by Dal Maclean
“She’s . . . it’s like there’s no one in there. The only moment she seemed alive was to say she wanted to be left alone. And she must be close to twenty-five stones.” Ingham turned her head to him then, eyes wide. “What was she like when you knew her?” Will asked
Ingham frowned and turned her gaze back to Emily and Joyce.
“Sullen,” she said after a second’s pause. “Angry. Incredibly angry. And then . . . cooperative, when she realized she wasn’t goin’ to wriggle out of it.” She shrugged. “Thirteen years is a long time in a place like Bronzefield.” They both stood in silence for a minute, then Ingham sighed. “Look, all this is doing is stirring up old bones. We have a brand-new corpse to deal with.”
But Will couldn’t help saying stubbornly, “Her DNA was there, Boss.”
“Then it was an anomaly,” Ingham snapped, patience instantly gone. “Fucking hell, I might have expected this from Jamie but . . . .” She scowled and pressed her lips together, as if she were trying to beat down her temper.
“But what?” Will bit out and he realized he was now in a confrontation with his superior officer. Just like old times. He just hadn’t expected it would happen with Ingham. But he went on with stubborn defiance, “If you know Jamie would pursue this, why wouldn’t I?”
“Because . . .” Ingham turned her whole body toward him. She huffed with impatience. “Look . . . Jamie’s a natural detective, a brilliant one even. An instinctive one. But, he’s a white knight. An idealist, one hundred percent by the book, no stone unturned. Nothing can change that, and I wouldn’t want to. But you . . . for all your criminology degree, you are a natural copper, and that’s pretty fucking rare.” She shook her head slightly, a movement of frustration. “I thought you understood the compromises we have to make every day, to get just. . . .The best result we can manage. The shit, split-second decisions we have to take.” She held his gaze effortlessly. “This thing . . . whatever it is, it can’t be some ‘what if?’ to theorize over in a seminar. Yeah, it’s fascinating but we don’t have the time or resources or manpower to . . . to stumble round this murder looking for crazy possibilities, just so we’ve crossed every t. You checked in with June, and she denies all knowledge. That’s enough to cover us in a trial. We may never know how her DNA got there. And that’s shit. But we have to focus on the live avenues, likely ones. Because if we don’t, the next case’ll steamroller over this one. You know that. I’m amazed you’d be the one to forget it.”
Her large, clever, slightly protuberant eyes blazed into his, and Will couldn’t argue with a thing she’d said.
It was all true, and he felt a sudden, unworthy sense of reprieve, like being excused a horrendous project by a teacher through no fault of his own.
The unit genuinely didn’t have time to reexamine June’s case. He had to accept Daria’s would be an imperfect investigation, because pursuing “perfect” could destroy their chances of finding the killer.
And Will didn’t need to feel anymore now, like some snitch, undermining and digging around his own colleagues’ work.
“We have the possibility it was punishment by Daria’s bosses,” Ingham went on steadily. “The possibility she tried blackmail and it backfired. The possibility the intended victim was the sex worker who should have been in the walk-up. The possibility it was personal. You can solve the mystery of the dodgy DNA when you’re in your retirement home. Or better yet, let forensics figure out their own mistakes, and you keep focused on Daria, and the people who decided to make her dead.”
“Jo! Will! Thank you so much!” They’d sunk so deep into their hushed conversation that neither of them noticed that the program had ended or that Catherine had descended from the OB van to gush over everyone involved. “You were marvelous!”
Ingham held Will’s eyes for a moment longer then turned to Catherine with a broad smile.
“Just glad it’s over for another series,” Ingham said amiably. “I don’t think Will’s cut out to be a show pony either.”
“Once was definitely enough,” Will agreed, but he was still fixed on what Ingham had said, trying to process it. Trying to understand why it felt both right and pragmatic given the realities of policing in the Met now, and at the same time as if he was running away from something because it was difficult. Something from which Ingham had implied James, with his uncomplicated morality, wouldn’t flinch.
“You haven’t looked at social media yet have you?” Catherine asked, and something about her twinkling self-satisfaction snapped Will back to the moment with a clear sense of doom, seconds before she turned the iPad she carried and pointed the screen at them. Someone had collected tweets, with attached gifs.
“A selection from on-air,” Catherine announced.
If I confessed would that hot dark-haired cop do a home visit? #comeandgetme #witnessroadshow
Where the fuck do @BBCWitness find their cops? They don’t look anything like that round my way.
So is DI Foster single? Asking for a friend. #witnessroadshow
@realemilydalton Back off the future father of my children.
Just let someone look at me the way @realemilydalton looked at DI Foster on #witnessroadshow.
Cannot believe the UST on Witness! @realemilydalton and the beautiful cop. It’s so cute!
It was daytime TV, Will told himself pathetically, one last time.
He felt ill reading the reactions, flushed with a mixture of disbelief, embarrassment and panic, but when he shot an appalled look at Ingham, she was trying badly to contain her amusement.
“UST,” Catherine said. “That’s ‘unresolved sexual tension’.”
“I know,” Will said, through gritted teeth. Ingham snorted and pressed her lips tight together.
Catherine sailed on. “Well, you were a godsend to our social media engagement markers. Just as I thought. The #hotcop effect.”
Ingham snorted again. No way this humiliation wasn’t getting back to the office. Will had endured all the jokes about getting a piece of meat reaction, like James’s, but he hadn’t actually believed it would happen.
“You’re both coming to the lunch,” Catherine said, a statement rather than a question.
But Ingham explained a car was coming to take her to catch a train. And Will said he had to get back to the office at once. They retreated together as Catherine insisted she’d be in touch.
“Oh dear,” Ingham gloated as they walked toward a dark saloon, waiting further along Belvedere Road. “Hot cop 2.”
Will was still too traumatized to begin to conjure up a defense.
By the time he’d reached his own car, parked in a multistory on York Road, he’d begun to calm down. But he had to talk himself into switching his phone on again.
Immediately it began to ping and kept on pinging as he opened the car door and slid into the driver’s seat. Then he sat scowling at the home screen as it finally. . . finally slowed to a halt. There were a lot of notifications from the office. Texts from his mum, his mum’s friend, an ex-girlfriend, Mark Nimmo, Will’s extended family and Tom. He opened that one.
You were great. Very authoritative. Looked like you’d been doing it forever. X
Will read it again and his chest felt warmer. Because Tom had known instinctively that was what he’d cared about: doing the task professionally and not letting the unit, or their cases, down. And he realized that was why Catherine and her tweets had rattled him so much. His contribution had been reduced to . . . superficiality, as if it didn’t matter what he’d said.
Will couldn’t fathom how Tom, with a mind as focused as his, could stand the world he’d worked in. Still worked in.
Or maybe Will just needed to regain a sense of humor. He’d laughed enough at James, and James had probably felt the same way he did right now.
He clicked open a message from Salt, letting him know the lab had again matched June’s stored DNA sample from 2006, with the sample taken at Ricky’s crime scene. So that was one more fantastic possibility killed of
f. June had definitely done it.
But then, in the mess of notifications on his home screen he spotted one he’d almost missed—a call from Hansen’s mobile. He just hoped to hell she wasn’t calling to tell him she’d been watching.
She picked up almost immediately.
“Will,” she said. “Thanks for getting back to me; I know you were busy this morning. The director at Bronzefield has called to inform me that Ava Burchill was attacked early this morning.” Will’s eyes fixed, staring at the concrete wall in front of his windscreen. “She’s in the hospital and she’s asked to talk to you.”
“Me?” Will parroted, to end his moments of blank disbelief. Then a wave of familiar outrage crashed in behind. “Not her brother?” The psychopath Ava had served like some kind of religious enforcer, worshiping at his altar. “Not you?” Who’d hid David Burchill for years under a government anonymity program as successful model agency owner Nick Haining. Who was shielding him still, under yet another identity—unbelievably, outrageously, free—living a brand-new life in France. “She wants me.”
“Yes,” Hansen said. “Aren’t you curious?” It was as if she didn’t hear the unfettered hostility in his voice, as if she didn’t understand what he was really saying, or the tone he should not be using to a superior officer. She always had ignored what suited her. “In any case, you know Nick can’t travel abroad without special permission.” Because to her he was still ‘Nick,’ the civilized identity under which she’d known him.
“Your permission,’ Will accused. “He should be behind bars.” And it all felt fresh again—the personal betrayal and disappointment he’d felt when he’d first heard about the convenient deal she’d negotiated for David—Nick. Tom’s horrified anger and distress.
“I do understand this affects you personally,” Hansen said. The cool, almost bored understatement of it took Will’s breath. “But you’re not some civilian who doesn’t understand the criminal justice system. You’re well aware Nick had already wrongly served longer than he’d have got for aiding and abetting as far as he did. It’s how fair sentencing works.”
Will clenched his hands, white-knuckle tight on the steering wheel until he thought he’d rip it off its moorings through sheer, blind frustration. But the simple truth was that nothing had convinced Hansen that Nick had ever been any more than an ineffectual bystander to his sister’s madness.
“I’ve organized clearance,” Hansen went on. “So you can go straight there. I’d like an immediate briefing when the meeting is over.”
“The DCI’s away,” Will protested. “She’s left me in charge and I have a murder case to. . . .”
“I appreciate you taking the time,” Hansen said. And that was that. Anything that impacted on Nick was going to come near the top of Hansen’s priorities.
“Ma’am,” Will said bitterly, and switched on the engine.
The last time Will had seen Ava Burchill, she was being led out to a police car after trying to kill him. And Tom. She and her unholy ally Carys Rolfe had come within a whisker of killing them both.
The previous summer, Ava had carried out a grotesque campaign of strategic violence and gaslighting aimed at destabilizing Tom; to tear him down him until he finally surrendered himself to the brother she worshiped.
There had been no need for either himself or Tom to give evidence at her trial, because she’d pleaded guilty to multiple murders and they’d deliberately ignored her sentencing hearing. They’d played football in the park instead.
But in Will’s memory she had remained . . . familiar. Jena Haining, as she’d called herself then—tall and statuesque, elegantly dressed, with discreet makeup and a feathery bob, dyed an on-trend pale pink. A successful PA in her brother’s modeling agency; a pitch-perfect projection of youthful efficiency in an image-led industry.
Now she lay cuffed to a bed in a hospital room in Chertsey, her forehead and hands swathed in bandages like a victim of cartoon violence. Will wouldn’t have recognized her if he hadn’t been guided to her bed. What he could see of her hair beneath the bandages, was mid brown and she was bird thin. Frail and plain, her pink feathers gone.
The investigating officer, a weary middle-aged DI from Surrey Police, told Will that her hands were covered in defensive wounds and that a name had been carved into her forehead. “Max.”
To Ava, ordering the murder and mutilation of gangland IT wizard Max Perry had been nothing more than one more means to an end. Collateral damage. But Max had been Eddie Butts’s brother. It was inevitable Eddie would use his connections to reach behind bars and to take his revenge.
“Ava?”
She shifted restlessly and winced, but she didn’t open her eyes. Will could have almost felt pity, if he hadn’t known what she’d done. “You asked to see me.”
And he’d just spent one and three quarter valuable hours getting here—time he should have spent working Daria’s case. Just to reassure Hansen that nothing would rock the boat.
Ava’s eyes fluttered open, and at last she was familiar.
“Will,” she said on a breath. Her voice sounded thin. Her eyes were large and wondering. Dark blue, like her brother’s eyes. “You came. I didn’t know if you would.”
Will kept his expression enigmatic, giving no emotion away. But talking to her was bringing it all back, though the nightmares had faded months ago.
The unreachable determination in her eyes as she’d inflicted relentless agony to paralyze him. Lying helpless in gut terror and grief, watching Tom’s execution.
“Why did you ask to see me?” His tone was harsh.
Ava swallowed, and swallowed again. “I . . . I wouldn’t have bothered you unless I had to.” Meek. Timid. She’d always been good at getting people on her side. “They said you’re a policeman again. How’s Tommy?” She asked it anxiously, as if she really cared.
Will could feel his expression sliding toward outright loathing.
“Alive,” he snapped. She pressed her lips hard together, and her lashes were wet, but she didn’t cry.
He pulled his expression back to stone neutrality. The policeman in him asked, “You know who did this to you?”
She looked at him with terrified eyes. “No.” But it held no conviction.
“So you’re going to protect them?”
Ava didn’t take her desperate, avid gaze off him. “I want to do the numbers.”
Doing the numbers. What inmates called applying for Rule 45—segregation for prisoners with special concerns about their safety. It was used for sex offenders, jailed police officers, grasses. It was even more claustrophobic than main prison life. “Will you ask the Director for me?” Her voice quavered. “Or get Chris to?”
Will glowered. Chris. Years of easy familiarity were in that name.
“If you wanted to speak with AC Hansen,” he said. “You should have asked for her.”
“I’m . . . look.” Her voice trembled. “I have to tell you something.”
Will’s eyes narrowed. “All I want to hear is that you’re finally going to confess Nick was behind all you did.”
“He wasn’t!”
“Has he ever even visited you?” Will’s mouth curled with contempt.
“You know he couldn’t.”
“I know he wouldn’t, because he’ll always put himself first.”
“No! He loves me. He loves Tom . . . so much it almost destroyed him!”
“Love?” Will scoffed. “He has no idea what it means.”
Ava glared at him, her face coloring with impotent outrage under the white bulk of the bandages. But then, her eyes widened as if someone had warned her and she visibly checked her anger. He could see her forcing calm.
After a moment she said again, “I have to tell you something,” steadily, like repeating a learned line from a play. But Will registered that the emphasis was again on ‘have to.’ “I . . . need to talk to you alone. I won’t say it otherwise.”
Will folded his arms and raised an unimpressed brow, b
ut he nodded at the prison officer seated in a chair in the corner. The man glowered, but he got up and left.
“So,” Will said. “Tell me.” Truthfully he’d had enough of the conversation before he’d even arrived.
“You came here to talk to June Winton,” Ava said. Will frowned. He really hadn’t expected that. “You wanted help and she wouldn’t give it.”
“How do you know?” Will demanded.
“Everyone knows everyone’s business in here.” It sounded like evasion. Then she blurted, “She was ordered not to cooperate with you.”
“Ordered?” Will’s heart rate began to speed up: the beginnings of excitement, the premonition of threat.
Ava drew in a deep breath. “Have you heard of Eve Kelly?”
Will wondered if his eyes had bugged.
Who the fuck hadn’t heard of her? A whole week of his criminology course had been devoted to trying to pick her mind and methods apart; a rare female serial killer who’d tortured, castrated and murdered men just for fun. Stunningly beautiful and charming, without pity or remorse. A counter-culture icon. ‘The Holly Golightly Killer,’ in the words of the tabloid press. A superstar monster.
“You’re saying . . . Eve Kelly told June not to cooperate?” It sounded as stunned and incredulous as Will felt.
Ava’s breathing began to shake audibly. If she wasn’t mortally afraid, her acting skills had leveled up. “She . . . wants something. Eve.”
Will stared at her a moment longer. “What does she want?”
“To meet you.”
It took too long for his brain to work again.
“Me? Wait. You were . . . this was done to you, to get that message to me?”
Ava’s damp eyes evaded his, then she looked at him again, straight on. She sniffed hard. She didn’t have to say, yes.
“Why wouldn’t she just . . . put in a request?”
“Because . . . .” Ava said forcefully. “That’s not how she works, Will. She plays games, gets inside people’s heads. She lives for it. It’s not like the gangs that form around the others. It’s more like a cult. Or . . . or a Praetorian Guard. They’ll do anything she tells them to. And she wanted you to see who has the balance of power.”