Dirty Little Lies

by John Macken

  ‘Judith . . .’

  ‘Have you any idea what I’ve put on the line for you? Jeopardizing my career. Undermining my colleagues. Going behind their backs. Working for you on the inside.’ Judith glanced at Moray. There were tears in her eyes. ‘Not to mention anything else.’

  ‘I know it seems . . .’

  ‘And what was it you called me? Piggy in the middle?’

  ‘But . . .’

  ‘Well, this little piggy’s going to market.’

  ‘Judith . . .’

  ‘And she isn’t coming back.’

  The door slammed. Reuben bit hard into his lip. He screwed up his face, rubbing his forehead with his knuckles. He turned to Moray, who shrugged, heading for the exit as well. ‘Get some sleep,’ he said, swallowing the last of his sausage roll. ‘You’re going to need it.’

  3

  Mark Gelson crouched behind a brimming yellow skip, which sat pregnant in front of a renovated house in Dulwich. Disused doors had been wedged along the skip’s length, its bulging contents in imminent danger of overwhelming them. From his position beneath the slight overhang, Mark Gelson could monitor the road, the short drive and the front door of the house. More importantly, given that the skip was backed close to a neighbouring brick wall, he couldn’t be seen.

  Originally, he had planned simply to sit in his car and wait, but this was far better. To be out in the fresh air, the falling sun still warming the tarmac, this was the life. He looked up, above the house, past its shiny new guttering, and saw that the sky was slowly filling with clouds, drifting in and parking, like old American cars. A light wind toyed with an empty cement bag dangling out of the skip. Mark Gelson zipped his jacket up and checked his watch. It was almost seven-thirty. He rubbed his hands together impatiently, wondering why the fuck CID seemed to work so many hours for so little pay.

  To pass the time, and sure that he couldn’t be observed, Mark Gelson opened the sports bag at his feet and risked a glance inside. He was met by the knowing wink of a blade. In the gloom he also noted a gag, a pistol, a length of wire, some handcuffs and a bottle of pills. In each he pictured procedures and protocols, fun and games. Ever ambitious with his arsenal, he stood up and surveyed the skip. Its swollen innards spoke of repair and replacement, of DIY and modernization. Period skirting boards, window-frames and fire-surrounds had been ripped out, to be substituted, no doubt, for less ornate, more functional entities. It saddened him momentarily that items discarded after a hundred years of domestic service would now be of no more use to anyone. Mark Gelson scoured the contents until he found something he could utilize, an object he could rescue from futility. Amongst bricks, tiles and pieces of wood, he spied the ideal implement. He extracted a thick shard of glass from under a light fitting. Beside it he found a strip of cloth coated in paint. He wound the material around the blunt end of the glass to make a handle and slotted it into his bag.

  Crouching down once more, Mark Gelson’s knees grated, femur and tibia grinding unhappily together. The pace of his life was eating into his bones. His thirty-seven years had been lived in a frenzy that would have exhausted lesser men. He had taken more drugs, been more places, seen more desperation and earned more money than an entire town of ordinary people. It had been an existence of extremes, of brutality, of desperation. At the current moment, his skeletal complaints told him that he was more extreme, brutal and desperate than ever before. And, listening to the lament of his body, Mark Gelson vowed to himself that his rampage would soon be over. He would disappear as easily as he had broken cover, with the marrow-deep satisfaction that only true retribution could bring.

  A car slowed, coming from the right, and Mark Gelson zipped up his sports bag. His bones instantly felt strong and alive again, gripped as they were by tightening muscles and eager tendons. He adjusted his position, and watched a silver Vectra pull on to the drive. It was a pool car, an unmarked squad car, obvious from a mile off. He congratulated himself that the last interrogation had brought the truth. Here was the next link in the chain. This time a CID officer. A change of tack. But this was where things started to get more interesting. With the information a copper could provide, there was no one he couldn’t get to. Mark Gelson checked his watch again. It was just after eight. He had no plans until the following morning. It was going to be a long night, particularly for the CID officer now climbing wearily out of his car. Mark watched him walk to his front door, carrying a wad of files and notes. Again, he marvelled at the dedication of a copper to his case. He allowed the officer to unlock his door and close it behind him. Mark Gelson counted a slow hundred. He wanted the CID man to dump his homework, loosen his tie, kick off his shoes, and then stride impatiently to the door without checking the spyhole. A little agitation would throw him off his guard. Ninety-five. He stood up. Ninety-six. He stretched a little. Ninety-seven. He stepped up to the front door. Ninety-eight. He clenched and unclenched his fists a few times. Ninety-nine. He pulled out his gun. One hundred. He rang the bell.

  4

  Reuben and Moray left the car nearly a kilometre from GeneCrime. Both were silent, Reuben swinging a slim attaché case, Moray a closed umbrella. A fine summer drizzle wet their foreheads, the humid air swallowing their thoughts. The pavement reflected what light there was like a greasy mirror. The streets were known to Reuben in almost microscopic detail. As he turned a corner he saw the spot where he had encountered Jez Hethrington-Andrews. Reuben glanced at the restaurant he met Sarah Hirst in, half expecting her to be there. But it was closed, as were all the other shops, offices and cafés. Ramraid-proof shutters lined the street so that it almost felt like walking down a steel tube. Reuben checked his watch. At this time, even London slept. Moray fastened an extra button on his coat and let out a grunt. ‘Better do it,’ he said. He raised his over-sized umbrella and opened it wide. Reuben hopped on to the pavement and walked under the umbrella’s shadow. Moray held it inches above their heads.

  ‘Thank God it’s raining,’ Reuben said. ‘I’m getting sick of baseball caps.’

  ‘I cannot stand umbrellas.’

  ‘You think they make you look effeminate?’

  ‘Aye.’

  Reuben glanced at Moray’s untidy bulk. ‘Listen, a pink fucking parasol wouldn’t make you look effeminate.’

  ‘I’ll try and take that as a compliment.’ Moray wiped the moisture from his face. It was the sort of drizzle that pervades, soaking through clothing, leaking through umbrellas. ‘Now, you’re sure about all this? I mean, talk about the lion’s den.’

  ‘I’m not sure about anything.’ Ahead Reuben spotted the faceless rear wall of GeneCrime. There were no windows or doors. It merely served as a partition, closing off a dead end. People passed all day long, oblivious. Reuben and Moray turned sharply into a narrow side street fifty metres before it, too tight for traffic, but brightly lit. Above and around their progress was monitored by a swarm of security cameras. ‘Something Sarah Hirst said rang true.’

  ‘So you’re friends now, all of a sudden?’ Moray asked, pulling the umbrella tighter over their heads.

  ‘Not by a long stretch. But a deal’s a deal. She owes me a favour, and I expect her to keep her word, just like I kept mine and sent her the Predictive Phenotyping results. She could have had me arrested when I met her in the restaurant, but she didn’t. Who knows, maybe she is playing fair.’

  ‘Maybe. Or maybe this is a trap.’

  ‘Which is where you come in.’

  ‘Right,’ Moray whispered, ‘like I get all the glamorous jobs. OK, you stay here. Keep the brolly down low. There’s an alcove twenty yards ahead which can’t be seen on camera. I will be a while. If I’m not back in an hour, go home, making sure you’re not followed.’ Moray pulled a small radio receiver from his pocket, along with a digital heat-sensing camera. Reuben watched him walk slowly down the alley, adjusting the camera and listening to the receiver. In his environment of stealth, Moray had transformed into a professional, the kind you would trust your life with.<
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  Reuben tried one final time to weigh up whether he was doing the right thing. He saw the way Sarah had toyed with him in the restaurant, the rising enthusiasm in her face, the unexpected ease with which she agreed to this favour. He recalled the warning in Jez’s eyes, confiding in him, telling him to trust no one. He contemplated how Judith Meadows was losing weight, jumpers baggy, cardigans not hugging so tight. He pictured the newspaper headlines. He imagined the rumours spreading through the capital’s forensic teams. He envisaged the CID meetings, Phil Kemp banging the desk, spitting through the air. He saw printers spewing his photo out, his image being distributed, becoming the man in the manhunt. He ran through views of his lab, first as a sanctuary and second as a prison. He lived the soaring moment he had conceived of Predictive Phenotyping, and the crushing moment it had trapped him. He concluded that he had little choice. Bite back. Play them at their game. Be smart. Stay ahead. Use the skills they had instilled in him. Think like they thought; act like they acted. Understand them from the inside and overcome them from the outside. Gamekeeper turned poacher. And now he was about to enter GeneCrime, the epicentre of the organization which was hunting him down.

  A figure appeared and passed by. There was silence. Reuben shivered. Minutes later, another figure entered the alley, a drunk who staggered past, barely noticing him. He realized that there was a strong possibility of a trap. Reuben imagined what he would do if he had to go back again. Three months had been horrible. But Reuben knew it would be even harder this time. He would go in labelled with the tag of copper. It didn’t matter that he was civilian force. How many fellow prisoners had been locked up on forensic evidence? he wondered. And how many of them had he personally sent there? He shivered again. This time would be murder. Reuben clenched his fists involuntarily. Then he recognized the rotund form of Moray. Reuben inspected his watch. Moray had been forty minutes. ‘It’s clear,’ he said, ducking under the umbrella.

  ‘You sure?’ Reuben asked.

  ‘It’s clear,’ Moray repeated. ‘No police communication within half a mile, no one in the morgue except DCI Sarah Hirst.’ He waggled the infra-red camera. ‘Well, no one who’s alive. And no one hanging around the streets in parked cars. Shall we?’

  They began walking. On the right, around a shallow corner, was a set of tall, metal gates, opening into a cobbled courtyard. The capital was full of such anonymous incursions, hiding who knew what. The gates pushed open, and Reuben and Moray approached a door. Reuben moved his hand towards the metal keypad, but Moray grabbed his wrist.

  ‘Fingers,’ he said.

  ‘Sorry, force of habit. The combination is—’

  ‘Don’t tell me,’ Moray interrupted. He squinted at the pad from a couple of oblique angles. ‘It’s two seven nine four.’

  ‘Two nine four seven,’ Reuben corrected.

  ‘Close enough.’ Moray entered the numbers.

  ‘How did you do that?’ Reuben asked.

  ‘Companies rarely wipe their keypads. Hence the correct keys of the combination tend to be greasy. And the number two appeared greasiest of all. I’d have cracked it in a couple of minutes.’

  Reuben shook his head. ‘Rule number one of being shady. Never deliberately break into police stations.’

  ‘So?’ Moray held the door open. ‘Shall we?’

  Reuben sensed the cold pinch of formalin reach his nose from within. A figure was moving behind the frosted window. A tired clock on the corridor wall pointed to 3.15 a.m. Reuben drew in a deeper breath. ‘What could possibly go wrong?’ he answered, pushing through and entering the morgue.

  5

  Mina Ali is sitting up in bed, hugging her knees, another pounding sweaty nightmare having woken her. She looks at the blood-red digital numbers: 3:15 a.m. The house creaks and groans like a heavy piece of furniture. Through the nearest wall to her single bed comes the sound of her father snoring. She finds some comfort in the deep vibration, and convinces herself that moving back in with her parents is a good thing, for the time being at least. Mina peers across the room in the half-darkness. The wallpaper and curtains have been changed since she moved out. They have depersonalized her room, she realizes belatedly. Mina touches her forehead, which is sticky. She runs her fingers down the length of her nose, feeling the grease which has exuded from her nightmare. A single LED bar switches the time to 3:16. She returns to hugging her knees and closes her eyes, trying to think of something to pull her brain away from its nocturnal chases.

  *

  Bernie Harrison is inside and on top of his wife. He has the faint impression that she is slumbering, but it doesn’t concern him. He has been unable to sleep, and knows that he has coerced his wife into sex. She is offering him comfort in the form of penetration. He speeds his stroke. She is quiet. He opens his eyes in the darkness. Whenever he closes them he sees things which terrify him. His wife begins to breathe more deeply, and for a second he worries that she really is dozing. But she grabs his hands tight, the sign that she is close. He forces his eyes open, picturing one of the female CID support staff naked, bending over, offering herself. Bernie begins to come. It is over almost instantly, a weak orgasm, forced, conjured up, a physical solution to a mental problem. His wife whispers that she loves him. He withdraws slowly, reluctantly, and lies on his back. The luminous hands of his watch tell him that it is quarter past three. He sighs. His wife starts to snore. Bernie closes his eyes and attempts to join her.

  Paul Mackay reaches his hands skyward. Above, smoke is made solid by lights and drilled through with lasers. The man dancing behind begins to rub his crotch against him. A rush of ecstasy coincides with the stranger’s contact. Paul’s muscles are rigid, the contact between them so hard they almost rebound. The throbbing, banging noise is melting into a second rhythm, equally sublime. The DJ, hunched over in concentration, is jumping from one speeding train of a record to another. The bass vibrates Paul’s chest with delicious warmth. He feels good. The stranger wraps his arms around him from behind. Paul is still extending upwards, through the lights, towards the invisible roof of the nightclub, and out and beyond, up and away from his problems. The stranger’s wrists are gleaming and almost hairless. Paul notices the time on the man’s watch. He dances with renewed mania, feeling aroused, excited and free. The club is open for another three hours. Until then, the world outside doesn’t exist.

  Birgit Kasper is talking on the phone. She flicks at a cigarette. There are several butts in the plastic cup she is using as an ashtray. The cigarette never gets the chance to accumulate a growth of ash, as she taps at it almost constantly. Birgit is speaking in Swedish. She is wearing a pair of unisex pyjamas and some slippers which are decorated with small woollen sheep. From time to time she rubs the skin beneath her eyes with forefinger and thumb, the phone held in the crook of her neck. She has been crying. As she listens, she takes a deep drag, a needy red cone glowing at the tip of the cigarette. Occasionally she peppers her speech with terse words of English. The microwave in her studio flat shows the time. Birgit notices it, and speaks rapidly. She ends the conversation with the word ‘Ciao’, slumps back in her chair and opens a fresh packet of Marlboro Lights.

  *

  Simon Jankowski is tapping a stream of letters into his computer. He is reading them from a piece of paper, and never once looks at the keyboard. Two of his fingers hover over the characters A and C, and two more touch the surface of G and T. He is in the living room of his bedsit. The dining table is littered with scraps of paper, photographs and evidence forms. A Pheno-Fit of Reuben Maitland is taped on his wall. He is chewing a Biro, and his concentration is absolute. Simon Alt-Tabs to another screen of sequence data, and then to a public database of gene accession numbers. The small speakers of his laptop are playing a CD by the Stone Roses, which reminds him of his student days in Manchester. In the bottom right of his screen are four tiny digits. Out of the corner of his eye he notices that they say 03:15. He stops typing and stretches, only aware how tired he is now he knows how late it i
s. Simon saves his work, stands up and stretches again. He looks in the direction of his bed, pauses for a second, and then sits down and continues his work, typing, collating, comparing and validating with reluctant discipline.

  Judith Meadows is sitting on the edge of her bed, silently crying. Her husband lies next to her, fast asleep. She glances down at him, before returning to stare out of the window. An orange streetlight opposite shines sadly through the night, its head bent over, as if examining its feet. Judith blows her nose on a tissue. Tears continue to pour out of her eyes and slip down her face, dropping off her chin and on to her bare legs. She is startled by a noise. A cat appears on the ledge, meowing to come in. Judith shrugs at it with a half-smile which quickly fades. She points her eyes at a pair of freshly fitted locks bolting the window closed. Turning round, she wonders if the cat has disturbed her husband. He mumbles something incoherent and resumes his slumber. Judith stands up and walks into the newly decorated room next door. She pulls back the cold sheets of the spare bed and climbs in.

  Phil Kemp is asleep at his desk in the GeneCrime building. His left cheek is lying on a small stack of newspapers, and two empty horizontal bottles of Shiraz loll on the table. Forms, papers and evidence are strewn everywhere. His arms are spreadeagled, as if he is about to gather up all the information in front of him. A penholder on the desk has a small analogue clock at its centre, short stubby hands climbing over each other, and both pointing to the number three. His computer monitor shows the home page of an online poker club. Phil lifts his head and turns to face the other wall. His left cheek bears smudged black letters of print from the newspaper. He grunts and slides back into his shallow slumber.