Blue On Blue

by Dal Maclean

  Will blinked. He’d never met a con who wouldn’t grab the chance of a reduction in their term. But June was the personification of dogged resistance.

  “Does the name Daria Ivanescu mean anything to you?”

  “No,” she said.

  “She was a sex worker,” Will pressed. He slid a photograph across the table. “Romanian. She was working in clubs round the time you were arrested. She’d have been twenty-two then.”

  June glanced at the image. “I didn’t do clubs,” she said.

  “She was executed.”

  June’s gaze dropped again to the photograph. The silence stretched. Will sighed. It was like punching a cushion. Nothing made an impression.

  “All right, June. I’d like to take a new sample.” He picked up a DNA pack from the table. “You know how this goes.”

  “No,” June said, definitely. Again.

  Will looked up at her, startled. “You’re refusing?”

  “Can you make me?”

  Will scrabbled around for any other answer, but he had to admit it. “I can’t make you. But why wouldn’t you cooperate?”

  “I don’t wanna get involved. I just wanna be left alone.” June grabbed the edge of the table with one hand, the crumpled card still peeking from the other, and began to lever herself painfully to her feet.

  “But you are involved,” Will countered. “Your DNA was at Daria’s murder scene.”

  She looked down at him. “It’s not my problem. I just wanna be left alone,” she repeated.

  She turned and began to lumber toward the door, as fast as her size would allow, thighs rubbing and heaving against each other as she moved. The prison guard scuttled ahead to open the door, back into the prison.

  Will called out: “Do you know a man called Joey Clarkson?”

  June stopped in her tracks and struggled round to face him again, the effort painfully clear. Her swollen face was still expressionless, but her eyes were suddenly alive with resentment and rage. It was the closest to human engagement she’d shown.

  “I’m gonna tell the Director you’re ‘arrassin’ me,” she said. Then “You people put me in ‘ere. Now leave me the fuck alone.”

  7

  “Well that’s shite,” Salt said.

  “Yep,” Will agreed. “But we can’t force her to give a sample, because we already took a sufficient one after she was cautioned for the same recordable offense. Police and Criminal Evidence Act Section 63, 3B.”

  He shoved his hand through his hair. It was getting too long, but scheduling a haircut felt like a ridiculous dream.

  He’d spent the drive back from Sussex thrashing through the interview in his head, trying to work out what had gone wrong. What he could have said. How he could have got past that blank wall.

  But prison had led June to create a protective carapace that appeared impregnable. She’d retreated into herself, taken comfort in food, and refused to react to anything.

  On the road back, he’d worked out what she reminded him of: a tortoise his friend Pat’d had when they were small kids. “Buster,” it had been called, bizarrely. Buster hadn’t shown fear as Will had understood it, but at the slightest suggestion of challenge, he’d withdrawn his limbs and head, to leave nothing but an impervious “fuck you” shell.

  Except, June had found that last question of Will’s offensive enough to finally show something of the person inside. A mention of Joey Clarkson.

  He rubbed a hand over his face and looked at Salt, across their joined desks.

  Salt raised his eyebrows.

  “What?’ Will snapped.

  Salt shrugged. “I just don’t get why it matters, Guv? We have her DNA profile from her arrest. An intimate sample, an’ all.”

  Will frowned at him from beneath his brows. “I didn’t notice on the file that it was an intimate sample.”

  An intimate sample—blood, semen, urine or fluid from an orifice other than the mouth—needed written consent, both from the suspect and from a senior officer. It was pretty much a foolproof way to get a complete profile—more so than non-intimate samples from saliva or hair. But non-intimate samples had the advantage of being quick and enforceable without the suspect’s consent so long as they’d been arrested.

  Salt shrugged one shoulder. “Patrick—the lab guy—told me. June gave a blood sample in the station.”

  That was unusual. Someone had really wanted to be one hundred percent sure she was guilty. And June had cooperated, then.

  Will regarded the big cardboard file on his desk.

  “Do me a favor,” he said as he opened the cover. “Pull June’s original sample and get it retested. Then compare it against the Desmond crime scene profiles again, as well as the profiles from Daria’s scene.”

  Salt’s eyelids fluttered in a spastic blink. “Why?”

  “Just covering every angle.”

  “But June confessed,” Salt protested. “If it gets out that we’re lookin’ at it again. . . ”

  Will glanced up from the file. “What?”

  Salt shrugged uncomfortably. His pale, freckled skin began to turn pink. “You know what it’s like. Every conspiracy theorist and anti-police blog is gonna say we framed an innocent kid. Victimized a sex worker. Maybe that’s what this is all about . . . so we do things like this, to give them ammo to agitate to get her out.”

  “Is that you talking, or Alec?” Will asked.

  Salt opened his mouth and closed it again.

  “Look,” Will said. “As you pointed out, June confessed. In fact, she just confessed again to me. But when Daria’s killer stands trial, how the hell would we explain to the defense why we didn’t automatically retest June’s DNA when it turned up at Daria’s murder scene?”

  “I’m just sayin’. . . maybe you should clear it with Herself.”

  Will stared at him. “It’s a routine line of investigation, Des. I don’t get the defensiveness over this case. Alec looks like he wants to run someone over. Now you.”

  “It’s just . . . .” Salt swallowed hard. “That was the case that made the DCI’s career. An’ you know how loyal Alec is to her. It’s just . . . it’s sensitive ground, Guv. That’s all I’m sayin’.” He gave a weak shrug. “It matters to them.”

  Will watched him narrowly for a second longer, as his self-conscious flush turned to painful scarlet.

  “Okay,” Will said slowly. Alarm bells were going off, though he couldn’t work out what worried him most. That he could hurt Ingham. Or that anyone could think it would be appropriate for him to back off. But maybe Salt was reacting to Scrivenor’s uncharacteristic touchiness. “Thanks for the warning. I don’t want to poke around a case that was important to them either. But we have to do it Des. We can’t pretend June’s DNA wasn’t there.”

  Salt held his eyes for a few more beats of painful silence, then he sighed. “Okay.” He gave a little puff of surrender.

  “Tell the lab we’ll have them shut down if the request leaks out.” Will looked back down at the open file.

  “Can we do that?” Salt asked, impressed.

  Will didn’t look up. “Course we can,” he lied.

  Salt began negotiations on the phone, and Will turned his full attention to June’s original case files.

  It had been a straightforward kind of a murder.

  According to June’s confession, she’d recognized Ricky when she’d tried to solicit him in Mayfair. He’d been at a private party in a house beside the alleyway in which the incident took place. He was walking home. He’d had a sizable amount of cocaine and a high level of alcohol in his bloodstream, though that hadn’t reached the press.

  June had suggested to Ricky that he take her to his home for full sex, with the intention of robbing him. But he’d told her she was too young to be on the game and tried to pull her with him back to the house he’d been partying in. He’d been too high or drunk to understand her resistance and refused to let her go. She’d lost her cool and smashed the half bottle of vodka she had with h
er, onto his head. The blow had left him stunned and bleeding, but still conscious. But instead of escaping, June had calculated that Ricky would be likely to pursue charges. So she’d decided to silence him for good by using the broken bottle to stab him in the neck, severing his jugular. She’d struck his neck twice. The PM report suggested the second stabbing blow had been the fatal one. June had not tried to get help for Ricky as he lay dying, and she’d taken his wallet and keys before fleeing the scene. She’d then sold his cards and used the proceeds and cash from his wallet to buy coke and smack.

  The story was sordid and unedifying and Will was surprised that June had only been given an automatic minimum sentence at the time—thirty years. She’d been old enough at eighteen, and there had been elements of premeditation, and intent to interfere with the course of justice—even if it had been on-the-spot—as well as robbery. And, the victim had been a well-loved celebrity. The judge had actually shown restraint in failing to throw away the key.

  The files detailed what Scrivenor had meant too—she’d known Ricky had been hit over the head and glassed twice, though the details released to the press had only revealed he’d been fatally stabbed in the neck. On top of that, his wallet had been found in the flat she shared with some other sex workers.

  With the DNA match added in, it was as cut-and-dried as any case could be.

  Will surfaced long enough to set Salt to going through witness statements from outside the walk-up where Daria had been killed, and to check progress on chasing her phone and getting into her laptop.

  Then he went back to Ricky Desmond.

  There really had been an extraordinary press and political interest in his murder—wall-to-wall attention. But the MPS had arrested and charged June within a week. Or rather—the then DI Ingham had.

  According to the file, Ingham had been given the tip-off that led to June’s arrest, and then conducted the first interview that led to her confession and ultimate guilty plea.

  Will read through the transcript.

  It had been an impressive piece of wheedling and intimidation, as the best police interviews were, but then, June hadn’t been much of an adversary. Once she’d crumbled, she’d given them every detail they could want, before being put away with no resistance, and the minimum of distress to Ricky’s family.

  All the press emphasis had been on the fact that Ricky had tried to do a good deed, in keeping with his famously charitable nature, and been killed for it by a cold-eyed drug-addicted prostitute.

  There’d been no sympathy for the girl who’d murdered kind-hearted Ricky Desmond for the contents of his wallet.

  Will studied the image of Ricky in the file. He’d hardly been in his fan base demographic when the man was alive, but the face was as familiar to him as if he had been. He had just turned sixty when he died, and he stared out at Will with a shade of the jovial, twinkling intelligence that had helped win over the cynical British public. He had a fleshy face with a double chin; strong nose; thick silver hair and alert, friendly eyes.

  Will tapped his fingertips on the surface of the MDF desk, then leafed back to the first scene-of-crime reports.

  Things that hadn’t made it into the press.

  The small private gathering Ricky had attended had been at the house of a multimillionaire businessman called Eric Chan. And the cocaine in Ricky’s system suggested it hadn’t been a religious gathering.

  The witness list of people present at the party had been exclusively male and a Who’s Who? of privilege and influence—a famous actor and now knight of the realm; a football club owner; a politician; a high-ranking civil servant; a couple of top businessmen; a newspaper magnate; a TV sports pundit and a Queen’s Counsel.

  Will flicked back to the witness statements and read closely. Everyone stuck to the same story and they’d all been too powerful to push hard. They’d had dinner and a few drinks at Eric’s house. Everyone denied taking drugs. They were all personal friends and acquaintances.

  Will rubbed his fingertips against his mouth.

  Had anyone believed that shit?

  A dinner party of eleven powerful men with not a lot in common beyond their money and their egos, that went on till the early hours? A dinner that Ricky had left, earlier than the others, coked up and very drunk?

  There was no way of proving it now, but all Will’s instincts told him the party had included sex too.

  What if everyone there had agreed to make up a story to protect their own reputations when Ricky had been inconveniently murdered outside? There may have been other people there too, who were too sensitive to disclose.

  It had been thirteen years ago.

  But . . . what if Daria had been one of the girls? She hadn’t been in London that long then.

  How the hell could he find out though?

  His phone buzzed and he picked it up, still brooding.

  “How did it go with June?” Ingham asked. No greeting. She sounded distracted.

  “It didn’t,” Will said. “She refused to give us a new DNA sample, and denied knowing Daria, or how her DNA got there.”

  There was a short silence. “Why would you ask her for a new sample?”

  Fuck.

  “Just trying to close all the loopholes, Boss,” Will said.

  “There’s closing loopholes DI Foster.” Ingham’s tone was dangerous. “And there’s wasting time and police resources.” Will didn’t reply but his pulse began to speed up. She’d never spoken to him like that before. Well—Salt had warned him. “It’d be more productive to retest the sample we got from her in 2006, against Daria’s scene of crime samples. Wouldn’t it?”

  “We’re doing that,” Will said. He felt an unnerving relief that she’d suggested it, as opposed to shooting that down too.

  “Good,” she said. “Get your best suit out for tomorrow. And go home. I need you fresh.”

  “Boss,” Will said warily. But he didn’t want to question her in this mood.

  She told him anyway. “The Witness roadshow’s doing a live outside broadcast tomorrow morning at Westminster Bridge. You’re coming on with me. We’re doing the West Ken and Isleworth stabbings. The producer specifically asked for you.”

  “What?” Asked for him? Fucking . . . Catherine? From Jamie’s party? “But I’ve never done anything like that before.”

  “Neither had I the first time. I’d say it gets easier, but I’d be lying.”

  “But neither of those is my case, Boss,” he wheedled. “The one that isn’t Jamie’s is Mulligan’s.

  “Did I mention they asked for you?” Ingham said. “Take it up with Media and Communications. Be in my office by nine tomorrow so we can go over what you’re going to say. Look pretty,” she said and at last he could hear glee in her voice.

  She rang off and Will stared at the phone in disbelief. Knots of panic writhed in his middle as he thought about it. Live TV. Live national TV. He’d tormented James about it; now James could torment him back.

  But this would just be daytime TV, he told himself. There wouldn’t be the same kind of fuss James had experienced from a prime time slot, with fans on social media and . . . this was Tom’s territory not his.

  Tom!

  Will hadn’t checked his messages since he’d sat staring obsessively at his phone in HMP Bronzefield.

  And then June had wiped his mind clear.

  He hadn’t even glanced at his messages. The puzzle around Daria’s death, around Ricky, had taken all of his attention.

  He opened his message app wincing with guilt, wanting there to be a reply as much as he didn’t want there to be one, because he’d have ignored it.

  In fact it must have come in very soon after the start of the interview with June.

  You’re sleeping with Alec????

  Then just over an hour later, Caught the bad guys yet?

  A couple of hours after that, I invited Cam to stay at the house while he’s looking round London. He needs to save $.

  And then he’d given up.
/>   Will stared at the last message, gut knotted tight. He began to type, so quickly that spell-check gave up in the middle.

  Sorry. Got caught up. It’s a shitty one. Hoping to get home tonight.

  He waited, watching the screen as he’d done in Bronzefield, but there was no reply.

  8

  All of the lamps were on in the uncurtained living room at Warren Road when Will pulled up outside his house. Golden light spilled out too through the fanlight over the front door. It was just after half past nine.

  He probably shouldn’t have driven, since he felt so exhausted he was almost floating. His skin and eyes felt gritty and oversensitive. But the relief Will felt was ridiculous, and he was aware of how little of it truly came down to the anticipation of sleeping on his own mattress. Part of him had been sure Tom would be out with Cam.

  He sat for a moment or two, trying to muster the energy and will to get out of the car, knowing Tom wasn’t going to be alone.

  The prospect of meeting Cam in this condition . . . but he had no choice.

  He inhaled a deep bracing breath through his nose and let it out again, then climbed out of the car and slammed the door. The metallic thud was startlingly loud in the almost silent street. The only other sound was the distant swish of passing cars on Leyton High Road.

  Rain drizzled steadily down. The air smelled of rubber and petrol fumes.

  Will looked down the length of the suburban road—lit by the flat orange wash of sodium street lights—at the stretch of Victorian terraced houses with small walls closing off their tiny front gardens from the pavement.

  Will had bought in to Leyton as an up-and-coming area—affordable at the time but hopefully on its way to imminent gentrification—and Will’s house was now one of the best kept on the street. It was covered with crisp white-washed render and it had a glossy black front gate; a door of shining, black-glossed wood. Its lines were classic, elegant, unpretentious.

  Over two years, Will had painstakingly remodeled the house with his own hands. In fact for a while, after he’d lost Tom, and then Sanjay, and then when he’d left the Met, restoring the house was all that had kept him sane. He never failed to get a little surge of pleasure now, when he arrived home after time away.