Breaking Point (13 page)

Reuben made a note, and repeated the process. ‘05-616277.’

Mina entered the code and squinted at the accompanying information. ‘Furniss,’ she answered. ‘Christian name Nick.’

Judith watched them, hands resting on her belly. She could see, reflected in Mina’s square glasses, rows of numbers and names scrolling rapidly upwards; it was almost like she had two tiny monitors for eyes. This is what science had become, she sighed. Computers. Profiles, databases, even the visualization of sequence data that used to be made by radioactive spots and stripes. Bloody computers everywhere. When Judith had first started in forensics she could actually touch the data, feel it, run her fingers over opaque X-ray films, hold cold agarose gels in her hand and squint as she exposed them to UV light. Evidence was physical, not virtual, numbers calculated by pen, not by processors, DNA extracted by hand, not by machine. But now it was remote. Even for the girl on the Tube who had fallen on to her. That was as close as the evidence would get. While her body lay solid and motionless in the morgue, she was simply coloured lines on computer screens, numbers in databases, NMR profiles in toxicology traces. As Judith listened to the short, terse exchanges between Reuben and Mina, she realized that
what
forensic science had gained in sensitivity it had lost in soul.

Reuben’s voice brought her round.

‘Fuck.’

‘What?’ she asked.

‘The final sample ID. Read it again, and spell it.’

Mina squinted at the screen. ‘Margulis, Maclyn,’ she read. ‘M-a-r-g-u-l-i-s, M-a-c—’

‘God,’ Reuben said.

‘You don’t think it’s …’

‘There can’t exactly be many of them. What other info have you got?’

Mina chewed her top lip and stared hard into the screen. Judith watched as the reflections of the database changed, revealing highlighted columns of words, and then two almost blank images appeared in her glasses with what seemed to be thin lines of reversed text.

‘Right. Maclyn Margulis. Date of birth, October tenth, 1969. Born in Surrey.’

‘It’s him,’ Reuben interrupted.

‘Why is he on the Negatives database?’ Judith asked.

Mina returned her attention to the file. ‘Let’s see …’

‘Don’t bother,’ Reuben said. ‘For those of you
who
obviously weren’t assigned to the case, or else have very short memories, I’ll remind you. The shooting of Mr and Mrs Keansey on their front doorstep, fifteen months ago or so.’

‘But nothing stuck, right? Not enough evidence, despite a lot of GeneCrime interest,’ Judith said.

Mina breathed deeply. ‘I knew the name, I just couldn’t recall which case. So how come he isn’t on the National DNA Database?’

‘This is Mr Teflon, Mina.’

‘Don’t get him started,’ Judith said.

‘So you have history with Mr Margulis?’ Mina asked.

But Reuben wasn’t listening. A memory was washing through him, a moment in time, images and words ingrained in his consciousness. Just over a year ago in the windowless depths of GeneCrime.

2

REUBEN CHECKED HIS
watch, searched its broad round face for solace, squinted at the stuttering second hand for progress. This was going nowhere fast. The room was cold, even though outside, away from the GeneCrime air conditioning, he knew it was a warm summer’s day. Patience. That was the key. But Reuben knew his tolerance, his fortitude, his level-headedness had been in short supply lately. He was on edge most of the time, his heart racing even when he was at home, unable to switch off or calm down. He knew the speed wasn’t helping, but without it, GeneCrime was verging on the unmanageable. Of course the unit got results, spectacular headline-grabbing breakthroughs, and on a frequent basis. But the intensity, the
conflict
and the politics seemed to be chewing him up. He had worked fourteen hours solid at the crime scene, bagging small fragments of flesh and skin. Then he’d showered and changed, and driven two hours back to base. And now, in the interview room, a windowless cell in the basement of the building, the ordeal was only just beginning.

Reuben licked his dry lips, feeling a small amphetamine surge, the drug starting to ebb from his body but leaving the odd reminder in its wake. He turned to the man in front of him, the stillness tainted only by the hum of the all-pervasive air conditioning.

‘I’ll take your silence for a no,’ he muttered.

Maclyn Margulis shrugged. He had said nothing for a full two minutes. And then he replied, ‘Take it any way you like.’

Reuben rubbed the sharp stubble that was starting to push through his skin. He needed to sleep. He craved the feel of fresh sheets, the tranquillity of a dark room, the smell of his wife’s skin.

Reuben glanced at DI Charlie Baker, who was staring down at his hands. ‘Charlie?’ he said. ‘Do you have anything to say to Mr Margulis?’

Charlie looked up. ‘I’ve got a lot of things.’ He
turned
to Reuben, as if Margulis wasn’t there. ‘Maybe it’s time we stepped things up a bit, boss, started being a bit more direct with him.’

‘Oh yeah? Suppose I insist on my brief?’ Margulis said.

‘Suppose you do,’ Charlie answered.

‘Well, get it sorted.’

‘This isn’t a police station, Margulis. While you’re here, normal rules don’t apply. You want to be mollycoddled by some fucking solicitor, we’ll ship you out to a police station somewhere, book you in, waste a couple of days of everybody’s time.’ Charlie was glaring across the table, all sharp stubble and bared teeth. ‘But if you’re innocent, if you’re as tough as you like to make out, let’s just talk. Man to man. Here and now.’

‘I don’t know. A police station sounds a lot better than this shithole.’

‘You’re a big boy now, Margulis. You want to know what we’ve got on you. And we want to know how you react when we tell you. We’re feeling each other out, before it all gets messy. Now, if you’re no longer happy with that, I’ll get you transferred. Otherwise, let’s cut to the fucking chase.’

Maclyn Margulis was still, his arms folded, leaning back in his chair. His face had an aspect of
control
that bordered on the arrogant. He swept a strand of straight black hair away from his eyes, indifferent and detached, and twisted one of his diamond ear-studs between his fingers. ‘Do your fucking worst,’ he said.

Reuben rubbed his brow, feeling the itchy tiredness beneath his fingers. Charlie was merely antagonizing Margulis, putting his back up. They needed another tack.

‘Your parents still alive?’ he asked him.

‘Nope. Yours?’

Reuben ignored the question. ‘And if they were shot at point blank with a modified twelve-bore that virtually cut them in two?’

‘What about it?’

‘Why don’t you tell me how you would feel about that?’

‘Take a wild stab,’ Maclyn Margulis growled.

‘Cut up. Angry. Devastated.’

‘Whatever.’

‘We know how you did it, when you did it, and why you did it.’

Margulis pursed his lips, a thin smile in the creases of his mouth. ‘You just can’t prove that I did it.’

Reuben sighed. ‘Not yet. But we will.’ He raised his eyes to the ceiling. ‘Up there, above us, twenty
three
of the country’s best forensic scientists are opening evidence bags and sample tubes, taking out skin and hairs and flesh, looking at fibres and footwear patterns, analysing fingerprints, picking out cells shed by the culprit at the scene. Microscopic particles left every time a human being goes anywhere.’

Maclyn Margulis yawned, stretching it out, making his point. ‘You should be very proud.’

‘And the reason I know we’ve got all these samples is that I collected them myself. Stood on a doorstep for fourteen hours just looking for little bits of you left behind at your crime scene.’

‘Well, this has been illuminating. But seeing as you and your twenty-three fucking scientists don’t have any evidence, I would suggest you charge me or else get the fuck out of my way.’

Margulis stood up slowly. He was the same height as Reuben, slightly heavier, verging on the well built. Rumour had it that he had been a boxer once, a promising Under-21 whose career had been cut short by injury. The straightness of his nose was testimony to his ability to dodge the punches. In fact, as Reuben examined him, the bastard was still sidestepping anything CID could throw his way.

Reuben remained seated. Charlie stood up, facing him.

‘You’ve wriggled out of a lot of things in your time, Margulis, but you’re not getting out of this one. Sit the hell back down and answer our questions.’ Charlie leaned in closer. ‘Or are you brave enough to slaughter pensioners but too scared to face a couple of coppers without your minders?’

Maclyn Margulis bent his neck forward, their faces inches apart. His cheeks were red, his eyes wide. ‘Fuck you, Baker. You might be a copper, but your boss isn’t. He’s a fucking anorak.’ He glanced away from DI Baker and down at Reuben. ‘Real police work too much for you, was it? You had to hide in the laboratory? Running tests and trying to frame people while the real coppers get out there and catch the bad guys?’

‘Something like that,’ Reuben said.

‘So what is it that you’re so fucking scared of? You get shot at once and shit your pants?’

Reuben grunted.

‘You see something you didn’t like the look of and complain to your inspector? “Take me off the streets, boss, let me hide in the lab”?’

‘You’ve got me, Maclyn,’ Reuben said.

‘See, I don’t mind being questioned by the police. Real coppers, proper CID. Short-arsed
Rottweilers
like DI Baker here. But over-educated cunts like you, ones who’ve done a couple of months on the beat and then run away to get a fucking degree in science—’

‘That’s a Ph.D.,’ Reuben answered.

‘Smug bastard. You think you’re so fucking smart, where’s your evidence? Come on, college boy, educate me. Or is that it? You’re just as dumb as DI Baker here?’

‘Is there a point you’re getting to, Mr Margulis, or are you just trying to rile me? Because calm or pissed off, any minute I’m going to have a laboratory full of evidence that puts you on the doorstep of two dead pensioners. Without your minders or your weapons or your back-up, you’re just a middle-aged man stuck in a room with me and DI Baker. And given the chance, I would happily take you to pieces. But I don’t want you like that. I want you arrested and charged, and off the streets you somehow think you own.’

Maclyn Margulis smiled. ‘So let’s do this the proper way. You and fucking me, Maitland. Like you said. Mano a mano.’

Charlie remained still, leaning forward, his fists clenched, looking like he wanted to launch himself across the table. Reuben stared up into Margulis’s wide-open eyes, the pupils huge,
swallowing
all the blue and turning it black. Maclyn Margulis, the gangster who didn’t even have a police record. Slipping away from murders and tortures, protected by God knew what. Witnesses too scared to speak, a virtually impregnable underground fortress, minders who did the dirty work.

‘Come on. You fucking scared, Maitland?’

Charlie was grinding his jaw, weighing Margulis up. Margulis was wearing a T-shirt that showed his biceps. Small regions of flesh that could make a lot of difference. Reuben wondered whether Margulis still had the boxer’s instinct, whether he would be difficult to hit. And then, without warning, Charlie reached forward and grabbed Margulis by the scruff of his expensive jacket.

‘I’ve had enough of this shit, Margulis, and so has my boss.’

Margulis grasped Charlie’s neck. ‘Yeah? Well fuck you.’

This wasn’t what coppers should do. ‘Charlie,’ Reuben said, ‘not like this.’

But DI Baker was already launching himself over the table. Margulis broke Charlie’s grip and aimed a punch, off balance, which hit him high in the ribs. Charlie pushed him back towards the wall, Margulis kicking and thrashing, blows
landing
, others missing. Reuben struggled up from his chair and lurched around the table. Charlie pulled his arm back and squared his fist into Margulis’s jaw. Margulis elbowed him in the neck as the blow landed. Reuben threw himself across the room. Charlie broke his left arm free and punched Margulis, a fierce uppercut to the diaphragm. And then Reuben was on him, pulling him away, saying, ‘Leave it, Charlie!’ both of them falling backwards, CID suddenly swarming into the cell, Margulis being wrestled to the ground, an officer with his knee in Margulis’s sternum, Charlie breathing hard in Reuben’s grip, Reuben’s pulse racing, knowing that Charlie had gone too far, but still understanding his desire for justice, pure adrenalin-fuelled justice.

3

REUBEN GLANCED UP
at the sign in front of the large building in Paddington and shivered. It wasn’t cold, it was just that the very word ‘Hospital’ now came with an inescapable image. An eighteen-month-old boy lying in a bright yellow cot with a thin tube entering the back of his hand. Disney characters painted on the walls. A green trace flicking across the screen of a white machine. The boy’s eyes closed, eyelids pale, tangles of blood vessels visible beneath the skin. Joshua Maitland fading fast among vivid colours, aggressive chemotherapy and urgent marrow transplantation draining him of life.

‘This looks like the main entrance,’ Moray said. ‘You coming?’

Reuben blinked, dispelling the image. He
followed
Moray through the automatic doors, the heat of the hospital rushing out to meet them. It still amazed Reuben that in an era of security and paranoia, hospitals were as easy to wander around as shopping malls. They passed through a reception area with a round desk and incurious staff. Moray scanned for signs, then pointed at one marked Pharmacy.

‘What do you think?’ he asked.

‘That I don’t like hospitals. They remind me we’re all extremely mortal. Old people, young people, children even.’

‘Joshua, you mean?’

Reuben sighed. ‘Am I that transparent these days?’

‘Only when you’re thinking about your boy.’

Moray set off walking again, and Reuben followed.

‘Lucy wants me to have more access.’

‘What do you think she really wants?’