Dirty Little Lies

by John Macken

  Jez Hethrington-Andrews is sitting and staring into his TV. He is chain-smoking joints, swallowing strong lager, staring and staring. His eyes are glassy, his thoughts a long way from the film which is showing. There is a noise. He turns his head slowly to look at the front door of his flat. It is a gesture of resignation and acceptance. Jez hears another noise, louder this time, and away from the door. He remains where he is, drawing heavily on the joint, his fingers shaking so that the burning end flickers in the glow of the television. Swigging from his can, Jez mutters to himself. ‘This is so fucked up,’ he says. ‘This is so fucked up.’ He picks up the remote and presses a button. The film gives way to Teletext. One of the headlines is ‘Scientist Killer Still on Loose’. So fucked up. Jez takes another drag and continues to talk to himself. ‘So fucked up,’ he repeats. ‘So very fucked up.’

  6

  ‘So, Dr Reuben Maitland returns to the scene of his crimes.’ Sarah Hirst’s eyes are wide, already accustomed to the bright light. She is wearing a lab coat with pinched sleeves and an enclosed collar.

  ‘Hello, Sarah,’ Reuben replies. ‘This is a friend of mine, here to make sure nothing happens to me. Any trouble and we’re gone.’

  Sarah nods an unenthusiastic hello in the direction of Moray. ‘This has meant pulling a lot of strings,’ she intones. ‘We don’t have long – an hour max – and we’ll have to get everything back as it was.’ As ever, Reuben is drawn to her air of detachment, which mimics the perpetual separateness he feels. Separate from friends, family, Joshua, from society. In Sarah’s isolation he sees his own remoteness staring back. ‘Now, some rules. You mustn’t take any gross samples like skin punches. Nothing noticeable. The bodies stay on their trays. We don’t have time to transfer them to the autopsy table. You must work quietly – there are a couple of CID on night shifts in the building above, and imagine how pleased they’d be to see you. And your friend can’t touch anything. OK?’

  ‘Wouldn’t dream of it,’ Moray answers flatly.

  ‘Right, I guess we ought to get this party started.’ Sarah walks over to what appears to be an elongated stack of filing cabinets. Reuben follows her. He is nervous, worried about his reaction when he sees the corpses, concerned that this could still be an ambush. ‘I have to warn you,’ Sarah Hirst adds, ‘that they are a mess.’

  Reuben grunts. He places his case on the floor and opens it. From within he extracts a pair of surgical gloves, some forceps, a rack of tubes, several self-sealing plastic bags, a roll of Sellotape and a packet of cotton-wool earbuds. Reuben has seen many bodies before, but knows this is different. He has feelings for these people. He tells himself all he has to do is examine them as if he has never met them. Reuben tries to do this, to make them strangers. But it doesn’t quite work. Sarah withdraws a shiny steel drawer, and Reuben gasps quietly.

  Lying naked on the table is the body of Sandra Bantam. Even though her wounds have been cleaned, her torso is stricken with slashes, bite marks and cigarette burns. The sick pallor of her skin contrasts with the reddy-brown lacerations. Her face, slightly bloated, shows local swelling and bruising, oozing cuts apparent on her lips and nose. One of her earlobes is missing, a bite-sized chunk where an earring might have hung. There are finger-bruises on her upper arms and neck. Reuben’s eyes wander over the rawness of her knees, the bushiness of her pubis, the serenity of her navel, the darkness of her nipples, the contusions on her forehead, the unkemptness of her hair. He breathes hard, sweat running down his back. Sarah is watching him. He knows now that she wanted to see his reaction. She is still making her mind up. Extracting a cotton bud and a vial of blue dye, he realizes that this is a good thing.

  Reuben wipes small dabs of the solution around the bite marks, and examines for DNA staining. He can see that this has been done already, but needs routine to steady himself. The smell of Sandra is nauseating, and he tries not to swallow it. He remembers the perfume she used to wear. Reuben crouches down and runs his gaze across the surface of Sandra’s skin. He hears the near silence, penetrated only by the hallway clock. Moray has turned away and is fiddling with his camera, finding less gruesome things to occupy his attention. Reuben notices that Sarah is continuing to monitor his body language. ‘Plenty of DNA,’ he mutters to her.

  ‘Run was leading Sandra’s processing. He got DNA early on.’

  ‘Bite marks. The big forensic no-no. I suppose you’ve done dental?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Slightly ambiguous, so we haven’t made a big deal of it.’ Sarah grins in a way that spells trouble. ‘But the bite marks were similar to your own.’

  ‘How do you work that out?’

  ‘You left a gumshield in your locker, presumably from your spell in the infamously poor Forensics Rugby Club. We made an internal cast and matched it to the marks. Path were a bit fifty-fifty about it.’

  Reuben turns away from Sandra’s skin. ‘I guess I shouldn’t think about that too much.’

  ‘I guess not,’ Sarah says.

  ‘So, apart from the suspect dentition, do you know exactly where they took DNA from?’

  ‘Not exactly. But follow the blue staining.’

  Reuben frowns. ‘I mean, did they swab internally?’

  Sarah leafs through a wad of notes and forms. ‘Vaginal, anal, buccal.’

  ‘That’s my boy. Run was as thorough as . . .’ Reuben stops, glancing over at the metal drawers. He shivers with sick anticipation. Run’s body is next.

  ‘Look, Dr Maitland, what do you think you’re going to find that we haven’t already?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he answers. ‘But let’s get the next one out as well.’

  Sarah tracks her finger along a row of metal doors, squeaking over the surface until she stops at a name. Reuben watches her. He glances at Moray who appears pale. Sarah pulls the drawer, sliding Run Zhang out into the harsh whiteness. Reuben readies himself. He knows this one will be difficult. Pretend this is a stranger, he tells himself again. Pretend you are not about to throw up. Pretend the death of Run hasn’t gnawed away at you for sleepless night after sleepless night. Reuben steps slowly forwards. The first thing he sees is the lettering, carved with short, fine angular slices. He clenches his jaw, forces himself to be objective. He skims his reluctant eyes along the length of the body, from feet to head, noticing the smoothness of the skin, the relative hairlessness, the trauma and leaking of internal wounds. Burns, cuts and abrasions are scattered over the loose surface. In places, the skin gapes open like small mouths, with red flesh lips and white fat teeth. In their throats is a burgundy blackness which seems ready to ooze out into the light. All around are slow budding bruises which occurred just before the time of death, fighting their way through the adiposity to flower at the surface. Reuben’s wet eyes are dragged back to the site of the most intense damage. Across the flabby chest, multiple cuts lie in intersecting patterns, slicing into Run as his life ebbed away. Reuben checks Sandra’s face momentarily.

  ‘Tell me, were Sandra and Run’s eyes closed at the time of death? Or were the lids dropped by pathology?’

  ‘They were closed at death. I attended the scenes.’

  ‘Aha,’ Reuben says.

  Moray turns from his camera. Sarah steps forwards. ‘What?’ she asks.

  ‘We might be on to something.’ Reuben pulls Run’s eyelids back, feeling the coldness through his nylon gloves. A sudden detective urge moves him away from the feeling that he is about to retch. ‘I read about this once.’ The pupils are large, hard to see against their enveloping irises. He takes a fresh bud and dips it in the solution, before wiping it gently over Run’s eyeballs. The cotton wool drags across the surface, and Reuben shudders with it. He retracts Sandra’s eyelids and performs the same sick procedure with a separate stick. Bending over them in turn, he says, ‘Bingo.’

  ‘Reuben . . .’

  ‘You saw the lack of blueness in the whites of their eyes?’

  ‘Kind of.’

 
‘So no one has tested under the lids. Until now.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And maybe that’s important.’

  Sarah walks round to stand opposite him, Run’s head between them, gazing up, the whites of his opened eyes slowly turning blue. ‘How? Could just be the same DNA – your DNA – which is all over the body.’

  ‘Could be,’ Reuben answers. ‘But think about this. Eyes are like amber. They trap the moment. A fly stuck in the resin of a tree becomes fossilized, there for eternity.’

  ‘I’m still not really following you.’

  ‘Get used to it,’ Moray Carnock grumbles.

  ‘The eyes witness the murder, wide open in shock. Then sometimes they close. And when they close they seal in any sample, contaminant or whatever, safely away from harm.’ Reuben dabs a cotton-wool bud onto Run’s iris, and then into a plastic tube of clear liquid. ‘Very few forensic scientists ever check the eyes, especially if there’s abundant sample elsewhere.’ He performs the same careful process on Sandra. ‘But I think we may have just found our fly.’

  7

  When they reached the car, which was parked several streets away from GeneCrime, Moray said, ‘So Sarah believes you?’

  ‘Not at all. She just owed me. And the main reason she let me cash it in was to see how I reacted to the bodies. Classic procedure.’

  ‘Aye, well. Best keep our distance.’

  ‘As long as we can. But face it, Moray, someone is fucking me over.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘No idea. Except that they’re smart and they know about forensics.’ The central locking made the noise of a belt being pulled quickly through the inside of the doors. ‘Think about it,’ Reuben urged, climbing in. ‘Three scientists die, each of them smeared in my DNA. Someone even goes to the trouble of attempting to plant bite marks. You think that’s easy?’

  ‘Not something I’ve ever considered.’ Moray started the car and pulled off. The intermittent wipers dissected rivulets of water and tossed them away. ‘Where would they get your DNA?’

  ‘Wouldn’t be hard. It’s possible to take a minute quantity and amplify it up, if you know what you’re doing.’

  ‘And your gumshield?’

  ‘As Sarah said, I obviously left it in my old sports locker. I’m not sure how she found out about it.’

  ‘But we’re looking at someone from GeneCrime? Someone on the inside. Someone with access to things the average criminal could never get hold of.’

  Warm air from the fan blew the moisture from Reuben’s eyes and he blinked with slow, dry lids. ‘Indeed.’

  ‘You scared, big man?’ Moray asked.

  ‘Would you be?’

  ‘I’d be bricking myself.’

  Reuben was quiet. ‘Yes,’ he said eventually. ‘When I’m on my own. I sit there and just listen. You know, like when you’re in a house alone at night. But knowing someone is coming for you, that they want to hurt you . . . Yes, it’s eating me up.’

  ‘So what now?’

  Reuben lifted his head and looked at Moray. ‘Sandra was murdered ten days ago. Run five days. Lloyd three days, give or take. Just as Run was about to come up with answers on Sandra, he is killed. Just as Mina was processing Run, she is chased, and has a near miss.’

  ‘So what about Lloyd Granger?’

  ‘Lloyd represents a change in tack.’

  ‘Any names spring to mind?’

  Reuben stared sadly out of the window. The light was improving, dawn about to make its pale presence felt. The wipers dragged across the screen as the mist-like rain began to ease. ‘One or two. But the eyeball samples might give us a clue.’

  ‘So what are you going to do?’

  ‘Take the DNA from Run’s and Sandra’s eyes and phenotypically profile it.’

  ‘And what will that show us?’

  ‘All being well, the face of the killer.’

  ‘Won’t your samples be contaminated with Run’s and Sandra’s own DNA, though?’

  ‘It’s OK. When Sarah wasn’t looking I took buccal swabs from both bodies, so that I can isolate the killer’s DNA away from the background.’

  ‘You can do that?’

  ‘You never know. Where are you going?’

  Moray accelerated off a stretch of dual carriageway, and flung the car round a roundabout. ‘I think we’re being followed,’ he said, wrestling with the steering wheel, a frown pinching his brow. The surface was greasy, and Reuben pictured a fine film of moisture separating rubber from tarmac. He checked the side mirror. A hundred metres behind, a white Fiesta was making rapid progress.

  ‘You see who it is?’

  ‘Male. Caucasian. That’s about all.’

  ‘Fuck.’

  ‘Indeed.’

  ‘What are we going to do?’

  ‘Your call.’

  Reuben stared hard into the mirror again. The Fiesta was gaining. ‘He’s quick,’ he said.

  ‘Quicker than this big thing.’

  Moray changed down a gear and floored it, the engine whining. The speedo climbed slowly clockwise and he gripped the wheel with greater force.

  ‘He’s going to catch us.’

  ‘The cops are out. No other option,’ Moray grunted.

  ‘Than what?’

  ‘Than this.’ Moray screeched the car around another traffic island. ‘Basic level-one training for security consultants.’ He yanked the handbrake up and spun the vehicle down a side street. Almost instantly, he pulled the handbrake again and pointed back the way he had come. Reuben grabbed hold of his belt, thrown back and forth across the passenger seat. The stench of burning rubber seeped into his nostrils. Adrenalin encouraged blood to flow out of his gut and into his muscles, leaving his stomach feeling tight and sick. Moray revved the engine. ‘You ready?’

  ‘You’ll kill us, for fuck’s sake.’

  Moray drove the accelerator deep into the nylon carpet. He teased the clutch. The large rental car howled. The smell of burning intensified. The white car blurred by. Moray jumped off the clutch and the car sprung out of the alley, wheels slewing round the corner, digging for grip. He found second and Reuben pitched back in his seat. Third and the rev counter dipped momentarily out of the red, before quickly returning again. Within seconds they were up behind the Fiesta. ‘Got you, you motherfucker.’ Moray grimaced. They were approaching the industrial estate. The car in front slowed. Moray nudged up to its bumper. He thrashed the engine. The clutch screamed, held just below biting point. Ahead, the road split into two carriageways.

  ‘Easy,’ Reuben warned.

  Moray accelerated forwards and thumped into the car. Its driver sped up, and Moray followed. He tried to ram it another time. Reuben saw the broken indicator and brake lights. The Fiesta, smaller and quicker off the mark, avoided the second contact. The junction loomed. Moray floored the hire car again. Reuben checked his seatbelt, and glanced at his friend. Moray had changed. He was now dangerous. A series of images appeared to Reuben as they broke eighty miles an hour. Moray chasing and being chased, attacking and being attacked, hunting and being hunted.

  They were gaining. The rental car was eating up the tarmac at higher speeds. Reuben braked involuntarily, forcing his right shoe into the footwell. They were seconds from impact. The junction started to fork. Cross-hatched white lines marked a no-man’s land between the two turns. The Fiesta swerved to the left. Moray followed. And then, yards from the concrete divider, he swung the vehicle right. They watched the Fiesta peel off and away, confined to a raised over-pass. Moray was breathing heavily. The hair at the back of his neck was wet. He didn’t slow. Reuben saw that the needle was nudging eighty-five.

  ‘Moray,’ he barked.

  Moray shook his head and followed the direction of Reuben’s gaze. He took his foot off the accelerator. The car coasted, its engine starved of petrol, slowing down over quarter of a mile. After a few silent moments, he said, ‘Where do you want to be dropped?’

  ‘I know we’re close to home, but take me to an al
l-night chemist’s. I need some things.’

  ‘How will you get back?’

  ‘Cab or tube. Don’t worry, it’s still early. Don’t think the Met will be combing the streets for me at six a.m.’

  Moray yawned, the excitement subsiding. ‘Be careful,’ he replied. ‘We don’t want to fuck things up now.’

  ‘Surviving your driving – that was the big thing. Everything else is easy.’

  Reuben felt a shaky fatigue tugging at his limbs. The road was almost dry. They passed a small number of taxis and buses, and the occasional car. He made a mental list of what he needed from the chemist’s. Toothpaste. Soap. Wet wipes. Vaseline for the sequencing plates. Tweezers for sample preparation. Paracetamol for his head. Cough medicine for a few hours’ sleep. He saw a frantic day of Predictive Phenotyping. And at the end of it, the image of a murderer. Moray slowed and stopped. Reuben climbed out and walked towards an all-night chemist, trance-like, lost in the mechanics of detection.

  8

  Dave Hillier, Assistant Security Officer, stretched, arching his back, pushing his swollen belly outwards and dropping his head over the back of the chair. When he looked down again, he saw that a dusting of orange biscuit crumbs had begun to edge into the creases of his jumper, which was folded like an extra layer of fat. Dave brushed them away, where they lingered on his trouser legs, before finally being dispatched to the vinyl floor. As he stood, the rollers of his seat crunched over the powdered debris.

  Dave ambled to his locker in the corner of the control room. It was bluish-grey and rusted around its lock. From inside he retrieved a wounded copy of Razzle, which he thumbed hungrily on the way back to his seat. The cover proclaimed a ‘Readers’ Wives Special’. Dave extracted another biscuit and pored over the pages. From time to time, he glanced upwards, squinting at the vast bank of monitors which surrounded him like an electric panorama. The screens were pale, the summer dawn beginning to emerge, a lull between illicit late-night activities and the morning scramble to work.