by Dal Maclean
Her accent was anything but East End. Cut-glass and upper crust in fact. Will thought he recognized the uniform as City of London girl’s school. Fee-paying and exclusive. Only the best for Joey’s little girl.
“Well Magda wiz right,” Pauline put in from the sink as she dried her hands. The girl went to hug her too. “Eddie spoils you. An’ so does yer dad. Yer getting dinner in an hour.”
Will frowned, first at the nanny, apparently unperturbed to be nestled at the heart of a murderous gangster family, and then, at Eddie—around six feet tall with a blond crew-cut; over-muscled; extremely violent; not too bright. And he tried to spoil Joey’s daughter with fast food.
Eddie held Will’s eyes and smirked.
Had he been the one to pull the trigger on Sanjay? The one who’d shoved a knife into Salt’s side?
Will could feel Salt all but vibrating with tension beside him.
“This is our Holly,” Joey announced proudly. “These gentlemen ‘ere are police officers,” he told her. “I’m just ‘elpin’ ‘em out.”
Will tore his eyes away from Eddie to find Holly gazing at him with fascination. As their eyes met, she blushed.
Time to go.
He said formally, “Thank you for your cooperation Mr. Clarkson. Mrs. Clarkson.” He smiled at Holly, whose color shifted violently from pink to crimson.
“Think nuthin’ of it,” Joey purred. “Ah think you’re gonna turn out to be one of my favorite coppers, Will.”
They were almost back at their car when Salt muttered with feeling, “Christ.”
Will said quietly, “Yeah.” He pressed the central locking button and the car indicator lights flashed orange.
“It felt like he wiz wooing ye!” Salt burst out. His accent had thickened, as it did when he got agitated.
Will stopped in his tracks, horrified. Salt stopped, too. They were at the car now.
“He acted like he respected that ye hate him. Like he thought he could win ye round. Seduce ye.”
Will’s horror intensified if anything. Salt pulled open the front passenger door. He didn’t get in.
“He thinks he can buy anythin’,” Salt said and gave a sharp shrug. “Outsmart everyone. So maybe he wants a wee challenge. Turnin’ a copper dedicated to bringin’ him down. You heard him Guv.”
“Des,” Will said, appalled, gutted. “I would never . . . .”
“I know,” Salt said fiercely. “But that bastard doesn’t. He doesn’t understand men who can’t be bought. So what does he do when he finally gets it?”
5
It was just after 8:30 when Will found miraculous, though pricy, street parking on Broadwick Street and walked the five minutes or so to Upper James Street.
He heard the sounds of Pez’s party twenty yards before he reached Golden Square. Graphic’s open door was close to the point where the street opened out into the long, divided rectangle of concrete, grass, statues and seating that made up the center of the square. Brick and render mainly, Georgian buildings loomed around it.
It was dark. The air was damp, and smelled of petrol fumes and turned earth.
Ingham hadn’t given Will an easy way out, possibly because she seemed to find his aversion to arty gatherings hilarious, given his relationship. So, despite his quiet desperation not to go, she’d generously waved him on.
Will had briefed her about the meeting with Joey when he and Salt got back to the station.
Essentially, it had been a game. Opponents feeling each other out. But Will still believed Joey hadn’t expected to be challenged about June. Maybe, Will had to admit, because he had nothing to do with her.
Will had worried at it for an hour or so from multiple angles, then changed into his uniform again, weathering Salt’s mockery, and drove to Soho like a lamb making its own way to the abattoir.
A few feet away from Graphic, he stopped and straightened his black tie, pulled down his uniform tunic and told himself it would soon be over. Then he walked through the open door.
The space inside was much longer than it was wide, and packed full of people. It had weathered wooden floors and cream-painted brick walls and multiple light bulbs hung from the ceiling. There were some leather sofas and stylized cylindrical seats but most people were standing in knots, talking loudly to be heard over background music. And everyone was smiling as if their careers depended on it.
If James’s engagement party had shrieked of sleek, smug wealth, this one seemed to Will’s jaundiced eye, to be focused on getting and keeping attention. Clothes, hair, makeup—everyone was trying to be the stand-out attendee. And Will, judging from the response he got when he entered, had outplayed them all. No one else had turned up in police uniform.
The multiple expressions of shock and dismay directed at him felt perversely satisfying, perhaps, he had to admit, because this level of happy frivolity felt obscene, fresh from watching the dissection of Daria’s corpse. At least at the Westminster coroner’s offices he and Salt had been able to watch from an observation room, by camera. So they’d escaped the smells of a postmortem at least. But they could see and hear everything: the cameraperson keeping close record. The oddly graceful dance of the pathologist round the table, the whistle of the windpipe, the sucking removal of the heart and lungs.
And the unsurprising conclusions. Daria hadn’t vomited before her death. She’d put up a fight and defensive cuts had been inflicted to her hands. The gunman had placed his shot with the gun muzzle less than a centimeter from the skin behind Daria’s ear. Nothing new.
“Well,” Pez appeared from nowhere to give Will a once-over that had him braced for impact. “Very Dixon of Dock Green. Do you actually have a truncheon and a whistle? ”
Pez wore a baggy sage green suit, what looked like orthopedic sandals and nothing else, the jacket gaping open to expose his thin, smooth, sculpted chest. His short dark hair was spiked at the top, and his large dark green eyes, were expertly made-up.
“You forgot your shirt,” Will returned.
“Skin is a spring/summer trend,” Pez said. Will regarded him without expression. Pez rolled his mascarared eyes. “Oh never mind. Since you’re here, smile for Nora. She’s the evil cow in next season Chanel.” He turned and directed an insincere beam of pleasure at a pair of very thin women in short dresses who were watching them narrowly from further down the room. Will smiled at them too, in his role as The Policeman-Boyfriend.
“Excellent,” Pez said with satisfaction. “Icing on the cake.”
Will sighed. “So what else do I have to do?”
“How would I know?” Pez sniffed.
It took a second to sink in. “You mean . . . I came all the way here for that?” And dressed up again. And spent a tenner on parking. He could have been grabbing a couple of hours kip on one of the office camp beds.
Pez bridled. “Well you decided to come. I’ve got the organ grinder, so the monkey’s slipped well down the billing.”
Will clenched his teeth hard. He should just go. Ignore it as one of Pez’s stupid windup games. But he was knackered, and on a razor’s edge.
“You think it’s funny to drag me away from a murder investigation for nothing? You told me this was important to you. You said it was nonnegotiable in return for looking after John.”
“Yeah, because I thought Tommy wasn’t coming.” They locked glares in mutual outrage, then Pez’s truculent expression slowly melted to revelation. For a moment he looked nonplussed, even uncomfortable. Then he nodded toward a spot over Will’s shoulder.
And then it made sense.
Tom.
Tom was here?
Will felt now, totally exposed in front of Pez, like a teenage kid out of his depth. Tom hadn’t even bothered to tell him he was coming back to London, never mind that he’d arrived and was going to Pez’s party. And Will didn’t need to witness Pez’s awkwardness to know how bad that looked.
How bad that felt.
His insides were a churn of confusion, humiliation and still, despite
it all, excitement. Bitter resentment, that another person could affect him so profoundly, so casually.
Pride finally made him turn round.
He had no idea how he hadn’t spotted him the instant he came in—leaning against a wall, further down the room than Nora and her friend. Tall, willowy and broad-shouldered.
Tom Gray.
Will’s pulse lurched, the way it did when he saw Tom without warning. As if this was his very first sight of him in a Soho pub, and he couldn’t quite accept that anyone so beautiful existed in real life. As if it had been two long, fallow, bitter years. As if he’d hallucinated their reconciliation.
God, he needed sleep. Or . . . maybe he was asleep. Surreality crackled at the edges of his brain. Why would he be at a party in uniform?
Tom wore a surprisingly conservative black suit and a white shirt, open at the neck, and he was surrounded by people, watching him with varying degrees of openness. But he was listening, head down, to another man, who was talking to him intensely. An empty champagne glass dangled languidly from the fingers of one hand. He looked what he was: one of a handful of top models in the world. A class above every other man in a room full of professionally attractive men.
Shoulder-length flaxen hair; stunning profile. Strong, narrow jaw; high cheekbones and smooth tanned skin; long, strong nose; ice-blue eyes; thick dark lashes.
There was always a certain air of apartness about him; the elusiveness that had helped make his name. That challenged people to get past his steel walls and make him want them too. Make him care. Last summer, when a stalker had made Tom his obsession, people had died because of it.
Deep down, Will realized that he’d more than half-believed Tom wasn’t coming back at all.
But Tom hadn’t been making excuses to stay in the States. He was here.
Without bothering to tell Will.
And he’d brought Cam Daley with him.
Cam was the man talking to Tom. He was roughly the same height as Tom but with a broader build, more like Will’s own. His smooth collar-length dark hair was swept back off his face and he had light eyes, a square chin and a model’s symmetrical features, but with an added aura of playful idealized athleticism. Watching him, any hope Will might have had that Cam didn’t want Tom, was gone.
And Tom was listening to him.
Will straightened his shoulders. He should go over and say hello.
But he hesitated. Because he couldn’t help backing away the instant he suspected Tom might be attracted to someone else, or someone else wanted Tom.
Perhaps that was because of Tom’s scorched earth destruction of their relationship the first time round. The fact that Will had spent two years believing that Tom had cheated on him, because Tom had wanted him to believe that. Or maybe because of the way Tom had been during the previous hot, terrifying summer—sleeping with his various lovers, refusing to be tied to one person. Will had masked his pain and jealousy then, because he knew they were pointless. Only pride and a professional focus on saving Tom had got him through. But maybe it had all cemented in place a fear that Tom could never commit to anyone. Maybe Will had lost his nerve when it came to Tom and to other men.
Or maybe refusing to show possessiveness or jealousy was part of Will’s continuing effort to make sure Tom didn’t feel trapped by his choices. Perhaps it was all of that.
As if he felt the weight of Will’s uncertain stare, Tom’s eyes flicked up suddenly and met Will’s from underneath his straight dark brows. And even though he hadn’t been moving; he seemed to still.
Then his inscrutable gaze tracked down and up, slowly taking Will in, uniform and all, until their eyes locked again.
The moment stretched. Then Tom raised his head, straightened slowly from the wall, muttering something to Cam and began to walk toward Will.
Will tried hard not to show his relief.
“Hey,” he said, when Tom reached him. “I thought you couldn’t make it back.” His tone was commendably neutral, but still, the words sounded accusing. Why pretend otherwise?
The atmosphere between them felt charged with energy.
It always did.
Tom said, “D’you have time to go for a coffee?”
Will worked to keep his expression free of any sign of irritation or worry. Cam was still leaning against the wall where Tom had been, watching them.
“Is that a euphemism for a fuck?” Pez piped up, manifesting from nowhere. “Because he’s far too important and busy for anything but administering justice.”
Tom gave him a vaguely flustered look of irritation.
“Just coffee,” he said to Will. “Half an hour?” He waited for Will’s nod before saying to Pez, “I’ll be back. Look after Cam, yeah?”
Pez pursed his lips. “One last big family smile for the Ferret.”
All three of them turned as one and beamed at Nora as if she’d just done something entertaining. Will thought she looked understandably freaked out, and actually there was nothing ferrety about her, apart from extreme slenderness. And a very long neck. God only knew what kind of working relationship she had with Pez.
He held his stone face as he followed Tom toward the door, weaving through the ever-growing crowd of guests, many eyeing them as they went.
Will was a curiosity, but Tom was very obviously a star to the people there. Pez was right: Tom’s partial withdrawal from modeling and his well-publicized brush with death had only served to increase his mystique and star power. He took all of the gushing hellos, the touches, the compliments as his due in this world of unembarrassed adulation.
The square outside Graphic was quiet even for an April Tuesday evening.
It took less than five minutes to reach the Nordic-themed café Tom pointed out, but though they talked a little as they walked, it felt awkward, overly polite, as if they were both waiting to address the obvious questions.
Why hadn’t Tom told Will he was coming home? And why had Cam come with him?
Inside, the café was redolent with the smell of coffee beans and cinnamon and almost empty. The decor was industrial-airy with dark blue-gray paint and bare wooden cladding, but the important thing was that the utilitarian tables were far enough apart to talk with privacy.
Will ordered two coffees at the metal counter while Tom sat down, and he was tensely aware of Tom’s brooding stare as he spoke to the barista. He felt almost nauseous with nerves.
It struck him treacherously out of the blue as he put down the mugs on their table, how long it had been since Tom had told him he loved him. And because Will rarely had the nerve to say it first, how long it had been since he’d told Tom. How far apart they seemed to have drifted.
Tom said: “I told Mel I’d had enough after the launch party. So we took a flight through Munich and we changed in the loos in Terminal Five, to come straight here.”
‘We’ being Tom and Cam, Will presumed. He sat down.
Tom continued: “I’m so knackered I’m hallucinating you’re dressed up as a fantasy policeman.”
Will blinked. He found he hadn’t expected levity; he found he’d come here expecting pain.
“You didn’t let me know,” he said.
Tom’s brows knotted. He began to fiddle with his mug on the table. “It was meant to be a surprise.” The dark brown liquid rippled as he pushed the mug clockwise, then back again, “And every moment I wasn’t on a plane, I was listening to Dad.” He looked up. “Mum ‘wants another chance’. Richard dumped her.”
Will’s stomach dropped even further. No one knew better than he, how Tom’s view of love and commitment had been distorted as he grew up watching Alistair Gray’s obsessive, self-destructive devotion to his faithless wife. No one knew better than Will how much Tom abhorred the idea of becoming anything like his father, so, unconsciously, he’d become his mother instead. Always the one who was loved, the one in control.
“Will he take her back?” Will was relieved that his tone sounded merely interested.
Tom’s lip
curled. “What d’you think? He told me all the conditions he’s going to lay down. Again. How this’ll absolutely be the last time.” He studied his untouched coffee. “All he wanted was for me to say I understood.”
“And do you?” Will asked.
Tom’s mouth twisted. He met Will’s gaze, some intense emotion boiling in his remarkable eyes. Whatever it was, Will didn’t like it.
“Yes,” Tom said. Their eyes held. Then Tom asked, “Was the funeral . . . okay?”
“It threw me a bit,” Will conceded, and because it was Tom, he made himself add, “More than I expected.”
Tom’s eyebrows tugged together again. He looked concerned but then his full mouth quirked into a pale kind of smile. “Has anyone told you that you look unbelievably sexy in that uniform?”
“Actually,” Will said. “I get that a lot.”
Tom blinked and then he laughed—a genuine laugh—and Will, despite his unease, laughed too. Relief, to see that emotion blink out. Relief that maybe there wasn’t going to be pain.
It was as if a switch had been pulled. The weird tension between them blinked out, and with a sense of inevitability, attraction slid into its place. Magnet and iron.
Tom’s lowered his head, and smirked up at Will from under his brows. “Did you miss me?”
Will nodded. It felt slavish, out of his control. The air was thinner.
Tom’s mouth was full and firm, pale pink and tilted up at the corners. It was incredibly distracting.
On cue, Will’s cock began to chub up, and all of the insane tension and delirium of exhaustion couldn’t stop it. Not even the elderly woman eating posh toast at the table next to them could slow him down. He’d never experienced a power of attraction close to this. And it hadn’t faded, through two absent years of blame and resentment, as he’d realized to his own disgust when he’d walked up Dean Street the previous summer and seen Tom leaning against the railings, waiting for him.
Tom said very softly, “Can’t wait to get home.”
Will felt that sink into him like balm. But he said, “I have a new case.”
The atmosphere of erotic promise began to dissipate.