Illusions (Alexandra Best Investigations Book 2)

by Jean Saunders

‘Can I speak to DI Nelson, please?’ she asked the duty officer, recognizing his telephone voice. ‘It’s Alex Best.’

  She could almost see the smirk on his face as he said he’d see if the DI was in, and to hold the line. They all knew of her friendship with Nick, and no doubt thought she had decided to try her luck with his successor now.

  In their eyes she was the bimbo private eye, thinking she could do a copper’s job — and some of them were the worst chauvinists on God’s earth.

  ‘Hello, Alex. What’s up?’ she heard Scott say. ‘Don’t tell me you’ve changed your mind about Saturday after all.’

  ‘Of course not. But something’s come up, and I’d like to discuss it with you. Do you have any free time before then?’

  And this wasn’t a pass, either, she thought, hoping her efficient manner would tell him so.

  ‘Can you come into the station?’ he said, clearly busy.

  ‘I’d rather not. Could you come to my office? I’ll be here all day.’

  It was like a game of tennis, she fumed. Each of them was throwing the ball in the other’s court, and challenging the other one to lose out.

  ‘Is it a confidential matter?’

  ‘Very.’ And if he didn’t bloody well play it her way, she was going to give up on him.

  ‘I’ll be there when I can, Alex, but I can’t promise when,’ he said at last, a different note in his voice that she couldn’t quite fathom.

  ‘That’s good enough. Thanks.’

  She hung up, wishing she’d never got him involved at all. And not really knowing why she had.

  ***

  ‘So what do you want to know?’ Scott said.

  She knew that superior DI-compared-with-the-little-female-private-eye note in his voice. She had given up waiting for him at her office, and it was now past nine o’clock, and she had opened the door of her flat cautiously. She had showered after the heat of the day and wore only her red kimono, and she tied it more securely around her as Scott Nelson eyed her with an arrogant male smirk on his face.

  ‘Who says I wanted to know anything? Maybe I just fancied your company, but you’ve left it a bit late,’ Alex said, while inwardly cringing at her own twee response.

  And just as instantly biting her lip, realizing how vulnerable she was. And of course it had been a mistake to open the door dressed as she was. But he was a copper, for God’s sake, and if you couldn’t trust coppers... and whatever bloody fool ever put about that fairy tale wanted locking up, she thought savagely.

  ‘Oh yes?’ he said, a spark of interest flaring in his eyes now at her comment.

  ‘I only said maybe,’ she hedged, wondering what the hell was wrong with her, when she’d fancied him like mad at first sight. But not anymore. There was something about him…

  He moved across the room until he was close to her. Before she knew what was happening his arms had gripped hers tightly, and his voice had dropped to a trickly leer.

  ‘What do you fancy? Is it a bit of rough? Is that why you invited me here? I know it turns on classy tarts like you. A bit of slap without the tickle—’

  ‘I didn’t invite you here. I said my office—’

  He ignored her, and Alex felt a shock ripple through her as his hands moved downwards and clenched her buttocks cruelly. He dug in his fingernails so sharply she knew they would leave marks and rip the silk of her kimono. She felt the piercing pain, sharp as needles as his nails probed her flesh, but somehow she managed to drag up a scrap of dignity, and not to wince or show any emotion but cold anger.

  ‘If you don’t get your effing hands off me this instant, you’ll get my knee in your balls,’ she said, her eyes clear and unblinking, and as hard as emeralds.

  His own eyes widened. But not with fear or apprehension. There was gloating delight in his face.

  ‘That’s it, bitch, tease me,’ he said, suddenly hoarse. ‘It’s what my old lady never did. She always gave in too easily, and I get off on a fight. Same as you. I can tell.’

  One hand suddenly left her backside, and shot around to the front of her body, punching her in the belly and winding her until she staggered and fell on to her sofa. He was on her immediately, ripping her kimono aside and fumbling his hands up and down her body with no more finesse than an elephant.

  He squeezed her breasts, tweaking the nipples until she gasped with the excruciating pain, feeling her and kneading her, and grinding against her as he tried to part her sex with greedy fingers.

  But after the first shock of the assault, Alex recovered her senses, and with one almighty action, she rammed her fist into his groin and heard him howl with rage as he rolled off her and or to the floor, clutching himself. And even in those moments when she had tugged her kimono around herself and got to her feet, ignoring how every bit of her hurt, she had registered that no matter what he had done to her, or how he had violated her and exposed her body to him, there had been no sign of an erection. Nothing.

  She knew him for what he was then. A good-looking strutter who couldn’t get it up, no matter how much he tried, or whatever tactics he used. No wonder his wife had left him if he couldn’t deliver the goods. Especially if he had had to resort to violence to get his kicks.

  Her first furious reaction to report him to his boss faded at once. He wasn’t worth it. He was pathetic, something to be pitied, especially when she saw how he was snivelling on the floor now.

  ‘You’ve bloody ruined me for life, bitch,’ he shouted.

  She looked down at him, seeing the vivid colour in his face, and the humiliation in his eyes. He knew that she knew. She could taunt him, or betray him, and he knew that too. She could ruin him in more ways than one. She could strip him of his career... for a moment she wondered if Nick Frobisher had ever known of his one-time colleague’s penchant for sexual violence, and doubted it. Nick would never have allowed her to get into this situation without warning her.

  ‘Get up, Scott. You look ridiculous,’ she said at last. ‘I’ll make some coffee and get a bag of frozen peas from the freezer to put on that lump of dough in your trousers. And then we’ll talk. Savvy?’

  She didn’t wait for a reply as she stalked off to the kitchen, wondering just why she was prepared to take on the role of mother-confessor to this little pisser. But maybe if she did, it would stop him trying it on with a weaker, more vulnerable woman. As she registered her own thoughts, she felt her hands shake over the kettle, because she knew of old when dealing with weirdos just how dangerous the situation could have been.

  They would do anything to hide their humiliation at being found out for what they were. And she wasn’t that strong, damn it. She may have skills at her disposal that other women didn’t, and she knew that one good karate chop could have silenced the bastard for good, but she was still a woman after all.

  ‘I’m very sorry, Alex,’ she suddenly heard Scott say humbly. He was right behind her, still clutching himself, and she whirled around, spilling water from the kettle, and seeing his abject face. ‘Look, if you want to beat me, I’ll understand. I know I deserve to be punished.’

  ‘Christ, Scott. I’m not into that,’ she said, disgusted that he should think she could be a party to his needs. ‘Get back and sit down, for God’s sake. You don’t need punishment. You need help. Have you sought counselling for your problem?’

  His eyes flashed more aggressively for a moment. ‘Bloody counsellors do more harm than good. My wife went to one, and all it did was make her up and leave me.’

  ‘I doubt that it was the counsellor that did that, Scott,’ Alex said carefully. ‘It was your own behaviour that was at fault, wasn’t it?’

  And if trained counsellors had failed, who the hell did she think she was, trying to tackle this guy’s huge problem with a few choice words, a cup of coffee and a bag of frozen peas? She opened the freezer quickly, and thrust the bag into his hands. ‘Take these and do the business in the other room until I bring in the coffee,’ she ordered.

  And once he had left her, sh
e slipped into the bedroom and into a high-necked sweater and jeans, trying to ignore her shaking hands and the darkening bruises on her body as she did so. She was the one who needed frozen peas, she thought, but not yet. Not until she had got the bastard out of her flat.

  But before she had spooned a good dollop of strong coffee into two mugs and composed herself, she heard the front door slam, and when she went into the sitting-room, he had gone.

  And now she really did have second thoughts about what to do about him. If he had gone blundering off into the night, ready to pick up some poor innocent kid to vent his spleen on, whatever the hell that was, she would feel responsible.

  She began to feel physically sick. She abandoned coffee and had a hefty swig of brandy instead before she went into the bathroom, forcing down the urge to throw up. And while she was gingerly applying witch hazel to the ugly bruises appearing on her body and flinching as she dabbed the weals on her buttocks with Savlon, her wild imagination was already reading the morning newspaper headlines outlining a girl’s savaged body dumped in a ditch…

  ***

  She found it almost impossible to sleep that night. Her brain and her stomach were still churning, and it hurt far too much to lie on her back. She wondered how she would ever sit down again, let alone drive any distance in her car.

  But one thing was for sure: the trip to Worthing was definitely off. At least, as far as Scott Nelson accompanying her was concerned.

  If she never had to see him again, it would be too soon, and anyway, she was pretty sure he’d be feeling the same way. Rejected weirdos never went back to the scene of their humiliation. Or so she hoped and believed.

  ***

  In the middle of the following afternoon there were two callers at her office. She looked up with dislike as she saw two of Scott Nelson’s colleagues. She had never cared for Sergeant Thomas, who saw her as no more than an irritating flea who scratched his nick’s surface from time to time. She didn’t know his companion, a red-necked constable, fresh out from Hendon by the look of him, and eager to make a hit.

  ‘What can I do for you, Sergeant?’ she said amicably, sure that this wasn’t a social call. It never was. And even more sure by the fat-cat way he smiled at her, and sat down uninvited on the other side of her desk before saying a word.

  ‘Would you like a seat, Constable?’ she said pointedly.

  ‘Nay — no — you’re all right, Ma’am — Miss—’ he said, his voice as broad as her own Yorkshire tones had once been, before she had refined and rounded them, and she smiled at him more warmly because of it.

  ‘So?’ she said directly. ‘To what do I owe this — now what shall I call it? What’s the opposite of pleasure?’

  She heard the constable smother a snigger, and his superior gave him a freezing look.

  ‘Read the lady your notes, McAdams,’ he snapped.

  More red-faced than ever, the boy was all fingers and thumbs as he flipped open his regulation notebook.

  He was hardly out of short trousers, Alex thought, unaccountably feeling all of her twenty-six years.

  ‘At 2.15 pm yesterday, you telephoned the station and asked to speak to DI Scott Nelson, and you were told that he wasn’t in,’ he repeated, parrot-like.

  ‘So I did, Constable,’ Alex said gently.

  But her heart lurched at the mention of Scott’s name. Surely the rat wasn’t trying to do her for assault, was he? If so, she could show these two a thing or two in the way of bruises, if she felt like it. Which she certainly didn’t…

  ‘And then DI Scott Nelson called you back, and at your insistence he arranged to meet you as soon as he was free,’ the voice droned on in a monotone.

  ‘All right, what’s going on?’ Alex said. ‘What’s all this about my insistence? If DI Nelson has got something to say about me, why isn’t he here to say it himself?’

  She looked directly at the sergeant, and instinctively sat up straighter even though it hurt like hell to put pressure on her backside, and the idea of turning the other cheek held no charm. There was no comfortable cheek she could turn.

  ‘What would DI Nelson have to say about you, Miss Best?’ he said silkily, and she knew she’d fallen into the trap, sweet as honey.

  It was the easiest trap a copper could set. Dangle the bait and just wait for the suspect to grab it. But what suspect, for God’s sake?

  ‘I really have no idea,’ she said coolly. ‘But I refuse to discuss my movements with you. What I do in my free time is my own business, and if DI Nelson logged our private telephone conversation I shall have words to say to him.’

  The sergeant raised his hand slightly as the constable made as if to speak.

  ‘It was hardly private, Miss Best. The whole unit heard DI Nelson’s responses to your invitation.’

  Invitation? The implication was obvious, and Alex’s temper flared at once. In view of last night, it was ludicrous, but she wasn’t giving this oaf the lascivious pleasure of knowing it.

  ‘I don’t know why you’re here, but I would like you to leave, and I assure you DI Nelson will confirm that our discussion was on a purely business matter,’ she snapped.

  But it wasn’t, of course. They had never got far enough for her to try to get him to winkle out any inside info about one Leanora Wolstenholme, so-called medium, psychic or whatever... and she knew that the sergeant’s unblinking eyes would have registered the flicker in hers.

  ‘I’m afraid DI Nelson is in no position to confirm anything,’ he said smoothly. ‘DI Nelson was found in his garage this morning, having died through carbon monoxide poisoning by means of exhaust fumes, and leaving a note simply saying “I’m sorry”. Since you were the last known person he had contact with, I am naturally wondering if you can throw any light on the matter?’

  As the impersonal voice went on, virtually making a mockery of a man’s death, Alex couldn’t think straight. For one thing, the pounding of her heart almost drowned out the police sergeant’s words. And then professionalism took over again. Just what the hell was he suggesting?

  ‘Are you telling me DI Nelson’s dead?’ she stammered. ‘That’s usually the case in these circumstances,’ he drawled sarcastically.

  God, he was an insensitive bastard, thought Alex. Even though there had been nothing going on between herself and Scott Nelson, Thomas didn’t know that. For all he knew, they might have been having a torrid love affair, and he’d been witless enough to throw the words at her so brutally.

  But of course, it wouldn’t have been witless at all, her whirlwind thoughts raced on. His words would have been calculated to the nth degree, catching her on the hop, making her say things she didn’t intend. Making her blurt out whatever indiscretions his nasty little mind had cooked up... and she knew well enough to take things slowly, and not to rush into anything.

  ‘I’m shocked to hear the news, of course, but I can’t help you,’ she. said, choked.

  ‘I can’t agree with that, Miss Best. In fact, I require you to come down to the station for fingerprinting—’

  ‘What?’

  ‘There are fingermarks all over certain areas of DI Nelson’s — er — person,’ he said, in a clumsy attempt to be delicate, which only exaggerated the ridiculousness of the words. Alex knew full well that the only contact she had made on Scott were on her attempts to fend him off, and that full-blooded fist ram on his genitals. And he’d been fully clothed.

  They couldn’t pin anything on her for it. And it had to be suicide, anyway. Scott wasn’t known well enough here yet for anyone to have a grudge.

  Her juddering nerves settled a little as she saw the little pulse beating at the corner of Thomas’s mouth. She knew then that the old bugger was trying it on. Trying to ferret out some sleazy connection between herself and his DI, just for the hell of it. Life in a nick wasn’t always at fever-pitch. There were dull, routine times as well as all-hands-on-deck murder hunts to get the adrenalin going at full stretch. It might be unsavoury to the general public, but that was
what policing was all about. Just as an army needed a war to keep it pepped up, a police force needed crime. There were also times when a good shot of healthy sleaze was just what was needed to spice things up a bit. And there was nothing like internal sleaze.

  ‘Sergeant,’ she said, a pitying note in her voice. ‘I’m terribly sorry to disappoint you, but DI Nelson and myself were no more than acquaintances. He called at my flat last night because he had been too busy to see me here at my office, but it was only on a routine matter, I assure you—’

  ‘And that was?’

  Sod the man. He may be world-weary in some respects, but like any astute copper he was like a dog with a bone when he sensed something. They all were. It was the nature of the species.

  ‘DI Nelson was going to drive me to Worthing on Saturday, to a funeral. I thought he might have had some inside information about a lady I met on holiday recently. She’s just died. A violent death. I shouldn’t have been asking, I know, and it was entirely unofficial. I’m not involved in the case. In fact there isn’t any case to answer, since I gather that they’ve got someone in custody for it.’

  She was stumbling, trying to fumble her way out of the unspoken accusation that she had intended probing police files. And probably by way of sex, if she interpreted the sneering look in Thomas’s eyes correctly.

  ‘You were trying to find out facts from a police officer while not being involved in the case, Miss Best? It hardly rings true, does it? So just why were you and DI Nelson going to Worthing together?’

  She didn’t like the way he said that word ‘together’. She glared at him. ‘I told you. I wanted to attend a funeral. DI Nelson was just driving me.’

  ‘Don’t you have a car?’ he said, knowing that she did.

  ‘Look, this has nothing to do with DI Nelson’s death, so can we please get on with what you came here for? I’m upset to hear about it, and I’d like to be on my own.’

  She couldn’t say the words without a shiver running through her. It all seemed so unreal, so macabre. Last night he was with her in her flat, molesting her, hurting her, almost weeping in his frustration, and then simply vanishing without explanation.