by John Macken
‘At a guess, a few heavy punches, followed by an unfortunate contact between cranium and concrete.’
‘So he fell back pole-axed, and cracked his head?’
‘As I say, that’s a guess.’
Kneeling beside the pathologist is a junior officer, Philip Kemp, who has been promoted at the same time as Reuben. He is now a Detective, and Reuben can tell from the body language of the pathologist that he is on his way to becoming a respected copper. Philip Kemp stands up and shakes his hand.
‘So they’ve put you in charge for one, have they?’
‘Boss is on another case.’
‘Better not fuck it up then.’ He smiles, and Reuben appreciates he has made a friend at the scene.
‘Look,’ Reuben says, ‘what exactly happened?’
‘We got a call from Jimmy Dunst, he’s the landlord. Said there was a big fight happening. Some of it spilt into the back here, which is where Gabriel Trask’ – he thumbs at the prostrate figure – ‘ran out of luck. We don’t have any direct witnesses, but it’s likely the culprit either climbed over the wall there, or else ran back into the bar. We got here pretty sharpish, while most people were still in the thick of things.’
‘Have to be a fucking mountaineer to get over that wall.’
‘If you’re desperate you’ll climb anything.’
‘So the killer is probably still in the bar.’
‘I guess so.’ Phil Kemp shrugs. He looks quickly at Reuben. ‘Tell you the truth, this is my first big investigation as well.’
‘So we’re bluffing it together. Well, there’s only one way to find out.’
‘Yeah?’
‘I’m going to DNA-test everyone at the scene.’
‘What about the people already here? It’s not exactly clean.’
‘Between you and me, I think it’s time we did this more.’ Reuben glances at the corpse. ‘Even just for assaults which go too far.’
‘Look, don’t get me wrong, but wouldn’t it be easier to question them all, take statements, do identity parades?’
‘I dunno. This could be different.’
‘How so?’
‘You’ve got a pub full of people, most of whom are probably drunk, and half of whom have been fighting each other. The deceased was killed outside, away from obvious scrutiny. My feeling is that it’ll be difficult to get reliable witness statements, ones which won’t get pissed on in court.’
Phil Kemp stands, several inches shorter, gazing up at him. He chews his lower lip and examines his fingers for a second. And then he says, ‘You think this gets easier? You know, for the bigger boys inside?’
Reuben frowns. ‘I hope to fuck it does,’ he answers.
Phil grins, walking past Reuben and into the pub. A few moments later Reuben hears the sound of laughter, and imagines he detects Phil’s chuckle amongst it. Reuben follows him in and sits down at an empty table, observing the mechanics of the investigation, and willing the forensics technician to turn up. Several of the established coppers glance over. It is, he concludes sadly, a battle to introduce new methods to old policemen, and even to new ones. But, as he scans the line of drinkers patiently waiting to be interviewed, he guesses that this is nothing compared to the battle that lies ahead.
4
The only thing keeping him alive, Reuben appreciated, was the difference in viscosity between two liquids. He wondered about the surface tension dispute holding the fluids apart, phenolic riot police intermittently breached by protesting drops of alcohol bursting through their cordon.
Reuben had contemplated his mortality on numerous occasions during his professional life. It had been hard not to. Confronting death and its ugly aftermath made you think about your own. Certainly, he had never imagined dying at his laboratory bench. Reuben looked around. Laboratories were where people ended up after being killed. They shouldn’t constitute the actual scene. They were too ordered for the chaos of dying – the futile thrashing, the desperate gasp for oxygen.
‘Did you send a man to shoot me?’ he asked Lars Besser.
‘Your ignorance continues to astound me. I had no idea where you were. If you hadn’t disappeared so effectively, I wouldn’t have had to torture your colleagues to get to you. Think about that for a second. Your sudden anonymity cost several people their lives. Besides, I intend to savour the pleasure of your death all to myself. So someone else wants your blood?’
‘Looks like it.’
Lars grinned. ‘Well, finders keepers.’ He turned his eyes to the measuring cylinder. ‘Not long now till we get the show started. It’s best we cut right to the heart of the issue in your last few minutes.’ Lars Besser turned his pistol over in his hands. ‘First, I want to tell you another story, in many ways a more important one. How I made the link between a couple of seemingly unrelated events. How I realized what was really going on. A year before I was released from prison, a new inmate arrived, broadcasting the fact that he had been fitted up for the unsolved murder of three hitch-hikers in Gloucester-shire in the late eighties. You are familiar with this case, Dr Maitland?’
‘I worked on it.’
‘And the forensics unit who fitted him up? Gene-Crime.’
‘Look, Lars, that conviction had nothing to do with me. I was working on something else—’
‘Shut the fuck up,’ Lars screamed. ‘I’m the one who’s talking.’
The ferocity of Lars Besser’s reaction encouraged Reuben to remain quiet.
Lars squeezed one of his fists tight. And then, without warning, he slammed the butt of the gun down on Reuben’s hand. A burning ferocity travelled instantly from the site of contact. The whole of Reuben’s nervous system screamed. His stomach convulsed. The hand curled up like a wounded animal. A buzzing agony broke out through the bones; knuckles which had only recently mended screeched in pain. The skin, already opened up by the phenol, was pulsing blood over the bench. Lars trained the pistol on Reuben’s injured hand.
‘Move it again and you get the other end.’ The force of his voice shook the lab. Reuben squeezed his jaws together. The pain was intensifying, swamping him. He had no notion of anything other than his broken hand. As he tried to unfurl his fingers there was an agonizing disagreement between carpals, tendons and metacarpals. He bit into the flesh of his cheek. Lars was virtually willing him to move his palms from the bench. He pushed them hard into the surface and screwed his eyes shut. He was dying, and he knew it. Not now, but the process was taking hold. The systematic torture, the chemical assault, the sickening minutes as the poison leaked through his skin and circulation, burning cells and stripping nerves. Reuben pictured himself begging and pleading, Lars Besser staring down, eyes moist with pleasure, writing a new code with Reuben’s seeping blood. He saw the day fade, the cloudy London sky, the city preparing for bedtime, people going about their rituals as if the world would last for ever. He saw that as he stopped everyone else continued. Joshua sleeping fitfully in his cot; Judith staring out of an anonymous window; Moray on surveillance in Finland; Lucy and Shaun Graves making love with the window open; his mother sitting in her still front room; Sarah Hirst returning to base, perplexed and agitated; the Forensics team talking in hushed tones about Jez; his brother pacing a small police cell. He imagined the pain in his hand spreading throughout his whole body.
Reuben realized that he actually wanted to die.
‘Of course, everyone is innocent in prison. Everyone has been fitted up. But this one case began to get me interested. You know why?’
Reuben winced, the crushed bones throbbing more acutely. He shook his head, partly at the question, and partly to dispel the notion that he actively wanted a quick death.
‘I believed him. You could see it in his face. He was no saint. In fact he had probably done a lot worse than fool around with a few hitch-hikers in his time. But I was the only one who made the link.’
‘Which was?’
‘That the same forensic fuckers who had framed me were framing others. Putting peo
ple away based on false evidence.’
‘But there are safeguards …’
‘Right. Safeguards. Controls. Mechanisms.’ He screamed the word. ‘There’s one thing you’re forgetting.’
‘What?’
‘That in the search for a killer only one person really knows the truth. And I was that person.’
‘You?’
‘The guy was stitched up. Clearly. Because, in the late eighties, when I was working near Gloucester, I inconvenienced three young people thumbing for lifts. Showed them the authority someone could have. Made them see how human flesh is there to be enjoyed, in whatever way possible. That as one person dies so another comes alive. That as my father killed my mother he became more powerful, more forceful.’ Lars examined the phenol. It was very nearly ready. He was almost quivering with excitement.
Reuben studied the face of the Hitch-Hiker Killer. He could see that Lars Besser was a rare breed. Sadistic, intelligent and psychotic. There was a bipolarity about him: rational and furious, measured and delirious, controlling and unpredictable. A complexity which rendered normal detection useless, overwhelmed by a superior acumen, outplayed by an unanticipated malice.
‘Of course I saw the beauty of it. In prison, everyone is scared to fucking death of forensics: the unblinking eye, following them everywhere they go, sticking its nose into everything they do. They fear it more than the police. It’s more deadly than an Armed Response Unit.’ Lars ground his teeth together, chewing at his words. ‘No one doubts forensics. Juries just love the fucking stuff. You see, in the good old days, you beat a confession out of someone. Now, in a force which is ever scrutinized, who has power over everything? Who can convict whoever the fuck they want to convict? Who are infallible? Scientists. Instead of the truncheon, the pipette. The new short cut to locking up whoever you want locked up.’ Lars lowered the volume of his words. ‘How could you know how it feels to spend a decade in prison for something you didn’t do? Knowing that one bent scientist had put you there, and was doing the same to others. Wondering whether he’ll try and do it again when you get out.’
Reuben remained quiet.
‘So I thought I’d beat you with your own stick. Take forensics and fuck you up. Destroy you from the inside. Make you see that you don’t have absolute power. Claim back some of the years you had taken from me and everyone else you were busy framing.’
Scrabbling, clawing, grasping, Reuben’s brain fought for an answer. There had to be a way out. See Lars’s story, he told himself. See it from his side. See his injustice and use it, divert it.
Only a few drops of alcohol remained. Lars was wrapping up his argument, eager that Reuben died with full knowledge of his crimes. Reuben half listened, half snatched at piscine thoughts darting back and forth in his watery consciousness.
‘So I began to plan, reading texts on genetics and molecular biology. Got to know the field. Convinced the warders I was a reformed character, going to study for a degree when I left prison. Of course, none of those halfwits realized that molecular biology is the same thing as forensic science. Identical principles, just a different name. Biology? What could be dangerous in that? So I spent all day every day absorbing and learning, until I knew just about everything. GeneCrime was taking liberties, and now it was payback. I even read some of your sorry excuses for papers. And then a breakthrough. I noted that one of your co-authors was a man with an unusual surname, one which matched with a fellow prisoner in Belmarsh. I couldn’t believe my luck! Jeremy Hethrington-Andrews was easy to get to. A promise to have his brother Davie killed in prison. Holding his dear mother captive in her flat in Walthamstow. And he agreed to help me. Just to switch a few samples, that was all. Take some of Reuben Maitland’s DNA from his GeneCrime exclusion profile and exchange it for crime-scene DNA. All this chaos just through the deliberate mislabelling of a few tubes. And then, with a man on the inside of the Forensics team, I was virtually immune to detection, as you have seen. Unstoppable. Untraceable. Until Jez began to – how should we put it? – crack under the strain. Poor Jez. Didn’t really know what he had let himself in for. Entirely unaware of the scale of what I had planned. But he was smart enough to know that if he opened his mouth, he would instantly lose his brother and his mother. And by the time I had your rough whereabouts, Jez had outlived his usefulness.’
Reuben watched the last drop of alcohol wobble and hesitate on its less viscous bed. This was the end. Think. Think. Think. He wondered whether to antagonize Lars. He needed to be shot. Death by phenol was not an option. If you were going to die anyway, speed was the thing.
‘And so …’ Lars Besser turned to the measuring cylinder. The final drop was small, just visible. It was teetering. Lars gave the cylinder a nudge. The amyl alcohol rode the wave of phenol sloshing thickly from right to left and back again. And then, a diver with lead boots, it immersed itself and plunged through the phenol. Both men watched it, hypnotized, a silent reverse bubble. ‘We are equilibrated. We are at a steady state. We are ready.’ Lars picked up the long cylinder with one hand, the other still pointing the gun at Reuben. He took in a slow, deep breath, his eyes momentarily closed. When he opened them again, he said, ‘Let’s do this thing.’
Reuben scanned the laboratory frantically. Fridges, freezers, machines, chemicals, brightly coloured plastics and bare walls stared back at him. The cold antiseptic glare of science. The hush was interrupted by the passing of a train above. In the far corner, Lloyd Granger’s unfinished portrait jolted slightly with the tremor. Lars moved the cylinder of phenol. Reuben closed his eyes. Lars Besser felt the weight of the container, gauging how best to launch it. Reuben clenched tight. He said a silent goodbye. His teeth gnashed together. Lars pulled his arm back. Reuben held a cold empty breath. His right leg shook uncontrollably. Another train juddered by, vibrating the bench. And then there was a voice in the room.
‘Stand exactly still,’ it said from the shadows. ‘Don’t move a fucking muscle.’
5
Reuben and Lars turned as one. Reuben saw that Lars’s gun was lying impotent on the bench. He tried to track the voice down, knowing this could only be bad news. Moray was away, and the police were returning from a mad hunt in the wrong direction. Someone else finding the laboratory could only spell trouble. He pictured the man sent to kill him in the alleyway. Slowly, the figure emerged from the shadows, pistol first, then hand, then arm, shoulder and face. And as he looked into Phil Kemp’s eyes, Reuben felt a deep joy rising from his stomach and filling his body. Here, in the form of a stocky, straightlaced Detective Chief Inspector, was the cavalry. Phil approached cautiously.
‘Put the cylinder down and slide your gun out of reach,’ he ordered, motioning with his own weapon.
Lars Besser balanced the phenol on the bench and stared at him. There was hatred in his face. ‘Kemp, isn’t it?’ he said.
‘I won’t ask you again. Should you fail to slide your gun out of reach I will have no option other than to shoot you.’
Reuben stepped gradually away from Lars, skirting round to be behind Phil. He was impressed with DCI Kemp’s composure. This was a side of him he had never witnessed before: the calm control of a live situation. Phil held his arm straight, sighting down the barrel of the police-issue pistol. Reuben felt protected, as if his father had intervened in a school fight and was now confronting the bully.
‘I’m counting to five. Then I will have no choice other than to discharge my firearm.’ Reuben even found himself moved by Phil’s use of language. This was the sort of clichéd cop-speak that he generally detested. However, he could see now that its simplicity and power cut right to the chase.
‘Phil Kemp. Mediocrity personified.’
‘One.’
Lars scowled. ‘And to think I was coming to shoot you next.’
‘Two.’
‘Big hero thinks he’s going to save the day.’
‘Three.’
‘You see, I’m really still in charge here. Just a question of whether
I want to die or not.’
‘Four.’
‘Live or die.’ Lars glanced down at his gun. ‘Live or die.’
‘Five.’
Lars moved his hands to grab his gun. Phil squeezed the trigger, the echoing crack of a shot stopping Lars dead. Reuben glanced past Lars at the hole in the wall.
Phil shouted, ‘Drop it, you motherfucker.’
Lars stared at his gun. Phil aimed at Lars’s head. Reuben watched Lars. He seemed to be deciding if he had time to grab the gun and aim. Phil squeezed the trigger again. He screamed, ‘This time it’s your head.’
Lars looked at him. He smiled, and then slowly, almost imperceptibly, began to push his arms into the air, nudging his pistol on to the floor.
‘Kick it over to Reuben,’ Phil ordered, still focusing his weapon on Lars’s head.
Lars obliged, but without a hint of defeat. Reuben sensed that they were still not safe. Lars had the air of a pit bull allowing a lead around its neck, knowing that it could break free whenever it chose.
Reuben bent down to pick up the gun, noting the warmth of the handle. He slid the handcuff keys off the bench and removed his manacles. Phil cast his eyes over Reuben.
‘You OK?’ he asked. ‘Your hand looks—’
‘I’m fine.’ Reuben felt a second wave of almost overpowering affection towards DCI Kemp. He appreciated that their jobs had gradually come between them. At GeneCrime, Phil was another under-pressure team leader, needing to do what he felt right, constantly battling to make sense of a unit which was divided and incoherent. And he and Phil had fractured along the same lines as the rest of the outfit. ‘But how did you get here?’
‘I tapped your mobile. Wanted to double-check you were definitely heading out east.’ Phil was sweating slightly, still holding the gun. ‘Used a contact in the Intelligence Service to have your progress scanned, got some GPS, located you here. All strictly illegal, of course.’
‘Of course,’ Reuben agreed, smiling. ‘You know, Phil, in the past—’
