Nasty Bitch

by K Leitch

  Tracy looked round the tiny room…she grabbed the list of properties from Simon. ‘Let’s go through that list again, there’s got to be something here surely, here what about this one?’ Simon raised his eyebrows, ‘Oh I know it’s a bit above our price range,’ Tracy went on enthusiastically, ‘but it is really gorgeous, or it could be…and it has got an acre of land right next to the Glory Woods, can’t we just go and look at it…pleeease?’

  ‘Yes come on daddy…peas daddy peas,’ shouted Zack happy to join in the conversation even though he had no idea what he was asking for.

  Simon looked into three pairs of pleading eyes (although to be fair Buster was only pleading to be let out into the garden), ‘Ok ok,’ he said caving in, ‘but we are just looking, if we bought anything at that price we wouldn’t be able to afford to eat!’

  ‘Well that might not be such a bad thing,’ said Tracy ruefully looking down at her tummy which hadn’t yet lost its baby fat, ‘and anyway it is only actually 50k over budget, we might be able to knock them down.’

  ‘Ha! Don’t hold your breath sweetheart, there’s not a chance in hell that we could offer anywhere near enough for them to consider us, and if there was, there would have to be something seriously wrong with the house…so do you still want to go and see it, even though we almost certainly can’t have it?’ said Simon kissing her nose to take the edge off his words.

  ‘Yes I do,’ said Tracy defiantly, ‘and I don’t care what you say Simon I know that people accept silly offers all the time, it just depends on how desperate they are to sell and how good we are as buyers. I’ve seen it on “Location Location Location” and I may not be Kirsty Allsopp but I bet I can negotiate just as well as she can…let’s go and see it anyway, you never know it may turn out to be awful, in which case we can cross it off the list.’

  ‘Ok sweetheart I’ll phone the agent and book us a viewing, and then I’ll leave the rest to you Ms Allsopp…hmmm,’ he added looking closely through his glasses at her chest. ‘I’ll tell you what though darling you’ve definitely got the boobs for it; let’s just hope we’re dealing with a man. He’ll be so busy looking at these puppies we could get him to agree to anything,’ he broke off laughing as Tracy thumped him round the head with her pillow, Zack sensing a daddy bashing session was about to start, let out a fierce war cry of glee and launched himself into the fray. Buster, however, just sighed a huge sigh and flopped himself down, who knew how long this could go on for, it was obvious that he wasn’t getting out into the garden any time soon!

  CHAPTER 7

  Keith looked again at the picture on his laptop, apparently he knew this one. Well according to her he did anyway…he didn’t recognise her from Adam, but she said that she remembered him from when he used to visit his mum in hospital…must have been working as a nurse there or something. Anyway she looked a bit of alright she did. Nice hair, nice eyes…cracking pair of tits for a woman of her age, real ones too if he wasn’t mistaken, and let’s face it he rarely was. He read through her email again, not that all that rubbish interested him much, he went on looks, always had, he was well known for always having a pretty girl on his arm and just because he was knocking on a bit didn’t mean he had to lower his standards did it?

  Gail Shipley, 46, divorced with two grown-up children neither of which lived at home. It seemed that Gail liked the finer things in life, like eating out at good restaurants, weekends in the country; she enjoyed horse riding and walking her dogs (two chocolate Labradors, Laurel and Hardy). She apparently now worked as a PA for the CEO of a large insurance company and obviously wasn’t short of a bob or two, not that that interested Keith, he had enough money to last his lifetime, but he did expect any woman he dated to have a bit of class and from what he was seeing it would seem that Gail had it all.

  He decided to get in contact by sending her an email, he was encouraged by the speed with which he received a reply…but then, he laughed to himself, he was a handsome devil. She probably took one look at his photo and wet her panties with excitement. Keith smiled to himself, this one was going to be a pushover.

  CHAPTER 8 – MAGGIE

  Maggie sighed and lay back down next to Thomas, her body still humming from their lovemaking, Thomas pulled her close and she could hear his heart beating fast, which wasn’t surprising considering the amazing aerobic workout that they’d just had.

  Maggie was amazed at the passion that, even after three years, still flowed between them; and it still scared her a bit if she was being honest. She had never been in a relationship where she wasn’t in control, where she didn’t feel 100% secure; she had always been so confident of her own attractiveness that feelings of insecurity had never been an issue. But if she was being truthful she had doubts now, big, gigantic, humungous doubts, only for some reason those doubts only made her more desperate to hang on to Thomas, and she hated that she felt so needy…it just wasn’t her…she was never needy!

  She loved Thomas…she did…SHE DID. But the whole thing scared the shit out of her, Thomas seemed to have changed a bit as time had gone on; he was a bit less attentive, a bit more careless. He had started staying at her house more and more, Maggie had cleared some space for him in her vast wardrobe which he had almost filled. The thing that was worrying her the most though, she had finally admitted to herself, was that a couple of times just lately Thomas had been a bit rough with her during sex. Now Maggie wasn’t averse to a bit of rough play, not at all, a playful spanking could be very enjoyable every so often, and she absolutely loved being tied up, but she had found out quite early on in her sexual encounters that the one thing that she didn’t enjoy was real pain, receiving it or inflicting it. She certainly wasn’t a prude though, and if that was what turned some people on then who was she to judge, but it wasn’t for her.

  It had started a few months ago; Thomas had started getting a bit aggressive when they were making love, pushing her around a bit and calling her some rather nasty names and he had slapped her a few times…quite hard actually, she had tried to stop him, but that had just seemed to excite him even more. He had dragged her by the hair and grabbed her chin, squeezing her face before giving her hard bruising kisses, forcing her mouth open so that their teeth were almost clashing, before forcing her legs apart with his knees and pounding into her. Maggie had been a bit shaken by the whole incident and had tried to speak to Thomas about it, but he had been totally dismissive, laughing at her squeamishness making her feel foolish…so she had let the subject drop. Now though, these rough times were becoming more and more frequent and more and more painful and Maggie was starting to worry.

  She had accepted Thomas’s proposal last year without a single qualm. They had been holidaying in the Caribbean and nothing could have been more romantic than the candlelit dinner on the beach that Thomas had arranged, and the magnificent diamond ring that he produced, Maggie had been on cloud nine.

  So she had come home and thrown herself into organising the wedding of the century. She had the church booked for late September; the reception was going to be held in an enormous and very elegant marquee, which would be erected in her large garden a day before the wedding. Helen was doing the flowers of course and Poppy, Maggie’s head Chef from The Bull public house, which she part owned with Duncan McKinny, was providing the sumptuous wedding breakfast for the eighty or so guests. Jed’s friend ‘Fats’ (so called because he was in fact thin to the point of anorexic) was an accomplished DJ and had jumped at the chance of displaying his talents at the wedding of his friend’s totally hot mum.

  Maggie had asked for Rosie and Abby to be her bridesmaids with little Benjamin and Zack as page boys, so that was the cute angle taken care of, and amazingly her father had jumped at the chance of giving her away, actually dragging himself away from a lecturing tour in Russia to do so. Her mother would also be in attendance which was another thing that was filling Maggie with misgivings.

  Fiona Crabtree, Maggie’s mother, had made a name for herself in the seventies as a fashion
model. She had worked for some of the most exclusive fashion houses, Chanel, Dior, and Vivienne Westwood to name but a few. When she grew too old for the modelling game she opened her own agency, searching for and providing some of the most glamorous models to walk the cat walk. She had wanted Maggie to follow in her footsteps, but by that time Maggie had met and fallen in love with Greg, her first husband, and she had seen enough of the modelling lifestyle to know that she didn’t want that sort of life for herself. Maggie was basically a hedonist, she loved all the sensual pleasures that life offered, good food, sex, the warmth of the sun on her face, surrounding herself with beautiful things and she had seen from her mother’s life that to be successful as a model, you had to deny yourself a lot of these things, and she wasn’t prepared to do that.

  Her rejection of her mother’s world had caused something of a rift between the two of them, not that they had ever had a very close relationship, but the little connection they’d had, had become strained and they only saw each other these days on special occasions…like Maggie’s wedding. She was sure that it would all be ok, everybody would behave themselves…but on top of everything else, her parents had divorced very acrimoniously, only a year or so ago and this would be the first time they had been in the same room together since then.

  Thank goodness her sister Ruth would be there to help keep the peace, if anyone could do that it would be Ruth. She was the most wonderful person that Maggie had ever known and it was a great sadness for her that Ruth lived so far away, on the other side of the world in New Zealand. Thank goodness for modern technology which enabled her to Skype her sister once a week; so that they could keep up with each other’s lives. Maggie was ecstatic that her sister was making the long journey to come to her wedding; that in itself was a good enough reason for marrying Thomas. Maggie’s daydreaming came to an abrupt end as Thomas began to stir next to her, he turned over still asleep, but now facing her…she looked at his beautiful face, oh she was being a fool, how could she doubt him…she did love him…SHE DID!

  CHAPTER 9 – CARLA

  The first thing that Carla saw when she switched on her computer at work was a picture of Giles Poole. Carla had been responsible for Poole’s arrest for conspiracy to murder nearly four years ago, during one of the most frustrating cases she had ever worked on, in which the body of a young girl had been discovered by some walkers in the Glory Woods. The real criminal, Giles’s wife Vanessa, had managed to slip through Carla’s fingers and was still on the run somewhere. There had been a few sightings of her but nothing concrete, as far as Carla could remember the last one was in Ontario, Canada and of course there had been that rather un-nerving phone call that Vanessa had made to Carla a few years back; which had set everyone on edge and had sparked off another spate of sightings, none of which had ever been substantiated with any solid evidence. Carla hadn’t thought about Vanessa in ages, but seeing Giles’s face in front of her brought it all back. The terror of nearly losing one of her best friends, and the impotent rage that she had felt when she had realised that Vanessa had used her and had got away scot free, leaving another dead body behind her.

  Giles had been sentenced to six and a half years in prison for his part in the kidnap of Vanessa’s father, but had apparently been released on parole a few months ago. His parole officer though had reported him missing this week, after he had failed to check in with him two weeks running, and that was why his face was on Carla’s computer screen.

  In her career in the police force Carla had only come up against one or two genuinely disturbed criminals, and on each occasion the most worrying thing about them was that they were totally illogical and therefore unpredictable. How could a normal sane person be able to second guess the actions of a totally deranged brain? Sometimes they considered themselves as some sort of saviour cleansing the earth of sinners, or sometimes, as in Vanessa’s case, they were wreaking some sort of twisted vengeance against someone or something that had allegedly done them some harm in the past…some of them even thought that they were giving a pleasure that was being reciprocated, but whatever their crazy reasons they were the most difficult criminals to catch, and usually they did the most damage.

  Carla was pondering this when her phone rang, it was Dorothy Smiles the head of the forensics team.

  ‘Hi Carla, how are you, did you manage to get any sleep in all the excitement of last night, you live pretty close to the woods don’t you?’ she said brightly, Carla was always amazed at how upbeat Dorothy always was given the rather grim job that she did.

  ‘Oh I can sleep through pretty much anything,’ replied Carla, ‘my whole house smells of smoke though; I don’t know how long that will take to clear. How did you get on at the crash scene? Have you managed to get near to the wreck yet to be able to recover bodies?’

  ‘Well we are letting the crash scene investigators do their thing first before we go in, I just needed to confirm with you how many people were meant to be in the helicopter, I’ve got no idea what sort of state the bodies of those poor people are going to be in, so it might help if I have some idea of whom I’m dealing with.’

  ‘Frank spoke to someone from the helicopter company and it looks like there were three of them Dorothy, including the pilot, two males one female, I hope that helps…I don’t envy you your job at times like this…let me know if you need anything else won’t you?’

  After Dorothy had rung off Carla determinedly put the whole Giles and Vanessa thing out of her mind and tried to concentrate on the latest case she was dealing with. There had been a recent spate of petty vandalism in and around the village, which was seriously upsetting the residents. Mrs Binworthy and Ms Goss, two of the organisers of the local WI, had had dog excrement shoved through their letter boxes, another time all the shrubs from their respective front gardens had been dug up and scattered in the road, and two of the tyres on Ms Goss’s old Morris Minor had been slashed. It all pointed to kids; maybe the elderly pair had upset a couple of the livelier lads that lived in the village. They were both known for their loudly voiced opinions of the ‘riff raff’ as they put it, that were infiltrating the village, so it seemed logical that these kids were hitting back. The last prank though was a step too far; Mrs Binworthy owned two pedigree British Blue cats, Panther and Princess, that were her pride and joy. She had won countless rosettes with them in cat shows up and down the country, a couple of days ago she had found Panther dead on her doorstep, his head had been caved in. She was naturally distraught and had alerted the police immediately and so Carla and her team had been on the case now for the last couple of days. Mrs Binworthy’s husband was friends with the assistant commissioner who had personally asked that they try and get this solved as quickly as possible.

  They had been given a couple of names, Daniel Rushton and Larry Pincher, two known trouble makers that went to the large comprehensive school in Redbank, Riddlestone High. So that was where Carla was headed this morning, just as soon as Frank decided to show up.

  Carla had been working with DS Frank Hill for about three years now. He had taken over as her partner after the tragic death of DS Ted Connelly, and after a few false starts they were beginning to work well together. Carla still missed Ted’s calm and sensible advice though, Frank had tendency to go off at a tangent and be a bit impulsive…it was probably because he was so much younger. Carla looked at her watch again, and he had absolutely no idea about bloody time keeping either!

  Carla had just decided that she would head on up to the school by herself when Frank finally showed up.

  ‘Sorry, sorry I know I’m late…I was up at the crash site till well after two this morning, so I slept in I’m afraid,’ he said slurping an enormous takeaway coffee, ‘my head is killing me; it must have been all that smoke. My god Carla you’ve never seen anything like it, at one point it looked like the whole of the woods were on fire.’

  ‘I know I could see it from my bedroom window, why the hell did you stay so long? Surely uniform had it covered? Mmm that looks
good, mind if I grab a corner, I’m starving?’ Carla asked as she tore off a piece off the sticky pastry that Frank had put on her desk.

  ‘Hey! Don’t take it all, that’s my breakfast,’ he went to slap her hand away but not before Carla had shoved a healthy amount into her mouth, ‘they did have it covered,’ he went on, giving her a filthy look, ‘but I just sort of got roped in, you know how it is…it was amazing to watch them put out the flames, I was quite in awe I can tell you,’ he finished wiping his mouth on the paper napkin.

  ‘Don’t tell me, you wanted to be a fireman when you were a boy,’ teased Carla as she got her coat from behind her chair.

  ‘Of course I did,’ said Frank with a grin. ‘Until I saw the police uniforms and then I wanted to be a copper, little did I know at that age that women wet their knickers for firemen…typical of my luck.’

  ‘Oh please,’ said Carla with a laugh, ‘let’s not start on the unlucky Frank stories this early in the day, I don’t think my sympathetic genes are even awake yet.’

  ‘Sympathetic jeans? Oh are those the ones you wore the other day, the ones that gave you such a peachy bum…I thought you said you got them from Primark!’ said Frank with a laugh as he grabbed his coat and followed her out to the car.

  CHAPTER 10 – HELEN

  Helen was enjoying a rare, quiet moment in her studio. She was putting the finishing touches to some sketches of her ideas for the flowers inside the marquee at Maggie’s wedding reception. After countless brain storming evenings the two girls had finally settled on very simple table decorations made from stacking various pretty tea cups and saucers with flowers in between. It was very easy to do, and Maggie had the most beautiful collection of old tea cups which was what gave Helen the idea in the first place, and the results were very pretty and unusual.