by Dal Maclean
Will sniggered, and the reassurance of Tom’s smug possessiveness followed him down into sleep.
15
Ben was already at Bronzefield when Will arrived, leaning against James’s ancient Toyota. He looked tired and tense, dressed simply in jeans and a dark wool jacket, yet somehow much too luminous for the setting. Definitely too luminous for the carpark.
“I didn’t get much sleep,” Ben said, as they walked toward the prison entrance. “Jamie spent hours trying to talk me out of coming here. So . . . .” He managed a mischievous smirk. “I distracted him by reading the comments from your Daily Mail article. You’re a bad man DI Foster. Lunching. With a television presenter.”
Will forced a game smile in return. Until that moment he’d suppressed the memory of his public humiliation beneath the need to gameplan his next encounter with Eve. But if Ben needed the distraction he’d play along.
“They’re going to take me apart when I get to the station. Again.”
“Such is the price of life as a #hotcop,” Ben said piously.
Will laughed. “You’d know. Living with the gold standard.”
They moved through security relatively quickly; one of the staff remembered Ben from his past visits. Then they waited together outside the Interview Room, like human sacrifices waiting for their big moment. Will felt nauseous with tension; the metal taste of bile in his mouth, the power of adrenalin pumping through him
Then the guard gave the signal.
Ben gave him a taut smile, and as they’d agreed, Will went in first. Ben had advised that Will was more likely to benefit from Eve’s satisfaction that she’d won, if he made his play before Ben soured her mood. So, he took a seat at the same table as before, the table at which he’d last seen June, and watched as Eve was brought in.
She looked startlingly different that morning, and not only because she radiated exhilarated anticipation. She didn’t have much to look forward to, so Will supposed getting the chance to psych out her son and a police officer on the same day must feel like a party. But the change was also physical.
Eve had expertly applied a stylized fifties makeup and arranged her hair in a Hepburn chignon. She wore a tight black top with a low V-neck, and slim black trousers. She looked eerily like the spectacular police mugshot the newspapers had published so many years before; the one colored and stylized, on edgy posters on edgy student walls. It hardly seemed fair that evil had been given this effortlessly perfect shell which even age seemed barely able to touch.
The significant fact for Will though, was that she’d dressed up at all.
He’d given it a lot of thought on and off since his last visit. Strategizing.
Ben’s knowledge of her had reinforced Will’s instinct after the first meeting: that Eve responded to sexual challenge. She was turned on by resistance. She needed to break it down. To reduce every man to the same level. That was how Ben’s father had survived, before he fled. By never entirely giving in.
So, Will had dressed up too. He’d left his black work suit in the car and donned the tightest white dress shirt he had, and the light gray suit with the tight trousers that Tom liked. The jacket was already off and draped over the back of his chair.
It was certainly worth a try to bait and to distract her.
Then again, this was Eve Kelly, one of the most dangerous and manipulative criminals of the past few decades. He was an amateur at it, taking on a master. Still, he stood up when she entered the room to let her get an eyeful.
He watched her reaction carefully as he sat down again. Her eyes fixed to his crotch, moistening her lips with her tongue, her hand touching her hair.
“Miss Kelly,” he said.
“Eve,” she purred. Today her accent was neutral toward posh Received Pronuciation—the accent she’d used in the old videos he’d seen at uni. Maybe she expected him to forget that she’d sounded completely different at their last meeting. He suspected she demanded reality be whatever she chose it to be.
She settled herself in her chair and leaned forward daintily on her elbows, as if the table were covered by a linen cloth and bore candlesticks and crystal. It felt like teasing a snake.
“Eve,” he corrected. Then, with his most charming smile. “Did you have June killed?”
Eve pouted. “Straight to business? Do you like my hair?”
“It’s very nice.”
The prison guard was in Will’s eyeline, the audience to their game. He was very grateful that she remained expressionless, looking straight ahead.
“Nice?” Eve pouted again. “Is that all?”
“Would you be surprised if I said you look a bit like Audrey Hepburn?”
She laughed, unnervingly coquettish. “I assume you brought Stevie with you? Unless . . . you just couldn’t stay away.”
“He’s outside. And you were going to give me some information.”
“Was I?” Will raised an eyebrow. “I said June would, but now . . . .” She gave a moue of faux regret. Then out of the blue, an accusation: “You live with a man.”
Will’s gut lurched. “And how would you know anything about my living arrangements?” His voice remained pleasant somehow.
Another pout. “A little bird told me.”
“A little bird called Charles Priestly.”
She smirked. “Well, you find out more about me, and I find out more about you. Fair’s fair. Isn’t it?”
“Not really. Did you have June killed?”
“Are you a faggot?” Eve countered.
The prison officer shifted uneasily in Will’s eyeline. You and me both, he thought.
“I don’t hear you answering my questions.” Will leaned back in his chair, letting her get a better view of the fabric stretching over his chest. He could feel the thin material straining against his skin as he scratched his nose and sniffed in lazy unconcern. “Why would I answer yours?” Eve’s gaze obligingly roved over his pectorals and the muscles of his upper arms.
“A trade then,” she said quickly.
Will pretended to consider it.
“Honest answers,” he said, as if he believed he could trust her to tell the truth. Not that she could trust him either of course, in the circumstances. He intended to lie through his teeth when he could.
Eve’s full, pale-glossed mouth curved upward. “No,” she said. “I didn’t have June killed.”
It took Will a second to understand that she’d accepted his terms. And he found he believed her answer because he sensed she’d badly wanted to say “yes,” to shock him. It seemed to be almost a compulsion, like Tourettes.
“I’m bisexual,” he said. And even if he was gay, he’d have said it. As long as he kept her interest, he had a lever.
Eve sat back in her chair. She looked satisfied. “I knew. You’ve had girlfriends. I can always tell a real man.”
She used casual homophobia like everything else—to unnerve. Or maybe, she was just a bigot. Either way, he might be getting somewhere.
“Why was June killed?” Will asked.
Eve frowned with exaggerated disappointment. “I get you her DNA and you ask a stupid question like that. Maybe you’re not as smart as I thought. Tell you what . . . I’ll let you have another one.”
Of course she’d known June had been framed. And she hadn’t warned him of the consequences of taking that sample because June’s life had been irrelevant to her. Just part of this game that currently amused her.
He swallowed the lump of disgust in his throat. “Who framed her?”
Eve bit her lip on a private smile. “Joey Clarkson,” she said. And then, in an avid rush, “That’s what you want to hear, isn’t it? You’re obsessed with bringing him down.”
Will was going to rip Charles Priestly’s head off, slowly, for maximum agony, and then shove it up his arse. How far had he dug into Will’s past and present for Eve’s titillation?
“Is that your question?” he asked.
Eve’s shrewd eyes didn’t leave him, watching for
any hint of expression he gave her. “Would you answer me if it was?”
“Yeah,” he said. “I want to bring him down. Like any decent copper, I want to bring him to justice,”
“And . . . what do I get if I help you?”
Their gazes locked. Will could see the hugeness of her excitement and it unnerved him. He felt as if only Eve knew the rules of this game. But he still had that one weapon.
“Uh uh,” he chided. “It’s my turn.” He reached up to rub the back of his neck, flexing his shoulders. Some emotion flared in her eyes. He both hoped, and was very afraid, it was genuine arousal.
“Who killed Ricky Desmond?” he asked.
Eve’s expression didn’t change and her eyes didn’t leave him. “June said she didn’t know.”
Disappointment was a lead weight dropping in his stomach. “You’re lying,” he said.
Eve was controlling this. He couldn’t pretend otherwise.
She grinned. “How badly do you want to destroy Joey?”
“Not badly enough to fit him up,” Will said. “Who killed June?”
Eve sniffed delicately. “You know I won’t grass up anyone in here.” Will raised his eyebrows and waited. She laughed and it almost sounded fond. “All right then. I’ll give you another freebie. Look how good I am to you. Ask me who came to visit June the day she popped off.”
“I could just look at the visitors’ list,” Will pointed out.
“Not so much fun though.” She leaned closer so that he could see the tops of her breasts, her bizarrely youthful cleavage. Didn’t she age? “Joey’s wife.” Eve pronounced and sat back, a satisfied conjurer who’d just whipped a large rabbit out of her hat.
Will no longer cared what his face was showing.
Pauline? Fuck, could Joey have been protecting Pauline all these years? She was the reason June was framed?
“They had an argument,” Eve said gleefully. “June and Mrs. Clarkson. I didn’t see it but . . . .” She leaned closer still. “I’ve got somethin’ I can give you. If . . . you give me somethin’ back.”
Will snapped his full attention back to her.
“What do you want?” He tried to sound bored but they’d come to the crux of it at last. What Eve wanted.
“What do they call it?” Eve bit her lip for effect. “A conjugal visit.”
Will kept his stone-face with huge effort. “You get one of those by applying for it Eve. If you have someone to conjugate with.”
“You.”
And that was what came from poking a tiger.
“Am I supposed to laugh?”
“You say that as if I don’t have I have plenty of men writing . . . begging to be with me. But I don’t want to fuck the ones who beg, Will. I want you.”
“I’m not a sex worker.”
She sneered. “Call a whore a whore.”
When he had breathing space, maybe Will could work out why those cut glass tones made everything she said sound more brutal, more obscene.
He kept his voice steady. Incredulous but still in charge. “You actually expect a police officer to agree to have sex with you, in return for information?”
She sat back with that coquettish pout. “You sound boring all of a sudden. And I told you. Not any copper. You.”
The prison officer wasn’t looking front anymore. She was staring at Will with stunned disbelief, probably unsure if she should intervene or not.
“You have a well-documented homicidal hatred of men, Eve,” Will said. Still calm. “That’s why you’re in here.”
“You’re not weak. I saw that straight-off. You barely flinch.” Well. He’d called that right. “Tell you what. Show me your dick, an I’ll give you something solid to bring Joey down. That’s more than fair.”
Humiliation. That was another of her things, as he recalled. Coaxing her victims to self-destruction. The criminologist in him was fascinated to watch her in action, to map the cleverness of her manipulations.
And this was his own fault for thinking he could play in her league.
He pushed back his chair and stood up.
“Come on,” Eve coaxed. “Give me something . . . and I’ll give you Joey’s head.”
Will picked up his papers and reached for his jacket.
“Skin, then,” she said. “Show me some skin.”
He frowned down at her. She looked on edge. Jittery. It was impossible to tell if she was acting or genuinely aroused.
He sat down again, slowly.
She reached into her cleavage and pulled out what looked like a crumpled business card; held it teasingly between two fingers.
No one spoke.
Will waited as long as he could. How stupid was this, exactly? How unethical? But deliberately, he pushed up the tension, before unbuttoning one cuff and with great care, rolling up his shirtsleeve, to reveal, turn by turn, the lightly haired, still-tanned skin of his forearm. The prison officer watched too, wide-eyed, mesmerized by the movement of his hand.
It was bizarre how erotic it felt. Breathless and forbidden. Like some Victorian maiden slowly . . . slowly raising her skirts to give a starved audience a glimpse of ankle.
When the sleeve reached just below his elbow he stopped, and with his other hand, plucked the card from Eve’s lax fingers. He flipped it to read it.
It was a business card as he’d thought. For a solicitor.
Eve’s eyes were still fixed avidly on his arm.
Will carefully turned his wrist over, to show a flex of muscle, then back.
He held up the card. “What’s this?”
Eve dragged her gaze up, and at last Will saw the force of her resentment toward him. And he understood, in that burst of relief, that he actually did have power. Enough power to create that resentment, because she didn’t hold all the cards. She wasn’t in total control.
“Tell me.”
Resentment flicked to arousal and back. He began to suspect that somehow he’d managed to stumble into fitting some essential role in her head.
Resist her; don’t show fear; behave as if he could stand up to her; give her just enough of a flicker of attraction in return to make her believe she could possibly control him in time. It was nothing he’d have expected to work, having studied her. But, he realized, she was bored. Indescribably bored. Worn down by it. She craved a challenge. And that made her vulnerable.
Eve slid her hand across the table. He didn’t pull back. “I got my people to her cell first.” Without asking permission, she touched his forearm with delicate fingertips, light as down, tickling his skin, then tracing over his wrist to the back his hand. Her lips parted as she watched her own hand caressing him. Her nostrils flared. He could hear her unsteady breath. He wondered if she could feel the iron tension in his arm.
“Why this card?” He looked at it more closely. Lauren Newman. “A contracts lawyer?”
“Find out for yourself,” she snapped with a flash of that bubbling resentment. But her cheeks had flushed a delicate pink and her pupils were huge and velvety against the clear dark gray of her irises.
So many years deprived of the things she really wanted.
“All right,” Will said softly. “I’m going to give you what you asked for now.” He waited, just a beat, while she took the bait, while her eyes widened and settled with hopeful hunger on his. “I’m going to get Stevie.”
She jerked back in her chair, yanking her hand from his as if she’d just woken up and found someone else had taken over her body. Embarrassed her in her absence. But she didn’t say a word as Will pulled his jacket from the back of the chair and exited the room to the hallway.
It was only when he saw Ben’s chalk white face that it occurred to Will that he’d created the worst possible environment for this enforced meeting with Ben’s monster of a mother.
His stomach turned over with guilt. He’d known how scared Ben was; that he was preparing to confront his own real-life demon. But Will had let himself forget that, caught up in his own weird joust with Eve.<
br />
“Ready?” Will asked. But he had to say, “I should warn you; I’ve pissed her off.”
Ben managed a smile. “That’s like saying she’s breathing. Everything pisses her off. Let’s get it over with.”
Will nodded and followed. Ben’s courage awed him, though he wished he didn’t have to watch. He didn’t know if he could just stand by and watch her take him apart.
Eve was sitting on her plastic chair, rigidly straight, like a charm school graduate, when they walked back into the Interview Room, her head held regally high on her swanlike neck. She could have worn a tiara and it wouldn’t have looked out of place.
Everything about her screamed the stupidity of equating beauty with goodness.
“Well. Look what the cat dragged in,” she sneered. And her voice and accent were back to harsh South London. It was bizarre though, emanating from the image of regal, dignified elegance she presented. Will realized he had no idea which was her natural accent and which the one she affected. They both seemed to be organic; her two chosen faces. Or maybe they were both false.
Ben walked to the chair Will had vacated, while Will went to stand by the prison guard, who raised her eyebrows at him and smirked before regaining her guise of institutional sobriety. At least someone had enjoyed the show.
“I don’t want him in here,” Eve said to Ben as he sat down. “Will. Piss off.” She didn’t turn her head to look at him.
Ben threw Will a glance that said he understood perfectly. “Been trying to impress him?” And that, to Will’s relief and apprehension, showed not a scintilla of fear.
“I don’t give a fuck what a pig thinks,” Eve spat. “An’ watch your mouth, Shithead.”
Will could only see the back of Eve’s head, and the perfection of the styling of her chignon. So he moved slightly sideways and leaned back against the wall so that he could observe them both. So she could be aware of him, in the unlikely event it might slow her down.
But looking at them together, even knowing their relationship, Will found the likeness between them unnerving and nauseating. Ben’s nose was different, his jaw was masculine, but their bone structures were very similar; their large, heavily lashed eyes; the beauty of their neat features and how they were placed; the indefinable way their heads sat on their long, elegant necks. They shared those.