by Dal Maclean
“Yeah. I checked him out. He’s on a photo shoot in Martinique.”
“Did you find out which PI firm he’s using?”
“Well.” Pixie left a significant pause. “I didn’t do a full check.” Which meant she hadn’t hacked into Ken Schuler’s bank accounts or his emails.
Will said, “Maybe it’s time for the full service.”
Pixie paused for a thoughtful second. “It’ll be tomorrow morning before I can get back to you. I’m on a date.”
“Oh fuck. Sorry Pix, I . . . .”
“Will,” she said softly. “It’s fine. I’ll call you tomorrow.”
They’d been on the cusp of something once, he and Pixie, but Will had known better than to start a romance with a valued work colleague. And he’d still been emotional walking wounded after the first time round with Tom. Maybe he still was.
As Will lowered his phone it beeped with an incoming message.
From Tom. But Will had to read it several times before he could believe it.
We’re both wasting our time. I’m off to fuck someone who isn’t you. Enjoy your pussy.
Pain clawed at his throat.
It didn’t sound like Tom. Not the Tom he’d come to know over the past ten months.
It sounded like the Tom who lived on in his barely suppressed nightmares. The Tom he’d feared and held at arm’s length just in case. Just in case he did this again. And in holding him off, precipitated it.
He called Pez.
“Is Tom there?” Will asked with no preamble.
“Tommy?” Pez sounded surprised, but he was an excellent liar. “No. Why?”
“Because I can’t reach him and I thought he might be with you.”
“Well, you thought wrong.”
“And you just interrupted the beginnings of a good fuck,” a posh voice announced in the distance. Mark.
“Do you have Cam’s number? Does he have a UK mobile?”
“No,” Pez said. “He’s using carrier pigeons.”
Will didn’t respond. It would only prolong the stupidity. And after an uncertain pause—because Will always responded—Pez gave him Cam’s number. Before he could ask any more questions Will cut the call.
But now he had the number, Will hesitated. Cam wasn’t his ally. He’d made it pretty clear he wanted Tom himself.
But he needed to talk to him.
“Hey,” Cam’s tone was cautious. He had a very attractive voice. Unfortunately.
“It’s Will.”
There was a short, surprised pause. “Oh. Hello Will.”
Will clenched his jaw so hard his teeth creaked.
“Is Tom there?’
“Nope. I’m in a cab on my way to Soho which is where we were both going, but he stormed out after talking to you.”
Will grimaced. “Is his bike gone?”
“I don’t know. I’d guess so unless he’s gone for a walk with his helmet.”
“Right,” Will gritted. Arsehole.
“Dude . . . my mom raised me to be polite an’ I’m grateful you let me stay at your place.” He sounded neither grateful nor polite. “But . . . that article should have been the final straw, man. No one should make a guy like Tom feel like you make him feel.”
Will heart plummeted. “What do you mean?” It hurt to ask.
“I mean . . . .” Cam gave a gusty sigh. “Look. He got kinda drunk after a shoot one night an’ he told me why he’s on edge all the time. Because his boyfriend couldn’t give a fuck. You don’t have the guts to finish it so you freeze him out an’ wait for him to crack an’ fuck around so he takes the blame instead.”
“That’s bullshit,” Will spat.
“Yeah?” Cam returned and his contempt was clear. “With all due respect, if you’d found us screwing on the hallway floor, you’d have stepped over us an’ gone to bed.”
That was how he seemed? That was what Tom thought? That was why Cam had come to London, because he thought it was just a matter of time before he got Tom for himself.
“If I’d seen you lay a hand on him,” Will’s voice was low and brutal. “I’d have ripped your throat out and put your nuts in the blender.”
But would he? Or would he have done exactly what Cam said, desperate not to make Tom feel he had to stay? What a fucking mess he’d made of everything. Trying to protect himself from Tom wanting to leave again; maybe Will had made him think that was what he wanted.
Cam made a cynical sound on the other end of the line. “Sure. Whatever. He looked like a zombie when he left. So whatever you did, or said, maybe it’s not your call anymore. You didn’t deserve him. I gotta pay the cab. See ya man.”
The line went dead.
Tom’s phone was still turned off when he tried it.
So Will did his best to concentrate on helping James identify faces in Steggie’s hoard of images but his mind was scattered, so he set to scanning and printing out copies instead.
He should be focused on putting together an airtight case against Joey. They were so close.
But all he could really think about was Tom, his guts twisting with worry and pure dread. Where had he gone? What was he doing?
Will and James took turns trying to sleep on the padded briefing room chairs, lining them up beside each other to create a makeshift bed, but only James managed actual unconsciousness. Will lay and fretted until he drifted into a light doze.
All the same he felt very alert when he took his turn to shower in the gents, surprising a couple of DCs who hadn’t known he was in the station. Then he donned the shirt, tie and black suit he’d kept in the car.
At just after nine-thirty he stood in the lofty glass-roofed atrium of Coutts private bank on the Strand, waiting as James went to stash away the original evidence left by Steggie somewhere in the bowels of the building, while Will stayed below. Just in case.
The atrium was vast, with multiple glass-galleried floors above it, hushed with the self-importance of serious money. It was planted with a number of full-size trees and there were banking counters round the edges, together with a grand piano. It was quite easy to believe the Queen banked there.
Will’s phone beeped.
A text from Tom: So I got laid.
Followed immediately by: He was pretty magnificent.
And another: Just in case you didn’t get the message, we’re finished.
Will sank down on the padded bench behind him. His phone rang and he answered it automatically.
“Morning honey. No visible foreign currency transfers.”
“. . . Pixie.” He thought he sounded convincingly normal. “Any trail at all?”
“What’s wrong?”
Or maybe not. “Nothing. Just in a bank,” he said.
Pixie gave an unconvinced hum. “Right. So . . . no obvious evidence he hired anyone in the UK. Some bitching about his cheating ex to friends. Mainly slagging off Tom . . . saying he made all the running and seduced the boyfriend away. But if his photo app’s anything to go by, he’s fucking some new guy on his shoot.
“Okay,” Will said. He wasn’t even sure anymore why he’d wanted the information. A notification pinged on his phone. His jaw clenched.
“Thanks . . . thank you, Pix.”
“Are you sure you’re all . . . ?”
He cut the call and made himself look at the screen.
I collected some things. I’ll be back for the rest when you’re not there. Don’t contact me again.
Another ping. An image.
Tom with his head thrown back against a beige cushion, eyes half-closed, his expression somewhere between pleasure and puzzlement, as if he didn’t understand what a camera was, and yet he must have taken the photograph. The man on top of him couldn’t have done it. What could be seen of Tom’s body underneath him—his shoulder and upper arm—was bare, as was the other man’s back. The man’s face was pressed against Tom’s neck.
Will stared at it, winded. Whatever was showing on his face was enough to cause a well-dressed middle-aged
woman standing nearby, to take a step back. Will met her eyes and looked away, embarrassed, as if she’d seen him naked.
The exact thing Will hadn’t been able to get over. The thing he hadn’t been able to forgive. He couldn’t quite believe he was awake, that this wasn’t a particularly shitty nightmare.
But the proof was in his hand.
And Tom had done that just because Will hadn’t told him about an ancient affair with Hansen? Or—because it was the perfect excuse to get out as he’d wanted, with a clear conscience. What he’d accused Will of to Cam, had been what was in his own heart. “Projection,” they called it.
Will welcomed the stirrings of rage as they began to push through the numbness of grief. Unexpressed anger he’d suppressed and told himself was gone for good. But he needed it now.
His eyes went again to the image and rage juddered against the pain of seeing Tom like that.
Tom wouldn’t do it, he told himself again. He wouldn’t be that vicious and petty. He wasn’t vengeful. But the picture told him that Tom would and had and was.
Across the lobby James emerged from a lift and stood talking with the employee who’d escorted him into the inner bank.
Will’s sausage fingers fumbled with his phone until he managed to bring up the second number on his recent calls list.
It rang and rang, well past the time he’d normally have given up, past the time he’d have expected the call to cut out naturally. His mouth tasted sour.
I’ve collected some things.
“What?” The sudden shout into Will’s ear was so unexpected he flinched. He felt like throwing up.
“Is Tom there?”
“Will?” Cam groaned. “Dude. I’m in bed after a very late night and I have a meet. I need to look amazing in four hours.”
“Is he there?”
“No! Much to my regret he’s not.”
Will opened his mouth to remind him he was sleeping in Will’s spare room on Will’s tolerance.
But he needed his help. “This is important. Is John still there?”
“Who’s . . . ? Wait. The cat? The cat’s the important question?”
“Is he?”
“Yeah! Don’t worry! The cat’s just fine! He woke me up an hour ago wanting food.”
“Is Tom’s bike there?” The silence at the other end of the line seemed to become more outraged. “Cam. Please. Check.”
Will’s urgency must have got through, because he heard rustling and cursing, but also the impression of movement.
“No. The bike’s gone,” Cam said.
Will’s strange hope shriveled. I’ve collected some things . . . .
Had it been hope or fear? He should be relieved.
“Wait,” Cam interjected. “I looked in your backyard where it usually is. But it’s parked out front. Anything else I need to check? Maybe his underwear drawer?”
Will cut the call.
He shouted across the lobby: “Jamie. Now!” Already turning and heading for the exit.
He burst out onto the Strand, dodging past the few pedestrians on the pavement, to reach his car, parked illegally a few hundred yards along the road under a police badge.
He was pulling away from the curb when the passenger door opened and James slid inside, already reaching for his seatbelt.
“What happened?” James asked, as if he hadn’t almost been left behind.
Will accelerated away.
“Nick Haining’s got Tom,” he said.
19
Hansen was fully dressed in her uniform when she opened the door of her flat to Will and James. All that was missing was her bowler hat.
“Have you brought it?” she asked.
Will held up the large manila envelope he and James had filled with the copied evidence, but he didn’t hand it to her.
“The CCTV in your hallway’s been compromised,” he announced. He could see from her slow frown of puzzled concern, that his facade of stoicism had cracked, that he was bleeding desperation. “David Burchill . . . Nick isn’t in France. He’s in London and he’s taken Tom.”
Hansen threw a quick look at James—an “is he all right?” look—then she said carefully: “Come in.” She turned from the open doorway leaving them to follow as she headed for her breakfast bar and huge espresso machine. “You both look like roadkill.”
The machine resembled like something a barista should be operating in an upper end café, but good coffee was one of Hansen’s primary indulgences. Along with clothes, fine wine and imaginative sex.
As she operated the machine, Will paced, looking restlessly at her books and at her framed photographs. Then she brought their coffees over on a tray and took an armchair for herself. Will joined James on the sofa, in the seat closest to her.
The coffee was superb.
Will sipped it, barely able to contain the agitation and fear buzzing and itching under his skin. But he fought to appear calm.
Somehow he had to finally convince Hansen that Nick was not the man she stubbornly believed he was. To do that he had to show her that he was thinking clearly, and these social niceties felt like a test. A test of his mental state.
Hansen said at last. “Perhaps you’d care to explain.”
Will leaned forward and began to make his case. He showed her the whole line of messages he’d received about and from Tom, from the first photograph on the set in Los Angeles, to the image of Hansen greeting Will at her front door and the texts along with it. Then the messages that followed from Tom. That last picture. All of it.
He thought perhaps Hansen lost color, but she was always pale.
“The message says Tom collected some things.” Will kept his voice steady with effort. “But his cat and his bike are still there. Those are the only two things he would never leave behind.”
Hansen’s expression remained inscrutable, but she let him go on.
“That photograph.” Will scrolled to the image of Tom and the other man. “If Tom decided to finish our relationship he would not do it that way. It’s the exact method he used the first time and it had consequences he deeply regretted. The last time he did it out of fear. He wouldn’t do the same thing out of malice. It’s not in his character. And the man in the photograph—short hair, slicked back. It could be Nick.”
At last Hansen sighed. “It could be anyone. It’s the back of a head.”
Will couldn’t detect even a flicker of discomfort from her, though she must know James had seen the messages about her and Will.
“Look. I understand this is painful for you, but it’s all there on your own phone. You’ve been receiving anonymous messages about Tom and another man. Someone tried to warn you. Tom finished your relationship because he readily believed you were cheating on him. It sounds as if he wanted an excuse to leave.”
It had been Will’s own thought at first. The echo slid under his certainty, but only for a split second.
Hansen sounded regretful and reasonable. “He finished your relationship and slept with someone else to make sure of it. And you say he’s done it before. Then he went back and took a few things from your house still high on rage. You realize it’s not easy to find a place on the spur-of-the-moment that’ll accommodate a cat and a motorbike?”
“He wouldn’t leave his cat behind,” Will said stubbornly. “He’d have taken him to his agent’s place. Hell, he’d have probably relocated his houseguest, too. This isn’t him.” He ignored Hansen’s skeptical eyebrow. “When he gets upset he goes for his bike. He’d be easier to ambush then. Nick knows which buttons to push. He played us, just like last time.”
Hansen was regarding him with something like pity.
“Will . . . . You’re making huge leaps of logic. Clutching at straws. You have to pull yourself together. You keep saying Tom wouldn’t do these things, but even if you’re right, you acknowledge that he was in a state of high emotion. Rage. Betrayal. That changes patterns of behavior.”
“Then look at patterns of behavior. Nick’s obsessio
n with Tom!”
She groaned.
“Tell me where to find Nick!” Will demanded. “Or give me his new name!”
He and Hansen stared at each other for long beats of challenging silence, then she blew out a long breath as if to calm herself. Will felt James shifting on the sofa on his other side.
“You’re not rational about him,” Hansen said. “And you’re definitely not rational about Tom. But . . . .” She raised a sharp hand to stop Will from launching into another tirade. “I need to think.” She held out a hand for the manila envelope. “I can’t believe this has become a secondary issue to your love life.” She took the envelope from James and extracted the pile of documents and photographs they’d printed out so painstakingly, all with one word stamped at the top.
“Copies?” Her expression was a mask of horror. “You just have copies? That won’t be enough to . . . .”
“We have the originals in a secure place Ma’am,” James said.
“There’s no such thing!” Hansen retorted. She flicked through the pile with agitated movements, stopping here and there, while Will watched, frustration building, until he was ready to snatch the papers out of her hands to get her attention back. Finally she pressed the pads of her fingers against her mouth. She didn’t look her usual calm self at all.
“Tell me where to find Nick,” Will pleaded again. Desperation clawed at his throat. “He could be doing anything to Tom right now!”
Hansen glared up from the papers in her hand. “Nick Haining was relocated to France, DI Foster. And that is where he remains under a new identity.” She held Will’s disbelieving stare without a blink.
“You’re lying,” he croaked. It sounded as betrayed as he felt.
Hansen’s mouth moved in a tiny grimace. Maybe, Will thought with ugly resentment, at the insubordination.
“I couldn’t break Nick’s anonymity even if he lived here,” she bit out. “You have no evidence other than your own prejudice against him and the wish to avoid painful reality. That’s an end to it DI Foster! We have a more important crisis on our hands than your boyfriend leaving you.”
The tone, the humiliating reminder that the job came first, were to force him back into line, to find discipline. But he had none left.