by Nick Oldham
They bailed out of the cab outside her house. She threw a tenner at the fortunate cab driver and waved him away. She immediately grabbed Rik where they stood at the bottom of her driveway.
Rik rained lascivious kisses all over Danny’s face and neck, whilst expertly dealing with the buttons on her blouse.
She teetered backwards as Rik’s mouth worked down to her fettered breasts. He popped one of the firm, milky-white mounds out of its constricting support mechanism. Danny almost shrieked with ecstasy as Rik’s burning mouth closed around a hard, erect, plum-coloured nipple.
‘ Come on, let’s go inside.’ She hoisted him towards the front door.
Within a moment her key had opened up. They stumbled into the dark hallway. Danny kicked the door shut with a heel and turned to Rik with an expression that said, ‘I am going to fuck your brains out, pal.’
She did not care that one of her lovely breasts was hanging out and that her tights had laddered. She was hungry for orgasms.
Once more they clashed, pitching uncontrollably down the hallway as things progressed.
Danny tore his jacket off, threw it to one side. He did the same with hers and whipped it away down the hall, then pulled her blouse out of her skirt waistband and finished unbuttoning it.
‘ God! Fucking clothes,’ she breathed.
‘ A pain, a real pain,’ he agreed, reaching behind her, unhooking the Marks amp; Spencer bra. She unfastened his shirt, ripped it out of his pants and removed it with his assistance. Now, both their top halves were naked. They embraced again, Danny revelling in the sensation of her breasts being crushed against Rik’s chest.
They lurched further down the hall, bouncing from wall to wall, kissing, fondling, moaning, until they twisted into the kitchen where Danny slammed him up against her new fridge. Still in darkness, no lights.
Here they separated and Danny’s eyes bore into Rik’s. So as to save time, she unhitched her skirt and shimmied it down her hips, at the same time removing her damaged tights, knickers and kicking off her shoes. She was naked in front of him.
She swallowed, moved towards him, her mouth working over his face, across his shoulders to his chest, smooth and hairless, muscled. She sank lower, tongue flickering over his stomach and she thought, Jesus, a real six-pack! And then she was kneeling in front of him, her face inches away from his groin, fingers fumbling with his belt, unbuckling it. Then his flies. She tugged his trousers down to his thighs, revealing white boxers with an unbelievably huge and hard penis outlined inside them.
Almost with dread, she took hold of the boxers and peeled them down, revealing a wonderful, glistening cock which she needed to devour.
‘ No! Fucking hell!’ Rik screamed and pushed Danny away from him, hitching his pants back up.
Danny fell backwards onto her arse, stunned. ‘What’s the matter?’
‘ I can’t do this!’ he shrieked, searching frantically for his shirt. ‘No way.’
‘ Why, why, what have I done?’
‘ It’s too weird. God! This is where he did it, didn’t he? Jack Sands — blew his freakin’ head off in here and we’re going to… no chance, babe.’
He picked up his coat and shirt and ran down the hallway and out of the front door, slamming it shut behind him.
Danny closed her eyes.
She had forgotten, actually forgotten, about Jack Sands — for the night, at least… but it was quite obvious others had not. She sat up and rubbed her face, everything having drained out of her. The ghost of Jack Sands was alive and well and seemed to loom out of the fridge and sneer at her. She started to sob.
Chapter Eleven
Henry Christie surveyed himself in the mirror over the washbasin. What he saw could not be described as a pretty sight. Both sides of his head were red, tender and sore as a consequence of Gunk’s initial punches which had felled him. The bridge of his nose, which had been head-butted, was not broken, or so he believed, but the impact of the blow had blackened his left eye and given a certain amount of swelling to his right. Blood caked and crusted around his nostrils.
Henry stood upright and gingerly raised both arms. Blotchy purple and black bruises dotted the right side of his ribcage, each one a result of Gunk’s steel toe-capped shoes. Like his nose, Henry believed his ribs had escaped breakage.
He lowered his arms and looked down at his naked body. Carefully he wrapped his testicles up in the palm of his right hand and massaged them very gently. They were very sore indeed. He winced. The deep pain caused by Gunk’s knee was still lurking in his lower abdomen. He doubted his ability to be able to father children again. Not that he wanted to, but the necessary attributes to do so would have been nice. It was one of those ‘man’ things.
Behind him the bath was almost full of steaming hot water, frothing with bubbles. He bent down to switch the taps off. The act of bending sent a shockwave of agony through him. Four hours in bed since the hammering had only served to make him feel worse.
Before easing his troubled body into the bath, he swallowed another couple of aspirins, then sank slowly into the water, thinking back to what had happened.
Henry thanked the Almighty that Thompson and Gunk Elphick had only been blessed with a peanut for a brain between them. Had they had something more substantial between their ears, he knew that he would probably be floating face down in the ship canal now, brains blown out.
He had been given a good solid beating, been crudely interrogated and denied their allegations — so he must be innocent. Henry knew of some cops who worked along those lines: if someone doesn’t ‘cough’ a job under such circumstances, then how could they possibly have done it? That was the theory. Henry was fully aware that getting a prisoner to admit guilt was a far more subtle process than that. Quite often, physical violence was counter-productive. Good interview technique was far more effective, and neither Thompson nor Elphick had it. They simply relied on intimidation and a sound thrashing. Probably it usually worked. But he didn’t have a choice in the matter. He had to hold out because it was a matter of life and death for him. If he admitted talking to the cops as Frank Jagger, he would have been dead; if he had told them he was an undercover cop, he would have been dead. There was no way he could have admitted either.
After their questioning, they had allowed him to get dressed and cleaned up in a bathroom which adjoined the office. Then, although he wasn’t fit for anything other than a visit to a Casualty Department, they had wanted to talk business with him.
He had difficulty maintaining concentration, but he kept in there, even though he was quickly working his way through a toilet roll in an effort to stem the blood flow from his nose.
‘ I hope you understand why we had to do that, Frank,’ Gary Thompson had said on Henry’s return from the toilet. ‘We can’t be too careful in this game, as you well know, and we don’t have time to arse around asking nicey, nicey questions.’
Henry muttered something from behind the bog roll.
‘ So, nothing personal? No hard feelings?’ Thompson slapped his thighs. ‘Down to business, eh?’
They were all seated on the Chesterfields; Thompson next to Henry on one, Gunk and the mysterious stranger on the other.
Henry sniffed up and a blob of blood shot down his throat. He hacked it up into the tissue and wiped his mouth. He looked round at them.
Gary — ‘Gazzer’ — Thompson, was the one with the majority of the peanut brain. Or at least he talked a good story, and had the less intellectual Gunk under his thumb, although they were obviously a team. He was a cool-looking guy, well-dressed, lots of gold, with furtive eyes and a moustache which gave Henry the creeps. Henry imagined that Gazzer was pretty good with women.
Then there was Edward — ‘Gunk’ — Elphick. Short, squat, powerful, built like a Sherman tank and probably just as intelligent. His nickname had come from his juvenile tearaway days when he spent much of his time with oily hands from stealing engine parts from cars. He wore an array of earrings either side an
d was dressed rather unoriginally in a black dinner suit and bow tie, though the latter featured Disney characters. He had a smirk on his face as Henry’s eyes momentarily caught his. Henry was very uncomfortable with Gunk. Not just because of his physical power, but because he had a violent sexual deviance streak in his character. His previous convictions detailed two horrific assaults on young boys. Now Henry had the very real perception that Gunk saw him as a potential conquest; he had an unpleasant feeling that Gunk might try to chance his arm. Henry was not a violent man, but he knew that if there ever came a legitimate chance of beating the living shit out of Gunk, he would do it and enjoy it.
Next along was the mystery man. Henry looked at him for an instant, then back to Thompson.
‘ What’s the score now, Gazzer? Now that Jacky’s gone to gangster heaven? I need to know before I do business.’
‘ It was very sad that Jacky got taken out like that. Despite what you might think, Frank, we had nothing to do with it. We both miss him very much. He was a good boss, a fair man.’ Thompson made a valiant effort with his body language to convey grief. Henry covered his mouth with tissue and tried to hide a smile. ‘But the sad fact is, he’s gone. Yes, gone to gangster heaven, I would guess. But the business still has to run. Me and Gunk have stepped into Jacky’s shoes to keep the momentum going. A dirty business, but someone has to do it. So that’s the score, Frank.’
‘ And who is this personality?’ Henry pointed at Mr Mystery with a gesture of his blood soaked tissues.
‘ A friend, a business partner.’
Henry looked at him. The man’s deep-set eyes returned the stare. Henry though he looked deadly and cold.
‘ Look, Gazzer, I’m not being funny, but I really don’t like doing business with people I don’t know. Commonsense, really. I could be compromised. I need to know who he is, and if I can trust him.’
‘ Fair enough. I’ll introduce you. Frank Jagger — Nikolai Drozdov. Him and us are in business together now. He’s from Europe.’
Drozdov offered his pale hand to Henry, who shook it. It was cool and small, like a woman’s. But there was no time to talk further. There was an urgent knock from the office door. Gunk opened it to a man who tumbled into the room, breathless.
‘ Trouble… down at the door. Some heavies from Moss Side are causing problems. We need you down there to sort it, otherwise it’s going to get out of hand.’
Thompson nodded. ‘Right.’ He turned to Henry. ‘We’ll be in touch.’
Now, as he lay in the bath in his hotel room a few hours later, running these events through his mind, Henry began to marshal his thoughts.
Firstly he needed to get a grip on Rupert Davison, that two-faced bastard of a Detective Superintendent who had lied bare-faced to him and got him beaten up. Secondly he had to do some research on Nikolai Drozdov, who Henry suspected was a fully paid-up member of the Russian Mafia, and to bone up on the Russian Mafia itself; he had heard lots about them and their ever-spreading influence, but had never yet met one face to face, except… Henry had a very disturbing thought: maybe he had come face to face with the Russian Mafia before, not so very long ago, and did not realise it at the time. Maybe the guy who had done the business on Jacky Lee had been one of them and maybe the incomprehensible words he had uttered at Henry were Russian words. And maybe Jacky Lee had been ousted by the Russians so that they could move in and control his little empire, working alongside Thompson and Elphick.
Wow, Henry thought. He settled deep into the bath, the hot water having a soothing effect on his wounds, and tried to remember exactly what the killer had said. Henry had thought it gibberish at the time.
Another person suffering that morning, though not in exactly the same way as Henry Christie, was Danny Furness.
She sat at her desk balancing her forehead on her forefinger, swallowing in an effort to hold back the contents of her stomach which threatened to burst forth at any moment, and wishing she was dead. Being so would end all her suffering. As well as her stomach being bad, her head was no better, being the cranial version of hellfire; and she was also suffering from the acute embarrassment of having a man’s erect penis almost in her mouth and him running out on her because it was all too weird.
Surely that could not have happened to any other woman, anywhere, ever?
Danny took a chance and lifted her head off her finger to look around the office through a pair of eyes which refused to open properly. No doubt about it, she should still be in bed, suffering her physical and mental anguish — alone.
The phone on her desk rang. She let it. It stopped eventually.
She had missed the daily murder briefing at eight, not having landed until well after nine, and that had been a miracle, so she had no idea if there had been any overnight developments.
‘ Oh God.’ Her mouth fell open; her bottom lip sagged heavily. She got to her feet slowly, steadying herself on her desk, and walked, one measured, controlled step at a time, out of the office. She ignored the lift. The very thought of it made her queasy. She went up the stairs to the MIR, one tread at a time, pausing on each one to regain equilibrium.
Eventually she made it to the right floor and shuffled into the Incident Room which was very quiet. Everyone who should be, was out investigating. Everyone but her.
She went across to the Receiver’s desk. The Detective Constable assigned to that role raised his eyes.
‘ Anything doing?’ she enquired.
‘ This has just literally arrived by fax — results of the dental identification on your man.’ He held up a sheet of paper. Danny snatched it from his hand and read with glee. At last, a major step forwards.
Except that her excitement was halted quickly by a loud gurgle from her intestines.
She clamped a hand over her mouth and raced out of the room to the ladies’ toilets, where she burst into a cubicle and sank down to her knees over the toilet bowl. Almost before she had finished vomiting, she was scrambling like mad to drag her skirt up, knickers down, to plonk herself down on the loo and empty her bowels.
‘ Oh my God,’ she moaned again just as a stomach cramp creased her guts.
Just her luck. Insult to injury. On the most important day of the investigation for her, she was sick, had diarrhoea and was about to start her period.
Henry Christie locked his hotel-room door, trotted down the stairs and wandered into Manchester city centre. He went into the Arndale Centre, which still bore the scars from the massive IRA bomb attack which had devastated it several years before, found an empty, working phone booth and made a quick call, after which he strolled to McDonald’s where he ordered coffee and an Egg McMuffin which tasted of cardboard. He wolfed down a couple more Advil for his pains, then, after buying a newspaper from W.H. Smiths he hobbled up to the Sticky Fingers restaurant off Deansgate. Here he had another coffee, far more expensive and far nicer than the one at McDonald’s.
Ten minutes later he became aware of a figure hovering next to him. He looked up slowly and his sore face cracked into a grin. ‘Thanks for coming. It’s good to see you.’
The man slid into the seat opposite, shook hands across the table. ‘Good to see you, too, Henry — but I have to say, you look like shite.’
Henry guffawed. ‘Thanks a bunch. Let me order more coffee.’ He folded the newspaper and beckoned a waitress. The coffee arrived quickly.
‘ OK, nice coffee,’ the man said after taking a sip and wiping his top lip with his finger and thumb. ‘What’s this all about, H?’
Henry adjusted his backside, winced and glanced shiftily round the cafe. It was almost empty, being so early. ‘Beast of Burden’ played over the sound system, one of Henry’s favourite Stones tracks. ‘I believe you are the deputy SIO on the investigation into the death of Jacky Lee — and before that you were on the enquiry into the death of a guy that Lee himself was supposed to have iced?’
The man nodded.
‘ Were you, or are you, aware that an undercover officer had been assigned
to Jacky Lee before he was killed and that the same U/C officer is now assigned to Gary Thompson and Gunk Elphick in the hope of getting evidence of their involvement in Lee’s demise?’
‘ No,’ the man said. His eyebrows knitted together, wondering where this was going.
‘ Well, now you do,’ declared Henry.
A key turned in the lock. The handle revolved and the door opened. Loz stood there looking as grubby and dishevelled as ever. Colin Hodge was sitting on the edge of the bed, not having slept during the night and since his abduction. Loz beckoned to him. ‘Come on.’
He stood up and followed laggardly. His feet were like lumps of lead.
Without speaking, Loz took him down a wide hallway, a sweeping flight of steps to the ground floor, through a set of wide French windows and on to a terracotta terrace beyond which was the garden. A table and chairs were set up on the terrace, protected by a large umbrella. The sun was already hot in the clear sky.
Loz pointed with his bandaged hand to a mobile servery. ‘Help yourself.’
Nervous, but trying to give the impression of confidence, Hodge picked up a plate and examined a selection of breakfast dishes on the hot and cold plates. He chose scrambled eggs and sausage, a large glass of orange and black filtered coffee.
Loz lounged back against the villa wall and watched him, a sneer of contempt quivering on his lips underneath his rather pathetic moustache.