‘Barns! You could have waited for me to fetch your towel!’
She turned round and found David standing right behind her. ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘I hope you didn’t get showered.’
His face remained serious. ‘I just wanted to tell you how grateful I am that you let me in.’
‘Well, of course, don’t be silly. It’s lashing outside and you don’t even have an umbrella.’
Katie rubbed Barney down with his frayed old bath towel and gave the kitchen floor a quick squeaky going-over with her sponge mop. Then she led David back into the living room and they both sat down on the couch again.
‘I don’t know,’ said David. ‘Sometimes I feel like there’s no way out of it, and it’s never going to end.’
‘Well, you and me both,’ Katie told him.
‘What? You’ve had a bad day, too?’
‘Oh, you don’t want to hear all of my problems. Besides, I shouldn’t really discuss them with anybody. It’s mostly to do with an ongoing case I’m dealing with.’
David took another swallow of whiskey and then set down his glass. ‘If it’ll make you feel better to talk about it, go ahead. I won’t tell a soul.’ He paused, and then he said, ‘I’m a doctor, remember.’
‘Oh, yes, but you’re only a dog and a cat and a budgerigar doctor! It can’t be too difficult to maintain patient confidentiality when your patients can only tell you things in woofs and miaows and chirrups.’
David smiled, but his smile faded almost immediately. ‘It’s not what the animals tell me, Katie, it’s their owners. Just because I’m wearing a white coat they think that they can unburden their souls. I had a woman from Coolamber come in the other day who told me that she hated dogs, despised them – couldn’t stand the smell and the slobber and the clearing up after them. But taking her spaniel for a walk every evening gave her an excuse to visit her lover three streets away. The spaniel didn’t get a whole lot of exercise, but she did.’
Katie thought for a moment, then she said, ‘Well – this case that’s giving me so much grief – you’ll see it mentioned on the news tonight anyway, and in the papers tomorrow, so I don’t suppose there’s any harm in your knowing about it.’
She told him about Micky Crounan’s kidnapping, and the ransom handover that had gone so disastrously wrong. She told him about the media conference, too, and how Bryan Molloy had damned her with faint praise in front of the press. She knew that she shouldn’t discuss internal Garda affairs with civilians, but she felt so demoralized that she needed to talk to somebody about it. Six months ago she could have told her father, because he had been a Garda inspector for eleven years and would have understood, but ever since the tragic death of the woman he had been intending to marry he had closed himself off and spent most of his days staring out of his window at the rain, and the toing and froing of the Passage West ferry.
‘David – you mustn’t breathe a word of this to a single soul,’ she said. ‘I could really be goosed if you do.’
David smiled at her and laid his hand on top of hers. ‘You don’t have to worry, Katie. Heaven knows I have enough difficulties myself with Sorcha, and I shouldn’t be telling anybody how mad she can behave sometimes. Mostly, yes, I can cope with it, as I’m sure you can cope with your friend Bryan Molloy. But, come on, it’s a great relief to be able to share your problems with somebody who’s prepared to listen, and who understands what you’re going through, even if there’s nothing else they can do to help – not in a practical way, anyhow.’
Unexpectedly, Katie found that David’s words had made her feel very emotional, and her throat tightened. Part of the reason was that he reminded her so much physically of John – that dark, lean look, like some martyred medieval saint. Yet he also possessed an animal magnetism that John had never had. She almost felt that he understood everything that was upsetting her so much, that he was capable of showing her how to get her strength back, and her courage, although she was more than aware that she might have to pay a price for it.
She felt tears prickling in her eyes, so she said, ‘You’ll excuse me for a moment. I need to give Barney his supper.’
She got up and went into the kitchen – not only to open a can of Brandy’s Chunks in Gravy for Barney, but also to take a few deep breaths and stare at her reflection in the window over the sink. The glass was jet-black and bejewelled with raindrops and there she was, a pale ghost looking back at herself from the yard outside. Barney was making a clattering noise pushing his bowl around the floor, but Katie could hear David talking on his mobile phone.
‘Yes, that’s grand. No problem at all. I’ll see you tomorrow so.’ ‘Yes, me too.’ ‘Of course I do. I just can’t say it at the moment.’ ‘Because I can’t.’
She came back into the living room just as he was pushing his phone back into his trouser pocket. ‘Everything all right?’ she asked him. ‘Would you like another drink?’
‘Yes, go on, then, thank you,’ he said, holding up his glass.
‘You’re a vet,’ she said, ‘so tell me something I’ve always wondered about. Do our pets really love us? Or do you think they only show us affection because we feed them and take care of them and make a fuss of them?’
David shook his head. ‘Oh, I believe they genuinely love us, and in the same way that we humans love each other.’
‘But how can you know that?’
‘Because sometimes we humans hurt each other badly, don’t we? But we still come back for more. In the same way you can whip a horse but it will still remain faithful to you, or you can thrash the living daylights out of a dog and it will still be devoted. Men and women can cause each other terrible pain sometimes, but that doesn’t stop them from wanting and needing each other. After all, what else is there?’
They carried on talking for well over an hour. David was an attentive listener, and for the first time in her life Katie found herself describing to a stranger how she had only joined An Garda Síochána because none of her sisters were interested in becoming police officers and she hadn’t wanted to let her father down. Midway through her training at Templemore she had almost quit because of the bullying and sexual harassment, even from other women trainees, and she had nearly resigned again when she had been assigned to Crosshaven Garda station, in Coastguard Cottages, Crosshaven, where there was hardly any crime except for bicycles having their wheels pinched or fishing nets being vandalized or drunken yachtsmen punching each other in the car park of Cronin’s pub.
‘I fought really hard to get where I am now,’ she said. ‘I lost my husband and the man I love. Now I’m beginning to wonder if I was a fool. I could be in San Francisco now, with a really good job at Pinkerton’s, instead of living on my own, eating supermarket dinners-for-one, and worrying every day if I’m going to have the rug pulled out from under me.’
‘Katie,’ said David, ‘you’re unselfish, and you’re loyal to the people who really need you. Those are very rare qualities. You’ll get your reward, you’ll see.’
‘Where?’ she retorted. ‘In heaven?’
***
It was past eleven by the time David drained the last of his whiskey and stood up.
‘I’d best be getting back to Sorcha,’ he said. ‘She’ll be spark out by now. Thanks again for giving a poor pilgrim shelter in a storm.’
Katie stood up, too. ‘Do you want to borrow an umbrella? It’s still spilling out there.’
She lifted a red folding umbrella down from the coat hooks in the hallway and opened the front door for him. ‘Sorry it’s a bit gay, but it’ll keep you dry.’
David shaded his eyes with his hand and made an exaggerated show of peering out into the darkness. ‘That’s okay. Not a soul in sight, thankfully. Wouldn’t want to get mistaken for a steamer, would I?’
He laid his hand on her shoulder and kissed her on the right cheek, and then the left. For a few seconds he looked into her eyes as if he had seen something inside her mind but wasn’t quite sure what it meant. Then he raised th
e red umbrella and said, ‘See you,’ and ducked out into the rain.
Katie closed the door and went back into the kitchen. Barney had retired to his basket now, although he wasn’t asleep yet and he raised his eyes to look at her, as if to say, ‘What’s the story, mistress? Are you all right?’
‘Yes, Barns,’ said Katie, out loud. ‘I’m all right, boy. Surviving.’
She thought of pouring herself another Smirnoff but decided against it. She would need to be pin-sharp in the morning to decide how to interview Derek Hagerty, and there was sure to be more questioning from the media about the High Kings of Erin. She would also have to work out a game plan for dealing with Acting Chief Superintendent Molloy. She couldn’t allow him to continue second-guessing her. After Gardagate, in which Commissioner Martin Callinan had resigned, and the resignation of Justice Minister Alan Shatter, there was a mood for heads to roll in An Garda Síochána for almost any kind of corruption or incompetence, real or perceived, and she didn’t want hers to be one of them.
She switched off the lights in the kitchen and the living room and went out into the hallway to switch on the alarm. As she raised the keypad towards the control box, however, the doorbell chimed. She hesitated, and then she went over to the front door and looked through the spyhole. All she could see was darkness.
‘Who is it?’ she called out.
‘Me,’ came the reply.
‘David?’
‘Yes.’
She opened the door. David was standing in the porch, holding her folded umbrella. His hair was wet and raindrops were clinging to his eyelashes. Behind him, rainwater was frantically clattering from an overflowing gutter.
‘Did you forget something?’ Katie asked him.
‘Yes,’ he said.
Without another word, he dropped the umbrella and stepped inside the hallway. He took Katie in his arms and pulled her close to him and kissed her on the lips.
She said, ‘Mmmfff!’ and her first reaction was to grab his arms and wrestle herself free from him. But then he kissed her again, and again, and even though she was gripping the wet woollen sleeves of his sweater, she stopped trying to prise herself away and found that she was kissing him back.
No man had held her so tightly in his arms since John had left her, or kissed her with such passion, and it gave her a heady feeling of being wanted and desired which she had thought she might never experience again. Several of the officers at Anglesea Street had made it obvious that they found her attractive, and one or two of them were reasonably good-looking and very masculine, but it would have been impossible for her to have an affair with a man she outranked.
Not only was David arousing her, he was making her feel secure, too, as if she no longer had to protect herself, because he would make sure that she was safe from harm. She hadn’t felt like that in a long time, either.
‘The door,’ she gasped.
He closed the front door behind him with his foot, and kept on kissing her. At last, however, she placed her hands flat against his chest to push him away. He had a mischievous smile on his face and his eyes were bright.
‘What about Sorcha?’ she asked him.
‘Sorcha’s dead to the world. Besides, this is nothing to do with Sorcha, or anybody else. This is me and you.’
‘We can’t.’
‘And who says we can’t? God?’
He took hold of her wrists and lifted her hands away from his chest so that he could lean forward and kiss her again. This was the moment when she could have said, No, I really like you, David, I think you’re a very handsome and charming man, but I’m not going to allow myself to get involved with you. But his tongue slipped into her mouth, and she closed her eyes, and even though she was saying the words inside her head, she didn’t want to stop kissing him and say them out loud.
She took hold of his hand and looked up at him with her eyes sparkling as if she were about to show a boy what she had bought him for Christmas. She led him along the hallway and into her bedroom. He waited by the door while she switched on the pink bedside lamps and drew the rose-coloured velvet curtains. The bed was still unmade from this morning; she had woken up late and hadn’t had time to straighten it. The pink patchwork cover was thrown to one side and the impression of her head was still on the right-hand pillow.
‘Let’s get you out of these wet clothes,’ she said, walking back to him and taking hold of his sweater. She tugged it upwards, but it wasn’t easy because it was soaking from the rain and he was so much taller than she was. Eventually, though, she managed to drag it over his head and drop it on to the bedside rug. He laughed and brushed his wet hair back.
Next she unbuckled his braided brown leather belt. By now his erection was so hard and angular that she found it difficult to jerk down his zip. Underneath his trousers he was wearing blue pinstripe boxer shorts. She grasped his penis through the cotton, squeezing it and rubbing it up and down three or four times, and then she pulled his boxer shorts down to his knees. His penis reared up mauve-headed in front of her, and she was surprised and aroused to see that he was completely shaved, and had no pubic hair at all. The nakedness of his penis made it look even longer than it really was, giving it the appearance of a classical sculpture in dusky pink marble.
‘Sit,’ she ordered him, and he sat on the end of the bed while she took off his wet black socks, then finished taking off his trousers and boxer shorts.
Still sitting, he reached up and unbuttoned her dark green cardigan. When he had taken that off, though, he stood up to take off the lighter green sweater that she was wearing underneath, and while he did so she held his stiffened penis in her hand, as if she wasn’t going to let it go. After he had lifted her sweater over her head, he ran his fingers into her tousled red hair and kissed her again.
‘Katie,’ he said, not in a murmur but quite plainly. It was more like an announcement than a declaration of desire. She found it unusually reassuring. He was recognizing her for who she was – her personality, herself, Katie Maguire, as well as her face and her figure and the way she felt and the fragrance of her.
‘David,’ she replied, and she found that cleansing, as if she were saying to herself, John has long gone now, and our relationship is over for ever, so why should I feel guilty making love to somebody new?
David was gentle and highly controlled, continually kissing her lips and neck and shoulders as he undressed her. He slid off the catch of her bra, and when her breasts were bared, he cupped her right breast in his left hand and rotated the ball of his thumb around her nipple, until it stiffened and knurled.
He unzipped her speckled tweed skirt and let it drop. Now she was wearing only pantyhose. She lay back on the bed so that he could take hold of the elasticated waistband and roll them off her. Once he had done that, he lay down beside her and kissed her again, and ran his fingertips all the way down her side to her hips, so that she shivered.
‘Protection,’ she said. ‘We ought to use a condom.’
David gave her the smallest shake of his head. ‘It’s all right. I’ve been spayed. And I can promise you that I haven’t been putting it about.’
He reached down between her legs and stroked her so lightly with his fingertip that she could barely feel it, and she was aching for him to stroke her harder, and quicker. The sensation that he was giving her was extraordinary. She could almost imagine that a butterfly had perched itself on her clitoris and was flapping its wings.
She grasped his shoulder and said, with a catch in her throat, ‘I need you inside me, David.’
He kissed her forehead and then raised himself over her. She parted her thighs wide and took hold of his penis and positioned it between her lips. Both he and she were slippery with juice. There was a moment when they looked into each other’s eyes and both of them were trying to read what the other was thinking. Then David slowly leaned his weight forward and penetrated her, as deeply as he could, until the tip of his penis touched the neck of her womb and made her jump.
&nb
sp; He stayed deep inside her, kissing her again. The feeling of his hairless skin against her own hairless vulva was so erotic that she wanted to stay like that. It made her nerve ends tingle and the muscles of her vagina spontaneously flinch, and she thought she could almost reach orgasm without him moving.
Gradually, though, he did begin to slide himself in and out of her. She closed her eyes and listened to the soft sticky sound of them making love and it was so familiar and yet it felt so exciting and so new.
When she opened her eyes again, however, she saw that he was looking down at her with the strangest expression on his face – disinterested, rather than aroused, as if he had always known from the moment they met that she was going to give in to him.
‘David?’ she said.
‘What?’ he said, suddenly smiling.
‘What are you thinking about?’
‘Nothing. You. How amazing you are.’
Katie kept her eyes open as he continued to make love to her, pushing himself into her faster and harder, and gripping the quilt tightly as he approached his climax. But her own excitement had started to subside, and even as he grunted and sweated and gritted his teeth, she knew for certain that she wouldn’t have an orgasm. She could almost feel it ebbing away, like an evening tide.
It’s me, she thought. I’ve allowed myself to be manipulated into bed because I’ve been so frustrated and lonely and I’m having such trouble at work. I don’t feel guilty about it. But I’ve been trained to be suspicious and I can recognize a liar when he’s standing three streets away with his back turned, let alone when he’s naked and right on top of me.
David made a noise that was halfway between a cough and a sob. As he climaxed, he took himself out of her and she felt the warm spatter on her stomach. He stayed on top of her for a few moments, breathing heavily. Then he rolled himself sideways so that the mattress bounced. He shuffled himself close up beside her, staring into her eyes and stroking her hair.
‘I mean it,’ he said. ‘You’re amazing. But … you didn’t come. We’ll have to do something about that.’
Taken for Dead (Kate Maguire) Page 14