by Ian Mayfield
‘For some.’
‘I prefer to remember the fun parts.’
‘Best way.’ Jeff fingered his collar. He wasn’t about to loosen it, though, let the draught in down the front of his neck. He added, ‘Think Nina’s going to be OK?’
Jasmin shrugged. ‘I hope so.’
‘Sandra’s been putting her up, did you hear her say?’
‘Uh-huh.’ She hugged herself. ‘I wonder what she said to her. Outside.’
‘Probably unrepeatable.’
They laughed, full of warmth for their extraordinary colleague. For a moment the cold house seemed less oppressive. ‘Sometimes,’ Jasmin said, ‘I think that if Sandra was not a cop, she would make a good doctor.’
‘Dunno about that. Imagine her bedside manner.’
Their Ovaltine ready, they went back upstairs.
‘Sit on the bed. I have only this one chair and it’s not comfortable.’ He sat, pulling himself back so he could lean against the wall. Jasmin said, ‘Can I come right up close to you? We will keep each other warm.’
‘Be my guest.’
Uncertainly, he extended a welcoming arm. She slipped within his embrace and snuggled up to him, her head resting on his shoulder.
‘People would talk, if they saw us,’ she said.
‘No, they wouldn’t. Their teeth’d be too bloody busy chattering.’
They giggled.
‘Left our mugs on the mantelpiece.’
‘Let them stay there for a bit.’ She clutched his waist.
‘I think this is as warm as we’re going to get,’ he hazarded.
‘Maybe,’ Jasmin said softly.
Given the presence of a car registered to a known violent criminal, Nina knew she should call for backup. But at this hour police vehicles would be heard approaching a long way off; and while marching up to the Clarkes’ door now might well bag them Quaife, it could not only rob them of the chance to find any link to Porter, the fire and Mark Watkins, but also endanger more lives.
Besides, she was feeling reckless.
She decided to reconnoitre.
In between several of the houses were alleyways, of the kind that lurk between the back-to-back gardens of suburbia, offering a run to urban foxes and a convenient repository for grass cuttings and weeds. She walked to the nearest one, noting the number of properties between it and the Clarkes’, knowing how different houses could look from the back. A few steps took her out of sight of the street, in between high plank fences that smelled of fresh creosote. A smile crossed her face, a sudden childhood memory. Left to amuse themselves in school holidays, she and her sisters as a trio of African explorers, creeping unseen through forbidden places.
At the far end, as she’d expected, another alleyway cut across at right angles, running between the back gardens of Ballards Way and those of the next street. It was still too dark to see far ahead, and she hoped there were enough knotholes and gaps in the fence for her to pinpoint where she was. The path was overgrown with great clumps of bindweed and ground elder, cow parsley and nettles, and she was thankful she’d changed into jeans. In her childhood she would have imagined this a fairytale, she hacking through the undergrowth to free Sleeping Beauty with a kiss.
The Clarkes lived eight houses along. If she stood back she had a clear view of the upstairs windows. There were no lights. She stared at the fence, trying to decide what to do next. And noticed that, providentially, this garden had a gate.
Warrant? Reasonable suspicion as to the presence of a suspect, she told herself, lifting the latch. If that didn’t fly, she was technically already trespassing anyway. As well to be hung for a sheep as a lamb. The gate was not locked. Another thing about these alleyways, they were a godsend for burglars. She slipped through.
Closing it behind her, she inhaled, but never got to let out the deep sigh of relief that went next because something travelling at speed hit her below the ribs and sent her crashing breathless to the ground.
There came a point when the mood between them changed irrevocably, but it was some time before they did anything about it.
Was it Jeff who made the move, lowering his lips to Jasmin’s and, elated, felt her respond? Or did she, brown eyes raised, invite him wordlessly to kiss her? If they ever wondered, by that time it hardly mattered.
She sat up to face him and wound her arms around his neck, caressing it and the back of his head with strong fingers. He brought his hands up to her shoulders, easing away the cardigan. Presently it lay spread on the bed behind her, and her bare shoulders were open to his unsteady hands. She sighed and replaced her arms, kissing him still more intensely, her tongue fusing with his, pressing warmth against soft, flexing warmth.
They were long minutes like that. Then their mouths parted; he kissed her chin, on down to her neck and shoulders, while she slipped her fingers under his jacket, her warm hands brushing his chest through the shirt, trembling across to slip the jacket off, then undoing his tie, fingers tangling and touching his chin and throat. She was sighing, short of breath, under his kisses. His hands were trickling down her spine, fumbling fingers finding the tiny hook that took an eternity to undo, and the zip that didn’t, as the dress opened and clinging velvet gave way to cold air. And then the dress was being drawn down by gentle but unpracticed hands as his lips and tongue followed, making the goosebumps on her breasts thrill before warming them away.
Moaning, she shifted herself and took the dress right off, allowing him a long glimpse of the body he’d dreamed of experiencing. She’d worn nothing underneath; clad now only in the velvet sleeves she crawled into bed, under the blankets and out of the cold, edging nearer the wall to leave him room.
Watching her watching him, he stood and took off the rest of his clothes. He approached the bed, erect and distended in want for her so much as to be almost painful. Fast. So fast. Uncertain, he checked. He was terrified of making a wrong move, of having misinterpreted whatever it was she meant. Now, after so long, that she seemed to be responding to his feelings for her, it must be right. Ruin it now, and it would destroy him. He was confused, not thinking straight. An inner voice spoke up. Here he was, standing in all his glory in front of a bed containing the woman of his heart, naked and waiting for him. Misinterpret that, loverboy. Jeff drew back the covers and climbed into bed with Jasmin.
She came to him, pressing the length of her body against his, breasts moulding themselves to the contours of his chest. Their lips reunited, sliding betwixt and between, discovering all over again. He stroked her back, gliding downwards to the swell of her buttocks which he kneaded, pushing their groins urgently together. Waves of spicy perfume washed up his nose. He wished to draw her whole body inside him where he could keep her forever.
‘Oh, my,’ she said. She withdrew her hips a little, firmly but very gently so he would not think of rejection. She rolled to him and let a hand coast downwards, velvet-covered arm brushing him, exploring for the shapes and spaces of his hips and groin. Between his legs she went. He cried out in barely controllable ecstasy as her fingers triggered bombs in his lower body. He could bear no more. He had to have her. Driven by this compulsion his hand swept down, coaxing her onto her back. It glided over her belly, combing through the brittle curls of her groin to find the warm, silky dampness of its destination. A cry burst from her. Her squeezing hand left his penis and grasped his hip, fingertips digging into the flesh, tugging him towards her, inviting, demanding.
They were still kissing. He broke away. ‘Protection,’ he murmured. Eyes half open, lips parted, she nodded.
‘Hurry.’
He hurried, stumbling out of bed, grabbing his jacket, dropping it, picking it up again and somehow, after seconds that seemed hours, finding the right pocket. He tore the foil open and stood weak-kneed while she helped to unroll the condom down the length of his erection. It flitted through his mind that Jasmin was a Roman Catholic; not, evidently, something she allowed to get in the way of good sense.
He climbed back i
nto bed and slipped at last in between her thighs. He took a moment to adjust himself. Feeling his difficulty, she reached down and took hold, guiding him. He throbbed at her touch again. He entered her.
And came almost immediately. A climax he’d been expecting and dreading still took him by surprise with its intensity. With a few frantic thrusts he pushed himself deep inside her, but it was all over so quickly, leaving him released, but unsatisfied.
He groaned with a mixture of rapture and embarrassment. Then, as abruptly as the feelings had come, they were gone, replaced by a surge of shame.
‘Shit,’ he panted, burying his face in her neck. ‘I’m sorry. I really, truly am.’
‘Why?’
He screwed up his eyes, which had been tight shut ever since he’d felt himself begin to explode. ‘Jeff Wetherby, the one minute marvel.’
‘Is that all?’ Jasmin said. Her arms were still round him.
A slow sigh escaped him. Useless to say, true though it might be, that it had never happened before. This had been it, she was the one, and he’d blown it.
And yet...
A former girlfriend had once told Jeff women were attracted to him because he was the sort of bloke they felt able to have a crisis at. Choosing to take this as a compliment, he tried grafting it onto the present situation. True, Jasmin was at a low ebb, but it had been an innocent lift home, nothing planned, both of them almost completely sober. One minute they’d been in a chaste embrace; the next, almost without knowing it, they were making love.
But it was more than that. They both knew it.
Because she’d whispered into his ear, with a note of wonder, ‘Oh, my.’
At last, he dared to open his eyes. One look at her, at her face glowing with amazement, told him all his fears were unfounded. They understood, and smiled together. Because he’d never fallen in love before, it hadn’t occurred to him that the feeling might be reciprocated.
He felt like laughing for joy at the simplicity of it all. Of course he hadn’t been able to control himself. It would have been like trying to outrun a tsunami.
Half-stunned, suffocating, stars blotting out her vision. Someone grabbing her arms, dragging her along on her back. Over the roaring in her ears, a voice hissing, ‘Handcuffs. In her bag, probably.’
She was hauled to her feet, thrown against something hard and cold, arms twisted behind her. A vicious tug, and she felt the bite of the zip-tie restraints into her wrists. Her legs buckled and she scrambled to stand. She grasped for control of her lungs, took a first laboured, wheezing breath just as another blow, higher between her breasts and not quite so hard, slammed her against the rough surface at her back. There was sharp excruciating pain, a hot, slow trickle down her legs, and the dizzy sickness squeezed her like a fist. Finally the stars cleared. Her head was a dead weight, but she lifted it, and was able to see what, and who, had happened to her.
Dim as the light still was, dim as her vision seemed swiftly to be turning, she knew the face. She’d seen it by proxy through a telephoto lens, as its owner, frozen in time, closed his front door behind him.
‘Can’t read it in this light.’ Edward Porter had her warrant card in his hand and was holding it high, as though trying to catch the first rays of the sun. ‘Tym…offski? Bloody Polish, are you?’
She closed her eyes and tried to keep the shake from her voice. ‘Police officer.’
‘No shit,’ he responded coolly. ‘Can’t even keep Polacks out of the fuzz now. No wonder none of you job robbers ever get deported.’
She swallowed hard, fighting the monster, feeling the hatred of this man for all things not as he was. It gave him strength, the enormity of it; strength, at this moment, directed towards her alone. Opening her eyes again was agony, acute and unexpected, like ripped fingernails. Her joints were trembling, giving way as she struggled to keep upright against the tree she’d been secured to. The blows seemed to have numbed her whole body, so that it would no longer do what she required of it.
‘Scream if you like.’ Porter spoke with the relaxed, sadistic amusement of a hunter watching his prey die. ‘By the looks of you you’ve probably got, what, a couple of minutes before you black out, so by all means hasten the process if you feel so inclined.’ Still rummaging in her handbag, he had found her phone, and now he ejected the battery and hurled it into the next garden.
Dimly she could make out two other people, lurking in the gloom behind. One of them wore pyjamas and a dressing gown, hugging himself, face pale. Others like Andrew Clarke slept in the bedrooms of neighbouring houses, some possibly rising even now, moving to open curtains, to look out at the morning and what it held.
‘Doesn’t bother me either way,’ Porter said, reading her thoughts. ‘By the way, don’t take this personally, other than the fact that I hate your immigrant guts. In case you were wondering, your job here is to serve,’ he hissed in her ear, ‘as an example. To someone who needs to know we’re going to get to him before the pigs do.’
As if on an unseen signal, the third man stirred and moved forward. Michael Quaife’s arms were folded almost carelessly, but she could see the shaped, polished blade he held in his huge fist, one serrated edge glittering in the dawn like dew on a cobweb, and suddenly, in horror, she realised the Bowie knife was what had hit her, and the warm liquid down her legs was not piss. Hail Mary, full of grace -
Porter tilted his head slightly, perhaps expecting her to challenge him, or at least spit in his face, if she still had the strength. But Nina, though mortally afraid, wasn’t about to give him the satisfaction. She thought hard of other things, desperate to keep her brain alert, remembering a conversation she’d had with Paul arising from old TV news reports of soldiers captured by the Taliban. Paul had been of the opinion that your best tactic in that situation was to keep silent, give your captors nothing they could twist round and use back at you. It worked for some hardened villains back at the nick, but this wasn’t an interview and she wasn’t in control. She could forgive Paul a lifetime of betrayals if he’d only appear and be her white knight now.
But he wasn’t here. After tonight he never would be. Succumbing to despair, she uttered a terrified whimper.
‘Edward, for God’s sake.’ The quiet, shocked voice, empty now of the bluster that had characterised many of his dealings with the police, belonged to Andrew Clarke.
‘Andrew.’ Porter spoke mildly, almost avuncularly, turning to him. He started to back away, catching something Porter tossed in his direction. ‘Move her car. It’s like a bloody signpost. We don’t know how she found us here yet.’
Yet.
It wormed through the wound, a gash made far worse in her mind by the fact she couldn’t see it, couldn’t feel it. It wrapped her heart in icy coils and squeezed. Yet.
Quaife laughed contemptuously as Andrew Clarke fled back to the house. ‘Tosser.’
‘Out of his depth.’ They seemed for a moment not to care she was there. ‘Good at noticing unmarked police cars at three in the morning, and keeping track of nosy FOB policewomen who go crashing round the backs of houses. Comes to necessary unpleasantness, though, he’s not your man and never was.’ He looked at Nina now, probing for a reaction to the knowledge she’d been rumbled from the outset. She hoped he saw none.
A car drove by on Ballards Way. Porter looked at his watch.
‘I count on you to deal with her,’ he said to Quaife. ‘Beyond that, as I said, I don’t much care.’
Quaife peered at Nina. ‘Few more minutes, she’s not telling us anything.’
‘She’s got nothing to tell us I’m interested in hearing,’ Porter sighed. ‘Nothing to tell anyone, as it happens.’
He turned slowly away, then hesitated and stepped right up to her.
‘Pretty, for a Polack.’ He spoke to Nina rather than Quaife. ‘Even racist fascist bastards have weaknesses.’
His hand reached up. She cringed as one finger traced a line down her jaw and under her chin. Her skin seethed with pain where he’d t
ouched it. She cried out. A black curtain descended. Panicking, she escaped it, Nina the heroine struggling free of the thorns round Sleeping Beauty’s castle. Reality returned. Porter was gone. She heard the back door close behind him.
Inside the house, someone was watching from an upstairs window. Featureless from here, but she knew all the same she’d been right. There had been three empty mugs on the coffee table that night. Three. The clue had, literally, been staring her in the face.
But, as Porter had just suggested and the looming figure of Michael Quaife reminded her, it was a bit late now.
To the despair of environmentalists, Kim Oliver was one of those drivers who invariably choose the straightest line from A to B, even if it means straying far from anything resembling a main road. As a young PC in patrol cars she’d spent so much time down rat runs the relief had nicknamed her Rizzo. Even night’s empty highways could not entice her off the back streets, if it meant deviating from her planned itinerary.
Her idea of the quick way to New Addington took them through Purley to South Croydon, then north-east on side streets to emerge onto Croham Valley Road just below the golf course. A quarter of a mile further on Kim turned into Ballards Way.
The plan was to cut across to the top of Gravel Hill, where the main road descended towards Addington. While not consciously thinking about it her choice of route, she realised, was probably influenced by memories of following Andrew Clarke to the Keeper and Wicket. Her surprise, therefore, at seeing what was parked in the space they’d used for obbo was sufficient for her to press her foot down momentarily on the brake.
‘What was that?’ Lucky, whom fresh air from the open windows seemed to have sobered up somewhat, righted herself from her back seat slump and glanced over her shoulder. ‘Fox?’
‘Thought I saw Nina’s car.’
‘Where?’
‘Back there. The black Mini.’
Lucky looked again, but they’d rounded a bend. ‘Nope.’
‘Lot of Minis,’ Juliet suggested. ‘Probably a different car altogether.’