Trial by Blood

by John Macken

  ‘So how did you track Aaron down?’

  ‘I didn’t,’ Lucy answered flatly. ‘Some Scotsman with a pie habit came to me and put us in touch.’

  Moray Carnock. The man who could fix just about any mess you cared to get yourself into.

  ‘How long till they come round?’

  ‘The nurse said the operation will last about four hours, then they’ll keep them pretty much sedated until tomorrow morning.’

  ‘And when will we know more?’

  ‘Not for several days. They’ve begun the treatment now, so things are heading in the right direction. But he’s not out of the woods yet.’

  ‘I guess not.’

  Reuben finished his drink. It tasted pure and beautiful, even though it was stacked with additives. Compared to water from a rusting door, it was wonderful.

  ‘Look,’ he said, pushing back his chair and standing up, ‘there’s something I’ve got to do in a hurry.’

  ‘What?’ Lucy asked.

  ‘Something urgent. One last thing. I’ll be back before Joshua and Aaron come round tomorrow.’

  And with a sense of rising apprehension, Reuben left his ex-wife, strode out of the canteen and exited the hospital.

  19

  Judith’s hug was shaky. A little stiff, a slight tremor in her chest, her arms wrapped tight for a couple of seconds before letting go and stepping back.

  Behind her, Moray said gruffly, ‘I don’t do hugs. And I will fight you if you try.’

  Reuben grinned. ‘Not a problem,’ he said. ‘Now, this might sound like a daft question, but what have you done with the body?’

  ‘You’re right,’ Moray answered, his face serious.

  ‘What?’

  ‘It does sound like a daft question.’

  ‘Really, though.’

  ‘What body?’ Judith asked.

  ‘Michael Brawn. You’re telling me there was no body here?’

  ‘Afraid not.’

  ‘And the lab door?’

  ‘Unlocked.’

  ‘So they came back and tidied up.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Robert Abner and friends. After they took me for a ride and put me away.’ Reuben retrieved his mobile from the drawer and turned it on. It vibrated, indicating that he had messages to view. ‘Look, this is all fucked up. Brawn was working for Abner, deliberately placed in prison, executing a gang of inmates one by one before they could be released.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Abner was bent. He ran London’s gun market in the nineties, made a mint out of it, and then needed some scapegoats to do his time. But he made the mistake of crossing Kieran Hobbs. Who, at this very moment, is exacting his revenge.’

  ‘What’s Hobbs going to do?’ Judith asked.

  ‘I don’t know. Even Hobbs isn’t big enough to take on senior Metropolitan brass. Christ knows what he’s hoping to achieve.’ Reuben paced over to the lab bench that Brawn had lain under, his fingertips ruined, a gun exploding in his ribs. There was no obvious sign now, the floor wiped, probably even fingerprints cleaned away. ‘But I guess we’ll find out soon.’

  He thought of Brawn, and whether he had already been disposed of, melted down, poured away. The damp sulphuric smell of the concrete out-building seemed to be burned deep into Reuben’s nostrils. So much life and menace seeping into the ground somewhere. But at least with no corpse in his lab, one serious problem had been averted.

  ‘So, what else has been going on?’ he asked.

  There was a pause, Judith looking into the floor, Moray finding other things to occupy him.

  ‘So?’ he asked.

  Judith cleared her throat. ‘I . . . he attacked me. The man.’

  ‘Who? The Thames—’ Reuben didn’t say the rest of the name.

  Judith nodded quickly, her eyes fixed on the floor. ‘After work. Late. Near GeneCrime.’

  ‘Fuck.’ Reuben walked over and put his arm round her. ‘Are you OK?’

  ‘Fine,’ she said.

  Reuben glanced at Moray, who shook his head.

  ‘But what—’

  ‘I’m fine,’ Judith repeated. ‘I got away. I was lucky.’

  She started to cry, and Reuben held her close. Soon, her breathing became slower and less jerky, as if she was trying to control her tears, fighting to stem the outpouring.

  ‘But there was something good.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘They finally got DNA. A couple of hairs caught in the zip of my jacket in the struggle.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘No matches yet. But they have a sample.’

  Judith said this triumphantly, as if she almost believed her ordeal would have a positive outcome. Almost. Reuben noted a pair of dark red marks on her neck, just visible above the collar of her white blouse as she moved her head.

  ‘What are they doing?’

  ‘Just prelims at the moment. A crude run, plug it through the database. When we found it was negative, yesterday morning, Mina decided we should do it properly, which will take another few days.’

  ‘How are they certain they’re his,’ Moray asked, ‘and not some random hairs you picked up along the way?’

  ‘Fragments matched the sample from what we think was the first victim, the one Reuben helped with. Just a couple of loci, but enough to get stats on.’

  ‘And what do you guys do when you’ve confirmed that the murderer’s DNA doesn’t match anything in your database?’

  Reuben was quiet. Excited, thinking through the possibilities.

  ‘We start screening. You know, working our way through the hundreds of suspects we’ve identified from witness statements, car registrations, descriptions. The net begins slowly to tighten. But of course there is another way, now Reuben’s back with us.’

  ‘Which is?’ Moray asked.

  ‘Predictive phenotyping,’ Reuben answered slowly. ‘So we can see his face. But we’d need access to the DNA.’

  Judith smiled. ‘Catch,’ she said, tossing an Eppendorf tube through the air. ‘Dried down, desiccated and ready to go.’

  Reuben caught it and brought the tube up in front of his eyes. The DNA of the Thames Rapist. Molecules of the man who had been terrorizing London for weeks. Fragments of the psychopath who had tried to kill Judith, microscopic pieces she had carried with her in her pocket. He flicked a hot-block on and began programming a thermal cycler. The last time, predictive phenotyping had shown him that Michael Brawn was a black man. This time, there would be no mistakes.

  Reuben took a breather, leaning against the bench, a phosphoimager scanning two thousand spots which were crammed on to a nylon membrane the size of a postage stamp.

  ‘Who wants a cuppa?’ he asked.

  Moray, who was slumped on the sofa reading the paper, answered ‘Aye’ without looking up.

  ‘If you’re offering,’ Judith said, pulling off a pair of lab gloves.

  Reuben slid a clear bottle marked ‘Ethanol’ from the shelf above him. He poured a slosh into three Pyrex beakers and handed one each to Judith and Moray.

  Judith eyed the liquid suspiciously. ‘You drink this stuff?’

  ‘Why not?’ Reuben asked, taking a swig.

  ‘Management always told us that laboratory ethanol was spiked with meths.’

  ‘And why would they do that?’

  ‘To stop us drinking it.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  Moray straightened slightly and raised his beaker in front of him. ‘To scientists. Who’ll believe anything except the obvious.’ He took a healthy gulp, then his cheeks reddened and his eyes widened. ‘Fuck me,’ he muttered. ‘Not exactly single malt.’

  ‘One hundred per cent pure alcohol,’ Reuben answered. ‘An acquired taste. Don’t you think, Judith?’

  Judith placed her beaker on the bench. ‘I’ve changed my mind. Look, I’ll get the wash steps ready.’

  Reuben watched her pull on fresh gloves and busy herself. She had come through a head-fuck of an ordeal. The only one to survi
ve. The only one to get away from him alive. He knew that she would have made the same deduction he had: that the killer had already met Judith, or was familiar with GeneCrime’s personnel. This was not coincidence. He marvelled that she was coping so well, but then, she had always been tough. It was one thing you never suspected of Judith. She might be petite and demure, but she was as gutsy as hell.

  Reuben took another swig, savouring the warmth, wondering what the predictive phenotyping would show him. Faces and names flashed through his mind. He glanced at his watch. In three more hours, he would know for sure.

  20

  There was a noise, a scratching and scraping sound, and the front door swung open. Kieran Hobbs was standing in the doorway, brash and bold, grinning from earring to earring. He walked in, nonchalant and relaxed. Reuben pressed the ‘Start’ icon on his laptop and turned to face him.

  ‘Kieran,’ he said, slightly taken aback.

  Kieran extended a smile around the room. ‘Reuben. Mr Carnock. The lovely Judith.’

  Moray and Judith smiled back.

  ‘You make any progress with that mugshot of mine?’

  ‘We’ve had a few technical problems,’ Judith answered.

  ‘You win some, you lose some.’

  ‘So you haven’t found Abner?’ Reuben asked.

  ‘Oh yeah, I found him all right. Do you mind?’ Kieran gestured towards the sofa, then lowered himself down.

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘Went straight there. Sorted a few things out. One to one. Just me and him.’

  Reuben pulled his gloves off and put them in the bin. His laptop was busy, grinding through algorithms, beginning to construct the human face responsible for weeks of subhumanity.

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘You know how these things work. Revenge being served cold and all that.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Trouble is, sometimes you don’t have the stomach for cold food. Sometimes you fancy something from the dessert trolley instead. You know what I mean?’

  ‘Can’t say I do.’

  ‘See, the thing is, no one, no matter how big, kills three senior coppers to get what they want. Am I right?’

  Reuben took in the winning smile, the expression of quiet, forceful bonhomie. ‘Obviously.’

  ‘These days, you have to be smarter than them.’

  ‘And how do you do that exactly?’

  ‘You have to ask yourself, what’s more use, owning a dead copper, or owning a live one?’

  Out of the corner of his eye, Reuben noted the scaffolding, the contours, the 3D outlines. A mesh of intersections steadily gaining texture, depth and colour. A network of coordinates being mapped and re-mapped until the software was happy with itself. ‘So what happened?’

  ‘What always happens. We cut a deal. In return for silence, certain activities of mine will gain immunity from prosecution, while the Met comes down hard on my competitors.’

  ‘But he killed your men,’ Reuben said.

  Kieran stood up, edgy and menacing all of a sudden, the smile gone, the mouth tight. ‘A lot of people kill my men. It’s dog eat dog out there.’ He slid a pistol out of his jacket. ‘And now there’s only one problem left.’

  ‘What?’ Reuben asked, appreciating that the rules were about to change for good.

  ‘I want my twenty-five grand back.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Plus all the other money I’ve given you recently.’

  ‘We had a deal.’

  ‘And now I have a different deal. I’ve got the boss of GeneCrime in my pocket.’ Kieran waved the pistol about with practised detachment. ‘I hardly need some two-bit forensic scientist to sort my problems, do I?’

  Reuben straightened, ready. He eyed Moray and Judith, sensed where the door was, flicked through his options. Kieran Hobbs with a gun was not good news.

  ‘See, by my estimates you’ve had the best part of twenty grand from me over the last few weeks, plus the twenty-five I sent you . . . we’re looking at forty-five large. Please.’

  Kieran pointed the gun directly at Reuben’s head. Reuben paused a second, again glancing at Moray and Judith. Then he paced over to a chemical bin in the far corner.

  ‘And don’t try anything silly,’ Kieran said.

  Reuben opened the metal bin slowly. It held half a dozen nasties: phenol, mercaptoethanol, sodium hydroxide, glacial acetic acid, ethidium bromide. And sulphuric acid. Reuben paused, his fingers close to the brown bottle. A label marked 8N H2SO4. Highly concentrated. To be handled with utterly paranoid care. Brooding among liquids of lesser evil. The smell from the concrete building. A fluid that melts bones for fun.

  Reuben glanced over his shoulder at Kieran. The gun was pointing at Judith. Reuben reached his hand in slowly, changing direction at the last second. He felt for a padded envelope sellotaped next to the sodium hydroxide. It came free with a small ripping sound, and Reuben stood back up. For a second, he had been tempted. Until he’d seen the weapon aimed at Judith.

  ‘Here,’ he said, holding the thick envelope out.

  Kieran snatched it from him and nosed through its contents with the barrel of his pistol.

  ‘Look, there’s other money in there,’ Reuben said dejectedly.

  ‘How much more?’

  ‘Three or four grand.’

  ‘What a fucking bonus! Interest on my investment.’

  Kieran slotted the envelope into an outside pocket and slapped Reuben around the cheek. ‘You over-educated mug,’ he said with a smile. Standing toe to toe with Reuben, he pulled out a fat cigar and lit it with a gold lighter. ‘B.Sc.’ He blew a long stream of smoke into Reuben’s face. ‘Ph.D.’ Kieran chewed his cigar, grinning at Reuben. ‘M.U.G.’ He waited a second, letting the message sink in. ‘You mug.’

  Reuben stared back at him, his eyes narrowed, utterly powerless. Behind him, the face on his laptop was taking shape, colours and tones subtly shifting, features beginning to stick.

  Keeping the pistol trained on Reuben, Kieran edged back towards the door. ‘See ya,’ he said, before heading out and away, his footsteps echoing along the concrete walkway, nearly fifty thousand pounds richer.

  Judith and Moray slumped on to the sofa almost simultaneously. Reuben stayed where he was, his head bowed, focusing into the vinyl floor. He had been used, a scientific pawn in a game with secret rules, where the good guys and the bad guys swapped sides for fun. And what had he achieved? A senior police officer had covered his tracks, and a well-known gangster had bought immunity from prosecution.

  ‘Fuck,’ he said. ‘My enemy’s enemy—’

  ‘Has a new friend,’ Judith muttered.

  Moray glanced up at Reuben. ‘And it ain’t you.’

  ‘Ever get the feeling you’ve been taken for a ride?’ Judith asked.

  ‘Not until now,’ he answered, dejectedly.

  Reuben walked over to the computer. If he squinted, the face almost looked like a photograph. In a few more minutes it would be ready; 3D, with texture and depth, a pheno-fit face of the Thames Rapist.

  Reuben knocked back the remnants of his ethanol and paced to the rear of the flat. Below, he watched Kieran Hobbs climb into the driver’s seat of his silver Range Rover. Reuben looked more closely. There was someone in the passenger seat. Commander Robert Abner, in uniform, even his hat on. A folded copy of what appeared to be the Bargain Pages. Noticing Reuben and waving with the folded newspaper. Reuben watched the vehicle pick its way across the rubbled car park, and shook his head sadly.

  ‘I’ve got to get back to the hospital,’ he said.

  Moray stood up, between Reuben and the door. ‘I don’t know, Reuben,’ he said. ‘You’re going to have to watch yourself.’

  ‘What are you saying?’

  ‘Things have changed. Abner knows you’ve seen too much. And Hobbs, his new best buddy, isn’t averse to having Nathan and Valdek beat people to a pulp. Not to put too fine a point on it, you, me, Judith, the lab . . . it’s finished.’

&n
bsp; Judith didn’t look at him. ‘Face it, Reuben, they’re going to come for you. Maybe not today, but it won’t be long.’

  ‘And don’t forget, all the archived samples have been ruined.’

  ‘Moray’s right. There’s not a lot left, and now you’ve made yourself dangerous and vulnerable.’

  ‘Again.’

  Reuben ran his nails over an impenetrable section of lab bench. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. He had been used up and spat out. Too quick to follow his hunches, too eager to take the bait. Sensing cover-ups and impropriety but missing the point. Entering prison on a whim and paying for it now. The detective urge strong, the obsession for the truth almost overwhelming him at times. Reuben bit deep into the inside of his cheek. Defeated, lied to, taken for a ride.

  The face on the screen stared back at him, deadpan and indifferent. Reuben pressed ‘Print’ and waited for the photo to emerge, thinking, glancing hard at the patch of floor where Michael Brawn had been slumped in death. He frowned at Moray and Judith, took the picture, paused for a quiet moment and then made for the door.

  It was a long shot, but an idea had just come to him. Maybe the laboratory was not what it seemed. Maybe he had been wrong about events. Maybe, just maybe, his eyes had deceived him. He slid a folded yellow Post-It note out of the back pocket of his jeans. As he left the lab he pulled out his mobile phone and dialled a number, praying after every ring that it would be answered.

  21

  Sitting between them, listening to their breathing, one long and slow, the other quicker and more shallow, both peaceful, almost serene. Reuben glanced back and forth, holding their hands, Joshua’s tiny and unblemished, Aaron’s larger and rougher. Watching them gradually return to him, a closed circle of father, son and brother. In the background, two sets of monitors fired green traces from left to right, digital numbers ebbing and flowing, varying around fixed constants. The blank, windowless ante room magnified the noises and images of recuperation around its walls. His two closest relations sleeping off the effects of the operation, lying on adjacent beds, their cardiac traces duetting.