Breaking Point (17 page)

‘Who’s in the garden?’ Izzie asked her sister. ‘Is it Daddy?’

‘I don’t know,’ Lydia answered.

‘Should we ask Mummy?’

Lydia called to her mum. ‘Mummy?’

A slightly irritated voice came from somewhere upstairs. ‘What is it? I’m changing Tiffany.’

‘Mummy, there’s some men in the garden.’

‘What men?’

‘We don’t know, Mummy.’

‘It might be Daddy,’ Izzie piped up.

There was a pause, then the rumble of stockinged feet on the stairs. Caroline Crannell appeared in the room, carrying the bare-bottomed eighteen-month-old Tiffany over her shoulder. The garden was pitch black. Caroline saw only herself and her three daughters caught in the reflection of the floor-to-ceiling glass doors.

‘Now what are you two talking about?’ she said with a smile. ‘Daddy isn’t in the garden, and nor is anybody else.’

‘Where is Daddy?’ Lydia asked.

Caroline Crannell sighed. ‘Not this again,’ she said under her breath. ‘Daddy will be here to see you at the weekend.’

‘Why is it only at the weekend?’

‘Well, as we’ve discussed many times, Mummy and Daddy agreed that Daddy would stay in his flat and we’d all stay here. And then Daddy can come over and visit, can’t he? And we can all have some fun.’

Caroline dragged the words out, for maybe the
thousandth
time over the last twelve months. She dreaded her youngest learning to speak, asking the same depressing and defeating question over and over again. Daddy had left because he became impossible to live with. His research, all that he had really cared about, heading down the tubes, family life with a new baby and two young daughters becoming too much for him. His moods, his distance, his impenetrability. The solution being a long and painful separation. But now things were easier. Not easy, just easier.

‘But if Daddy was here all the time—’

Caroline put her hand on Lydia’s shoulder. She squeezed hard enough to stop the question in mid stream. The outside security light had just clicked on. And there, fifteen paces away, two men were staring at her. Large men with balaclavas. Starting to walk slowly forward. Angry eyes and gloved fists. Caroline was frozen to the spot.

‘Mummy, they’re scaring me now,’ Lydia said, taking a step closer to her.

The men continued to approach.

Izzie let out a small scream.

Something in Caroline clicked. Maternal instinct. A voice in her head shouting my children are under threat, I will die to save them. A rush of adrenalin kickstarting her body. She dashed
forward
and pushed the top and bottom double glazing locks closed. Then she spun round looking for the phone and spotted it on the dining table. She picked up Izzie and carried her under her arm, Tiffany still over her shoulder. ‘Lydia,’ she shouted, ‘come with me.’ She retrieved the phone and raced out of the living room and into the kitchen. Caroline turned the key in the back door, and slid the bolt home. Through the small panel in the door she saw that they were still approaching. She knew what their unhurried pace was supposed to tell her. That they were in no rush. That they were in control. That they were coming in whether she wanted them to or not.

She paced back into the living room punching 999 into the keypad. The security light went off. She couldn’t see them, but Caroline wanted them to watch what she was doing. Silence in between the rings, a dead space filled with growing panic. ‘Come on,’ she said, her mouth tight, her teeth grinding. ‘Come on.’ Lydia began to cry.

Caroline peered out through the expansive double glazing. It was still black but she thought she glimpsed movement. And then there was an almighty crash, a splintering bang, a violent crack booming and echoing through the room. The outside light came on, illuminating everything.
She
dropped the phone. The whole double sliding door had been smashed. The glass had fractured. It clung to its metal frame, like a shattered car windscreen. She saw their shapes distorted through the mosaic, refracted, unmoving forms, areas of black against the brightly lit shards and splinters. All of her daughters started to scream.

Caroline bent down to pick up the phone. A voice was saying, ‘Hello? Emergency services. Can you hear me?’ She straightened, Tiffany’s weight making it difficult. And they were gone. The light flicked off again. Caroline started to say the words into the receiver, trying to stay calm, the last sixty seconds catching up, her children screeching, her hands shaking, her voice trembling as she asked for the police.

10

‘IT’S TRADITION,’ MINA
answered. ‘It’s your birthday. We have to celebrate it. Even in the middle of a manhunt.’

Slouching next to her at the elongated wooden bar, Bernie Harrison said, ‘When aren’t we in the middle of a manhunt?’

‘You know what I mean. Besides, if you didn’t want to catch serial killers you should have ignored Reuben’s head-hunting and stayed at Oxford.’

‘
Cambridge
.’

‘Whichever.’

‘And that’s precisely the problem of being head-hunted,’ Bernie said, scratching his beard. ‘It makes your head feel flattered. And where your head goes, the rest of you follows.’

‘You sound almost bitter. You pining for those dreamy spires?’

‘That’s
Oxford
,’ Bernie answered sharply. ‘And admit it, Mina. The pay’s awful in forensics. Compared to what I could get in a proper job.’

‘You don’t see this as a proper job? How much more proper could it possibly be?’

‘You know what I mean.’ Bernie squinted at Mina. It was a cold look of appraisal, an academic scowl, she thought. ‘Or maybe you don’t, now you’ve been promoted.’

‘It’s only temporary. And it’s hardly wheel-barrows full of cash. But you don’t do this line of work for the money, Bernie.’

‘No? What do I do it for?’

Mina’s shrug got lost somewhere in the broad shoulders of her oversized coat. ‘Only you can answer that,’ she said.

Bernie stared off into the middle distance and Mina let her eyes wander around the gloomy pub. Dusty wooden floors, yellowing walls, a jukebox turned down low. A place the general public usually avoided but coppers loved. The closest drinking venue to GeneCrime, the one the whole unit celebrated in when cases were cracked. Mina thought back to the last time she had been here. The week before last, Commander Abner’s wake.
Talking
to Sarah, saying hello to Reuben, meaning to leave early but not quite getting round to it.

She watched as several of the forensics team trooped in, late from another twelve-hour shift. Simon Jankowski, Paul Mackay, the new guy Alex Brunton, Birgit Kasper, Judith Meadows bringing up the rear. An awkward and disjointed lot, ill at ease, often over-exuberant outside the lab, as if temporarily free from scientific constraint. She took their orders and waved a note in the direction of the barman, who was giving his full attention to a newspaper spread out on the bar in front of him.

‘Sit down,’ she said to Bernie and the others. ‘I’ll bring them over.’

Mina watched them make a meal out of selecting a table big enough for everyone. She felt uncomfortable and restrained. A few months ago she would have been joining in, one of the team, happy to be out of GeneCrime. But now, as the acting boss, she was aware of subtle differences. Small nuances, her opinions carrying a weight they had previously been free of, ordinary utterances taken more seriously, light-hearted remarks dragged out of context. She was gradually beginning to believe that being in charge of
people
came a poor second to being equal with them.

The barman started to assemble the round, taking his time, returning to his paper while the beers slowly settled and optics recharged themselves. Mina carried each drink over when it was ready. She listened to snippets of their conversation, fragments of sentences punctuated by her time at the bar.

She heard Simon Jankowski, dressed in one of his perpetual series of colourful shirts, say, ‘And what the hell is it with Toxicology? How difficult can it be to identify a toxin? It’s their fucking job. It would be like if we couldn’t identify a gene …’

She caught Birgit Kasper, her Scandinavian voice as plain as the logo-less clothes she always wore, saying, ‘I don’t get this thing with the Lithuanians. Surely they can do post-mortem, test for arsenic residues, let us know if it links. We exhume people all the time …’

She picked out Paul Mackay, in his tight-fitting top and Dolce and Gabbana glasses, saying, ‘But I’ve got a bad feeling about this one. Three deaths and we’re nowhere near him. It’s like the killer’s become invisible or something …’

She overheard Bernie say, ‘Gross forensics is the only solution. Hairs and fibres. We’re not
going
to do this on DNA or bio-informatics. He needs to make a mistake, a microscopic mistake, like they all do eventually …’

She tuned in to Judith, holding her swollen stomach, bemoaning the day, saying, ‘One more double shift standing at the bench and I swear I’m going to have varicose veins for the rest of my life …’

She listened as Alex Brunton said, in his slightly effeminate voice, ‘I guess I wouldn’t have volunteered if I’d known how much training it needed. Three weeks in CID with DI Baker, another three in Forensics with you lot. And now everything’s gone ballistic. I mean, please hurry back from maternity leave, Judith.’

When Mina finally brought her own drink over and sat down, Simon was talking again. ‘It’s just not working. We need something else. It’s hopeless and depressing. Someone we know, a friend or a relative, could be next. It just seems so bloody random.’

Bernie took another slug of his beer. ‘Right,’ he said. ‘Seeing as it’s my birthday, and you lot are forcing me to celebrate against my will, who wants another?’ He stood up and scratched his belly through his jumper. ‘And after this one, no more talk about the case. No toxicology, no
strategies
and no bloody Lithuanians. Just proper normal conversation.’

Paul Mackay finished his vodka and Coke and held up his glass. Simon nodded his head. Judith placed a hand over her orange juice. Birgit smiled. Alex Brunton hesitated, then said, ‘Another bottle of Sol, please.’

Mina sipped her white wine, revelling in the fumes. ‘Why not,’ she answered. ‘It’s this or go back to work and fail to catch the killer.’ Almost immediately she regretted her words. Flippancy and leadership seemed to jar once again. ‘I mean …’ She left her words hanging. In fact, she would rather be at home, alone, the TV on, the problems of the world over for another day. But it was too early to bail out. She was stuck with this disparate bunch of forensic scientists, stressed Ph.D.s in the grip of another serial investigation. Workloads ramping up, activity becoming more frantic. These were decent people under indecent stress. Bright and overworked individuals struggling to be team players. She swallowed some more wine and watched Bernie walk to the bar, wondering what the hell went on in the mind of someone who got their kicks from murdering random people on the Tube.

11

DON’T COME NEAR
me. Don’t come fucking near me. Don’t touch me. What I’ve got here in my hand will finish you. A couple of minutes and it will all be over. Painful, choking, burning death. Being stripped from the inside. Slowed down, eaten up, stopped.

He feels the hypodermic in his hand, his gloves sliding over the sheer plastic surface. He twitches his neck and shivers a warm shiver.

He closes his eyes, rocking with the train, daring one of them to touch him. Come on, he pleads silently, bump into me. Breach my sacred space. Invade the invisible wall around me.

The train is quieter than usual at this time, and he wonders whether people are afraid, whether they are starting to avoid the Underground.
It
doesn’t matter. If half the city died the Tube would still be full at rush hour. No alternative. Hundreds of thousands of people with no other way of getting home.

He slides the opaque plastic guard off the needle. A very fine gauge. You would barely feel the pinprick. One of those needles you sometimes get injections from, the short slender ones you have to check are actually piercing your skin while the doctor talks to you and distracts you. No one has noticed so far, or cried out. That had been his biggest fear. But he had tested it on himself, pricking his skin with the tiny gauge. The back of his hand, the side of his leg, the flesh of his arm. Finding the sites that were most immune to sensation. And even though he knew he was doing it, the pain had been barely perceptible, a scratch at best.

The needle is unsheathed. Careful does it, he tells himself. A few drops will be enough. He knows that no one surrounding him can see it. The slim five-millilitre syringe is partially up his sleeve, the hypodermic point resting between his forefinger and thumb. One slip and he will pierce his own skin. And with a sudden jolt from the train, it is more than possible that he could accidentally push the plunger. The danger excites
him
. This is not just about the passengers on the train, this is about his own survival as well. Killing people is easy. Taking risks with deadly poisons, putting yourself in the front line, that’s something worthwhile.

The train slows and he opens his eyes. Come on. The people who trample over you, who force you out of the way, who grind you under their feet. Those are the ones. They deserve everything they get. The society that rubs up against you, barges into you, pressures you, pushes you. Pushes and pushes you until you have to push back, a movement of the thumb, a force in the opposite direction.

He feels the thin metal of the needle. It is starting to get warm from his fingers.

Life is random, he reminds himself. We just think it has order. It doesn’t. We’re like riders on a bucking bronco, barely holding on, balancing, trying to stay upright as the thing gets faster and faster. Random, random, random. You could get hit by a bus. You could wake up with a terminal disease. Or you could die on a Tube train. That is life. And he is merely fighting back against the overwhelming tide by taking a few of them with him as his head is forced underwater and he slowly drowns.