by John Macken
9
Reuben opened his front door. He was restless and tired, a nervous feeling eating at his stomach. The house was still, the air cool, its occupants asleep. He walked through into his cramped study at the rear. It was a converted outbuilding with unfinished brick walls and a roughly tiled floor. A large desk in the corner supported the weight of a computer. Scattered around were multiple pots of water paint, a jar of slender brushes and a number of pens and pencils. Taped to the surface was a square of rough canvas. Reuben slumped in his chair and began the ritual. He started to sketch out the face of the corpse.
Reuben started with a soft pencil, before progressing to colours and tones. Drawing the victims brought them back to life. He gave them dignity, reconstructing them as they would have looked before the world chewed them up and spat them out. More importantly, this ritual brought him down from every crime scene. As his mind shook itself free from the final lurches of amphetamine, he would sit alone, restoring and re-establishing, touching and retouching, renovating and reanimating, letting the sickness bleed from his body. The drawers of his study were crammed with faces of the dead, two-dimensional representations of souls who had been stabbed, shot, strangled and scythed down in their prime. In this room, only good things happened. This was Reuben’s sanctuary, painting his method of readjustment. Aside from Lucy, no one ever saw these pictures. They were purely for his own peace of mind.
Dipping his brush unsteadily into a coffee jar of water, Reuben appreciated that, unusually, he was struggling. He was stuck on the eyes of the corpse; all he could see were pupils frozen wide as they imprinted a final series of horrific images on the victim’s brain while his guts were torn from his body. And as Reuben stared into the canvas, another face was tormenting him, poking through the surface. Its eyes were broader, its nose pinched, its hair lighter, its cheeks rosier. The visage of a baby. Smiling, innocent and untouched by iniquity. Suddenly Reuben stood up, crashing, too overloaded to paint away the horror.
He climbed the stairs and stopped outside his bedroom, before turning and padding back along the landing. Reuben read the letters J-O-S-H-U-A on the door of the nursery, and pushed it open. The smell seeped into his consciousness: urine, faeces, sour milk and nappy sacks. The odours were much more acute than they had been the previous day. Then, he had been on forensic autopilot, getting the job done, breaking into his own house. He lay on the floor and pulled a couple of blankets over him, wrapping them tight under his body, swaddling himself like a baby. Reuben listened to his son wriggling, kicking his legs, sniffling, tossing and turning, trying to be free of his own restraints. Focusing on a stationary mobile above the cot, Reuben once again felt the ants buzzing around his head, fighting their way into nooks and crannies, marching along neural highways.
In his pocket he still carried the Pheno-Fit. Two hairs in his bed predicted that a male whom he had never met had been spending time there. To his knowledge, no workmen had visited the house, no friends had dropped by, no . . . He quickly appreciated there were no other explanations. This was hypothesis-based research. He hypothesized that Lucy was having a long-term affair, and now he was in the process of proving it. Reuben reasoned that he should be scientific about the whole thing. If I’m scientific, he rationalized, I can’t be hurt. Everything is just a question with an answer. But, screwing his eyes up, he realized that feelings and reasons are very different beasts. And no matter how logical he was, it hurt like hell.
But what to do? He took the picture out and squinted at it in the gloom. He ran over the crime scenes of the last forty-eight hours – the drowned man nailed to his living-room wall, the disembowelled corpse with the dislocated legs – his conversations with Sarah Hirst and Phil Kemp. He considered the fact that someone was rummaging around in his lab at night; the statistic that ten per cent of all babies don’t share their supposed father’s DNA; the possibilities; the impossibilities. Come-down paranoia began to join the dots between all the events of the last couple of days. Sarah Hirst was pulling the strings, masterminding events. The drowned man had been using his lab at night. Run Zhang was planning something with Judith. Lucy was having an affair with Phil Kemp. The fat man in the bar had poisoned Simon. Only Joshua knew the real truth . . . Reuben wrapped himself tighter. He recognized the signs of delusional behaviour.
To paper over the paranoia he ran through a mental slide show of images of Lucy. Almost hysterical two nights before their wedding. Hobbling around with a broken ankle. Camping in Northern France. Sitting unselfconsciously on the toilet while he bathed. Screaming at him during labour. Giving him head as they drove across Canada. Nursing him through a long bout of flu. Making love to him silently in the dark. Crying as he proposed to her on Sedge Knoll, a wet Somerset hill.
And then he cut to the present. The arguments when Joshua was in bed; the fractured trust; the terse atmosphere which had become the norm. A great marriage which was slowly, inexorably, going wrong, the love and respect diluting, the very things which had held them tight starting to unravel. He remembered the first time he had met her. It had been in a pub near her office, and Reuben had known instantly that he wanted to be with Lucy, that he would take more risks than with other lovers, that he would open himself up to her. Now, he felt shut, clamped tight and hidden away.
Reuben saw that some of this mess was actually his own fault. The long hours, the press interviews, the politics of GeneCrime: he was honest enough to acknowledge that none of these had helped his role as a husband. I know what I have done to you, my love, he sighed in the darkness. And now I’m going to find out what you have done to me.
Reuben reached through the bars of the cot and squeezed Joshua’s hand. Eventually, he slipped into an uneasy unconsciousness.
At breakfast, Reuben studied Lucy’s every action, images from the loft photos playing around with his mood. He was distracted and distant, a thousand notions washing through his brain as he spoke. In contrast, Lucy was tense, busy, rushed, a big day ahead of her.
‘What are you looking for?’ he asked.
‘You got any cash?’ she said, rooting through her handbag. ‘The childminder needs paying.’
‘Sure.’ Reuben stood up and picked Joshua out of his high chair, wiping his face with a wet-wipe. ‘Look, why don’t I take Josh to nursery today?’
‘Fine by me.’
‘It would make a change, that’s all.’ He felt the warmth of his son, cheek to cheek, his solid little body clinging to the embrace, one hand tugging at Reuben’s ear. When he held his son, there was no wrong in the world.
‘I really don’t mind. Now, where are my keys?’
‘In the hall.’
She glanced at him and nodded quickly, her straight dark hair bobbing momentarily. ‘Don’t forget his bag. There’re some spare bibs and a dummy.’
Reuben pictured the drive to the nursery. Sometimes when he dropped Joshua off, he arrived at work with a baby-sized hole in his stomach. Although the day quickly distracted him, it was still there, just perceptible, a space ready to be occupied again when he saw him at night. That was when crime scenes didn’t drag him away.
Lucy managed a slender smile. ‘Rough night?’ she asked.
‘Very,’ Reuben replied, closing his eyes, his tired mind continuing to drift and explore, winding in and out of the conversation, and in and out of his problems. How did it come to this? he wondered. Functional, practical, mechanical. Where did all the fun go? The laughs, the games, the lunacy? Going out, getting drunk, flopping into bed in hysterics.
‘And will you be putting in an appearance tonight?’ she enquired.
Maybe this was just what relationships did. They lasted a number of years and fell apart. What had Lucy said to him in the early days? I have been unfaithful to nearly every partner so far. And Reuben would have been shocked, if the same hadn’t also been true of him. They had promised each other that this was different, that this was a proper relationship, grown up and serious, years away from all that childish stuff with
previous partners. They had got it all out of their systems, meeting in their early thirties. But had they really? Reuben looked at her. Did anyone really? ‘Shouldn’t be a problem,’ he answered.
Lucy leant forwards and kissed him on the cheek. She smelt good – clean, fresh and natural – and he wondered again why she was betraying him. She wasn’t inherently flirtatious, or needy, or exhibitionist. ‘Good,’ she said. ‘You fancy a Chinese when Josh is in bed?’
Reuben nodded, still watching her closely. There had been no obvious behavioural signs. She was just different, colder, more withdrawn. For months, Reuben had fought the obvious. It was down to having Joshua, transferring love from husband to child. Her role in the family was changing. Certain freedoms had been sacrificed. He had tried to think it through in every conceivable way. Until the hairs in the bed. And then, almost instantaneously, he had stopped pretending. He had snapped from denial to resolution. ‘Yeah, that would be good,’ he answered quietly.
Lucy turned and strode out of the front door. Reuben walked Joshua into the living room and distracted him with a stuffed toy while he changed his nappy. Joshua kicked his legs and arms almost randomly, delighting in the mock screams his father gave each time he was hit in the face. Reuben blew a soft raspberry against Joshua’s cheek, and a second and a third, his son’s squealing laughter getting louder each time. Then Reuben picked him up. Reuben was silent for a moment. He stared into Joshua’s smiling blue eyes, suddenly focused and serious, snapping to the point.
‘Please forgive me for what I’m about to do,’ he whispered.
He carried him into the hallway.
‘But I need to know the truth.’
1
Reuben Maitland strode into a small cramped office on the first floor of GeneCrime and closed the door. Inside, Jez Hethrington-Andrews was playing a computer game and made a half-hearted effort to cover his tracks. Reuben looked sternly down at him. ‘Relax, Tiger,’ he said, breaking into a smile.
Jez grinned back. ‘Fancy a go?’ he asked.
‘I’m hopeless.’
‘Come on. I won’t tell anyone.’
Reuben hesitated, appreciating that he would soon be asking Jez to take risks on his behalf. ‘OK,’ he said. ‘Prepare to witness some wildly inaccurate shooting.’ He sat down and began to fire more or less indiscriminately at a succession of digital zombies staggering towards him.
‘You weren’t joking.’
Reuben’s eyes watered as he yawned. He had missed the best part of two nights’ sleep. ‘Listen,’ he said, hammering the keyboard hard, ‘there’s something I want you to do for me . . .’
‘Name it.’
Reuben took a disc out of his shirt pocket and passed it over, his eyes remaining glued to the screen. ‘You have open access to all databases?’
‘Aha.’
‘Now, you don’t have to do what I ask. Understand this – what I’m going to suggest doesn’t follow protocol. Not by a long margin. You’re going to need to keep this quiet.’
‘I’m in.’
‘Right. On the disc is the image of a suspect. I’m aware this hasn’t come through the usual channels, but I want you to insert the suspect’s face on the Serious and Sexual Crimes database. Flag it up as Priority One.’
‘I’ll do it now.’
‘Is there a way of putting it on anonymously?’
‘Nothing in the world of computers is anonymous.’
‘OK, well, do what you’ve got to do.’ Reuben was beginning to get inside the game, and to understand its mechanics. ‘There’s one more thing.’
‘What?’
‘Pattern- recognition software. Take it to the address written on the back of the disc. Use my authority and get it installed on the CCTV system. Drag Run along with you – test it out.’
‘How?’
Reuben spent another few seconds maiming and destroying, before reluctantly handing the controls over to Jez. ‘Get a digital photo of Run and place it in the search files of the CCTV system. Then ask him to walk back and forth in front of a nearby camera, and see if it picks him out.’
‘By comparing its images with Run’s stored photo?’
‘Exactly.’
‘You’re sure? I mean, this all sounds a bit . . .’
‘What?’
‘Nothing. It’ll make a change from shooting him in the park, I guess.’
‘And, Jez . . .’
‘Yes?’
‘Not a word.’
As he paced back to his own office, along shiny corridors humming with antiseptic, Reuben rang DCI Sarah Hirst’s number. Things were finally moving. A new sense of calm settled his nerves, like a child falling asleep in a vehicle, happy just to be going somewhere. He had the opportunity to stall, to back out, to leave things alone, but was about to pass the point of no return.
‘I was thinking about what you were saying the other night,’ he began.
‘And?’ Sarah asked.
‘Predictive Phenotyping has just had its first outing.’
‘You’re joking.’
‘Seriously.’
‘Mark Gelson? The Korean murder?’
‘Not necessarily.’
‘Who, then?’
Reuben entered his office and closed the door. ‘Let’s just say this is a double-blind trial.’
‘Dr Maitland, try to be clearer.’
‘The ultimate philosophy of science. In order to test something properly, you must have no notion of the expected outcome. By observing, we interfere.’
‘Whatever you say. Fingers crossed.’
‘Yeah,’ Reuben answered unenthusiastically, pulling his wedding ring off, ‘fingers crossed.’ He noted the dent the ring had ground into the base of his digit. On the inside of the slim band he read the inscription. It simply said Sedge Knoll. He span it on its axis, watching it blur, glimmering, slowing, becoming unstable, falling over, vibrating on the desk, shuffling round in its death throes. ‘You know, Sarah,’ he said, putting it into a drawer, ‘I’m going to need to call in a couple of favours if we’re going to test this thing properly.’
The need in Sarah’s voice was palpable. ‘Name them.’
‘Can you sanction a CCTV pattern- recognition trial? And clear it with Metropolitan CID?’
‘Sounds possible. What for?’
‘As I said. Double blind. This thing is going out into the field, and no one must know what to expect.’
‘Come on, Reuben, give me a clue.’
‘You’ll see,’ Reuben replied, sighing, ‘but you may wish you hadn’t.’
He hung up before Sarah had chance to ask him anything she might regret.
2
‘OK, what have we got? Run, how about kicking off?’ Reuben suppressed another in a long succession of yawns.
‘We boring you, sir?’
Jez grinned. ‘Maybe all those zombies have worn you out.’
‘There’re only two zombies wearing me out,’ Reuben said. ‘And they’re both DCIs.’ He glanced around the group of eight forensic scientists crammed into his office for their weekly meeting. These were the bright young things, recruited to GeneCrime from industry, academia and the Forensic Science Service. All of them, even the technicians, were as sharp as knives. Reuben liked it that way – it kept him on his toes. ‘Sorry. Scratch that last comment. So what’s going down, Run?’
‘I think my neck’s gone sceptic.’
‘That’s septic,’ Jez corrected, sending a reasonable titter around the group.
‘Ri’. Well, I’m extracting from Colon Man.’
‘Let’s have a little dignity, please.’ Reuben rewound to the previous night. He smelt the obscenity of the death that had hung in the air. ‘His name was Kim Fu Sun.’
‘Think there’s a link, boss?’ Simon Jankowski asked. ‘You know, with the hosepipe case?’
‘I don’t know. CID aren’t pushing it. Mr Kim appears to have been executed, according to Pathology, a couple of weeks ago. Probable South-East Asian
gang member. Mr Machicaran, on the other hand, known crack addict and associate of Mark Gelson, was tortured, presumably for information of some sort. Maybe no more linked than any other pair of unpleasant London deaths. But let’s get our evidence straight and see what’s what. Birgit?’
‘I think we now have a pure sample from the Gelson–Machicaran case.’
‘Think?’ Mina Ali opened her fierce eyes behind her fierce glasses. ‘What do you mean, think?’
‘I’ll know better in a couple of days.’
‘Nothing less than certainty,’ she lectured. Reuben imagined she was fighting the impulse to poke a bony finger as she said this.
Bernie Harrison, a gifted bio-statistician Reuben had lured from academia three years previously, took issue with Mina. ‘Science is never a hundred per cent, forensic or otherwise.’
‘What are you saying?’ Mina demanded.
‘We’re all people, even you.’ Bernie smiled. ‘And—’
‘Fuck you.’
‘And people make mistakes. It’s the way we’re built. If you’re so confident, let’s have a look through your lab book, your sequencing, your profiling, everything you’ve done. You’re telling me I won’t find a single miscalculation anywhere?’
Mina let it drop. She was the group’s scientific Rottweiler. Although she vexed Reuben considerably, she was nobody’s fool. He liked to think of her as his internal control. If the evidence wasn’t good enough for Mina, it wasn’t good enough for court.
‘Come on,’ Bernie continued, ‘even some of our own cases have been doubtful. You remember the GeneCrime evidence on the Edelstein rape? Inadequate, at best. Or the McNamara murder? Not to mention one or two recent convictions. The Brighton Rapist, the . . .’ Bernie ran out of examples.
‘Fine. Let’s move on,’ Reuben muttered. ‘Science is flawed. Forensics isn’t always perfect. But Mina’s right. We need to be one hundred per cent, and if we’re not, we need to be open about what we do and don’t know.’ Usually, he welcomed the quarrel of sharp minds. Today, his own intellect was battling multiple diversions, an overwhelming range of unpleasant possibilities undermining his good humour. ‘Judith. What’s new with you?’