Breaking Point by John Macken Page B

orange box the size of a cigarette packet. As she slid it across to Reuben, streaks of condensation appeared on the table.
    ‘You’ve smuggled these out?’ he asked.
    ‘Thirty-eight DNA samples from GeneCrime,’ Mina answered. ‘Store them somewhere safe.’
    Reuben hesitated, then took the plastic box, slotting it into his jacket pocket. It was cold to the touch, and he could feel it through the lining of his coat. The technology he thought he had left behind coming back to life. Someone on the inside of GeneCrime starting to take risks. An unproven technique in the wrong hands. But what for ? What could be gained by doing it silently? What could the technique achieve that couldn’t be accomplished through official routes?
    Reuben had a sudden notion, but then dismissed it. That would be too astonishing. But as he finished his drink amid the rattle and din of the café, Mina watching him carefully and silently, a nervousness rose in his stomach and the possibility refused to go away.

23
    DI CHARLIE BAKER glanced up from the screen as the door opened. Mina Ali entered, flustered, her mouth open, looking like she had just run up several flights of stairs.
    ‘What did I miss?’ she said, striding over.
    Charlie fought the urge to ask her where the hell she had been. He had phoned her, texted her, even emailed her, and there had been no reply. She had clearly been outside the building. It wasn’t a crime to leave the premises during the working day, but the acting head of Forensics should at least be contactable. He let it go. What was on the screen was far more important than small matters of work protocol.
    ‘This,’ he answered, picking up the remote control and pressing Play.
    Charlie watched Mina push through, moving her small frame past CID officers and forensic scientists. She positioned herself between Sarah Hirst and Bernie Harrison. The ten or so GeneCrime staff crowding around the flatscreen monitor subtly readjusted their positions to get the best possible view.
    A couple of seconds of static gave way to a blue screen, which then blinked a few times. And then they were there, in the carriage of a train. Black and white CCTV footage inside a rounded cylinder. People standing and sitting, pushed in tight. Fatigue lurked in several of the faces, as if they were on their way home after work. From the flash of light through a near-side window, followed by sudden blackness, it was clear the train was accelerating out of a station. Passengers on either side rocked back and forth as the Tube started to take corners beneath the city.
    Charlie pressed the Pause button and said, ‘For the benefit of Dr Ali, remember to keep a sharp eye on the bottom left of the screen.’
    He pressed Play again, and the black and white image resumed. Charlie had watched the footage three times – twice on his own and once with the whole group – and had seen something different each time. It was a matter of almost focusing through the pictures, letting your eyes take you where they wanted, absorbing the whole of the scene and all of the information it contained. True, the main action was confined to the bottom left of the screen, but Charlie was well aware from years of viewing CCTV that it was all too easy to miss peripheral events. And that what went on at the margins of sight, as at the margins of life, was sometimes every bit as important as the main occurrence.
    He skimmed once again through the passengers he could see most clearly: a Caucasian man polishing his glasses on his tie; a young Japanese male playing with a mobile phone; a smartly dressed woman reading a novel; a young Mediterranean couple staring up at a Tube map; an Afro-Caribbean workman in a paint-spattered sweatshirt with his arms folded; a blonde-haired woman rummaging in her bag; a short older man holding a hand rail; a white youth staring into an MP3 player; a middle-aged black woman flicking through a magazine; a pair of female students talking, their