Trial by Blood

by John Macken

  ‘Good result last night,’ he muttered.

  Michael Brawn remained quiet, just staring. It was clear to Reuben, as it had been in the TV room, that Brawn was a man who controlled every situation he was in. His silence undermined, hanging in the air, making men talk when otherwise they would be mute. But Reuben needed a result.

  ‘Now it’s just Chelsea to try and catch,’ he said.

  Again, Brawn glared at him. Reuben remained half turned, trying not to look directly at him, feeling the discomfort of the scrutiny. They shuffled a couple of paces closer to lunch.

  ‘But with our away form this season, who knows?’

  Brawn cut into him with his eyes. Reuben held his tray firmly as a dollop of vegetable landed on it, a similar portion left clinging to the ladle. The clank of metal on metal. A background hum of chatter. A soft whoosh of steam from a water heater. Utter silence from Michael Brawn. Reuben’s trainers squeaking as he stepped up to the next server.

  ‘I heard we might get bought out again, though. Did you hear anything?’

  Michael Brawn dropped his tray beside Reuben’s. A similar dollop of greenness landed on it, the server avoiding his eye. And then the sound of a snort, barely audible, but unmissable to Reuben’s ears. Michael Brawn blowing air through his nostrils. The suggestion of don’t-make-me-laugh.

  Reuben turned away, focusing on the next server in line. Hidden from Michael Brawn, he allowed himself the briefest flicker of a smile.

  8

  The low-ceilinged room thundered and cracked, gunfire ricocheting off its surfaces, funnelling the fury so that it pounded DI Charlie Baker’s ears until they felt as if they should be bleeding. He ripped a pair of ear defenders off a rack and paced quickly along the row of shooters. As he fitted them over his ears, the noises dulled, their edges rounded off, though still forceful enough to rattle his skull.

  There was room for six officers at a time, the stalls divided with rough planks of plywood, looking to Charlie as if they had been knocked up in someone’s spare time. He walked along the dark green carpet. Above, the ceiling was strip-lit and suspended, like in a cheap shop. Even by Metropolitan standards, this was an untidy gun range. He peered at the damage as he passed each stall in turn, two female officers and four male. The targets were black bowling-pin shapes on a fawn background, successful hits appearing as specks of white where light poked through from behind. He reached the final marksman in line and waited, allowing him to discharge a volley of shots in quick succession. Then Charlie reached forward, his arm angling up to tap Commander Robert Abner on the back.

  Commander Abner turned his head, then swivelled his upper torso round, a two-stage process which seemed to Charlie slightly robotic, as if one cog controlled another. He pulled his own ear protectors away. ‘What is it?’ he asked.

  ‘Sorry to interrupt you, sir. Just thought you should see this ASAP.’

  Charlie held up a clear plastic bag, which contained two fragments of a sheet of paper. He glanced past his superior officer at the target near the end of the room. Robert’s shots were clustered in two regions, one in the rounded head area and the other in the approximate torso. Charlie noted with satisfaction that the torso holes were in a tight cardiac formation. He also observed with interest that the skull shots were in no way random, and appeared to concentrate around the area where the right eye would lie. The commander hadn’t lost his touch. And while Charlie considered himself a good shot, and had been trained to roughly the same standard, he knew that he wouldn’t fancy his chances against him in a twenty-five yard competition. The old man was still a star.

  ‘What is it?’ Commander Abner asked again.

  ‘I retrieved them from the house of Jeremy Accoutey.’

  Robert Abner laid his pistol flat on the deep wooden shelf in front of him, making sure its short, chopped nose was pointing away from Charlie. He took the evidence bag in both hands, savouring its silky plastic feel, layers rubbing and sliding over each other. The paper inside was thick and vaguely familiar to him.

  ‘So . . .’ he said.

  ‘It’s output data from a sequencer. The screen-shot patterns you get for quality control prior to sequence analysis.’

  ‘I’m more than familiar with what gel files are, detective inspector.’

  ‘Sorry, sir.’

  Commander Abner shouted to be heard over another barrage of shots. ‘But I don’t recognize the format.’

  ‘That’s because it’s probably from an ABI 377. Still in operation, but less fashionable these days. The dog’s knackers a few years back, and not the sort of equipment generally used by amateurs.’

  ‘Do we use them currently?’

  ‘Decommissioned our last one about ten months ago, sir.’

  ‘Ten?’

  He peered down at Charlie, a stern uncle with a glint in his eye. Charlie did his best not to be unnerved by Commander Abner’s reputation for detail, or his status as one of the country’s leading detectives, or his decorations for smashing gun rackets and drug gangs, or his no-nonsense progress in the world of forensics. It was, Charlie was forced to concede, a lot to try not to be daunted by, and it left him with the worrying fear that Abner saw right through him and into his motives and actions. It was bad enough a criminal getting on the wrong side of Commander Robert Abner. But a policeman . . . Charlie moved his thoughts to safer ground.

  ‘Give or take a couple of weeks, sir.’

  ‘So, let me get this clear,’ Robert Abner growled. ‘A footballer kills his wife, then turns the gun on himself. Some time prior to this event, he has been given sophisticated forensic information which hasn’t come from ourselves.’

  ‘Exactly, sir.’

  ‘Charlie?’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Drop the sirs. We’re both on the same side here.’ Commander Abner raised his eyebrows, a brief smile twitching on his lips. ‘Besides, it unnerves me. Now, what kind of information do you think Mr Accoutey received?’

  ‘Impossible to tell.’

  ‘But if you had to guess?’

  ‘The obvious, given the death of his wife, would be some sort of infidelity test.’

  ‘And who do we know who is currently offering such a facility?’

  Charlie felt as if he was being tested, a senior officer asking what he already knew. ‘Well, commercial outfits – you know, private labs that advertise in the back of magazines and just cover paternity tests, that sort of thing. If it was something to do directly with Lesley Accoutey, and that’s simply a guess, there’s only a couple of names that spring to mind.’

  ‘Which are?’

  ‘There was a private lab out near Heathrow, set up by some ex-human genome staff from the Sanger Institute—’ Another volley of rapid gunfire burst through Charlie’s words and he waited for a period of quiet. ‘You know, when the human genome was essentially mapped, a few punters branched off into more exotic stuff. Screening for inherited syndromes in potential partners, picking up viral infections at an early stage, HIV testing, deciding which partner had got the virus first, a few borderline activities for employers and insurance companies . . .’

  ‘And they’re still active?’

  ‘Very much so. We’ve been keeping a quiet eye on them.’

  ‘Good. Maybe it shouldn’t be so quiet from now on. Go over and see them, have a nose into their business.’

  ‘I will. Only . . .’

  ‘What?’

  ‘There is the other possibility.’ From the outset, a name had come to him thick and fast. A bell ringing, a nerve firing. ‘There are whispers about Reuben Maitland,’ he said. ‘That he’s still sniffing around, and offering forensic services.’

  Robert Abner’s face hardened. ‘I want you to leave Reuben Maitland out of this.’

  ‘But, sir. Surely he’s a potential suspect.’

  ‘I have my reasons,’ he said, picking up his gun again. ‘And that’s all you need to know for now.’

  He emptied the chambers, and Charlie watched
him slot six new rounds in their place. Commander Abner replaced his ear protection and turned back to the target, and Charlie appreciated that his audience with the big man was over.

  He walked back the way he had come, once again running the gauntlet of multiple weapons being discharged, and seeing tiny bright holes appear in distant targets, almost as if light itself was forcing its way through the cardboard in spontaneous bursts. He wondered why Robert Abner was protecting Reuben Maitland, and whether there was a bond between the two he didn’t know about. It was not a thought that cheered him. The chance to squeeze Maitland was one he would have relished. And if it was true that he was still poking his nose into prior GeneCrime business, then having him put out of harm’s way would have been a massive bonus for Charlie. As it was, he decided to convince Abner that he wasn’t interested in Reuben Maitland, while all the time getting closer to him.

  I know this smacks of you, Charlie thought, examining the evidence bag one more time as he left the range, and now, Dr Maitland, I’m coming to get you.

  9

  Joshua Maitland lay serenely asleep on his back, a blanket half on and half off him, a stuffed dog which had seen better days just out of reach. As his right arm stretched, it pulled a thin clear tube with it, which entered a vein on his wrist. The cannula was disproportionately large, and held in place with a plaster decorated with cartoon robots. A small amount of dried blood surrounded one edge of the plaster, wrinkling its surface.

  While Joshua slept, a nurse approached his bed and adjusted the flow-rate of a bag of saline hanging from a small metal frame. ‘Just keeping an eye on his fluids,’ she said with a smile. Lucy Maitland attempted to smile back, a terse flick of her lips revealing a glimmer of teeth. When the nurse had left, Lucy glanced anxiously at her watch, and then at the clock on her mobile phone. She sighed, and looked back at Joshua, peaceful and still, with all the untouched beauty a sleeping child possesses. She stared in wonder for a second, the way she always did when Joshua was asleep, his noisy exuberance gone, leaving behind only a delicate loveliness in its place.

  Sometimes, from a certain angle, he reminded her of Reuben. She saw it more when he was still. But when Joshua was charging around the place, boisterous and rowdy, Lucy thought he looked more like Shaun. But still, at eighteen months of age, she was unable to tell definitively. And the more quiet he had been recently, the more withdrawn and the less likely to run about screaming Shaun’s house down, the more he had seemed to resemble her estranged husband. Lucy smiled briefly to herself, that illness could change the way her son looked to her. In rude health he was Shaun’s son; in ill health he was Reuben’s.

  Lucy stroked the warm softness of his skin. She desperately hoped that Joshua wasn’t Reuben’s son. It was impossible to be certain either way without a DNA test. But Reuben didn’t seem keen on the idea, and, though she battled to suppress it, neither was she. At the moment they had a status quo, which, given the last ten months, was a hell of a lot more acceptable than further turmoil. What she did hope, however, was that the hospital tests on Joshua would be rapid, and as decisively negative as she knew they would be. These days, doctors seemed to test for anything they possibly could, desperate to avoid the career-threatening instance when they missed something big. As a practitioner of law, Lucy knew that medics were petrified of meeting her ilk in any context other than the doctor–patient relationship. She secretly believed that this was why Joshua was being singled out for such invasive testing, given two or three months of just being mildly under the weather.

  Lucy checked her watch again. Where are all the bloody staff ? she asked herself. Her mobile rang. Work would be hunting her down, wondering why she wasn’t keeping any of her morning appointments.

  ‘Hello, Lucy Maitland,’ she answered, trying to sound upbeat.

  On the other end, from a corridor in Pentonville, Reuben said, ‘It’s your ex-husband.’

  Lucy gave a half laugh. ‘Not till the paperwork comes through, sonny. Until then, estranged would be more accurate.’

  ‘Anyway . . .’ Reuben paused, his breathing scratching through the receiver. ‘Look, I just wanted to know how Josh is. Last time I saw him he had a bad cough.’

  ‘He’s fine,’ Lucy replied flatly. And then, ‘Actually, he’s not fine.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘He’s in hospital having blood tests.’

  ‘Hospital?’

  ‘Don’t panic. Just as an out-patient, referred by the GP. Useless bugger that he is.’

  ‘But what are they testing for?’

  ‘Christ knows. But I wish they’d get on with it. We’ve been here so long Joshua has fallen back to sleep. Tell the truth, I wouldn’t mind joining him.’

  ‘If you had to take a wild guess though?’

  Lucy noted that Reuben sounded edgy. ‘Like I said, probably nothing, simply a precaution. Bloody inconvenient – I’ve got an eleven o’clock. Actually, I don’t suppose you could . . .’

  In Pentonville, with his head pressed close to the metal hood, the phone jammed in the crook of his neck, and a phone card pushed in the slot, Reuben watched a succession of prisoners pass him by. ‘I’d love to,’ he said with genuine regret, ‘but I can’t. I’m a bit . . .’ Aiden Boucher walked past. He glared intently at Reuben and gave him the universal throat-cut sign. ‘A bit busy at the moment. For a few days at least.’

  ‘Fine,’ Lucy muttered.

  ‘Look, when will you know?’

  ‘When I’ve managed to see a bloody doctor, which in this place might not be any time soon.’

  ‘I’ll ring you,’ Reuben said. Aiden Boucher was disappearing into the distance, swallowed up by other inmates. Reuben pictured his son in the hands of medics, wanting only to hold him himself. ‘Good luck, Lucy. And will you give him a kiss for me?’

  In the brightly lit hospital room, Lucy ended the call with a curt yes. She bent down to Joshua’s face and gave him a very brief peck on the cheek. ‘That’s from Dr Maitland,’ she whispered, not wanting to wake him. ‘Which is about all he’s ever given you.’

  A medic entered the ward and she straightened again. She knew she could be fearsome if she put her mind to it. Colleagues at her law firm often joked about it. ‘Being Lucied’ was the phrase they had invented – on the wrong end of one of her tongue lashings. She stood up and straightened her skirt. Woe betide the doctor who came between Lucy Maitland and getting her son tested and out with a clean bill of health as fast as possible. In fact, woe betide anyone who came between Lucy and anything she wanted.

  10

  Moray Carnock ambled his considerable bulk along the pavement. A light rain that didn’t seem to carry wetness with it, just freshness, was beginning to come down. His clothes stayed dry, barely touched. Yet the droplets continued to fall, whipped up by the wind. Fifty metres in front of him his quarry was making similarly unhurried progress, untouched by the moisture, talking on a mobile, stopping occasionally in front of shop windows, gesticulating with his free hand. Moray noticed that a good deal of his attention was focused on checking his own reflection. He seemed to focus particularly on his hair, with its permanent wet-look and irritatingly rakish sweep. Moray ignored what he saw in the windows he passed. It was, he told himself, what lay on the inside that mattered. His stomach began to rumble. Moray allowed himself a brief smile. A pasty and two sausage rolls were what lay on his insides, and they rarely helped matters at all.

  Anthony McDower started walking again, and Moray continued his progress. From what he could gather through Judith, the police conclusion had been murder followed by suicide. Jeremy Accoutey possessed an illegal firearm, had been in trouble with the law before, and knew with one hundred per cent certainty, thanks to Reuben, who his wife was fucking. Stranger things had happened, however. And Mr Anthony McDower, the team physio, examining his profile in a series of high-street shop windows, certainly didn’t look overly distraught. He had been questioned and released by the police. But at the very least, Moray
and Reuben had concluded, he was worth keeping an eye on. So Moray had decided to devote his afternoon to seeing exactly what Mr McDower did during his time off.

  Moray watched Anthony enter a sunglasses and watches shop, the kind of place you go when you want to buy something but can’t really figure out what. He checked his own watch. Three thirty-six. That awkward period between lunch and tea. He rummaged in the folds of his coat, but his fingers discovered only empty wrappers, the plastic remains of saturated foodstuffs. McDower was taking his time. Moray imagined him trying on a series of similar sunglasses, relishing the chance for more self-examination, paying more attention to his face than to the potential purchases. Although Moray was 95 per cent sure he was innocent, obvious vanity only days after the death of his lover seemed inappropriate at best. He tried to imagine how he would have felt if his ex-wife had died when they were still together, and reasoned that he probably wouldn’t have been able to drag himself out of bed for a week. McDower’s behaviour was different, however.

  The howling of sirens pierced the air. Moray appreciated that this always meant bad news for someone somewhere. That omnipresent London noise had become exactly what pain, misery and tragedy sounded like to Moray, an anthem of distress, an electronic wailing of misfortune. Ambulances, fire-engines and police cars rushing to the scene of somebody’s bad luck.

  A dark blue Ford Mondeo pulled up sharply next to the kerb, and Moray cursed under his breath. ‘Here we fucking go,’ he muttered with a sigh, pretending not to have seen it. He began walking, but only managed a few strides before a CID officer he didn’t recognize began to match him pace for pace. He was in plainclothes, and seemed to have taken the description almost too literally. The logoless jeans and ironed shirt screamed copper louder than any uniform would have.

  ‘Care to come for a ride?’ he asked.