Perfect Crime

by Helen Fields

  ‘Why not?’ Ava asked.

  ‘One of the things I like best about you is how you say whatever’s on your mind,’ Callanach grinned.

  ‘You mean I have no filter,’ Ava smiled back.

  ‘I mean you’re exactly who you seem to be. No pretence, no show. You wouldn’t know how to be deceitful if your life depended on it. I, on the other hand, have learned to lie. First to myself, then to the people I love.’ He lowered himself off the arm of the sofa and down next to Ava, propping his feet on the coffee table. ‘I’m impotent, Ava. I have been since Astrid accused me of rape. I’ve tried therapy, medication and a gorgeous, leggy Spanish doctor. I’m broken. You’re the only person who makes me forget about it. No stress or pressure when I’m with you. Just reality, true emotion, open conversation. So no, I’m not thinking about going back to France, where all this began. The only place I want to be is right here, with you.’

  Ava turned to face him, arms folded.

  ‘What the genuine fuck?’ she rebuked. ‘You’ve been going through this since the day I met you and you didn’t let me in?’

  ‘Ava!’ Callanach said, incredulous. ‘How could I possibly have …’

  ‘You really are a bloody idiot,’ Ava told him, taking his face in both of her hands and leaning forwards, pressing her lips against his, letting her body slide into his chest.

  She pulled away thirty seconds later, red-faced and breathless.

  ‘Um, I’m not sure what to say. I shouldn’t have done that. Listen, I’m leaving, and I’ll understand if tomorrow you …’

  Callanach reached one arm around her waist and slid his free hand around her neck.

  ‘Shut up,’ he said softly, lifting her from where she sat and onto his lap, pulling her face back down to meet his, parting Ava’s lips with his own.

  She pushed her fingers into his dark, curly hair, pressing her body against him, feeling his warmth as she let her tongue drift slowly along his lower lip before pulling away slightly to stare into his eyes.

  ‘Seriously?’ she asked quietly. ‘Of all the women you could have, why would you want me?’

  ‘Because if I can’t have you, I don’t want anyone at all. Seriously.’

  He pulled her hair back slowly to expose her throat, running his tongue from the dip at the base of her throat between her collarbones and up the soft underside of her jaw, before releasing her so she could meet his kiss once more.

  Ava grinned, exploring his body beneath his shirt, feeling his tensed muscles moving in waves beneath her hands, tendons flexing and releasing. She ran her short, ever-practical nails over the hills and valleys of his upper body, delighted with herself as he arched and breathed out heavily.

  ‘Ava, are you sure about this? I don’t want you to regret it,’ he mumbled, undoing the top buttons of her shirt and kissing the smooth skin between her breasts.

  ‘I trust you more than I’ve ever trusted any man in my life, and regret is a word male politicians use when they get caught cheating on their wives. Could you finish taking my shirt off now, please? It’s getting a bit hot in here.’

  Callanach did as she asked, sitting back to look at her appreciatively while she fumbled with his buttons, balancing on the edge of the couch and kissing at the same time.

  ‘This isn’t working,’ Callanach said.

  ‘What? I thought …’

  ‘Not enough space on the couch was all I meant,’ Callanach clarified, sliding his hands beneath her buttocks and lifting her up with him as he stood and walked towards the bedroom, banging his shins on the coffee table then grazing Ava’s back on the doorframe.

  ‘Are you always this clumsy?’ she laughed.

  ‘Only when I’m carrying a woman who won’t stay still and is in my line of vision. Watch out!’

  He dropped her unceremoniously onto his bed and watched her roll about on his duvet.

  ‘God, this is the best duvet ever. It’s like landing in clouds. How is it possible that you have a six-pack, TV hair and also the best bedding in the universe? You’re never staying over at my place. In fact, I may have to kill you and take over your apartment.’

  ‘Or you could just stay here with me and never bother to go home again,’ he suggested, climbing onto the bed beside her and stretching out. ‘You’re so beautiful. You don’t even realise it, do you?’

  ‘Knock it off, poster boy. There’s only room for one supermodel inside MIT and you win that prize.’

  Callanach rolled on top of her, brushing hair from her eyes and smiling down at her.

  ‘Well then, you won’t be able to resist me, will you?’

  ‘Resist you? What exactly did you have in mind?’ Ava raised her eyebrows.

  He slid a hand beneath her back and under her bra, slipping it from her shoulders.

  ‘Why don’t you relax and let me show you?’ he whispered, letting his hand drift down her stomach, his thumb circling the soft skin directly above the button of her jeans. ‘Explain to me why we waited so long to do this.’

  ‘That’s easy,’ Ava said, lacing her fingers beneath her head and sighing happily. ‘It’s because I’m worth waiting for.’

  ‘I’m not going to disagree with that,’ he grinned, flicking the button open and kissing her again, teasing her lips with his teeth as he ran a warm hand over her breasts. ‘But I’m glad you didn’t make me wait any longer. I wasn’t sure my sanity was going to hold out.’

  Moving down, he ran his tongue along the vertical pathway over her stomach, pulling her body up to meet his. Ava let her head fall backwards, loving the heat of his mouth on her body. Millimetre by millimetre, he pulled her jeans over her hips, exposing simple black cotton panties and the whiteness of her thighs. Throwing the denim to the floor, he manoeuvred himself between her legs, gently nibbling the sculpted hipbones that defined her sides, running his fingertips back and forth over her thighs. Ava relaxed back onto the bed, her neck tipped upwards, her right hand playing in Callanach’s hair.

  ‘I suppose I should ask if you’ll still respect me in the morning, or something like that,’ she murmured.

  Callanach replied in French – something incomprehensible but Ava got the general idea – as he slipped her panties down and tossed them aside.

  ‘Thank God. Did I finally get you to stop talking?’ he asked, running his tongue up the inside of her leg.

  ‘That’s kind of rude of you,’ Ava laughed.

  ‘You think that was rude? Give me another minute.’

  Ava gasped as Callanach’s fingers found the most tender part of her, playing gently between her legs, circling up and around her clitoris, keeping his touch silky and light as he maintained the pressure enough to have her melting back into the bed. He followed his fingers with his tongue.

  ‘Oh my God,’ Ava groaned. ‘Don’t ever stop.’

  ‘Not even to take my jeans off?’ Callanach asked, getting to his feet, hands on hips, staring down at her naked body.

  ‘Okay, I’ll accept you stopping to take the rest of your clothes off,’ Ava smiled. ‘Just don’t be long.’

  ‘Other than that,’ he said, ‘I don’t think I ever want to leave this apartment again. Not as long as you’re here with me, anyway.’ He climbed onto the bed, one knee between her legs, the other to the side. ‘Say you’ll stay.’

  ‘The night?’ Ava grinned.

  ‘You know I mean for longer than that,’ he replied, kissing her neck and lying on his side next to her. ‘Promise me.’

  ‘Hey, you know what?’ Ava stared into his eyes as her fingers made a trail down the ripples of his stomach. ‘That problem you thought you had? I honestly don’t think you have to worry about it any more.’

  She wrapped her hand around his penis, gripping the hard length of it, pulling gently, leaving him breathless, gritting his teeth to control his reaction to the long overdue pleasure.

  ‘It was you I was waiting for,’ Callanach said. ‘Ava, I’ve imagined this so many times. I just never thought it was going to happen.
’

  ‘Don’t admit that!’ she grinned. ‘What happened to your cool, collected, sexy man-of-mystery routine?’

  He kissed her gently, parting her lips, taking his hand back down between her legs, slipping his fingers gently inside her as she rolled over, thrusting towards him.

  ‘I met you,’ he said, pulling away from her lips to stare into her eyes. ‘That’s what happened.’

  Sliding his free arm beneath her neck, he pushed her onto her back, covering her with his body, every inch of his skin caressing hers, pressing, pulsating together.

  Ava pushed back, taking her time lifting herself upwards, forcing him onto his back, sitting astride him, watching his face as she explored his body.

  ‘Sorry to break the moment,’ she said softly, ‘but given that it’s been – oh God – longer than I can even remember since I had sex, I’m not on the pill. Do you have anything?’

  ‘If it helps, it’s been even longer for me.’

  ‘Sorry, that was insensitive of me,’ she smiled.

  ‘No problem. And I do. Apparently, I never gave up hope. They’re on the very bottom shelf of my bathroom cupboard underneath the sink. Let me get them …’

  ‘You’ll stay right there,’ Ava said. ‘Exactly where I want you.’

  ‘Okay, but I’m only giving you sixty seconds. Any longer than that and I’m coming to get you.’

  Ava leaned over and kissed him playfully before bounding into the bathroom, the smile on her face testament to the unforeseen joy of finally allowing herself to both accept and acknowledge how she felt about Callanach. The last time she’d used his en suite, she could still kid herself that what she’d felt was purely platonic. Natasha’s stirring had given her pause, though, and while before she’d always been able to laugh it off, she knew something had changed.

  When Callanach had split up with Selina, Ava had felt something close to relief. When he’d saved her life and they’d spent the night together in his bed, it had been like coming home. Not just to his comfortable apartment, but to the warmth of him and the ease she felt around him. Largely ease. There had always been flashes of something else that she’d been careful to leave unexplored in her imagination. Moments when he’d put his arms around her and she hadn’t wanted him to let go. Times when they’d been thrown together in danger and yet it had never really occurred to her that anything bad would happen when Callanach was there.

  Pausing, Ava looked at herself in his bathroom mirror, running a hand through her messy hair and trying to calm the grin that seemed utterly childlike. Hard for anyone else to realise in the middle of investigations, where every day brought new talk of death and violence, that you had to go home and live. Really live. When you were witness to so much loss, the only antidote was to fill every moment with value.

  ‘Do you need a map?’ Callanach shouted.

  ‘Hey, I’m worth waiting for!’ she laughed.

  ‘White cupboard, bottom shelf beneath the sink. If you’re much longer I’ll fall asleep.’

  ‘It’ll be your loss if you do,’ she said, pulling both cupboard doors open and dropping to her knees, unable to make out what was what for the towels, bottles and boxes of toiletries packed in there. ‘At least now I know why this place seems so tidy. It’s because you’ve shoved literally every piece of rubbish into this cupboard. Are you sure they’re here?’

  As she ran a hand underneath the pile of towels, Ava’s fingertips grazed a rough, cold surface. Curious, without thinking, she grabbed and pulled.

  For a few moments she sat in silence, unmoving. Even in the dim light, she recognised what she was holding immediately.

  ‘Ava, did you find them?’ Callanach called.

  She opened her mouth to reply, but words were suddenly too complex to form. In the bedroom, she could hear him shifting on the bed, his feet hitting the floor. Additional light spilled into the bathroom, illuminating the child’s prayer slate she was holding.

  On the circular grey slate, six or so inches in diameter, a traditional Celtic prayer had been painted in a beautiful swirling calligraphy. The prayer was one she’d whispered before sleep for as long as she’d been able to read. Regardless of the fact that puberty had seen the rejection of her parents’ chosen church, the slate had remained in her bedside table throughout her adult life. A fragment of comfort, of simplicity, memories of an easier time.

  It had registered in the back of her mind that she hadn’t seen it for … what? Months, years? But life was too busy to spend time looking for stray items that would inevitably have been pushed to the back of a cupboard. It had never occurred to her that it might have been taken without her knowledge.

  ‘Seriously, let a woman into your bathroom and she won’t come out for hours. I knew I should have gone to look for them myse …’

  The end of the word died on the lips that had been kissing her just minutes ago. The lips she’d thought would never issue lies. The man she’d trusted, always, since the day they’d met. Until now.

  ‘This is mine,’ she whispered. ‘What’s it doing in your bathroom, hidden?’

  ‘Ava, damn, I’m so sorry, I meant to give that back to you ages ago, I just didn’t know how,’ Callanach said, getting to his knees next to her and putting an arm across her shoulders.

  She pulled a few inches away. ‘I assumed I’d misplaced it. I thought I was just disorganised. You know me. I can catch a killer but never find the pair of shoes I’m looking for. It never dawned on me that anyone would take something so incredibly personal. Something obviously from my childhood. Why would you do that?’

  Running her fingers over the rough surface of the slate, she recalled her father’s face when he’d given it to her. It was a sweet gift, innocent. The very definition of a treasure.

  ‘Ava, it all happened such a long time ago. When I first joined Police Scotland and you got me into line, forced me to accept a friend. Then you were abducted with the other women and I had no idea if you were alive or dead. I felt responsible. I was a wreck. I visited your house to make sure we hadn’t missed something or to see if there were signs of a struggle. While I was there, I accepted the truth about what had happened to you. I was at a low point. The squad was making no progress with the case. We had no way of knowing where you’d been taken. The items I took were just a way of maintaining emotional contact, of figuring out where you might be …’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Ava frowned at him.

  ‘There was a void in me after I left France – it was hard to feel anything at all – so I suppose I was looking for an attachment …’

  ‘No, not that. I get that’s how you’re justifying this, but you said items. Plural.’

  Callanach stared at the bottom shelf of his bathroom cupboard. The day Ava was kidnapped during a case the previous year could have been yesterday. Still just as raw. When he’d taken the slate from her flat, it was meant to be a temporary thing. Even then he wasn’t sure why he’d done it.

  Ava leaned forwards, pulling any remaining items in her way from the shelf onto the floor. A couple of bottles smashed and cotton buds stuck in the viscous liquid spreading around her knees. Finally, reaching to the very back, she drew out a paperweight and a globe keyring.

  ‘These had better not be what I think they are,’ Ava said, her voice pitched at a dangerous level of quiet.

  ‘You don’t understand.’

  ‘You sound surprised about that. You think I should be more understanding about what I’m holding in my hands? Psychopaths take trophies, Luc, not police officers. These things belong to victims, women who were kidnapped and tortured. What exactly did this paperweight tell you about the crime and how to solve it?’ She stood up, still naked, hands on hips, purple-faced.

  ‘I’m not going to pretend it made sense. Please, come back to bed, let’s talk about this calmly.’

  ‘Are you fucking kidding? You want to talk about this calmly? Do you have any idea how badly you’ve invaded my privacy and broken my trust?’

&n
bsp; ‘While you were being held captive, it was the closest I could get …’

  ‘How many times have you been to my house since then? You’ve had endless opportunities to return it to me.’

  ‘It wasn’t that easy.’

  ‘Yes, it was!’ she thundered, grabbing a towel from the rail and wrapping it around herself. ‘Even if it was hard giving it back, why the hell are you still in possession of the other items? Do you take them out and look at them? Do you think about what happened to us? Reginald King killed at least three women and ruined the lives of the two who survived, and here you are with mine and their possessions secreted in the bottom of your bathroom cabinet. It’s like you want to be able to remind yourself of it.’

  ‘You know that’s not true.’

  ‘Honestly, I have no idea what to think. Ten minutes ago I’d have sworn I knew you as well as I know myself. I’d have staked my career on you being as honest and straightforward as anyone I’ve ever met. God, I am literally currently staking my career on that! Even if I could accept your relationship with me as an explanation for having the slate, the other two women were taken first. Why take their belongings? Mine was just a continuation of the pattern. It’s just … I don’t even know what it is. Fucking creepy, if I’m honest.’

  ‘Don’t do this, you know you can trust me …’

  ‘What did you do with it, my slate?’ she asked softly.

  ‘Come on, Ava, this is out of context.’

  ‘I’m serious. Has it been in here the whole time?’

  ‘That’s insane. I didn’t know what I was doing when I took those things. They’re shoved in the bottom of a cupboard because I was trying to forget I ever took them. You know it’s standard procedure to go through a missing person’s belongings when they’re taken.’

  ‘Bullshit,’ she said. ‘You knew who’d kidnapped me. If there was any doubt about it, relevant items would have been put into evidence, not sneaked back here to your bedroom without any authority at all. Is this part of some bizarre fantasy where you play the hero? You rescue me, know everything about me, making it easier to seduce me?’