Breaking Point (14 page)

‘What do you mean?’

‘When lawyers offer you everything you’ve set your heart on, that’s the time to start worrying.’

Reuben was quiet. They passed a pair of men dragging portable drips, both of whom looked to be in their early twenties at most. They had a
hospital
shuffle, a way of walking you never saw outside in the street, a flat-footed gait that spoke of long-term sickness. For a second, Reuben sensed their misery, the confinement of ill health. Then he said to Moray, ‘You are a very cynical man. But as ever, my fat friend, you make a good point. I’ve barely been allowed to see him for the last six months.’

‘How’s the wee fella doing anyway?’

‘OK. In fact more than OK, considering how ill he was.’

‘That’s kids for you. Bounce back quicker than elastic bands.’

‘Spoken like a true father.’

‘Yeah, well.’

‘Did you never feel the call?’

‘ ’Fraid not. Always the uncle, never the dad. That’s me.’

They turned from one long pastel corridor into another.

‘Guess it’s a bit late now.’

‘You never know.’

‘Nah, you do know.’ Moray rested a hand on his considerable belly. ‘What with my barren womb and all.’

Reuben smiled across at him. If he ever needed cheering up, if the long hours of dry scientific
thought
ever ground him down, if he ever felt he was becoming too serious, Moray was there to unravel him a little.

They pushed through a set of double doors and entered a wide section of corridor. Plastic chairs lined one wall, almost as though the area couldn’t decide whether to be a walkway or a waiting room. Twenty metres down, a side room branched off the main passageway and gave way to a more formal seating area. A sign above a large open hatchway proclaimed ‘Pharmacy’. Again, Reuben was amazed that during their walk through the heart of the hospital no one had even come close to being interested in their right to be there. He sincerely hoped the other names on Mina’s list would be just as accessible.

As they approached the hatchway, Moray asked, ‘How do you want to handle this?’

‘No idea,’ Reuben answered. ‘I guess softly softly. Other than that, we make it up as we go along.’

‘About par for the course then,’ Moray remarked quietly.

Reuben stopped a few metres away from the hatchway, slightly to one side. It was just after 9.30 a.m. In the few minutes that they observed proceedings, two medics also approached and
were
treated the same as the patients. Reuben craned his neck forward. A black male, slender, five ten, short hair, small ears, bloodshot eyes, took a prescription and disappeared gingerly into an area that looked like a library for drugs. Densely packed shelving units held bottles and packets, jars and tubs. Reuben glanced at Moray, who raised his eyebrows.

‘You think that’s him?’

‘It’s a fair guess. Ayuk feels like an African name. And he’s the only Afro-Caribbean I can see.’

Reuben scanned the area. A door into the pharmacy was just visible, five metres away on the corridor side of the waiting area. He walked over to it, Moray close behind. Reuben tried the handle. It wasn’t locked. He pushed the door open. The black pharmacist in his white coat was running his fingers along a clean shelf, a prescription in his other hand.

‘Mr Ayuk?’ Reuben asked.

The man spun round, a sudden look of suspicion tightening his features. He didn’t answer.

‘Mr Navine Ayuk?’ Reuben repeated.

The man tilted his head back, his eyes
narrowing
. Reuben noted a pack of cigarettes in the top pocket of his lab coat.

‘We need to talk to you about something. Something important.’

4

FOR A SPLIT
second, Reuben thought the 4×4 wouldn’t stop in time. He tensed, ready for the impact of metal on bone, stomach muscles tightening, fists clenching. There was a blaze of irritation in Maclyn Margulis’s eyes that said this problem could be solved with a stamp on the accelerator. And then the squeal of a heavy vehicle on fat tyres echoed around the low ceiling. Anti-lock brakes flashing on and off hot metal discs. The bonnet dipping, coming to an abrupt halt, stopping inches in front of him.

Ten metres behind the car, the shutter was slowly closing, steel sections grinding down, lining up to form an impenetrable barrier. The engine continued to idle, petrol fumes filling the subterranean air. Maclyn Margulis remained
behind
the wheel, staring out at Reuben and Moray in angry disbelief. Reuben stared back, trying to look neutral, trying not to look like he had almost been annihilated by two and a half tons of BMW, a mass of emotions fighting inside him. He could just make out the head of Margulis’s dog in the rear seat, its ears pricked up, gazing along with its master. No Valdek, which was good news. The registration plate caught his eye. The number was different, and Reuben realized that Margulis must have bought a new car. The same, but not the same. He wondered what had happened to his other vehicle. Then the engine died and Margulis hauled himself out of the black X5. He ignored Moray, and paced around to Reuben, coming to a stop face to face.

‘What the fuck are you doing here?’ he asked.

‘Coming to see you,’ Reuben answered.

‘How the fuck did you find me?’

‘There’s a very thick file on you at CID.’

‘Thought they’d kicked you out.’

‘They have. But I’ve still got friends.’

‘That bitch Sarah Hirst?’

Reuben shrugged. ‘Maybe,’ he said.

‘She running the world yet?’

‘Just about.’

‘No fucking surprise there. Bang her own grandma up just to make an arrest, that bitch would.’ Margulis nodded at Moray. ‘And who’s the rent-a-slob?’

Reuben carried out the introductions. ‘This is Moray. Moray, this is Maclyn.’ Moray smiled briefly, which wasn’t reciprocated. ‘Now everyone’s met everyone, shall we get down to business?’

Maclyn Margulis stood with his arms folded across his chest, his suit jacket creased, the open collar of his white shirt pushed upwards. ‘What fucking business? You may have noticed that I don’t fuck about with coppers. Especially not sacked ones.’

‘I’ve come to help you.’

They had driven there straight from talking to Navine Ayuk and hung around for half an hour waiting for the underground car park to open its door to the street, and then another hour in the gloom, four storeys down, waiting for the second steel shutter to retract. It was just like the CID photographs. A no parking section with freshly painted yellow cross-hatching, dim orange lighting, close-packed concrete pillars.

‘You’ve got a fucking nerve, I’ll give you that.’ Margulis frowned, anger returning, as if
fragments
of memories were starting to gel. ‘After all you’ve done to try and put me away.’

‘Nothing personal, Maclyn,’ Reuben said.

‘Fuck off. Of course it was. Wanting to fit me up for snuffing those old biddies on their doorstep. Went out of your way to try and get me. But you fucking failed.’

‘As I said …’

Reuben bit into the inside of his cheek. Since Mina had told him that Margulis was on her list, a Negative with the wrong genotype, a potential future psycho, Reuben had been anticipating this moment. He battled to keep his cool. Of course, most of CID would argue that Margulis was a psycho already, and they wouldn’t be entirely wrong. Normal people knew better than to antagonize him. Reuben was well aware of the risks he was taking. But he also knew that Margulis’s minders carried out his dirty work, steroid cases like Valdek Kosonovski, who did whatever he asked, and without question.

‘And then what the fuck do you do? Not man enough yourself, so you get your friend Charlie Baker to leap across a fucking table in the interview room to get me. Shit-scared yourself, so that runt Baker does your dirty work. Lands a few pathetic punches before you and your boys
in
blue get round to calling him off. Was that it? All you could fucking muster? Hiding behind a tougher boy?’ Margulis laughed, straight white teeth bared. ‘What a fucking loser, Maitland.’

Reuben watched the practised display of disdain Margulis was busy treating him to. He was sure that while Margulis was dangerous, he wasn’t pathological. There were unsubstantiated allegations of tortures and beatings on record, but none of it random or sporadic, spontaneous or horrific. None of the hallmarks of the latent psychopath. With Maclyn Margulis it was business. Protecting his interests, muscling in on those of others, speaking the language of the underground world he inhabited. Even the doorstep shooting of Joe Keansey’s parents, which Reuben was certain Margulis had carried out, was designed as a cold statement of intent, not a bloodthirsty rampage. But Mina’s results put a whole new angle on Maclyn Margulis. Despite himself, Reuben decided not to antagonize him any more than was strictly necessary. Given the recent discovery of his genetic identity, an enraged Margulis was now an entirely different proposition. And if this was what he was like before his genotype caught up with him, Reuben said to himself, then God help everyone if it ever did.

‘You’re entitled to your opinion,’ Reuben answered.

Margulis cast his brilliant blue eyes from Reuben to Moray and back again. He made a show of scanning the deserted section of underground car park, and of patting the gun-sized bulge in his suit jacket. ‘Who’d miss you pair of fucking losers, eh? If I took you out, here and now? Who’d miss you?’

‘You’d be surprised.’

‘Shut the fuck up,’ Margulis said to Moray. ‘I don’t see money, I don’t see nice clothes, I don’t see wedding rings. I don’t see nothing. Two fucking has-beens who are wasting my precious.’

Reuben raised his eyebrows at Moray. ‘You got anyone missing you?’

‘There’s a chip shop in Streatham …’

‘If you don’t want our help, Maclyn, we’ll be on our way.’

Reuben turned and walked away from Margulis, leaving him standing in front of his oversized BMW, his arms still folded, his mouth tight, his eyes narrowed, his fists clenched. Moray caught up with Reuben and they turned the corner, heading for the ramp that led up into a packed area of car parking above.

Margulis didn’t move. He listened to the echoes
of
their footsteps receding, anger and curiosity boiling over. And then, despite himself, and in the face of every instinct he had, he called after them.

‘How the fuck do you mean, help me?’

5

THE CAMPUS LOOKED
to have been thrown together in a hurry some time around the sixties. A small number of ornate structures fought for space among three- and four-storey blocks of concrete with unerringly square windows and razor-flat roofs. Despite the architecture, Reuben had fond memories of this place. Leaving CID for three years to complete a Ph.D. in molecular biology. Swapping one series of terrible buildings for another. But beginning to understand how biology could be the cause of, and the solution to, the vast majority of crime.

They passed the ground-floor lab of the Biosciences Department. A quick glance told him that the layout had changed since his time there. A cold-room had been converted into what
looked
to be a bio-informatics suite, and a bank of monitors stood where previously there had been a bookcase.

Moray was pulling hard on a cigarette, his eyes roaming about, occasionally settling on the predominantly female students who seemed to be drifting from building to building.

‘It’s good to be out and about,’ he said.

‘Enjoy it while it lasts,’ Reuben answered.

‘That Margulis place gives me the creeps. And we were only in the car park.’

‘It’s not just the place.’

The meeting had not gone well. After he had called them back, Maclyn Margulis had been surly, aggressive and suspicious. He had listened to Reuben’s words, staring hard at him, barely moving. And then, when he had heard him out, he had simply got back in his car and sped off, screeching around the underground space, careering towards the exit like he was going to plough straight through it. Reuben hoped the next one on the list was going to be easier.

They entered another perfectly square building and began checking the names on office and laboratory doors.

‘Jesus,’ Moray said, peering through one of the windows, ‘is this what a cancer lab looks like?’

‘You sound disappointed.’

‘I’d kind of expected it to be more exciting.’

‘A lab’s a lab. Even the robots are dull. We once had an open day at the Forensic Science Service where staff could bring their kids in to see what Mummy and Daddy did all day.’

‘Yeah?’

‘You have never seen so many disappointed children.’

Moray pinched the end of his cigarette and slid what remained of it back in the packet. ‘I feel badly lied to by television,’ he said.

They turned a corner. Ten metres further on Reuben slowed. The floor had changed from interlinked and polished wooden tiles to a hard-wearing grey linoleum. A thick pile of yellowing papers sat on a waist-high shelf, and a line of freezers narrowed the corridor. This was a part of the university obviously not toured by prospective students and their parents, a section that quietly tried to forget about educating undergraduate minds in favour of getting on with full-time research. Reuben checked the name on the door and peered through its glass partition. Inside, a female scientist was chatting on the phone, leaning back in her chair. From her relative youth, and from the fact that she looked fresh
and
unjaded, Reuben guessed she was a Ph.D. student. He flashed back to his own three years of training, exciting times in the early days of forensic science, molecular biology just beginning to stretch possibilities and to crack cases that would never previously have been solved.

‘This place looks even worse,’ Moray grumbled.

‘I can assure you that this kind of lab is a lot more exciting than proper forensics labs.’ Reuben peered at the shelves and the equipment. ‘You could have a lot of fun here – access to human tumours, interesting machines, incubators full of immortal cancer cells.’

Moray frowned disdainfully. ‘You need to get out more.’