by John Macken
‘DCI Phil Kemp, Euston CID, GeneCrime Unit,’ he said as the call was answered. He chewed his thumbnail, eyes wide, brow creased, and then read out the telephone digits. After a few more seconds, he gave his own phone number. He wrote a few lines of text on an A4 piece of paper, then folded it up, slotting it into his shirt pocket.
Phil replaced the receiver and sat absolutely still for a whole minute. His mind raced through a series of rapid calculations. Serenity within chaos. He considered the options, shaking his head slowly, pulling a headset on and listening to the gunfire communications shooting back and forth between officers heading for the scene.
Somewhere in the mix he detected Sarah’s voice, giving orders, cajoling, seeking advice and running through scenarios. Phil could hear sirens intertwined in each statement, changing pitch and tone as various CID in different squad cars entered and left the dialogue. He jotted down locations and street names as he heard them, and tapped them into his computer, keeping a close eye on progress, watching the vehicles chase each other, being joined by new cars and vans, all inextricably converging on Waltham-stow.
Phil’s mobile rang and he listened intently, pulling one of his headphones away from his ear. He took the piece of paper from his breast pocket and scrawled some more numbers and figures on it. Again, he was motionless for a short period of time, temporarily cut off from the rapid events around him. Then Phil turned to a junior member of CID and said, ‘Can you take over for a minute?’
The officer nodded, and Phil noted the panic in his eyes.
‘You’ll be fine. Good experience. Just keep a record of everything that strikes you as important, and give locations and ETAs.’ He waggled his phone. ‘And call me if things get out of hand.’
Phil left the Incident Room and headed for the floor below. He put his jacket on and walked down a long vinyl-floored corridor, past a succession of laboratories and offices, and towards the toilets. Inside a cubicle, he unfolded the piece of paper again and stared at it, pushing himself towards a final decision.
2
‘Nice lab.’
‘Thanks.’
‘Very discreet, difficult to track down.’
‘That’s the idea.’
‘Some of your colleagues were extremely unwilling to give me your address. Even after a lot of encouragement.’
‘They wouldn’t have known.’
‘Unfortunate. You abandon your marital house, leave no forwarding address, quit your job, disappear into thin air. But now I can see why I didn’t run into you earlier.’
‘The torture was to get to me?’
‘Not just that. As you will see.’
Reuben felt oddly calm, but knew it wouldn’t last. ‘So you’ve found me. Now what?’
‘It’s funny. You plan something for so long, rehearse your words, and when it happens . . . Let’s say I have a strategy. You will be different from the others. More pain, but also more gain. I’ll explain as we go along. Now, where’s the phenol?’
Reuben moved his eyes towards a large brown bottle on a shelf above the lab bench.
‘No gimmicky kits for you. Just go with what has worked for twenty years.’ He frowned. ‘Interrogation and truth, that’s what you’re taught. The truth at any cost. Is it not? All right, let’s begin your very own interrogation.’ He reached for the bottle and played with its cap. ‘You know who I am?’
Reuben stared hard into his face, taking in the very features Predictive Phenotyping had forecast. The black eyes, the heavy eyebrows, the full lips, the barbed teeth. ‘Yes, I recognize you.’
‘And I am?’
‘Lars Besser.’
‘Very good. And why do you recognize me?’
‘I’ve come across you before. A pub murder in the nineties.’
‘Excellent. What you might also recall is the fact that you led the team that convicted me?’
‘Yep.’
Something seemed to snap in the serene features of Lars Besser: there was a redness in his cheeks, a tightening of his serrated mouth; his bristling lashes dragged in the light, revealing the fiercest of eyes beneath. ‘You see, extracting information is easy. Just like extracting DNA. All you need are the correct tools. Am I right?’
Reuben shrugged.
Lars Besser uncapped the phenol. ‘I said, am I right?’
‘Yes,’ Reuben acknowledged quickly. And then he asked the question that had been haunting him for the last ten minutes. ‘You’ve killed Jez?’
Lars smiled, a thin serpentine smile, lips snaking coldly upwards. ‘Oh yes,’ he answered.
‘Where?’
‘At his house. Only a few minutes from here.’
Reuben felt a tightening in his abdomen and a hardening of his muscles. His adrenals were working overtime, leaking their endocrine panic into his blood, pushing Reuben to maximum alert. In his heightened state he knew that pain was imminent and for a second he sensed his own transience. He had lived, burnt bright, and was now close to being snuffed out. But still his curiosity flickered. ‘So you didn’t torture him? You couldn’t have had time . . .’
‘No, I didn’t torture him – there was no need. I finally had all I wanted from Jeremy. You see, Jeremy has been most helpful to me, in ways you couldn’t imagine.’
Reuben looked at his watch. The hour wasn’t yet up. In the fictionalized chase across London, there would still have been hope for Jez. Reuben appreciated the reason for the deception. ‘It was you in the white Fiesta, following us a couple of days ago? You tailed us from the lab when we went to meet Sarah. And from that you gained the vicinity but not the address. So you flushed me out into the open and picked me off. Forced me to break cover to help a friend. Then in a stolen taxi you let me dial CID and throw them in the wrong direction before bringing me to the lab.’
‘More or less.’
‘So this has something to do with the laboratory? Otherwise, why not take me elsewhere?’
‘You know, it’s fascinating to watch your brain in action. I mean, I’ve heard you on the radio and read your articles – mostly derivative, narrow and poorly focused – but I can see now there’s an intellect in there somewhere, struggling to get out.’ Lars Besser took a step forwards, bold, in command, ramming home Reuben’s powerlessness. ‘Maybe it’s time to return to the interrogation.’ Keeping his pistol at waist height, resting against his hip, Lars passed Reuben a pair of handcuffs. ‘Try these on, hands to the front.’
Reuben picked them off the bench and slotted one manacle to his left wrist, while joining the second to his right. He kept his eyes on Lars. Behind the stare a thousand thoughts and impulses tore silently through his cerebral cortex, forging connections and striking up alliances.
‘Place your hands on the bench, palms down,’ Lars instructed.
Reuben did as he was told, slow and automatic in his movements, letting his brain fight for its survival. He watched Lars take a pipettor, plant it into a box of tips, then pull it out. It became increasingly obvious to Reuben that Lars knew what he was doing. Lars then dipped the instrument into the phenol, and withdrew a millilitre. Reuben had to think fast. Lars was about to interrogate and kill him. Reuben would die, surrounded by the very equipment and samples upon which he had based his investigation.
‘Keep your hands very still. If you move them, I will shoot you. It’s up to you, Dr Maitland – a bullet through the hand, or a drop of phenol.’ Lars grabbed a marker pen and drew around Reuben’s fingers, leaving a black outline on the surface of the bench and against Reuben’s skin. He brought the pipette tip so that it hovered over Reuben’s right hand. The drop of phenol exuded slightly, held back by its viscosity. Reuben clenched his teeth. Phenol was nasty because it had to be. When you wanted to extract DNA from muscle, or skin, or hair, you needed a chemical which would devour human cells and burst them open. Which was the very problem. You had to be careful with the stuff, otherwise it would eat you up. ‘Now, this might sting a little.’ Lars Besser smiled. ‘But I want it to serve as a ta
ster, a hint at what’s to come. And not just with the phenol. Why, we could drink a little TRI Reagent, gargle some chloroform’ – he cast his eyes around the laboratory – ‘maybe snort some ethidium bromide. And that’s before we even begin with the acrylamide or mercapto-ethanol.’
‘What do you want?’ Reuben asked, his eyes wide, the pipette slowly lowering towards his flesh.
‘What do any of us want? Peace. Love. Understanding.’ Lars Besser moved his thumb over the plunger. ‘But mainly understanding.’ He pushed down. The thick, clear fluid with its antiseptic smell oozed out of the blue tip. It bounced for a second in elastic hesitation, and then fell on to Reuben’s skin.
Reuben fought the urge to snatch his hand away, to run for the sink and wash it off. Phenol was bad, but a bullet would be worse. For a moment, all he felt was a coldness, as if the fluid had simply been water. But then the burning started. He watched his skin rise, blistering white. The phenol seeped through and into his bloodstream below. Seemingly every muscle in his body clenched tight. His hand spasmed. Flesh was being eaten by the burning teeth of the fluid. He saw an image of sulphuric acid consuming metal. His head was silently screaming. Reuben concentrated on his fingers, holding them still, impossibly still. When he looked up, he was truly afraid for the first time. Lars Besser was alight, his face sucking in the distress, his senses exalting in Reuben’s pain. He seemed to have swelled, to have gained power from his victim’s helplessness. Truly, he was unpredictable, impossible to gauge from one moment to the next. Since the taxi, Lars Besser had been threatening, persuasive, withdrawn, reasonable, ebullient and sadistic. Reuben realized he would have difficulty second-guessing him. He tried to keep his thoughts away, urging them to ignore the siren of hurt. But it was no good. They were dragged back into the agony and consumed.
‘You see what’s happening?’ Lars asked gleefully. ‘You see how this all works as a metaphor? We’re stripping away layers, getting to the real meat and bones. Extracting information and understanding like we extract and read DNA. You do see the beauty of it?’
Reuben clenched his jaw. The pain was throbbing with migrainous intensity. It was like being burnt with a cigar, but having the cigar pushed through the epidermis, someone still dragging on it, until the flesh below started to snub it out.
‘What’s nice as well is that all you’ve really achieved in your frantic attempts to track me down is to incriminate yourself. The more you’ve struggled to find me, the closer you’ve come to establishing yourself as the killer.’
Reuben grunted.
‘I guess I’ve got your attention now. That was one single drop of phenol. You have a large bottleful here. Imagine what that will feel like!’ Reuben pictured the mutilated bodies of Sandra Bantam, Run Zhang and Lloyd Granger. For the first time he saw that these injuries had been inflicted with alacrity and zeal. It was there in Lars Besser’s jerky, excited movements. He was a schoolboy, attaching fishing line around a sparrow’s neck and letting it fly off to its bone-snapping death. ‘But as you know, phenol is much more effective when it’s been properly equilibrated.’
Reuben watched Lars Besser pour the litre of phenol out of its brown bottle into a tall, thin measuring cylinder. He was careful, entranced by the evil liquid. Then he pipetted a smaller volume of isoamyl alcohol into the phenol, where it formed an unstable top layer, clearer than the brown-tinged liquid below it. Droplets of the ethanol fell slowly through the viscous phenol, lava-lamp fashion. Partially mesmerized, Lars whispered, ‘When the phenol is fully equilibrated, we will begin. And when I’ve watched you die sitting at your bench – and I imagine from the literature that this could take quite a while – an anonymous tip-off will give the police the address of this lab. With your DNA at every crime scene, and Pheno-Fit pictures up all over the capital, the case will quickly become what newspapers really want: a single all-encapsulating headline. “Bitter scientist goes on rampage and then kills himself”. End of story.’ Lars pushed the pipette tip into the blister on Reuben’s hand, popping it and encouraging a thin, watery fluid to leak out. ‘And then I just have one more person to deal with.’
‘Who?’
Lars merely tapped the side of his nose and winked.
Reuben mustered some defiance, watching drops of alcohol plunging through, each one taking days of his life with them. ‘But what the fuck do you want from me?’
‘Let’s talk about the point at which our paths crossed before, Dr Maitland. Let’s pick through the evidence, see what conclusions we can draw.’ He ran his fingers along a fierce bushy eyebrow, stroking it, suddenly reflective. ‘So, it’s the mid-nineties. A wet-arse student gets beaten to death in a fight which spills out behind a pub in South London. Police arrive at the scene almost immediately, and no one is observed running away. All males in the pub are questioned and later DNA-tested. Ring any bells?’
‘A few.’
‘So what about me? I’m drinking alone in the bar, thinking a few things through. You see, Dr Maitland, I’ve had what you might call a disturbed life. An atypical upbringing. And as I sat there, I was considering my mother and my father. Everything that went on. The wordless beatings. The turmoil. The funeral. The lies. Wanting to go back to Gothenburg and destroy my father’s grave. Astonished that I had managed to escape to England, my mother’s country. You know, flicking through the last few years, resolving what to do next. And then? A fight breaks out. I sit still and watch. I get DNA-tested along with everyone else, questioned and released. And guess what? A few weeks after, my DNA is discovered on the clothing of the victim! I’m arrested and charged, and with two previous convictions for serious assault, well, clearly I’m the man.’ Lars smiled ferociously, bringing his face close to Reuben’s. The mania was resurfacing. ‘The only problem is that I didn’t do it. And the team who fitted me up? Led by none other than Reuben Maitland.’
Reuben remained quiet. Droplets continued to fall, measuring out the minutes he had left to live. Recollections were gnawing away at him. This wasn’t simply revenge. There was something else. The memories were sparking an unease, a feeling that simple truths were no longer simple. Focusing past Lars’s gun, he pictured the scene at the Lamb and Flag, as it had appeared a decade previously.
3
Reuben Maitland enters the bar. He is nervous and the CID who look up at him are almost all more senior. They aren’t actively hostile, but there is precious little bonhomie as they examine a small patch of carpet. He can see it in their shrugs and raised eyebrows. They are asking, Where’s the proper Lead Forensics Officer? Reuben scans the room. In the corner, as in the Lounge, which he can see through the Bar, a group of twenty to thirty drinkers are being questioned one by one. A stocky barman is talking with a WPC. Two round tables have been commandeered, and an officer sits at each, asking for personal details, taking notes, checking identification.
For a moment, Reuben remains where he is. A large part of him wants to run away. I do not belong here, a voice whispers. And then another says, This is your first time in charge, don’t fuck it up. Do a good job and they might make this permanent. With the sudden fear of being paralysed by responsibility, he begins to do what he has repeatedly witnessed his boss do at the scene of a murder.
‘So what have we got?’ he asks, borrowing the phrase straight from his supervisor.
A tall, thick-set officer straightens and says, ‘Body of a young male, believed to be one Gabriel Trask, is outside. All those here at the time of death are being questioned. We’re examining the place the deceased was actually sitting just before he went into the back yard.’
‘Right. Look, I want this area, and the area around the body, sealed off. No officers within three paces. All right?’
‘You’re the boss.’
‘And keep the punters here. I want to take DNA from all of them.’
‘All of them?’
‘Yes.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Entirely. There’s a forensics technician on her way over.’
‘But we’ve already got witness statements—’
‘Look, this is my investigation. We will be doing DNA, whether you like it or not. OK?’
The tall officer appears momentarily petulant, and Reuben wonders whether he is trying too hard to sound in charge. As long as the tremor stays out of his voice he will be all right.
‘Fine,’ the officer answers.
Reuben walks through the pub, out past the damp smell of the toilets and into the back yard. Lying on his back on the cement floor is the body of a scruffy young man. His waxen features are lit by a harsh security light on the wall opposite. Blood has leaked under his lank hair, and forms a halo around his head, which appears black in the artificial lighting. A police pathologist is kneeling next to him, the corrugated concrete surface forcing him to shift his weight from time to time. Reuben introduces himself.
‘Reuben Maitland, acting Lead Forensics Officer,’ he says, holding out his hand.
The pathologist, a bearded man in his late fifties, cranes up at him and shows Reuben his bloody gloves.
Reuben withdraws his hand and asks, ‘So what was the cause?’