by John Macken
For good or for bad he had lost his tail. He wondered whether he should try and get back on the flyover at another junction, but realized he would never catch the Audi. So he spun the unmarked Volvo all the way round a roundabout and headed back towards GeneCrime, no longer cold and tired but sweating and alert, his mind buzzing with questions.
15
Reuben slotted the Volvo back in the space it had occupied that morning. The cooling fan stayed on after he turned the key, the engine running hot. He climbed out and signed in at the security gate, checking his watch and writing 22:13 next to his name. The guard nodded at him, then returned to his paper.
Sarah’s office was on the first floor. Reuben took the stairs down from the main car park level, which was at the top of the building. He suspected that whoever designed GeneCrime had enjoyed the premise of a large concrete ramp up the side, and a car park which still managed to feel subterranean, even though it was three or four storeys off the floor. They probably also enjoyed the large windows and great views over rolling fields and meadows, and were happy to let CID and Forensics sweat it out in what was virtually a sealed box.
GeneCrime was empty. Some of the offices still had their lights on, and Reuben flicked them off as he passed. When he reached Sarah’s door he rapped on it and entered. She was sitting back in her chair, bare feet on her desk, a biro in her mouth, flicking through a thick wad of papers. Her light hair, which was usually pinned up tight, hung loose and tangled. Reuben thought her office looked like a hospice for terminal plants. All around, different varieties were slowly dying, their leaves curling or turning brown. He thought briefly of the cactus left behind in his office, tiny particles of his blood coating its spines.
‘Thanks for staying,’ he said.
Sarah pulled her feet off the desk and sat up, taking the biro from her mouth. ‘Actually, I went home and came back.’
‘Really?’
‘There’s something depressing about being on your own in a large building with only a bored security guard for company. Besides, I thought I’d catch the news.’
‘What did you think?’
‘Raw. Painful. Terrible technique you have with the media.’
‘It was fucking horrible.’ Reuben pointed his eyes at the file she had been reading, eager to shift the subject. ‘Anything useful?’
‘I guess so. But I don’t know how you’ll take it.’
‘Take what?’
‘This.’
She angled the cardboard file upwards. Reuben read the information on the front.
‘How did you get that?’
‘I’m sorry I didn’t clear it with you, but I thought under the circumstances you wouldn’t mind too much.’ Sarah ran the fingers of her left hand through her tangled hair. Although her eyes were bright, she looked tired. Even her hair seemed drained of vitality. ‘I used what remain of my favours to request that GeneCrime handle the forensics on Joshua’s abduction.’
‘Why?’ Reuben asked.
‘Daft not to. We are, after all, a rapid response unit. No point sending the samples up the bloody M1 all the way to Birmingham. They’d only do the same things we would here, but slower.’
Reuben tried not to appear too pleased. ‘Thanks,’ he said.
‘A witness apparently saw someone drop a cigarette butt close to the snatch. A man. The butt is in a plastic bag in the routine samples lab, along with several others collected from the vicinity. They were couriered over half an hour ago from the unit at Paddington.’
‘So what’s the plan?’
‘I’ve asked Simon Jankowski to come in before dawn. We take fingerprints and DNA, run them through the national database, see if anything comes up trumps. Unless you’ve got a better idea?’
Reuben was silent for a few seconds. GeneCrime hunting the killer and now also hunting the kidnapper. Not appreciating that they were looking for the same man. He continued to think it through. GeneCrime were good at catching villains. It was what they were set up to do, it was what they did. And if they closed in on the killer, Joshua would die. A standard police lab would be days behind them, pushing the samples through routine testing, sending the results off elsewhere for analysis. This suddenly raised the stakes, fast-forwarded everything. But there was another side, Reuben quickly appreciated. Possible samples from the man holding his son. If Reuben could get his hands on them, he could get closer to the truth.
‘No,’ he said, ‘that sounds fine.’
‘Look, Reuben, you’re not to get involved in this yourself, OK?’
Reuben nodded.
‘I’m doing this as a personal favour for, well, you know . . .’ Sarah was suddenly awkward with her words in a way Reuben had seldom witnessed. She avoided his eye, staring instead into the thin dying leaves of a spider plant. For a second, she almost appeared vulnerable. ‘What we’ve been through in the past. I haven’t forgotten how close I came to losing my life . . .’
‘Thanks,’ Reuben said.
‘But there’s something else I want you to think about.’
‘Yes?’
‘I want you to think about standing down from the investigation into the fingertip killer.’
‘Is that what you’re calling him now?’
‘You got anything better?’
‘I haven’t exactly had a chance to think about it.’
‘Exactly. Your son is missing. You’re caught up in the most important hours and days of your life. I don’t see how you can coordinate events here.’ Sarah was back to eye contact, her voice as steely as ever. She had a knack for opening the door and letting you peer in for a second or two, before slamming it shut again. ‘There’s no room for sentimentality, Reuben. We have a sadistic killer on the loose. Personal problems, no matter how serious or upsetting, can’t be allowed to get in the way. Otherwise we put innocent people in grave danger.’
Reuben bit the inside of his cheek. She wanted him off the case. He wondered for a second whether she had only agreed to take on the forensics from Joshua’s abduction to soften the blow. But even by his own low standards, Reuben was forced to concede that that was a fairly cynical thought.
‘Look, Sarah, you have to understand a few things. While Joshua is missing, there’s nothing else I can do. The police want us as circus freaks to keep the media hungry.’
‘As I’ve seen.’
‘It doesn’t feel right, though.’
‘But it’s the only option, surely?’
‘Is it?’ Reuben rubbed his face, once again feeling the greasy tiredness in his skin. He nodded at an empty chair. ‘You mind?’
Sarah shook her head.
‘You know, I read a story once about a woman who was taken hostage in South America by Communist guerrillas. Missing for seven years. Then one day her husband charters a light aircraft. He gets the pilot to circle over a large area of jungle. The husband has spent weeks printing off twenty thousand photos of their children, showing what they look like now, seven years later, how they’ve grown, how beautiful they’ve become. He throws handfuls out, hour after hour, in the hope that she will find just one, and know that her family loves her and misses her.’ Reuben stopped talking. His mouth was feeling strange, out of shape, achy. ‘The point is, she never saw the photos. She was rescued a year later. A military police unit stormed in and took her. But that’s what every bone in my body feels like doing. I want to be out there searching, dropping photos of his mum and dad for Joshua, hoping I can get something through to him, let him know that he’s going to be OK.’
‘So?’
‘So, nearly two decades in the force have convinced me that I wouldn’t make any difference. I have to sit back and let Veno’s Missing Child unit do what they’re trained to do. But it’s killing me, Sarah. No news, no nothing. Trying to forget the statistics . . .’
Reuben hesitated, wanting to tell Sarah everything, to blurt it all out, to tell her he had spoken to the killer, to stop lying to her. He felt terrible. Like she had said, they went way b
ack. But he couldn’t just spit it out. Sarah wouldn’t be able to hold back a manhunt. Reuben knew, for the time being, he couldn’t do anything but trust his instincts.
‘Look, the energy I’m putting into worrying could be going into catching this man. You know I can do it.’
‘Usually, yes.’
‘And that’s what I intend to do.’ Reuben stood up. ‘And I’m sorry to say this,’ he muttered, running his fingers through the browning tips of the dying spider plant on Sarah’s desk, ‘but you don’t have the authority to suspend the Head of Forensics.’
Sarah regarded him coolly. ‘I don’t want to fall out over this, Reuben.’ Her tone was hard, her words sounding more like a threat than an expression of potential regret. ‘Do your job, and do it well. Catch the killer, and I hope you get your son back. But don’t bite off more than you can chew.’
‘Sure,’ Reuben said, turning to walk away.
‘One more thing, Dr Maitland. You are not to handle your son’s forensics. You can’t get involved in your own investigation. You understand that, don’t you?’
Reuben nodded solemnly. He gave Sarah a brief smile and walked slowly out. He made his way quietly down the long GeneCrime corridors, through sets of double doors, past offices, his pace quickening the closer he got, until he was jogging, running, tipping forward at full tilt, sprinting towards the lab housing DNA samples from the man who was holding his son.
16
Reuben flicked the switches of several pieces of equipment. There was an off-white PCR machine the size of a small microwave oven, 384 wells in its metal block. Next to it, an ABI3700 sequencer, kitchen cabinet in width, a flatscreen monitor balancing on top. A metallic blue microfuge with two circular dials, one marked Time, the other Speed, squatted on the lab bench. He picked a lab coat from an identity parade of white garments hanging next to the door. The inside collar was marked Dr Bernie Harrison. Wider than Reuben, an inch or two shorter. He raised his eyebrows and tried it on for size. It would do.
Reuben chose an under-bench freezer labelled New Arrivals. Inside he quickly found a clear plastic evidence bag. On a square white section the words Joshua Maitland Abduction Prelims had been scrawled in black marker pen. From the uneven look of the letters, Reuben guessed it had been labelled after the cigarette butts had been placed inside.
He held the bag up to the bright light of the lab. Like all forensic scientists, Reuben liked smokers. Cigarette butts gave you two simultaneous pieces of information: DNA from buccal cells deposited as the smoker wrapped his lips around the filter and pulled, and greasy fingerprints as the cigarette was slid from its pack, or from restless seconds in between drags.
He pulled on a pair of blue vinyl gloves and set about assembling the things he would need. Solutions from shelves, reagents from fridges and freezers, forceps from autoclaved bags, ice from the large white ice machine, a set of Gilson pipettes from a rack, filtered tips from a pile near the main sink. For the first time in over twelve hours he felt positive. Just to be doing something, to be hunting, forensically chasing the man who had his son. The familiar mechanics of detection. Moving forward, starting the investigation.
As he rolled the cigarette butts on to a section of stretched-out clingfilm, he picked up the nearby lab phone and dialled Sarah’s office. No answer. He let it ring and then replaced the receiver. She had gone.
He stared intently down at the bench in front of him. Nine butts, their identities branded just above their filters. A Benson and Hedges, a Super King, a Camel, three Marlboro Lights, two Silk Cut, a Lambert and Butler. Two of the butts flattened, their residual tobacco hanging out like innards. One of them maybe dropped by the man who was holding Joshua and who had killed twice. The first thing was to examine for fingerprints, but Simon Jankowski would be in maybe as early as five or six a.m., if Sarah had applied enough pressure. He would want to do the same things Reuben was about to do. Reuben had trained him, and unless his procedures had deviated wildly over the last eighteen months, Simon would be taking fingerprints and then DNA swabs. But if Reuben got there first, it would be obvious to Simon. There would be white powder from the fingerprint detection, red dye from the DNA testing. Reuben paused. He would have to take forensic samples in a way that would fool a forensic scientist. And a good one at that.
Reuben glanced at the clock. It was nudging eleven, at least six hours before Simon turned up. Everything back as he had found it. Cigarette butts looking like they had been plucked fresh from a grimy London street. The lab as pristine as when he had entered. And then Reuben had an idea. He gripped the Benson and Hedges with a pair of blue plastic forceps, and dusted the filter with powder from a glass vial. Then he carried it through to the adjacent microscopy suite. The ante-room was dark, a thick ceiling-to-floor curtain and a windowless door separating it from the rest of the lab. Reuben placed the butt carefully on the stage of a 20× light microscope and focused through the viewfinder until he was happy with the image. He clicked the shutter of the attached camera and then looked across at a monitor which was showing the captured digital view. Then he flipped the roach of the cigarette round with the forceps and examined the other side. Another partial print. Probably gripped between index finger and thumb, he guessed. He took another couple of photos, checked they had been captured OK by the imaging software, then carried the butt back into the lab and dripped distilled water across its surface, slowly and delicately, for several minutes, until he couldn’t see any residual powder. A soggy cigarette butt, he thought to himself. Not exactly an unusual state of affairs.
Next, Reuben returned to the lab bench. He used a small cotton-wool bud – like a miniature ear bud – to dab at the paper surface, staying at the edges of where the two fingerprints had been. Not obliterating the print, just swabbing the periphery. Simon would still get useable prints, and Reuben would have sufficient DNA for Low Copy Number Analysis. Bingo. He snipped the cotton bud into a small tube, then repeated the procedure for the other eight samples.
Later, while he waited for the DNA samples to denature in a mild phenol solution, Reuben picked up the lab phone and dialled a familiar number. He pulled out his mobile and examined the Calls Received log. ‘Yes,’ he said as it was answered, ‘a trace on a phone which made a call to a CID-registered mobile at just after ten this morning. The number was blocked on my display, but you should be able to trace it, right?’ Reuben listened for a second, then recited his mobile number and the duration of the call he had received. ‘Dr Reuben Maitland, Head of Forensics at GeneCrime, Euston. OK. Can you send the info to the mobile number I’ve given you, please? Thanks.’
Reuben put down the phone and began to set up the nine DNA profiling reactions which would run for a couple of hours on the PCR machine. He was feeling light-headed and tired, his eyes itchy, his stomach rumbling. He had forgotten to eat, despite his words of advice for Lucy. He knew he should sleep, maybe pull a few chairs together in his office and doze for an hour or so. But along with the fatigue, prowling and restless, was a hard ball of excitement. It was somewhere in his gut, a tight feeling of cold, impatient energy. He knew he wouldn’t sleep, he would just fidget. In a few short hours he would have nine DNA profiles. Eight of them would be from innocent Londoners who had dropped their cigarettes outside a cramped newsagent’s in Westbourne Green, maybe on their way in to buy fresh packets. But one of them, Reuben was sure, had been stamped on by a man witnessed only from a distance who, with Lucy only a few metres from him, had calmly pushed Joshua’s buggy away and into the mass of people streaming along the pavement.
Reuben loaded the PCR machine and stretched. After this, he would take minute quantities of each reaction from their plastic Eppendorf tubes and run them through the 3700 sequencer. An hour or two after that and he would have all the information he needed.
Reuben was woken by his mobile phone vibrating along the hard white lab bench. He was sitting in a lab chair, his head slumped forward. Despite his eagerness, he had obviously dozed off. The phone sto
pped, coming to a rest right on the edge of the bench. A couple more rings and it would have plunged to the floor.
He rubbed his face and glanced over at the sequencer. The run had finished. The DNA profiles were ready. The clock on the screen read 05:41. He had slept for nearly two and a half hours.
Reuben pulled a memory stick out of his pocket and stood up. As he copied the profiles on to the stick, he listened to the message on his phone, trying to force his brain back into gear. It was a high-pitched male voice. Northern accent. Long pauses between sentences. It wasn’t the killer. ‘Dr Maitland, we have the trace results. The mobile number you requested was 07761622341. An unregistered phone on a pay-as-you-go tariff. From the associated PAC digits, the handset could have been one of a large batch stolen from a Customs and Excise facility last year. Fairly untraceable, and from a couple of tests I’ve run, the number doesn’t seem to accept incoming calls. They can be programmed that way if you know what you’re doing. That’s all we have I’m afraid. If you need anything else, please call us back.’
Reuben shut down the phone, deleted the entire sequencing run from the computer’s memory, then walked around the lab tidying up. Maybe, just maybe, he now had the phone number of the man holding his son. And maybe as well he had a fingerprint and a tiny sample of his DNA with a matching profile that could be run through the National DNA Database. After one final check of the lab, he turned off the lights and walked back up towards the car park, gripping the memory stick tight in his hand, grateful as hell that Simon Jankowski was no early riser.
17
Reuben took a different pool car. A Ford Focus. Smaller and more agile, but equally anonymous. As he drove, he checked his rear-view, but nothing was following him. He could just about make out the beginnings of a pale winter dawn, a half-hearted effort compared with the way a summer sunrise began. The sky was virtually cloudless, the stars in the closing stages of their vigil. It was just after six; full sunrise wouldn’t happen for the best part of an hour. Reuben yawned. The two hours of sleep had helped, but he needed a couple more if he was going to function.