A Time Honoured Killing

by Samesh Ramjattan

  Carley pushed Nick back onto his brown upholstered sofa and pulled him lower down by his knees. She positioned herself between his legs, leaning over and clawing at his chest, from the shoulder slowly down through to quivering stomach. Nick felt his pulse race as she stroked his belly, then she hooked her hands firmly under his jeans and yanked them down sharply, liberating his swollen penis. Nick’s heart pumped like an Olympic sprinter as Carley eyed his throbbing manhood, teasingly gazing at it. She grabbed the base of it and tighten her grasp over it, ensuring it was as hard as it could be. Then she peeled back the foreskin of his partially peaking hood and caressed it with her small tongue. She watched his face as she toyed with his tip, giving it successive licks as she did. She could tell he wanted her to swallow all of it, and she smirked cheekily as she gobbled the entire thing all the way down her throat.

  Carley spent a few minutes massaging Nick’s penis with her rampant tongue, getting him as ready as she could without squandering her efforts all too prematurely. She elegantly rose to her feet and removed her dress over her head, tossing it onto the floor, revealing her naked body. Nick studied her athletic curves that started with broad shoulders, propped up by her remarkably upright posture. Her straight back and neck allowed her pert ample breasts to stand to attention. They were so firm and upright that they could have been mistaken for being fake, something Carley vehemently denied, but Nick did not really care. Her prominent breasts sat proudly over a small waist that bore a small tummy, a rounded milky white bum and a neat, elegant slit that rose perfectly from between her legs. From the front her smooth porcelain vagina was barely visible until she spread her muscular legs or when she bent over, revealing a sculpted mound, closely flanked by her plump cheeks.

  Carley knelt over Nick’s body resting her knees on the sofa and lining his penis for her wet vagina. Nick gave her full control as she yanked his stiff manhood and inserted into her moist passage. She saddled her weight along her knees and brought her all of her body over his, taking his entire length inside her. Carley wasted no time in thrashing up and down, riding the contour of his penis while using her fingers to invigorate her swelling clitoris. The sweet electric jolts of ecstasy enjoyed by the stimulation of her fingers, motivated her to work harder and faster. Nick felt the throbbing excitement of his penis reach climax and he lifted his hands to massage Carley’s breasts, but she revolted, slapping them back and pinning them under her knees.

  “Don’t cum yet,” She exclaimed as she began to move up and down with increased frequency and vigour, her entire body tensing into excruciating contortions of pleasure. She rubbed her clitoris even harder and began to shriek with the vocal range of a seasoned operatic tenor. Nick did his best to hold onto his load as the undeniable pressure began to arise from the base of his scrotum. Although he could feel the inside of Carley’s pussy tighten almost as if she was trying to expel him while milking him at the same time. She slowly began to settle into a shallow waddle, reverberating as if she was on a rodeo bronco, and then she pushed one more time at the bud above her flaps and she froze her entire body as the ominous joy of a full orgasm enveloped her completely. A loud shriek turned into a whimper, as Nick could feel the wall of her vagina expand and then release a small squirt of warm liquid. Her head fell as she bent double over him. Then she kissed him firmly on the lips and dis-mounted, dropping back down to her knees onto the floor between his. She could see the expectation that had built up in his face. He needed release. She filled her mouth with his quaking penis and sucked onto it a few times, before caressing the hood with her tongue. Nick quivered uncontrollably as his buttocks tightened, and Carley gripped both cheeks of his butt with her strong hands, pulling his dick into the back of her throat. That was all it took as he ejaculated his full load into her willing mouth. Then when he was done she plopped down on the sofa next to him and they lay together uninhibited, finally at peace with each other.

  9

  Nick’s eyes opened to the invading daylight that steaked into the dark apartment. He could not remember a time when he had slept so soundly and the fatigue he had so bravely fought, seemed to have abated. He rubbed some clarity into his eyes as the white stippled ceiling came into stark focus. Under the satin duvet Carley’s heavy arm lay straddled across his waist. His eyes shifted over to her cocooned form snuggled tightly in the bed linen with only the hint of a forehead and unruly blonde hair. He carefully moved her arm off himself and slid out from under the duvet, slipping on his carelessly discarded denim jeans and throwing on a t-shirt that had a picture of Guns n’ Roses across the front.

  Nick pushed open the drapes of the living room with conviction, scanning the small Victorian square which lay in front of his building. It was enclosed by a decorative black steel fence and dotted with old Oak amidst well-tendered gardens. He took pleasure in staring out of his flat window into those gardens, studying the local inhabitants going about their day – joggers keeping up their healthy regime, whizzing past older folk who had lived in that part of Camden long before the ‘money’ moved in, along with anxious mothers barely containing precocious mischievous toddlers, wishing they had never given up independence for motherhood.

  The scene brought Nick a moment of serenity that made him grateful for his achievements, despite it not coming without a degree of struggle. Somehow this simple scape put things in perspective and he realised how far he had come, clawing his way out of London’s concrete tower block slums and escaping into this idyllic middle-class sanctuary.

  Nick basked in the glow of the morning sun, almost meditating to its magnificence. Then a hand came down over his neck and slid down the contour of his back. A foreboding kiss on his unprepared lips followed leaving him little chance for resistance.

  “Good morning,” She declared looking nothing like the vixen that took advantage of his body the previous night. This morning she looked fulfilled and blissful, almost as if the beast was still asleep and this congruous version was sent forth. Carley looked radiant, with none of the latent effects of hard liquor. She looked vivacious and bubbly as though she had woken from a sleepover wearing one of Nick’s rock themed t-shirts, stretching it over her private parts as she plonked down on the sofa that was the setting to the previous night’s erotic escapade.

  Nick stared at her profusely, as though he suddenly belonged to a bizarre alternate reality. Was he still dreaming? Surely this wasn’t the Carley Banks he knew? But there she sat, like an overhyped teen with a false sense of adolescent security. No scorn or scowl, pithy retorts or overconfidence masking a deep seated inferiority complex. Whatever this side was, he had not seen it before. It took him by surprise to realise that she was even capable of such polite behaviour, and that garnered an underlying reaction of adoration and generosity toward her. He felt his defensiveness dissolve, realising that there was now this side to her, a side which could garner trust.

  “What are you up to today?” She enquired gleefully.

  “Work probably,” Nick declared flatly, as he came to terms with this new caring side of Carley.

  “Oh,” Carley responded with disappointment. “But you’ve been working so hard all week. Couldn’t you take a day off?”

  Nick gazed at her as she spoke, realising that she sounded increasingly like a neglected girlfriend, rather than the matter-of-fact emotionally stunted individual that he had gotten used to. And a part of him cowered with trepidation at this display of vulnerability.

  “My first case and I need to impress,” he replied trying to garner empathy.

  “Oh, and what case would that be?” she retorted as the scorn returned.

  “The Khan murder,” Nick replied.

  “The one in the news?” Carley questioned bluntly as the vulnerability in her voice ebbed away. “Detective and high-flying murder case all in one week!” She scoffed.

  Nick’s affection turned back to disdain, as he deflated, exhaling deeply and shutting his eyes in frustration.

  “Nevertheless…” Nick reasoned.
“She needs me.”

  “She needs you?” Carley bellowed. “Why would she need you?”

  “She needs her murderer to be brought to justice,” Nick declared emphatically.

  Carley turned away from him, shaking her head gravely.

  “You just don’t get it do you?” Carley lamented with venom. “Ron, McNeill, this case. It’s all been set up so that they can get what they want…”

  “And what’s that?” Nick barked loudly.

  “I don’t know,” Carley resounded. “But I know who’ll be left with nothing in the end – You!”

  Carley leapt to her feet heading toward the bedroom, just as Nick grabbed her hand preventing her from leaving.

  “Stay,” Nick said with an impassioned voice.

  “What for?” Carley responded with contempt, latching her hand from his and storming off into the bedroom.

  Carley had gathered up her things and left without a word or shudder of emotion. It hadn’t taken long before things spiralled back to where they always were. Nick knew that he could not dilute his quest to find Adilaah’s killer, a mission that resonated deep down and he felt the overwhelming need to persist. He could not bring himself to tell Carley that he was investigating the murder of an ex-lover, who still haunted him to this day. He knew that Carley wouldn’t be so receptive to that and that she would need a few days to simmer down, before she would be back. She always came back. Besides, where else could she go? Nevertheless, he felt a slight remorse at how things had been left, especially as the morning had begun so amiably. A part of him felt a new connection with this side of Carley – susceptible and gracious, but he didn’t want to get his hopes up.

  The mechanical ringtone from his mobile phone interrupted his thought patterns, and as he reached out for it. He noted the private number.

  “D-C Shankar,” Nick answered in an authoritative voice.

  “Shank?” The muffled voice questioned.

  “Yes?” Nick replied confused as nobody had called him that name in years.

  “It’s Ashraf. Ashraf Khan,” The voice replied confidently.

  “Not someone I was expecting Ashraf,” Nick confirmed with surprise.

  “I know.” Ashraf answered despondently, “Can we meet?”

  “Err…” Nick dithered, unsure whether to accept.

  “I’ve got something. It’s to do with Adilaah,” Ashraf stuttered.

  Nick remained silent for a moment to consider his options. He wasn’t sure how to process this.

  Why did Ashraf choose to come to him? What did he have on Adilaah? Did he somehow know about their love affair? Worse still, did he know about her pregnancy and assume that he was the father?

  “Where?” Nick said tentatively as the questions raced through his mind.

  “Stratford. Boxing Gym on the High street. About three? Come alone,” Ashraf instructed bluntly and hung up the phone. Nick lingered over the call, cradling his phone. This call from Ashraf was odd. They had not spoken in years and when they last did, it was not cordial. A sinking feeling churned inside him, and Carley’s words began to echo – you’ll be left with nothing in the end.

  ~

  Nick sat slouched in in his office chair, reclining behind his dishevelled desk. It was a Saturday and the office was deserted, with the rows of desks eerily quiet. He stared engrossed at the computer screen before him, the index finger of his right hand carefully pressing the arrow key on the keyboard. The other hand cradled an extra-large coffee cup with the words Starbucks branded on it. Nick sipped the hot Americano, swallowing a few gulps before returning to the detail on the screen. The screen displayed an arrest mug-shot of Ashraf Khan. Nick studied the picture as Ashraf’s ill-natured eyes stared back. They seemed to stir something unnatural in Nick’s gut, that inflamed a sense of discord. That feeling took him back to that day.

  “You Paki’s need to stay away from this park!” The one with wavy blonde hair shouted. At first Nick could not even understand what he was saying. He had quite naively thought that the boy was making some kind of joke. Perhaps they were just ‘avin a laaff’ as he’d hear them always say but didn’t quite know what it meant. His father always taught him to speak properly – the Queen’s English he called it. “When I drove the Ambassador around, that is what he expected, and nothing less!” Rohit always reminisced over his service as a driver for the first British Ambassador to newly independent India. At age eleven, Nick had heard it so many times that he stopped listening. But when he got to the stories of Nick’s mother then he paid attention. Nick did not know that much about her. He knew from his father’s whisky-laden anecdotes that she was the Ambassador’s daughter, a much younger, free-spirited rebel; Ethel would do the opposite of everything that her father expected from her or from any self-respecting English girl for that matter. It was love at first sight his father always declared proudly, and they would steal her father’s car and sneak off to the various Delhi hide outs and christen the fine leather seats. That’s probably where Nick was conceived, because after the many torrid backseat exploits she became pregnant. And unwilling to brave the scandal and shame that would ensue from the affair between a ‘Coolie’ and a promiscuous high society English rose, they eloped to Kenya to live on her sister’s tea estate. And that’s where Nick would have grown up. Perhaps as a spoilt disillusioned half-breed outcast not quite sure where his true roots lay. But her spirit and appetite for other partners was more than Rohit could manage nor bare. Ethel was his reckless abandonment in an otherwise mediocre and steady life, and for that he was now saddled with a lifelong reminder of that escapade. It was not long that their opposing cultural, social and personal ambitions began to polarize their self-worth and Rohit decided that he would come to England, along with his three-year old son, to find the placid safe life that he was more suited to, leaving Ethel to continue the life of excess and exuberance.

  Ashraf had heard the boy’s slur clearly, and he wasn’t prepared to let this go. Ashraf marched up to the boy who was probably about fourteen or fifteen, Nick had guessed, as he followed behind Ashraf nervously.

  The bully stood tall and forbearing as Ashraf confronted him.

  “I didn’t catch that from all the way over there,” Ashraf said with undue confidence.

  “I said keep out of this park! You don’t belong here,” The boy announced, almost spitting on Ashraf’s face who seemed unnervingly calm.

  “You called us something else,” Ashraf probed, listening intently for the reply.

  “Paki is what I said,” The bully lamented.

  “Were you talking about him or me?” Ashraf continued.

  A small crowd of kids had gathered around the scene of this unusual altercation. Nick began to close in on Ashraf sensing that he had a plan for this bully, his nervousness turning into a resolute confidence.

  “Both of you!” The bully screeched.

  “Well this is my friend Nick,” Ashraf jested, “We call him Nick because he is only half Indian. Other half English.”

  Ashraf put his arm around Nick and ushered him forward so that they both stood in front of this much taller Cretan who, hadn’t anticipated this partisan exchange to ensue from his callous outburst. Nick stared at the boy with anxiousness.

  “You were wrong to call him a Paki you see,” Ashraf affirmed, “No I am from Pakistan. Well my father is. I was born here in Britain. We own that big house up there.”

  Ashraf pointed at the large mansion not far from the park.

  “Do you see it?” Ashraf asked as he smiled courteously.

  The boy avoided looking as Ashraf seemed to have gained the upper hand in the standoff, with the boy’s position looking far weaker now.

  “We have a right to walk through this park. Show me your house. Is it near?” Ashraf questioned as he looked around. But the boy remained silent, his eminence draining.

  “Not here is it?” Ashraf inquired as his face had become choleric, “Where are you from?”

  “Finchley,” The boy sta
mmered.

  “Finchley,” Ashraf considered, slowly nodding. Ashraf looked at his crowd of spectators and then back at the bully with a smirk. Then as if he had been possessed by a demonic power, Ashraf curled up his fist and swung it at the boy’s jaw, careening across it with a crunch. The boy dropped like lifeless sack of potatoes. The crowd of kids who had gathered, scattered, including those who had accompanied this loudmouth, who by now was a curled-up lump on the ground. Nick himself backed away at the speed at which Ashraf had levelled this boy. He watched as Ashraf stood over boy with a vicious malevolent smirk. Nick realised that his best friend had an unpredictable violent streak that he never wanted to be on the wrong side of. He kept his distance while he watched Ashraf circle his victim.

  “You’re the one who doesn’t belong here Finchley,” Ashraf bellowed as he kicked the boy once more in the stomach and marched off. Nick faithfully followed.