by John Macken
‘I know. He’s asking me to go and get him.’
‘What? Do you know him personally?’
‘Not really . . .’ Lucy tailed off.
‘Don’t know when I’ll be back – a few hours at least.’
Reuben pecked Lucy on the forehead. He smelt her hair and for a second was unsteady on his feet. There was a finality in the kiss. It was all he could do not to scream. He left the house and rushed to the car. This was it. The moment had arrived.
6
Reuben drove the six convoluted London miles to GeneCrime. Cutting down side roads and funnelling through one-way systems, he had the notion that he was slowly circling his house, taking wider and wider concentric sweeps until he arrived. Even the SatNav appeared to struggle to direct him. When he reached the car park, Reuben pulled up outside the subterranean security office and signed a short form authorizing him to take a pool car. He climbed into a regulation blue Mondeo with subtle police markings and screeched around the sticky tarmac of the car park.
Some twenty minutes later, Reuben killed the engine outside a police station in the shabbier end of Westminster. The building was worn-out and greying, a tired witness to years of relentless crime. Seemingly, criminals leaked out like rats from a drain and officers returned them, over and over, neither side particularly gaining from the experience. The duty sergeant checked Reuben’s ID and rang an internal number. Reuben examined the posters which lined the walls. They implored people to ring Crime-stoppers, or DrugAmnesty, or Vandal-Line. Please, they seemed to beg, do something.
The man who had called him, when he appeared, was thin and old, the word ‘deskbound’ cowering in the creases of his uniform. As his mouth opened to speak, thick threads of saliva appeared at the back of his tongue, as if moving his jaw was a rare event.
‘I’ll bring him up, then.’
‘Good. But don’t tell him who’s collecting him or where’s he being taken.’
‘If you’ll just sign the release forms.’
The man paced slowly back the way he had come and Reuben was suddenly nervous. The moment of truth. Two whole years of research and experimentation. Months of pressure from above. Eight years of relationship, three years of marriage. A six-month-old son. Seconds away from the intersection of every important timeline in his life. A horrible collision of all of his worlds. He hoped to God that he was less competent than he had imagined. Surely there was a good chance he had fucked everything up, and that he could go home to Lucy and Joshua, guilty of nothing more than suspicion and abuse of power. Please, he whispered to himself, please let the obvious logic be wrong. Please let there be another explanation for this situation. Please let recent events be a series of unhappy coincidences. Please let Lucy be faithful and loving. Please let the hairs in my bed have blown in on the wind. Please let my child be mine. Please let the detainee have no connection to Lucy. Please let the Pheno-Fit be inaccurate. Please let the CCTV recognition be wrong. Please let the restless ants in my brain stop. Please let everything return to the way it was. Please let me turn around without finding out. Please let me drive home in blissful ignorance. Please. A man being led forwards, scanning left and right, slightly stooped, smartly dressed but looking uncomfortable, an air of recent terror about him. The skinny PC behind, nodding to say here’s your captive. The eyes, the skin tone, the chin, the nose, the height, the build, everything assessed and assimilated. The hair. Reuben sees two kinked hairs in a tube. The start of everything. He hears the phrase in his crashing mind: Give me the hair and I will give you the man.
Time goes into slo-mo.
‘Shaun Graves,’ the constable says, coughing and shuffling back the way he has come.
Reuben turns and walks out to the car. He opens the back door. Shaun Graves looks at him, his face haunted by physical shock. He is battered and broken. Here, standing bleeding before him, is the real power of the technology. Reuben suddenly feels sick and his legs weaken. He realizes that he is out of his depth, that he has pushed things too far. This stranger was never supposed to get hurt.
‘Look,’ Shaun spits, ‘I don’t know what the hell is going on but I demand—’
‘Where to?’ Reuben asks, numbness beginning to mix with his agitation.
‘You mean I’m no longer in custody?’
‘Where to? Get in and tell me an address.’
‘Islington.’
Reuben pulls off, shaking, a multitude of unsettling notions flashing through his consciousness. He has the sudden need for drugs. He stares into the rear-view mirror, studying the features again, registering specifics – the width of the bridge, the kink in the chin, the darkness of the eyebrows. He notes the nascent bruises, the grazing on the right cheekbone, the cut above the left temple. Shaun Graves pulls out a mobile and dials a number. At a set of traffic lights, Reuben watches him, listening intently.
‘It’s me. Can you talk? Good. Look, it’s been . . . a nightmare. The fuckers beat me up. For Christ’s sake, I’m innocent. Jesus, this is going to be the biggest lawsuit these fuckers have ever seen. Are you alone? He’s out? Good. I’m coming over. I don’t care. There’s doubt in your voice. I’m going to look you in the eye and convince you. The kid’s in bed, yeah? I’m on my way. Bye.’ He pushes a button on his phone and leans forwards. ‘I want to be taken somewhere different. Do you know Euston? The A40, yeah?’
‘What’s the address?’
‘Melby Road. I’ll direct.’
‘No need,’ Reuben answers. ‘I know it well.’
He begins to join the dots of roundabouts and junctions back to his house. A film of sweat appears on the surface of his skin. It is so cold that it feels more like condensation than perspiration. Through the glare of headlights he sees the faces of Lucy, Joshua, Shaun Graves and himself. Reuben superimposes aspects and features, his mind racing as the car stutters between traffic lights. He asks himself the question which eats into the very heart of him. Is Joshua my son? He views the series of events underlying his suspicions. The police beating a man in their custody; the man having an affair with a married woman; the woman betraying her husband; the husband tracking the faults of others while ignoring his own. He links the sequence of failings of Lucy, Shaun Graves, CID, GeneCrime, of the whole of London. His visions are cut through with conflicts, memories of rights and wrongs, regret about initiating a course of events over which he has little control, thoughts of what is best for his son, of what is best for himself. He visualizes the scientific journey that has been taken, from DNA to protein to cell to hair to tube to RNA to picture to CCTV to arrest to sitting in the car with the suspect. He reviews the recent tweaks and improvements in Predictive Phenotyping which have successively brought the suspect into focus. He swallows the doubts, the errors, the potential limitations of the approach. He considers the dangers of the technique ending up in the wrong hands: the police attacking suspects with the blunt tool of technology.
In the mirror, Shaun Graves watches the outside world flash by, fighting his own demons, blood seeping into his expensive suit. They pass through a complex intersection, and Reuben sees the imminent collision of a number of existences. His thoughts concentrate themselves into a readiness for action. His unease distils into a restless hunger. In the last mile before home, he begins to breathe more quickly. Reuben is alert, ready, excited and scared.
The moment of many truths is fast approaching.
1
Waiting; waiting; an eternity of waiting; staring in the rear-view mirror; the eyes wild; the teeth clamping; waiting; giving them enough rope; waiting; counting; estimating; twitching; buzzing; the moment crystallizing; turning off the engine; jumping out of the car; marching down the drive; fists bunching tight; muscles swelling; breathing hard; swinging the front door open; down the hall; bouncing off walls; through the kitchen; striding into the living room; the two of them together; the arms wrapped tight; heads jerking back from the embrace; the fear in Lucy’s eyes; the slow-dawning comprehension on Shaun Graves’s face; th
e pointlessness of words; grabbing Shaun by the back of the collar; swinging a punch; the jarring connection of knuckle and nose; staring at Lucy; her inability to deny or explain; blood dripping on to the carpet; soaking in; making itself at home; an invading red permanency; running upstairs; pushing into Joshua’s room; his stillness and innocence; kissing his hot forehead; leaving him; leaving him; packing a bag; throwing items in; clothes and toiletries; useless items of convenience; leaving him; looking at the bed; the tidied bed; the hoovered carpet; the carefulness; not careful enough; suppressing the notion that forensics fucks lives; hearing the commotion downstairs; descending; two stairs at a time; tears welling; mouth making funny shapes; trying to hold it together; trying so hard to hold it together; seeing Lucy comforting Shaun Graves; punching the wall; shouting; knuckles bleeding and swelling; hitting the wall again; anything to block the pain inside; the dents in the plaster; the flaking paint tumbling down; mouthing the word divorce; Lucy refusing to beg for forgiveness; Lucy refusing to walk away from Shaun; Lucy dabbing at the redness on Shaun’s face; the last scan of the room; vision blurred by rage; picking up keys and bank cards and files; crashing through the kitchen; smashing wedding present plates and champagne flutes; throwing open the door; leaving it open; hopeful; desperately hopeful; heading out and away; into the road; into the warm air; into the cool car; engine firing; wheels spinning; looking back in the rear-view mirror; praying to see her running out; praying to see her in the street; praying to see her pleading for forgiveness; getting further and further away; swallowed by the London traffic; blurring through the disorder; fast and erratic; screeching round corners; wanting to drive headlong into walls; turning off the main road; being spat out near a hotel; a cheap hotel full of cheap people; checking in and drinking; drinking; drinking; vomiting; passing out; tossing and turning; drinking; too hot and too cold; sweating and shivering at the same time; endlessly repeating the word ‘No’; the pitiless light pushing through the blinds; waking up alone; crying in the morning; the crushing, defeating hangover; the split-open knuckles; the sickening realizations; the gnawing truths; the utter desolation; the son, the wife, the house, the marriage, the job; the end of one life; the vacuum of another.
The new day brought a frantic series of phone calls. From Phil Kemp: ‘We’ve got problems, Reuben. Serious problems.’ From Sarah Hirst: ‘What the fuck have you done?’ From Judith Meadows, loyal Judith: ‘Are the rumours true?’ From Mina Ali: ‘CID are baying for your blood.’ Empty bottles lay on the bed, open wraps of powder were scattered across the flimsy brown table, and used-up clothes were heaped on the floor. And all the time, the redness continued to leak through bandaged knuckles, refusing to scab over and begin healing.
The next morning, the recriminations began in earnest. Lucy screamed abuse down the line, the news of Shaun Graves’s intention to sue the Metropolitan Police Force emerged, and rumours of improper conduct within GeneCrime surfaced. There were more calls from Sarah Hirst and Phil Kemp, which insinuated a developing picture of misuse and impropriety. Reuben stayed in bed all day, drinking, vomiting and reaching out for the clawing comfort of institutionalism.
The third and fourth day melted into the fifth, powders blurring the distinction between night and day. Reuben ignored his phone, deleting messages without hearing them. He knew that senior CID were starting to take an interest, and decided to stay the fuck away from GeneCrime. And then came a visit from Judith Meadows. Reuben saw the shock in her eyes and tried to explain the whole mess to her in one extended amphetamine rush. The deceptions at home, the deceptions at work, the pressures from above, the hunger of CID for an untested technology, the relentless search for the truth, the not knowing, the need to find out, the pattern recognition, the hairs in the bed, the denials, the police beating Shaun Graves, the knuckle-jarring punch, the untenability of everything.
The sixth night, Judith stayed with him, pacing up and down and describing how his team had reacted to events. She told him that, mostly, he still had their loyalty, and that Run and Jez had been complicit in events and were keeping quiet. Judith said that many saw the pressures but didn’t understand his actions. Eventually, Judith had fallen asleep on the other bed. Reuben lay awake and listened to her breathing, feeling humbled by her concern, weighing up ideas and notions and planning to get out of bed during the day. He decided to stop drinking to excess, and vowed to call Run, Jez and Mina, the ones he could trust. In the half-light of the morning he realized he was alone. Judith had gone, and only an indent of her remained on the bed. He quietly shaved and showered, before re-bandaging his broken knuckles. And then Judith returned with breakfast.
On the seventh night, Judith finally left. Reuben waited silently for the call to hunt him down. As he did so, he saw the weeks ahead. Night after night in a different room of the same hotel, sleeping and lounging on spongy beds, alone and isolated. And as he sat and wondered, picturing the bleakness of his immediate future, the single phone call he had dreaded all along pulled him back to the present. It had taken longer than he had imagined, which could only be a bad sign. They were being painstakingly thorough.
‘Reuben,’ Commander Robert Abner barked down the line, ‘come and see me tomorrow.’
2
Despite the all-pervasive air-conditioning, Reuben was sweating inside his suit. As a general rule, Reuben wore suits only when absolutely necessary. Today there was no other option.
There was an element of going through the motions as he walked into the building and along its corridors. Reuben kept his head down, avoiding the stares of his colleagues. Even when he passed Judith, who was loitering by a coffee machine, Reuben focused resolutely on the thin carpet. He felt a sense of shame eating into him as the eyes of GeneCrime staff monitored him intensely, burning into him with accusations. Reuben appreciated that the rumours had probably gained a momentum of their own.
They were already seated in the Operations Room, waiting for him. Reuben pictured them arriving early, scheduling to meet half an hour beforehand, getting their stories straight, ironing out any differences of opinion. He ran his eyes from left to right: DCI Sarah Hirst, coolly professional in a tailored trouser suit and regulation white blouse; Area Commander Robert Abner, large and forbidding, jacket off, wide shoulders almost bursting out of his shirt; DCI Philip Kemp, slightly scruffy, but having made a noticeable effort to iron his collar and centralize his tie. By the care they’d taken with their outfits, Reuben knew his fate.
He pulled out the single chair which faced them across the table and sat down. Phil refused to meet his eye. Sarah stared straight through him. Commander Abner grimaced briefly in welcome.
‘So, Dr Maitland, I think we all know why we’re here. Let’s not have any illusions.’ Robert Abner turned to his right. ‘Sarah, why don’t you kick off?’
‘I’ll be blunt, Dr Maitland. We’ve spent the last week investigating your recent actions here at Gene-Crime and have discovered a series of inappropriate activities including . . .’ Sarah glanced down at a sheet of typed, headed paper, ‘. . . misuse of FSS consumables and equipment; misuse of FSS staff time; misuse of FSS databases; misuse of FSS samples and specimens; misuse of CID time; arranging for false imprisonment; subsequent assault of a person under Metropolitan care . . . the list goes on.’
‘Phil?’
‘Right.’ Phil Kemp stared into a similar piece of previously prepared evidence. ‘Altogether there are seventeen accounts of inappropriate behaviour deemed to have brought GeneCrime into serious dis-repute under Section Twelve of the Forensic Science Service Code of Conduct. Plus there are a number of unsubstantiated allegations that we have not had time to investigate fully.’ He shuffled in his seat, deferring to the Commander.
Robert Abner turned his massive palms face up. ‘Do you want to contest any of our allegations?’
‘No,’ Reuben answered.
‘What the hell happened to you?’ he said.
Reuben remained silent, gazing into the table.
There was a palpable disappointment in Commander Abner’s face and voice. ‘You turned it down, Reuben. Running this Division. You could have been great. Instead . . . look at you.’
Reuben stared back. Time seemed to get lost in the still air. ‘So what now?’
‘You know exactly what now.’
‘That this will be quiet. Kept out of the papers. The truth glossed over for the good of the Division.’
‘We may not have that luxury. It wouldn’t be in anyone’s interests to broadcast this. Not yours, not ours, not anybody’s.’
‘And how about the public interest?’
‘The public need to believe in forensics, Reuben. You know that. And this is the flagship unit of the FSS, where we pioneer the advances which keep us ahead of the game.’ Reuben briefly pictured Commander Abner addressing a conference of senior CID officers. ‘The public don’t want to hear that one of the country’s leading scientists has been falsifying evidence.’
‘I wasn’t falsifying anything.’
‘The point is you go out of here quietly and you don’t say a fucking word.’ Robert Abner scowled across the table. ‘And remember, you still have a pension here. So I expect your cooperation.’
‘Are you threatening me?’
‘I am telling you, in your last few minutes under my command. We’ve got one, possibly two, maniacs on the loose, drowning and disembowelling as they go. Shaun Graves is going to sue the Met for wrongful arrest. We’ve had word that one of the broadsheets is about to run the story. We have to be seen to act decisively.’
Reuben cleared his throat, which felt tight and dry. ‘There’s something else here, isn’t there?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I’ve just made it easy for you to do what the Force has wanted to do for ages – to get rid of me.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous. We offered to promote you, for Christ’s sake.’
