by John Macken
‘It’s important that what I do isn’t illegal.’
‘Aye, well.’ Moray squinted at Judith and Reuben in turn. ‘The sad truth is that there’re going to be times when both of you will have to step over that fine line, along with the rest of us.’
‘What else?’ Reuben asked, his brow creased.
‘CID worries me. Judith stands the obvious risk of having both sides coming after her.’
‘So the real danger lies with you, Judith.’
Judith turned to Reuben, the welcoming lights of a fruit machine trying to pull her away from the conversation. ‘Why don’t you spit it out, Dr Maitland,’ she said.
‘You’ll be piggy in the middle.’
‘Nice image.’
‘You know what I mean.’
Judith glanced around herself. ‘This still doesn’t feel good. Any of it.’
‘Your choice . . .’
‘But to quote you, Reuben, something is fucked up. GeneCrime is fucked up.’
‘No one will have to be aware that we’re in touch. No one at all. To all intents and purposes we no longer know each other.’
‘OK.’
‘If they join the dots from you to me, we’re both finished.’
‘Right.’
Moray Carnock monitored the door, barely listening. Reuben followed his gaze, but saw nothing untoward. A slight man in out-of-fashion denims left the shop. Moray was suddenly alert, bristling with energy. ‘Call me later,’ he said, nodding briskly at Judith and Reuben.
‘What’s up?’
Moray declined to answer. He was already pushing his way through the throng, edging towards the door.
Reuben watched him go, realizing that there was a lot he still didn’t know about the hulking Scotsman, and a lot that he would probably never find out. Returning his gaze to Judith, he appreciated that, at times, this might be a good thing. ‘So, are you in?’
Judith blurred through the lights of the fruit machine. On an impulse, she suddenly stepped forwards and pushed a coin into the machine’s hungry mouth. Obligingly, its buttons flashed, screaming to be pressed. She hovered her finger over the largest one, marked ‘Start’.
‘Well, Mrs Meadows?’ Reuben asked. ‘Are you ready to step off the cliff?’
Judith swallowed a nervous breath. She bit into the inside of her cheek. She felt the dampness of her palm. Her hand moved. She pressed the button. The lights glimmered and the reels began to spin.
1
Two Months Later
Detective Chief Inspector Phil Kemp paused for a second, taking in the sheer carnage of the house. He had rushed over on a blue light, siren splitting the pre-dawn silence. For any emergency service the same rules applied – if a colleague was in danger, you would move heaven and earth for them. This time, however, he had been too late. Way too late.
The terraced house was deceptively long, as all terraced houses are. Phil wondered therefore why he had been surprised at the depth of the residence when he had first paced through it, checking all the rooms, opening all the doors. Maybe, he conceded, it was because his own house was a modern one, with a disappointingly functional layout. It was cubic on the outside and cubic on the inside. What you saw was exactly what you got. He pictured his bedroom, the heat from his bed slowly leaking away, light gently nudging through the curtains. Phil Kemp sighed, and walked back to the epicentre of the activity.
By now, there were at least fifteen other officers and forensics swarming along the extended narrow hallway, in and out of the rooms, up and down the stairs, like frantic insects on the trail of the deep red jam which smeared the walls and carpet. He acknowledged a number of GeneCrime members: Run Zhang, patiently scraping a dried blood sample from the cold glass of a window; Jez Hethrington-Andrews, pale and quiet, cataloguing a long row of specimen tubes; Birgit Kasper, setting up a small thermal cycler, slow and methodical; Paul Mackay, scanning a series of barcodes into a portable reader; Bernie Harrison, changing his gloves, scratching his face gratefully in-between pairs; Mina Ali, trying to take control, ordering younger forensic scientists around; Sarah Hirst, jeans and T-shirt, no make-up, her face creased, her eyes puffy, irritably signing a wad of pink and yellow forms.
Amongst the ordered bustle, the victim lay silent and unmoving on the bed, her fluids being carefully sucked up by pipettes and emptied into plastic vials. Next to her, a small travel cot sat on a chest of drawers, empty now, folded sheets showing where the baby had lain, screaming with his mother’s screams, and long after she had stopped. Thankfully, a matronly WPC had taken the youngster and held him in her arms until social services had arrived to take charge. Phil Kemp felt uncomfortable around children at the best of times. In the middle of a murder scene, however, this one had shredded his nerves.
DCI Sarah Hirst finished her paperwork and walked over to Phil. She appeared uncharacteristically uncomfortable, and Phil allowed himself time to pause. This wasn’t easy for any police officer.
‘So what do we know so far?’ Sarah asked.
Phil stared at the body as he spoke. His eyes took in the arm restraints, the cigarette burns on her cheeks, the razor cuts on her bare legs, the darkness oozing from her neck, the mutilated ear, the missing skin from her thigh, the bone poking through her split-open nose, the horror on her face. He returned to the notes he had scribbled. ‘Victim appears to have deceased around midnight. CID alerted after a neighbour heard repeated screams over the course of almost an entire twenty-four-hour period. Initially thought they might “just be having an argument”. Idiot. Victim’s cause of death appears to be severe trauma and loss of blood . . .’
‘Could you stop calling her “Victim”. We all know her name.’
‘Anyway, we’re running with the theory that she was systematically tortured.’
‘Rather than just sadistically killed?’
‘Subtle difference. Her death looks almost incidental. Someone was trying to keep her alive for as long as they could.’
‘Whatever for?’
‘What most people are tortured for. Information. Knowledge. Access to the truth. Where’s the money kept? When is so and so back? Where’re the keys to the car? You know. When someone needs to know something the other is reluctant to share.’
‘Christ.’ Sarah risked another glance at the woman on the bed. The sight was truly shocking, and despite her training and seniority, she was unable to look for too long. All she saw was the suffering, the pain, the drawn-out leaking away of a life. She pictured the child, lying on its back, dirty, hungry, screaming and motherless. ‘And the baby?’
‘Unhurt. I guess, at that age, he’ll never remember anything about it.’
Phil and Sarah’s moment of reflection was broken by a familiar voice.
‘Inspec’or Hirst?’ Run Zhang asked.
‘Detective Inspector.’
‘Ri’. I got sample, and wanna take back for pre-emptive analysis.’ Run held up a matchbox-sized plastic container. He looked tired and worn, his normally immaculate clothes creased, razor-straight hair rioting in all directions.
‘What do you mean, pre-emptive analysis?’
‘Reuben’s old system. In serious crime with good probability of getting pure sample, do pre-emptive analysis for quick detection. Compare with, ah, more thorough assessment later. Save time in the long run.’
‘It is, as you are well aware, almost four months since Dr Maitland left us. And if he’s not with us, his systems aren’t with us. And that goes for any other procedures he might have instigated along the way. Do I make myself clear?’
‘Christmas.’
Sarah Hirst stared harshly at him. The name Reuben Maitland had irritated a small and angry wound like a stomach ulcer inside her. ‘You mean crystal,’ she said curtly.
‘So what exactly have you managed to isolate, Run?’ Phil Kemp asked in the calming tones which had diffused tension throughout a fraught career.
‘We think we got hairs and maybe saliva.’
‘Anythin
g else?’
‘Probably. But everything else take longer time.’
‘OK, thanks, Run.’
Phil glanced at Sarah as Run returned to his task. She appeared bothered and unsettled, more so than he had seen her for a while. ‘Are you thinking what I’m thinking?’ he asked quietly.
‘You tell me.’
‘That if Reuben were still around, and if he’d played ball, we’d be able to sort this carnage out in a matter of days.’
‘I wasn’t thinking that.’
‘So what were—’
‘It’s probably best you don’t know,’ Sarah said abruptly.
Phil wondered whether to ask, but decided against it. He left DCI Hirst’s evasiveness hanging in the oppressive air of the house. Mention of her former colleague had evidently taken her mind somewhere she didn’t want it to go. Phil swayed slightly on his feet, urging his brain to lose itself instead in the mechanics of the investigation. All around them, sloth-like forensic scientists inched across carpets, running gloved hands over the surface, unhurriedly feeling for evidence. Others opened doors, examined window-frames, pulled out drawers. The pace had slowed. Detail was more important now, the one vital hair or fibre or stain that would make all the difference. Against the backdrop of hypnotically gradual activity, an urgent shout tore down the hallway.
‘Sarge. Sarge? Over here.’
Sarah and Phil were instantly animated, striding in the direction of the yell.
‘You’re not going to believe this,’ Mina Ali said as they reached the bathroom.
Mina opened a thin plywood door. Inside was a hot-water tank, which sat below empty shelves. On the interior of the door was a series of letters. It was quickly apparent from the colour of the characters and the way they streaked downwards that the ink of choice was blood. Phil Kemp counted the letters. There were seventy-eight in total, all of which were either G, T, C or A.
‘What the hell does that mean?’ he asked loudly. Several of the scientists were huddled around, running through the possibilities.
‘GGC. That’s glycine.’
‘What the fuck?’
‘An amino acid.’
‘Remind me?’
Mina drew in a long breath which exited again as a stream of undisguised scientific impatience. ‘DNA is divided into threes. Each triplet spells out an amino acid, which collectively make polypeptides, which subsequently make proteins.’
‘So how does that help us?’ Phil asked, frustration clouding his excitement.
‘This is genetic code, which may be indicating the sequence of something specific.’
‘Like what?’
‘I don’t know. It’s not a gene I recognize off the top of my head.’
Simon Jankowski, the most junior forensic scientist within GeneCrime, cleared his throat. ‘Maybe it’s not an actual gene,’ he ventured. ‘Perhaps they’re using single-letter code. The amino acid glycine, for example, is represented by G.’
‘GAG. Glutamic acid. E,’ Birgit Kasper added. ‘And I think AAT might be asparagine. Which, if I am remembering correctly, is N.’
‘G, E, and possibly N. And the rest?’
There was an uncomfortable lull. No one wanted to profess their ignorance first. Eventually, by default, the task fell to Bernie Harrison, senior bio-statistician. ‘It’s not that easy,’ he explained. ‘I mean, a lot of people can look at a stretch of code and pull out some amino acids that they recognize. But there are four different bases – A, C, G and T – which come in sixty-four different three-letter combinations, like AAT or GAG or CCC. And, as Mina said, each triplet combination encodes an amino acid.’
‘But there’s only, what, twenty amino acids?’
‘Exactly. So there’s lots of overlap and redundancy. Three or four entirely different triplets might all give you serine, for example. I can see a lot of stop codons, and the odd isoleucine, possibly another glutamic acid or so, but we can’t be certain until we get to a textbook or program. No one knows all these off by heart.’
‘Well, ring someone at the lab,’ Phil instructed. ‘I’ll text them the image. Ask them to call us back with the answer.’
Phil photographed the letters with his phone. Mina prompted Judith Meadows, who was back at the lab, to grab a textbook and expect a message. Phil keyed in Judith’s mobile number and paced back and forth. Sarah Hirst stood and stared uncomprehendingly at the blood code. Bernie, Simon and Birgit also ran their eyes over the letters, exploring other possibilities, muttering about reading frame and codon usage. Jez Hethrington-Andrews focused on the thick bathroom mat. Mina Ali entered something into the keypad of her mobile. A police radio crackled away incoherently. The hot-water tank gurgled as it began to heat water for the day ahead. Perspiration ran down Run Zhang’s circular face. CID shuffled restlessly, universally black footwear worrying the carpet. Phil’s phone beeped.
‘Christ,’ Phil said, examining the display. His normally ashen skin seemed to blanch even whiter. ‘Get the rest of Forensics and everyone else. You need to read this.’ He passed his phone around the group. Each face changed slightly as their eyes absorbed the information. Birgit’s mouth dropped open. Simon grimaced. Paul clenched his jaw. Run bit into his knuckle. Bernie swallowed hard. Jez screwed his eyes shut. Mina pursed her lips and whispered the word ‘Fuck’. There was a short delay and then a shocked silence amongst the scientists and police as the implications of the message began to eat into each one of them in turn.
2
If you wanted to forget, hotels were not the place to do it. That was the problem with short-term accommodation. Time seemed to stay with you, cooped up with nowhere to go, ricocheting off the blank furniture and the featureless walls. Just when you thought you’d begun to rebuild your life, you caught sight of your reflected face, sad and drawn, and you wondered whether you were truly moving on.
But stepping back from the mirror, his breath slowly evaporating from its surface, Reuben told himself that things were getting better. Now he had something to occupy him. He walked over and sat upright on his doughy bed. He was impatient, checking his watch every couple of minutes. Soon it would be crunch time. A final glance at his watch. Six minutes until showtime. He stood up, managed a half-convincing smile in the mirror and left his room.
Across the road from the hotel, Reuben loitered in the shallow doorframe of a shop. Dusk was leaking into darkness, and streetlamps were stuttering into action. They came on like falling dominoes, travelling alongside a taxi, as if directing its solitary way through the gloom. The majority of cars had their headlights on. As these passed over Reuben’s face, he stepped back into the shadows. Two days’ worth of sandy stubble coarsened his skin. He wore a baseball cap, a denim jacket and a pair of jeans. Reuben leant forwards and examined his watch in the glare of an oncoming van. It was eight-twenty-eight. Two minutes to go.
He peered across at the hotel, which was starting to show its age; it was badly in need of refurbishment. It had faded into the row of shops that surrounded it at street level, and blended almost seamlessly with the three storeys of flats above. The flakiness of its brickwork was almost like camouflage paint. He had another glance at his Dugena. Any second now his accomplice would ring, and the trap would be set. Although he was excited and scared, the way he always used to be, the balance had shifted recently. The anticipation was more intense, the fear more real. His actions were no longer protected by law. If he got it wrong, no police were going to come screeching round the corner to his rescue. This was the price he was paying. He had begun the descent into a world of scant morality.
The phone in his pocket vibrated twice and then died. Reuben pulled the baseball cap low over his eyes and stepped on to the pavement. He removed his watch and refastened it around his wrist, but over the top of his jacket. The sleeve was long enough that it partially obscured his right hand. He walked determinedly, head down, his face obscured from the CCTV cameras which dredged the streets with glassy determination. Few people were still around. Mos
t had drained away after work. The road turned into a narrow pedestrianized section, bordered on both sides by restaurants and bars. The surface was cobbled, the lighting provided solely by the windows of eating and drinking venues. Two hundred metres ahead, where the street widened out to become a bona fide road again, Reuben could just make out the corpulent shape of Moray Carnock. Moray wore a dark suit and carried a newspaper, adopting standard City uniform. The two men approached each other, stride for stride. In between them, slightly closer to Moray, a smartly dressed man had just left a restaurant, accompanied by two larger companions. Reuben slowed. This was not in the strategy. He fingered the small implement in his pocket with uncertainty. Excitement began to be overwhelmed by fear. He chewed hard on some dying gum, his jaws resuscitating a remnant of flavour. They had rehearsed this manoeuvre a dozen times. The target would be distracted and unsuspecting. And yet no one had told them to expect bodyguards.
Reuben speeded up. The next few seconds were vital. Get it wrong and the whole thing would fall apart. Reuben’s breathing was short and quick. He could see the tension in Moray’s pudgy face as they converged. They had a hundred metres to rethink. He nodded at Moray. Moray scratched the back of his head. No turning back. Seventy-five metres. The bodyguards were big and wide, and stayed a step behind their client. One was black, seemingly without a neck, and the other was white, his hair in a ponytail. He realized that it was down to Moray to change the strategy.
Reuben missed a breath. Ahead, on the right-hand side of the passage, two policemen appeared from an alleyway. They were walking slowly, scanning around, taking everything in. Fuck. Reuben pulled out the SkinPunch gun and concealed it under the extended right sleeve of his jacket. The constricted alley suddenly felt claustrophobic, turning a simple sting into a risky undertaking. Moray was almost upon the man and his bodyguards. Forty metres. The coppers were ambling straight into the middle of the operation. He noted Moray’s change of demeanour as he came to the same conclusion. Reuben worried that the police knew about the intended strike. He quickly dismissed this notion as paranoia. Moray stiffened and his walking became almost mechanical, aware that he was being observed from multiple angles. But it was too late to back out now. They had to do this tonight. There would never be a clear-cut opportunity again. Reuben drew mental lines, judging the speed of the four converging parties, calculating where everybody would meet. It was going to be close. Moray made the agreed abort signal, but Reuben shook his head. This was do or die.
