Blood Red Roses

by S. J. Coles

  He, whoever he was, climbed out of the car, and Rick followed in a daze.

  “Get inside,” the man muttered, opening a narrow door next to the entrance of the takeaway.

  “Tell me what’s going on.”

  “Get in, ya prick.”

  “Kim—”

  “Get in.”

  Rick stared at his face then at the gun tucked in the waistband of his ripped jeans and drifted through the door and up some creaking stairs. Kim chivvied him all the way to the top floor where he unlocked a door and pushed Rick inside.

  The tiny flat Rick found himself in was cluttered with the accumulation of years and a functional, non-sentimental taste. The furniture was mismatched and worn. There were papers and books everywhere. The faded wallpaper was stained and peeling in places. A table at the end of the sofa was crammed with wooden incense holders and ceramic oil burners, dusty with the ash of burned-out sticks. The sharp-sweet smell of sandalwood was heavy in the air.

  A huge pin-board dominated the largest wall. Rick’s blood froze, one drop at a time. Every inch of it was plastered with printouts, pictures, scribbled notes and newspaper articles… And at least a third of them related to him. Some, including his Grindr profile picture, he recognised as his own information from social media. Others were photographs of him walking to work or leaving his flat in Morden or copies of his old CVs and employment records. There were several pictures of him and Ella buying his suit for the New Year’s Eve party.

  The rest of the photographs were of the Swansons, Harry Gerrard-Hanson and the unfortunate, unremarkable Edgar Ropeman.

  “What the fuck…?”

  Kim pushed past him to a kitchen unit that was crowded with unwashed dishes and a large fruit bowl filled with oranges and limes. Discarded peels, littering the sink and dirty glasses containing dried slices of the fruit, added a note of citrusy sharpness to the air. Kim tapped a code into a safe that sat on the counter, half-buried in drifts of paper, finance books and bulging ring-binder folders, opened the door and shoved his gun inside then slammed the door.

  “Kim—”

  “You’re a smart lad, Rick,” the man cut him off. “How’s about you stop calling me that?”

  Again, his voice was all wrong. A Cockney accent so strong that it jarred Rick’s nerves sharpened every word.

  “That’s not your name, is it?”

  The blue eyes when they hit Rick’s were hard. Rick fought to stay where he was when every instinct was clamouring at him to either shake the man until he returned to himself or turn and run, run before anything else could fall apart. In the end, all he was able to do was stammer, “I d-don’t understand.”

  Kim—or the man who he had thought was Kim—let out a shuddering breath. His shoulders slumped and he lowered himself onto the arm of the threadbare sofa. He glared at the floor.

  “What a fucking mess.”

  “Explain.” Rick forced the word out.

  The man met his eye then dropped his gaze again. “For the record…this wasn’t supposed to happen.”

  “What wasn’t supposed to happen?”

  “Look… Just sit your arse down for a sec, will ya?”

  “Tell me, Kim…or whoever you are. Tell me what the hell all this means.”

  Kim chewed on his thumbnail for a moment then stood. He took a step towards Rick, his hands raised, then appeared to re-think it and shoved them into his pockets. “My real name is Cooper. Jack Cooper.”

  “Jack Cooper?” Rick repeated in a low voice.

  “Yes.”

  “So who’s ‘Kim’?”

  Kim—well, Cooper—looked uncomfortable then shrugged. “Some closeted guys find a girl’s name easier to get on board with.”

  “I’m not closeted—”

  “I know that now. But in my defence, on paper you were a classic closet-case, mate.”

  “You what?"

  Cooper raised his eyebrows. "On and off Grindr. Never ‘In a Relationship’ or even ‘It's Complicated’ on Facebook. Lived with your family your whole life. Sorry, mate. Can’t blame a guy for assuming."

  “Step back. How do you know all that? Who the hell are you and what the fuck are you talking about?”

  “I’m a PI, okay?” Cooper’s jaw was set but the eyes were pained. They went right through Rick, even though the person looking out of them was a stranger.

  “You’re…what?”

  “A PI. Private investigator.”

  “I know what the fuck it stands for,” Rick growled. “What the fuck does it mean?”

  Cooper set his jaw and wiped his palms on his jeans. “It means I was hired to investigate S&G, Edgar Ropeman’s resignation…and you.”

  Rick took a step closer and drew himself to his full height, glowering down at him. “You better start spelling this out this second or—”

  “Oye.” Cooper glared. “I just saved your life, you ungrateful prick.”

  “Who the fuck are you?”

  “Who the fuck are you?” Cooper returned, stabbing him in the chest with a finger. “And what the fuck are you doing sneaking into Cecily Swanson’s house at arse o’clock in the fucking morning?”

  It took Rick a long time to find his voice. “You’re jealous?”

  “No,” Cooper snapped. “No, don’t turn this on me. What the hell were you doing there?”

  “I’m not answering any of your questions until you answer mine.”

  Cooper’s face flushed and his jaw worked. He ran his hands through his hair, mussing it even more, and Rick spotted tears glittering in his eyes before he turned his back on him.

  “Fine. Fucking fine. Since it’s all gone to shit anyway.” He took a deep breath and let it out slowly, but if anything his lithe frame only seemed to tense further. “Edgar Ropeman hired me to dig dirt on S&G. He was building a case for wrongful dismissal. But the idiot didn’t have the first fucking clue what he was stirring up. And I warned him.” He looked over his shoulder. “Fuck knows, I warned him. Any idiot knows the bigger the money, the bigger the blowback.” He turned back to the board. “But no, the self-righteous arsehole had to have answers. Closure. Bollocks. He wanted money. It’s always about money.”

  “So where does sucking my cock fit into all this?” The bitterness in Rick’s tone was sharp even to his own ears.

  Cooper finally faced him with a glare. “You want the truth? Fucking let me talk then, yeah?”

  Rick felt like his chest was about to burst if his brain didn’t implode first. He took a careful breath and folded his arms, expectant, clamping his jaw shut even though inside he was seething.

  Cooper watched his eyes for a long time then glanced away. “The Swansons forced Ropeman to quit. You probably guessed that much. What you don’t know is how they did it. They dug into his past and found some dirt on his folks. They threatened to go public if he didn’t go quietly. He thought it was because he’d found something out he shouldn’t, something from the archives. But that was only part of the reason they got rid of him. The main reason was”—Cooper raised his gaze—“you.”

  Rick stared. The words coming out of this man’s mouth—this man who he’d thought he’d known…thought he’d loved—refused to make sense. Rick blinked, his throat closing. He fought it open again to ask, “Why?”

  “You really don’t know?”

  Rick shook his head.

  “Shit,” Cooper said, rubbing his eyes. “Fucking hell, Rick. What are you doing to me?”

  “I was going to ask you the same question.”

  Cooper opened his eyes, red now, and gave him a grim look. “It wasn’t supposed to happen this way. I want you to know that.”

  “Get on with it.”

  Cooper’s face hardened. “Cecily and Lloyd Swanson have been skimming from S&G for years. They’ve syphoned off close to one hundred million quid between them. This merger with EBR and her marriage not only brings that total up another cool fifty mil but also provides cover for everything else they’ve set in motion.”
/>
  “Like what?”

  “Like tanking their company,” Cooper went on, gesturing at the half of the board plastered with the Swansons’ photographs. “Affairs. Lawsuits. Blackmail. Murder. It was all building to tonight. After Cecily Swanson killed you—in self-defence, as she would claim—there would be no coming back. S&G would be shanghaied into insolvency, neat as you please. Then there would be nothing to stop Cess and Daddy from doing a runner with the hoarded cash, setting up camp somewhere sunny with new names and new identities—and with no one the wiser.”

  “They…they killed Ropeman? And Gerrard-Hanson?”

  “Not themselves,” Cooper made a derisive noise. “But they made it happen.”

  “There is no way… How could they ever hope to get away with this?”

  “Well, that’s where you come in,” Cooper said, staring hard at the board, though Rick had the distinct impression he was no longer seeing it.

  “Me?”

  “The evidence is all there, mate. She’s been laying the groundwork for ages.”

  “Evidence of what?”

  “That you started an affair months ago. That she engineered bringing you in to S&G so you could be close to each other. But you grew obsessive. Possessive. Dangerous. When Ropeman threatened to unbalance everything, you killed him. When Cecily went through with her marriage, you killed her husband too.”

  “This… This is insane.”

  “Sorry to break it to you, but the Swansons are all too sane.”

  Rick shook his head. “How do you know all this?”

  “After Ropeman died, his family took me on. They didn’t believe the police would get to the bottom of it all. They paid me extra to find the truth…and I did.

  “Tonight was supposed to clinch it. The police are looking at you, just like Cecily Swanson planned. All she had to do was publicly display her support then privately reel you in. She would have said you went to her house tonight to kill her, that you'd been driven into a murderous rage, most likely, by her ending your affair. By some miracle, she got the gun and turned it on you instead. Then boom.” He clicked his fingers. “Job done. And with you dead, there would be no one to question it.”

  “My alibi…with the wine merchant…”

  “The owner has been in the Swansons’ pocket for years. They’ve used her for misdirects and blackmail too many times to count.”

  “How are they not in prison already?”

  Cooper shrugged. “They have money. It’s tantamount to being bulletproof.”

  “How were you there tonight?” Rick asked quietly.

  “I’ve been staking the place out, waiting for her to make her move.”

  “And you didn’t think to tell me any of this?”

  “I didn’t bloody well think you’d be dumb enough to go to her house in the middle of the night after everything that’s happened.”

  “But when they check my phone records, they’ll see she called me.”

  “So she made a call. That doesn’t prove anything.”

  Rick thought of the bored tone of her voicemail. Anyone who checked wouldn’t find any evidence she’d called in a panic, begging for help. His head started spinning again.

  “This can’t be real…”

  “Think about it, Rick. Didn't you ever even ask yourself why Ropeman was thrown off the balcony? The poor sod was already dead. Why chuck him into the carpark?”

  Rick blinked at him.

  “It was to make sure he was found,” Cooper went on, his expression tight, but whether it was with impatience or some other emotion, Rick couldn’t tell. “They needed to make sure you were implicated right from the get-go. They couldn’t take the risk of you getting rid of the body before the police could connect it to you.”

  “I would never—”

  “They didn’t know that. They’re not exactly the sort that think the best of people who are…not like themselves.”

  “I still can’t believe it,” Rick said, his voice thin, unfamiliar.

  “Come on, mate,” Cooper said, making a gesture that was equal parts frustrated and defeated. “Cecily just happened to be behind you in the queue for coffee that day? Took you at your word that you were as good as you said? Fell for that complete work of fiction that is your CV?” Rick blanched, but Cooper continued without pausing, “Then put you in charge of the biggest business deal the company had ever seen?”

  Rick flushed then said, “I’m more than capable of doing that job.”

  “Well, that’s clear now,” Cooper said. “But you weren’t supposed to be. You were supposed to be the clueless dreamer, the uneducated bum with just enough background to make it broadly feasible she’d hire you, but not convincing enough for anyone to believe you were anything but her bit on the side. Not realising you were gay is where it all went wrong.”

  The board swam before Rick’s eyes. Everything pinned there was making what Cooper said true. But looking at it was better than looking at the still-beautiful but now-unfamiliar person saying horrible things with the mouth of a man he’d kissed and made love to and almost…

  “This is how you knew the security codes at The Savoy,” he breathed. “How you knew so much about my job and that I didn’t really come from Greenwich. It wasn't my accent. You've been spying on me this whole time. Jogging where I jogged, sneaking looks at my phone...”

  “I prefer to call it research… And it’s kinda the job.”

  Rick closed his eyes and sank onto the edge of the cluttered coffee table. A mug crashed to the floor, but neither of them moved to pick it up.

  “Everything that happened,” Rick heard himself forcing out. “Everything between us. That was just to get close to me to find all this out?”

  Cooper was silent for so long that Rick finally looked at him. His eyes were locked on him, hot with agony. “It was supposed to be,” he forced out. “I was supposed to play a part you liked, gain your trust and get evidence that Cecily had hired you inappropriately for Ropeman’s suit. But as soon as I found your deactivated Grindr profile, I knew something was twisted about all this. But then when we…” He took a breath, steadied himself and continued. “I knew straight away you weren’t guilty of anything but trying to make a life for yourself.” He swallowed. When he continued, his voice was hoarse. “I wasn’t supposed to fall for you, you shithead.”

  Rick's chest ached. “You expect me to believe that? Are you even into men?"

  “Jesus fucking Christ. What do you think?”

  “I don't know what to think—”

  Cooper brushed his fingertips along Rick’s jaw. “You’re a fucking idiot, Rick. A gullible, trusting idiot. But I’m much, much worse.”

  Rick choked. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I couldn’t.”

  “You could,” Rick said, snatching the hand away. “If you’d been honest—”

  “I didn’t have enough. I knew you were innocent but I didn’t know what was really going on. I couldn’t risk anyone finding out before I knew the truth.”

  “So you lied to me. Even after…even after everything. Every time you were with me, you were acting a part. Lying to me. Fucking me when all the time—”

  “It wasn’t all an act,” Cooper said, the lines of his face hard. “This would all be a hell of a lot easier if it had been.”

  “For you.” Something stabbed through Rick’s chest and it took a moment to find his voice again. “All those questions about work,” he said, his grip on the other’s wrist tightening. “All those times you listened so well… Fuck, I told you everything. I let you in. I let you—”

  “I know,” Cooper cut him off, grabbing his other hand, the rigid control in his face starting to slip. “I’m a dick. Worse than a dick. I’m a heartless, mercenary arsehole. That’s the real me, Rick. I never thought—”

  “You stopped calling me after they arrested me,” Rick spoke over him. “You didn’t even reply to my texts.”

  Cooper’s face twisted. “I had to get rid of
that phone and keep my distance. Everything was coming to a head. I had to make sure I had everything in place for when Cecily made her move. If you’d called me back in time, I would have explained. I swear.”

  “None of it was real.”

  “Too much of it was real,” Cooper whispered. “That’s the whole problem.”

  “It was all a lie.”

  Cooper’s jaw tightened. “You fell for Kim Bailey. And, yeah, Kim Bailey isn’t real. But I fell for you, Rick. The real you. And now I don’t fucking know what to do with myself.”

  “I do,” Rick growled, grabbed him by the wrist and shoulder, pushing him back onto the sofa, climbing on top and kissing him.

  Chapter Nine

  When they’d made love, Kim had always moaned and panted and purred. Cooper’s noises were helpless and pleading. The sound of his voice still stoked Rick’s desire like a hot poker, but the edge of desperation, of guilt, was new.

  Cooper’s skin was hot and tasted familiar, which confused and maddened him. His face and eyes burned with need so acute that it looked like it pained him. He panted Rick’s name in his ear, his breath hot on the side of his face whilst his strong fingers dug into his arms hard enough to leave marks. He didn’t guide or encourage Rick like before, didn’t tease and push and coax him. Instead he gave himself up to him, completely submitting. He allowed Rick to pull his shirt off so roughly that it tore, then shove his jeans down to his knees. He let Rick pull him upright, bend him over the sofa arm and prepare him with nothing more than spit-lubricated fingers. Rick held back long enough to roll on a condom from the drawer Cooper wordlessly gestured to, then he grabbed the man’s hips and thrust in with one barely controlled movement.

  The cry Cooper gave was somewhere between relief and pleasure so intense it was beyond feeling. Rick set his jaw, dug his fingers into Cooper’s smooth flesh and began pounding into him, the sofa creaking and scraping along the bare boards of the wooden floor. Cooper cried out with every thrust, gripping the worn cushions with white-knuckled fingers, begging Rick to go faster, harder.