by Alex Caan
She sent them to Michelle to begin an electronic search, to try and identify any links that might exist between them and Julian Leakey.
Chapter Fifty-Four
Mark Lynch hadn’t responded to the messages that Kate had left him, so she sent Stevie out to check on him. Mark lived in a studio in West Brompton, opposite the cemetery. Cemeteries creeped Stevie out at the best of times, and with the day fading into evening, she wasn’t best pleased to be anywhere near the place. She wasn’t afraid of anything she could see – she could kick the shit out of most tangible things – but all that invisible poltergeist stuff really freaked her out.
Stevie avoided looking at the gate to the cemetery as she rang the bell to flat three, where Mark Lynch lived. It was on the first floor, and she could see a light was on. Maybe he just left it on for security while he went out? She continued to buzz but there was still no response.
Stevie called Kate.
‘Nothing boss, he’s not answering.’
‘Can you let yourself in, have a look around? See if knocking will make him open up? Or check with the neighbours if they’ve seen him leave?’
‘Will do. He might have gone away after all?’
‘Possibly. Strange he’s not replying to any of my messages though. If the police called, you would get in touch. If you had nothing to hide.’
‘Maybe. Then again, we don’t think like the other side.’
‘Don’t we? I thought that’s what keeps us alive, being one step ahead?’
Stevie laughed. She buzzed one of the other flats, and checked with the neighbours. They said they hadn’t seen Mark for a few days, weren’t sure when they had last. It wasn’t one of those love-thy-neighbour situations. That was London for you. Welcome to the busiest city in the world, also the emptiest and loneliest.
Stevie checked Mark’s post-box, opening it with a tool on her key ring. It was piled quite high, and hadn’t been emptied. He was definitely gone.
She decided to go back and knock again, calling his name. No response. She was about to leave, when she heard something. A faint hum. She leaned in closer, put her ear to the door. She heard it again. There was also a distinct odour. She would have put it down to male, alone, only it had a tinge to it.
‘Boss, I’m going to go in,’ she said, calling Kate. ‘Is that OK?’
‘If you have immediate cause for concern, then yes.’
Stevie pushed the door gently, felt its shape and weight, examined the locks on it. Stevie leaned back and kicked. It didn’t budge. She kicked again. A small break, and it dented inwards. She then put her weight to it, using her shoulder. It opened further. After another couple of kicks it gave way.
The smell hit her hard, and she choked. She could hear the incessant humming of insects now. What the hell? She moved in quickly, covering her mouth and nose with her sleeve. It was a one-bed flat, the kitchen and lounge one small room. She checked they were clear, and then went towards the bedroom. The smell and sounds grew thicker, and she gagged as she opened the door, and saw him. Mark Lynch was on the bed, flies swarming around him and on him. Stevie went to turn the lights on, only she smelt something else. It was there lingering over the smell of death and putrification.
Gas.
‘Fuck,’ she said, dialling 999.
She then started banging on all the neighbour’s doors, telling them to get out of the building. One by one the residents started to evacuate, slowly, dazed.
‘Get a fucking move on before you’re blown to pieces,’ she yelled.
‘No need for language like that,’ one man said sullenly.
‘Fine you stay and get fucking well burnt alive,’ she shouted back. ‘Hurry up. Leave your fucking coat, and your laptop. What is wrong with you all?’
It took about ten minutes for everyone to be gone, and she still couldn’t be sure someone wasn’t inside. The fire brigade hadn’t turned up either.
‘Shit,’ she said. She just hoped they got there before the place went up. They needed Mark Lynch’s dead body in one piece, or whatever state it was in. He was now key evidence to this case.
Chapter Fifty-Five
It took nearly half an hour for the gas to be switched off and the building ventilated fully. Stevie got the all clear from the fire brigade, went back up to secure flat three, and waited for Kate and Dr Kapoor.
They took another twenty minutes to get there, by which time half the block were harassing Stevie, who was standing outside the entrance to the flat, asking her what was going on.
‘Go back to your own apartments please, this is now police business.’
She sounded like a fifties copper in her head, and really wanted to tear the residents to shreds. She kept her tongue in check though, didn’t give in to her anger.
Kate arrived breathless, with Dr Kapoor.
‘Had to park miles away,’ said Kate, zipping into a forensic suit. Dr Kapoor did the same, and gave Stevie one.
‘Well this feels familiar,’ Dr Kapoor said.
‘Public Health England are on their way, they’ve asked us to wait. In case Mark Lynch’s been infected with whatever Julian had.’
‘It’s a neurotoxin. It will only infect us if we ingest it,’ Dr Kapoor told her.
She handed Kate and Stevie hoods, with respirators built into them.
‘Now it feels like déjà vu,’ said Kate.
The three woman walked slowly into flat three, Stevie leading the way into the bedroom.
*
Dr Kapoor set up lamps against a wall, which cast eerie shadows on the walls. The blinds were open, and Stevie could see the cemetery in the background. Not freaked out at all, she told herself.
Mark Lynch was lying on the bed, his arms out to the sides, his legs apart. The insect buzz was still strong, as they picked at the dried blood that was all over the sheets and body. Stevie moved in closer and could see this wasn’t the same MO as Julian Leakey.
‘Cut to the carotid artery,’ said Dr Kapoor.
Someone had simply hacked through his throat, and let the blood stream freely. It was spattered on the walls, the bedside table, the carpet. His clothes were drenched in it, as was the bedsheet he was lying on.
Dr Kapoor was taking photos, and examining the victim’s hands.
‘There are no defensive wounds,’ she said. ‘No struggle. He doesn’t seem to have fought back at all. More than that though, look at his hands. They are relatively clean. He didn’t try to stop the blood flow, or protect his throat.’
‘Maybe his wrists were tied?’ said Kate.
Dr Kapoor had a look, and saw nothing that suggested he was being restrained.
‘You mean he just let someone cut his throat, and didn’t react?’ asked Kate incredulously.
‘Didn’t react, or couldn’t react?’ said Stevie.
‘His eyes are open,’ said Dr Kapoor. ‘And yet everything else seems so . . . still?’ She examined a glass on the bedside table which was spattered with blood too. She bagged it. ‘There’s something odd about the splatter on that wall.’
They all turned to look at the wall facing Mark Lynch’s bed. Stevie couldn’t see what Dr Kapoor was pointing out.
‘Turn the lamp that way will you, towards the wall,’ she said. Stevie did so, but she still couldn’t see properly. ‘The pattern: look where it’s the strongest.’
Stevie looked, and then began to see. There was a definite gap in the spatter, a space that was less covered in the deep brown spots.
‘What does it mean?’
‘I think,’ said Dr Kapoor, ‘that someone was blocking the blood spatter. The murderer was standing or sitting here, cutting his throat. Sorry. I shouldn’t speculate, it’s not my job to.’
Stevie could see it clearly now. The question was why didn’t Mark Lynch do anything to stop his throat being cut, or try to stop himself bleeding out?
Chapter Fifty-Six
Professor Bernhard Keller was clearly shaken up, his eyes red, watery. He was an academic, loo
ked normal, but still part of a rare breed. A cocooned breed, protected from the real world by their passions and their pursuits.
Zain felt for the guy as he spoke to him, telling him about the death of his colleague. This was the real world at its worst, crashing into the unreal set-up they had at UCL. Kate had been there the day before to ask him about Julian Leakey. And now he was there to discuss Mark Lynch.
What the link was, Zain couldn’t say. But it was too much of a coincidence not to have one.
‘Can you tell me anything about Mark that might help? His background, where he was from?’
‘I think the Midlands somewhere, near Birmingham?’ Keller pronounced the ‘h’ thickly. ‘I think he was an only child, or if he had siblings he didn’t mention them. His parents, he spoke of them, but again, I don’t know the details. He went to visit them regularly. I thought when you couldn’t contact him he had gone there, maybe.’
‘What about friends?’
‘Ah, well I don’t think he had many. It’s a very lonely and intense experience sometimes, doing a PhD. His social life was built around his work; we tended to go out on Fridays. I can’t remember him doing much else. The only thing he did regularly was attend a war-games society in Covent Garden. ’
‘Where was that?’
‘A community centre, oh, where was it? . . . Seven Dials, yes, there.’
‘Thank you, I’ll check it out. So no girlfriend? No other associates?’
‘None that I can think of. And no, there was no girlfriend.’
‘Boyfriend?’
‘No, nothing like that. Our work is very immersive, detective. It takes over, leaves very little time for other pursuits. And remember, Mark was also conducting research into his own PhD as well as working here as a researcher. From the outside, academia looks like an easy option. But in truth it is quite the opposite.’
Yeah, tell that to someone who wakes up at four o’clock everyday to clean offices or the public toilets. There’s difficult jobs and then there’s difficult jobs. Where would he class his own? Zain didn’t know. To him it sometimes felt like torture, but in reality? He was lucky, wasn’t he?
‘When did you last see him?’
‘Three weeks now. He took a month off. I asked him to, and told him he could use the time to work on his own research. He was due back next week. I can’t believe this. He was so gifted.’
‘I don’t think death discriminates like that. Professsor, what part of the research was he involved in particularly?’
‘He worked closely with me on the modification elements. We are working with nanotechnology, really breaking down the minutiae of code that sits on TTX2. It requires fine attention to detail, and patience. Not easy to come by.’
‘He was at the heart of the research then? If anyone knew how these modifications worked, apart from yourself, it would be Mark?’
‘Yes, without doubt.’
‘And are you sure there is nothing missing? None of the previous substances you produced? You know the ones that went wrong?’
‘I told your boss. We track everything, and all of those were destroyed.’
‘When you say tracked and logged, who did that?’
‘Myself and . . . well . . .’
Zain watched Professor Keller’s expression run the gauntlet. It was his favourite thing to see, people’s faces go through the spectrum from firm belief to being unsure to realising that actually they were wrong.
‘Let me guess, yourself and Mark Lynch?’
Keller nodded, and put his face in his hands. ‘Come with me, DS Harris,’ he said, taking his hands away. ‘Let’s go and have a look at exactly what’s been happening.’
Chapter Fifty-Seven
It was painstaking work. Zain was wearing latex gloves, along with Bernhard and his other PhD researcher, Emeka Benson. They were going through the electronic database, checking for stored TTX2. Emeka was reading out the container numbers, and the expected weight. It was recorded down to the milligram. Keller was then weighing up each container, making sure the two matched.
‘Once they are weighed, they are locked away. There shouldn’t be any change.’
‘Unless somebody took something after the fact?’
‘Yes, unless somebody did that. Or unless the initial figures were incorrect.’
They continued weighing and reading out, until finally they started seeing discrepancies.
‘There are four milligrams of TTX2 missing from here,’ said Keller.
‘Is that bad?’
‘Twice the amount needed for a lethal dose.’
‘Fuck,’ said Zain. ‘Let’s see exactly how much you’ve misplaced.’
They found in total nearly twenty milligrams missing from a number of containers. With each discrepancy the tension in the room mounted, as did the temperature. Bernhard was struggling after the last container had been checked, his face red and sweat rolling down it. He rubbed at his eyes. Zain was surprised at the emotional response. Then again this was an absolute betrayal of everything he lived for.
Betrayals like that could erode your trust forever. Zain knew how that worked.
‘Why do you need so many containers in the first place?’ Zain asked. He hoped his irritation wasn’t too palpable.
‘We don’t like to keep that much toxin in one container just in case. This way if someone took one, the impact could be minimised.’
‘I see. Because someone with access would only ever take one container. I think it was reckless not to destroy the samples completely. At least we know there’s TTX2 missing. Question is, what else would Mark Lynch have needed to modify it?’
‘He had everything here,’ said Emeka. ‘We have protected time to do our research in the lab. If he did take it, then he could have done it here?’
‘Yes,’ agreed Bernhard.
‘You said you kept notes on the experiments that went wrong? They’re electronically stored, I’m guessing?’
‘Yes, we have a database for them,’ said Bernhard.
‘A database that logs who opened the file last?’ This was more Zain’s territory.
‘It should. Emeka can you please bring it up for DS Harris?’
Emeka logged into a terminal that was sitting on one of the work benches in the lab. Zain saw there were cages with white mice in them on a shelf. Rob was so not coming here, he thought. He would probably free them, and punch the staff so they knew what it felt like.
Once logged in, Bernhard started to click through files until he had the relevant ones open for Zain.
‘These are the ones that have videos of what happened to our test subjects, the date we ran the experiment, and what modifications were done to achieve that particular formula.’
Zain sorted them by date modified, and checked for the username. He saw MLynch had opened and modified a number of them in the days leading up to his leave. Zain started to bring them up. The files were essentially zip drives, containing everything related to that experiment.
There was one particular file that had been accessed on the very last day Mark was in the lab. Zain wanted to know if they could tell how many times a file had been opened by someone easily.
‘No, I don’t think so,’ said Bernhard.
Zain said he would have to use some code to find out, if they gave him permission. They didn’t refuse, so he rebooted, and ran the code he needed to, checking it on his phone first. He had logged in to the secure area at work where he kept his files.
With the additional programing entered, he was able to check a log that showed which files had been accessed, by whom and how many times. He couldn’t access the files without an authenticated username, but he checked the files that Mark had looked at the most.
‘This one, what is it?’ he asked.
‘I can’t say for sure, it was one of Mark’s experiments,’ said Emeka.
He logged back in on a different terminal, and opened the file Zain had highlighted. There was a video, and a report detailin
g what had happened to a mouse it was tested on. Emeka played the video, and Zain watched, transfixed but also horrified by what he was seeing.
‘Fuck me,’ he said when it was done, holding back the urge to throw up. This was it, he could feel it. This was the breakthrough. They had found the weapon used to kill Julian Leakey.
Chapter Fifty-Eight
Zain was driving through Central London, heading to the club in Seven Dials. Kate was on loudspeaker, having just watched the video he had seen earlier.
‘Do not show that to Rob,’ Zain told her.
‘Quite. I wish you hadn’t insisted I see it.’
The video was like a horror movie. A small white mouse was infected with a modified version of TTX2. At first nothing had happened, and then the video was sped up, to show the effects on the poor creature. It had started convulsing, retching, its eyes bulging. It had died horrendously, and most tellingly, there were skin lesions on it and blood from haemorrhaging.
‘It’s fucking sick and cruel,’ said Zain. ‘I’m joining Rob next time he goes on one of his hunt sabotages.’
‘I don’t think I’m meant to know about those. Not officially.’
She was right. It wouldn’t sit well if a cop was known to be a hunt saboteur and passionate animal rights activist. Rob kept it quiet from most people outside their immediate team.
‘And Bernhard couldn’t remember the experiment?’
‘No. Neither could Emeka Benson.’
‘Mark did some private work then.’
‘Yes. That mouse basically showed us what Julian Leakey went through. Forty minutes of intense agony, and then a painful death. Bernhard said the body shuts down because sodium intake is inhibited, and the neurons stop transmitting. But you can still feel it, and sense it.’
‘So we have our weapon.’
‘Yes. Mark Lynch created a bioweapon. How it was used on Julian Leakey and why, I have no idea. And how it relates to the dead woman, and to Mark’s own death: again, no idea. But I don’t think you need a PhD to realise we are looking for another person behind it all. You think Natalie Davies is capable of doing all this? Or Anya Fox-Leakey?’