Blue On Blue

by Dal Maclean

  “Yeah well. We don’t know Catherine’s a match yet. Only that she touched my jacket.” Why did it have to be a well-connected upper middle-class professional with a clean record, Will thought. Why couldn’t it have been a nice, easy, well-established lowlife?

  Will’s phone beeped. He looked at it and cleared his throat.

  “Pez is at reception,” he announced.

  Tom frowned. “You called him?”

  “While you were in with Jamie,” Will confessed. He began to usher Tom toward reception. “For reassurance. Safety in numbers?” Tom could be very sensitive about being coddled.

  “Even when the numbers are made up by Pez?” Tom asked with incredulity. Will punched in the code to open the door to the public area. “What’s he gonna protect me from? Low-cost menswear?”

  Will snorted. “Thanks for coming,” he said unctuously to Pez as they entered reception.

  Pez rose from his plastic chair. He wore what looked like an old-fashioned safari jacket and underneath it, something in peach satin. “Oh it’s fine. It’s not as if I have a career to look after or anything.”

  “Thanks for remembering your shirt,” Will said. “We’re all very grateful. And you’re wearing your granddad’s coat. Don’t tell me. Pockets are a spring-summer trend.”

  Pez’s eyes narrowed to dark green slits. “What a pity you’re not a detective.” Will had explained as much as he could on the phone, and Pez had been desperate to come to fuss over Tom. But Tom would be freaked out if they were too civil to each other. This was comfort and habit and normality. “We’re not all boring bags of . . . .”

  “Sorry,’ Tom cut in. “Pez. I didn’t know he’d bothered you.” He turned to glare at Will. “I’m actually fine.” But he was smiling too.

  Will found himself grinning idiotically back. “It’s better you’re not on your own.”

  “Oh God,” Pez said, all uncut disgust. “This is going to be worse than the misery. Come on Tommy. The day’s a dead loss. We can get bladdered back at yours.”

  Tom gave Will a long, grave look. “Pockets actually are a spring-summer trend,” he said. Then he and Pez walked out of reception together into the sunlight.

  It was still a beautiful day, and Will, for all his professional life rested on madness and danger, felt lighter than he had for a long time.

  “I keep going back to this one thing,” James said, the moment Will closed the door of the meeting room behind them. “Who told Joey that Nick was the right person to set the trap for you? Who knew enough about what happened to you last summer? Hansen said she took charge of the case when you were all rescued from Nick’s flat. So . . . can we narrow the leak down to the people Hansen said knew the truth?” He paused and pulled a chair away from the table. “And why didn’t Eddie know?”

  Will slumped into another chair. “Max sort of hinted he knew who Nick was, or maybe we were just paranoid enough to read that into what he said. Either way, I can believe he wouldn’t tell Eddie. I can’t think Eddie’d have given Max an easy ride about his obsession with Tom. And Joey’s more than capable of keeping Eddie in the dark to keep a leash on him.”

  “That’d explain how Eddie didn’t know,” James said. “But not how Joey did. Can we narrow it down to the officers Hansen listed?”

  “Lawson.” Will’s least favorite copper. “Des was his sergeant then.” No. No fucking way. “And Sir Ian and Sir Robin.” Which would bear out Hansen’s suspicion that someone above her was in Clarkson’s pocket.

  “And Hansen herself,” James reminded him.

  Will shook his head. “If she were in on it, she’d have sent us straight to Nick’s. She even denied he was in the country. She’s clear. But the others . . . .”

  “Who else could have known we’d go there?” James asked. It was clear who he meant.

  “Pixie?” Will said, incredulously. “No way.”

  “There’s no such thing anymore,” James said. “You’re expecting me to doubt Ingham. And Pixie is the only person we can be sure knew where we were going. She needs to be checked.”

  Will grimaced as he nodded his agreement.

  “But if she were working for Joey she’d be far too clever to leave an easy trail.” He rubbed his face hard. “Let’s get on to Catherine Millar first.”

  They worked together to dig up Catherine’s publicly known past. According to a brief biography online, she was fifty-one. She’d come into TV as a production assistant when she was twenty-five. She’d been a producer for seven years.

  “That’s it?” Will asked.

  “That’s all that’s here.”

  James raised his eyebrows significantly.

  With a heavy sigh, Will extracted Catherine’s business card from his wallet and put the call on speaker.

  Catherine answered on the fourth ring. “Will! What a wonderful surprise! I was afraid I’d never hear from you again after that article. That wasn’t us sweetie! Please tell me it’s ‘yes’! I need some good news.”

  She was so full of guileless guile, Will couldn’t believe she was capable of violence. But everyone one was, if driven far enough.

  “Not exactly,” he said. She made a sound like a wounded animal. “But I wondered if you might be interested in a tour of the fast turnaround DNA lab at Lambeth. It’s revolutionizing our investigations. So I just thought I’d mention it, you know? As an idea. In case you fancied doing a story on it. Just when you have time. Or whatever.”

  Will looked at James, cringing. James pressed his lips together hard.

  “What are you doing tomorrow morning?” Catherine asked. Her tone was sharp.

  Will and James looked at each other. The sooner the better.

  “You want to go along tomorrow? I can speak to . . . .”

  “I mean come on the show.” Will’s stomach turned over. Tomorrow would be Tuesday. Witness was a biweekly show. He’d lost track of time. “I’m desperate Will. A second item’s gone tits up and it’s too late to film anything new. But you could do something live. Or . . . Jamie could.”

  Will stared at James with pitiful appeal, but James shook his head hard.

  “I’m not an expert on DNA,” Will tried.

  “We can get an expert from that lab and you can make it accessible. That’s all we want!”

  James widened his eyes with expectation. Will scowled. One of them had to be there; one of them had to try to hustle Catherine into giving a sample or to assess her behavior if she refused.

  “All right,” Will said. “But you have to have a live bit from the lab to do it right. To show how it works. Maybe with some samples we take before the show.”

  James gave him a thumbs-up.

  “That’s brilliant!” Catherine gushed. “I’ll organize a mini-OB for the lab then. That’s an outside broadcast by the way. Message me once you’ve got permission.”

  Media and Communications were predictably thrilled, but selling it to Ingham was another matter.

  “You want to play with entrapment on live national TV?” She sounded stunned. “That’s your cunning plan?”

  “Jamie and I thought we could just adapt the idea to use on the program. I could work it to take samples before it goes on-air . . . then send the samples to the lab to be analyzed by the end of the program. As a sort of reveal.”

  “The reveal being the producer’s a double murderer?” Ingham asked, incredulous.

  “No! Let’s face it Boss; if she’s guilty, she’s going to refuse a sample point-blank, but there’ll be more pressure to do it if she’s being filmed. If I do get her sample, I’ll hold it back. We’ll get it analyzed on the quiet.”

  Ingham sighed. “You have a distressingly twisted mind DI Foster.”

  “Thank you, Boss.”

  Ingham snorted and they grinned at each other with wry desperation. And for the first time since Will had made clear his suspicions of her, he felt as if they’d touched normal.

  The lab bosses were helpful and flattered to be asked to explain their w
ork on TV. So Will talked through a plan of attack with the lab, Media and Communications, Catherine and some technical people via a conference call.

  But he couldn’t help some moments of now familiar stage fright, along with undermining doubts that the whole plan was a stupid and unnecessary ruse and a wild goose chase at that. All because of DNA traces anyone could have put on his jacket. They should just ask Catherine outright.

  But then he remembered how he felt hearing about June. Better safe than sorry when it came to Joey.

  Just after nine, James let out a whoop of triumph. Will looked up from the basic script he was trying to write.

  “I found her CV. Well enough of it.”

  “How?” Will asked in awe.

  “Some database for film and TV called the Mandy Network. Anyway from 2003, she worked as an Assistant Producer for an independent company called FreeLife, and among her credits is a chat-show for ITV. Which was hosted by . . . .” He played an imaginary drum roll in the air. “Ricky Desmond.”

  Will sat back with a whoosh of relief. A solid link at long fucking last.

  “It’ll take time to trace her old colleagues on that show,” James said. “But if we know we’re on the right track—going by her reaction to the sample request tomorrow—we can justify committing the resources.”

  Will gave him a dry smile. He’d needed the motivation.

  He needed it even more the following morning, when he arrived back at the OB site on Westminister Bridge. He wore a shirt and tie borrowed from James’s emergency stash at the station, and the only suit he had left to hand—since his black one had been effectively cut in half—the pale gray with too tight trousers he’d used to tantalize Eve. Most importantly, he had a script outline with him, and a handful of DNA sampling kits.

  The floor manager—an eerily calm man with a ginger beard, called Ed—grabbed him and led him to one of the large OB vans parked about ten yards from the set. Inside, it was very dark, apart from a wall of monitors showing camera images of the bridge and the river. Big Ben. Two other screens displayed what looked to Will like the interior of the Lambeth lab.

  A row of people, some with headphones on, sat in front of a long desk facing the monitor wall. The desk was covered with switches and buttons and faders and microphones and lights—like characterizations Will had seen onscreen of a TV gallery, but much more cramped, and, bizarrely, far more hysterical.

  Catherine was ranting down a microphone at one end of the desk; a man two seats along was shouting down another. At the far end a woman was talking intensely to a very tall man who shook his head with vehemence at everything she said, and in the middle, another woman had her head on the desk.

  As Will took in the chaos, his guts began to detach and slide toward his boots. Then Catherine noticed him. She said something curt into the microphone, leaped to her feet and went straight to greet him as if he’d brought relief to a city under siege.

  And all the time Will was calculating how much DNA she was leaving on his arm and his cheek and his shoulder. Realizing in that moment, that he was going to have to sacrifice yet another suit to forensics. Tom wouldn’t be happy he was losing this one.

  Catherine said, “Will! We’re splitting your part into three slots. Frankly, darling, we really need to pad the run time and the more of you the better!” She smiled brilliantly, but Will suspected that underneath her sparkly good cheer, she was actually close to losing the plot. He hadn’t appreciated how stressful it must be to have a live program to fill and lose half your material at the eleventh hour.

  Catherine lowered her voice to a confidential murmur. “Sweetie, you’re really saving my bacon.” Her voice rose again. “So, I’ve got Mike all set to film you taking the samples, okay? To underlay the opening voice-over.”

  Will held up his little bundle of DNA kits.

  “I’ll take them in here then. We have a bike courier outside waiting to take them to Lambeth.”

  Catherine blinked. “In here?”

  “Yeah. For speed.” He gave his best mendacious smile. “And I thought it’d be interesting . . . to show the Control Room you know?”

  Catherine smiled back. “You see? You’re thinking visually already.”

  “No names’ll be used, in case anyone happens to have a criminal record.” He tried to make it sound like a joke. “But I really need to get a move-on, to give the lab time to get some results for the end of the program. It’s going to be tight.”

  Catherine winced theatrically. “Don’t tell me that darling. Ed, could you get Mike?”

  Within a couple of minutes, a bald, overweight man with a video camera on his shoulder, accompanied by a soundman and a man holding a light, had all edged into the cramped gallery.

  When they switched on, Will duly took cheek swabs from anyone who put their hand up as willing: the PA at one end; the director who’d been abandoned to despair when Will came in; the man who mixed sound and an assistant producer.

  “Four should be enough, shouldn’t it?” Catherine asked, hovering. Mike, the stone-faced cameraman, reached to his shoulder to switch off.

  “Let’s make it five,” Will said. The camera switched on again. Will smiled. “How about you?”

  He found himself surprised by Catherine’s shock. She genuinely didn’t seem to have anticipated he would ask her, and her quickly succeeding reactions—shock, resistance, self-consciousness, resentment—were overt. But the camera was on her, and that was a unique kind of peer pressure.

  “I’m far too busy darling!” she said with forced joviality.

  “Oh. Well.” Will held up a bare swab. “The kit’s open now. Might as well use it. It’ll only take a second.”

  Will could see Catherine’s turmoil as she searched for a graceful way out of the corner he’d shoved her into. And if she’d come up with anything, Will would have had to concede. Both of them had to pretend it wasn’t important. But Mike still held the camera steadily on Catherine and reluctantly, she opened her mouth for the swab.

  Will snapped closed the sample stick, and that was that. Job done. Though the price in public embarrassment still had to be paid.

  He said, “I’ll get these away,” and pushed out through the outer door of the OB van, all but jumping down the short ladder steps to the ground. But as he strode toward the bike courier, skirting the far edges of the set, with a sense of inevitability, he heard Catherine behind him, calling his name. He turned to wait for her, as she scurried toward him.

  Across the set, Will could see a cluster of police officers waiting for makeup. His fate soon, too.

  “Will darling,” Catherine murmured. “I’d appreciate it if you didn’t use that sample.”

  Will should have been relieved, but he was actually surprised by the extent of his disappointment. Deep down, he hadn’t wanted it to be her. He liked her.

  “If I’d known you’d ask . . . .” she said. “I have a very old conviction for something very minor and stupid, but . . . I’d rather it didn’t get out.”

  On the whole, being caught doing something “very minor and stupid” didn’t lead to a DNA profile being kept on record indefinitely. Only a recordable offense or worse. But Will didn’t bother to explain that, as he would have if he’d believed her.

  “Oh. Right. Of course. We won’t use it then. I’d better get the rest to the courier though, so . . . .”

  “May I have it?” Catherine asked. Her expression remained friendly and pleasant but her eyes were steely.

  Will frowned. He should be showing some suspicion now; some uncertainty. He should be reacting to the obvious fact that she wasn’t behaving like a person with nothing to hide.

  Catherine added quickly, “It’s not that I don’t trust you, it’s just. Well . . . mistakes do happen.”

  Will and James had war-gamed for every eventuality the night before, especially the likely behavior of a guilty person. They’d expected an open refusal, but this was even clearer.

  Will proffered a sample he’d kep
t in his pocket: opened, not used, then sealed again. Catherine took the tube and gripped it tightly. Her relief was painfully obvious.

  Catherine’s sample, premarked before use with a dot of red ink, had been slipped up Will’s shirtsleeve, like a conjurer.

  “Thank you darling!” Catherine gushed. “Now, I think we’ll have some shots of you giving the samples to that very fetching man in black leather. You couldn’t take off your jacket? The more the Great British Public sees of you, the better.”

  Will walked to the courier—jacket on—and watched the samples dropped into a freezer bag and then into a bike box, considering all the while the implications of what had just happened.

  Catherine’s demand had destroyed any arguments that her DNA had been given voluntarily. They certainly couldn’t use the results of the sample in court. But that wasn’t the point. Will had achieved his purpose. But as he turned round he envied the courier the anonymity of his bike helmet.

  “Makeup’s free,” Ed announced, as if that was a good thing.

  Will had no option then but to surrender himself to the forces of live TV. He duly went through makeup, got miked-up and he was even given a script this time, because he wasn’t just an interviewee; he was a contributor. That sense of responsibility didn’t help.

  Then he stood and waited at the side of the chaotic set with the other officers who were going to appear. The investigating personnel covering the crimes that were featured, huddled at one end of the group, while Will stood with the other emergency item—a calm, self-contained dog handler called Ron, and an even calmer German Shepherd called Errol.

  Will’s stomach squirmed and writhed with nerves, worse than the first time by quite a distance, because this time he knew what was coming.

  Finally, Emily approached the group, beside a tall, slim, Ken-doll of a man with brown hair and an eerily symmetrical face that could have come out of a plastic mould.

  Emily greeted Will and Ron first, while the man moved to glad-hand the other end of the group. “You changed your mind!” she said to Will.