Breaking Point (27 page)

Sarah whispered something to Mina Ali, and then to DI Baker. James looked around the room,
waiting
for someone to say something to him. As far as he could tell, they were underground, with no natural light. He had barely paid attention in the lift, too distracted and on edge. The window at the end was clearly for observation purposes. The rest of the room was standard office fare: a thin green carpet, off-white walls, wood-effect table, padded blue chairs, a suspended ceiling with embedded strip lights, a couple of air conditioning vents. In short, hell. An artificial environment, a laboratory of interrogation. Nothing to distract you and take your mind elsewhere. Just anonymous blankness staring back from each wall.

In the absence of direct conversation, a nervous feeling burrowed into his stomach making him feel cold and uncomfortable. He had never liked the police at the best of times. Sure, he called them when things went wrong or strangers attacked him. But there was just something about them, their perceived superiority, the way they looked at him as if they knew him.

DI Baker cleared his throat.

‘OK, James. This is how we’re going to play it. We’re going to talk straight with you, and you’re going to talk straight with us. We’re going to find out what we can piece together. And none of this leaves GeneCrime. All right?’

James Crannell nodded. He was willing to do anything to get out of this windowless building.

And then he looked back at DI Baker, at DCI Sarah Hirst, at Dr Mina Ali, and realized that there was a lot of trouble still to come.

9

IT HAD ONLY
been a couple of days, but seeing Moray again felt like running into a long-lost friend. Reuben had been travelling the city in seemingly an endless loop, and it was starting to take its toll. From Lucy’s house to the lab for a few hours of restless sleep, to meeting up with Mina before nine, to going to see Dr Crannell at the university, to leaving before CID arrived, to joining Sarah at a café close to GeneCrime, to now walking out of the Tube station eight hundred metres from the lab. He was aching and hungry, but the sight of Moray waiting for him raised his spirits. Reuben tried not to let it show.

‘Thanks for meeting me,’ he said.

Moray shrugged, his untidy overcoat rippling
and
creasing with the movement. ‘Pleasure’s all mine.’

‘Let’s walk and talk.’

‘Just as long as you don’t ask me to chew gum.’

‘Only we’ve got some work to do. Turns out our baseball cap duo are coppers. We need to find all the punters they’ve damaged, explain what’s been happening, and hope to fuck we can calm them down. I’ve just seen what one of the milder ones is capable of. Dr Crannell nearly killed a man. Christ knows what some of the others will be like.’

‘Maclyn Margulis, you mean?’

‘A massive head start in terms of personality disorder.’

‘Plus he’s armed, and has twenty stones of steroid case for back-up,’ Moray groused under his breath. ‘Like I get all the good jobs.’

Reuben peered at Moray side on as they made their way through scruffy back streets of futile graffiti and shattered glass. All around, tired old concrete was stained with uneven black streaks. They headed towards the rundown housing estate being methodically torn apart by mechanical claws.

‘You don’t look so happy,’ he said.

‘Fucking traffic is starting to get to me.’

‘So what do you propose?’

‘We take the back roads. Alleyways. Residential streets well off the beaten path.’ Moray waved his hand in front of him. ‘People round here seem to be coping.’

Reuben took in the scuffed tarmac, the litter blowing along the pavement, a couple of skinny trees shedding their leaves, a three-storey council block showing its age. A few cars passed in quick succession. He watched them stop at the end, trying to funnel into a clogged junction. ‘But most of the small roads will be fucked as well.’

‘Nah. We’ll manage. As long as we stay away from the busy areas.’

‘Moray, this is London. It’s all busy. And everyone will be having the same thought.’

‘They don’t all drive like I do.’

‘I guess turning back and using the Underground is out of the question?’

‘I don’t do public transport at the best of times. And when there’s a cold-blooded serial killer running amok down there, not a fucking chance.’

‘Either way it’s not going to be easy. But we’ve got to get to these guys, and quick.’

‘Come on, we’ll drive. It’ll be fun. Where’s your spirit of adventure?’

‘I’m rapidly running out of it,’ Reuben answered.

They turned into the estate. In the middle distance stood three slabs of grey flats. Some windows broken, others still intact. Reuben glanced up towards the third floor of the middle block. It had seemed an ideal place for the lab. For months, they had been out of reach, unobserved, hidden in the centre of a failed estate in Mile End. But things were changing quickly. Reuben sighed out loud.

‘All right, my fat friend,’ he said. ‘You go get the car. I’ll grab a couple of things from the lab.’

‘Who are we going to find first?’

‘I’ve been doing some thinking. I reckon we should be having a serious word with Navine Ayuk.’

‘Mr Pharmacist?’

‘The very same.’

‘Why? He’s safe now, isn’t he?’

‘Maybe it’s not his safety we need to worry about.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Just a hunch. I’ll tell you in the car.’

Moray kept walking, heading round the back of the flats. The area of available parking was getting smaller and further away as JCBs ripped
up
huge swathes of tarmac. Reuben loitered, standing on one foot, propped against a wall, rubbing the sole of his free shoe against the rough brick surface. Something was bugging him. An idea that everything was not as it seemed. The notion that the truth was going to elude him now that Detective Grainger was lying in a hospital somewhere. The attacks would stop. Several men in the city with unstable genotypes would go about their business, maybe becoming homicidal at some point in the future, maybe not. But whoever had planned all this, whoever had combed the databases and passed out the information, had time to cover his tracks. That had been Sarah’s mistake – handling it in house. The perpetrator would know everything that was going on. The whole scheme might never be fully understood or chronicled. He frowned. The big idea of Psychopath Selection was to identify people at risk and to counsel and inform. Now, it had been used for very different reasons. But what?

Reuben needed some addresses from the lab. But he remained where he was, thinking hard, trying to piece everything together, his brain awash with places and names, conversations with Sarah and Lucy, the faces of Navine Ayuk, of Ewan
Beacher
, of Maclyn Margulis, of the forensics team at GeneCrime, of the whole tangle of the last week of his life. Contractors in fluorescent jackets walked up and down, directing diggers, shovelling stones, talking on mobiles, leaning their weight on pneumatic drills. Day-Glo movement in front of his eyes, vivid images in his head. A Ford Transit pulled up. Patterns and sequences, just like any case he had ever been involved in. Threads of knowledge, streams of information, all entangled and intertwined. And somewhere within, a plain and simple strand of truth.

Reuben turned to walk up the stairs. Moray would be back in a minute, his thirsty Saab exhaling fumes, impatient to be on its way. Something stopped him. A tightness around his upper arm. A huge physical blow. The air slammed out of him. His ribs felt crushed and broken. He struggled for breath. He was aware of being pulled up by the scruff of his jacket. Into the back of the Transit. Scratching along the metal floor. A large bulk pinning him down. Looking up. Valdek Kosonovski staring down at him, holding on to the sides of the van, his boot pressing hard into Reuben’s chest.

Reuben grunted, still fighting for air. ‘Working for the other side now, Valdek?’

‘Kieran Hobbs is dead. But before he died he told me where your lab was. Just a matter of catching you here.’

‘Come on, Valdek. What’s this going to achieve?’

‘Orders are orders,’ Valdek growled. ‘And when Maclyn barks, I bite.’

‘But you don’t have to—’

A fist smashed into Reuben’s jaw. He saw an explosion of light behind his eyes. The van changed gear and took a corner at speed. Reuben started bleeding on to the rusty metal floor.

10

THE VOICE BARKED
at Reuben, echoing and magnifying as it bounced off the bare walls of the room.

‘You see, when you stamp on the underworld and it doesn’t squeak, you start to wonder. You start to think back. You start to remember that irritating fucking twat who tried to nail you. You start connecting the dots. The weird shit, like the stuff he tells you about your genes. Things to mess with your head. And then things begin to happen. My car gets smashed up twice. An unannounced visit to my private headquarters. My dog gets fucking ripped from ear to ear. And you start to see the pattern. The one constant. The single thing that links all those events. And you get to thinking that maybe this isn’t about other
crews
wanting to take you on. This is about one lone sick fuck who couldn’t touch you as a copper and now as a pathetic runt on the outside of the force thinks he can still come after you. Tell me I’m wrong.’

Reuben didn’t answer. He had been here, he guessed, seven or eight hours. He had no idea if it was dark outside now or getting light again. Maclyn Margulis was breathing hard, hands on hips, his cheeks flushed, his eyes maniacal and on fire. The ceiling of the room was pressing down, the lighting low, the walls so dark Reuben couldn’t see them. This was what the CID photos had never shown him. The fact that, buried four storeys down, cut off by a thick metal shutter, Maclyn Margulis’s headquarters felt like it had been hacked out of the rock, carved into the black foundations of the city.

Maclyn’s voice continued to boom around the space. ‘You come after me, but you can’t get me. So you break my property, hurt my dog, like some sort of fucking kid.’

Reuben tried to clear his throat. It wasn’t easy. A thin length of tubing had been forced down his oesophagus. The back of his head was throbbing. He guessed the hose had been inserted some time when he had been knocked out. His arms
were
fixed behind at the wrist, his legs tied at the ankles. He could talk, but the words rattled against the clear plastic tube.

‘You have to ask yourself who would have anything to gain, Maclyn? Who would benefit from killing the mutt?’

Maclyn bored into him with his eyes. ‘You did. You fucking killed him. And that’s Ricochet Lad to you.’ Maclyn held Reuben’s gaze, unblinking, brooding, menacing. Beside him, a brown cardboard box sat on an otherwise empty table. Maclyn rested a hand on it, running his fingers over the surface. The dead greyhound lay beneath the table, swollen around the stomach. ‘Before I rescued him, I looked him up,’ he said evenly. ‘Won some races, that boy did. And then for some reason he stopped. Just like me. South London Under-21 boxing champ till my wrist got fractured. All of a sudden, it’s over. Things aren’t quite the same. No one wants you any more. Nowhere to go.’ Maclyn tapped the knuckles of a fist into his forehead several times in quick succession. ‘Nowhere to fucking go. And then what do you do?’

Valdek stood impassively beside him, watching, interested, his arms folded across his chest, ominous bulges in the sleeves of his sweatshirt. Reuben sensed a purple blackness at his feet.
Recent
blood scuffed into the floor. Terrifying images came to him of Valdek dislocating a man’s shoulders one at a time, bones popping out of their sockets – the single time he had witnessed him in full flow. Valdek walked in a slow, deliberate semicircle to stand behind him. Reuben heard the metallic rattle of a chain. He knew he had to say something, had to talk his way out of whatever was about to happen to him. Maclyn had endured two weeks of intimidation. He was wound so tight he could barely keep still. And a wired Maclyn was a dangerous beast.

‘Either way, I think I know the answer,’ Reuben said. ‘Who has been attacking you.’

‘I’m listening.’

Reuben swallowed, the length of tubing almost making him gag, his voice sounding distorted and unfamiliar. ‘There’s a police officer, based somewhere in Tottenham. Detective Simon Grainger. He’s been behind a series of attacks on men with your genotype.’

‘And why the fuck would he do that?’

‘I don’t know,’ Reuben said ruefully. If he knew why, he’d have half a chance of persuading Maclyn that he had nothing to do with any of this. He glanced at the cardboard box again, wondering. ‘I really don’t.’

Maclyn seemed to change. He began to pace back and forth, staring into the ceiling just inches above his head.

‘A copper attacking me? Fuck off. Is that the best you can do? It’s you, Maitland. You’re the cunt behind this. It always has been you. That fucking old couple who got shot in half on their doorstep. Trying to fuck me for that, and anything else you could.’

‘Look, I’ve been trying to warn you. Someone in the police wants you—’

‘Enough!’ Maclyn screamed. He held his hand up, fingers splayed, the flesh pulled tight. Still staring into the ceiling and walking around in front of Reuben, he began to talk quietly, taking his time over the words. ‘You’re aware of the rudiments of training a dog? I had to do a lot of work with Rico when I first rescued him. He just wanted to run off, chase rabbits, do what greyhounds do. This was not a pet, it was an athlete. But you put a choker on them, they soon learn. They quickly understand that their breathing is something you control. You have the ultimate say in whether they suffocate or not. So your average dog begins to stop doing what he wants, and does what you want. Your will becomes his will. Simple. Same principle with
humans
. Only if they’re smart, they get it slightly quicker.’

Suddenly, Reuben was aware of something moving quickly over his head, dragging down over his face, tightening around his already uncomfortable neck.