by Dal Maclean
It took less than half an hour to set up.
But Hansen had sent him to Bronzefield purely to discover how Eve connected to David Burchill. When he’d told her the bones of what Eve actually wanted—a way to reel in her son—she’d sounded less than interested.
But for Will the genie was out now, and flying. Eve had said the magic words.
More information. Joey Clarkson.
Holly Clarkson was June Winton’s daughter. But Joey and Pauline had told him they didn’t know her.
Did Eve know about Will’s history? Did she know that any connection to Joey would hook him in?
But how? She could easily have got Will’s name from his first interview with June, and where he was based. He’d given June his card.
And that, when he thought about it, was most probably the key to his usefulness to her. The fact that officers in South Ken MIT had investigated the murder of her children and knew where to reach her son.
So, why not ask those officers direct? Why involve Will?
Unless they wouldn’t come. But an officer who didn’t know her, an officer she could reach through a fellow inmate, might.
And then she’d seen Will and decided to play. The fact that her first piece of bait involved Joey was probably a coincidence.
But it might as well have been tailor-made for him
Somehow he had to try to persuade June to tell him what she knew.
When she shambled into the same Interview Room though, June looked dazed, as if she didn’t understand how this could be happening.
It took two tries to get a nod when Will formally asked her if he could swab her cheek, though in truth the sample was just an excuse to try to restart a conversation with her. But more than that, it was to keep her safe.
This was Eve’s gesture of power, her largesse, and Will was pretty sure that if he didn’t accept it, June would pay the price.
But as he rose to his feet, pulling on his latex gloves, Will could see that June’s whole bulky body was trembling. Who wouldn’t be terrified if they drew the attention of Eve Kelly though? Will wasn’t feeling too chipper himself, and he wasn’t daily at her mercy.
“June,” he said. “You understand that this is voluntary?” He kept his tone soft.
June’s small mouth compressed. “There’s no such thing,” she said miserably. “Not for me.”
He eyed her, startled. It was the closest to a human interaction he’d yet managed with her. He took his opening.
“I’m sorry,” he said, “I don’t want you to be forced into this. I won’t take it then.”
She looked up at him in naked alarm. “No, you ‘ave to! Or . . . .” Her child’s voice fell to a hushed mutter. Her eyes darted round the room as she drew in a deep sobbing breath that shook her enormous frame.
She was terrified, and Will felt a surge of sympathy for her. She seemed like a child to him, peering out from that huge body.
Getting June to trust him, to tell him what she knew, that was the prize. The samples were a bridgehead to get there.
“Look, why don’t I take the swab, and that’ll get you clear with . . . .” He almost said, “You Know Who.” “But . . . .” he lowered his voice to a near whisper. “We already have your DNA, so it’s just a formality.”
She stared up at him with watery turquoise eyes. She didn’t look any less upset. She looked resigned.
She opened her mouth for the swab, like, Will thought suddenly, like an animal bowing its neck for the knife.
The image was disturbing, and Will was barely concentrating as he swabbed her inner cheek twice, and closed the samples away in their cases. He took his seat again.
June’s eyes never left him. Tears coursed down her plump cheeks, trembling on the edges of the rolls of fat round her chin, and she didn’t try to wipe them away, as if she wasn’t aware they were there, or she was beyond caring. What the fuck had Eve threatened her with?
All Will’s protective instincts, all his copper’s instincts, told him to ask the Director to put her into segregation, to try to shield her. But Eve had specifically laid down that gauntlet. She’d do everything in her power not to lose face if he challenged her that way; do everything to reach June. And he couldn’t bet against her succeeding.
He could only hope that June’s cooperation and possible usefulness to Eve would protect her, as Eve had intimated. As long as he didn’t try to get her segregated. And here he was, already having made a deal with the devil.
As he watched June’s distress, Will felt painfully responsible.
But it was his job. Finding the truth. He just wished he didn’t feel so much like . . . a bully.
“June,” he said softly. “You had a baby and she was adopted by Joey Clarkson. Did you work for him?”
He’d thought June’s face was already chalk white but somehow she got paler. Gray. Her gaze dropped to the table. She leaned forward, then back, then forward. Back. Forward. And she shook her head and didn’t stop shaking it.
“June!” Will said, alarmed, but his tone was too sharp.
She froze, a rabbit in front of a relentless fox.
“I used to work out of an alley,” she said in a monotone rush, still staring at the table. “Beside Mr. Clarkson’s club.” She reminded Will of a long-dormant machine that had suddenly switched on. But she sounded oddly detached from what she was saying. As if the words meant nothing to her. “I got knocked up. His wife felt sorry for me. She’s very kind.” Every sentence ran into the next, like lines rehearsed and learned by rote then gabbled without expression in that high, fluting voice. And all the time plump, silent tears slipped from her eyelids and she was rocking again in her chair, heaving back and forth. “She tried to help me. But I went back on the game. So she took in my baby; she’s very kind; she’s very kind.”
“June . . . .”
“She’s very kind.”
And as much as Will desperately wanted to pursue it, he looked at what he’d done to her and he couldn’t.
“Okay,” he said with a sigh. “Okay, June. We’ll leave it there.”
The rocking didn’t stop and she didn’t look up.
Will studied her for a moment longer, then stood and gathered the samples from the table between them. At least he’d established a line of communication between them. Something he could build on if he needed to.
“Perhaps we can talk again sometime?” he coaxed. “Would that be okay? Do you still have my card?”
Her head jerked up.
“I called her Megan,” she said, urgent. Will held his breath, caught in the shock of reddened turquoise misery. “She’s thirteen.” Her mouth trembled into something resembling a smile, grotesque. “Tell her I love ‘er? An’ I’ll always be her mum. Tell her that? Please. Please. Thank you.”
Will handed June’s samples to Salt to be sent to the lab, which would probably wind Ingham up even more than hearing about the trip to Bronzefield, given her lecture on wasting police resources. But he couldn’t just throw the samples away after the emotional cost to June in getting them.
Her distress still ate at him—that last plea about her child. Megan. Holly. But trying to get any information out of her may be a lost cause. Or maybe he hated the idea of doing any more damage.
Salt raised a disapproving eyebrow when he saw the details Will had scrawled on the sample, but he didn’t say June’s name aloud or Eve’s, come to that. Not with Scrivenor sitting across the aisle.
“You looked aye bonny on the telly,” Scrivenor said as he swung his seat to face Will. His voice was very loud.
As office manager, he had to brief Will on what had happened in his absence. But now he’d deliberately attracted the attention of the DCs sitting nearby, to alert them to the imminent ritual humiliation usually dished out to James.
“An’ that lassie who interviewed ye . . . .” Scrivenor said salaciously. “She thought so tae.”
The DCs, men and women, made “woah-hoah, go get her Guv” noises.
; Will sighed. He’d forgotten about the supposed UST. The morning felt years in the past.
But he still sounded defensive when he said, “She was just being encouraging.”
Hoots of derision sounded all around him.
“Aye, is that so?” Scrivenor said. “Maybe she should have wiped the drool aff her chin then.”
Even Will had to laugh, ridiculous as it was. And he tried not to think of what Scrivenor would be saying if he knew how Will had spent the rest of the day.
“Oh, an’ Media an’ Communications came down to see ye. Very nice wimmin. She said to tell ye, the producer uv the program, Catherine someone. She wants tae take you to lunch tomorrow to discuss things.” Somehow he made lunch sound like a dodgy sexual pastime indulged in only by the decadent elite. “An’ Media an’ Communications say—yer goin’ like it or no.” Scrivenor’s moustache stretched over a satisfied grin. “It’s like Jamie all over again. It’s the gift that keeps oan givin’.”
Will opened his mouth and closed it again. He’d worry about Catherine when he had time.
“Anyway,” Scrivenor said, when it was clear Will wasn’t going to bite. “The remarkable thing is, we got a good lead oan the West Ken case frae it.”
Will stared at him gobsmacked. The whole TV experience had felt trivial and risible from beginning to end, so gaining something useful from it felt shocking.
“And you saved that piece of trivial information for last?”
“Naturally. A lassie called in,” Scrivenor explained, still grandstanding. “An eyewitness. Apparently she wiz hopin’ tae talk tae you.” More jeering. “DI Mulligan’s gone oot oan it.” Then he lowered his voice until only Will could hear him, and leaned closer. “He’s nae chuffed.”
“Why not?” Will asked in an equally hushed voice.
“Well,” Scrivenor shrugged a beefy shoulder. “It wiz his case, an’ they put you oan the telly. And then Herself leaves you in charge.”
Put like that, Will could totally understand why Mulligan would hate his guts. And there was much worse to come—if Will leapfrogged him to become DCI.
Scrivenor swept off then on some mission and Will sat at his desk and did what he always did at this stage of an investigation, even one as fucked-up as this one. He tried to focus on creating some kind of a theory that might fit all of the information he had in hand.
In truth, so far, it was all just scattered clues, related and yet not. Pieces of the puzzle floating, touching at times, but disconnected, and it was impossible to see a picture.
Someone had planted June’s DNA at Daria’s murder scene. June said she didn’t know Daria. Daria had worked at clubs owned by Eric Chan, who’d been loosely connected to the man June murdered, Ricky Desmond.
Daria had been directly employed by a company owned by Joey. Joey had adopted June’s baby.
But he hadn’t found a direct link between June and Daria.
Every one of those facts could be coincidences . . . except the DNA. Someone had deliberately linked the two cases for the police to find. And Will still had no idea—not even a theory—why.
Then there was the new wild card in the pack: Eve, who claimed to know things about June.
And one more link Will didn’t like to think about. Ingham, who had not only worked on the Desmond case, but headed the investigation into the murders of Eve’s children. Ingham, who’d also ordered him to back off June.
Will couldn’t tell anyone about any of it until he spoke to Ingham herself, but he was aware the most likely outcome of that conversation was her ripping his balls off out of sheer frustration.
Will sent Walsh out with DC Sameera Khan to conduct a preliminary, shot-across-the-bow information-gathering interview with Eric Chan, focused on any knowledge of Daria. The Ricky Desmond link was still too sensitive.
Then he sat and went through Daria’s postmortem report again.
Something that hadn’t struck him before. A cursory effort had been made to wipe up the vomit at the scene. But the killer must have known the planted DNA would be discounted immediately it was identified as belonging to June. So why go to the effort of even pretending a cleanup?
Daria’s laptop had given them nothing, her phone hadn’t been traced, and a more detailed search of the flat in Bethnal Green had yielded nothing that could be construed as potential blackmail material.
They had to assume then that if Daria had tried that game, the murderer had managed to find and destroy whatever information they were being threatened with. Or Daria had brought it to the meeting in Soho, and it had been taken by the killer.
Will sat back and scowled up at the ceiling.
He had to force away what he wanted to be true, and look at the likely scenarios.
Because Ingham was right, as bloody usual.
Joey’s connection to the case didn’t mean he was the culprit, even knowing about Holly. Especially knowing about Holly. Will had favored the assumption that whoever was running Daria—Joey’s organization—had her killed, but he had to face it.
Joey would be the least likely to play games by planting evidence that could lead the police to June, because that would lead to Holly. If he’d wanted Daria gone, he’d have had her quietly and efficiently removed, like a business transaction. Game-playing wasn’t his style. Will had just wanted it to be.
Looking at it objectively, Eric Chan was a more interesting prospect for information.
Daria had worked high-end clubs and parties for years—latterly in his establishments. Should they assume any blackmail material was recent, given the fact Daria had spoken to Scarlett about a new windfall? Or was it something she’d kept for a rainy day? And drug addiction and a plummeting income would definitely class as that.
When she’d started working in London, her rich, connected clients probably wouldn’t have gone to much effort to hide their identities. They’d have shielded themselves and each other from exposure, and they had the ability to easily discredit any accusers, especially prostitutes. But the advent of social media and changing attitudes made it harder to hide the past, especially if any accusers had hard evidence.
Which didn’t tell Will who may have decided Daria posed an imminent threat, or who might have been employed to commit the murder.
But if Daria’s execution fitted the blackmail scenario, then maybe an attempt to muddy the waters with a bizarre addition to a crime scene did make sense. If it distracted the police long enough to let the trail go cold.
The realization hit him like a cudgel.
He sat up, rigidly straight, as if someone had stuck a pin in him.
He really was doing what the killer had planned, stupidly following their trail of false crumbs.
He needed to shift his attention fast to what Ingham had told him to do before he got stuck on planted forensics: focus on Daria and on her recent and past contacts.
He picked up his desk phone and tried calling Scarlett’s mobile number but it went straight to voicemail, and when he contacted the FLO, she informed him she’d already left him a message that morning. Scarlett had left her flat without informing her. Which was pretty much what he should have expected a smart person like Scarlett to do, Will acknowledged with a stab of self-disgust—go to ground and make it known in the relevant circles that she was not helping the police.
He’d taken his eye off the ball completely.
He went through every dot and comma of officer reports then, on lines followed on Daria.
Then as it headed toward six, he pulled up the available case files on Eve. Not the original ones from her notorious murder spree in 1996, but the files that involved her peripherally in 2016, when her daughters had been killed.
Will didn’t believe now that Eve had any viable information on Daria’s murder. She’d been playing with him. But he knew it would be prudent to learn more about the involvement of the South Ken unit and Eve’s son, before he delivered her message to Ingham.
Because Ingham was going to have to deliver the bad ne
ws to Stevie.
The case files read like a novel. Four murders in total, apparently unconnected, all relatively high-profile victims. An extraordinary puzzle, but one the unit eventually solved. And the murderer, Stephen Underwood, had committed suicide in front of then DS Henderson, who’d been about to arrest him.
It took time to discover why the existence of Eve’s son was never mentioned in press reports or in the case files. A comprehensive gag order had been slapped on the Underwood case, banning reporting of certain sensitive details. Two identities were redacted on the official case file and on top of that, part of it was locked. Amazingly, nothing had leaked from the unit.
The authorities had taken strict measures to protect “Stevie” from exposure of his existence, never mind his identity, though Eve had always had the ability to fuck that up on a whim. But Will supposed she’d held that card back to play at a time of maximum advantage to herself. And that time had apparently arrived.
DI Mulligan and his team got back to the station at about half past six with three suspects in tow. As Scrivenor had intimated, Mulligan—who’d never been exactly welcoming to the arrival of another DI—reported to Will as if every word physically hurt him. And in all honesty, Will couldn’t even blame him.
As Scrivenor had pointed out, it had been insensitive to say the least to put Will in charge when he was barely in the door and Mulligan had been there for years. And Ingham should have insisted to Media and Communications that the officer on the case should appear onscreen.
Mulligan was, in Will’s opinion, deeply insecure, which was possibly why he came across as an officious, pedantic, awkward twat, but Will couldn’t help feeling some empathy. He’d tried to ask him out for a pint once or twice but Mulligan had clearly viewed it as an attempt to take the piss, since everyone else, except his sergeant, pretty much ignored him.
Will should have given up then, because in the end Mulligan was an uninspired copper and he couldn’t fit in with the in-crowd in the unit and that was life. But if Ingham had her way, Mulligan could be under his command soon and he wanted his team working for, rather than against him. So Will put up with his almost insulting debrief, and offered what help he could.