Blue On Blue

by Dal Maclean

“Nope. I made the elementary mistake of mentioning an item idea.”

  Emily smirked. “Not surprised. We’re at the point of collaring passersby. We’re still going to have to fill like . . . .”

  Ken-doll had reached them. “You’re both lifesavers!” he gushed to Will and Ron. He had a TV presenter’s voice and flat Northern vowels. “But you’re not to worry. If you run out of things to say, Emily and I’ll pad.”

  Will frowned. “Run out of things to say? How long do you expect us to . . . ?”

  “This is Matt Haines,” Emily cut in smoothly. “He’s usually in the studio doing the crime roundup, but this week we have him out copresenting.”

  She didn’t sound particularly happy about it, and Will vaguely recalled Catherine talking about “Matt” demanding more airtime.

  “That’s luck then,” Will said. “You two can talk among yourselves. Ron and I’ll watch.”

  Emily’s lips twitched and she looked down.

  “There’s no need to panic,” Matt said with indulgent grin. “Just follow our lead. We’ve both done lots of live. We’re used to crises and emergencies.”

  “That’s very reassuring,” Will said. “Ron and I wouldn’t have a clue what to do in a crisis or an emergency.”

  Ron snorted. Matt looked at him suspiciously, but before he could reply, Ed barreled up to take both presenters on to the set.

  Will became horribly aware that things were still collapsing, because even Ed, professionally imperturbable, was fraying at the edges, and sounds of shouting could be heard from the main OB van whenever the door opened.

  As the title sequence played, Will opted to go with the method Emily had suggested the last time he’d done it. Pretend it wasn’t happening to him.

  In the opening sequence, shots of the Lambeth lab and of Will taking DNA swabs were run under an introduction to the item, as Matt explained they hoped to have results by the end of the show. Then, after the usual VTs and interviews on specific crimes, Will was hauled in for an interview explaining how a fast turnaround on DNA was helping investigations; how suspects could now be identified or exonerated more quickly and reduce the amount of precharge bail. Then the Lambeth OB kicked in for a five-minute interview with a lab spokesman, while Will was able to slip off the set.

  Soon after that though, it became obvious why the gallery had been melting down. The other last-minute OB setup at a police dog training center, glitched on the set monitors, then went to color bars, which left Ron and Errol alone and exposed, to fill the allotted space for the dog item. It quickly became evident though even to Will, that Ron’s calm had masked frozen terror. The presenters asked increasingly long and elaborate questions to pad out Ron’s monosyllabic answers, and eventually embarrassment forced the item prematurely out of its misery.

  But that left the show even shorter of material. They went to the Lambeth lab early and somehow, blessedly, results had been achieved, which Will had privately doubted was possible in the time available. They’d even come up with a match for “attempting to drive a motor vehicle while unfit through drink” in 2009. No names of course.

  But after that, the desperate filling began.

  Emily and Matt tried again with Ron and Errol, who’d made the basic mistake of not leaving the set. But they got even less the second time round. So Will was pushed on again to be asked desperate questions which had no honest answer that wouldn’t get him disciplined, or drummed out of the force. Eventually, Matt was reduced to suggesting Will show himself and Emily how it felt to have DNA taken, by swabbing both of their mouths there and then, and in the spirit of hysterical jollity that had set in, doing the same to Ron and Errol. By the time the closing credits ran, all pretense at seamlessly covering the cracks had gone. Twitter, as Emily adlibbed in her closing lines, was going to have a field day.

  Which reminded Will that people he actually knew might have been watching his descent into circus act.

  “Off-air,” Ed shouted at last. Instead of the usual relieved hubbub, stunned silence fell on the set. It felt like the aftermath of a disaster.

  Will walked off to the side and with an acute sense of dread, switched on his phone, which vibrated on cue with an incoming call. He squinted reluctantly at the screen.

  James. Well, Will could hardly deny him his pound of flesh. He pressed the green button, and turned away from the others. But James didn’t gloat.

  “Want a lift? I’m parked just along Belvedere Road.”

  The relief of hearing a familiar voice was like an energizing drug shooting through Will’s bloodstream after the surreal madness of the past hour. Without a word to anyone, he strode away along the road perpendicular to the bridge. He was only aware, when they overtook him at a jog, that Ron and Errol had made a break for freedom with him.

  He heard his name called sharply once—a female voice that he thought might be Emily, but when he turned, Catherine was talking urgently to her and Matt on the set. Emily looked up, and gestured at Will to come back, but he waved, walking backward, as if he didn’t understand.

  He turned front again, almost ready to break into a run like Ron, but then he saw James, leaning, tall and gilded in the sunlight, against the side of a pool car, parked twenty yards down the road. Will lengthened his stride until he could open the passenger door and dive inside, as James slid in behind the wheel.

  “We’re on the right track,” Will said without ceremony. “She gave the sample because she couldn’t refuse. But she asked for it back.”

  “So did you . . . ?”

  Will fumbled the white tube out of his jacket pocket.

  James gave a triumphant grin and Will took a moment to wonder if working with him was eroding James’s “strictly by the rules” persona, or if it had always been a false image.

  “No joke,” Will said. “That was far worse than being held at knifepoint by Eddie Butts.”

  James laughed. “I watched on my phone. You were the only one who looked like you understood it wasn’t life or death.”

  “My face lied then,” Will said. “Did the office know I was on?”

  James sucked air through his teeth. “Yep.”

  Will groaned theatrically.

  “But you got the sample,” James said.

  “But I got the sample,” Will agreed.

  23

  When Catherine’s DNA was sent to Lambeth, Will’s gray jacket went with it. And so, at Ingham’s insistence, did his shirt.

  Will protested vehemently—he had no other shirts left and neither did James. So Ingham ordered him to scavenge around the unit. Eventually he was left standing by his desk with James, Salt and Scrivenor, drowned by the fabric of one of Scrivenor’s spare shirts, and contemplating which was worse as work attire—that, or one of Salt’s which would barely close round his chest.

  James looked at the choice with an assessing pout. “Wear Des’s,” he said and waggled his eyebrows.

  “Would you stop flirtin,’” Scrivenor said. “I’m tryin’ tae have ma tea.”

  “You’re trying to have a large latte from Costa,” James corrected. “And a muffin,”

  “Aye. That.”

  “Both of which I bought you.”

  “It disnae make the unresolved sexual tension any easier tae bear,” Scrivenor said.

  “Can’t you have a wee break to go home for clothes, Guv?” Salt asked. “You’ve been here . . . how many nights in a row?”

  “Spoonin’ wi’ Jamie,” Scrivenor said. His ginger moustache bunched provocatively. “Two nights. Or is it three?”

  Will smirked. He knew what was behind it. Neither Scrivenor nor Salt were used to being left out in the cold, and Scrivenor was even further out of the loop than Salt.

  “Has Tom not thrown a wobbler?” Salt asked. “But then, he was in yesterday so . . . .”

  Will rolled his eyes. “Was that supposed to be subtle? Look, we can’t say what we’re doing at this stage. I’m sorry.”

  Salt and Scrivenor both looked down at their
desks and just like that, the atmosphere chilled.

  Will sighed. “I’m going for a slash,” he said and took his phone with him into the corridor. James could mop up their hurt feelings.

  Tom answered at the third ring.

  “Hey,” Tom said, voice warm and intimate. “How are you?”

  Will soaked it up; the peace between them. He’d become so accustomed to the bittersweet miasma that had settled over his relationship with Tom, the dread of inevitable pain.

  This felt giddy, like oxygen at high altitude.

  “Traumatized. What’ve you been up to?”

  Tom laughed. “I watched it. I’m at home, prepping for a meeting with the prof. Cam’s out looking to get laid.” Will smiled at nothing. Then, “Any word on Nick?”

  The smile turned to a grimace. “Sorry. They’re keeping up surveillance. Clarkson’s people are claiming Eddie and his sidekicks have been away for a week on business.”

  “So how did their DNA get smeared all over you and Jamie yesterday in Notting Hill?”

  “Probably transference.” Will sighed. “What any decent up-to-date brief’s going to be trying to argue from now on.”

  Tom ignored his copper’s bitterness. “But you got the sample?”

  “At great cost to my dignity.”

  Tom made a choked sound of amusement that went straight to Will’s dick. “You were brilliant. But the presenters were so desperate at the end. When the guy made you take the swabs. It looked like Emily and the dog handler were going to go for his throat. Then yours.”

  “The dog was the only one who didn’t show me the whites of his eyes.” Already it was beginning to feel like a story Will could tell, as opposed to just a miserable humiliation. “I’m never ever going to live it down.” He sounded weary, but he found he now felt anything but. “And I had to send my shirt and jacket to the lab. I’m wearing a tent of Alec’s.”

  “I’ll bring you some stuff,” Tom volunteered.

  “Hey,” Will protested, thrilled. “I didn’t call you for that.”

  “I want to see you. And this is an excuse.”

  “Well in that case . . . .” Will grinned wildly at the wall. “I want to see you too.”

  Neither of them would have felt able to take the risk to say that, just a day before. He went back into the office, bombproofed against mockery.

  While he was out, Emily and Catherine had both left messages on his landline. He counted himself blessed to have missed them. He also let calls to his mobile to go to voicemail, and he pretended he didn’t see a text from Emily. He just wanted to forget the whole TV fiasco.

  Instead he reveled in the mundane familiarity of the office and his own desk and his own sergeant; in piled-up routine paperwork, and the shit vending machine and office banter. It felt like years since he’d been part of a real team and not running out in the cold.

  He checked on Daria’s case—now Ingham’s—but predictably there was no progress.

  Daria’s parents couldn’t afford to come to the UK to claim her body or repatriate it to Romania, so it remained in the mortuary. As did June’s body, with no family to claim it, other than a daughter who didn’t know her mother had existed.

  The front desk told Will he had a visitor just after three, and he headed to reception with alacrity.

  Tom was sitting on one of the plastic chairs, ridiculously sexy in blue jeans, black leather bike jacket and biker boots, his helmet on a chair next to him. In his lap, lay a suit carrier and a big plastic bag.

  He looked up when Will came through the door, and his ice-blue eyes lit up, sparking with pleasure as he rose from his chair. Will didn’t fight his answering grin.

  Tom’s mouth quirked, but he fought for gravity as he took in the folds of shirt material Will had tucked into his trousers. “That’s quite a look. D’you have time to go for a coffee?”

  A young woman with a pushchair, sitting further along the row of chairs was eyeing the muscular length of Tom’s legs in tight denim, with frank appreciation.

  “Yeah,” Will said. He took the carrier and the plastic bag. “I’ll get changed first. Do you want to come in and wait?”

  But as he keyed the door open again, he found James about to open it from the other side. “We must stop meeting like this,” he said. “Ingham wants us.” Then, he noticed Tom. “Maybe you should come too.”

  Powered by James’s urgency, they headed for Ingham’s office. Her blinds were down.

  “Shit news,” Ingham said as Will closed the door behind them. “Catherine’s DNA doesn’t match the killer’s.”

  Will sank down, winded, into a chair beside James. He felt as if he’d run into a brick wall at speed.

  “But . . . she tried to take back her sample,” he said.

  “Yeah. I can see why. It matches convictions from 1990 to 1992 under the name of Katherine Sarl. In another life it looks like she was on the game. And a user who dabbled in dealing. Her DNA’s present in the same areas as the killer’s on your jacket, but it’s not the same.”

  “Shit.” All that for nothing.

  They were right back to square one. It felt to Will now like a tower of lies he was never going to be able to climb.

  “Just thank fuck we didn’t try to arrest her,” Ingham said. “Wait for it though. It gets worse. Her DNA did match one of the multiple small samples found on Daria’s anorak.”

  Will put his head in his hands.

  “Transference,” Tom said. “Classic case.”

  Will raised his head and tried not to roll his eyes. Ingham and James groaned.

  “Look, I know you don’t want to hear it,” Tom leaned forward in his chair, leather jacket creaking. “But think about it. The DNA you’re interested in. It was in the same places as Catherine’s on Will’s jacket. Right?”

  Ingham gave a weary nod.

  “Then how about this?” Tom went on. “The killer’s DNA was on Catherine’s palms and fingers when she touched Will. That’s why you have her DNA and the killers at those precise spots.”

  Ingham rubbed her lower lip. “Okay. But how did Catherine’s DNA get onto Daria?”

  “The other way round. Catherine’s DNA was on the killer’s hands.”

  “The door handle and the handle of the knife were wiped of prints,” Will said. “So I suppose it’s possible the killer didn’t wear gloves. Though a pro . . . .” But then he thought of Eddie, who took off his glove to make the murder he was about to commit feel more personal.

  “You don’t understand how easy it can be,” Tom said. “Even with gloves. If there was a struggle, and somehow the killer’s skin, even the skin of their face, came into brief contact with Daria’s jacket, that could be enough to transfer minute quantities of third-party DNA, as well as their own.”

  “So Catherine and the killer know each other,” James said. “Or they touched each other closely enough to mutually transfer DNA sometime on the day Daria was murdered. And again on the day Will had lunch with Catherine.”

  “Exactly,” Tom said with satisfaction.

  “Someone who Catherine sees regularly then,” Ingham said. She sounded doubtful. “Or, coincidentally she met them on those two days.”

  Light finally began to dawn.

  Will said, “The biggest sample of the killer’s DNA was on the arm of my jacket, right?” He pulled out his phone and tapped it open.

  “Are we boring you DI Foster?” Ingham asked.

  Will shook his head. Something had shoved into his consciousness . . . something Tom had said days ago.

  He tapped in a name and when the page opened, he started scrolling fast through images. It didn’t take long to find it.

  His emotions were beyond him. Did he feel triumphant or sad?

  He zoomed on the image and passed the phone to James.

  “Care to explain?” Ingham asked.

  James looked up sharply His expression was conflicted. Welcome to the club.

  “The day of the lunch, Emily didn’t touch me, but
Catherine put her hand on my arm before she left. Catherine held Emily’s hand when they kissed hello.”

  Ingham looked at the screen. “Your clothes from today have a fair bit of Catherine’s DNA on them, together with minute traces of the killer’s DNA. But truly minute.”

  “I had no physical contact with Emily today,” Will said. “Nor did Catherine that I could see. It was pandemonium and Emily arrived later than me, when Catherine was in the thick of it. So she and Catherine probably didn’t have the chance for the usual greeting. And with me . . . Emily just said hello and didn’t touch me. But the sound and makeup people must have touched both of us . . . which could explain minute traces.”

  “Transference,” Tom said. He smirked at Will in triumph. Will couldn’t help but smirk back.

  Then another realization.

  “Fuck. She had sticking plasters on her hands,” Will said. “The first show. She said they were from chopping onions.”

  “I hate to rain on this parade but she has an alibi,” Ingham pointed out. “In fact, you’re part of it and so am I. Emily was at Jamie’s party when Daria was killed.”

  How had Will forgotten that? But he was so sure now, he knew there must be an explanation. And on cue, he remembered.

  “Catherine was talking to Ben and me when . . . some guy got embarrassing. She said something like, ‘Oh look! Emily’s here!’ Something like that. Something that suggested she hadn’t seen her before at the party, though she was meant to be Catherine’s guest.”

  “My father’s housekeeper . . . .” James said. “Is like a professional monitoring device. I can ask her when Emily arrived.”

  “Hold on,” Ingham protested. “You’re both making wild assumptions. Again. If it’s down to DNA transference . . . Catherine must meet and greet hundreds of people in her job. You can’t finger Emily just because she’s someone you both know and she cut her hand chopping veg!”

  Will glanced at James. It was need to know only. But if they were going after Emily, Ingham did need to know.

  “Jamie and I got a hold of a cache of evidence. It was left by Stephen Underwood, detailing organized child abuse at the care home he was sent to.”