you know, some of the larger boys from CID, and a lot of them. I was expecting a fight, and he’s a big man.’
‘And there wasn’t?’
‘Not at the beginning. He just stood there, staring at us, grinding his teeth. We got him cuffed and out. Ankle restraints as well, just in case. Then I heard he kicked off in the van, went mental and butted a couple of the arresting officers, put them both in hospital. But with his limbs tied, even a man like Nathan Bardsmore is up against it in a van full of coppers.’
Reuben tried to picture the scene. Nathan raging, unstable and erratic, twenty stone of muscle fighting right to the end.
Sarah waggled her mobile phone, sweeping a strand of blonde hair from her eyes. ‘You know, I’ve had some interesting calls today.’
‘Oh yeah?’
‘I wondered if you could help me sort a few things out.’ The coldness was back, the smile gone, almost as if it had never existed. ‘Abner’s dead. Hobbs is dead. Probably, Michael Brawn got shot by Abner but was wearing a bullet-proof vest. Right so far?’
Reuben shrugged, patting his pillows and propping himself up in bed. Really, he should be out and about, but he was enjoying the rest too much.
‘Which means you’ve got a lot of explaining to do.’
‘If you’ve got the time, I’ve got the explanations,’ he replied.
‘I’m all ears.’
Reuben scratched at his stubble and sighed. ‘Abner made sure I was fired over the Shaun Graves case by leaking the details to the press. Then, when he was supposed to be fixing GeneCrime, he used his position to get Michael Brawn inserted into Pentonville, to erase the only witnesses to his past.’ Reuben slid open a bedside drawer and pulled out the pheno-fit and the folded yellow Post-It note. ‘Using the DNA from Judith’s attack I performed predictive phenotyping on the Thames Rapist. Only the pheno-fit wasn’t immediately apparent. Bits of it were. When I bent it, though, it suddenly began to click. Widening of the face. Altered musculature. Years of steroid abuse. Classic coarsening of the features. And then I began to think. What does excess testosterone do?’
‘Make you drive like an idiot?’
‘I’m being serious.’
‘So am I.’
‘Come on, basic biology. Reproduction 101. Negative feedback. It switches off your sex hormones FSH and LH. Stops testicular function. Makes you impotent. The great irony of becoming more masculine is you actually head the opposite way.’
‘Sex after death?’
‘That’s what I began to think. All that desire, but a profound lack of performance.’
‘We just interviewed Nathan Bardsmore’s wife. They’ve been having what she will only describe as marital problems.’
‘So he’s impotent, can’t perform, his wife doesn’t understand, maybe mocks him. He’s stacking steroids, oral and injections, brain all over the place—’
‘But why each victim? Joanne Harringdon, for example, or Judith?’
‘Judith had recently swabbed Nathan for exclusion. Long story, probably not for the ears of a DCI. But he must have guessed there was a chance that Judith could have run his sample through the national database. As for the GP, presumably he had some medical contact with her at some stage . . . The others are down to you guys to clear up now.’ Large gaping holes had been ripped in families that would never heal, daughters or mothers or sisters destroyed and violated.
‘Believe me, we’re working on it.’
Reuben fingered the Post-It note. ‘Anyway, I had Michael Brawn’s phone number and last known address from his police record.’
‘Ian Cowley’s?’
‘Whichever. Realized he might not actually be dead. Judith and Moray had found no evidence of a body and when I looked closely I couldn’t see any blood residue at all in the lab. Tried his number, and guess what? The evil fucker answered.’ Reuben frowned, biting his lip. He wasn’t proud of what he had done. It had been impulsive, the kind of fighting you do when your back is against the wall, and when all other options are gone. ‘I saw a way of straightening things out. For him, for me, for everyone. And then I was going to hand his details over to you guys so you could arrest him. Only things didn’t quite work out that way. And when this all shakes out, you didn’t get any of this from me, OK?’
Sarah’s face hardened, taking it all in but struggling to understand exactly what Reuben had done.
‘Look, how did you do all this?’ she asked. ‘We’re still trying to work out where everything fits. Dead gangsters, police commanders, acid baths, psychos with dislocated arms. What exactly was your role?’
‘Maybe I should call my brief.’
‘You wouldn’t be concealing something, would you?’
‘That depends.’ Reuben sighed, and scratched a fingernail along the blue surface of his lightweight cast, vainly attempting to address the underlying itch. ‘Look, Sarah, you’re either on my side or you’re not. You either arrest me or you don’t. Let’s say we stop beating around the bush we’ve beaten around all these years.’
Sarah ran a finger along the delicate curve of her eyebrow.
‘Are you propositioning a senior Metropolitan officer?’ she asked.
‘Are you with me or against me?’
‘Let’s say I’m with you. Then what?’
‘My son is alive. Everything else is just icing.’
Sarah stared long and hard into Reuben’s face.
‘And me?’
Reuben took it all in. The light blue irises with the deep blue borders. The pale face with colour leaking into its cheeks. The pink unpainted lips, pouting slightly, a hint of concern. Sarah Hirst, feelings emerging from hibernation, revealing themselves just for a second, maybe about to run away and hide again for ever. Years of building to this one single moment, a short question, two sm
all words saying more than a decade of working together ever had.
‘Maybe,’ he said, slow and unhurried, revelling in the moment, ‘you could be the candles.’
‘You know, I might just have you arrested after all,’ she smiled. ‘Prison seems to have done you some good.’
Reuben closed his eyes. In a while, when he had the strength, he would walk out of the ward in his stockinged feet, through the hallway, up the stairs, along a link corridor, across an internal walkway which traversed a road outside, through another passageway, into a lobby, past the reception area and into the heart of the other hospital. He would smile at his ex-wife, raise his eyebrows at Shaun Graves, bend down and hold his son, his own flesh, blood and DNA.
THE END
