by John Macken
‘Should be interesting,’ he said.
‘But . . .’
Brawn gestured with the pistol for Reuben to sit down.
‘Right, plod,’ he spat. ‘Let’s sort a few things out. Man to man.’
8
Lucy Maitland loitered in front of a hospital vending machine, surveying its rows of multicoloured snacks and chocolate bars, each assigned its own unique number and letter. She bent forward until her forehead pressed against the cold, isolating glass, her eyes screwed tightly shut. She needed sustenance – a cheap carbohydrate high or a greasy saturated fullness – but she had never quite trusted this type of machine. It reminded her of being six or seven, of school trips to the local swimming baths, of standing forlornly looking up, her money swallowed, the spiral not quite turning far enough, the bar of chocolate clinging sadly to its metal corkscrew, unavailable and unobtainable. Slowly, Lucy reached out and gripped the sides of the vending machine as if she wanted to shake everything loose, violently and desperately, a cascade of long-denied promises thudding into the empty catch-tray. She held still for a second, swamped by recollections, her own childhood summed up for her by chocolate bars that refused to drop.
A throat cleared behind her and she straightened, swivelling her head. The house officer, three or four years out of medical school, still slightly unsure of himself. She brought her body round to face him, looked him straight in the eye, saw his barely suppressed nervousness.
‘What?’ she asked.
‘I just wondered whether you’re ready to come back in,’ he said.
Lucy frowned. Of course she wasn’t ready to go back in, to stand beside the bed of her only child, who was failing by the day. She had needed to escape the gaudy colours, the hospitals-can-befun cartoon characters on the walls, the stifling air of cheerful efficiency, and had found herself irresistibly drawn to the vending machine. But the medic had already begun to walk, less a question than a request, and Lucy reluctantly followed him.
The house officer was positioned at the end of Joshua’s bed, pretending to flick through a brown file marked Joshua Fraser Maitland. Lucy took her time. When she arrived, he glanced up from the notes with what Lucy took to be practised concern. For a moment, her legs trembled beneath her suit trousers, and her stomach seemed to leap and fall in the same instant. It was bad news. More bad news. She glanced down at Joshua, serene and sedated, lying on his back, blinking slow, heavy blinks.
Lucy regained her composure and asked, ‘What is it now?’, crushing the tremor from her voice, the uncertainty from her manner.
‘As you know, Mrs Maitland, the latest batch of tests won’t be back until tomorrow.’
‘And?’
‘Well, whatever the results, there is something we need to do with increased urgency.’
‘Which is?’ Short sentences, clipped words, holding it all together.
‘What we need to find now is a marrow donor.’
‘As you said before.’
‘Ah yes.’ The house officer opened the file again, giving the impression he was simply reading out facts and figures rather than having to impart the news himself. ‘The blood tests from yesterday are back. And what they show is not terribly great news. The HLA types suggest that you are not, in fact, a good donor match for your son.’
‘Fuck,’ Lucy whispered. ‘But I’m the mother. Surely—’
‘It doesn’t always work like that. In the meantime, we’re trawling the databases, searching for potential matches.’ He lifted his head, tried to engage with her. ‘There is, however, another route.’
‘Go on.’
‘What about the father? Could he help?’
‘There are issues there. Difficult, complicated issues . . .’ Lucy Maitland stared down at Joshua, uncertainty and panic in her moist eyes, unable to fight it any longer, clumsy, sticky words getting caught in her throat. ‘I told the other doctor the day before yesterday . . .’ She pulled out a tissue and blew her nose, grinding to a halt.
‘Right.’ The young medic returned his attention to the file. ‘The consultant will see you tomorrow morning, go through all the options with you. We’re expecting the final test results by then.’ He snapped Joshua’s notes shut. ‘OK?’ There was the briefest of smiles before he walked quickly away, leaning into the corner of the corridor, tilting his whole body as if it would help him go round faster, escaping the awkward scene of a mother and her dying infant.
Lucy watched him go. She blew her nose again. Her stomach rumbled and she glanced through the double doors in the direction of the vending machine. She hesitated for a second, before taking out her mobile, dialling Reuben’s number and waiting impatiently for him to answer.
9
Reuben knew enough about firearms to recognize that the gun was genuine. It was a revolver popular on both sides of the law. Its snub nose stared back at him, bleak and unforgiving, absolute and inarguable. This is what death looks like, Reuben thought. The black promise of the barrel of a gun.
Michael Brawn was smarter than before. A pale shirt poked out of the top of his black leather jacket, and his charcoal jeans had been recently ironed. The straight lines and folds lent him a further severity that had been lacking in prison. He continued to stare down at Reuben, gun arm steady, face waxen and unemotional.
Reuben fidgeted on the sofa. How the fuck had this happened? Michael Brawn escaping as well. Tracking him down and entering the lab. And all because Reuben had DNA-profiled him. A multitude of notions continued to swarm around inside his head, insect ideas that buzzed and teemed and crawled and stung. A cacophony of thrumming thoughts in a still and silent lab.
Brawn took a step closer. ‘It’s time for you to end your life,’ he said. ‘Get on your feet.’
Reuben stood up, scanning the lab, desperate for anything that could help him. Brawn wasn’t fucking about. He had tried to kill him once already. Reuben knew that without intervention he would have died in his cell. And now there would be no help, no Damian or Cormack to alert anyone, no guard rushing in to save him. Just Reuben and a psychopath in a small series of rooms in a virtually empty building.
Brawn nudged a lab stool until it lay underneath the light fittings bolted into the ceiling. He pulled a plastic bag-tie out of his jacket pocket.
‘Hands behind your back,’ he instructed, ‘wrists together.’
Reuben did as he was told. Brawn walked behind him, confident, in control, showing that if it came down to it, he would simply put a bullet through him. He wrapped the slim, stiff band around Reuben’s wrists, slotted it through its aperture and tugged. He was obviously in no hurry. Reuben’s forearms still had some movement, which he was happy about. Then Brawn grabbed the end and pulled hard, Reuben’s wrists forced together, the tie burning into his skin. Brawn paced back round in front of him, reached into his other jacket pocket and pulled out a length of rope. Keeping the gun on Reuben, he climbed on to the stool and looped the rope around the brushed steel lighting attachment. He made a crude noose, yanking it to test its strength, the pistol momentarily under his arm. Then he jumped down and bared his teeth at Reuben.
‘Poked your fucking nose in, didn’t you?’
‘How did you find me?’
‘I know a lot more about you than you know about me.’
‘I doubt it,’ Reuben countered.
Brawn snorted, his nostrils flaring. ‘I’ve got contacts, informants in the right places. If you know who to follow you can find a lot of people. Just like I found you.’
‘So now what?’
‘I finish what I started in Pentonville.’ Brawn nodded his pistol at the stool. ‘Now you have a go.’
Reuben stepped forward, taking his time, hoping to fuck he could think his way out of what was about to happen. For a second he longed for the police to come and find him, the manhunt actually getting the scent at last, tracking him down like it had failed to do so far. But Reuben knew he had been careful, staying in Aaron’s squat, Moray driving him around in anon
ymous cars and staying out of sight of the police, Sarah keeping her mouth shut. As he climbed on to the stool, Reuben realized that Michael Brawn was watching him intently, his features almost gleeful. He had done this before.
Reuben’s mobile vibrated silently in his pocket six or seven times. A call from who knew who that would never be answered. Brawn motioned with his pistol for Reuben to place the noose around his neck. He poked his head through it.
‘You see how this thing works. Now, lean forward and tighten the fucker. That’s it.’
Reuben did as he was told. Experience told him there was no benefit to antagonizing Brawn. What he had to do instead was talk his way out, sidetrack him, shift the balance. He recalled his early years in CID, learning about negotiating, looking for a route out. It was his only option. He knew Brawn wouldn’t hesitate to fill him full of bullets. Reuben had to take the longest course he could that gave him time to think.
‘Come on, Ian,’ he said, feeling the rope against his skin, ‘we don’t need to do this.’
‘Oh yes we do.’
‘It is Ian, isn’t it?’
‘We’re getting to know each other now, are we?’ Brawn grinned up at him. ‘Coppers. All the fucking same.’
‘Don’t you want to know what I’ve discovered about you? Your real name, and what you’ve been up to?’
‘I’ll have a look at your computer. While you’re swinging.’
‘But you escaped from Pentonville?’
Michael Brawn gave a gruff half laugh. ‘You really don’t know fuck all, do you?’ He stepped one pace closer. ‘None of this. What’s going on. You know fucking nothing.’ With his right leg, he measured up for a kick of the lab stool. ‘And you never will.’
Reuben stared frantically around the lab. At the shelves beside him. At the scalpel lying on the bench. At the glass bottles on the side. One jolt of the stool and it was all over. A three-foot drop. Maybe enough to snap his neck. If not, a slow few minutes of strangulation, Brawn leaning against the bench and lighting a cigarette, smoking it down as Reuben thrashed away. He glanced up at the light fittings, bolted into the joists above, knowing they would hold his weight. Reuben had salvaged them from a gutted factory to give the lab the harsh white light it thrived on. He had never pictured himself hanging from them.
Brawn was sizing the stool up again. Reuben scanned the room with growing desperation.
‘OK, tell me then. What is it I don’t know?’
‘Goodbye, copper,’ Brawn growled, stepping forward.
Reuben swung his left leg round to the nearest shelf, aiming a kick, dislodging empty bottles. Brawn lifted his right leg up, bent at the knee. Reuben lashed out again, more solutions raining down on to the floor. Brawn kicked the stool hard, jolting Reuben back. He tottered forward, rocking on the balls of his feet. Fall off and he was dead. He regained his balance, and aimed his foot a third time.
Brawn steadied himself. Knocking a stool from under a fourteen-stone man needed the right amount of force. Reuben noted the split second of hesitation. His shoe crashed into the large, heavy cylinder of liquid nitrogen on the shelf beside him. It lurched and fell, its lid coming off, fluid cascading out, litres of volatility splashing over Michael Brawn’s left arm and surging on to the floor, the metal drum knocking him off balance. Brawn slipped and went down with it, into a hissing, fizzing pool of liquid nitrogen vaporizing and lifting the floor tiles.
A second of silence, of nothingness. Reuben fighting to stay upright, Brawn on his back, staring at his hand lying in the fluid. Standing up. Dropping his gun. Then screaming. Brawn holding his arm in shock. Fingers whitening and glaciating. Reuben wriggling out of the noose, jumping down, picking up the scalpel and using it to cut his tie. Freeing his hands and grabbing the gun.
Still screaming, Michael Brawn lunged for him. Reuben smashed the pistol butt into his injured hand. An icy cracking, shattering sound. The tips of two frozen fingers snapping off, rolling on to the bench. No blood, just dead white flesh. Bone poking out, stripped of its tissue. Pointed, skeletal metatarsals under the harsh strip lighting. Brawn falling back to the floor clutching at his broken hand.
Reuben suspected he wouldn’t be subdued for long. He picked up the lab phone and dialled the number of the one man who could help him, keeping the gun trained firmly on Michael Brawn.
10
Commander Robert Abner entered the lab warily and gestured towards the sofa. ‘Do you mind?’ he asked.
Reuben shrugged. ‘Who’s the back-up?’
Robert Abner raised his eyebrows in turn at the two men who had come in with him. ‘Detective Superintendent Cumali Kyriacou, and Assistant Chief Constable James Truman.’
Both of them stepped forward and shook hands with Reuben. Senior brass. Thickset men who had seen it all before and had managed to come out the other side, as if their solid frames were resistant to the hurt and the damage.
‘I know back-up is usually a little younger and fitter than this,’ DS Kyriacou said with a smile, patting his plump abdomen, ‘but we were with Commander Abner when you requested help.’
‘And a bit of action is a rare treat these days,’ Truman acknowledged, almost sadly.
Reuben glanced at Michael Brawn, who was silent and pale, shivering on the floor, hunched over, his ruined hand wrapped up in a lab coat. He held on to the gun regardless. Brawn was injured, but a wounded psychopath was an unpredictable entity.
‘So this is the lab,’ Commander Abner said. He cast his eyes around. ‘Nice set-up.’
‘Thanks.’
‘And this, I guess, is the prisoner. Want to tell me what’s going on, Reuben?’
‘I called you because I think you’re the one person who can sort everything out.’
‘Let’s see what I can do.’
‘OK, here we go.’ Reuben closed his eyes, getting everything straight in his head. ‘Using the alias Michael Brawn, Ian Cowley here was sent down ten or eleven months ago for sexual misdemeanour. Pleaded guilty, among other things, to the attempted rape of a woman on a train. GeneCrime were called in to tie some of the strands together. However, for reasons I won’t go into now, his DNA evidence – our GeneCrime evidence – was faked. Michael Brawn couldn’t possibly have carried out those attacks.’
‘You’re saying our proof was bent?’
‘Looks that way.’
Abner’s forehead creased, thin folds of skin darting upwards. ‘Not good. What else have you found out?’
Reuben glanced over at Brawn. ‘He’s been passing messages out of Pentonville.’
‘Pertaining to what?’
‘I don’t know. He used some sort of code which I couldn’t crack.’
Brawn stared over at him, brooding, the colour returning to his cheeks, slowly sitting up, a Dober-mann beginning to take interest in an intruder.
‘That’s everything you know?’
‘More or less.’
‘And now you’ve nailed him. I guess we should call off the hunt, eh?’
Commander Abner nodded at DS Kyriacou.
‘I’ll phone it in,’ the DS answered. ‘We’ll still need to clear it with Scotland Yard, and we’ll have to do some face-to-faces. But yes, let’s get the ball rolling.’
‘I’ve got to see my son without being arrested and taken back to Pentonville.’
‘As DS Kyriacou says, a few hours and we’ll have it all wrapped up.’ Abner scratched the short grey hair at the base of his neck. He cleared his throat, looking down at the floor. ‘I heard about your lad. Sarah told me. She’s been bloody evasive recently. But it’s a bad business, Reuben.’
‘He’s beginning to get critical. Got a message from my ex-wife twenty minutes ago. She sounded pretty . . .’ Reuben had been about to say the word ‘hysterical’, but let it go. ‘Days and hours, that’s all. I need to go and see if I’m a donor match so they can begin the chemo.’
Robert Abner glanced over at Brawn, who stared back with palpable hatred. Reuben noted that Brawn was now poise
d, on one knee, ready.
‘As I say, we’ll sort something. Maybe get you a car down to the hospital.’
‘Thanks.’
Commander Abner stood up and stretched, his large shoulders rising and falling inside his uniform. ‘OK. Pass me the gun. I’ll bag it up and send it for ballistics. You never know what stories it might tell.’
Reuben checked Michael Brawn one final time. Surely even Brawn wasn’t going to try to attack four men, one of whom was armed. But he looked like he fancied his chances. Reuben gave his former boss the pistol quickly and handle-first, so that Brawn could be instantly subdued if necessary.
Commander Abner examined the gun with deft expertise, checking the safety catch and the number of rounds in the chamber. ‘Nice weapon,’ he muttered, walking over to Michael Brawn. ‘Well, Mr Brawn, or Mr Cowley, or whoever you are. I think we have a few issues to sort out, don’t you?’
Michael Brawn stared intensely up at the commander.
Robert Abner turned to his colleagues. ‘Either of you have any questions for Mr Brawn?’
Both silently shook their heads.
Commander Abner then pushed the gun into Michael Brawn’s chest. ‘Sweet dreams, Mr Cowley,’ he whispered. And then he pulled the trigger.
A loud, dull shot, muffled by proximity, boomed through the lab. Michael Brawn’s body lurched back from the impact, and fell on its side. He groaned, breathing desperately through empty lungs, dying into the floor.
Reuben stared at Commander Abner in horror. The two senior officers remained silent and still, unmoved by what they had witnessed.
Robert Abner turned to Reuben. ‘Let’s go for a ride,’ he said, a thin wisp of smoke trailing from the barrel. ‘Turn your phone off and slide it into a drawer. You’re not going to be needing it where we’re going.’
Reuben sat in the front seat. DS Kyriacou drove. Commander Abner was in the rear, behind the driver, and next to ACC Truman. Reuben glanced quickly back, Commander Abner in his peripheral vision. A head-fuck was in the process of happening, a reappraisal of everything he believed, a spin cycle of feelings and truths and assumptions.