by John Macken
Reuben wondered what his own heartbeat would look like. It seemed to have raced for days, with little let-up. Maybe it was used to it, he reasoned – the days of amphetamine, speeding through crime scenes, concentrating for sixteen-hour stretches, pupils wide, consuming each scrap of information, understanding everything, making the case stick. The last week had been different though. Breaking out of Pentonville, the Met launching a manhunt, Michael Brawn turning up, being driven to the woods by Robert Abner and locked up for four days and nights. Reuben asked his pulse for calm, begging it to slow to normal speed, trying to persuade it that all the bad stuff was over.
While his heart continued to ignore the request, he took out the pheno-fit and stared grimly at it. Who the fuck are you? he asked. The face stared back impassively. There was something in the eyes, maybe, or in the shape of the ears that spoke to him. Fragments of someone he knew or had met. But the visage as a whole drew a blank. It was not a man he recognized. Reuben pondered this for a second. It was like identifying the windows and wing-mirrors of a car, but not being able to discern the actual model. He replaced the pheno-fit, deep in thought.
And then he had a sudden urge to feel his brother’s skin, to see if it was the same as his own, or smoother or hotter or somehow strange to the touch. He hesitated, and then reached forward and placed his fingers on Aaron’s forehead. It was cool and sticky, verging on the wet. Aaron opened his eyes, stared at Reuben for a second, and then closed them again.
‘You think I’d let you down?’ he muttered.
‘You want me to answer honestly?’
Aaron managed a drowsy smile. ‘Probably not.’
‘You OK?’
‘Tell the nurse I need more drugs.’
‘Nice try.’
Aaron tried to force his eyes open. ‘There has to be an up-side to this.’
‘There is,’ Reuben said. ‘You just saved your nephew’s life.’
Aaron’s heavy eyelids slid shut again, the anaesthetic dragging him back under. Reuben closed his eyes as well, the last few days catching up. He was overtaken by an overwhelming heaviness, a desire to be where Aaron was, semi-conscious, and all the world’s problems irrelevant.
A noise outside brought him round. He had been asleep. His neck ached, his hands still intertwined in Joshua and Aaron’s. He yawned, massaging the back of his shoulders, which were tight, as if he’d just come off a long-haul flight and had stiffened up. He watched the door open, surgical staff checking up, or a nurse taking notes. Aaron stirred, mumbling something under his breath, finally starting to come round. But it wasn’t a nurse or a medic. It was a senior CID officer. Behind him, lurking in the corridor, two uniformed officers standing with practised stillness.
‘Hello, Reuben,’ the CID officer said, walking over and standing in front of him, staring down.
‘Hello, Charlie,’ Reuben answered. He rubbed his neck. ‘It’s been a while.’
‘Word is you’ve developed a taste for prison food.’
‘Yeah?’
‘And that you want some more.’
Charlie Baker pulled a pair of handcuffs out of the back pocket of his jeans. Reuben glanced down at his wrists, fingers still holding Joshua’s hand. Charlie’s forearms appeared contrastingly hirsute, broader than Reuben’s, a dark width to them, magnified by the hair.
‘I’m arresting you on suspicion of perverting the course of justice in the murder of Jeremy Accoutey’s wife Lesley, and Mr Accoutey’s subsequent suicide.’
‘Learn that off by heart?’
‘You can have the full caution, if you need it.’
Reuben grunted. ‘This you, Charlie?’ he asked.
DI Baker shrugged, glancing back at his supporting officers. ‘Abner sanctioned it,’ he said.
‘Really?’
‘He’s got a hard-on for you all of a sudden.’
‘Sounds about right.’ Reuben nodded at Joshua. ‘You’ve got family, Charlie. Just give me a few minutes here. For old times’ sake.’
Charlie Baker hesitated, winding the handcuffs around his index finger, his brow creased. He scanned the room.
‘Ten minutes to say your goodbyes.’
‘Right.’
‘Then I’m coming back in.’
‘Great.’
‘And these two will be outside.’ He took out his mobile phone and waggled it in front of his ear to show Reuben what he would be doing. ‘I’ve got to make some calls. Some important calls. Don’t do anything daft.’ DI Baker motioned his head in the direction of the static coppers, who were staring evenly at Reuben. Then he turned on his black heels and walked back out of the windowless ante room, a police radio crackling away, echoing into the corridor.
Reuben saw that Aaron was awake. He checked on Joshua, who was still under, his heart-rate steady, his features beautiful and calm.
‘You heard all that?’ he asked.
Aaron nodded. ‘Unfortunately. Looks like you’re fucked.’
Reuben didn’t answer. He pulled out the phenofit again and scrutinized it. Ten minutes and it was all over. Abner would have him questioned, charged, sent back to Pentonville, or on to Wormwood Scrubs, the place he had been heading to anyway. In prison, possibly for a few years. Perverting the course of justice. Precipitating the deaths of two public figures. Sports-mad tabloids screaming for blood.
For a second, he saw himself and Aaron as twenty-five-year-olds, dressed in identical black suits, at their father’s funeral, standing in front of the freshly dug grave, an intense rain with fat, penetrating droplets cascading over the few mourners. Between them, their mother sobbing quietly. Reuben wrapping an arm around his mother, accidentally touching Aaron’s hand as he did so, and recoiling. He stared at his brother now. The brother whose bone marrow was inside his son, helping him live.
Reuben checked his watch and returned to the pheno-fit, bending it back and forth. As he did so, the face became convex and concave, wide and narrow, fat and thin. Reuben stopped. He held it in the convex position and scanned its features again. An image was starting to crystallize, an idea, a series of interlinked events. Gathering speed, falling into place, times and places and actions. He stood up excitedly and paced the floor, checking it through, making sure it fitted, examining and re-examining the picture. Whispering ‘Fuck’ under his breath over and over. The murders, the rapes, the lack of DNA evidence until now . . . It wasn’t that Abner or someone inside GeneCrime had been subverting the Thames Rapist investigation. No, the truth was much closer to home.
‘What is it?’ Aaron asked, propping himself up.
Reuben stopped in front of Aaron’s bed.
‘Brother, I need one final favour from you. And it’ll be just like the old days.’ He glanced over at a pair of scissors on a tray of bandages and syringes. ‘But it has to be now.’
22
A silver Range Rover idles. The alleyway is narrow and blocked at one end. Ahead, a small sign reads ‘Private Property of the Forensic Science Service’. Dual exhaust gases slink low to the ground, the sweet, heady pinch of petrol thick in the air. Two men in the front seats shake hands and make muffled assurances.
A figure approaches quickly and from behind, close to one wall, ducking low, under the side mirrors. He waits a couple of moments, inhaling the fumes, listening to their quiet words. The fumes make him slightly giddy, a light-headedness he doesn’t like. He stands up quickly, jacket sliding against the polished metal of the over-sized vehicle. He pushes a gun through the window and smiles briefly at each man in turn. Then he fires two silenced headshots. The noises are quick and muted, but there is still a small echo through the dead-end alley. Both bullets enter through the men’s foreheads, almost dead centre. Their mouths remain open in surprise.
He grips the pistol hard in his right hand. Waiting. Ready to shoot again. He sights down the slim barrel with its wider silencer. A couple of rasping breaths, small choking noises, and then nothing. Standing and looking, he replays the last few moments. The heads turn
ing, the eyes widening, the jaws slackening. And then afterwards, a pause of nothingness. Fine sprays of red catching the light. Small bits of blood and bone and brain appearing on the cream leather. One of the rear windows shattering. Two heads slumping, neck control gone, final gagging breaths, life over. Pitching forward towards the dash, seatbelts tensing and catching them. A slow-motion crash.
He smiles and reaches a bandaged hand into the car. He flicks open the glove box. A folded copy of the Bargain Pages, a pistol and a padded envelope. He leaves the weapon and takes the package. Peering inside, he smiles again. Then he glances left, up towards the road, forty metres away. A couple of cars pass, a woman hurries by with shopping. The noise of the silenced shots play themselves again in his brain. One. Two. Not like in the films. Louder and duller, less whistle. But pleasing anyway.
He looks back inside the Range Rover, double-checking. The key in the ignition, the engine purring away. Everything else is still. No twitching, no writhing, no futile, desperate spasms of life. Just nine-millimetre pieces of metal ricocheting around inside skulls, fragmenting and tearing, setting up shockwaves, ripping through, hot and excitable. One piece of metal obviously escaping the cranium, continuing on its way to crack the back window. Thick cherry blood starting to appear, running over an earlobe, dripping on to a shoulder.
He pulls his head back out and checks the road again. He tucks the padded envelope inside his jacket. His mobile is in his trouser pocket and he thinks about making the call. The one person he had never expected to contact him. The man who gave him this job. The man who had helped him do what otherwise would have been almost impossible. He changes his mind. He will ring in a few minutes, when he is clear, out of the vicinity and away from the bodies.
He scrapes his way back along the wall, slow and unhurried, just another person in the capital going about his business. The pistol is still in his right hand. He savours the warmth of the barrel through his gloves, unscrewing the silencer slowly and carefully, wincing as he does so. He slots each piece into separate pockets of his jacket as he nears the end of the alleyway. The pavements are half full, the road a mess of bikes, cars and buses. He turns right and allows himself to be swamped by office workers and shoppers.
There are now just two more cunts to deal with. A couple of minders. Valdek and Nathan, scum who protect Kieran Hobbs. And then all ends will have been tied. No trace back to him, no vested interests to make him vulnerable. He heads for his car, ready to sort the final duo out.
In the alleyway, the five-litre petrol engine continues to idle as Commander Robert Abner and Kieran Hobbs bleed into the luxurious interior of the Range Rover.
23
The old fish-gutting factory. A dampness that reminded him of the days he spent locked up in the woods. The kind of building that wore its history on its walls like tattoos. Faded patches where signs had once hung, unfilled holes where shelving had been attached, speckled stains where innards had clung stubbornly to the interior. The sluicing channels in the floor, the drains every five paces, the large metal tables with their gleaming plumbing and elongated taps still intact. It was unnervingly similar to the GeneCrime morgue, all designed to get unwanted flesh and unneeded fluids out of sight as quickly as possible. He wondered where the drains led. At GeneCrime, there were strict rules on blood and tissue disposal. But here they could go anywhere, even direct into the Thames. Reuben pictured Ethan de Groot, leaking into gullies, flowing along pipes, dripping into the river.
He made his way across the floor, his shoes echoing against the concrete, wanting to announce his arrival. Kieran might well be in the building and Reuben had no intention of creeping up on him. That could give out the wrong signals entirely. But he had no way of knowing for sure where Kieran was. Or if Kieran was still alive. He hadn’t answered his phone, but that wasn’t unusual.
Reuben recalled him leaving the lab, the smirk of it’s-only-business across his face, a thick wad of fifties in his pocket. He was nervous. This went beyond money. This was serious. He saw the recent terror in Judith’s features, her pale nervousness, the hangover of being attacked and nearly killed. Across the capital, women in fear, a psycho on the loose. In his pocket, the pheno-fit, its picture suddenly crystallizing in the hospital ante room, the implications still buzzing away at him. And then, for a second he allowed a pleasant memory in, almost laughing under his breath. Swapping clothes with Aaron, trimming his brother’s hair, Aaron being taken away by Charlie Baker’s henchmen while Reuben lay on his hospital bed next to Joshua. Waiting and then leaving, relishing the change of identities as they had done a thousand times as adolescents.
Halfway across, and a door in the wall opened slowly. It was a room originally used, Reuben guessed, for cold storage. He stopped, surprise blowing the reminiscence away, suddenly awkward and on edge. This wasn’t in the game plan. Valdek Kosonovski striding over to him, iron bar in his hand, flushed and angry.
‘What the fuck do you want?’ he growled.
Reuben took in the dark matted hair, the large rounded forehead, the threat of violence that emanated from his wide-shouldered bulk.
‘Kieran,’ he answered.
‘We don’t deal with you any more.’
‘No?’
‘So fuck off.’
‘Where’s your boss?’
‘Out somewhere.’ The eyes blazing, the mouth tight. ‘Business.’
‘Whereabouts?’
‘Like I said, business.’
‘Because he came to my lab and then went off with Commander Abner.’
‘So?’
Reuben knew he was pushing it, but kept going regardless. ‘So, did he say where he was heading?’
‘He rang a while back. Said you might come sniffing around. Had a few things to take care of.’
‘How long ago?’
‘A piece of advice round here.’ Valdek held the iron bar horizontally with his left hand, tapping it into the palm of his right, emphasizing his strength, his superiority, his command of the situation. ‘Don’t ask me any more questions. Turn round, forget all about it and fuck off.’
Reuben’s phone rang. He ignored it.
‘OK. But before I go, one final one. When did you see your boss last?’
Valdek blew air out of the corner of his mouth, just about keeping his cool. ‘He dropped Nathan and me, and then went to do what he had to do.’
Reuben decided to change tack. ‘Doesn’t really matter. It wasn’t just Kieran I came to see.’
Despite himself, Valdek said, ‘No?’
The phone burst into life again, and Reuben fumbled for the ‘Decline’ button.
‘No. After him, I wanted to talk to you.’
‘What about?’
Judith’s words echoed in his head. A big man. Strong enough to lift her clean off her moped. Holding her down and crushing her with his weight. And then the Path reports Sarah had shown him from Tamasine Ashcroft, from Kimberly Horwitz, from Joanne Harringdon. Broken ribs, collapsed windpipes, deep tissue bruising.
‘About the rape and murder of several young women.’
‘I don’t know what you mean.’
Reuben frowned at the large man in front of him, realizing that if it came down to it, Valdek would tear him apart, or turn him to pulp, like Ethan de Groot. That is, if it wasn’t for Reuben’s hidden weapon. Ten minutes in the laboratory on his way over, and he had rounded up what he needed.
‘I think you do.’
Valdek Kosonovski scanned the factory floor, checked the two entrances and flicked his eyes from the iron bar to Reuben and back again.
‘Let’s say I do,’ he snarled. ‘What are you going to do about it?’
For a third time, intrusive as hell, vibrating with urgency, Reuben’s phone interrupted him. Cursing, he pulled it out and checked the incoming number. Staring evenly at Valdek, he said, ‘We’ll get to that. But first I’ve got to answer this.’ Reuben pressed the button, cleared his throat and asked, ‘You finally got what they owed you
?’
‘Some of it.’
‘And Abner?’
‘Finished.’
Reuben turned partially away from Valdek and lowered his voice. ‘Hobbs?’
‘Finished.’
‘Finished?’
‘As in brains rearranged.’
Reuben let this information sink in. It was queasy news, the stuff that made you question your motives and wonder whether there could have been another way, while at the same time exciting. His stomach surged and fell in waves.
‘So what now?’
‘You get your tattoo removed, copper, and I get another one done.’
Reuben nodded, despite being on the phone. He hoped to fuck that Valdek wasn’t understanding this. As a confirmed weight-lifter and user of steroids, Reuben thought his chances were good. But if he twigged, picked through the implications and realized what Reuben’s role had been, Reuben was fucked.
‘Fine,’ he muttered.
‘And if I ever see you again, I’ll rearrange your brains as well. From now on, stay the fuck away from me.’
‘I’ll see what I can do.’
There was a noise behind him. Footsteps, a double echo in his ear. Reuben span round. A man making his way in through the factory door. Tall and lean, walking quick, head bent forwards. One hand bandaged, slotting his mobile into his leather jacket, taking out a pistol.
Michael Brawn.
‘You don’t seem to be trying very hard,’ he said to Reuben.
Valdek lowered the iron bar and took a few steps back. Brawn stopped five paces in front of him, sneering.
‘Valdek Kosonovski,’ he said with a smile. ‘I’ve heard a lot about you.’
24
Reuben senses the pounding of his heart. It is so strong he can almost hear it. Two psychos, two men with a confirmed taste for killing. Both armed. In Reuben’s pocket, the only thing that can help him. But against a pistol or an iron bar . . . He watches Valdek closely. No glimmer of recognition as he stares back at Brawn. Reuben surmises that Valdek doesn’t know who is standing in front of him waving a gun about, or that this man has just killed his employer.