by John Macken
7
Reuben swiped Judith’s GeneCrime card through the slot and entered the building. The security desk was clear, the guard doing his rounds. Sarah’s office door was open. He glanced inside the empty space. The short stubby hand of its clock pointed to eleven. Static plants crouched silently in the gloom. Reuben closed the door behind him, flicked the lights on and walked over to the desk. He opened Sarah’s top drawer. Just twelve hours earlier she had sat in the seat he now lowered himself into and, together with Commander Thorner, suspended him from duty, banned him from the building.
Reuben felt a cold nervousness burrowing into the pit of his stomach. He was tired, hungry and on edge. He breathed quick shallow breaths as he pulled out a thick cardboard file marked ‘Fingertip Killer’. He opened it up. The sad desperation he’d felt since talking to Laura Piddock stayed with him as he leafed through its contents. Piddock hadn’t recognized Sanghera, Riefield, Adebyo or Randle as the man who had taken Joshua. His plan to get their images to her had been the right one, he told himself. Barging into their homes, especially while they were being watched by CID, would have caused all sorts of unnecessary problems.
Aside from the spider plant, Sarah’s desk was clear. Reuben quickly spread all the paper evidence of the case over its surface. Photographs, DNA profiles, background checks, crime reports, sample inventories, hospital records, press clippings, pathology descriptions, lists of names. Everything was read and absorbed. He looked up, listened intently, made sure no one was heading his way. When he looked back down, the same gritty picture of Francis Randle, photocopied from a newspaper, stared up at him. He wondered what had happened to his ear. A fight? A bullet? A roadside bomb? What? Something had damaged him. No one had been able to locate Randle yet, but Laura Piddock didn’t think he was the man who’d taken the buggy. Laura failing to ID Randle was a blow. If Randle were involved, it meant he had at least one accomplice.
CID had been thorough. Since the morning, Reuben could see that they had identified a total of twenty-six people who were associated with planning, overseeing or running the trial. Reuben knew it was impossible to protect all of them all the time. From highlighted names on a printed list, he guessed they had already started to prioritize. People closest to the trial, ones the killer might still be interested in. But Reuben knew that protection was treating the symptom rather than the cause. Sooner or later, someone on the list would be exposed and vulnerable. He had to stop him before anyone else died.
Reuben clenched his fists, chewed his teeth. Images, he quickly decided, were the key. This had gone past forensics. They had a sample, but there was no database match. The killer had never had his DNA taken. Reuben knew Mina’s team would be working through familial matches, trying to get close to the killer, searching for relatives on the database. But that would take days, weeks even. Low stringency tests that had to be repeated and corroborated. And then, so what? The killer’s DNA is similar to an existing profile on the National DNA Database. That doesn’t mean that person could or would help. They might have twenty blood relations. Narrowing it down would take time, precious police time that they simply didn’t have. No, forensics wasn’t going to put Reuben in a room with the killer. Forensics wasn’t going to let Reuben stare into the eyes of the man holding his son. Forensics wasn’t going to help Reuben reach forward and grab the son of a bitch by the neck. But lateral thinking might.
Reuben rounded up all the pictures he could find. Anyone even vaguely associated with the trial. Doctors, nurses, placebos, everyone. Twenty-six faces, the ones CID had identified. Pictures from personnel files, from press cuttings, from civilian databases. One of these people, Reuben was certain, was the killer. This had to be someone on the inside of the trial. He glanced down at the writing on the back of his hand. Syed Sanghera. Daniel Riefield. Michael Adebyo. Francis Randle. Names were only half the battle. Faces, he appreciated, were the real answer.
Reuben left Sarah’s office and walked quickly to the end of the corridor. He shoved the pieces of paper into the photocopier and pressed start. While it hummed and flashed, a warm inky smell invaded his sinuses. He thought back to Laura Piddock. Something she said that didn’t ring true. A piece of information at odds with what Veno had said.
He picked up the copies and originals and returned to Sarah’s office. As he walked, Reuben heard a noise. A door slamming on the floor above. He stopped and waited a second. Another door opened and shut, closer this time. Reuben dashed into Sarah’s office. He stuffed all the pictures back into her file and rounded up the rest of the evidence. Then he clicked her light back off and put the file back where he had found it.
A figure passed the door, moving fast. Reuben edged forward. He heard footsteps. Another person going by. Reuben listened intently, then stepped out of the office. He checked the corridor. It was empty. Then he started towards the stairs, heading out of the building. Getting caught in GeneCrime could cause a lot of problems.
He made it to the stairs, and sprinted up the first flight. As it turned back on itself he came to a sudden halt. There, staring at him, motionless, was Mina Ali.
‘Reuben, what the hell are you doing?’ she asked.
‘I forgot my keys,’ he said, patting his pocket.
‘I thought you weren’t supposed to be here. I thought you’d handed your pass in to Sarah.’
‘I did. Judith lent me hers. Look, Mina, don’t tell anyone. Like I said, I just needed my house keys.’
Mina regarded him for a second. Reuben tried to read the look but failed. He thought he sensed curiosity and disappointment, but it was hard to tell.
‘But what about your son?’ she asked.
‘Nothing. A vacuum of information. He’s vanished into thin air. Nothing to do except sit and wait for news.’
‘Which isn’t exactly your style.’
‘So, why the commotion?’ Reuben asked, changing the subject.
‘I guess you won’t have heard. We’ve all been summonsed in. Ultra short notice, all leave cancelled.’
‘Why?’
‘There’s been another.’
‘Shit. Who?’
‘Daniel Riefield.’
‘Fuck.’
‘The man you brought in for questioning.’
‘Fuck,’ Reuben repeated. He still had his picture on his phone. He’d showed it to Laura Piddock only a couple of hours ago. ‘This changes things.’
‘How?’
‘Riefield was one of the trialists. He’d already lost his fingers. What does the killer have to gain now?’
Mina shrugged, bony collar bones arching up the neck of her blouse. ‘I don’t know. And I also don’t know how the hell we’re supposed to catch this freak. We just don’t have anything useable, Reuben. And I think he knows that.’
‘Wasn’t Riefield under police protection?’
‘No. Sarah drew up a shortlist of people for round-the-clock CID supervision. Riefield wasn’t on it. Like you said, he was a victim of the trial. We didn’t figure him for a victim of the killer.’
‘But CID were watching him?’
‘Yeah, they’ve staked out a number of people, ones that you initially identified. But surveillance and protection are very different things.’
‘So the killer managed to evade CID on the way in and the way out.’
‘He’s smart,’ Mina said.
There was the sound of more footsteps above. Reuben was suddenly nervous again. If Sarah caught him here . . . ‘Look, Mina,’ he said, ‘I don’t want to hold you up. But if I were you, I would be profiling for intelligence. Look at the most able and capable people who ran the drug trial or were associated with it.’
‘Thanks.’
Reuben paused, wanting for a second to wrap his arm around Mina’s diminutive frame. ‘Be careful, Mina,’ he said. ‘I think the rules have just changed.’ And with that, Reuben headed up the stairs, along the main entrance corridor and out of GeneCrime, making sure no one else spotted him.
8
He banged harder. He heard sounds of unhurried progress. The opening of a door somewhere, the creaking of stairs. ‘Come on,’ he muttered under his breath. He hadn’t wanted to come back here after yesterday, but something Laura Piddock said spent the night eating away at him, festering under his skin, tunnelling into his flesh. He drove the knuckles of his right hand into the flaky surface one more time. In his left hand he held the wad of papers he had photocopied from Sarah’s evidence file.
When the door finally opened, Laura Piddock looked terrible. Reuben appreciated that he probably didn’t look a lot better himself, but seeing her without make-up was a sobering sight. Without quick and approximate daubs of colour, her skin was a succession of parallel wrinkles which sagged under her eyes and around her cheekbones. She stared at him for a second, until recognition crept in.
‘What do you want?’ she asked. ‘I thought I told you not to come back.’
‘I know. And I’m sorry to wake you. But I need your help.’
‘Do you now?’
Reuben peered down at the floor. ‘I do. And it’s important.’
Laura Piddock scratched herself for a couple of seconds. ‘Well, I suppose you’d better come in.’
Reuben followed her through the cluttered mess of the hall, into the stale and unpleasant living room. Once again, he looked round for somewhere to sit but didn’t find anywhere. Laura pulled a half-empty pack of cigarettes out of her dressing-gown pocket and lit up. As she inhaled, her cheeks sucked inwards, leaving her face looking skeletal.
‘Something you said yesterday got me thinking,’ Reuben said.
‘Long time since anyone said that to me.’ The first fag of the day was helping to convulse her lungs, her eyes watering as she coughed.
‘You said the man who abducted the child had followed the woman with the buggy.’
‘Right.’
‘Not, as you told Detective Veno, that he had just been standing there. But that he had actually followed behind her before she arrived at the newsagent. Are you sure that’s correct?’
‘Sure as I can be. Just because I drink doesn’t make me blind, you know. But I don’t see what difference it makes.’
Reuben didn’t say anything. It made the world of difference. Lucy had been followed. ‘Look, I want to show you some more pictures.’
‘I won’t ask about your holidays this time.’
Reuben smiled. Once, twenty or thirty years ago, Laura had been a normal person, not the withered wreck who stood in her own living room with nowhere to sit, drawing heavily on a cigarette, shaking beneath her stained dressing gown. He pulled out the pictures and started handing them to her, one by one. He kept completely quiet, silently hoping. If this was another dead end, there were no other leads. This was the only logical answer. That someone associated with the trial he hadn’t come across yet had taken Joshua and was on a killing spree.
He closed his eyes for a few seconds and listened to the rustle of pieces of paper, the woman’s rasping breaths, the ever-present murmur of traffic. He thought of Lucy, what she would be thinking as Veno briefed her yet again, the agonies that another day without her only child would bring. He pictured Moray, going about his business, dropping him off at GeneCrime the night before, telling him to call whenever he needed him. He pictured the forensics team spending a sleepless night in the cold, damp flat of Daniel Riefield, mopping up his samples and his fluids. He pictured Sarah Hirst, tense and under pressure, leafing through the same folder Reuben had perused the night before.
He opened his eyes. Laura Piddock was staring at one sheet of paper, the other sheets floating down to the floor, released by her spare hand. Reuben’s heart felt tight in his chest.
‘What?’ he asked.
Laura didn’t answer. He watched her intently. She squinted into the sheet, muttering to herself. Reuben couldn’t see the picture, just the back of it. He didn’t want to influence her decision. But keeping quiet was almost impossible.
‘Do you recognize one of them?’
‘Shhh,’ she answered. ‘I’m thinking. I didn’t get a completely clear view. Mainly from behind, but as he turned his head . . . The ears are right. Out at the top, then pressed in tight, large lobes. And the nose, completely straight . . .’
Reuben’s phone vibrated in his pocket. He ignored it. All he could hear were the words Come on! screaming inside his brain.
Laura lowered the sheet of A4 towards him. Reuben could see now that it was a picture from a newspaper article, probably at the time of the trial. He didn’t recognize the face.
‘I’ve seen him before,’ she said. She took a long drag on her cigarette, burning it right down to the filter. When she spoke again, her words came hidden in puffs of smoke. ‘He’s the one. The one that took the buggy.’
Reuben couldn’t help himself. He snatched the picture. The photo had been blown up, possibly from a group shot, maybe from an identity card or some sort of personnel record. The resolution wasn’t great, but good enough. Reuben read the name scrawled in Sarah’s handwriting at the bottom. Dion Morgan. He racked his brain for information.
‘But he was . . .’
‘What?’
Reuben glanced down at all the other pictures, faces staring up at him from Laura’s littered floor, thinking hard. They might as well stay, adding to the detritus and clutter.
He folded Morgan’s picture into his pocket and took out his wallet. ‘Look, please buy yourself something, Laura. Food or whatever.’ He passed her four twenty-pound notes.
‘I didn’t think policemen were allowed to do that.’
‘They’re not,’ Reuben answered. ‘But I’m not a policeman.’
‘So who are you?’ Laura asked, taking the notes and folding them into her dressing-gown pocket.
Reuben started to walk out of the room. ‘I’m the missing boy’s father.’
‘Oh, I didn’t . . .’
He turned, taking out his mobile. ‘And now I’m going to go and get him back.’
9
Reuben paced along the street that Laura Piddock called home. It was close to the spot where Joshua had been taken. Posters of Joshua’s face stared back at him from lamp-posts and shop windows. It was a photo that Lucy had taken and then posted to Reuben a few weeks earlier. Joshua in a park somewhere, his brown coat done up tight, his cheeks red from running around, his pale hair almost translucent in the sun. It was the same coat he had been wearing on the day he was taken, the same coat he had spilled his drink down, the same coat he was probably wearing still.
Reuben had passed images of his son in other parts of the city, but nothing like this. Here, close to the scene, they were everywhere. The intensity was almost overwhelming. He stopped in front of one of them. It was in an off-licence window, presumably the one Laura had entered and left, pausing only to observe a man quickly pushing a buggy away. The words ‘Missing Child’ were printed above Joshua’s face. Reuben couldn’t help but see the picture differently now. Before, it had been about promise and potential, a photo of his eager young son that Lucy had taken on a day out. Today, seeing it through the plate-glass window of a shop, it spoke only of sadness and desperation.
He reached forward, fingertips against the freezing surface. My son, he said to himself, my beautiful son.
Reuben turned away and kept moving, tears welling in his eyes. He had managed to keep it all at bay for days, charging round the city like a man possessed, staying utterly and acutely focused. But he knew
it would track him down eventually, hurting him like it hurt Lucy, tearing him apart in the same way Lucy was being ripped open. He needed to keep going.
Reuben took out his phone and checked its display. The missed call was from Judith. He pictured her at home with her son, rocking him to sleep, holding him close to her. Reuben called her back and quickly brought her up to speed. She listened quietly, taking it all in, putting it all into logical boxes, like she always did.
‘If I hear anything new,’ she said, ‘you’ll be the first to know.’
In the background, Fraser began to wail for attention. Judith ended the call with a quick ‘good luck’. Reuben blocked out the sound of the child. He knew he could easily let this kill him. He could drown in the sorrow, suffocate in the grief. But that wouldn’t help his son.
As he walked, Reuben tore open a wrap of amphetamine, rubbed the coarse and bitter powder into his gums. His teeth itched and his gums felt raw. It was time for action. He had to be robotic, unfeeling, numb, until he got what he wanted. Then he could let it all break loose.
Reuben dropped the empty wrap in the street and dialled with his thumb, ignoring the pictures of Joshua all around him.
It was answered almost immediately.
‘I need one final favour,’ he said, cutting through the preamble.
‘You’ve had several already,’ Sarah answered, equally abrupt.
‘This one’s the big one.’
‘Look, Reuben, it’s too late for that sort of thing.’
‘Really? You remember what you said to me a few days ago?’ Sarah sighed. ‘Remind me.’
‘That considering what I once did for you, you owe me one. Well, this is the one.’
‘It’s not particularly gallant to keep reminding someone that once, a few months ago, you saved their life.’
‘This has gone way past gallantry, Sarah.’
‘Well, what is it?’
‘I need whatever current details you’ve got on someone.’