Blue On Blue

by Dal Maclean

  It was Sunday, late afternoon, but Lauren was apparently working.

  Will and James were buzzed up from a narrow street door to the second floor, and utilitarian offices that did not match Will’s image of successful commercial lawyers. But despite appearances, the research they’d done before they came suggested Lauren must be doing pretty well for herself.

  They found her at her desk in a glass office in a row of sparsely inhabited glass offices which would probably allow for auditory privacy, but otherwise, it was like being in a fish tank.

  Lauren rose to greet them with a tense smile.

  She was medium height and built. Solemn. Very dark skin, high cheekbones, straightened chin-length dark hair, and the discreet dress sense of a seasoned solicitor. She wore a black skirt suit, a green silky blouse and modest heels; the perfect representation of a young, successful professional.

  And somehow, she’d made it here from Grantham Close.

  “Yes, I was in care with June,” she said after they’d gone through their opening spiel. No shame or embarrassment about it. Her accent was unidentifiable. Perfectly neutral. “She was lovely. Kind. Clever.”

  Will didn’t show his surprise.

  “I went to visit her in prison when I qualified,” Lauren went on. “But there was nothing I could do. And she didn’t want me to anyway,” she finished, with a flash of sadness. “She just wanted to be left in there to rot.”

  And that sounded more like the June Will had met.

  He asked, “Do you know what happened to her in Grantham Place, Miss Newman?” The whites of Lauren’s brown eyes were turning pink. She was trying not to cry. “There have been allegations of certain . . . of questionable behavior. That she may have been assaulted.”

  Lauren made a sound between distress and cynical amusement.

  “I’m not going to name any names,” she said. “It’s pointless.”

  “But you can tell us what happened?” Will pressed.

  Lauren seemed to be weighing something up in her mind. She firmed her jaw.

  “Yes,” she said.

  She didn’t, as she’d warned them, name names, but she told them about a small cabal of care home management and workers who’d viewed the kids as their personal sex slaves. About the men from outside who came to take certain girls and boys away to attend private parties.

  “Were you taken to any of those parties Miss Newman?” Will asked.

  Lauren shook her head.

  “Why not?”

  Her smile was just a stretching of her lips. “Because I’m very Black Detective Inspector. They didn’t want this skin. And just to make sure . . . I ate. And ate. I made myself as fat as I could, because they didn’t want that either. I used to tell June to do the same, to escape that way, but she couldn’t. She was so nervous all the time. She couldn’t eat.”

  Her voice rose with old, frustrated grief and Will thought: She did. In the end June ate and ate, to try to hide inside her own body. He could see Lauren was thinking the same thing, when their eyes met.

  “They took her baby too, you know? They made her pregnant for fun, and then they just made her give them the baby because they said she couldn’t look after it. They wouldn’t even let her try. It was like they owned it and her. And she was broken after that. Even after all they did to her, taking the baby finished her off, you know? She stopped believing she could have a better life one day. And then, a couple of months after, they took her away. One of the other girls told me later they’d made her do more parties, and then brothels and . . . then she ended working the streets for the same people who raped her and stole her baby. And I kept asking myself, ‘how is that even possible? How can anyone get away with what these people did?’ That’s why I went into law but . . . .” She waved a hand at her surroundings. “This is where I ended up specializing. No help to June, after all.”

  “We want to get justice for her, Miss Newman,” Will said. Lauren gave him a scornful look.

  “Did you know Stephen Parrish?” It was the first thing James had said since they’d come in. “In Grantham Close?”

  Lauren eyed him with startled surprise. She frowned, apparently struggling past her memories to focus. Then her face cleared. She gave a genuine smile. It transformed her.

  “You mean Steggie? I forgot he used to be Parrish. I always think of him as Underwood.”

  Will frowned. Wasn’t that the name Oliver had thrown round like a grenade at James’s engagement party? Steggie.

  And then he registered: Stephen Underwood. The man who’d blown his own brains out in front of James.

  Lauren said, “Yeah. Steggie was my friend. He used to try to look out for all of us, though he didn’t stand a chance really. But he was the one who wanted to fight back, you know? Then . . . we met again when I’d got into uni. I was struggling to stay afloat financially. And by then he was . . . .” She shrugged. “He was hustling and being Steggie, he gave me money to help me get through my course.” She shook her head in reminiscence. “Then he helped me with my loans when he started earning big bucks in porn. And when I qualified and specialized in commercial law, he made me his contracts lawyer.” She gave a wide grin. Just talking about the guy made her light up. “Those contracts. Man, that was an education.” She shook her head, smile fading. “He never gave up. He fought every blow, even though they fucked him up so badly. I know what he did was . . . was terrible. But he was brilliant,” she said, fierce. “And always . . . .” Her eyes filled and she smiled again. “Fabulous.”

  James swallowed. Maybe he didn’t want to know how great the guy he’d hunted down had been. But he volunteered: “He mentioned he had a contracts lawyer. I think he was pretty proud of you.”

  “You knew him?” Lauren looked curious, then a thought visibly struck her. “I’m sorry. I don’t remember your name?”

  James stiffened. “DI James Henderson.”

  “My God . . . .” Lauren breathed. “Are you Steggie’s cop?”

  Steggie’s cop?

  James’s cheeks pinked. “We used to be friends.”

  Lauren grinned, pure relief, as if she’d finally seen someone she knew in a crowd of strangers.

  “He used rave on and on about how you blushed. Just like that,” she said. “He used to rave about . . . well everything about you. I never thought I’d see Steggie in love.”

  James’s head dipped. And Will tried to parse it. Stephen Underwood—Steggie had been in love with James, the policeman who ended his murder spree?

  “He said you were like a fairy-tale prince,” Lauren said, wistful. She paused, hesitated. “I kept something for him. He used to . . . he called it his ‘insurance policy,’ in case someone ever came after him. He knew better than to go after them, but Steggie wasn’t gonna let anyone outsmart him. I was meant to send it to the police if something happened to him, but in the end . . . .” She pressed her lips together hard and swallowed. “In the end that wasn’t why he died. So I held on to it. I didn’t want any of the people who put him in the ground pawing through it. And I knew nothing would be done. There was no point.”

  Will didn’t dare move, in case either of them remembered he was in the room.

  “He killed himself in front of me,” James said. His voice was thick, as if he was choking on it. “Rather than go to jail.”

  Lauren’s face twisted but she shook her head. “He believed in you. He said you were pure.”

  Will glanced quickly at James, at the agony in his expression. And he thought, ‘The guy knew him.’ Because it was the perfect word for James. He was pure, in ways Will could never be.

  How much did Will not know about that case? About Steggie and Eve Kelly’s children?

  “He never told me your surname,” Lauren said. “Or I’d have sent it to you.” She unlocked the bottom drawer of an old-fashioned metal filing cabinet in the corner of the room, and extracted a large, shabby jiffy bag. She held it out for James to take.

  “Thank you.” He looked down at it for a
moment or two, then he asked, “Would you be prepared to testify in support of what you’ve told us?”

  Lauren’s expression slid to incredulity. “You actually think this is ever going to be taken to trial?”

  “It depends what evidence we can gather,” James replied. “But testimony from the living is going to be essential.”

  She looked pitying when she said, “We’re talking about the establishment. The elite.”

  “But the whole discussion around this has changed now . . . .” James began.

  “No! These aren’t has-beens. Some of them are even more powerful now than they were fourteen years ago.”

  “We have to try,” James insisted. “Who knows what they’re still doing.”

  Their gazes held for a moment longer, until finally Lauren’s tense shoulders dropped. She made a sound of pained amusement. “I can see why he was crazy about you. He always wanted a hero to come in and save him.” She sighed. “All right Prince Charming. If you ever get it that far, if you’ve fought that hard, I’ll give evidence.”

  James said gravely, “Thank you Miss Newman.”

  Lauren studied him for a moment. “Steggie told me you took him to a ball. Held by a billionaire.” She cocked her head. “Did he make that up?”

  James looked down at the bag in his hand. His beautiful mouth thinned.

  “No,” he said. “It’s one of the few things I did right.”

  “Jamie?” Will ventured when they reached the street. James stopped, but he didn’t look at him. “You and Steggie?”

  James snapped. “We were friends, that’s all.” Then, “He shot Ben.”

  Will gaped at him. James’s shoulders sagged.

  “It’s not in the files. Ben wasn’t in Grantham Close for long. Steggie was there for years. He was nine when they started on him.”

  “Aw Christ,” Will breathed.

  James looked tormented. Will put a hand on his arm, but said nothing else. It felt sometimes as if the job was nothing but curating misery.

  It took less time to get back to the station than it had taken to reach Holborn, because the evening traffic had thinned. But even though the Incident Room was only lightly staffed, Will and James decided to commandeer one of the private meeting rooms with a laptop James had managed to dig up.

  James opened the jiffy bag there.

  It contained a USB stick; a couple of small, old-looking cameras, and a mess of photographs, notes and lists. They plugged in the USB stick first.

  A face appeared on the laptop screen—a young man, thin and very pretty with clever hazel eyes and wavy gold-brown hair.

  James made a soft sound, almost a gasp.

  “Is that him?” Will asked, hushed. “Steggie?”

  James nodded slowly. “Before I knew him.”

  “So, if you’re watching this,” the man in the screen declaimed. “I’m probably dead. And all I can say is . . . your loss darlings.” He gave a dismissive flick of his wrist, wildly camp. Will blinked, amused despite himself. James, when he glanced over at him, looked mesmerized. “But at least I’m causing some havoc when I go. Better than flowers every time. Wouldn’t you say? Whoever you are?” Steggie’s smile slid to nothing. “I want them to pay. But I can’t do anything about it. Because people like me are disposable. Easy to use and throw away, like . . . paper tissues. No one ever gave a fuck when one of us disappeared. But there’s that old cliché, revenge is a dish best served cold, right? And by now darlings,” he gave a stagy moue but his eyes were pits of bitterness, “I’d imagine I must be very cold.”

  Will was beginning to understand at last why James reacted as he did to his memory. He was mesmerizing. But it was clear that Steggie’s playfulness masked a soul twisted by suppressed and frustrated rage. He found he wasn’t surprised Steggie had finally exploded in an orgy of murder that had ended his own life too.

  The Steggie on the screen talked them through his process of gathering his evidence, begun, incredibly, when he was ten, and spanning several years. His camp persona vanished before a matter-of-fact efficiency. He’d clearly been extremely bright and fanatically motivated.

  When he’d been able to track down the technology he said, he’d stolen two pocket cameras from a specialist shop. And they’d been easy for him and his friends to use at the parties, because the adults were high or drunk or sex-addled or just . . . smug. Because these were kids without allies and who’d expect them to fight back in any way?

  Steggie said he’d almost enjoyed the cloak and dagger risk of gathering the evidence. He’d always wanted to be a policeman, until he met some of them at the parties.

  Then he worked his way through a list of names: the care home staff who’d used him and others for sex; the people who ran the home who’d had a nice business going selling the kids to Fred and Joey Clarkson. Who in turn organized and ran parties where prepubescent and adolescent children from the home were raped and abused by rich and influential men.

  The evidence was staggering. Repellent. Overwhelming.

  For the next few hours, Will and James cataloged and photographed the contents of the envelope.

  The two tiny cameras that had been used . . . old technology from the turn of the century. One was fitted on a Gameboy; one shaped like a thick pen.

  A signed statement from Stephen Underwood (formerly Parrish) dated December 2010.

  A list of names and dates and places and crimes.

  And the crowning achievement of Steggie’s campaign: the sneaky photographs he’d taken or persuaded his friends to take, some black and white, some color. There were multiple file copies on the USB stick, and hard copies.

  James recognized one man as a top civil servant in the Justice Ministry, with whom Magnus dined.

  Another photograph showed a man in shirtsleeves with a visible epaulette of the rank of a Commander in the Metropolitan Police Service. His face was obscured by his victim.

  Another showed Fred talking to a gray-haired man Will thought he knew but couldn’t place, holding the hand of a small boy. A well-loved actor who’d recently been knighted, fully involved. Ricky Desmond, National Treasure, with a girl who looked about fourteen.

  And photographs of acts. Obscene acts. Impossible to deny.

  Fred Clarkson seemed to have supervised the parties that used little kids. Joey’s parties appeared to involve young teenage girls—none looked to be over sixteen, but the majority seemed to have reached puberty.

  In many of the photos Joey appeared in, he was entwined with the same girl—a girl with short hair, dyed purple. She had a slim voluptuous figure, like a lingerie model and even though her face wasn’t visible in any of the images, Will was pretty sure she was older than the other girls there. A girlfriend then or a favored hooker, watching kids being trafficked for sex in front of her. The only identifying mark was a tattoo on her arm.

  Will and James had been slogging through the material for what felt like an eternity when James said, “I don’t get it. Fred and Joey are old school scum. Murder, guns, sex, drugs, people. They’ll deal in any of it. But kids? People like them . . . they despise nonces.”

  Which was why sex offenders were segregated in prisons from other criminals for their own safety.

  Will looked again at the image they’d just begun to study: a group of men and their scantily clad victims watching an exhibitionist floorshow involving a much younger version of someone Will now knew as a High Court Judge. Will had given evidence before him, and he’d thought he was sound. So much for his judgment of character.

  “Fred and Joey’d do anything it took to give them the kind of power they have over these sick bastards. These kind of people could only get more influential. It’d have been like salting away assets.

  “But these men were public figures even then,” James said. “How could they be so fucking reckless?”

  “They probably felt untouchable,” Will said. “All that power, all that money. Victims who had nothing. They could do anything they wanted, slake an
y desire and they validated each other. They were protected by each other, and by the Clarksons. Except, they didn’t reckon on Steggie.”

  James gave a strangled laugh. “He’s taking them out from beyond the grave. He’d have loved that.”

  “And you got his evidence in the end,” Will pointed out. “That’d have pleased him too.”

  James’s smile slid away.

  Will sighed. They were both on treacherous ground emotionally. The case was too huge, and yet too close to home for both of them. He wanted, suddenly and ferociously, to see Tom. To just talk to him.

  He stared down again at the images strewn in front of him—so many of them, so many powerful peoples’ lives hanging by this thread.

  “Who can we show all this to?” The question they’d both been avoiding.

  Who could they trust to use this evidence as ruthlessly and impartially as it should be used? Who could they trust not to bury it whole?

  “The Commander in that picture,” Will pointed to the image of the man in police shirtsleeves. “He’s sitting down, largely concealed by the kid so it’s hard to get an idea of height or built. But going by age, timeline, rank, normal career progression, that could be Sir Robin. Or Sir Ian.”

  “Or it could be someone who moved on to another force.”

  Will rubbed at his tired eyes. “So who can we trust to tell we have this?”

  James chewed his lip. Will knew he badly wanted to nominate Ingham. Will wished equally hard that he could agree.

  “Hansen,” Will pointed out. “Wasn’t involved in June’s case.”

  James frowned. “She was around though. What rank was she then?”

  “Chief Superintendent,” Will replied.

  James tapped his fingers on the desk for a moment, then sat back in his chair. Finally he sighed.

  “All right,” he said. “Hansen. But we’re taking a leaf out of Steggie’s playbook. Insurance.”

  Will regarded him with approval. “Copies.”

  “A few sets,” James returned. “We give Hansen one of them. We store the originals and some extra for backup.”

  “Where could we be sure they’d be protected?”