Breaking Point (6 page)

‘Well, talk to IT, see what they’ve got to say. In the meantime, keep an eye on it. This is something maybe to come back to when things calm down.’

Sarah smiled, her lips staying closed, her brow creased, her face slightly forward, an expression that said the meeting was over. Mina took the hint and retreated from the office. Sarah watched her go, frowning, sighing to herself. Then she picked up the phone and dialled a number.

11

REUBEN ANSWERED THE
call with a quiet ‘Yes?’ Even though the windows of the car were up he kept his voice low and whispered the word. It was a hard habit to shift. Through the windscreen, the steel-shuttered door ten metres away remained tightly closed. In the three hours that he and Moray had sat watching, two cars had entered and one had left. But none of them had carried the man they were interested in.

‘Where are you?’ Sarah Hirst asked.

‘Surveillance,’ Reuben answered.

‘You’re not in the force any more. You don’t do that sort of thing.’

Reuben grunted. ‘It’s precisely because I’m no longer in the force that I
can
do this sort of thing.
Particularly
without a senior officer telling me not to.’

Sarah was quiet for a second. ‘Who are you after?’

‘Maclyn Margulis.’

‘Margulis? Christ. So let me guess. You couldn’t get to him when you were at GeneCrime, so now you’re having a go, all vigilante style.’

‘Something like that.’

‘And who’s your back-up? You got your fat friend with you?’

Reuben raised his eyebrows at Moray. ‘That’s big-boned,’ he said. ‘And a dodgy metabolism. So, what can I do for you?’

‘First, stay the hell away from Maclyn Margulis. He’s a dangerous enemy.’

‘And second?’

‘You got a minute?’

Reuben stared at the steel shutter. He knew what lay behind it. GeneCrime surveillance had infiltrated the place during his time there. Reuben had no idea how they had got access, but he had seen the pictures. The underground car park descended four storeys. It was tightly packed and poorly lit, the kind of place you drove round carefully, trying not to leave your paintwork on concrete pillars. Then you reached a no parking
section
with freshly painted yellow cross-hatching. In front of that, another steel shutter which was always closed. And beyond that, Reuben had been told, lay Maclyn Margulis’s centre of operations.

‘Sure,’ he answered. He had all day.

‘It’s about Mina.’

‘Go on.’

‘I guess we did all that we could do – promoted from within. Someone to steady the ship for a few months. She was the logical choice when you left and things went pear-shaped.’

‘And now?’

‘A fair amount of mustard isn’t getting cut.’

‘She’s struggling?’

‘She’s not messing up exactly. She’s a bright girl. It’s just the things she isn’t doing.’

‘Like what?’

Reuben heard the rustle of a polystyrene cup of coffee being drained. Sarah’s voice softened. ‘Rube, will you do me a favour?’

‘Sounds familiar.’

‘No, really. Let’s get together, sit down and talk.’

‘When?’

‘I need to sort out a couple of things first, which will take a few days. And then I want to do some serious bending of your ear.’

Reuben grunted noncommittally. He had learned a long time ago that the only language Sarah understood was hardball. But something in her tone of voice excited him.

‘And until then, Reuben, stay the hell out of trouble.’

Sarah hung up and Reuben slid his phone back into his jacket. Moray passed a biscuit across and Reuben took it in silence, wondering. A proposition from Sarah could mean a multitude of things, some good, some bad.

Moray closed the CID file that had been occupying him for the last ten minutes and shuffled round in his seat.

‘How did Margulis come by a place like this?’ he asked, nodding in the direction of the door.

‘Probably owns the building. Maybe not the businesses, but certainly the bricks and mortar.’

‘The ultimate aim of the illegitimate – buying the legitimate.’

‘And how.’

‘What sort of businesses?’

‘Mix of clerical, trade, some accountants, a floor of import and export.’

Reuben gazed at the building. He was almost jealous of the location. It would have made a great
lab
, hidden from the world with nothing on the outside to give it away. A commercial back street, a steel-shuttered entrance under a grey office block, an entrance that housed corporate parking for the building. It reminded him of GeneCrime and its utter anonymity, the only access via a ramp into the car park. Control the entrance to a place like that and you were utterly secure. And then, beneath the street, beneath the parking, beneath everything, the windowless void where Maclyn Margulis ran his empire. Reuben tried and failed to picture what it was like inside.

‘Here,’ Moray said, nudging him, ‘someone’s rolling.’

Reuben watched as the shutter retracted like a metal striptease, revealing a vehicle inch by inch. First the wheels, then the registration plate, the bumper and the grille. A jet-black 4×4. Reuben spotted the BMW badge on the bonnet.

‘It’s our boy,’ he said quietly.

‘That’s him in the front?’ Moray asked. He opened the CID file and scanned the mugshots and surveillance photos again.

Reuben peered at the passenger side as steel gave way to glass and the X5 emerged from the gloom. And then he saw him. Maclyn Margulis, in the flesh. Jet-black hair, perfectly straight, long
on
the neck, side-parted on top. Nearly playboy in the sweep of its fringe. A right-angle jaw with muscles that twitched as he chewed some gum. A perfect nose and swimming-pool eyes. A diamond stud in each ear. One cold ruthless motherfucker, Reuben thought. And a good-looking bastard to boot. The car pulled out and cruised past, oblivious.

‘Did you see who was driving?’ Moray asked.

‘I’m afraid so.’

‘Didn’t realize he was working for the other side now.’

‘Nor did I. But with his boss dead, what else is he going to do?’ Reuben closed his eyes. Valdek Kosonovski. Twenty stones of steroid abuse built around an extremely short fuse. Reuben had tangled with him once before and was lucky still to be alive. ‘That changes things a bit.’

‘You want to follow them?’

‘What I really want to do is see what Maclyn’s base looks like down there.’

Reuben pulled his seatbelt on. Moray’s driving was not for the faint-hearted. He checked his watch. It was 2.36 p.m.

‘I’ve got to pick my boy up. You fancy dropping me?’

‘If you ask nicely.’

‘I need Margulis on his own, not with that psycho Kosonovski.’

Moray started the powerful old Saab, let a taxi pass, then pulled off smartly, the turbo-charger rasping for air in between brutal gear changes.

12

AT 3.04 P.M.
, Dr James Crannell followed the familiar campus path towards his car. Today, he had checked and double-checked. A smaller turnout for his lecture on oestrogen status and breast cancer. But among the apathetic rabble, no one who resembled the two men who had tailed him to his car the previous evening.

James lingered at the security desk, just in case, but the two men failed to appear. He carried on. He knew he really should spend some more time in the lab, but he couldn’t face it. The two men had got under his skin. There had been no more emails, but that didn’t help. He was agitated and ill at ease, off kilter, slides of his lecture skipped, conclusions rushed. He had slept badly and felt run down. James had decided to make full use
of
his academic flexibility and head back to his flat.

He entered the car park. His ageing Golf was parked in the far corner, an overspill of rough stones and tarmac, a plot used when the closer spaces were taken. He stopped by the car and put down his laptop bag, rummaging in its pockets for his keys. When he stood up they were there. Face to face with him, either side. They had baseball caps on, pulled down tight over their eyes. Shellsuit jackets with the collars turned up. Trainers and jeans. Similar clothes to before, just different logos. Both Caucasian. Well built. Tall and wide. The sort you wouldn’t fuck with even if you had to. Fists clenched. Features obscured by the caps and turned-up collars. He couldn’t see their eyes. Just their mouths. Sharp teeth, pursed lips, violence brewing. He glanced about. The rest of the car park was empty.

‘What do you want?’ he asked.

They said nothing.

‘Have you been sending me emails and letters?’

Silence.

‘You followed me here yesterday. Why?’

Again, there was no response.

James turned over his hand. ‘Here, take the keys. The car’s yours.’

A slap knocked the keys to the floor. A trainer ground them into the stones.

‘I don’t know what you’re after, but—’

James didn’t get to finish the sentence. The air was knocked out of him. A blow to the solar plexus which left him gasping, bent over, fighting for breath. In his line of sight, their trainers remained rooted to the spot. Adrenalin was kicking in. It mingled with the cold airlessness in his lungs. His heartbeat thumped in his temples, his muscles tightened and swelled.

James straightened bit by bit. They stood motionless, arms folded, effectively pinning him against his car. Their caps were lowered, their eyes still hidden, just the bottom halves of their faces visible. James’s brain was racing. What did they want? What were they going to do to him? He examined what he could see of their faces, trying to memorize the shape of their teeth, the width of their jaws, the colour of their stubble. A bad feeling in his stomach told him things were going to get worse.

‘Look—’

From nowhere, a punch in the kidneys. He rocked to the side. Another punch caught him
full
in the guts. He cried out. A glancing blow caught him on the ribs. He pulled his hands up to protect his face, and a fist pounded his sternum. James staggered against his car. He held on to it to stop himself from falling. His lungs fought for breath. They were utterly in control, and they knew it.

James lifted his head. They had taken a step back. Their arms were by their sides. He scanned the car park. Nothing.

‘What do you want?’ he asked again, through broken breaths.

The two men glanced at each other. And then one of them spoke. It was a low growl, just loud enough to be heard.

‘You’ll see,’ he said.

They turned and walked away, towards the barriers and out of the car park. James slumped against his Golf, their words ringing in his ears, his ribs heaving in agony with each breath.

13

DR MINA ALI
ran her fingernail down the laptop screen. As she did so, numbers and figures distorted momentarily, a trail of deformation where her nail pressed into the plastic. It made her feel that she was involved somehow, that the databases housed in mainframe computers in the basement of GeneCrime were organic and could be touched, that their patterns and statistics could be altered by human interaction.

Mina glanced up as Judith Meadows entered the lab, buttoning her lab coat tight over the bulge in her torso. Mina checked the clock. It was just after four. Prime coffee-break time for the scientists and technicians working the nine-to-six shift. She called out to Judith, unsure of quite what she was going to say.

Judith changed direction and headed over. ‘Yes, boss?’ she asked, her quiet, demure face enlivened by a twinkle in her eye.

‘Judith – I can trust you, right?’ Mina asked.

‘Sure.’

‘I mean, this is a big place, and things aren’t always as straightforward as you hope. People spying on people, et cetera. You and Reuben go right back. And Reuben never hangs out with people he doesn’t trust implicitly. As a matter of protocol.’

‘I guess so.’

‘Some would say as a matter of the pathological. You know …’ Mina was babbling, and she knew it. Two or three months ago she would just have confided in Judith; now, as acting head of Forensics, things were more complicated. However, if anyone would understand, Judith would.

‘So …’ Judith prompted.

Mina made a judgement call. Judith would keep her mouth closed. ‘It’s nothing too weird. And it’s something I want to keep between us. OK?’ Judith nodded. ‘I spoke to Sarah about it, but didn’t have anything concrete.’

‘And now?’

‘Things are beginning to set.’ Mina arched her
back
on the lab stool and stretched. ‘I’ve been paying a lot of attention to some of our profile databases and various other sources, and a couple of names have rung bells. You know the sort of names. Ones that in a list of two hundred punters jump out at you. Unusual spellings or names that remind you of people you once knew, or famous people, or just plain weird names.’

‘I know what you mean. We had a David Beckham in a case recently.’

‘Right. Well, I was looking through the Negatives the other day. Just because we’ve been a bit remiss about deleting things, and for various other reasons I won’t go into now. And when I cross-checked with the daily crime update, a couple of names jumped out at me, like I say.’

‘I’m not sure I quite follow.’

‘That’s not the main thing.’ Mina closed her eyes for a second. She should have got her anxieties straight before unloading them on Judith. ‘You know where the Negatives is housed?’

Judith nodded solemnly.

‘When I was looking into this, I discovered it had changed location.’

‘Like on a different server?’

‘No. The whole thing had been clicked and
dragged
into a new directory. IT informed me that the database had indeed shifted location, but were unable to say why. I mean, does that strike you as odd? One of our databases just upping itself and moving?’

Judith was quiet for a second. ‘Nothing in the world of computers surprises me,’ she said finally. ‘And nothing in this place, either.’

‘But seriously.’

‘I mean it. It’s an easy enough mistake to make, isn’t it? Accidentally changing the location of computer files?’

‘Ah. That’s what I thought, until I tried to do it myself.’