by John Macken
‘What?’
She bit into her lower lip. ‘He’s one of ours.’
‘Shit. I thought the name—’
‘This changes things, Dr Maitland.’
‘Fuck, yeah.’
‘I used Charlie Baker’s access to check back through GeneCrime records.’
‘Charlie Baker?’ Reuben sucked in a breath that held a faint tinge of Sarah’s perfume. ‘Are you sure that’s wise?’
‘As I say, I am trying to catch what looks like a serial rapist at the moment. You’ll forgive me if I take short-cuts.’
Reuben surveyed DCI Hirst’s flushed cheeks and flared nostrils. ‘Sorry,’ he said.
‘GeneCrime performed the forensics on him, the forensics which sent him down.’
‘And if they’re bent . . .’
Sarah whistled, a low note somewhere between a sigh and a hum. ‘I need to have another ask around, see what people know. Pull his file and have a proper look.’
‘It doesn’t make sense,’ Reuben said, partly to himself. ‘We profiled him, and his phenotype and genotype are entirely opposite.’
‘Just as the note suggested.’
She flicked at her hair in the mirror. Reuben continued to focus on his pheno-fit, a million unsettling notions blurring his vision. Michael Brawn. A false genetic identity. DNA used and abused. It was still going on. Sarah’s mobile rang, and she answered with a quick series of yeses and nos. Reuben scratched his forehead hard, trying to dismiss the notion. Sarah ended her call.
‘No rest for those who hunt the wicked,’ she said. ‘Drop you somewhere?’
Reuben shook his head slowly. ‘Here’s fine.’
He climbed out of the car, slotted the pheno-fit away, and allowed himself to be swallowed by the sea of bodies flooding the pavement, immersing himself in other people’s rights and wrongs, in their truths and inconsistencies.
14
Reuben lined up four colour photographs on the white lab bench. The first was a picture of Lucy, of her shoulders and her head. He recalled taking the photo, Lucy reluctant, self-conscious from the attention. They were on holiday somewhere, Portugal he guessed, and she had a reddening tan from too many hours in the sun. Her sunglasses were in her hair, which was slightly lighter than normal. Reuben estimated that it was near the end of the holiday, and they had been about to return to England, to their pre-Joshua lives, which seemed to revolve almost entirely around work. Lucy’s eyes were smiling, despite the reluctance. The light which bounced off them projected carefree happiness, a future together, marriage and children, endless possibilities. Reuben scrutinized her face, absorbing every detail of the moment, a shutter’s blink of everything that used to matter.
Joshua’s photo, in comparison to his mother’s, was slightly blurred. There was almost a halo around him, the haze of movement of his pale body lending an ethereal aura to his skin. Reuben estimated he was around fifteen months. When he saw photographs of his son, he half wished he could fast-forward them to an age when his features would start to really crystallize – five or six maybe. Even now, when he looked at him, he couldn’t be sure. The darkness could just as well be from Shaun Graves as from Lucy. The nose was still a snubbed mound of tissue waiting to bud. The mouth and ears, the chin, the line of the eyebrows, the cheeks . . . all were beginning to talk to him, but would always remain supporting evidence. The eyes held the real clue. They were a light blue, with, from some angles, a hint of grey-green, and Reuben never tired of staring into them. But eye colour, he was well aware, could change up to the age of two. After that he would have a good idea. Reuben’s irises were green, as were Lucy’s, and Shaun’s were hazel. He had done the maths, performed the permutations for the two locus trait with its three alleles. A complex inheritance with some guesswork involved. But a lot hinged on whether Joshua’s eyes remained blue or began to turn more green.
He put Joshua down and picked Shaun Graves up. He was in a dark suit and light shirt, caught unawares, frowning slightly, his face almost square on to the camera. A Moray special, snapped covertly from some distance, one of a series of shots he had taken for Reuben in the days when the exclusion order had been rigidly enforced, and his only contact with Joshua was holding illicit photographs of him. Shaun had, Reuben was forced to concede, charismatically good looks. His chin was long, with the hint of a dimple in it. His ears were relatively small and symmetrical, and his cheekbones high and prominent for a male. Shaun’s light eyes offset his golden skin. His hair was dark brown, but not quite as dark as Lucy’s. Reuben focused on the face which had taken everything away from him, forcing himself to be cold and scientific, to map the details of his features rather than glare at them with lasting bitterness.
Closing his eyes and imprinting Shaun’s characteristics, Reuben dropped his photo and picked up the final one. It was a perfunctory picture of his own face, expressionless and deadpan, taken from his old GeneCrime ID card. A terrible photograph, but ideal for the purpose at hand. There was no dishonesty of a forced smile or any other expression developed for the camera, just his nose, mouth, eyes, chin, ears, hair and cheeks. It was almost like an autopsy picture, so lifeless and drained of colour by a bright camera flash.
As he examined it, he recalled the period when it was taken. GeneCrime had just updated its already heavy security and had required new photo-ID cards for all personnel. It was three months before his dismissal. Reuben sensed the wildness in his own eyes, tried to immerse himself for a second in the suspicions, the pressures, the abrasive atmosphere of the division, at a time when everything was starting to go wrong. The root cause of where he was today. The seeds of protracted suspicion, the need for results starting to push one or two of his colleagues over the line that should never be crossed by CID.
And then Reuben paying the ultimate price. He saw Commander Robert Abner, red in the face, shaking his head sadly at Reuben, while DCIs Phil Kemp and Sarah Hirst stared at him in quiet silence. Sarah Hirst, cold and elegant, undisguised resentment on her face. Phil Kemp, dark-haired and squat, an unhealthy pallor to his skin. Clearing his throat, raising his eyebrows at Reuben and reading the charges against him. Then, minutes later, when all the talking was done, leaving the room, barrelling down corridors, DI Charlie Baker standing in his way, making him scrape past, giving Reuben a slow handclap out of the building.
Reuben blinked rapidly, returning to the now. He arranged and rearranged the four photographs on the bench, constructing family trees. Reuben and Lucy, with Joshua beneath; then Shaun and Lucy, with Joshua beneath. He superimposed features, measured distances with a pair of callipers, squinted and scribbled notes into a lab book. And then he turned Lucy’s photo over and moved Joshua’s picture next to his own face, and then next to Shaun’s, running his eyes rapidly back and forth between the images.
Reuben stood up. He slid a clear bottle labelled ‘100% Ethanol’ from a lab shelf and poured a slosh into a Pyrex beaker, measuring out roughly a hundred millilitres. A quick calculation told him that this approximated to half a bottle of 40 per cent spirits. He pulled down the small glass vial marked ‘Oblivion’ from a rack of chemicals, and shook its powder back and forth. Its fine off-white grains arranged themselves into hills and valleys, ups and downs. Reuben flicked the tube with his middle finger, deciding.
He knew he could never bring himself to perform a paternity test. To sully Joshua, to drag his DNA into his lab, through his equipment, into his tubes . . . It was the purest form of hypocrisy, but Reuben had fought the impulse a thousand times. And at least this way there was still hope. To test his son and come up with a cold statistical number, the answer ‘no’ spelled out in a long stream of digits, truly that would finish him. He uncapped the vial, wet a fingertip and dabbed it inside. Then he rubbed the bitter powder into his gums, a small quantity which would keep him alert and awake.
Swigging from the beaker, he slotted the photos of Joshua, Lucy, Shaun and himself away, and sighed. He sat upright in the chair and pulled out two other pic
tures. And as he sipped the drink and felt the first tingles of the slow onset of amphetamine, he began to inspect and re-inspect Michael Brawn’s contrasting photos in minute and utter detail.
15
Sarah Hirst supported the weight of her head with the fingers of both hands. A cold, gnawing headache was burrowing deep into her sinuses. On the desk in front of her lay a multitude of papers and photographs, covering almost the entire surface. The photos showed crime scenes, bodies and fragments of bodies. She felt a sense of overwhelming atrocity in the redness of the colour close-ups and the coldness of the black and white mortuary shots. Sarah pushed her fingertips into the thin skin of her forehead, lowered her chin and shifted the pressure from the top of her nasal passages. Like a ball of pain which moved position as she altered the angle of her brain, the headache seemed to relocate to her frontal lobes.
Three unsolved murders in little over a month, and now this. A body dredged from the Thames. Maybe linked to one or more of them, maybe not. There was no Missing Persons report, no search. Just a bloated corpse spotted by a woman walking her dog. Pathology had refused to commit themselves to a time of death. Three to four weeks was the best they had come up with. Sarah sighed. To disappear and to die, to have no one miss you, and to wash up naked on the brown cloying banks of the Thames . . . She rubbed her aching head, and again felt the pain move as she did so. This was loneliness on a scale even London found shocking.
Sarah had run Reuben’s suggestions past Dr Mina Ali, the senior forensic technician of GeneCrime. Since Reuben’s departure, the unit had promoted from within. The publicity and the sudden openness of the division had had that effect. CID, Forensics, Pathology – everyone looked inwards, as if trying to rediscover the privacy they had lost when everything spiralled out of control.
The press had swarmed all over the covert unit. In the subsequent nine months, wounds had closed and scars had formed, but actual healing was still a way off. GeneCrime’s greatest strength was also its greatest weakness. A unit of élite CID and brilliant scientists, supported by gifted programmers, pathologists and criminologists, had pushed crime detection to world-leading levels. Cases previously beyond the scope of straightforward resolution had been brought to fruition through new methodologies and cross-discipline cooperation. But it had come at a price. The disparity in personality, outlook and approach between GeneCrime’s police and scientist factions had sometimes threatened to overwhelm the unit. Mistakes had been made, lines had been crossed, egos had taken hold. And then DCI Phil Kemp, Sarah’s opposite number, and the man who initially took over from Reuben, had begun to change the rules.
Sarah reached for her coffee, which was cold. The thought of Phil Kemp distracted her from her grinding headache. It was possible that caffeine was to blame for it, but she drank the bitter liquid anyway. Sarah knew she had to keep going; had to run through the evidence, get Forensics to cross-match samples found around each body; had to chase Mina to see if she was willing to use Reuben’s method of extraction. The unit had fucked up once before, and Sarah was damned if it was going to happen again.
A knock at the door made her look up from the slim comfort of her cold coffee. Detective Inspector Charlie Baker was standing in the doorway, dark-haired, swarthy, a model IC2 if ever there was one. Sarah wondered just how hairy he was beneath his white shirt and black trousers. The short beard that covered much of his face and neck seemed almost ready to overwhelm him.
Charlie passed Sarah a heavy brown CID file, holding on to it a moment longer than was necessary. ‘Here,’ he said. ‘This was in your pigeon hole.’
‘Thanks.’
Charlie paused for a second, and Sarah knew that something was up.
‘This the file Reuben Maitland’s interested in?’
‘What makes you think that?’
‘See this here?’ Charlie pointed to the title on his security badge. ‘Detective Inspector Charlie Baker.’
‘So?’
‘So, I detect and I inspect.’
‘Well, do you think you could detect the door and inspect your way back out again?’
Charlie scratched his beard and grinned. Sarah noted the way his teeth fitted tightly together, worn upper incisors meeting equally worn lower ones.
‘Touché,’ he said, before spinning round on his black heels and leaving the office.
Sarah returned her attention to the carnage in front of her, seemingly a hundred corpses lying at subtly different angles with multiple patterns of wounding. But all sharing the same horrible truth. Lives ended in unimaginable pain and violence.
She picked up a picture of the bruised corpse of DI Tamasine Ashcroft. Married with one child. Her eyes fixed open, horror in her expression. Knowing about men who did this, and finally meeting one face to face. And then the most recent discovery. Slightly bloated, pulled out of the river after a few weeks. And, as she looked more closely at the Pathology report, similar patterns of injury to DI Ashcroft. ‘Killing them first and then raping them. Asphyxiation, death, and then, and only then, penetration.
Sarah picked up her drink and forced another sour mouthful down.
‘So what are you so scared of ?’ she asked.
16
Lesley Accoutey poured another drink, her hand shaking, the bottle clinking against the rim of the glass. Her slender fingers gripped the gin and tonic and carried it across the room, ice cubes rattling and slices of lemon slowly sinking. She sat down on the cold laminate flooring. They had chosen it together. Natural oak. And it looked good, virtually indistinguishable from the real thing. As she ran her eyes over the surface, Lesley noted the simulated imperfections which had been imprinted into its pattern, meticulously designed, a sad parody of the random beauty of real wood. She pressed her palm hard into the façade. It felt cold to the touch and didn’t seem to give anything back. Not like real wood.
She glanced up at her husband Jeremy, perched silently on a large cream sofa, staring intently at her. Anthony’s name came to her, and his face. She blinked him away. This was more important than anything, even Anthony. This was her marriage. And yet . . . Lesley began to cry again.
‘No more lies, Lesley,’ Jeremy said, after a few moments.
Lesley continued to sob, unable to look her husband in the eye.
Jeremy took a heavy slug from his glass. ‘His DNA matched samples found in your underwear.’ He picked an A4 manila envelope off the sofa and held it up for emphasis. ‘They said the odds were ten million to one. You know me. I like a flutter now and then. And I know those odds are pretty tight. So no more lies.’
Lesley raised her tear-stained face, blonde hair tumbling into her eyes. Again, an image of Anthony hunted her down, tracksuited and smiling, stroking his trained hands over her slender body, making her laugh and exciting her all at the same time. She glanced around the room. Could she give all of this up? she silently asked herself. A footballer’s salary for a physio’s? She ran her fingers over the unyielding laminate flooring.
‘We keep this quiet, and no more lies,’ Jeremy repeated.
Lesley looked up at him and whispered the word ‘sorry’. She tried to picture Jeremy taking her used panties from the laundry box. Choosing a likely pair, one of her favourites, expensive and sheer. Or maybe he had given them several sets to choose from. She was filled with a sudden disgust. Having her dirty knickers opened, revealed, examined by people she didn’t know. Violated. All looking for stains, for Anthony’s essence which had leaked out of her and into her underwear. Lesley felt a sudden flare of anger.
‘You had no right going through my things,’ she said. ‘Giving them to sordid men who delve about in other people’s private—’ She stopped herself, trying to choose a different word, on the verge of saying ‘affairs’. ‘Business.’
‘Yeah, well, sometimes you’ve got to do these things.’
‘Do you?’ she asked angrily.
‘When you get whispers, sniggers. When suspicions won’t go away, month after month. And when you
hear there’s a way of telling you one hundred per cent yes or no.’
‘Oh God.’ Lesley swallowed her gin, the ice cubes clattering against her teeth. Such a mess. Such an ugly fucking mess.
‘They got DNA from him, and DNA from inside you . . .’ Jeremy battled the anger and the humiliation. ‘Look, if we’re going to survive, we have to face this thing together. Openly and honestly. OK?’
Lesley stared at him, and shook her head slightly. She mouthed the word ‘sorry’ again and pushed her long manicured nails hard into the imitation wooden floor.
17
The secret, Reuben conceded, was always to stay one step ahead. And as he was driven east along concrete carriageways and brightly lit thoroughfares, he appreciated that sometimes this meant isolating yourself from cold, hard logic and following the random vagaries of your heart. But ahead of what? His old division was stitching itself back together. It was only with the benefit of time and distance that he was finally understanding all that had happened, and all that was still happening.
No one was sure how many miscarriages of justice there had been. Or, more worryingly, whether new ones were being perpetrated. Reuben knew it, Sarah knew it, Abner had even alluded to it. Phil Kemp couldn’t have been acting alone. He simply didn’t have the insight or the ability to trade genetic identities without being detected for so long. That required access to samples, to databases and to methodologies that a CID officer would struggle with. Reuben could see now that in neutralizing Phil Kemp, he had created a more subtle problem. You feel the bulging tumour under the skin, you cut it out, and you assume you’ve solved everything that’s bad. But what about the ones you can’t see? The small, thriving metastases hiding in the bones? Sometimes, Reuben frowned, the obvious symptom blinds you to the more serious diagnosis.
As the taxi turned off the dual carriageway, Commander Robert Abner’s words hunted him down and found him. Sarah Hirst is smart. She keeps tabs on you. Reuben had never been sure about Sarah. Not in the way that you’re sure that you are single, and happy half the time, and miss your son like crazy. Not in the way that in knowing your own strengths and weaknesses you also know those of others. Sarah had always been closed. Cold, distant, almost deliberately unknowable. With certain exceptions. There had been a time, several months ago, when Sarah had lowered her defences briefly, when Reuben had witnessed emotion and feeling and empathy. When they had nearly crossed the line. Nearly. But now the circumstances were different, and Reuben appreciated that he was, as Commander Abner had pointed out, being kept close. Not that close to Sarah Hirst was a bad place to be.