by Dal Maclean
Will sank back on his heels. “What?”
“When I got the bike out the front gate at home, someone else was waiting. He used that stun device of Nick’s, got me in a van and injected something to knock me out.”
“Was he was one of the men today?”
Tom shook his head. “Different voice. I got the impression he was Asian. London accent I think. When I woke up, I was here, barely able to move, clothes gone. And Nick beside me. I was . . . fuck I was actually relieved the guy who took me was there too. And another man. They never took off their masks. Nick said they’d forced their way in to his flat that evening and told him he had to use what he knew to get you here alone. Or they’d hurt him and me. But you know Nick.”
He lied like breathing.
“The pictures sent to my phone. Did he admit that was him?”
“I ripped into him . . . so he said he’d been keeping tabs on both of us to make sure I was okay. He’s been using PIs since he got back to London. I think he was too strictly monitored in France.” He gave a tired huff. “So yeah. I think we can assume he hired a PI in LA too. And he gave that story to the press. But the Hansen stuff was different.”
“How?” Will asked
“He said . . . someone sent all that to his phone yesterday evening. To use. And he did—he used it brilliantly. Then when he got my phone he used that to pretend he was me. He knew what happened with us before. He staged a picture and . . . all to get you to come. I asked him why he didn’t just tell you. Tell you he had me.”
“Why didn’t he?”
“He said the men told him you had to come here without backup. So he realized you had to figure it out yourself but have no way to prove it to anyone else.”
“Fuck,” Will said almost admiringly. “Evil bastard.”
“He knows people. He could manipulate the devil.” Tom grimaced. “I don’t know what’d have happened if you hadn’t come.”
“You didn’t try to say it was a trap,” Will pointed out. “You just told me to go away. You thought it’d take too long to get you out too, didn’t you?”
Tom picked up the underpants Will had put on the bed beside him and fidgeted with them for a moment or two. His vulnerability broke Will’s heart.
“I’m afraid I have to ask for help.” It sounded uncomfortable, nothing like a man talking to his lover.
Will said quickly, “Of course.”
He lifted Tom’s feet one after the other and slid the underpants up his long legs. His skin was covered with goose-bumps. Then Will helped him into his T-shirt and jeans, kneeling to pull on his socks.
He even had lovely feet, Will thought with a pang. Everything about him was beautiful.
Will raised his head and found Tom watching him.
“Did he . . . ?” Will began. He swallowed. “I mean . . . .”
“No.” Tom said. “At least . . . I assume not. You believed it though. For a moment, when you saw me like that. But I can’t blame you. All it took for me to lose it was a picture of you standing at Hansen’s front door.” He grimaced again. “We have no trust, you and me.”
It was a precise horrible echo of Will’s thoughts.
Someone knocked on the door.
Tom’s head dropped. Will snarled, “Yes?”
“Sorry,” James’s voice, from the doorway behind Will. “Hansen’s here.”
Will sighed and looked over his shoulder.
James had also encased himself in a forensic suit, hood up like a coif. Most people looked terrible with their face framed by draw-stringed plastic, but it only served to emphasize the beauty of his bone structure.
“She already knew,” James went on. “Nick Haining’s name flagged up on her private system.”
“I see DI Henderson is keeping you up to speed,” Hansen said coldly as her trim, white-clad figure appeared in the doorway beside James.
But Hansen didn’t look at him. Her whole focus was on Will and she looked angrier than he had ever seen her.
“DI Foster. You found your way here in contravention of a direct order. And the result is this fiasco. Nick’s been abducted by gunmen because you compromised his safety.”
“He compromised his own safety,” Will snapped. “When he helped kidnap Tom.”
Hansen’s eyes looked like gray flint.
“Tom,” she said though her gaze didn’t leave Will’s. “Did you come to see Nick voluntarily? And bear in mind. His liberty could depend on your answer, however little DI Foster may want to hear the truth.”
“The truth?” Tom repeated furiously. “The truth is, Nick claimed he was forced to help kidnap me, but then he’s also used private investigators to stalk me for weeks. So no, I didn’t come with him voluntarily and I wasn’t drugged voluntarily and I didn’t stay voluntarily.”
Hansen looked at Tom at last. Then, as if he hadn’t spoken, she asked Will, “What did the gunmen say? Did they warn you off any specific aspect of the investigation?”
“It was Eddie Butts and two others,” Will said. “And they weren’t warning us off. They were going to kill us.”
“You actually believed they’d execute you?” There was a fine edge of ridicule in her tone, as if it had all been an embarrassing overreaction.
“DI Henderson had a gun to his head,” Will said. “And Eddie fancied a beheading.” Hansen’s gaze flicked to his neck. He knew his collar must be stained red. “In fact,” he went on relentlessly, “only Tom saved us.”
Her eyes raised to his. He thought he saw realization, maybe even distress.
The hallway behind James was filling up with white-hooded SOCO officers.
“How do you know who the gunmen were?” Hansen asked. “If they were masked.”
“Apart from the way Eddie reacted to the news that Nick was behind his brother’s death?”
Hansen’s nostrils flared. “The fact that an anonymity order was breached, and the subject of it has been abducted, not to mention you might have been killed . . . .” Her voice shook—just one flash of human weakness, then she straightened. “I wouldn’t big up any of that if I were you DI Foster. It’s a disaster.” She took a deep breath. “I’m talking about something solid enough to arrest Eddie Butts. Did you see his face?”
Will knew it was pointless to mention Max’s ring. Hansen would say—as any decent lawyer would say—there must he thousands like it and they’d be right.
“His DNA’ll be all over you after that fight,” James pointed out. “I’ll give your jacket to SOCO. They already have mine.”
Will sighed and obeyed, knowing he’d probably never see the jacket again. Which meant his favorite fancy black suit was no more. James disappeared with the jacket down the hall.
Hansen said, “There’s no way we can explain all the aspects of this incident without blowing everything wide-open.”
Will considered that; the web of intrigue she was controlling. She’d been keeping Nick’s identity secret from her colleagues, as she was keeping their probe into MPS corruption secret. And the fact that both secrets had now crashed together, was something Will needed to think about when he regained some brain power.
Hansen chewed at her lower lip. “This incident has taken place due to an ongoing investigation into Joey Clarkson, being conducted by two officers from the South Kensington unit. That’s you. So I’m going to give the case to Jo Ingham who has the benefit of being, at least, an existing connection.”
Will stared at her. MITs did cover kidnappings with risk to life but . . . .
“I thought you were worried that . . . .”
“There’s no option,” Hansen snapped. “This is a live incident. We need to find Nick urgently . . . but we can’t involve a whole new investigating team who don’t know the background. And I categorically do not want to explain that background to anyone else at this point if I can help it. Jo knows about your investigation. And she knows we’re going to be watching her. It’s my judgment that the South Ken team is the best option. So I’m going there
now. Do you need a lift?”
Will let go the breath he’d held. She was a force of nature. No point trying to stand against it.
“No Ma’am. My car’s outside.”
“Are you up to giving a statement?” Hansen asked Tom. “We’ll need a blood sample.”
“He should go to hospital,” Will protested. “God knows what shit they used on him.”
“I’m okay,” Tom said, his tone frigid with dislike. “Yes, I’m up for giving a statement and blood.” Hansen didn’t indicate she’d noticed his hostility, but her own behavior was hardly friendly either.
“Come to the station then,” she ordered. Then to Will, “We need to move fast.” She swept out.
Will stared after her. There had been no serious recriminations for disobeying her and going after Nick. No more reproaches for throwing him to Eddie like a piece of meat to distract a rabid dog.
All the wind had been taken out of her sails when she’d accepted how close to death they’d come
“Ma’am,” he called. Hansen stopped a few feet into the hallway and turned back toward him. Will glanced quickly at Tom, before he followed her out, but Tom’s expression was unreadable.
“What’s happening with Stephen Underwood’s evidence?” he asked quietly.
“I set up a meeting with my contact at the ACC. But this happened. Is it a coincidence that Joey would call a hit now?”
“You think he knows we found something critical?” Will asked.
Joey may know they had something on him, but surely he couldn’t know what.
In the dim light of the hallway, the frown lines between Hansen’s eyes looked carved into her skin. “Maybe you were followed. Or it may be as simple as the fact you’ve been openly digging around in his muck. But . . . .” She put a hand on Will’s arm and moved closer. He could feel the heat of her palm through the sleeve of his forensic suit; see the pores of her skin and the fine lines around her eyes. “If I seem unconcerned by what almost happened,” she murmured. “Believe me, I’m not.” Her fingers tightened. “I think you should pull back.”
“Ma’am. That’s unnecessary.”
“They could target your parents next. Or James’s loved ones.”
“There’s no point anymore,” Will protested. “Once the Underwood evidence goes to the ACC, Jamie and I aren’t the threat anymore. Joey’s gonna have to try to close it down from inside the force. That’s what we need to be looking for. He’s going to know by now the hit on us was too late. He should have twepped us yesterday.”
“It’s not funny.” Hansen’s distraction was tangible, but then, she was so far out on a limb now she was clinging to a few twigs. “You should check with DI Henderson before you speak for him. He may have a bit more respect for his own skin. I have to think about this.” Then she said, “It’s not worth your life, Will.” It sounded almost tender.
She gave him one last long look and walked down the hallway until her petite white figure merged into the bright sunlight pouring in the front door. Will stared after her, confounded.
“Sir?” A SOCO officer materialized at his elbow. “Can we get into the bedroom now?”
Will turned to find that Tom, seated on the end of the divan bed, had been positioned to watch his entire murmured exchange with Hansen through the open bedroom door.
It must have looked intimate, Will thought with a worried pang. Secret. Because it had been.
When Will met his tired, cynical eyes, Tom looked away.
21
Back at the station, Ingham’s door was closed when they reached it, but Will could see the back of a platinum blond head through her blinds. Hansen, of course, had beaten them to it.
Ingham called them in at once when they knocked and asked them how they were.
But they’d barely taken a seat when she said, “This doesn’t feel like Joey. A hit on cops.”
Will’s lips thinned. “I think Sanjay’d argue.”
“That wasn’t a planned execution,” Ingham returned. “Joey’s always been careful to keep a balance of power with us. Trying to keep things bubbling over with no drama that’s going to provoke serious pushback. If he was the one who set this up . . . it suggests he thinks he has to take the fight to us.”
“No drama?” Will repeated. “After his goons murdered Sanjay, there should have been bloody drama. We should have razed his poisonous business to the ground! Instead it sounds like he’s being forced to kill cops because we’re breaking a nice cozy arrangement.”
Ingham’s eyes narrowed to outraged slits. Will had never come close to that kind of insubordination before.
But Hansen was the one to snap, “You were aware of heightened danger when you opted to go walkabout.” She looked at Will now as if she’d like to wring his neck. “You didn’t notice you were being followed?”
“They were waiting for us,” Will said. He sounded angry. He needed to wrestle it down. “They needed to get us somewhere without the hope of backup, to take us both out in one clean hit, with no evidence to lead back to them. Using Nick—and Tom—worked perfectly. I followed the trail of crumbs, and no one but Jamie believed me.”
Tom sat, silently observing from the side of the room. He looked exhausted and out of reach. Cruelly glamorous.
They hadn’t talked.
“Did Nick say anything at all?” Hansen turned to Tom suddenly. “About these people who coerced him?”
Tom regarded her with his cool gaze. “He said they told him Will was a bent copper who’d fallen out with the people paying him. He claimed they told him if he wanted me to be safe, he had to help them teach Will a lesson because Will double-crossed them.”
Will gaped at him. “You didn’t say that before.”
Tom’s mouth twitched into a frigid smile. “You didn’t ask. You know in his own head Nick isn’t the bad guy. In his head, the best thing for me is to be with him, because he wants it that way. But—I don’t know if he expected killers. To be honest, I thought he was lying and he’d hired everyone himself. Then I saw Eddie’s ring. And I knew there was no way Nick would ever have gone near him.”
“Eddie didn’t know Nick was David Burchill,” Will said. “That’s what saved us. The press connected Burchill to Tom last summer, but not his new identity as Nick. So shouldn’t we be asking how Joey knew to use Nick to set up his hit?”
Hansen sat up straighter. “When you and Tom were rescued I took control of that investigation as quickly as possible. Nick’s true identity was then need to know only.”
“So who needed to know?” Will asked.
Hansen rubbed her mouth. “The SIO, DCI Lawson. His sergeant.” She looked as if her thoughts were making her feel ill. “Senior management. Above me.”
“Sir Ian and Sir Robin,” Will said.
Hansen sighed. There was a grim silence.
Ingham called them back to business. “We can thrash this out later. For now, the priority has to be to find Eddie before he gets private time with Haining. There’s a call out on the escape vehicle but . . . .” She shook her head. “Let’s face it, it’s likely in a run-in.” Joey’s people most likely had a network of them—yards where stolen goods and cars were hidden—but most were probably unknown to police.
“Even if we find the van, we aren’t going to find Nick sitting in there, ” Will pointed out. “We need hard evidence Eddie was involved, then we go in and collar him.”
“SOCO have our jackets,” James offered. “Will’s should be plastered with Eddie’s DNA. And one of his sidekicks bled all over me and the plastic sheeting. With luck, he’s someone in the database too.”
Hansen had been listening to the exchange with foot-tapping impatience. “You realize you have to edit your reports,” she said to Will and James. She sounded curt. Then, to Ingham, “I’ll leave it with you Jo.” She got to her feet, her expression bleak. “I’ve told SOCO to expedite results from the flat to you. I don’t want to imagine what’s happening to Nick right now.”
The briefi
ng Ingham gave to the unit was highly selective as Hansen required. Just the necessary facts. That a businessman named Nick Haining had been kidnapped and his life was in extreme jeopardy, but not why. Not that he was actually a criminal celebrity. Officers were often kept in the dark about the full picture by SIOs. Just not usually this much.
The grunt work began then of checking hospitals for the wounded gunman, tracing the van, trying to trace the source of the original 999 call. The vehicle number plate had predictably come back as stolen and not attached to a white transit. A ringer, like so many vehicles used in organized and semiorganized crime.
James took Tom to a quiet Meeting Room to give his statement, though it probably wouldn’t see the light of day, and after that a police doctor would be called to assess him. Until then Will returned to the Incident Room to wait for the DNA results to come through. But he felt jittery and far too anxious to succumb to a post traumatic slump.
Since the rescue, in the car they’d traveled in, and in the station, Tom had been politely distant.
We have no trust, you and me.
Will knew too well how stubborn Tom could be.
He generally took time to come to a big decision but once he had—once he made up his mind—he was like a guided missile. Nothing could divert his course.
Maybe it was already too late.
“Guv?” Salt asked. “You look like warmed-over shit. An’ there’s blood on yer collar.” He lowered his voice in an effort at discretion. “Wiz that Tom in with the DCI? An’ Hansen?”
Will gave a wan smile. “Yep.” But he couldn’t elaborate, not even to Salt. “Are you getting anywhere on Daria? Scarlett? Anything about June’s case?”
Salt made a Northern Irish sound of disgust. “It’s been all dead-ends on Daria. Feels like we’ve chatted up every hook . . . every sex worker in Soho. I asked Herself but she says there’s no hard evidence to prove Scarlett’s murder’s linked to Daria’s, so Lawson gets to keep it. An’ I keep waitin’ for the announcement that June’s postmortem DNA didn’t match but . . . .”
Over Salt’s shoulder, a figure beckoned to Will from the Incident Room doorway.