by John Macken
‘Look, like it or not, we have to use that. We have to use the public interest in you to stimulate public interest in the search. Whatever it takes.’
‘So what are you proposing, detective?’
‘Like I said, the police angle. Dr Reuben Maitland as a senior forensics officer. The irony. The fact that units like yours process samples from cases like this.’
‘My unit is processing Joshua’s samples.’
‘Clearly. Not that for a moment I agreed with that decision.’
Reuben shrugged, as if it didn’t concern him. But without Sarah’s help he would be sunk, relying solely on Veno. ‘Great,’ he said. ‘So the public hate me already, and now you want them to find out I’m a copper.’
A thin smile flicked across Veno’s thick red lips. ‘More or less,’ he said.
‘What do I have to do?’
‘A couple of TV interviews. They’re already booked.’ He squinted at his watch. ‘Ten minutes or so. We’ll run them here. Both of you, but mainly Reuben.’
‘Oh fuck,’ Lucy said. ‘They’ll take us to pieces.’
‘Let them try,’ Reuben answered.
Detective Veno raised his palms as an indication to stop. ‘No, no, no, that’s not what we want. Be nice, be humble, be cooperative for once. Christ.’
Lucy stood up and walked to the door. ‘I’m going to freshen up,’ she said. ‘That’s if you don’t have anything useful to tell me about my son’s disappearance?’
Detective Veno raised his eyebrows at her but didn’t speak. When the door was shut, he leaned forward in his chair, pressing himself into the stark emptiness of his desk. He glared at Reuben, and Reuben waited for him to speak. It suddenly felt like an interview room, sitting on the wrong side of the desk, watching the copper insinuate without speaking, applying pressure just by staring. A voice inside Reuben’s head said, ‘Fucking amateur.’
While he counted the seconds, he realized that being inside a child abduction case was very different from the way he had imagined. Activity all around, but at the epicentre, a vacuum, lonely and still, just two desperate parents acutely missing their child.
Veno kept up the silent treatment. Then, finally, he said, ‘I’ve got something to put to you.’
‘Go on,’ Reuben answered.
‘Let me say it this way. I think you’re hiding something from the police.’
Reuben didn’t look him in the eye.
Veno tried again. ‘I think you’ve got secrets from the police. Things you don’t want them to know.’
‘What do you mean? I am the police. You seem to have forgotten, Detective Veno, that I’m on the right side here.’
‘Are you? Are you indeed. I know a lot of coppers who would disagree with that statement, Dr Maitland.’
‘And who would they be?’
‘The honest, hard-working ones you’ve sniffed around in the past.’
‘Don’t give me that. The only coppers I’ve ever been interested in are the ones who’ve abused forensic evidence to seal convictions. Ones like your old buddy DI Phil Kemp. That’s what this is about, Veno. A grudge. A classic copper’s grudge.’
Reuben stood up, a sudden anger flaring through him. Veno stood up as well, the desk screeching forward.
‘While you should be out finding my son, you’re wasting my time in here, trying to pretend you’ve got some sort of authority over me. Well, you don’t. Get the hell out of my way before I move you out.’
Veno stayed where he was. ‘In here, Maitland, you do what the fuck I say. Try to move out of this room and I’ll have you in cuffs before you can say backstabbing bastard.’
Reuben hesitated, caught. He flicked through the idea of punching Veno in his hardened gut, grabbing Lucy and getting the hell away from the police station. But he knew that wouldn’t help. He was tired and on edge, a million notions flashing through his consciousness. Thinking straight was becoming difficult. He tried to calm down by closing his eyes for a few seconds. And then he pulled his chair out and sat down again.
Veno waited a moment, then did the same. He opened a drawer and pulled out a slim cardboard file, placing it squarely on the desk in front of Reuben. The words ‘Dr Reuben Maitland: Confidential’ had been written on a white sticker in black biro. An ink stamp had been used to press the words ‘Metropolitan Police Authority’ into the cardboard in blue and red.
When he spoke, Veno’s voice was calmer and quieter. ‘It’s time you came clean with me.’
Reuben looked over at the door. Veno’s dark overcoat drooped off a hook, its shoulders sagging low. He glanced at the file, his anger fizzing inside with nowhere to go. ‘Let’s have it,’ he said.
Veno opened the file and made a show of skimming several sheets of paper. ‘Sacked for DNA-testing your wife’s lover just under two years ago. Improper conduct. A very dishonourable discharge.’
‘Hardly news.’
‘Not to me, no. Let’s see what else.’ Veno licked the tip of his index finger. His tongue was pink and sharp. He flicked through the file of loose A4 sheets. ‘Time in Pentonville. Two sentences, one before you joined the FSS.’
Reuben shrugged. He wondered how Veno had gained the authority to pull his file. And then he appreciated that in a child abduction case, just about everything was fair game.
‘A brother who has been in more than his fair share of trouble. Oh, and a father who was an habitual pain in the arse to his local police force.’
Reuben raised his eyebrows, wondering where the hell Veno was heading. A large part of him wanted to get up and leave, but he knew the detective in front of him was building to something. ‘Can’t choose your family,’ he said, more to himself than to Veno.
‘And a child with a history of life-threatening illnesses.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘I’m just saying. What was it?’
‘Acute lymphocytic leukaemia.’
‘Ah yes. And parents with significant and ongoing relationship issues.’
Reuben took a deep breath and held it there.
‘Not exactly a spotless background, is it?’
‘Whose is?’
‘The point I’m making, Maitland, is that we take a long hard look at the family in all child abduction cases. And what I’m seeing in yours doesn’t exactly reassure me.’
Reuben dug his fingers into the flesh of his legs beneath the table. Veno poking about in his life was intensely uncomfortable. He could see now why the room was cold and brutal. It was like being inside Veno’s head. Stark and pitiless, cold white walls staring back, blank and indifferent.
‘Let’s see what else. An illicit laboratory somewhere in Mile End, probably infringing national forensic testing laws.’
‘The lab’s gone.’
‘Really? Where?’
‘Just gone. Taken to pieces and stored.’ Reuben pictured the sequencer in Lucy’s garage grinding through the eighty-three samples, lighting their profiles up on its monitor, illuminating the truth against a background of black. ‘It was a pre-condition of me joining GeneCrime again. Does it say that in there?’
‘No. But it does say something else very interesting.’
‘Go on.’
‘Previous evidence of serious drug use.’ Veno peered over the top of a sheet of A4. ‘You still like amphetamines, Dr Maitland?’
‘I try not to.’
‘You see, you put all this lot together, it’s a fucking mystery to me why the force has taken you back on.’
‘That’s just as well,’ Reuben answered. ‘Seeing as you don’t know a fat lot about actually getting out there and arresting punters.’
‘Maybe not,’ Veno said. ‘Maybe you’re right. Maybe I am just a desk-bound detective, running investigations through the media. But I do know this. You have a shady past, Maitland. You have skeletons in your cupboard that are pounding on the door to get out. And that pounding is only going to get louder and louder.’
‘Why don’t you spell it
out, Detective Veno?’
Veno smiled slyly back at him. Reuben suddenly felt outmanoeuvred. It was an uncomfortable sensation he was not used to. ‘I got hold of all this information about you without breaking sweat. And what it tells me is your background is complicated.’ He closed the cardboard file and laid it flat on the desk. ‘You’d just better hope no one else has been digging as well. Because pretty soon, whatever the truth about your son’s disappearance, it’s going to be all over the front pages.’
24
Reuben arrived home in a foul mood. He had ducked out of the TV interviews, giving Veno the slip and jumping into a cab outside the station. Lucy had agreed to face the cameras, explaining only that her ex-husband had been asked to answer an urgent work call. Covering for him when he needed her to. Not lying to him any more, but to the people around him. It was sad, but Reuben appreciated that was at least progress.
It had been dark for a while by the time he opened the front door, at a shade before eight o’clock. He knew the profiling run would have ended some time ago, while Veno was toying with him, relishing his sudden power, his utter grip on Reuben’s future. As he entered, he called Judith’s name. There was a muffled response from the rear of the house. Reuben strode past the kitchen and into the utility room that led into the back of the garage. He threw open the door and saw Judith standing with a print-out in her hand. She looked excited.
‘What?’ Reuben asked.
‘You’re late. And I’ve been busy.’
‘So?’
‘You’re going to like this.’
She was alive, her eyes wide, her mouth suppressing a smile, her brow creased. The way she had always been when a crucial strand of evidence began to snag. Quiet and demure as ever, but the animation burning out regardless, radiating through her face.
‘You’ve got a match?’
‘Here.’
She passed Reuben several sheets of paper. He noted that she had taken the printer from his office and connected it to the computer running the sequencer. Reuben wondered where her son was, whether Judith had left him at home with her husband. Clearly, she had covered a lot of ground while he had been entrenched deep inside Paddington Green police station.
‘Profiles from the nine cigarette butts. And one from the home of Dr Ian Gillick.’
Reuben shuffled through the papers, just like Veno had done with his police file. But this was different. This was important. He inspected each of the ten profiles in turn. Elongated graphs with sharp spikes of blue, green, black and red. Numbers running from one hundred to four hundred along the top, from zero to fifteen hundred up the side. Pairs of peaks labelled with codes like TH01, D16, FGA and D18. A set of twin peaks in each trace marked either Male or Female. Clean profiling with very little background. One graph per sheet, printed in landscape. Judith’s blue biro in the top left corner of each, a code corresponding to sample order.
He glanced up at her, full of admiration. In between breast-feeding and changing nappies, toiling in a small garage half crammed with junk, she had worked miracles. ‘Nice,’ he said. He laid the profiles on the dusty concrete floor and squinted at them for a second. ‘So, these are the two that match.’ He picked them up and held them side by side. ‘What do we do now?’
‘Nothing. I’ve already done it.’
‘You’re joking.’
‘Used my remote access to the work server. Trawled the matching profile through.’
Reuben pictured the server in the basement of GeneCrime, its thick blue cable leading into the junction boards he had done his best to disrupt earlier. ‘And?’
He watched Judith fail to suppress a smile.
‘A name.’
‘Where?’
Judith slid a fresh piece of paper off the clingfilmed door. ‘Here.’
Reuben scanned the information. Standard CID nomenclature, courier font, name, address, DOB, national insurance number. Judith had evidently copy/pasted the data from the National DNA Database. He scanned down to the list of previous offences. ‘Fuck,’ he said quietly.
‘Looks like he has a bit of what CID like to call previous form.’
Reuben inspected the descriptions and dates. Theft. Driving while intoxicated. Breaking and entering. Aggravated assault. Possession of a knife. Reuben was static. His brain was racing. A knife. An existing assault. He quickly tried to dismiss the notion, checked for other explanations, but couldn’t come up with any. DNA from a cigarette butt dropped where his son was taken matched DNA at the scene of Ian Gillick’s murder. This was not coincidence. He peered at the name. Daniel Riefield. He had been present at both events. The taking of a scientist’s life and the seizing of a two-year-old boy from his mother.
Reuben looked up at Judith. She was watching him intently. After many years of working together she didn’t need to ask. Reuben patted his jacket pocket and heard the dull metallic rattle of keys.
‘Reuben,’ Judith said.
‘What?’
‘I’m not going to tell you to hold back from what you’re about to do.’
‘Good.’
‘But don’t go alone. Call it in.’
Reuben raised his eyebrows at her. He folded the piece of paper and stuffed it in the back pocket of his jeans. ‘It’s not that simple.’ Then he stepped forward, grabbed Judith, and planted a kiss on her cheek. ‘I owe you one,’ he said. ‘A big one.’
He turned away from her and pulled open the door, picking up speed as he ran through the house and out into the street. The Volvo he’d driven home welcomed him in with soft lighting. Reuben started the engine, put it in gear, and screeched off into the night.
As he drives, the sat nav does its best to soothe him, a calm female voice gently but firmly telling him which way to go. The roads are quiet. The car is as smooth and composed as ever. But inside it, Reuben is alight. Less than three miles. He’ll be there in minutes.
He pictures the next half an hour of his life. As he does so, questions buzz through his head, vibrating in his consciousness, stinging him with the sharpness of their logic. Am I ready for this? he asks himself. If Joshua is dead . . . will I ever come to terms with that? In between junctions and traffic lights, in the glare of oncoming headlights, such notions continue to track him down and attack him. Whoever killed Carl Everitt and Ian Gillick must be strong. He overpowered two grown men and hacked off their fingertips. Will I be able to take him down alone? And if I do, will I be able to stop myself from hurting him and re-hurting him? And then Joshua. His eyes when he sees me. His crying stopping, recognition spreading across his features, hope, understanding, relief. Calling out Daddy. The word that can cut straight through a grown man and tie his stomach in knots.
Reuben speeds up, pushing the large accelerator pedal hard into the floor. Among the big questions, smaller issues start to come. No car seat to take him home in. No clean clothes or nappies. The lack of a dummy or his bunny to comfort him with. No food or drink for him.
The voice in the dashboard tells him to take the first exit at the roundabout. Reuben screeches around it so quickly that he is twenty metres clear of it when the sat nav issues the instruction again as a reminder. He squints at the screen. Less than a mile. The roads aren’t familiar. A residential area of once-grand housing turned into decaying modern flats. A half-built office block, a disused garage with no petrol pumps, a stretch of tarmac with a single basketball hoop. No green anywhere, just greys and blacks. A row of boarded-up shops, a pub, a betting shop with a couple of punters still inside.
He checks the screen again. The final road. Long and straight. No trees, just intermittent yellow street lights. Reuben watches the sat nav counting down the distance. Five hundred yards. Four hundred and fifty. Four hundred. He experiences a sudden urge to call Sarah, to request back-up, to do the thing properly. But he is trapped, and he knows it. He has to do this alone. He cannot give CID the full story yet. Questions would be asked, his career ending again before it started. Three hundred yards. He needs time to sor
t his answers out, to tidy up the pieces, to explain how he has caught the killer of two men.
But first, a desperate and terrified two-year-old boy. His own flesh and blood.
Reuben slows for the last hundred yards. No one is around. It is too cold. The city has retreated indoors, slumped in front of televisions. The sat nav voice announces that he has reached his destination.
Reuben kills the engine and climbs out. He walks to the back of the car and opens the boot. Underneath the carpet, he reaches inside the spare wheel. A jack and a tightly wrapped tool kit. Reuben pulls the heavy steel jack out of its pouch and tests its weight. It will do. He slams the boot, checks the piece of paper that Judith has given him, and opens the scruffy front door of a four-storey block of flats. Inside, the tiled floor is cracked and stained. A filthy carpet leads up the communal stairs. Reuben takes the steps two at a time. He double-checks the address. Number 41. He climbs another couple of flights. Flat 41 stands at the end of a dingy corridor. A strip of wallpaper is hanging off. Reuben stops. He smells cooking and dampness. He sniffs the air for a second longer, wondering whether the smell of rats is somewhere in the mix. A thin strip of light is escaping from under the door.
Reuben paces forward and stands directly in front of it. He places his ear against the cold wooden barrier. The noise of a TV booms through the thick surface. He grips the jack in his right hand, sensing its weight, where its balance lies. As he does so, he appreciates that whatever lies on the other side of the door will decide which way his life proceeds. A happy life or a broken one. A dead son or a living son.
Reuben takes a step back, running his eyes over the lock, guessing at the location of the hinges, estimating the best point of attack. He bows his head for a second, taking in the smell and the noises.
A child is crying somewhere.
Reuben straightens. He takes a second step back. And then he crashes into the door.