Nightmare City (32 page)

Leanne revealed another drawing which resembled ... nothing.
She explained it was someone riding the ‘Big One’. With that Henry
could appreciate where she was coming from.

‘
Ahh, yeah, great. . . Look, honey,’ he said tenderly, ‘your
Daddy needs to have the loo to himself for a moment or two, so go
and get ready for brekkie, will you?’

She sighed heavily and collected her masterpieces which she’d
scattered all over the floor. She left, closing the door behind
her.

‘
Mercy,’ Henry said. He lifted the newspaper and Kate came in
with one of her ‘faces’.

Henry closed his eyes momentarily.

‘
Don’t look at me like that,’ she warned him. ‘Are you
seriously going to try and get on this squad?’ It was the
continuation of a discussion-cum-argument they’d begun when Henry
came in from work the night before. Kate was obviously going to
pursue this to the bitter end. ‘Seems a bloody dangerous job to me.
Everyone who has anything to do with it ends up dead.’

‘
Coincidence. No connection - and an exaggeration.’

‘
But why d’you want to go on it?’ She crossed to the shower
and turned it on. ‘I thought you wanted to be a DI? Surely it’ll
put your promotion chances on the back burner?’

‘
Probably. But it’s such a good opportunity, Kate. It’s got a
cracking reputation, the work’s real interesting and very focused
... and there’s nothing set in stone that I’ll get on anyway.
They’ll have to advertise the vacancy, so other people will be able
to apply and everyone’ll go through the rigmarole of interviews.
You know I’m crap at being interviewed. My bottle goes.’

Kate unfastened her dressing gown and shrugged it off. Henry
could not keep his eyes off her as she tested the shower
temperature and adjusted the control minutely. Even after all these
years and two children, he loved the sight of her body minus
clothing. Recently she’d been on a pretty ruthless exercise and
diet regimen which had shed pounds and toned her muscles up just
enough to - well, just enough. He glanced down at his own tummy and
breathed in, slightly ashamed of himself. He was in good health,
but didn’t have the strength of character to stop eating things
which were bad for him, and go to a gym. The result was showing
around his midriff. Jenny had been right in her cheeky
observation.

Kate stood and faced him with a sad look in her eyes. She was
completely unaware of her nakedness and his position on the
loo.

‘
I don’t want you to go back on a specialised
squad.’

‘
There’s no guarantee I’ll get promoted to Inspector. I think
I should go for it. They approached me.’

‘
It’s not the Inspector thing. It’s the hours, days, weeks.
You know what it was like when you were on Regional Crime Squad. I
never knew when you were coming home next. I didn’t like it and
neither did the girls.’

‘
I work long hours now,’ he protested.

‘
Yes, but at least you come home every day and you only work
ten minutes away. It’s different. You’re not chasing all over the
country, or Europe. It feels good having you close by, even if you
work until midnight. And you virtually run that office, don’t you?’
she said, changing tack slightly. ‘Surely that’ll count towards
promotion?’

‘
Don’t bank on it. Once you get into that interview room,
everyone’s on a level playing-field.’ He paused and gave her a
pleading look. Big eyes. Fluttering lids. ‘Look, I really fancy
this job, Kate. It’s the chance of a lifetime. It’s like dead men’s
Doc Martens.’

‘
Literally,’ she commented gloomily.

‘
And as I said, I’m not guaranteed it.’

‘
Well, you know how I feel about it. We’ve only just got
everything back to normal around here and now you want to rock the
boat. . .’ She shrugged. Her small breasts quivered with the
gesture. She turned her back on him, stepped into the shower and
slid back the curtain.

So that was really her hidden agenda. It wasn’t so much the
long hours away from home, it was the temptation that went with
them.

She had a point, of course. Life at home had been incredibly
good recently, following the ‘blip’ caused by Henry’s stupidity and
rampant sexual urges almost two years ago. Kate had truly forgiven
him and for that he was extremely grateful to her. He loved Kate
like mad and didn’t want to lose her. But the guilt he carried
about betraying her was always just under the surface and now,
sitting on the bog, he realised for the first time that she too
always had something at the back of her mind.

Something called mistrust.

She was obviously worried, but did not want to spell it out.
Henry sensed that she equated specialist squad with adultery. All
those hours and weeks she’d talked about meant temptation. Away
from home. Strange places. Even stranger women, particularly the
detectives.

He understood Kate’s concerns, but was sure it would never
happen again. His libido was in check.

And he seriously wanted to get on the Organised Crime Squad.
It was right up his alley, the type of work he excelled in. Chasing
and convicting good-class criminals.

Feeling unable now to concentrate either on the
Mail
or his bodily
functions, he got off the loo and went into the bedroom to get
dressed.

Rider edged around the perimeter of the garden, aware that his
flimsy shoes were no barrier against the wet. He stayed far enough
away from the house so as not to activate the security lighting
which was fitted all the way around. He was trying to establish
which of the bedrooms they were going into before he moved in and
tried to gain entry.

The lights in a ground-floor room at the rear of the house
came on. Rider assumed it was the kitchen, but the blinds were
drawn. He could see the shadow of some movement but not enough to
tell him anything. Then the lights came on in another room and
through the patio doors Rider could clearly see into a
lounge.

A man and a woman came into view.

The man was Munrow.

Rider did not know the woman, but from the brief conversation
he had initiated with Toni Thomas, he had learned that she was a
volunteer prison visitor and her husband was working in Saudi.
Apparently she and Munrow had struck up a relationship in prison
and it had spilled into the outside world.

She obviously liked a bit of rough.

Rider settled onto his haunches in the shadow of the back
fence. Munrow and the woman - Rider could see she was good-looking
- stood side by side at the patio door and looked across the garden
in his direction, or so it seemed to him. They each held a glass
and were talking. She wore a dressing gown. Munrow was in a black
windcheater and black jeans.

From his observation point, Rider appraised him.

He looked as fit and as hard as ever.

Once again, after having chosen a course of action, Rider
wavered. In his condition, even if he hadn’t been beaten up, he’d
be no match for Munrow in a head to head. Rider had to physically
stop himself from making his way back to Jacko and saying, ‘Fuck
it, we’re going home.’

But he knew deep down in his soul that if he didn’t take
positive action now in a way which Munrow understood, he’d never be
able to shake the bastard off his back. Ever. Munrow would walk all
over him again and again. That was the sort of person he
was.

If he dealt firmly with Munrow now, it would also send a
strong message to Conroy to keep away.

The woman put her drink down and opened the patio door. She
stepped outside with only slippers on her feet. The security light
came on, illuminating the whole of the back garden. Rider hunched
further down into the shadows.

In the snow she tiptoed to the bird-table and checked to see
if there was any food on it. A moment later she was back in the
house, patio door closed, and in Munrow’s arms.

They attacked each other with a passion, kissing wildly,
necking, tearing at clothing. She didn’t have very much to remove
and within a couple of seconds her dressing gown was on the floor
and she was naked. Together they removed Munrow’s clothes and she
took obvious delight in peeling his boxer shorts off him, revealing
what Rider had always suspected. A very big penis. Which she
greedily took in her mouth as she knelt in front of him.

Munrow’s head drooped back in ecstasy.

The woman clawed her way back to her feet, heaved herself onto
Munrow by wrapping her legs around his waist and hands clasped
around his neck.

Thus engaged, Munrow walked them both out of the room, easily
holding her weight.

When they disappeared, Rider emerged from the shadows and
sprinted low to the house. He flattened himself against the wall,
gun in hand.

The security light went out. Rider moved and it came back on.
He darted to the patio door and silently pushed the handle. Yes! It
was open.

He was inside the house.

Munrow’s discarded clothing was on the floor. Rider went
through the pockets and found a single car key which he slid into
his own. He trod carefully through the lounge and emerged in the
hallway.

From upstairs the sounds of unbridled lust bounced down the
walls. She was moaning to a rhythm, Munrow was gasping a beat
behind. Oh, the din of sexual rapture, Rider thought.

He pulled a ski-mask over his head. Not because he wanted to
hide his identity from Munrow, but from her. If things went
pear-shaped in the next few minutes it would be better if she
didn’t see his face. He made his way cautiously up the steps to the
landing, where the racket of intercourse became much louder from
the bedroom second on the right.

After checking the first bedroom and finding it empty, Rider
stepped lightly to the next door, which was open. He adjusted the
ski-mask and tried to control his breathing - and the urge to
scream and run away, forget it all, become a hermit. He counted to
three and twisted into the bedroom, gun in right hand, supported by
the left.

They did not notice him enter, being far too preoccupied in
their own world of thrusting and grunting.

The couple were on the bed, facing away from Rider. The woman
was on her hands and knees, face buried into a pillow, groaning
wildly and Munrow plunged himself into her from behind with no
subtlety whatsoever. It looked like he was meting out some form of
medieval torture as he grabbed her thighs with white knuckled
fingers and jab-jab-jabbed into her. She didn’t seem to be
complaining, meeting each of his rams with a powerful reverse
thrust of her own. At the same time she was reaching backwards
between Munrow’s legs, cupping and squeezing his balls in the palm
of her hand.

Not that he was a good judge of such things, but Rider made an
educated guess that Munrow was not a zillion miles away from his
climax. Rider wondered if it would give him an even greater thrill
with a gun poked in his ear.

He decided to find out.

Two strides and he was standing right behind the heaving
Munrow whose arse flexed, tightened and relaxed each time he drove
his cock into her.

Without warning Munrow emitted a rhino-like squeal which made
Rider jump.

The reason for it was that the woman had reached further back
than Munrow’s testicles and inserted the tip of her forefinger into
his anus.

‘
Shove it in, baby,’ he hissed. She obliged. He let out a long
‘aaargh’ - somewhere around middle C - and responded by slamming
his full length into her. Rider wished he’d thought to shove the
gun up there instead of in his ear. That would have been a real
wheeze. Alas, the opportunity had passed.

Instead he sidled up to Munrow and stuck the muzzle under his
left ear and cocked the weapon with an ominous click which always
seems much louder than it really is.

In mid-forward thrust, Munrow stepped on the brakes, came to a
dead halt. He contorted his head round, eyes wide, knowing exactly
what he was feeling behind his ear.

Rider put more pressure on and said, ‘Don’t stop.’

‘
Honey, what’s wrong?’ the woman said. She looked round and
saw the hooded figure of Rider pressing a gun into her lover’s
neck. She did what any normal person would have done: screamed and
tried to wriggle free.

With his left hand, Rider grabbed the back of her neck and
forced her face roughly down into the pillow, muffling the noise,
suffocating her. He kept the gun pointed to Munrow’s head and said,
‘Shut it, you bitch, or I’ll blow his head off and then rape you in
the blood.’

He hoped it sounded convincing. Personally he was not remotely
taken in by the threat.

Munrow hadn’t moved.

Rider let go of the woman. She stayed where she was, ass in
the air with Munrow stuck inside her. She started to shake and
sob.

Suddenly Rider’s resolve petered out. There was no way he
could bring himself to force Munrow to finish the job.

‘
OK Charlie, we’re gonna go for a ride. I suggest you come out
of there, real slow-like - unless you want to take her along
too.’