Control

by John Macken

  ‘You have to do what you do best for a living.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘Lying. Avoiding the truth. Hiding in the gaps and exploiting the weaknesses. Doing whatever it takes to win.’

  ‘You’re a cynical bastard,’ Lucy answered. ‘And you’re getting worse.’

  Veno stopped in front of them, his hearing obviously acute. ‘Cynical?’ he asked sternly. ‘Does this explain why you’ve been upsetting my media officer, Dr Maitland?’

  Reuben grunted. ‘You know how it is, Detective Veno.’

  Veno scanned the large room. ‘This is the modern age, Maitland. It’s where we are. What other option is there? Do you want ten million witnesses out there, or just the single alcoholic one we’ve dredged up so far?’ He left it hanging, a question he wanted answering.

  Reuben muttered, ‘Let’s get it over with.’

  ‘Right. Follow me.’

  Veno turned and headed back towards the corridor. Reuben and Lucy followed, staring at the floor, watching as it changed from laminate to vinyl to fake wooden tiles, and then into the soft blue carpet of the media room. Reuben glanced up. It was two thirds full, a crush towards the front. He shuddered. A thin desk, three plastic chairs, blue background boards. Blank and stark, the only focus the faces of two parents, with a copper to one side.

  Veno pulled out the right-hand chair, Reuben took the middle, to shield Lucy from too much attention, and she took the left. Stroboscopic flashes made their movements seem stuttering. Reuben blinked hard. He couldn’t see anyone directly, but when he blinked, the impression of a human form was etched behind each individual flash.

  Veno spoke first, reading from a piece of paper that Reuben noted was taped to the desk. He parroted the words, barely pausing for breath, a calm London monotone that said ‘this is all just routine’. ‘Ladies and gentlemen of the press, this morning at approximately ten a.m. a two-year-old boy in a light-blue three-wheeled buggy was taken from the vicinity of Grove End Road in St John’s Wood.’ He glanced up. ‘We will be distributing maps of the precise area at the end.’

  Reuben felt the squeeze of Lucy’s hand under the table. He squeezed back.

  Veno stared back into his sheet. ‘After intensive searches of the environs, the boy, Joshua Maitland, remains missing. Given that he was strapped firmly into his buggy, we are working on the assumption that he has been taken. We now have grave concerns for his safety and whereabouts. We are therefore appealing to the public at large, particularly in the capital but also in the rest of the country, to be vigilant. All calls to the number now appearing on the screen will be treated in the strictest confidence.’

  Reuben blinked in the light. The cameras seemed intent on blinding and then staring, blinding and then staring. He imagined TV stations flashing up the photos of Joshua that Lucy had provided, the phone number running beneath.

  ‘OK, I will now pass you over to the father of Joshua, Reuben Maitland.’

  Reuben sensed it. Being fed to the press. Being passed to them for their words and images to devour.

  A voice from behind the barrage of flashes asked, ‘Do you have a message for the person who has taken your child?’

  Reuben stared bleakly into the nearest TV camera. Joshua. Defenceless and helpless. A tiny boy being held by someone who had already killed two grown men. He suddenly appreciated that the man was watching. Wherever he was, perched forward on his chair, monitoring every aspect of Reuben’s behaviour, even more intently than the rest of the public. Needing to know if Reuben was going to play ball.

  Reuben cleared his throat. ‘I just want to reassure whoever has my child. Don’t do anything rash. We can step back from this. There is no need to harm Joshua. I can reassure you, there is no need to harm Joshua.’

  Reuben caught Lucy’s eye. He couldn’t have made it any plainer. Don’t harm Joshua and I will help you.

  Another question fired through the room. ‘How are you feeling at this moment, now that your only child has been taken?’

  Reuben knew what they were after. They wanted tears. This wasn’t a press conference for a missing infant until they had tears. But Lucy was as hard as they came, and Reuben hadn’t cried since the moment in the middle of the night almost two years ago when his son was born.

  ‘How do you think?’ he asked.

  ‘Simon Shaw, Evening Standard. Can you confirm that a witness has said your son was taken by a man?’

  Veno intervened, barking his answer, his hard round stomach forced into the table. ‘We won’t be entering into any speculation at this time, Mr Shaw.’

  ‘Do you have any words for your son?’

  ‘Not at this time,’ Reuben said.

  ‘None at all?’

  ‘Well, just that Mummy and Daddy love you and will see you soon.’

  Another voice, this time from further back in the room. ‘Is it true, Mrs Maitland, that you left Joshua’s buggy unattended outside a shop?’

  ‘Yes,’ Lucy answered quietly.

  ‘And what would you say to him if he could hear you now?’

  She didn’t answer.

  ‘How long did you leave the buggy on the street?’

  Silence.

  ‘Do you regret your actions, Mrs Maitland?’

  Reuben looked at Lucy. She was silently crying, her eyes wide and open, her head tilted forward, tears dripping on to the wooden veneer of the table. The flashes intensified, individual droplets caught on their way down, trapped for ever as frozen newspaper images.

  Reuben stood up and grabbed Lucy by the arm. He pushed the table back and began to stride through the crowded room. Voices shouted, a clamour of words and questions. But Reuben kept walking, pulling Lucy beside him, placing his arm around her shoulder, pacing out of the Media Room, out through the open-plan office, along its main corridor and towards his car.

  13

  ‘They’ll be here any minute.’

  ‘Christ. If they spent as much time hunting the man who has Joshua as they do tracking us . . .’ Lucy tailed off, her elbows on the kitchen counter, her head in her hands. She wiped her eyes. She’d been crying for almost two hours, waves of grief broken by phone calls from Veno and periods of deafening silence.

  Reuben had held her for much of that time, her sobs cutting right through him. He rubbed his face, his forehead tight, his skin greasy. He was suddenly and acutely aware of the other side of the crimes he investigated. The emotion, the fear, the helplessness. When you were banging on doors, speeding through databases, matching evidence and interrogating suspects, there was a momentum that prevented you from stopping to think. For every rape, for every murder, for every abduction, tens of lives ground to a halt, off balance, caught up in the static horror of the aftermath.

  ‘You hungry?’ he asked.

  ‘No.’

  ‘We should eat. Get some energy inside us while we can.’

  ‘What are you thinking?’

  ‘I’ll cook us something.’

  Lucy sighed. ‘You don’t know where anything is. It’s all changed round since you last spent time in here.’

  Reuben ran his eyes around the kitchen. He didn’t doubt it. Eighteen months, give or take. Most of the time the house had been rented out. Now Lucy had moved back in, she had put her stamp on it again. A new shelving unit, different chairs under the soft wooden table, a couple of pictures, new utensils in a metal rack.

  A month ago, she had asked him to move back in as well. Joshua needed a father, someone he saw more than once a fortnight. Reuben had accepted, but bit by bit. They had both agreed that there was nothing to gain from rushing. There were too many wounds between them simply to take up where they had left off. So Reuben had begun to visit his son more often, occasionally staying later, chatting with Lucy until they were tired or starting to argue, or orbiting around the same old issues. It was platonic, wary and damaged, but heading in the right direction. And up to now, Reuben hadn’t troubled the kitchen with any cooking.

  ‘I guess you�
��re right,’ he said. ‘Though I ought to find out where you keep everything at some stage.’

  ‘Maybe now’s not the time,’ Lucy said softly. She stood up and began rooting in kitchen cupboards. ‘And I guess a bit of food can only help. Like you say, before the bloody police arrive and set up camp again. Which, after your antics earlier—’

  ‘I know I shouldn’t have stormed out, Luce. It’s just, what were we there for?’

  ‘To encourage witnesses to come forward.’

  ‘But isn’t it enough to show a picture of Joshua? It’s not like you’d need to scrutinize the agony of the parents on TV before you finally decided to call the police. We were just the freak show. Media impact, that’s all.’

  ‘Reuben, how long do you think we have? Until the killer gets what he wants and releases Joshua?’

  ‘It can’t be long. Looking after your own two-year-old is no easy matter, let alone someone else’s.’

  ‘It’s just . . . we should be doing more. I feel so bloody helpless. These are the critical hours, the first few after an abduction.’

  Reuben could see his ex-wife was on the verge of tears again. Something about the moisture in her eyes tugged at his own, making them wet, forcing him to blink rapidly.

  The doorbell sounded and he walked out of the kitchen to the front door. He waited a second, composing himself, before pulling it open.

  ‘Not smart.’ Detective Veno was standing on the doorstep, his hard round belly almost intruding into the house. He was shaking his head slowly back and forth. ‘Not smart at all.’

  ‘Yeah, well. That wasn’t exactly a pleasant experience.’

  ‘Losing your child isn’t a pleasant experience. And if we don’t find him soon, that’s what we’re looking at. It doesn’t matter how you feel, Dr Maitland. If we’re being frank, I don’t give a fuck that you might be upset. In fact, there’s something about your unhappiness that would appeal to a lot of coppers I know. All that matters to me is that child. Getting him back, rescuing him from the sick bastard who has taken him.’

  A cold blast of air was rushing into the house. Reuben stepped back from the door and let Veno push past. Behind, the support officer and one of his team from the police station followed him in. Reuben waited for them to sit down in the living room and asked them what they wanted to drink.

  ‘Coffee,’ Veno said. ‘And plenty of it.’

  In the kitchen, Lucy was boiling some pasta. Reuben filled the kettle and switched it on. It started to boil, its rumble getting louder and louder. He flicked the extractor fan on above the hob.

  ‘I’ve got to head out,’ he said, just loud enough so that Lucy could hear. ‘It’s time to start searching for the man who has our child.’

  ‘What about food?’

  ‘I’ll grab something later. But make sure you eat. Even if you don’t feel like it.’

  ‘There’s too much now,’ Lucy said.

  ‘I’m sure Veno will help you out.’

  ‘What should I say to them?’

  ‘Stick to the story. We don’t know any more than they do. Christ, if they knew we’d had contact, it would be all over the front pages by the morning. And Josh wouldn’t stand a chance.’

  ‘Why don’t they go, call it a night?’

  ‘They need to be here in case the killer rings. Plus, they need to look after you.’

  ‘I don’t need any looking after,’ Lucy whispered. ‘I just need my boy back.’

  ‘Well, that’s what I’m going to start working on.’

  The kettle switched itself off and Reuben poured out three coffees.

  ‘I’ll see you later,’ he said. ‘Stay strong.’

  He walked the hot drinks into the living room and distributed them. Then he pulled his leather jacket off the banister, grabbed his car keys and headed towards the front door.

  ‘Where are you going, Dr Maitland?’ Veno shouted, watching him from the room.

  ‘GeneCrime. You might remember that I’m in the middle of catching a villain at the moment.’

  Veno raised his eyebrows. ‘And what the fuck do you think I’m doing?’

  Reuben opened the front door. ‘Sitting on my couch, drinking my coffee, wondering whether you’re going to make the ten o’clock news reports.’

  ‘Oh don’t you worry. After your performance on the six o’clocks, the ten o’clocks are going to be all over it.’

  Reuben stepped out into the freezing air and slammed the door.

  14

  The traffic was light. It was late and cold, a Monday night, and only the people who needed to be on the roads were. The unmarked police Volvo slowly began to warm as Reuben picked his way towards GeneCrime. It was a route he used to take every day, and the tangle of roads and junctions had obviously settled somewhere deep in his brain, there to be called upon should he ever need them again. He drove on autopilot, following the memorized directions, a fuzzy tiredness washing through him. He squinted at oncoming headlights, his eyes feeling dry. It was coming up to ten o’clock and the day was nowhere near over yet.

  Reuben started to think everything through again, examining it from every conceivable angle, trying to sort the critical facts from the mess of information he had absorbed already that day. The scenes of death of Ian Gillick and Carl Everitt. The removal of their fingertips with a saw. Their pale bodies in the morgue. The rats. The phone call. The man’s voice, his use of words, his accent. Who the man was likely to be, what was motivating him, why he needed to kill three people and then return to normality. That was the crux, Reuben decided, the fact that this was planned. It had taken a precise strategy to enter the homes of two men, to incapacitate them, to remove their fingertips, to obtain rats and transport them to each scene, to snatch the son of the forensics officer leading the hunt for him. Again, Reuben wondered, if this had all been so meticulously planned, why not just ensure that the scenes weren’t contaminated? Gloves, mask, shoe covers – just like the forensics squad did. Why risk the abduction of a child? Or else, why not start with the abduction and then carry out the three killings? What had changed? Was the taking of Joshua an alternative strategy, a modified circumstance, a reaction to events?

  Reuben approached a junction and checked his mirrors. He shook his head quickly, as if doing so could shake the thoughts of Joshua from his mind. He had to think carefully, without emotion, a cold logic unclouded by sentiment. But even as he tried, he realized he couldn’t. At this exact moment in time, short-cutting through the back streets of London, driving through the cold November air, Joshua was all that mattered.

  He took a mini-roundabout, flying across it at speed, and glanced in his rear-view again. A vehicle had followed him through the last series of junctions, and it took the roundabout at a similar speed. Reuben turned left at a small intersection, then immediately right. The car behind did the same. This was not an established London route, a well-worn path from one part of the capital to another. This was Reuben’s personal means of avoiding the traffic between his former house and his place of work. That fact was an important one, he decided.

  He accelerated, the large Volvo engine whining and picking up speed. At the end of a long straight road of terraced housing, he turned left into a tree-lined street, one eye on his mirrors. The car behind did the same. Reuben strained to look at the vehicle. It was an Audi of some sort. An A4, or maybe an A6. A big, heavy, solid chunk of black. One bright white headlight, the other dimmer, the glass cracked. Not a classic police marque, or even an unmarked squad car. The Met used Fords, Volvos, Peugeots, the occasional BMW, but never Audis. They were expensive to buy, costly to maintain.

  The road opened out and the street lighting picked up. Reuben squinted in the mirror. The car was five or six years old, judging from its condition. Too old for CID. But who else? And what did they want? No one followed you for ten minutes late at night through a mesh of intersections and crossroads for no reason. There was only one way to find out.

  A set of lights ahead began to change.
The green became amber. Reuben floored it. He screamed through the empty junction at nearly seventy. He took a roundabout on the wrong side. The tyres complained, the heavy momentum of the Volvo wanting to plough straight on. The road joined a carriageway. Reuben pulled on to it, hammering the gears, accelerating hard. An overpass, two lanes, concrete barrier in the middle. Eighty-five, the road spotted with other vehicles, no speed cameras in sight. He looked back. The Audi was fifty metres back and gaining. Reuben tried to make out the driver. Male. Caucasian. Thick-set.

  There was a slipway ahead, just over the crest. He plunged between a bus and a white van and slammed on his brakes. The pedal juddered, the ABS kicking in. The Audi disappeared behind the bus. Reuben indicated to turn off.

  Fifteen seconds.

  Who the fuck was chasing him? Reuben had a sudden premonition that it could be the killer.

  He started to move into the feeder lane. It was a short section quickly divided by a barriered-off section of tarmac.

  Ten seconds.

  He hesitated. If this was the killer, he was not to be fucked with. Then another icy thought hit him. Joshua could be in the car. His son in the back of that speeding vehicle. Whoever it was had been happy to jump red lights and drive on the wrong side of the road. They meant business.

  Five seconds.

  The narrow turn-off was looming. It was now or never. But if it was the killer, and if Joshua was in the back, what was the best plan? Losing him might not be the smartest idea. And if it wasn’t the killer, what then?

  Reuben started to move back across, calculating, theorizing, planning, implications and scenarios gnawing away at him. He slowed while he thought. The bus behind him closed up, flashing its lights at him. Reuben got a good look at it and made his mind up. He stamped hard on the brakes. The bus lurched towards him, then Reuben kicked it down a gear and pounded the throttle, screeching off the flyover at the last second. He stared over his shoulder. The empty bus was slewing sideways, momentarily out of control, blocking off the exit. The driver quickly corrected the slide, but the Audi was unable to turn off and follow. Reuben watched it go above him. He didn’t get a clear look inside. It was impossible to see whether anyone else was in the back of the car.