by L.H. Cosway
I winced slightly at the sound of my ex, Gavin’s, voice. Usually, I went out of my way to avoid him, and in the ten months since we’d broken up, I’d managed to reduce the number of times we ran into one another to the barest minimum. Gavin worked for the armed unit, and his job tended to veer toward the more dangerous end of the spectrum, while my daily shifts were usually less hazardous. Today was not the usual.
“I was stationed at Upton Park. I presume you heard about the rioting,” I said, stepping past him and hoping he wouldn’t try to prolong the conversation. In my mind, there were two categories of men who signed up for the police. You had the well-meaning, family kind, like Tony, who just wanted to make the streets a safer place for his daughters to grow up. Then you had the borderline sociopathic kind, like Steve, and, let’s face it, my dad, who joined the force because it meant they got to wield power over people.
Gavin fell into the latter category. I’d broken up with him for two reasons. One, he’d been a controlling fuckwad, and two, I’d caught him shagging another woman – on my birthday, in the ladies’ bathroom of the club where my party was being held. Nothing like a bit of adultery on your birthday to make you feel like truly celebrating – that was sarcasm, by the way.
In conclusion, Gavin was a dickhead, and I was better off without him.
“I did hear, but I didn’t know you were there. Shit, that cut looks bad, Karla. Have you had it checked out?”
“It’s fine. Now if you don’t mind….” I lifted a brow and gestured for him to get out of the way, but he didn’t move.
“Ah, come on, don’t be like that,” he said.
I rolled my eyes, shook my head, and walked around him. He wasn’t even worth the effort of a hostile conversation. He called after me, so I threw my hand in the air and gave him the finger. His growl of irritation was infinitely satisfying. I’d just climbed into my car when my phone went off with a call from Alexis. I put it on speaker.
“Hey.”
“Karla! I just saw the riot on the news. Are you all right?”
“I’m fine, nothing a glass of wine and a good night’s sleep won’t fix. I’m on my way home. Do you need anything?”
A pause. “Well, now that you mention it, you wouldn’t mind popping by the McDonalds drive-through, would you? I have a hankering for chicken nuggets and a chocolate fudge sundae for dipping.”
I resisted the urge to gag. “Bloody hell, that sounds disgusting. Are you pregnant?”
She snorted down the line. “Piss off. I’m not pregnant. I’m depressed. There’s a difference.”
“Fine. I’ll get you McDonalds. Be home in twenty.”
“Aww, you really love me, don’t you?” she crooned.
I laughed. “Yeah, to my detriment sometimes.”
Three
The next day at work, Tony pulled me into one of the briefing rooms, opened up a laptop, and hit “play” on a video. It was surveillance footage from an apartment building, showing the outside grounds. Nothing happened for a second, and then off to the left a man approached. He wore a dark hoodie and jeans, his face shielded by a black balaclava as he reached up and grabbed hold of a window ledge on the bottom floor. Swinging himself up, he balanced himself perfectly on the narrow space, his movements swift and graceful like a stuntman or an acrobat.
“What is this?” I asked, glancing at Tony.
“Just keep watching,” he urged me, his lips curving into a smile.
My eyes returned to the video, where the masked man grabbed onto the next ledge and swung his body up the same as before. The footage cut to a camera higher up, showing he’d climbed something like ten floors, only to land on a thin brick outcropping that ran around the middle of the building.
“Somebody watched too much Spiderman as a kid,” I said cynically, though really, I was impressed, very impressed. No average person could pull off something like this without some extreme amount of skill. The pit of my stomach began to tingle with a little rush of excitement to see what would happen next.
The footage cut again to another camera, showing the man stop at a window and push it open with ease before slipping inside the building. Tony fast-forwarded a couple minutes and the man was back, emerging through the same window. However, this time the rucksack he wore appeared distinctly fuller than it had previously. He began moving along the ledge the same as before, only now he didn’t climb between the windows.
For some reason, my eyes fixed on the line of his shoulders, the way he moved his body, and some strange sense of familiarity hit me. I couldn’t quite pin down what it was, so I concentrated back on what was happening.
The video cut to yet another camera, where a scaffold was set up on one side of the old building. The man began swinging from bar to bar, his movements more panther than monkey. When he got as low as the top of a nearby street lamp, he leapt through the air, caught onto the lamp, and swung deftly to the ground, like a fireman going down a pole. The camera was angled just right to catch him running off into the night, and then he was gone.
“The boys down in evidence had this footage put together after somebody dropped off a rucksack full of jewellery and a note tipping us off about one of the units in that building,” said Tony. “We paid a visit, and it turns out there was a cash-for-gold scam being run out of the same flat our guy broke into. They target older people, usually those who live alone and don’t have anyone to tell them it’s a scam. They put leaflets through their letterboxes saying if they send their old gold to a P.O. box in the city, it’ll be valued, and a cheque for the same amount will be sent back to them.”
I nodded. “Yeah, I heard about that one.”
Tony sighed. “Obviously, weeks go by, and the cheque never comes. Bunch of scumbags, taking advantage of the elderly like that.”
“So this bloke stole the jewellery back?”
“That’s about the size of it.”
I had to admit, I was sort of fascinated. “Forget Spiderman, maybe he thinks he’s Robin Hood. Perhaps his granny got scammed, and he was pissed and decided to dole out some vigilante justice,” I joked.
“Whatever way you want to spin it, you’ve got admire his gumption. Though I don’t condone the method, at least there’s a few less people out there being taken for mugs.”
“Yeah,” I said, staring at the frozen screen of the laptop and again trying to shake off that odd sense of familiarity. “At least there’s that.”
***
Confession time: I had a crush on my eskrima instructor.
His name was Felix, and he came from the Philippines. He was also in his forties and married with three kids, but hey, it wasn’t like I ever planned on doing anything about it. I was simply happy to admire him from afar. He was short, but he had a perfect body, muscles draped in smooth tanned skin.
The truth was, I had a thing for small, handsome men. Give me James McEvoy, Elijah Wood, Daniel Radcliffe, hell, even the guy who played E from Entourage, and I was giggling like a schoolgirl. I think this derived from my deep-seated resentment of my father, who was the opposite of a small, handsome man. Therefore, they represented a comfortable ideal, something non-threatening and safe.
Lee Cross was neither small nor extremely tall, but somewhere in the middle. He was unclassifiable. Huh.
I sat on the mat beside my good friend Reya, stretching and staring at Felix as he stood by the doorway, chatting with a guy who was interested in joining the class. For some reason, there was an abundance of new members today. We practiced twice weekly at my gym, which was handy because it meant I could go for a swim afterward to cool down, or spend some time in the sauna.
“You’re staring again,” said Reya, nudging me with her shoulder.
I chuckled sheepishly and pulled myself out of my Felix-induced trance. “Sorry. But look at the man. He’s perfect.”
She laughed. “You’re such a weirdo sometimes.”
Reya and I had met under somewhat unusual circumstances. I’d been out one night at a jazz ba
r with Alexis, and Reya had been on stage, singing and playing piano. She performed under the stage name Queenie, and was perhaps the shyest singer-songwriter I’d ever come across. All through her act she never once opened her eyes, but her lyrics had hit me square in the gut. They were just so brutally honest, full of pain and heartache, and I couldn’t understand how a girl so young could have experienced that amount of hurt. It was clear that she’d been a victim of some kind, so I’d determined to approach her after the show.
When I did, I told her how much her music had affected me, invited her for drinks with me and Alexis, and the rest is history. Somewhere along the way, I suggested that she learn how to defend herself, and now she was a full-fledged member of the class. I went to see her play gigs whenever I got the chance, but she still never opened her eyes. I guess you could call it a work in progress.
After a few minutes, Felix came and gave a little talk to all the new members, and we finally got started. When we were done I was a hot, sweaty mess. Apparently, another gym nearby had gone into receivership, which accounted for all the new members. Reya and I were making our way toward the showers when I heard a familiar voice shout, “Come on, Smithy, you’ve got more in you than that!”
Glancing to my right, I got a shock to see Lee Cross and a couple of other guys sparring in the boxing ring. Fuck my life. I couldn’t seem to get away from him. Only yesterday I’d seen him at the football match, and now he was attending my gym. Some higher being was seriously trying to test my willpower. It was too ridiculous for words.
So ridiculous that my feet were suddenly glued to the spot as I watched him throw a punch. He wore protective gear, of course, but he had no top on.
I repeat: Lee Cross was just yards away from me, wearing no top.
My skin prickled with awareness as I watched the way he moved. Right off the bat I could tell he was no amateur, from the way he threw his punches to the way he angled his body.
His skin shone with a thin layer of sweat, making the movement of his muscles so much more captivating. His dark eyebrows furrowed as he concentrated, and when he finally took the other guy down, I felt a quiver between my thighs.
God, I was so embarrassed by myself sometimes it wasn’t funny. My female hormones had me acting like a complete stereotype, and I hated how just the sight of Lee exerting his dominance over another man could reduce me to a tingling mess.
“Karla, are you coming or what?” Reya called impatiently.
As soon as he heard my name, Lee’s head turned, and I found myself caught in his stare. He lifted a bottle of water to his mouth and took a long gulp. All the while his eyes never left mine. At once my skin felt too hot and too cold. He lowered the bottle and wiped his mouth, and the spot between my legs continued to ache with a need I refused to acknowledge. Turning sharply, I went and followed Reya to the ladies changing rooms, stripped off, and stepped under the hot spray of the shower.
The way Lee had looked at me, like he already knew me intimately, was stuck in my head, replaying in a loop. It mixed with my memories of the day before, when his lips had brushed over mine and my frustration reached uncontrollable levels. I really wanted to do something about my arousal, but I didn’t. I wasn’t going to let my attraction to Lee make me act out of character, because I certainly wasn’t the kind of woman who got herself off in a communal shower room at the gym. That was just yuck.
Taking a second to gather my nerve, I got out, dried off, and turned to find Reya studying me curiously.
“So, who was the guy in the boxing ring?”
I frowned at her. “Who?”
“Um, the guy whose body you couldn’t take your eyes off. You were looking at him the same way you look at Felix, but with more hunger.” Reya was real big on the hand gestures and dramatics, ever the artiste. So yeah, she was shy until she got to know you, and then she never shut up talking. She was also highly perceptive. It was kind of annoying sometimes.
“Oh, fuck off.”
She laughed. “I’m being serious. I don’t know what the story is between you and this bloke, but even I could sense the chemistry. It was so delicious I could almost mould it with my hands,” she enthused, continuing with the gestures.
“Go write a song about it, then,” I deadpanned, and she scowled at me.
“Don’t start putting up the aggressive front. You’re not in cop mode now, and I’m not a perp. I’m your friend. You can talk to me.”
Her expression showed she was a tiny bit hurt that I wasn’t opening up to her, especially since she’d opened up to me about her past. It made me want to give her something, so I said in a low voice, “Look, this is all I’m telling you. He’s got a record. He’s seemingly into me. And I’m not touching that shit with a ten-foot bargepole.”
“Why do people always say that?” Reya asked irritably. “Do you normally go around touching things with bargepoles? It makes no sense.”
“Yes, it does. Bargepoles are notorious long.”
“Well, anyway, I think it’s stupid. Besides, do we even use bargepoles anymore? I don’t think so, not since like, the Middle Ages when armies wanted to storm a castle or something.”
I laughed loudly, because seriously, she cracked me up. “That’s not a bargepole, you numpty, that’s a battering ram. A bargepole is quite literally a pole used to propel a barge. It’s all in the name.”
She narrowed her gaze at me. “Oh, my God, I just enabled you in changing the subject, didn’t I? You’re a sneaky little bitch.”
I grinned.
We were rounding the reception area and making our way toward the exit when I caught sight of Lee again and my grin faltered. There was no avoiding him, because he was standing right by the door with a couple of the guys he’d been training with. I glanced at him quickly, relieved to find he hadn’t seen me yet. Then, just as Reya and I were about to leave, he stepped forward and opened the door for us.
“Ladies,” he said, and smiled.
Reya gave him a shy little nod of acknowledgement and stepped past.
“Constable, how’s the head?” asked Lee, eyes flicking briefly to the small bandage covering my wound.
“It’s healing,” I answered, and frowned. It had been irritating me that I’d never gotten the chance to thank him, even if his help had all been an act. “Thanks, by the way. For yesterday.”
His expression softened. “No thanks needed.”
I glanced around. “I’ve never seen you here before.”
Lee nodded. “Murphy’s closed down, so we all had to find a new place to train.”
“Hmmm.”
“Hmmm,” he mimicked, a grin shaping his lips as he leaned down, his hand braced against the door above my head. “Miss Sheehan, do you think I’m stalking you?”
Involuntarily, I snorted, and subsequently flushed with embarrassment. Staring at the floor, I muttered, “My ego’s not that big.”
I felt his breath whisper across my skin when he replied, “It’s a good thing mine is.” His wink told me he wasn’t talking about his ego.
Feeling the need to flee, I quickly stepped by him and outside to join Reya. All the while, I got the sense he was watching me leave. I gave her a lift to the tube station and then set off for my parents’ house. Yeah, I still visited, but it was mostly out of duty to my mum. I was patiently waiting for the day when she stood up to my dad and finally left his sorry arse for good. That would be the same day that elephants sprouted purple wings and scientists declared the world wasn’t round but flat. So, never.
Pulling up outside their house, I grimaced at the sight of the small front garden with its pristinely trimmed rosebushes and perfect little patch of grass. It was contrived, just like everything else about my family. Perfect on the surface, broken beneath.
Using my key to go in the front door, I could hear my dad talking loudly. The Northern Irish accent was a distinctive one, and it had this way of always sounding threatening, even when the speaker was merely commenting on the weather. He was on th
e phone, and from the gist I got of the conversation, it was a work call.
“We need to pin down McGregor sooner rather than later. He’s a snake — always when we think we have him, he manages to dodge the final bullet.”
Shop talk on a Sunday afternoon. Lovely.
I bypassed the lounge, where my dad was having his phone call, and headed straight for the kitchen. Mum was standing by the cooker when I came in, pulling her roast out of the oven.
“He’s not in the best mood today, love,” she whispered quietly, not even bothering to greet me. “It’s probably advisable not to try and rile him.”
“It’s nice to see you too, Mum,” I said, annoyed, and went to pour myself a glass of water. “And I never try to rile him. He riles himself. By the way, why the hell are we whispering?”
“Because I told you, your father’s in a terrible mood. The case he spent the last few months working on has fallen flat.” She paused, eyes moving to my bandage as she reached up to touch my forehead. “What happened here?”
“Hazard of the job,” I answered flippantly, and refocused on what she’d said about Dad. “What case was he working on?”
Dad sometimes liked to decompress by telling Mum about his work. He thought it was safe, because even if she wanted to tell someone, she didn’t really have anyone to tell. He’d seen to it a long time ago that she didn’t have any friends. Sometimes, though, if she was stressed, I could trick her into talking.
“Some bigwig called McGregor. Your father’s been trying to get him for years,” said Mum, waving away my questions. “Will you go and set the table, please?”
I wanted to ask more, but I knew she’d clam up if I did. So I went and set the table just like she’d asked, and a couple of minutes later we were sitting down to eat. Dad came in, shoving his phone in his pocket, and shot me a frown. That was about as much of a greeting as I ever got from him. We ate for several minutes without conversation, and, in spite of Mum’s warning not to rile him, I couldn’t seem to help it.