Blue On Blue

by Dal Maclean

  “I know.” Tom sighed. “Pez told me.”

  Was it adding to Tom’s restlessness? The way he always came second to Will’s job. Did he feel neglected? He felt a surge of unease so strong, it could have been alarm.

  “You know Pez coerced me into coming to the party,” Will blurted. “When he thought you weren’t turning up. He’s merging into Mark. They’re becoming some sort of . . . ruthless hybrid.”

  Tom gave a tense laugh. “Pezmo.”

  Will grinned. Their eye contact held. Will’s cock felt full and heavy. Aching and unsatisfied.

  But Tom’s expression shifted to resignation. “Well Pez won’t be pleased but I can’t stay late even for Nora. I need to shift back to this time zone. It’s the Prof’s Ted Talk in three weeks.”

  Will narrowed his eyes and played for time, trying to remember why that was relevant. They’d had a conversation just before Tom left for the States. Will had been knackered . . . no surprise there . . . so he’d paid only superficial attention but he did know that Tom was working parallel to his professor on aspects of the uses of DNA in law enforcement. And Tom had been thrilled that the guy was going to use some of his research work for his talk.

  But Tom was too sharp not to register that Will was having to grope through his memory for details. He saw a flash of hurt. Or was it anger? Then resignation.

  Until like a breeze blowing away fog, Will’s mind cleared.

  “The latest findings on DNA transfer,” he said. Tom gave him a cool look, but Will was suddenly very focused indeed on the Prof’s Ted Talk. “New doubts about the use of DNA in solving crime,” he said urgently. “Tell me about these new doubts.”

  Tom frowned, before understanding visibly hit. “Your new case. You want an overview of the latest research.” Will loved moments like this, when he could see how much they truly had in common. He grinned and waggled his eyebrows.

  “Okay,” Tom sounded cautious. He would know Will couldn’t elaborate. “Well, I don’t think you’re going to like it.” He bit his lower lip and scratched his head. The careful aloofness of his professional model’s demeanor evaporated, and there was the real Tom Gray. Finally returned from LA. “So we’ve always known DNA evidence wasn’t foolproof . . . samples could be contaminated at a lab or at a crime scene, especially if a profile was partial or degraded. You can never get a DNA-free environment as a starting point, but we’d thought we allowed for that. But . . . .”

  “DNA transfer?” Will ventured.

  Tom’s eyes shone. Whatever he felt about modeling, there could be no doubt he loved his subject. Chemistry. Forensic science.

  “Yeah. Because now that we can create profiles from just a few cells, significant DNA traces can be found just about everywhere. We don’t really understand the mechanisms yet, but we’ve established that a person’s DNA can be transferred from one object to another, without the person being present. So it’s not just a question of establishing who the DNA’s from now, but also being sure how it got there.”

  “Which could undermine trust in a lot of DNA evidence,” Will said. And as a copper that more than alarmed him.

  Tom nodded. “It’s important though. Prosecutors have guidelines that they mustn’t rely on DNA-match evidence alone, but juries are swayed by it. Knowing what we know now, there have to have been miscarriages of justice on DNA evidence. Transfer happens far more easily than we thought. I mean, I opened the café door, yeah? If I touched your hand now and you were swabbed later, they’d get my DNA and traces of whoever else opened the door before me, though you never went near them or touched the door. Or, say someone used a gun range, and that person got into a taxi and used the seat belt. Then I get in on my way to the airport. Pull on the same seat belt. Set off the alarms at security because I have traces of gun residue on my hand. And I wouldn’t have an explanation to appease them. I’d deny everything.” He shrugged. “The tinier the samples we need to identify DNA, the riskier identification gets.”

  Will rubbed his mouth with his fingertips, thinking hard. “What about complete DNA profiles from a known sources? Like blood and vomit. Can there be mistakes on those?”

  “Well . . . . Cross-contamination in the lab or somewhere else.” Tom frowned. “Mixing up samples. False matches on the database.” He shrugged. “Otherwise, complete profiles from generous samples aren’t easy to fuck up.”

  “That’s what I thought,” Will said. But he’d needed to make sure he was educated on all of the possibilities.

  The lab was adamant that June was not a false match to the Daria crime scene DNA and there hadn’t been any mix-ups. And transference didn’t apply. So the most likely scenario had to be that the samples had been deliberately planted at the scene of Daria’s murder.

  Will worried at it a moment longer.

  When he looked up, Tom was watching him closely, his expression unreadable. Then Tom asked, “D’you need to get back to the station? Your time’s almost up.”

  Will checked his watch. He almost suggested another coffee; another ten minutes because they hadn’t talked about anything personally important. They may as well have been work colleagues.

  But Tom was already standing up, his chair scraping the wooden floor. “I should get back too,” he said. “Cam doesn’t really know anyone.”

  Will couldn’t ask for more time after that.

  They walked back along the right side of Golden Square toward Graphic, the pavements eerily empty. And as they walked, Will chastised himself for not asking straight-out why Cam was in London. It didn’t have to sound like he was insecure. Or jealous. He could make it sound like he was mildly interested.

  But all Tom had said about Cam in those sparse phone calls from LA, the way they looked together at the party when Will first saw them, the likelihood that Melanie had seen the connection between them as significant enough to use to her advantage; all of that silenced him. His throat ached with all he wanted to say.

  It wasn’t the time to ask those questions anyway . . . not in the middle of a new case. Not if the answers might throw him off-course. Not when he remembered how badly he’d handled their breakup the first time round.

  A long line of Mayors’ bikes sat along the edge of the central block of the square like a long, red fence, and beyond them, Will spotted the only sign of life: the tops of a couple of heads just visible over the bike-fence at the far end of the gardens.

  He wasn’t prepared for the strong uncompromising shove that propelled him sideways into a shallow alcove, several doors before Graphic.

  He grunted with alarm, but Tom piled in against him, pressing him hard against the door behind him as if they were hiding from someone further down the pavement.

  Will managed, “What’s . . . ?”

  But the hard press of Tom’s mouth silenced him, Tom’s fingers gripping his jaw, Tom’s demanding tongue pushing between his startled lips. And the moment he understood, Will kissed back.

  A remaining sliver of caution told him it was insanely reckless and totally against the rules to do anything like this in an MPS uniform, in public. But he didn’t give a shit at that moment, and he could admit that a large part of his elation was relief at this proof of Tom’s continuing desire for him.

  Will’s pulse was rabbiting when Tom finally dragged his mouth away a few panting inches. His cock, which had deflated while they talked about DNA in the café, was rigid again in his uniform trousers.

  ‘Do you actually have a truncheon . . . ?’

  Pez’s voice in his head made him loose a hysterical giggle. He didn’t think he’d ever made that sound before in his life, but Tom sniggered too.

  “I know it’s against the rules to snog an officer of the law in uniform. But. . . .” He leaned in again to press his forehead against Will’s, then he pulled back an inch to look up through his lashes. The light blue of his irises formed a thin circle round dilated velvet pupils. He knew what he was doing. “I just really need to peel you out of it. Or maybe . . . I’d let you l
eave it on.”

  The air felt thinner. Will drew in a deep, sharp breath through his nose.

  “I think there’re probably rules against that too,” he said, perversely determined to prove to both of them that he could resist. He did that a lot, and he wasn’t really sure why. Though the idea of putting his No. 1 uniform into the dry cleaners to remove semen stains turned his blood cold. He gave Tom a lopsided half grin of apology.

  Tom’s smile slid away.

  “Fuck,” he breathed, and dived in again, both hands gripping Will’s head, holding him in place for another tongue-delving kiss. But this time Tom pushed the whole long length of his well-muscled body against Will’s, grinding their swollen, trouser-clad groins against each other; shocking, brutal pleasure.

  Will moaned loudly, his knees weakening, and he slid his arms round Tom’s slender waist, jerking him closer still.

  “Tut tut officer,” a cultured voice reproved from the pavement.

  Tom’s head jerked back. But he pressed instinctively against Will, as if he thought that could shield him.

  “Police officers behave in a manner which does not discredit the police service or undermine public confidence, whether on or off duty,” the voice intoned.

  Every panic-locked muscle in Will’s body relaxed.

  “Fuck off Mark!” he said.

  Tom loosed an explosive sound of relief, head sinking to press against Will’s shoulder, as Mark Nimmo appeared in Will’s line of vision, cackling with glee, before strolling off to disappear inside Graphic.

  “Pezmo in action,” Will muttered bitterly.

  “Fuckfuckfuck,” Tom’s forehead was still pressed against Will’s uniform. “That could have been anyone.”

  Will squeezed him tighter.

  “I’m sorry. I just . . . .” Tom sighed and raised his head until they were looking at each other again. All of his sexy bravado was gone. “You never lose control, do you?”

  I did when you dumped me, Will thought—a gut-deep, reflexive shock of old resentment, bursting out like something buried in his cells. And you can crush me again on a whim.

  He didn’t say anything out loud, shocked by his own defensive response, but Tom’s mouth twisted.

  He pulled back, and Will let his arms loosen and fall.

  “Thanks for the coffee,” Tom said. He leaned in and brushed his mouth against Will’s a final time. Then he began to turn away, expression pensive.

  Will caught his wrist. “Thanks for the ninja snog,” he said quickly.

  Tom gave a slight smile, but he didn’t seem to know what to say. But neither did Will.

  6

  Will caught a few hours of rest at the station but woke in the dead of night, full of regret and middle-of-the-night dread at how he’d left Tom.

  He got up and tried to work: reviewing the files he’d dug out on June Winton. Actual files on actual paper with actual cardboard covers, which served to physically emphasize the coldness of the case. It should have made fascinating reading, a snapshot of the times.

  But he couldn’t seem to stop obsessing over the meeting with Tom. Trying to analyze it. The urgency in that kiss. That last, closed expression on Tom’s face. Cam’s obvious interest. Will’s own instinctive withdrawal, just when Tom had seemed to show vulnerability, to seek reassurance.

  By daybreak he’d managed to get through the files, and he set off for HMP Bronzefield.

  The Interview Room he was given to use in the prison was suitably grim and hopeless, with a brown resin floor and scuffed cream walls. He sat on a hard plastic chair, set across from another single chair with a screwed down table between them. And waited.

  Tom hadn’t messaged since they’d parted outside Graphic. Will hadn’t messaged Tom either.

  The papers on the table in front of him were already neatly ordered, but he tidied them again anyway. He shifted restlessly. Then he pulled out his phone.

  Maybe it was his move.

  He typed a text quickly, letting himself imagine Tom asleep in their bedroom in Warren Road. Pale blond hair against white cotton. Tom slept as gracefully as he did everything else. No snoring or drooling or slack jaw for him. And Will knew that, because he’d spent too long watching him sleep since Tom’d come back to him, like a creep. Or an addict.

  Hope you got some sleep.

  Will gnawed at his bottom lip. What else? His auntie could have written that.

  Got a couple of hours on the camp bed next to Alec. His wife must have iron earplugs.

  Actually, though Scrivenor looked like a snorer, in defiance of his bulk, he slept as neatly and peacefully as a small child. But Will felt no guilt at chucking Scrivenor’s reputation overboard in the service of romance. His eyes fixed on the screen and waited. His stomach felt tight.

  The door on the far side of the room opened.

  Will looked up with a startled lurch of embarrassment, and then, as two people shuffled in, his mortification at his lack of focus was obliterated by shock. Followed by an insane kick of hope.

  The woman being escorted into the room wasn’t June Winton.

  The arrest photograph had shown a girl with long red hair, a thin, pale face with a pointed chin, a small, full rosebud mouth and startling turquoise-blue eyes. Her stats showed she was five feet three inches tall and delicate; built like a bird. She’d looked almost childlike in fact, which had probably significantly added to her earning power on the streets.

  But this woman—the woman shuffling across the floor toward him—was a mountain of flesh, so huge that she could barely lift her feet off the ground to walk. Instead, she waddled, almost as wide as she was tall, her breath wheezing with the effort of moving that bulk. Female prisoners were allowed to wear their own clothes, and hers were dark and shapeless, cut to accommodate her size—a vast gray tunic and soft black trousers stretched tight over huge thighs.

  Will couldn’t take his astonished eyes off her as she struggled across the room with a female guard hovering just behind, as if she expected her not to make it.

  It was only as the woman lowered herself carefully onto the chair across from him, that Will registered that she hadn’t looked once at him; that she’d shown no curiosity at all about her visitor. Her gaze remained fixed on the floor, then on the table.

  Her hair was short and mousy brown, lifeless. Her chin disappeared into the rolls of fat around her neck.

  “June?” he asked uncertainly. The woman didn’t react. She couldn’t be the same person. “June Winton.” Her gaze remained downcast, as if she were alone in the room. “Look at me please,” he demanded.

  Finally the woman raised her head and her eyes lifted to meet Will’s. In the swollen, fleshy moon of her face they were small, dull pebbles, the whites yellowed, their expression blank. But they were still turquoise blue.

  “June,” Will repeated more certainly. But he was thrown. The change in her was so extreme that he really had allowed himself to believe for a few hopeful seconds that there might be some sort of identity switch. Inmate weight gain was an issue in both men’s and women’s prisons, but June must have tripled her size. Quadrupled it.

  He raced mentally through the records he’d read.

  A child of London drug addicts. In and out of care until finally the mother conceded that she’d never be able to cope and, when June was ten, she was handed to the authorities for good. A history, from that point, of absconding from her care home. At fifteen she’d had a child, given up for adoption. By sixteen she was on the streets and on the game. At eighteen she murdered Ricky Desmond in Mayfair. Glassed him in the neck twice and stole his wallet as he lay dying.

  Will could imagine she’d have had a hard time in here. She’d have been a celebrity inmate for a while, thus, visible, but without the hardened criminality to use that as a badge of pride. So she’d have been a target instead.

  He softened his tone. “June. My name’s DI Foster.” He slid his card across the table to her and she took it automatically with swollen fingers but she
didn’t look at it. “I asked for this interview because something unusual has happened.”

  June’s face remained an incurious mask.

  “This is the thing,” Will went on. “Samples of your DNA have turned up at a new murder scene.” At last her eyes flickered, and she gave the tiniest of frowns, the first reaction she’d shown. “Do you have any idea how it could have happened, June? How your DNA got there?”

  June’s mouth pursed. It was still full and firm, but it looked tiny in her swollen face.

  “I dunno,” she said at last. Her voice was high-pitched. London accent. Weirdly young.

  “Have you vomited recently?” Will asked.

  “Vomited,” June repeated slowly as if she didn’t understand the word. She had no lines on her face, her skin plumped out and baby smooth.

  “A pool of your vomit was found at the scene,” Will said. He didn’t have to see the expression on the prison guard’s face in the corner of his eye to know it sounded ridiculous, as if he were demanding June explain a sighting of fairies. “It’s possible it was taken without your knowledge.”

  It was an open route to an excuse, but June didn’t take it. She looked away instead. She crumpled Will’s card in her hand, but she seemed unaware of it. To Will’s eyes, she’d lost interest.

  “Did you hear me?”

  She said at last, “I didn’t vomit.”

  “Did you cut yourself? A sample of your blood was at the scene too.”

  “No.”

  Will said, “Perhaps someone is trying to draw attention to something about your conviction. Who would that be, June?”

  June’s shoulders moved up and down in a heaving shrug, but Will thought he saw a flicker of expression. Maybe something had occurred to her, something that closed her expression still more.

  “No one,” she said. “I did it.”

  “Some people might say you were just a kid,” Will said. “That maybe . . . Mr. Desmond did something. That it was self-defense. Maybe if you helped us, we could look into it. . . .”

  “I just wanna be left alone.”