A Man of Sorrows

by James Craig

  With his trousers around his ankles, the priest struggled to turn to face the inspector. The look of horror on his face was unmistakable. His member, however, showed no sign of wilting as Eddie continued diligently about his task while caressing the priest’s balls with his thumbs. As Rose had said, it looked like the boy knew what he was doing. It was impossible to tell whether the croaking sound that caught in McGowan’s throat signalled pleasure or pain. Either way, he was unable to step away from the boy’s ministrations before Eddie jerked his head back, allowing an arc of semen to hit a pile of Bibles stacked against a nearby wall.

  ‘Oh my God!’ said Rose, appearing at Carlyle’s shoulder. ‘That is so gross!’

  ‘Phew!’ said Eddie as he bounced to his feet. ‘That was a close one!’ He grinned at the two police officers. ‘You don’t want to get a faceful, if you can help it.’

  ‘No,’ said Carlyle, trying not to laugh. ‘I suppose not.’

  Eddie patted McGowan on the shoulder. ‘Don’t forget, you owe me a fiver.’

  ‘Might take him a while to earn that,’ Carlyle said, all humour gone. ‘You can only make about twenty pence a day in prison.’

  With trembling hands, McGowan pulled up his Y-fronts and then his trousers. Rose waited for the priest to sort himself out before reading him his rights and calling for a car to take them to nearby Holborn station.

  ‘Let’s see if you can wriggle out of it this time, you piece of shit,’ Carlyle snarled. For once, he felt no desire to smack the old bastard about, even as part of an act. Maybe it was the scent of victory in his nostrils; surely now the job was done and McGowan would be put away for a reasonable stretch. It was something that should have happened long ago; maybe it would have happened long ago if the degenerate criminal hadn’t been wearing a dog collar.

  The squad car arrived in less than five minutes. McGowan was bundled into the back. Rose got in beside him, letting Eddie ride up in front. As she went to close the door, she looked up at Carlyle, still standing on the pavement. ‘Do you wanna come too?’

  ‘Nah.’ Carlyle shook his head. ‘I’ve got stuff to do. Let’s talk in the morning.’

  ‘Okay.’ Rose nodded.

  He gave her a thumbs-up. ‘Well done!’

  ‘Thanks.’

  Smiling, he slammed the door shut and watched them pull out into the light traffic on Charterhouse Street. Then he started out on the short walk home.

  Christian Holyrod watched Abigail Slater pull the Durex Pleasuremax out of its packet and licked his lips. ‘I didn’t think you lot used condoms.’ A sly smile spread across his face. ‘Whatever would the Catholic Legal Network say?’

  ‘Me?’ Slater tossed the wrapper onto the carpet and flicked an imaginary piece of fluff from her puce-coloured Stella McCartney bra. ‘I’m not a Catholic.’ Glancing down at his erect, glistening member, she smiled lasciviously. ‘I’ll use anything if it gives me pleasure.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘The CLN? It’s just a career thing.’

  ‘Ah.’ Holyrod knew all about the things one had to do to climb the greasy pole.

  ‘I only got into it through a boyfriend. He was really old-school. No penetrative sex before marriage, and all that.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes.’ Slater ran a cool hand along the length of his penis, causing Holyrod to gasp. ‘He liked me to give him hand relief dressed as a traffic warden.’ She giggled at the memory of it.

  ‘How very unimaginative of him.’

  ‘He had a thing about wardens . . . meters too.’

  ‘Meters?’

  ‘I know. We never did get to the bottom of it, but he liked to jerk off over them,’ Slater explained. ‘He regularly left his seed over the parking meters of Highgate.’

  ‘Urgh.’ Finding it hard to breathe and talk at the same time, Holyrod let out a small grunt of approval as he watched Slater unroll the Pleasuremax with her tongue. His admiration for this woman was reaching new heights. He hadn’t known sex as good as this since his university days. Idly, he wondered how much a divorce might cost. With his cock poised to explode, however, his brain simply couldn’t handle anything as prosaic as maths.

  ‘Lie down.’ Pushing him backwards onto the bed, she caressed his balls before taking him in her mouth, slipping the condom on to him as she did so.

  ‘God!’ he cried, ‘I’m going to—’

  ‘Not so fast!’ Lifting her head, Slater gave the tip of his penis an expert flick with the index finger of her left hand. Instantly there was a slight relaxation in his groin as he backed away from the point of no return.

  ‘Better than Viagra,’ she laughed, crawling up the bed on all fours and kissing him deeply on the mouth. Given where Abigail’s tongue had just been, Holyrod was less than keen but, pinned to the sheets, he was powerless to resist. Sitting up, she straddled his waist. Pulling her panties aside, she eased him inside her and started moving, slowly, up and down his cock. ‘Now,’ she said, waving an admonishing finger at him, ‘you take your time.’

  I’ll try, thought Holyrod, gritting his teeth. Closing his eyes, he tried to focus his mind on something – English footballers, British prime ministers, his wife – that would stop him from prematurely shooting his load. It was no good. ‘Argh.’

  ‘Steady,’ Abigail whispered, the amusement in her voice obvious, as she slowed the grinding of her hips almost to a stop.

  ‘I can’t . . .’

  Holyrod’s complaint was drowned out by the opening bars of Coldplay’s ‘God Put a Smile on your Face’. Without dismounting, Abigail reached over and pulled an iPhone from the Hermès Birkin Black Palladium at the side of the bed. Taking the call, she stuck the phone to her ear. ‘Yes?’ Grinning, she gave a firm thrust that made his knees buckle. ‘What is it?’ Holyrod tried to thrust back but she simply shifted her weight so that he couldn’t establish any momentum. Listening to someone on the other end of the phone, she responded: ‘Yes. Say nothing – nothing at all. I do the talking, remember? I’ll be right there.’ Ending the call, she tossed the phone back into the bag.

  ‘Problem?’ Holyrod croaked.

  ‘Isn’t it always?’ Pushing herself half off him, she grabbed the shaft of his cock with her left hand and finished him off with a couple of swift tugs.

  ‘Thanks.’ Overcome with gratitude, he tried to pull her towards him, but she slid away, off the bed.

  ‘At least you got what you wanted,’ Slater said drily, already halfway to the bathroom. ‘You’ll have to sort me out later.’

  ‘It will be my pleasure,’ Holyrod grinned, stripping off the used condom and dropping it on to the bedside table.

  With a theatrical sigh, Alice tossed her copy of Bleak House onto the duvet. ‘I don’t want to bloody talk about it!’ Reaching across to the iPod dock on the bedside table, she steadily turned up the volume on The Clash’s ‘I Fought The Law’ until Joe Strummer’s vocals filled the room.

  ‘Well,’ said Carlyle, turning it down again, ‘I do.’ He retreated to the end of the bed and sat down. ‘Grandma wasn’t very happy – and neither is your mother, for that matter.’

  Folding her arms, she gave him a hard stare. Wearing one of her mother’s old grey Gap T-shirts, with her hair pulled back, she looked frighteningly mature. ‘Tell me about it.’

  ‘We have to sort this out,’ said Carlyle gently.

  ‘It’s only a bit of dope,’ Alice complained. ‘No big deal.’

  ‘I don’t suppose you’re going to tell me who you got it from?’

  She shook her head. ‘No.’

  ‘I will find out.’

  She looked at him defiantly. ‘Give it your best shot, copper.’

  Despite everything, he burst out laughing. He wanted to grab her and have a play fight, tickling her under the arms like they did when she was a kid. But as he had to keep reminding himself, she wasn’t a kid any more.

  ‘Anyway,’ she grinned, happy that the tension had been broken, ‘it’s not like there’s just o
ne guy.’

  Fucking great, Carlyle thought.

  ‘And I’ve kept my side of the deal.’

  Carlyle frowned. ‘What deal?’

  ‘I’m doing well at school.’

  Feeling completely powerless, he gazed at the ceiling. ‘Well, look,’ he said finally, ‘all I can tell you is that you’re a bit young for this kind of thing. And . . .’ Alice began to protest, but he held up a hand. ‘And, whatever your grades, there is the issue of school. If Myers thinks you are smoking dope, they could kick you out.’

  ‘There are plenty of other schools.’

  Carlyle gritted his teeth. After all the time and effort, not to mention money, that they’d thrown in over the years, first to get her in and then to keep her there, his daughter’s laissez faire attitude was totally soul-destroying. ‘Look,’ he told her, ‘if you get into a problem at City, I will track down every little dope-dealing scumbag and I will break their legs.’

  ‘Dad!’

  ‘If you get kicked out, your card will be well and truly marked. Other schools will have the same issues. If you get on a downward slope, it’s that much harder to get back on track.’

  Alice frowned. ‘Back on what track?’

  ‘Back on the not-fucking-things-up track,’ he said, frustrated at his inability to put together an argument that sounded convincing, even to himself. ‘So that you don’t end up a dickhead loser.’

  Alice smiled malevolently. ‘Are you going to use that line in your next talk at the school?’

  Despite himself, Carlyle let out a small laugh. ‘Maybe. What do you think? Would it go down well?’

  Alice sniggered. ‘I’m sure it could only add to the legend.’

  ‘What legend?’

  ‘My dad – the drug-using cop with borderline Tourette’s.’

  ‘Ha bloody ha.’

  ‘See what I mean?’ Reaching over, she gave him a peck on the cheek. ‘Time for me to go to sleep. I’ve got school in the morning, remember?’

  ‘Sure.’ Carlyle got to his feet, stifling a yawn as he did so.

  ‘Tell Mum not to worry, it’ll be okay. You’ve just got to remember you can’t tell me what to do all the time.’

  ‘But—’

  This time, it was she who cut him off with a sharp wave of the hand. ‘After all, I’m only doing what you did, when you were at school.’

  Christ, thought Carlyle sadly, me and my big fucking mouth. John Carlyle, Idiot Parent of the Year. ‘I was a lot older then.’

  ‘Not much.’

  ‘Relatively speaking.’

  ‘It’s different now, everybody does it.’

  ‘No.’ He shook his head. ‘No, they don’t.’

  ‘Well, I am,’ she said, looking him straight in the eye. ‘And you’re going to have to trust me to be sensible about it.’

  Like I have an alternative, Carlyle thought unhappily. ‘Okay,’ he said, stepping forward and kissing her on the forehead. ‘I’ll trust you.’

  ‘Thanks, Dad.’

  She sounded so young, Carlyle had to turn away quickly for fear of tearing up. He moved quickly to the door.

  ‘And I never got kicked out of school.’

  ‘Neither will I.’

  ‘Fine,’ he said wearily. ‘We’ll see how it goes.’

  THIRTY-NINE

  Abigail Slater took a mouthful of coffee, eyeing Rose Scripps suspiciously as she did so. ‘Where is Inspector Carlyle?’

  Rose returned the stare with interest. Female defence lawyers were not something you came across very often working in CEOP, certainly not one dressed like this. In a skirt that barely got halfway to her knees and a silk blouse with the top four buttons undone, Slater looked less like a brief and more like a high-class escort. Were you on a hot date, Rose wondered, or is that your normal style? When McGowan had made the call, it was disappointing that Slater had picked it up. Even more disappointingly, she had made it over to the station – albeit looking like a tramp – in barely twenty minutes, during which time McGowan had remained resolutely mute. Together, they made quite a pair. ‘He is not here,’ she said finally. ‘This is my arrest.’

  ‘What exactly is your relationship with the inspector?’ Slater asked, placing the paper cup carefully on the table.

  Taking a deep breath, Rose told herself that she was not going to take any nonsense from this one. ‘The inspector and I have worked together on several occasions,’ she said coolly, ‘where there has proved to be an overlap in our investigations.’

  Sitting next to the lawyer, McGowan started to say something. Slater cut him off. ‘I’ve told you, Father,’ she said sharply, ‘leave the talking to me. We’ll have you back in your bed in no time.’ She smiled patronizingly at Rose. ‘You understand that the inspector, along with his sergeant, is under investigation regarding a brutal and unprovoked assault on my client.’ She placed a comforting hand on McGowan’s shoulder as if to ease the priest’s pain at being reminded of such a sordid affair.

  ‘Oh yes, I understand that there are various unsubstantiated allegations that have been made against the two officers, by a suspect who has consistently refused to assist the police in their enquiries,’ Rose gestured towards McGowan, who studiously avoided any eye-contact, ‘and who, earlier this evening, was caught paying a minor for sexual services.’

  ‘That was entrapment,’ Slater snapped, ‘and you know it.’ Getting to her feet, she placed the lid on her coffee and hoisted her bag onto her shoulder. ‘I will be upstairs. I expect the paperwork to be processed within thirty minutes, so that I can escort my client home. Rest assured, I will be speaking to your superior officer in the morning.’

  Tired and hungry, Rose fought to contain her anger. Then the thought popped into her head that Carlyle might have done better to smack the lawyer, rather than the priest, and she couldn’t help but smile.

  ‘What’s so funny?’ Slater asked immediately.

  ‘Nothing.’ Rose cleared her throat. ‘Nothing at all.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘You can wait in reception if you wish,’ Rose said, her eyes twinkling with mischief, ‘but your client will not be released tonight.’ She gestured at the clock on the wall behind Slater’s head. ‘My shift finished almost an hour ago.’ Now it was her turn to grin maliciously. ‘You may have heard that the Federation is asking all officers to restrict their overtime in protest at the proposed job cuts.’

  Slater shot her an angry look.

  ‘Father McGowan,’ Rose continued, ‘will have to wait until the morning to be charged.’ Getting to her feet, Rose nodded at the uniform standing by the door. ‘Take him to the cells, please.’

  With a look of weary resignation, McGowan got to his feet.

  Slater grabbed Rose by the arm. ‘You can’t do this!’ she hissed.

  ‘Take your hand off me,’ Rose said quietly, ‘or you will be the one facing the assault charge. And this time there will be witnesses.’

  Helen looked up from her copy of The Times as Carlyle slipped under the duvet. ‘How did you get on?’

  ‘Fine,’ Carlyle said glumly. ‘She told me that I had to mind my own business and that we had to trust her.’

  ‘And?’ Helen dropped the newspaper onto the bedside table and took off her reading glasses.

  ‘And . . . nothing.’ Carlyle switched off the light on his side of the bed and pulled the duvet under his chin. ‘I guess we have to trust her. I think she understands the point about not getting into more trouble at school, but we have to play it cool. What else can we do? We obviously can’t micro-manage what she does; she’s already proved that.’

  ‘So we give up?’

  ‘No, of course not. We just need to help her through this phase. She went into it early, so hopefully she’ll come out of it early too.’

  ‘Maybe,’ said Helen, unconvinced.

  Pulling her towards him, Carlyle gave her a firm hug. ‘Look,’ he said, kissing her on the nose, ‘we’ve got a big couple of days coming up. Let’s get through
those and then we can take stock.’

  ‘Okay,’ she said unhappily.

  He reached over and turned off Helen’s light, leaving them in the orange-grey semi-darkness of the city that seeped in through the bedroom window. ‘At least she didn’t ask for her stash back.’

  ‘That’s just as well,’ said Helen, squirming away from him as she fought to get comfortable. ‘Mum took it back to Brighton with her.’

  Sitting on the floor in his Calvin Klein trunks, Christian Holyrod had worked his way through the best part of a bottle of Vega Sicilia Valbuena by the time Abigail Slater reappeared. Even in his somewhat intoxicated state, he could see that she was less than pleased. ‘What happened?’ he asked, trying not to sound too drunk.

  Kicking off her shoes, Slater dropped her bag on the carpet and slipped out of her jacket. ‘Some fucking CEOP bitch refused to release McGowan.’

  ‘Huh?’

  Grabbing his wine glass, Slater took a large mouthful before demanding a refill. Once the last of the wine was gone, she began pacing the room, explaining the detail of her unsuccessful trip to Holborn police station as she did so.

  ‘I see.’ Holyrod forced himself to try and sound sympathetic but Slater had started unbuttoning her blouse and it was impossible to concentrate.

  ‘You have to sort these people out!’ she said angrily.

  ‘Mm,’ he replied, sticking a hand inside his Calvins.