by Dal Maclean
Ben pulled back with a weak, self-conscious laugh.
“We went to Devon,” James said. “In April. The best anyone can hope for’s rust.”
He wore a faded collared shirt and jeans and he looked like an indie film casting of a young Greek god. Will thought James and Ben must be the best-looking men he knew, until Tom appeared in the doorway behind James, and Will couldn’t see anyone else.
His chest hurt with love and the helpless fear of imminent devastating loss.
Tom’s pale hair was loose and parted in the middle, and he wore a dark blue finely ribbed knitted jumper with a deep V neck ending in a zip, exposing his tanned throat and the top of his smooth chest. His long legs were enhanced by narrow navy trousers with a turn-up at the ankle and electric blue suede lace-up shoes with no socks.
Will hadn’t seen any of it before. Tom had stopped dressing up in high fashion since he’d gone back to university, other than for photo shoots, but he still had a wardrobe full of freebies in the spare room. Tonight he looked as if he’d come straight from his old life—outrageously gorgeous, untouchable, light years out of Will’s league.
He met Will’s wide-eyed gaze with no expression. Will felt a pulse of nervous despair.
There was no warmth in Tom’s eyes. Not even the guilt or panic he’d shown when they parted at Rocco’s. He was the Tom of last summer. The Tom who’d broken Will’s heart two years before.
“Come on then,” Ben said tiredly and ushered them all into the large kitchen at the back of the house. It was floored with wood too, and it stretched from the back of the hall to impressive bifold doors at the very back of the house, leading onto a leafy garden. A dog bed lay near a big table near the doors, and in it, a cowering black dog.
Ozzy took time to warm up to company. He was Ben’s rescue dog and James said he’d hidden for his first months with them, but now he followed Ben everywhere he could get up the courage to go. Apparently his bones had once stuck out; now he looked sleek and healthy. It was very much mutual adoration.
Will crouched down beside him and held out a hand for inspection.
Ozzy sniffed it timidly and looked up at him with nervous brown eyes, ready to accept whatever was coming to him. Will wondered if he would ever forget his early abuse; if later kindness could wipe away the instinctive flinch, the brace for pain.
He stroked the dark head gently. “Good boy, Ozzy,” he said softly. “You’re a good boy.” Ozzy’s tail whapped uncertainly against the bed. Will looked up to find Ben watching them gravely.
Perhaps, Will thought, he could understand better now the intensity of Ben’s bond with the dog.
“Tell me about meeting my mother,” Ben said.
My mother. Fuck, but he was brave.
Will levered himself to his feet. “Here?” he asked softly.
They both glanced toward Tom and James standing by the large island unit in the center of the room. Tom’s mouth tightened.
“I told Tom,” Ben said.
They all perched on stools around the island and ate Ben’s excellent lasagne and Will spewed out everything that had happened—as he had to Hansen, from the moment he saw Charles Priestly outside their engagement party, through to Hansen despatching him to Bronzefield, to meeting Eve, to the false DNA sample and June’s murder.
He told them all of it, whether Hansen liked it or not.
But James certainly didn’t like it. Any of it. He looked shell-shocked, then sick, then appalled, then derisory.
“You actually suspect Ingham?” he scoffed.
“I don’t want to.” Will shifted on his stool. “But she was the one who ordered June’s blood sample. She’s all but ordered me not to look into June’s case, though the DNA link was there to Daria from the start. She’s directed me away from Eve. And now she’s ordered me off June’s murder.”
“Fucking hell! I can’t believe this! You’ve lost the bloody plot Will! You’re jumping to insane conclusions. And as for Hansen . . . !”
Will stared at him, unnerved, because he’d never seen James seriously lose his temper before. He defined coolness under every kind of pressure; Will had always put it down to having his upper lip stiffened at his posh public school. But really—what else could Will have expected, after what he’d just told him? James loved Ingham.
But he couldn’t help his own defensive response either, because he must have hoped deep down for support and understanding. And he cared about Ingham too.
“I get it!” he snapped. “She’s like family!” James looked murderous. “But June Winton was locked up for thirteen years for something she most likely didn’t do. And then she was killed, like an animal in an abattoir. Her whole life was misery. And I sentenced her to death, by asking for that sample. For getting that sample.”
He hadn’t known how badly he needed someone else to hear that. Maybe, he thought once again, that was the value of Confession. His mother would be thrilled.
“You couldn’t have known,” James said. He sounded uncomfortable.
“You didn’t see her,” Will said. “She was fucking terrified. She knew when she gave the sample, that they’d kill her. And she thanked me for it.”
A hand pressed down on his, resting on the granite surface of the unit. He looked up into Tom’s enigmatic gaze. He didn’t know why he was surprised. Underneath everything, Tom had an unerring instinct toward compassion, and Will knew Tom did care about him. But he couldn’t help feeling some hope. He wondered if it showed.
James sounded tormented as he burst out, “All right! I’ll help. But only because finding out who was responsible will clear Ingham.”
Which was what Will wanted too, if the world were fair.
“I don’t understand why you trust Hansen though,” James said, almost sullen. “After last summer. She ran the whole investigation like the rules didn’t apply to her. “
“That’s why I trust her,” Will bit back. “She took risks to do the right thing as she saw it. To save Tom and to keep Nick’s identity safe.”
“The right thing as she saw it,” James repeated. “That’s the point. She doesn’t get to decide. She has to abide by the rules.”
“You didn’t, last summer. You helped us and you kept our secrets.”
James chewed his lip. “But I didn’t know all of it,” he said. “I trusted a superior officer. But a copper who makes their own rules is dangerous. And mitigating circumstances aren’t an excuse.”
The dichotomy between Will and James’s basic attitudes to their job was just as Ingham had said. Will thought with a pang, that she understood them both very well indeed.
“We make those decisions every day as coppers. Maybe it’s not always strictly by the book, but a good copper, an old school copper, has a sense of proportion. An ability to use discretion.” He sounded like Ingham.
“Our job is upholding the law,” James said. “Following rules put there for a reason. We have enough power without deciding for ourselves what’s right and wrong. And Hansen keeps running her own private operations.”
“You make it sound like she’s doing it for personal gain,” Will protested. “For fuck’s sake Jamie, she’s trying to investigate corruption when she doesn’t know who else around or even above her might be on the take. She has to bend the rules, when the rules might protect the bad guys.”
“Who else is on the take?” James repeated with outrage. “You’ve already condemned Ingham then?”
“No! But, look . . . .” Will tried. “The way Hansen’s doing it allows the DCI privacy at least. If Ingham’s innocent, what would be the effect on her or on anyone else caught up in a public investigation into her potential corruption?”
“Can you come with me tomorrow?” Ben said suddenly. “Stay with me when I talk to her?”
It took Will seconds to understand Ben that was talking to him. James understood at the same time. He reached out to grab Ben’s hand. “No! Please Ben. Let me go with you.”
“Jamie . . . think what sh
e’d do if she had us both in there to play with. Last time, she didn’t know what I was to you, or the other way round. I don’t want to give her that. I’ve always let her cow me. It’s like . . . she wrote that response in my cells. Every time I used to go to see her in prison, my guts would just . . . turn to water. I’d go there to remind myself who I really was. Why I could never trust anyone. And I wanted to show her I’d won; I was living my best life. But every time, she’d turn the tables and I’d become this cringing thing. ”
“You were trained to appease her to survive,” James said. He squeezed Ben’s hand tighter still. “No one can ever blame you for an automatic reaction to her. You shouldn’t go.”
“I don’t want to give her any more power over me, Jamie. But I do want to help find out what she’s doing. The thing is . . . she needs to feel she’s won. She needs it like air. And once she does, she gets cocky. She gets careless.” His mouth trembled, but his voice was steady, and Will realized that he didn’t need to consult any criminology lecturers or well-researched essays or media think pieces. Because the world’s leading expert on Eve was sitting in front of him. “If I go . . . in her head, she’s won. If I don’t . . . Will gets nothing. So I have to go. And I have to know what she wants!”
He sounded close to losing it by the time he finished, and fuck, Will couldn’t blame him. He couldn’t begin to imagine what had been done to him as a boy. But Ben was nothing like Will had imagined Eve’s son would be. Maybe—unlike Ozzy—he’d been rescued in time to stop abuse defining him. Or maybe, he was just that determined to win.
“The DCI’ll say I can’t go with you,” Will warned him.
Ben shook his head. “I’ll talk to her. She’ll be okay.”
Will nodded. “Then I’ll stay with you.”
The trip back to Warren Road took over an hour.
They’d barely pulled out of James and Ben’s road when Tom said, as if it had been dragged out of him, “I had no idea you were going through all that.” He’d barely uttered a word all evening. Just listened.
Will tensed. “I couldn’t say anything. Hansen’d eviscerate me if she knew I’d told you now.”
“You didn’t have a choice,” Tom said. It sounded cool, chilly even. “Given you wanted to tell Jamie and Ben.”
His tone, the tension in it, made Will’s stomach clench with apprehension.
“It’s not like that. You know I’ve really been discussing it with you all along.”
“Except I didn’t know what we were talking about. The stakes involved.” Tom grimaced. “It feels like last year. Hansen running a covert operation again. Pulling the strings and making us all dance. Not giving much of a fuck if it hurt us. ”
Will threw him a quick glance as he drove. He was well aware that Tom’s feelings toward Hansen were now almost exclusively resentment. Especially after Nick had been released. But after James’s frontal attack on Hansen, Will felt increasingly defensive of her.
“Maybe that’s why I trust her,” he said. “She showed then she’d take risks for justice rather than clinging to every line in the book. She put her neck on the line too.”
Tom made a derisive sound. “She showed she’d take risks for Nick. And isn’t it dangerous for a police officer to decide what justice is?”
Will glanced at him again, startled by the sense of hostility he radiated. Because Will had expected awkwardness or embarrassment perhaps, if he was preparing to tell Will that it had been a mistake after all. But maybe anger made it easier for him. Maybe anger would make it easier for Will. Except he couldn’t seem to feel it.
His silence seemed to goad Tom on. “I’m just not sure why you want to operate in the shadows again.”
The description was so startling it made Will flinch, but it was also undeniably correct. It was as if Tom could sense every weak spot.
“I don’t want to,” he said. But it felt bitter to have what he was doing for the greater good, described like that.
Tom didn’t reply, and when Will glanced at him he looked absent, as if he’d dismissed the conversation and was thinking of something else entirely, frowning fiercely straight ahead.
They both fell then into an introspective silence that felt tense and almost melancholy, and it lasted the rest of the drive home. Will wondered if Tom wanted to wait until they could look each other in the eyes before pulling it all down.
But Will had barely closed the door on the sharp night air at Warren Road before Tom had headed into the lounge. The TV was on, so Cam must be there.
Will didn’t even know why he followed. All he wanted was to sneak up the hall and go to bed.
But they couldn’t go on like this—he couldn’t. He had to get it over with. Over and done.
Tom was standing behind the sofa when Will entered, saying something quiet to Cam, who was lying full-length on it, largely concealed by the sofa back. The TV showed a group of men and women with weirdly stretched and inflated facial features. They were arguing. A reality show then.
As Will reached the sofa he could see Cam was dressed in thin sweat pants and a tight vest top, showing off a bulging groin and impressive upper body development. An open laptop rested on his thighs.
Cam said to Tom, “So was there an excuse? Was it funny?”
“Cam,” Tom said, voice tight. “Leave it.”
Cam’s eyes narrowed. He seemed to read something in Tom’s strained expression because his eyes widened with outraged disbelief. “You’re gonna pretend it didn’t happen?”
“Pretend what didn’t happen?” Will asked.
Cam glanced up at him and clicked on something on his laptop. He held it up so Will and Tom could both see the screen.
Will recognized a newspaper website. The Daily Mail.
“That,” Cam said. He pointed at one thumbnail picture among many on a sidebar. Will could make out a tiny man and a tiny woman apparently eating together. It took Will only a second to accept that it was himself and Emily.
The shock, the outrage took his breath. Cam clicked the thumbnail open without being asked.
The headline read, “Emily Dalton Sparks Romance Rumors Following Meet with Hot TV Cop Fans Want Her to Date.”
He didn’t want to read the first horrifying paragraph, but he couldn’t help himself.
‘She’s engaged to one of the most eligible bachelors in Britain but rising BBC star Emily Dalton, 32, only had eyes for the hot cop fans say mesmerized her on her Witness roadshow TV slot. Handsome Met officer DI William Foster, 30, met up with Emily for an intimate lunch in Knightsbridge. ‘They couldn’t take their eyes off each other,’ said one fellow diner. ‘He’s so into her. I can’t blame him either. She’s gorgeous.’’
Cam scrolled down the page before Will could read any more of the text, to display an apparently endless series of shots of himself and Emily, taken through the restaurant window. Their harmless air kiss greeting which looked incriminating shot from that angle. Emily’s hand on his arm as she talked, looking mischievously into his eyes, himself smiling back. His profile as he listened to her. A stock shot of a man in an open-necked check shirt who had to be Andrew, the mega-rich fiancé. Somehow they’d found shots in which Will did look mesmerized. Shots in which Emily looked dazzled.
He couldn’t believe it. He’d been there. He knew what had happened. And yet there was photographic evidence that seemed to prove it had been something else. He could feel a kind of panic rise, and he wasn’t a panicking man.
Cam drawled, “I’d ask for your autograph but . . . .”
“That’s enough!” Tom snapped. He turned and stalked to the door, turning left toward the bedroom at least when he got to the hallway. Not right, to the exit.
“Tom!” Cam called after him. It sounded urgent and apologetic.
But he didn’t say anything as Will headed off in pursuit, which showed the remnants of self- preservation at least. Because Will would have happily thrown him out onto to the fucking street if he’d tried.
He slamm
ed the lounge door after him.
When he reached the bedroom, Tom was standing just inside the open door, head hanging. His back was to Will but there was no concealing the rigid tension in every muscle.
Will said helplessly, “That wasn’t how it they made it look.”
Tom made a bitter sound. “Really? It looked like you told me you couldn’t see me because you had a meeting. But you went to lunch with Emily Dalton instead.” Tom’s phone buzzed and he glanced at it. “And now Pez has seen it too. Everyone’s seen it.”
Explanations and excuses staggered round Will’s head in an incoherent sludge, his mind almost paralyzed by disbelief at what was happening.
He’d been sure that he was about to be dumped. And instead now Will was the villain.
Somehow, he’d blundered into Tom’s world all on his own. Stitched up by tabloid journalists, turned into someone Twitter had an opinion on, branded as a cheat by some . . . couch-surfing American swimwear model.
“Do you trust me?” he asked.
Tom’s head rose slightly. He took a moment to answer. “That’s fucking manipulative. . . . ”
“I mean do you trust me to tell you the truth?”
Tom didn’t turn round and he didn’t answer.
“I met Catherine Millar, the producer of the program, for lunch because I was ordered to. She tried to persuade me to do a TV slot with Emily. I refused. So she got called away to some pretend emergency just as Emily came in. Because Catherine believes I fancy Emily and I wouldn’t refuse her.”
Tom’s head dropped lower. His reply was muffled. “So why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because it wasn’t important. And we aren’t exactly in a ‘how was your day?’ place, are we Tom?”
Tom raised his head sharply, like an animal scenting danger.
“I wasn’t splashed over a global tabloid!” he spat and swung round to face Will at last. He looked distraught and Will had to wonder how he’d managed to restrain himself from confrontation all the way through their evening at Ben’s, and then in the car. “That was your payback was it? Slobbering over some woman in front of the paps?”