Breaking Point (35 page)

Reuben glanced up at Lucy, who had followed him into the kitchen. She made him a cup of tea, and while he sipped it she said, ‘I’m glad you’re here.’

‘Likewise.’

‘I need some help with the table.’

Reuben blew across the surface of his drink. ‘How come you brought it here in the first place?’ he asked.

‘Shaun didn’t have a kitchen table. Bachelor living, you know, meals eaten in front of the TV.’

Reuben struggled for a second to see Shaun as a bachelor. He had only ever encountered him as the man who at some point began fucking his wife. Clearly, his house had benefited from Lucy’s attention. Everything was efficiently ordered, labelled and demarcated. Even moving house was a triumph of organization.

He ran his fingers over the soft wooden table again. It had an archaeology, he thought, a previous existence outside this ruthlessly designed kitchen with its cold granite surfaces. It was an organic object with indelible marks.
Marks
he and Lucy and Joshua had made together before everything had gone wrong. He still remembered driving it home from Ikea on the roof of a CID pool car just after they had bought their house. He guessed even the marks from that event would be there if he looked close enough.

‘The legs are bolted on, aren’t they?’ he said.

Lucy nodded. ‘We need to flip it over and undo it.’

Reuben edged round it and stood facing Lucy at the opposite end. For a second their eyes locked. Reuben saw flashes of the countless meals they had shared together in the kitchen of the house Lucy was now moving back to.

‘You ready?’ he asked.

They tipped the table on to its back and Reuben set about removing the legs. Joshua climbed out of his box and sat in the middle.

‘Boat, Daddy,’ he said excitedly. ‘Boat.’

Reuben glanced up at him. Innocent fun, the best kind there was. And he was missing it most of the time. Joshua was looking better every day. He was recuperating on the fast-forward time-scale of early childhood. Illnesses easily picked up but quickly shaken off. Squinting at his son, Reuben knew it would be hard to guess that he
had
been acutely leukaemic just a few months ago. His hair was coming back thick and fast, and he was gaining weight.

Joshua swung against one of the legs, and Reuben couldn’t bring himself to ask him not to. Instead, he adjusted the spanner Lucy had passed him and attacked each of the four bolts holding the thing together. A cheap table, functional and practical. Nothing ornate or complicated about it. But somehow, for Reuben, it embodied his relationship with Lucy and Joshua. As he removed the first leg he pictured it being set up again in their old house, transported from one kitchen in the capital to another. After he had abandoned the marital home, the table had gone too. And now it was travelling back.

He recalled the rest of the semi-detached property. The study at the rear, with its drawers stuffed full of Reuben’s paintings. Joshua’s nursery with his name spelled on the door in animal letters. The long thin garden at the rear that he had mowed once a week through the summer. The bedroom where he had found evidence of Shaun Graves’s presence – two dark hairs he had taken to the lab and genotyped. The indentations in the plaster where he had punched the living-room wall. A tiny patch of London where several
years
of his life seemed to exist in suspended animation, triumphs and heartbreaks hanging in the still Victorian air.

He was aware that Lucy was watching him, and he anticipated the next question.

‘So, Reuben,’ she said, bending closer to him, ‘it’s make or break time. The lodgers have left, and apparently the old place isn’t in too bad a state. The van’s coming in ninety minutes to pick up all our stuff. Are you with me or not? I can’t ask you again.’

Joshua tried to jump on his back while he crouched with the spanner in his hand. Reuben made a play of fighting him off, Joshua clinging tightly to his left arm.

‘One hour. That’s all I need.’

‘Do you have much stuff?’

‘Not really. Sold some, ditched some, the rest in storage. You kept all the big stuff.’ Reuben removed the third leg and passed it to Lucy. ‘Like this thing, for instance.’

‘And am I allowed to ask what the hell you will be doing during this hour?’

‘There’s someone I need to see.’

‘Where are you going?’

‘Just out. I’ll be back soon.’

‘And then?’

Reuben unfastened the final table leg. He leaned it against the counter and stood up, lifting Joshua as he did so. He gripped him tight and then sat him down on the black work surface. He picked up his tea, which was still hot, and took a mouthful. When he put it back on the granite counter he noticed it hadn’t left any evidence of its time there.

‘And then I promise I’ll give you a straight yes or no.’

23

ON THE WAY
there, Reuben noted that the city was quickly getting back to normal. He passed two news-stands, both with identical headlines: Tube Killer Caught. Word was literally out on the street. Traffic was moving with relative ease. There was a sense of freedom and possibility in the air, and he swallowed several lungfuls of it. But against that there was also a forlorn inevitability. He pictured bicycles being put back into sheds to gather dust and felt sad that the frantic race of London had begun again in earnest.

Reuben took a bus for a handful of stops and walked the rest. Paddington wasn’t far. There was so much on his mind that he let it wander, losing itself in the sights and sounds of the capital. Masses of people all moving at the same time. A constant
and
perpetual relocation of human beings around a large area of concrete and tarmac.

St Mary’s Hospital was as it had been just a few days ago. Navine Ayuk was doubtless in the pharmacy, wondering why he hadn’t been attacked for a couple of days, worrying that the next episode was imminent. As Commander Thorner had said, these men needed to be approached and spoken to, maybe offered counselling, just like a cancer patient or an HIV sufferer or a carrier of a genetic illness. They had to be reassured about the now, and guided about the possible future they all had written in their genes.

Reuben turned along the same wide corridor he had walked down with Moray. After a couple of minutes he approached the pharmacy, scanning the area for Navine. He stared through the glass of the reception area where patients handed over prescriptions but couldn’t see him anywhere. Maybe he had nipped out for a break, doubtless checking his surroundings, looking out for two men with casual clothing and baseball jackets. Or maybe he was in the back, hunting for someone’s medication. Reuben couldn’t help wondering how close Navine was to his breaking point, how badly he had been pushed by Grainger and Williamson under Charlie Baker’s guidance.

Reuben kept walking. He reached a lift and took it to the third floor. He followed a corridor with pink walls and a light-blue vinyl floor until it opened out at a communal area with a desk. He gave his name and was pointed to a side door. The door was closed and Reuben knocked lightly on it. Almost immediately it was pulled open by an unhealthy-looking nurse with a tired and hassled face.

‘Visitor?’ she asked.

Reuben nodded.

‘Go easy on her. Ten minutes maximum. All right?’

Reuben entered as the nurse left. Sarah was sitting up in bed, propped up by a huge pillow. She attempted a smile, which looked more like a grimace. Reuben walked over and sat down on a wooden chair next to her. He noted the two drips, a cannula in the crook of each arm, some bruising around her neck, the puffiness beneath her eyes, the pallor of her skin with its roaming blue veins visible at the surface.

‘You look great,’ he said.

‘Fuck off,’ she answered.

‘No, really.’

Sarah cleared her throat. Her voice was croaky and hoarse. ‘Thanks for coming.’

‘Not at all.’ Reuben raised his eyebrows at her. ‘And Christ, have I got some news to tell you. The last twenty-four hours have been—’

‘Don’t bother,’ Sarah said. She pointed with her eyes at the BlackBerry sitting on her bedside cabinet. ‘No bloody escape, even on my deathbed. Emails from Commander Thorner, from Mina, from every bloody member of the Met, give or take.’

‘So you know about Charlie?’

‘All about it.’

‘Still can’t believe it. I guess he got carried away.’

‘You have a genius for understatement, Dr Maitland.’

‘And what do you know about Crannell?’ Reuben ran a finger over the knuckles of his left hand. They were sore to the touch. ‘I mean, apart from that he tried to kill you.’

‘Took a bit of a pounding, I’ve heard. Discharged and under arrest pending a detailed investigation into an as yet undetermined number of Tube killings.’

‘Any news on Danny Pavey?’ Reuben asked.

‘Couple of sightings in the same area. I don’t think it will be long before we have him.’

‘Jesus, they haven’t left you alone, have they?’

‘That’s the evil of email,’ Sarah answered. ‘And it’s very difficult not to read them when people are taking the trouble to send them.’

Reuben inspected Sarah’s face again. She was putting on a brave show. There was a slight flatness to the way she spoke, like she was down and was having difficulty lifting herself back up again. Reuben didn’t blame her. She had been as close to death as it was possible to be.

‘Thanks,’ she said.

‘What for?’

‘For making me drink whatever it was in the animal house. Some sort of chelating agent, the consultant said.’

‘EDTA. Common lab chemical. But I suddenly remembered that it can be used to mop up arsenic compounds in the body if given early enough. Who would have thought A level chemistry could have been so useful?’

‘Not me,’ Sarah croaked. She struggled to sit up higher, fighting the tight constraint of her hospital sheets. ‘And now, Dr Maitland, I want an answer.’

‘What to?’

‘Now Charlie’s gone, we need someone to coordinate GeneCrime. To put it back together. To run your old unit on a permanent basis.’

‘And?’

‘Now’s the moment when you say yes or no. And I hope to God you say yes.’

Reuben looked away from Sarah. Somewhere, three or four miles away, Lucy and Joshua were about to travel back to their old house. He glanced at his watch. He had asked for an hour to think things over, and that was forty-five minutes ago.

Slightly south of that, the GeneCrime unit was doubtless considering the jaw-dropping news that Charlie Baker had been behind a series of attacks on men across the capital. Fresh cases would be coming in, crime scenes that needed attending, people killing and mutilating and needing to be stopped. And next to him in a hospital bed, Sarah Hirst was asking him to make a decision. Home life or work life?

Reuben stood up. He scratched his face, rubbed his eyes. Really, he could do with some sleep. A dysfunctional family at home, or a dysfunctional family at work? That was the stark choice. He turned to Sarah and opened his mouth to speak.

‘Go on,’ she prompted.

‘I’m not taking Abner’s old office,’ he said. ‘Even the plants can’t stand it there.’

Sarah beamed up at him. ‘You sure?’

‘No,’ Reuben answered slowly. ‘No I’m not. But what the hell. One more time can’t hurt.’

‘What about Lucy? What are you going to tell her?’

‘That my smart new deputy Mina will be soaking up the pressure, giving me a hell of a lot of time to spend with my family.’

Sarah shrugged, still smiling. ‘You’ve got a deal, Dr Maitland,’ she said. Her BlackBerry beeped twice and then lay silent. ‘Welcome home.’

From one drop of blood, one human hair, or one single cell

The forensic science behind
Breaking Point

Imagine for a second that you are the killer in this novel
.

You are murdering people on the Underground at will. You are smart. You know that forensic science is a powerful beast. So you take precautions. Gloves, no sustained contact with the victim, dodging CCTV cameras and witnesses. But still, the net is closing. Because as careful as you are, it is almost impossible to be careful enough.

I quite like numbers, and here’s a big one. As a normal human being, your body is constructed from 100,000,000,000,000 cells. This is a truly jaw-dropping number. 100,000,000,000,000. One with fourteen noughts. One hundred thousand billion. The planet, over-crowded as it is, can only muster six billion people. To put this into perspective, your body therefore has sixteen thousand times more cells in it than there are people on Earth. And drop just one of those cells at a crime scene, and it could be enough to reveal your entire identity. Because each one comes stamped with your unique code.

Human cells are tiny worlds. The events that happen every minute within them are as complex and intricate as anything happening in the universe. All of these processes are driven directly or indirectly by our genes. This genetic information is what makes all of us different. It’s what distinguishes the identities of killers and victims. And a large part of forensic science is dedicated to exploiting these differences.

While forensics covers an incredibly diverse range of
scientific
endeavour, including psychology, ballistics, botany, anatomy and anthropology, the primary aim of the DNA side of forensic science is to pattern match. Identity is the critical component of any crime.
How
it was carried out,
where
it was carried out and
why
it was carried out are all much less important than
who
carried it out.

This ability to match minute samples of fluids or hairs to whole human beings became possible after Professor Alec Jeffreys’ first scientific paper on DNA fingerprinting was published in spring 1985. In it he detailed how humans had unique regions of repetitive DNA which could give an effective fingerprint for genetic analysis.

In fact, the first time Prof Jeffreys’ DNA fingerprinting technique was used, it was not in crime detection, but to settle an immigration dispute. A boy attempting to reenter the UK from Ghana was detained at Customs due to an allegedly forged passport, prompting the question of whether the boy was who he claimed to be. Genetic profiling of his family in the UK proved that he was, and the technique subsequently led to a change in the UK Immigration Act.