Breaking Point (12 page)

Mina yawned, screwing her eyes up behind her glasses and covering her mouth with the back of her hand. ‘The thing is,’ she continued, ‘the two
observations
may be totally unrelated – the fact that the Negatives database is being accessed, and that Psychopath Selection seems to have been either installed or resurrected. But that’s what science is about. Linking observations. Phenomena that on the face of it appear totally unrelated, yet biologically represent cause or effect.’

‘Like Fleming’s bacteria and fungus.’

‘Precisely. Now I’m not saying we’re on the verge of discovering antibiotics here, just that it would go against every scientific hunch I’ve ever had in my life not to put two and two together.’

Reuben noted that Mina’s enthusiasm was slowly beginning to light up her tired face. The more she talked, the more animated her features became. It was infectious, but years of professional experience had taught him not to jump up and down with excitement just because another scientist was.

‘OK,’ he answered slowly. ‘But you know two plus two can equal a lot of things. What’s in the folder?’

‘These are all the details for the samples I gave you, and for the ones I’ve cross-referenced with our Recent Crimes database. So all of these are Negative DNAs that have, one way or another,
lit
up for recent crime involvement. And that includes all levels of involvement. Perpetrators, suspects and victims.’

‘Let me have a look.’

Mina handed Reuben a numbered list of thirty-eight sample IDs on a printed spreadsheet. Next to the eight-digit IDs were three columns headed
Crime Ref Number, Date
and
Description of Act
.

‘So, of the thirty-six thousand members of the Negatives database, thirty-eight have been associated with some form of criminal endeavour in the last couple of weeks?’

‘Right.’

Reuben pulled out a lab drawer and used it as a foot rest. ‘Which is entirely to be expected.’

‘Exactly. Now that’s Strand of Evidence One. Let’s look at Strand Two.’ Mina slid another A4 sheet of paper out of her brown wallet file. ‘These are the ID numbers of punters associated with recent crimes who have the wrong genotype, behaviourally speaking.’ She pushed it across to Reuben.

Reuben lined up both pieces of paper. The second sheet had an identical list of sample IDs to the first, but instead of three additional columns there was just one, marked
Genotype
. Reuben noted that this sheet was off-white and
considerably
scruffier than the original one, as if it had spent a lot of time being examined and re-examined. He also noticed that seven of the thirty-eight ID numbers were crossed through in fluorescent green. The numbers he had told her earlier on the phone.

‘OK, so seven of the thirty-eight have, as you so elegantly put it, the wrong genotype.’

‘Uh-huh.’

‘So having evil genes makes you more likely to perpetrate evil acts. Ergo, the relatively high proportion of the thirty-eight who have faulty genotypes. But you’re going to tell me that it’s not that simple.’

Mina smiled briefly. ‘It’s not that simple. Compare the last column of the first piece of paper with the highlighted names of the second.’

Reuben ran his eyes along the fluorescent cells of the spreadsheet, reading from the
Description of Act
column, taking in the eight-digit IDs, the dates and reference numbers. He was about to speak, but hesitated. He checked it again. Genotype in green, criminal act in the final column. ‘Fuck,’ he said quietly. Strand of Evidence Three.

‘You see?’ Mina asked.

‘Fuck,’ Reuben repeated.

‘There’s something
active
going on. We’re not looking at random events here.’

‘I’m beginning to realize why you put me through profiling thirty-eight consecutive DNA chips.’ Reuben rubbed his face. Since meeting Mina in the café for lunch, he hadn’t stopped, even for food. ‘Have you thrown statistics through this?’ he asked.

Mina nodded rapidly as she spoke. ‘The probability values are tiny. This is no coincidence.’

‘OK, the best thing to do now is to think of alternative explanations. What have we fucked up? What are we missing?’

‘Here we go,’ Mina groaned.

‘I’m serious. We have to make sure we’re right.’

‘Well, if we must, Dr Anal. Your technique could, in your own words, be completely fucked up.’

Reuben raised his eyebrows. Mina rarely swore, and there was something simultaneously unsettling and reassuring about the bluntness of her language. ‘I’ve only tested it on a relatively small number of samples, but it seems pretty robust. We need to think differently, peripherally. What else could explain the association between
the
databases and the technique, and the actual events occurring?’

‘OK, then. Your technique does something different than you imagined. It predicts a different component of psychosis than you designed it to.’

‘For instance?’

‘Let’s say that deep in the flesh and bones of your average psychopath there lies something hidden, something just hitching a ride, something linked. Like having sickle cell anaemia shields you from malaria. Possessing your five main genes of evil has the side effect of attracting trouble towards you, unwanted attention, you know …’ Mina trailed off. ‘It’s not the strongest argument I’ve ever come up with.’

‘Brave effort though. I don’t know, Mina. I understand what you’re saying, but all the people on the Negatives database are ones who aren’t already on the National DNA Database. These are, on the whole, innocent people tested for exclusion. As far as we know, they haven’t been associated with any serious crimes in the past.’

‘Yet.’

‘So as for having some linked trait that pushes them towards perilous situations …’

Reuben stopped, changing his mind about what
he
was going to say. Mina had put her finger on the single word that could explain everything.

Yet.

‘What is it?’ Mina asked.

‘Yet,’ he answered. ‘They haven’t done anything
yet
.’

‘So?’

Reuben stood up and began to pace the laboratory, excited and on edge, images and scenarios coming thick and fast. Among the tangle of names and dates and profiles and coincidences, a sudden clarity. A gap in the trees, a light through the fog. He spoke rapidly, his words spraying out in all directions. ‘Look, this was always the potential of the technique. Prevention. The gold standard of criminology, of medicine, of aircraft safety, of whatever really matters to people. Stopping the event before it occurs. Using Psychopath Selection to screen populations, to find out who has the wrong genes, to offer counselling and support. To accept that one day nature will bump up against nurture, that hostile genes will meet an abrasive environment, that the subconscious could overwhelm the conscious.’

Mina was watching him, peering over the top of her glasses, her eyes wide. ‘Go on.’

‘This was the aim. To shield the genetically
vulnerable
. To advise and explain, to teach and guide the tiny proportion of individuals who could become future killers, given a few wrong moments or events in their life. Medication, as well. Offering them drugs that could combat irrational and uncontrollable rages that may be hardwired into them without their knowledge. The next generation of criminology. Not mopping up murders but actually preventing them before they happen. Getting to the criminal before the criminal gets the chance to hurt, to maim or to kill.’

‘Which has always been the theory of Psychopath Selection. So what are you getting at? What’s changed?’

‘Someone is using it for something entirely different.’

‘I still don’t get it. What else could it be used for?’

‘It’s not a case of
what
else for, but of
who
else for.’

‘Reuben, for fuck’s sake!’ Mina stood up as well, exasperated, on the verge of anger. Reuben noted that she no longer looked tired. ‘Just spell it out!’

Reuben stopped pacing, his mind suddenly focused, his voice quiet. The images had
crystallized
, the implications now clear and stark. ‘Someone has it out there on the streets,’ he said. ‘They are using it as we speak.’

‘Who, though?’

‘That’s the point. We know that whoever it is, they have the support of someone on the inside, a member of GeneCrime staff. Look, we’ve got seven incontrovertible links, matches between recent crimes and unstable genotypes. As you say, this isn’t coincidence. The software has been accessed, Psychopath Selection is up and running, events are happening out there.’ Reuben gestured towards the window with a nod of his head. ‘And we know it’s only recently, the last few days, maybe the last couple of weeks at most. A lot of minor assaults and incidents don’t get reported, as you’re aware, so it’s difficult to get an exact timeframe. But it’s happening now. Something has been unleashed that won’t stop until we put it all together and figure it out.’

Mina picked up one of the sheets of paper and squinted at it. ‘But I keep coming back to the central point, the reason none of this makes sense. All seven punters on the Negatives database, essentially normal people but with abnormal genotypes, have been victims of crime. Not the perpetrators, the victims.’ She ran her unpainted nail down the
column
marked
Description of Act
. Brief, staccato reports of criminal events were printed in each box. ‘Mugged in car park,’ she read. ‘Attacked at work. Punched in park. Fingers broken in garage. Assaulted in smoking shelter.’ Mina examined some of the descriptions from boxes that weren’t highlighted. ‘Come on, there’s no “stabbed woman in street”, or “caught breaking and entering”, or “committed ABH in nightclub” here.’

‘What we have,’ Reuben said, ‘is unheard of in the world of crime detection. Front-page stuff. This isn’t about the crime that has already happened, it’s about the one that hasn’t happened yet. Your word. Yet. Don’t you see what this means? Someone is screening the population, genotyping people with no previous history of serious violence. The thirty-six thousand punters on the Negatives database, innocent people, witnesses, informants, whoever … men and women who shouldn’t be stuck on a DNA database. Someone is weeding them out, finding the small number of latent psychopaths that lurk in that population.’

‘And attacking them.’

‘Precisely.’

‘But why?’

‘I’ve got a couple of ideas. But that’s not the most important thing right now.’

‘What is?’

‘Tracking these people down. Warning them. Because the fuses have been lit. Unstable people are out there, being pushed and provoked. We know about seven. There could be more. And if each one has the unwitting genotype of a serial killer …’

‘There’s going to be carnage.’

Mina and Reuben stared at each other. The lab was silent. A freezer kicked into life for a few seconds and then lay quiet again.

There was a noise at the door, and it swung open. Judith walked in, a motorcycle helmet under her arm.

‘What?’ she asked, looking at Reuben and Mina, who were still standing motionless in front of the lab bench. ‘What is it?’

TWO

1

‘OK, LET’S LOOK
at some names, see if that gives us anything. You do have their identities?’

Mina raised her eyebrows. ‘Give me a couple of minutes. Thirty-six thousand is a lot of names to remember.’

She walked over to her handbag and pulled out a small laptop. Reuben couldn’t help but be impressed with the size of it. It made his own computer look like something on steroids and weights. Mina pressed the power button and waited impatiently for it to boot up.

While it buzzed into life, Judith asked, ‘Anything else come of the CCTV footage?’

Mina remained glued to the screen. ‘CID are checking back to the Tube station before, watching hours of video from different angles.
We
know the time of the train, what line, which platform, but still, there are literally tens of cameras covering the adjoining passageways, the stairs and the escalators. Thousands and thousands of grainy people going about their business.’

‘And one murderer.’

‘Potentially. We don’t know. We can’t be certain that he definitely exited the train, or even that he was definitely on it. I mean, it would be a neater way of doing things, but killers, as we see time and time again, aren’t always neat. Otherwise we wouldn’t catch them so easily.’

Reuben grunted. ‘He doesn’t really need to hide. He just injects someone at close quarters, probably with an ultra-fine needle they can barely feel. He’s in the middle of a carriage full of people trying not to look at one another, most of them, in fact, actively ignoring one another. Then, his job done, he calmly steps off at the next stop. He’s not exactly running in and waving firearms about.’

‘I think you’re forgetting that I was there for one of the murders,’ Judith said quietly. ‘A few feet away at most. Minding my own business just like everyone else.’

‘Yeah. And if a highly trained forensic scientist didn’t notice anything …’

‘Poor girl,’ Judith said, almost to herself. ‘I just thought she’d been drinking. But to have been there in the middle of a murder scene, and as you say, not notice anything … It’s been freaking me out.’

‘I’m not surprised,’ Reuben answered. ‘All the hundreds of crime scenes you’ve attended over the years, and the only one you don’t realize you’ve been to is a live one.’

‘Right,’ Mina said, double-clicking and staring intently into the small screen, ‘we’re in business. Read out the first ID number and I’ll cross-reference it.’

Reuben glanced again at Judith, who was staring quietly out of the window. This time, he suspected she wasn’t watching the diggers and workmen slowly advancing towards them. He picked up one of Mina’s spreadsheets, and called out the first highlighted number, 06-738494.

Mina typed the digits in and ran her fingernail across the screen. ‘Ayuk, Navine,’ she answered.

Reuben wrote the name down and called out the next ID. ‘05-638223.’

Mina looked it up, and after a few seconds said, ‘Crannell, James.’