by John Macken
‘Police,’ she answered into her mobile. ‘This is Detective Chief Inspector Sarah Hirst, Euston CID. I’ve found a man apparently dead on the pavement. Request an ambulance and some back-up.’ Despite the civilian context, Sarah found it difficult to explain the situation in anything other than cop-speak. ‘Yes, I’ll stay on site. Roger that.’ She scanned up and down the street in cold agitation, stepping away from the corpse. A road-sweeping lorry edged around the corner, its brushes kicking up dirt from the gutter, its suction hoovering the detritus of passing life. She ended the call and watched the vehicle pass, oblivious, the corpse just a few metres out of reach of its determined cleaning.
Looking at her phone, Sarah cursed. This was taking time. Her day would have to be even more rushed. She strained her ears, but there were no sirens. They say you never hear the ambulance that comes for you. A couple of cars pulled into Gene-Crime, almost line astern. One contained Phil Kemp, and Sarah felt a quick flare of irritation. She considered him an inferior officer in almost all regards, and yet he seemed to be trying to overrule her at every opportunity. Sarah told herself that she had to be harder than him, colder than him, more ruthless than him if she was ultimately going to gain control of GeneCrime. She comforted herself momentarily that her opponent had weaknesses which she could exploit. An ambulance turned into the road, and she saw a squad car approaching, a junction behind. She sighed with relief. Five more minutes and her presence at the scene would be over.
The first person to address her was a paramedic, who walked calmly to the body, resisted the urge to touch it, and returned to the ambulance for a blanket. She draped the shiny black material over the corpse and said to Sarah, ‘A few hours too late.’
Sarah nodded, unsure what to say.
‘You found him, did you?’
‘Yes.’
‘Right. Over to you, boys.’ The paramedic gestured as two policemen climbed out of their cars.
‘OK, love,’ the first began, ‘it can be a bit upsetting seeing a body. Now, take a second, and tell me exactly what happened here.’
Sarah paused. Nothing had happened. She had simply found the man lying in the street.
‘If you need a sit down . . .’
‘I’m fine. Really.’ Sarah resisted the urge to pull rank. She knew she would enjoy the cheap thrill and a large part of her wanted to say, ‘I’m a fucking Detective Chief Inspector, sunshine. I’ve seen people mutilated in ways that your twenty-three-year-old brain couldn’t even imagine. So don’t fuck me around with all the fragile female nonsense.’ Instead, she continued, ‘Look, I’m uniform, just like you guys. I arrived here fifteen minutes ago, and this chap was lying in the road.’
There was an instant change in body language. The two PCs smiled, put away their notebooks and chatted. Sarah told them all she knew, and they radioed the information back to base. Finally, she gave them her office phone number, and left them to it, feeling somehow good about herself. There was a song she once liked by Morrissey. ‘I Keep Mine Hidden’. She whistled it as she walked through the car park and into GeneCrime.
The phone call which would change Sarah Hirst’s life for ever came shortly after lunch.
The morning had been hectic, fraught, laboured, divisive. Meetings between CID, Pathology, Scenes-of-Crime and Forensics had turned up more problems than had been solved. Sarah sat in her office with a sense of retreat, and double-clicked the files that had been forwarded to her. The one which made her stop showed the inside of the bathroom cupboard door at Sandra Bantam’s house. As she viewed digital images of the code, magnified and sharpened, in normal light and under UV, the implications once again pricked her, and made her sweat. The message had been checked and double-checked for ambiguities and mistakes. The final task Dr Bantam’s blood had performed, as her life leaked away, was to spell out the words: ‘GENE.CRIMES. WILL.BE.REPAID’. Sarah wiped some dust from the screen with the back of her hand. The letters shone out at her with renewed zeal. The red letters of the code, the black letters of the translation. Since eight o’clock, ideas and theories had been whispered and shouted across GeneCrime’s conference-room table. She noted the differing effect the murder had upon the building’s staff – CID excited, eager, sniffing the air like bloodhounds; forensic scientists sullen, bickering, cautious that every angle was considered before venturing conclusions. The phone rang and she reached for the receiver, picking it up before the second ring.
‘Hello,’ she answered. ‘DCI Hirst.’
There was a pause. ‘PC Davies here, Euston Met. I’m sorry, ma’am, I didn’t realize you were a DCI when we talked this morning.’
‘No problem. Is everything OK?’
‘I just wanted to follow up on the body you reported finding in the street.’
‘Yes?’
There was another short silence. ‘Well, it looks like he wasn’t a vagrant. He had some ID on him.’
Sarah stared into her screen, annoyed that this was still encroaching on her day. She checked herself, shaking her head slowly, the phone lead rattling against her keyboard. Someone had died. This was a tragedy, not an inconvenience. But this was the side effect of chasing killers – the loss of a stranger’s life had become a mundane event more likely to vex than upset. ‘Right,’ she muttered, not really sure what was expected of her.
‘The thing is, we found something in his wallet.’
‘What did you find?’
‘A pass for the GeneCrime Forensics Unit.’
‘What kind of pass?’ Sarah asked abruptly. ‘Staff or visitor?’
‘Staff. We think, well, that he might be one of your colleagues.’
The letters on her computer faded in and out of focus, dancing around, revelling in their message. ‘What . . .’ Sarah asked, a sharp breath settling straight into the depths of her stomach, ‘what is the name on the pass?’
‘I’m not sure which way round this goes. It looks to be either Zhang Run or Run Zhang.’
‘Run Zhang,’ she repeated, the name now shocking, its abrupt syllables stabbing somewhere in her chest. ‘Oh my God.’
‘You knew the deceased, did you?’ PC Davies asked.
‘Listen carefully to what I’m about to say. Don’t touch the body. Leave him where he is. Clear everybody from the room he’s in. Take the name of everyone who has touched him. We’ll be over. Where exactly are you?’ She wrote the address on a sickeningly yellow Post-It note and slammed the phone down.
While police procedures assembled themselves into rigid pathways of thought, the rest of her mind raced around, darting in and out, delving and exploring. She stood up and rushed down the corridor to Phil Kemp’s office, ideas and images streaking ahead of her, bouncing off walls and kicking through heavy double doors. This needed to be handled quickly and delicately and, knocking on Phil’s door, Sarah appreciated again that these were not DCI Kemp’s strengths. Phil was an old-fashioned copper, straightlaced and direct, but frequently oblivious to the subtleties of forensics. Still, they had to move fast. She flung the door open. Staff would have to be informed and, almost in the same breath, asked to examine Run’s body, to pore over his naked corpse, removing small parts of him, scraping bits into tubes and bags. Just as they had done to Sandra.
Phil looked up from a thick wad of forms, eyes asking about the commotion. Sarah steadied herself and told him exactly what she knew. That she had noticed a badly beaten man lying in the street. That she had failed to examine him. That the police had identified him as Run Zhang. That his body had been dumped deliberately close to his workplace. That this was the second murder of her staff in five days. That the more she thought about it, the more it unnerved her. Someone was murdering GeneCrime’s forensic scientists.
1
The lab was still. A trio of machines which had toiled through the night continued their programmed tasks. The forensics team of GeneCrime sat on tables and benches, subdued and quiet. As each staff member had entered, they had been told. The news spread quickly. A thick silence s
wallowed the shock and seemed to hold it tight around the group. No one looked at anyone, scared of seeing their own grief staring back. Birgit began to cry quietly, and Judith placed an arm around her. Paul’s eyes were moist, as were Jez’s. Mina clamped her hand tight over her open mouth. Simon whispered the words ‘Shit shit shit’ to himself. There was an empty space where Run’s section of bench had been, the area demarcated with autoclave tape bearing his name. Three of his pipettes lay forlornly on their sides. Mina picked them up and slid them into a drawer.
‘I bet you’re wondering what the hell you’ve done,’ Bernie said to Paul Mackay, breaking the peace. ‘Four months here and two of us have kicked the bucket.’
‘I guess,’ Dr Mackay answered uncertainly.
‘Look, if I’m next, promise you’ll be gentle with me. Use something that doesn’t have phenol in it. A Qiagen column, maybe. And some of those nice swabs with the soft tips.’
‘Bernie?’ Mina said.
‘Yes?’
‘Shut the hell up.’
‘Just trying to lighten the atmosphere.’
‘Fuck you. Run’s dead. And Sandra as well. And I don’t know about the rest of you, but this is freaking me out.’
‘Come on, people die all the time. Do we get upset when a young girl is mutilated and we run our grubby gloves over her?’
‘I won’t explain to you how that’s different. If you don’t understand, I really don’t want to work with you any more.’
Bernie glanced around the group, calculating his reaction from their body language. Mina glaring, Judith rubbing her face, Jez pale, Simon sullen, Paul scratching his scalp, Birgit’s eyes filling again. ‘Sorry,’ he muttered. The truth was no one knew how to react. This was different. It was under their skin, a splinter driving its way through the epidermis, too slippery to be grasped. One of their number had left the lab, gone home, been mutilated and tortured, and had come back to them in a bag. Worse, until his death, he had been examining minute parts of a former colleague. Now he would be swallowed up by the GeneCrime lab, and picked apart himself. Nobody wanted to touch him. The unspoken question leaked through the group. Was Run killed because he was the scientist working most intimately on Sandra Bantam? On that basis, would assessing Run result in a similar risk? If so, this raised some even more unnerving issues. ‘Look, we all understand the nature of chance, right?’ Bernie asked, desperate to move on from his apology, which permeated the air like the nip of formalin.
A couple of shrugs and the odd ‘Sure’.
‘One of us being … killed, we can work it out. Jez, how many murders in London last year?’
‘Two hundred, give or take,’ Jez replied quietly.
‘Right. And population?’
‘Say eight million.’
‘So, the chances one of us – Reuben’s old team of ten, plus or minus – dies from an attack are … anybody?’
Simon, who had spent the last few seconds sullenly bruising the keys of a calculator, replied, ‘One in four thousand.’
‘OK, do the obvious. The risk of two of us dying.’
‘One in sixteen million,’ Judith answered.
There was a pause. In the background, a TaqMan 7500 hummed its way through a sample scan. Simon, Mina, Paul, Jez, Birgit, Judith and Bernie found reasons not to look at each other. They had all secretly been through the numbers within minutes of hearing about Run. But still, the message was clear. Hearing it out loud was confirmation. Maths never lie. The machine finished its task and lay in empathetic silence. Birgit broke the stillness.
‘We don’t need statistics. I am thinking that we’re just being scientific about it. The only way we know how.’ She dabbed at her eyes with a tissue. ‘But we all can appreciate that Run and Sandra showed the same patterns. A CID guy told me that he didn’t think Run was killed quickly.’
‘Why don’t you spell it out, Birgit?’
‘I should not need to.’
‘You’re saying—’ Mina was interrupted by the barking voice of Phil Kemp, who had entered the lab silently.
‘Conference room. Now. All of you,’ he instructed. He examined the group, and his demeanour softened. ‘We need your considerable brains,’ he explained, turning and walking back the way he had come. They filed out behind him, quizzical glances passing between them.
The conference room was long and slender and, had it possessed a second door, could almost have passed for a corridor. A highly polished table ran virtually from end to end, leaving little space to manoeuvre. Meetings in this room felt intense and claustrophobic, even when informal. It encouraged argument rather than discussion, confrontation rather than cooperation. The members of the forensics team funnelled down one side of the room and pulled out their chairs. Opposite them sat CID, impassive, doodling, chatting. At either end of the table were DCI Sarah Hirst and DCI Phil Kemp.
Phil began. ‘Right, let’s talk this one through. Sarah, what have we got?’
Sarah was gripped by a momentary annoyance. Really, she should be running the meetings, giving the orders. While the irritation slowly let go of her, she brought up the relevant information on her laptop, fingers slipping over the track ball. Twenty faces monitored her intently, hungry for information, scared of what they might find. ‘Right,’ she started, ‘since Run’s body was discovered early this morning, we’ve only had time to run … to process crude tests. He’s in the morgue downstairs.’ Sarah looked up, scanning the room, her face cold and unemotional. ‘I think we all have a right to be upset by recent proceedings. However, we’ve got to push those considerations to one side. I guess I don’t have to spell it out. We need to work quickly. This will sound harsh – there will be time for grieving later.’
‘That’s right,’ Phil added, backing her up from the far end of the table. ‘We’re looking into sorting a counselling service. And we’re talking about twenty-four-hour protection for each one of you. But before the Met will sanction it, we need to be certain. So we have to stick together. Scientists will be accompanied by CID personnel wherever possible. We need answers, and quick. Because if we don’t, well …’ He took in the chewed fingernails, wide-open pupils, clenched jaws, and realized the implications didn’t need spelling out.
‘So, let’s look at what we know.’ Sarah opened a file on her computer. ‘Run appears to have been murdered at home and then dumped in the street outside GeneCrime. There is also evidence, as many of you may have heard already, of torture. It’s early days – SOCOs are at the scene, and some of you will be asked to go over there later – but a timescale in keeping with that of Sandra Bantam seems possible. We think we might get DNA from the body. And there’s something else …’ Sarah allowed the words to hang in the air, doing the dirty work for her, preparing the room for the news.
‘What?’ Jez Hethrington-Andrews asked.
‘More code.’
‘What does it say?’
Sarah plugged a USB cable into her laptop. ‘Some of you might prefer not to see these pictures.’
Most of the room’s occupants gazed past Sarah and at a screen behind her. On it was the projected image of a human torso, with arms, legs and head out of shot. ‘A pathologist has had a very quick look. She is more or less certain that the letters were carved into him with a scalpel or modelling knife.’
‘And?’
‘He was alive while it was carved. The blood was wiped away later.’
Even those members of the forensics team who hadn’t looked at the screen immediately now turned to take in the images. Sarah flicked through a series of colour shots, showing the body horizontal, vertical and from the side. Several of them gasped, unprepared for the atrocity of what they saw. The photos came to rest on an upright image, as if Run were standing magnified in front of the room. It was clear exactly what sort of code he was wearing.
‘So what does it say?’ one of the unfazed CID asked, his stare directed across the table.
Forensics were silent. Simon rushed out of the room, followed clo
sely by Jez. Phil watched intently, noting for the second time in a week the gulf in personality between the two sides of GeneCrime. The door opened again, and Simon reappeared with a thick textbook. He sat down and started alternately to squint at the screen and scribble on a piece of paper.
Phil said, ‘OK, while Dr Jankowski is working on that, we need a strategy. Sarah and I have talked about this and have come up with an idea. Feel free to comment.’ All eyes were trained on Simon, swivelling his head between the scalpel cuts on Run’s sallow body and the white opened page of his book. Phil’s unruffled voice poured out regardless. ‘First, we need to establish that Run and Sandra were killed by the same person. So, in a few minutes’ time, half of us are going to Run’s house for a thorough sweep, while the other half stay here and examine his body.’ Simon was scribbling furiously, crossing out and scribbling again. ‘Then we regroup, and split into two different factions, Forensics under my direction, CID under Sarah’s. Forensics, with associated CID support, will begin trawling through previous Gene-Crime convictions.’ Dr Jankowski was moving his pencil rapidly across the page, as if performing a calculation. His face was a mix of intense concentration and puzzlement. ‘CID, assimilating what DNA evidence we have by then, will work on the premise that the killer is someone unknown to us.’ Phil glanced up. The twenty members of GeneCrime were unanimously focused on Simon. He followed their gaze. Simon was sitting bolt upright. He was pale; there was a sudden shocked weariness about him. ‘What?’ he asked.
Dr Simon Jankowski stood up and headed over to a whiteboard near the blinded window. His eyes were half-closed, and he almost seemed to be sleepwalking. He picked up a marker and uncapped it. Then he began to write, slowly and deliberately, from left to right in red capital letters which squeaked painfully with each movement of the pen.
