by William Avon
‘Thank you, Sir. I was just trying to do my job to the best of my ability.’
‘Yes.’ Osborne frowned. ‘However…’
Here it comes, thought Melanie.
‘However, there has been an enquiry from one of the parties whose property was found in the stash. It seems that a particular item was not amongst the rest of the goods recovered.’
‘What was that, Sir?’
Osborne consulted his screen again. ‘A small black lacquer box inlaid with a dragon design in mother of pearl and ivory. Apparently it is quite unique.’
More than you can imagine, thought Melanie, but she kept her face expressionless. ‘I’m afraid I can’t be responsible for every item the thief may or may not have taken, Sir, or what they may have done with it subsequently.’
‘I understand that, but as everything else has been accounted for I have to ask is it possible this box got accidentally separated from the rest of the items when you first came across it? You were unwell, I understand.’
At Miss Newcombe’s suggestion Melanie had pretended she had had a bout of pneumonia brought on by her outdoor investigative activity to cover her week’s absence in the alternate England. This also explained the delay between her noting suspicious activities about the spot in Hoakham Woods where Amber’s stash was hidden and reporting it officially which had led to its discovery. Miss Newcombe had even supplied her with a false medical certificate. It was not a great alibi but she could hardly tell anybody the unbelievable truth.
Melanie said: ‘As I stated in my report, Sir, I became ill shortly after finding the goods in question. It was confusing and for a time I cannot accurately relate my movements, but I’m no thief.’
‘I was not accusing you of any such thing!’ Osborne said quickly.
‘Even so, Sir, we both know that’s the implication. Well I promise you that I do not have this box, nor have I profited from its disposal. You can search my home and check my bank account if you want.’
‘There’ll be no need for that, Kingston,’ Osborne assured her. ‘As the circumstances were a little unusual I wanted to be satisfied about the facts that’s all.’
By now Melanie was beginning to understand Miss Newcombe’s caution. The owners of the puzzle box clearly had some influence and connections in high places. They had learned of the odd delay between her finding the stash and reporting it and suspected she might have activated the box, which was more or less the truth. A man would not be drawn to the box or use a phallus but a woman could so she was the obvious suspect. They would not imagine that the thief had also been a woman, which had complicated events.
‘May I ask if the owners of the box have made any official accusation against me, Sir?’
‘No, not at all. It was just that as everything else they lost was recovered they were simply hoping there was a chance it would still turn up.’
She should have asked Amber to remove all the other items in her stash that came from the same place, eliminating any connection with the box. Too late for that now.
‘Then if that’s all, Sir, I’d like to return to duty.’
Osborne looked at her intently. ‘Very well. You have an excellent record, Kingston. The force needs officers with initiative like you. Keep up the good work.’
‘Thank you, Sir.’
As she rose he added, because he was perceptive enough to realize that this was not quite the while story: ‘Are you sure there’s nothing else you wish to tell me?’
‘No, Sir. Not right now. Perhaps… another time.’
Melanie drove back to her station and resumed her shift. She went about it by rote while turning over events in her mind. The owners of the box, whoever they were, had evidently been applying pressure through official channels to see if they could goad her into handing it back. And a CC would never have become involved in such a trivial incident unless the pressure had come from very high up.
She was still turning this matter over in her mind when she got back to her flat that evening. Mechanically she hung up her coat in the tiny hallway, picked up the post from the mat, went into the kitchen and put on the kettle, through to the bathroom to start filling the bath, then into to her bedroom. It was only when she had stripped her top clothes off and went to hang them up that she paused.
The clothes hanging in her wardrobe were packed together more tightly and more to one side than she usually left them. She looked round the room, trying to recall the exact state she had left it in that morning. The bottom drawer of the dressing table was slightly extended when she thought they had all been flush. A corner of the duvet she had left folded across the foot of the bed was turned in when, she was almost sure, she had left it flat.
Still in her bra and panties she prowled round the flat looking intently at every movable object. Had the books on the shelf been tipped that way? The clutter of detergent packs and cleaning fluid bottles in the cupboard under the sink did not quite seem right. There was no obvious sign of forced entry. The front door had been locked as she had left it and the alarm was on. But the feeling was growing in her that during the day somebody had entered her flat, carefully searched it and then left again.
Suddenly Melanie shivered, feeling defiled in a way that she never had before during all the forced sex she had endured in the other England. Her private property and space had been violated. Yet this was no ordinary break in. It must be something to do with the owners of the puzzle box. As a black woman PC in a largely white area she wouldn’t be hard to trace. Had they engineered her visit to headquarters deliberately to get her out of the way for a few hours? In any case they had taken advantage of her absence to search, or have somebody else search, her flat in case she had the box hidden away.
It was becoming apparent that this thing was bigger than her or Amber or Sue’s wonderful, perverted adventure. And this might not be the end of it. Should she tell her station about this? The trouble was there was no hard evidence. People this careful would certainly not have left any fingerprints behind. But she had better take some precautions in case they called again.
Melanie was alert for anything out of the ordinary the next day at work, but her shift went normally. She returned home apprehensively but the flat was secure and the tell-tale stands of hair she had left lightly gummed across certain doors and drawers had not been disturbed. Perhaps they had decided she didn’t have the box after all.
She was woken by a hand pressing a broad strip of household repair tape over her mouth. As she tried to jerk upright other strong gloved hands clasped her wrists and forced them back down onto the bed above her head. She kicked out with her legs, throwing the duvet off her, but more big hands caught hold of her flailing ankles and pulled them wide, leaving her squirming and thrashing about between them, her shrieks of fear and rage muffled by her taped lips.
A torch snapped on shining into her eyes. By its backlight she saw three large men looming over her, their heads covered in balaclavas so only their mouths and the slits of their eyes showed. Two of the men stood by the sides of the bed bending over and holding a wrist and ankle apiece, while the third man, who was holding the torch, knelt between her spread thighs. He raised something up into the torch beam before her face so she could see it clearly. It was a large combat knife. Melanie froze, her eyes locked onto the gleaming blade.
‘That’s better,’ the man grated softly. ‘Now what follows is a little demonstration to prove that we’re serious, so, when I ask you the question I’m going to ask in a minute, you won’t muck us about or pretend you don’t know, you’ll just tell us what we want to know. Do you understand?’
Melanie nodded dumbly.
The man reached out for the shoulder straps of her camisole top and cut them cleanly through. Then he slipped the tip of the knife under the hem of the camisole over her navel and sliced upwards. The fabric parted easily with a soft whis
pering swish. He parted the shredded halves of the vest to expose her full brown breasts with their plump chocolate dark nipples.
‘Nice, very nice,’ he observed, running the tip of the knife about the rims of the dusky cones, and then scraping the side of the blade across their peaks. Despite her terror she could not stop her nipples swelling in response, pressing up against the cold steel.
‘Even nicer,’ he said.
Reversing the knife he slid it under the waistband of her shorts and sliced downward, cutting them through to the crotch. Grasping the two sides he wrenched them apart, exposing her thick delta of glossy black curls which were trimmed back to expose her pouting labial mouth.
‘Pretty,’ he commented. Resting the torch on her smooth, palpitating stomach he pinched a tuft of black curls up between thumb and forefinger and cut it off. Transferring it to a trouser pocket he said simply: ‘Souvenir.’ He ran the knife tip over the nub of her clitoris and then down across trembling cleft. ‘This is real prime cut pussy meat,’ he said. ‘I’d really hate to scratch it, but I will if you don’t tell me what I want to know.’ And with a steady hand he slid the blade tip into the mouth of her vulva, holding it upright and not cutting but carefully separating her labia.
Melanie frozen in terror. She knew the blade’s insertion was just a terrible threat and a warning of what might happen if she did not cooperate, nevertheless the thought of what one thrust could do to her most delicate flesh made her sick and she hated the man with a passion. And yet at the same time her special nature that responded to the puzzle boxes’ call could not be denied. She had not had sex since her return from Shaftwell and, despite herself, she was becoming aroused. This was the legacy her adventure had bestowed upon her: the ability to respond without shame and to embrace humiliation. She felt a surge of hot slickness flood out between her lips and the hard metal between them, driven by deeper instincts even than the stomach churning fear that gripped her. Her nipples were straining and her clitoris was rising from its hood. Her labia were filling with blood and swelling, opening up her cunt about the blade as though in grotesque welcome. Her thighs which had been straining to close now spread wider in acceptance of the inevitable. This was her body’s way of surviving, bartering pleasure for pain. At that moment it was her only weapon.
The man holding the knife swore as her juices began to flow about it, dripping onto the bed sheet and scenting the air, while the gaze of the two men holding down her became fixed on her pussy. They muttered under their breath: ‘Bloody hell,’ and: ‘The fucking bitch is getting hot!’
‘What the hell are you?’ the knife man asked. Melanie could hardly tell him. Curiously, as if trying an experiment, he reversed the knife and, holding it about its blunt edge, slid its sculpted grip handle inside her wet and eager passage.
Melanie’s sheath squeezed down upon the handle, accepting its intrusion. The knife man began to work the shaft back and forth and Melanie responded, rising to its demand to be satisfied, inanimate object though it was. It was as if she was a pack girl again serving guests and this had been the foreplay. Her duty was not to question but to give pleasure with her whole body. Helplessly fascinated by her response her assailants watched as her passion mounted, feeling her straining against their grasp not to escape but to use it to feed her arousal, focussing all her attention inward to the ball of liquid heat in her loins that was swelling to bursting point. With a stifled moan and shudder, her breasts heaving and her hips bucking, she orgasmed, spraying her juices around the haft that plugged her vagina.
The man had let go of the knife and he and his companions watched in fascination as the blade, grotesquely jutting out of her sex lips as though she had just given birth to it, twitched and jerked while the spasms passed through her sheath until finally she lay still and unresisting, beads of fine dew sparkling on her brown flesh. Only then did the knife man carefully withdraw the weapon and examine the glistening film deposited over its handle, feeling the heat she had filled it with.
‘That is the damnedest thing I’ve ever seen,’ he exclaimed in genuine admiration. ‘I’d like to get to know you better, girl, but we’ve got to get back to business.’
He moved back up until he was face to face with Melanie and pressed the knife tip to her still hot and hard left nipple. Her eyes which had closed in post orgasmic bliss now flickered back open and focussed reluctantly upon him. ‘Apparently you have a small black box with a dragon marked on it somewhere in your possession,’ he said. ‘If it’s in this flat you’re going to tell me where it’s hidden. If it’s outside you’re going to lead us to it. Now I’m going to peel this tape back and you are not going to make any noise except to give the answer. Right, now…’
He pealed back the tape. ‘A small brown suitcase under the bed,’ Melanie said in one breath.
He patted the tape back into place. ‘There now, that wasn’t so hard, was it?’
He got down onto his knees, reached under the bed and pulled out the case. ‘This wasn’t here last time…’ he muttered. He set it down on the end of the bed, snapped open its catches and flipped up the lid.
There were multiple bangs and a brilliant flash of light as a dusty cloud erupted from the case right into the man’s face. He dropped his torch and staggered backward, thudding against the wall, coughing and clawing at his eyes.
As the men holding Melanie flinched away in surprise their grip on her loosened for a moment. She wrenched her right hand free, rammed it between the bedhead and mattress and pulled out the spring-loaded baton she had hidden there. In one swinging motion she snapped it open and smashed it across the arm of the second man who held her down. She heard a shriek as a bone cracked and her left arm and leg were suddenly free. She slashed the baton back at the first man, catching him across the jaw. There was another crack and a choking gasp and then there were no hands holding her.
Melanie rolled off the bed, the remains of her shorts and camisole fluttering from her, and charged at the three dazed and confused men, swinging the baton furiously across their arms, backs and legs. They broke and ran, piling out of the bedroom door and along the corridor to her front door with Melanie, stark naked and furious, at their heels waving her baton. Tearing it open they tumbled out onto the landing. Melanie charged out after them, ripping the tape from her mouth as she went. They half fell down the stairs into the entrance hall, flung open the front door and raced away into the night.
Melanie stood on the front step and shouted after them: ‘And don’t bloody come back or I’ll arrest you!’
She closed the front door and turned about only to see Mr Weaver, who lived in the ground floor flat, peering nervously round his door. He goggled at her naked body.
‘Sorry about that,’ she said. ‘Those doorstep salesmen really don’t take no for an answer, do they?’
Nonchalantly shouldering her baton she climbed the stairs back to her flat and shut the door behind her. Then she slumped down with her back to the wall and shook and cried for five solid minutes.
This time Melanie had to report the intrusion. It was after all a serious armed assault and witnesses had seen the men running away. Inside an hour there were three police cars parked out front and a CID and a forensic team at work in her flat. When it was one of their own involved in an incident like this the force responded fast. She debated not mentioning what the men had been after but decided there was no point. The whole thing was clearly too sophisticated for a regular burglary or even a failed sexual assault. She explained that she thought an attempt had been made to break in the previous day and so had taken precautions just in case.
Melanie demonstrated the booby trap in the suitcase. It was wonderful what you could do with some sticky tape, a couple of wire coat-hangers, a bungee cord, three party balloon pepper bombs, some drawing pins and an old camera set on flash. In between making her statement and having a medical examination, Melanie considered the i
mplications of this latest attempt to recover the box.
Since she was in the police force its owners knew they had to tread carefully and had decided to try more subtle persuasion first, but they had hired thugs ready to use more direct means if that failed. Perhaps they thought after they had alerted her she might do something hasty. In either case they hadn’t wasted much time, which was an indication of how desperate they were to get the box back. But who were “they” and what did they want it for apart from interdimensional sex tourism?
Melanie had been so overwhelmed by the consequences of her own transition into a state of beguiling slavery that she had not considered the wider implications. Now, for the first time, she thought seriously about what a puzzle box and a phallus could do. Well, if it was used cleverly, she supposed it could get somebody plus a certain amount of baggage in and out of more or less any reasonably sized closed space. Such as a bank vault, for instance… or an art gallery… or a government office. Oh God, the possibilities were amazing!
Now she began to understand the driving motivation of the box’s owners. Once they suspected she had used a phallus to travel somewhere and come back, explaining the gap between her finding Amber’s stash and reporting it, they would keep on after her. They could not imagine she had voluntarily given up something as wonderful as a phallus box. If they had recovered it from her as they expected they must have reasoned she would keep quiet from guilt and fear. She could hardly accuse them of stealing an object she had denied possessing.
But now the attempt had failed? Their hope must be that she would still keep the box and its secrets to herself and not tell her superiors about it. In that they would be right, but not for the reasons they might imagine. It was such an impossible, not to say embarrassing, concept that without proof nobody would believe it, and right now she had none. That must be one reason why the existence of such boxes (and how many were there in total?) was not public knowledge.