A Touch Of Heat (H.E.A.T. Book 2)

by Claire, Nicola

  Sweet Hell. Open night. Thursday.

  Eagle had branched out and my gut was telling me this was no mere coincidence. A members only club designed to accommodate any man’s debauched and licentious desires across the street from where a woman had been left as if crucified on an invisible cross.

  No. This was no coincidence. This was act one of a tragedy that I feared would be extremely long.

  I gripped the flyer in my hand and headed back towards Pierce and the first victim.

  Back towards where, I was sure, there would now be several more of my fellow CIB detectives.

  Back towards my life.

  Chapter 2

  “Never let them see your fear, Sport. Attack before they notice the shaking in your limbs.”

  My cellphone chiming had me pausing just down the street from the now cordoned off, tented and chaotic crime scene. I stepped over toward the shelter of a nearby stoop and pulled the device from my pocket swiping the screen, and placing the phone at my ear.

  “Keen,” I announced, receiving only silence.

  Cars roared passed on my right, the wind whistled through a gap of the door to my left, but I knew there was someone breathing on the other end of the line. I couldn’t really hear it, not with the diesel engines of city buses and shouts of someone hailing a cab. Not with my heart suddenly pounding inside my head loud enough to drown out my own rapid breaths of air.

  But I knew. Because this was the tenth silent call I’d received in just over one week.

  “This is Detective Lara Keen,” I tried, my voice solid and clear. You wouldn’t know I’d started shaking. “How can I help?”

  The line went dead. It always went dead.

  I looked up and scanned the street. Was he here? Was he watching? Was he trying to shake me awake and make me pay attention?

  Pay attention, Sport. Don’t fucking fall asleep on the job.

  My hand clenched around the cellphone, hard enough to make the casing creak.

  For a moment I couldn’t move. For a second that felt like a lifetime I stood still on the side of a busy street believing I was somewhere else. Believing I was going mad.

  I lifted the cellphone slowly up and stared at the screen, then swiped until I found the call log. The number was “unknown.” Unidentified. Possibly from a pay phone or a disposable cellphone with the number blocked. Like all the others had been. I’d pulled my service provider’s records already, pinpointed the caller to three locations. The CBD, Henderson and Manukau. Practically three equidistant locations across Auckland City.

  My guess, today’s call would have matched the others.

  Carl was getting around.

  But why?

  A sound escaped. An embarrassing hiccough that made me straighten my back, pocket the offending cellphone, and glare at a stranger who happened to look me in the eyes as they passed on the street. I shook my head, dispelled the images of Carl falling backwards over the cliffs at Melons Bay, and took one step after another towards Pierce.

  Knowing I needed to get my shit together. Aware my discombobulated state would be written across my face for all to see. Resigned to the fact that I was losing it. Emotions. Memories. Words. All of it a jumbled mess inside my head I could no longer tell what was truth and what was Carl’s meddling.

  My fingers shook when I raised them to tuck a strand of my hair behind an ear. I slipped them into my pocket, one hand still clenching the flyer, the other fisted and digging nails into flesh.

  Cawfield spotted me first. A sneer twisting his full lips as a glint of amusement entered his piercing blue eyes. He pulled expensive looking sunglasses down from on top of his head, the better to watch me unobserved behind. A tanned hand scrubbed at the blond stubble along his chin, then chiselled arms crossed in front of a broad chest, stretching the fabric of his t-shirt tight around his biceps in a move he’d perfected, probably as a teen.

  The man wore his superiority complex well.

  “Long time, no see, Keen,” he called out, loud enough to garner the attention of those colleagues also at the scene.

  There was his long time partner, Robbie Simpson. A nicer version of Joe Cawfield. Currently eating an iced bun of some description, crumbs raining down on an otherwise clean polo shirt. Trevor Jones was also here, cowboy hat perched ridiculously on top of his bald head, whiskers styled in a long droopy moustache framing warm smiling lips. And Pierce. Glowering at me.

  Never let them see your fear, Sport. Attack before they notice the shaking in your limbs.

  I think Carl had been referring to the criminals, but as Cawfield was still my number one suspect for the CIB traitor, the advice fit here.

  Of course, taking any advice from my once upon a time partner seemed so wrong now.

  “Just been doing your job for you, Cawfield,” I drawled. “Someone has to, otherwise the clues would never be found.” I held up the flyer to punctuate that point, making sure to wave it, hiding the slight tremble in my hand.

  Pierce’s face lost the glower and he strode immediately towards me. Unfortunately, so did Cawfield.

  I watched the latter man’s face as they both read the advert, trying to decide if it was surprise or calculation I saw there. Cawfield was an enigma. Despite the Criminal Investigations Bureau being a predominantly male environment, his misogynistic behaviour seemed out of line for a guy who spent an inordinate amount of time in front of the mirror. He liked women. There was no denying his penchant was for the opposite sex. Hell, he’d even propositioned me. More than once. But he did not like women to outshine him. Be that socially or professionally.

  I couldn’t yet tell if the feeling of unease I had regarding the man was due to this dichotomy or more nefarious reasons. Or simply due to the fact I was slowly going insane.

  “And how’s this a clue?” he demanded, giving the flyer a disgruntled look and turning dismissive eyes towards me.

  “Last night would have been quite a draw card,” I explained, as though speaking to a child. It only infuriated him further. A muscle ticked along his jaw. “Enough of a distraction for the murderer to do what he pleased on this side of the street,” I swept a hand out indicating the murder scene and crime lab set-up, “while all eyes were across the way.”

  “What about this club?” Cawfield argued, nodding towards The Whiskey Lounge. And it rankled that he had a valid point. Cawfield might be a slimy bastard, but he was a well trained cop.

  “This club closed beforehand,” Pierce announced, saving me from making some lame excuse up, just to piss Cawfield off. “Sweet Hell clearly had dispensation from the city council to remain open until ‘the birds start singing,’” he added, reading directly from the flyer.

  “So, some time between 4am and when her body was found at six,” I offered. “Do we have a more accurate time of death?”

  “Four-thirty,” Pierce said quietly, lowering the flyer and looking back towards the now fully hidden body.

  “And no one from this Sweet Hell would have seen a thing?” Cawfield demanded.

  “I guess we need to find out,” Pierce said, lifting his eyes to look across the street.

  “You think they have security cameras?” I asked.

  “Worth a crack.”

  “Or bouncers,” I added.

  “Good call.” Pierce thrust the flyer back at me. “You and Jones go knock on their door. See what you can find out.”

  I could have kissed him. I’d handed Pierce the ball and he was running with it, passing it back to me. He could have insisted I head to HEAT and work on my non-case. Hell, he could have insisted I go over there with Cawfield. But he was giving me a chance to dip my toe back in the turbulent waters of CIB.

  And also giving me the chance to work with a detective I hadn’t had the honour of doing so too closely.

  Cawfield couldn’t be my only suspect. I needed to dig deeper than the superficial pretty peacock who continually fluffed his annoying feathers at me.

  “Oh, and one more thing, Keen,” Pierce
added. “The ME thinks she was murdered in situ.”

  Fuck. We had a performer. They tended to go out big.

  Pierce turned away first, but Cawfield took his time. Just as Pierce was far enough away not to hear him, he said, “This creep gets off on it. Pretty girls under his thumb. He stares them in the face, probably gets a hard on while he watches the light fade from their eyes.”

  “Your point?” I asked, because sure as eggs, Cawfield had a fucking point.

  “You’re a pretty girl, Keen.” That was not a compliment. “Watch yourself in there.” He nodded off towards Sweet Hell. “I hear the membership is made up of all walks of life. Lawyers. Accountants. Cops.” Pause. “Firemen.”

  He held my eyes on the last and then turned and sauntered away.

  Now why would you go and say a thing like that, Peacock?

  Jones jogging over thankfully cleared my head, his wicked looking moustache twitching with his enthusiasm.

  “It’s just you and me, Keen. Bet ya never thought you’d get a chance to work with the King.” He rolled his Rs when he spoke, definitely not regal, and pointed a thumb proudly at his chest in case I didn’t get the inference.

  “You think you’re the King, huh?”

  “Better believe it,” he said jovially. “Of course, I was only a prince until Carl left, so I guess you did work with a king, after all.”

  Even now. Even after everything. It was still hard to hear someone else saying his name.

  “Come on,” I said, a little too abruptly, and started heading across the street.

  “How do you wanna play this?” Jones asked. “Good cop or bad cop?”

  I huffed out a laugh. Everything Jones did was to elicit a smile. He no further believed the good cop/bad cop routine applied to a fact finding mission than I did that Carl would hand himself in.

  “How about concerned cop and professional cop?” I offered.

  “Have it your way. But you ain’t seen nothin’ ‘til you’ve seen my bad cop. Grrr,” he added with a wink.

  Somehow I couldn’t picture Trevor Jones selling out CIB.

  But I also wasn’t a rookie cop. I was the daughter of a cop. The granddaughter of a cop. And if Jones was hiding something, sooner or later I’d see it. Being a detective, it flowed through my veins. I was born into this world, which was why being pushed out of it for the past three weeks had sent me slightly ‘round the bend.

  Maybe Pierce had picked up on that. He was my liaison with the department. Through him Inspector Hart would know everything. Maybe Hart already knew I was back.

  Three weeks. That’s all I’d lasted. Three weeks and I was back working a publicised CIB case.

  Trevor banged on the closed door of Sweet Hell three times. The wood thudded dully. Obviously thick and solid, no rattling to be heard in the frame.

  “No door bell,” he mused, banging again three times and receiving the same dull thud in reply and little else.

  “Try the back? There’s always a back door to these places.”

  He nodded and started heading towards the side of the building. “You’d know, Keen. Back door events, I hear, are just your style.”

  “And they’re not yours, Jones? I swear that moustache and a black polyurethane crotchless and cheekless leotard would go so damn well together.”

  He shuddered. “Tell me you didn’t see anything like that at Zero Gravity?”

  I’d seen a hell of a lot more at that club, when I’d attended a mystique night with Damon. A hell of a lot more than I cared to discuss with a colleague. But CIB was a boys’ club and although I tended to float above the more base layer of its intricacies, I also knew that gutter talk was just part of the job description.

  An outlet. Nothing more.

  “Whips and chains and paddles that would make a whore blush,” I offered.

  Jones shuddered again and then rapped three times on the back door to Sweet Hell.

  I glanced around the carpark, secured behind a chain-link fence. A Lexus, a BMW, and a Rolls Royce of all things, sat sparkling in the mid morning sunshine. My eyes swept over the potted box hedges and topiary trees shaped like silkily dressed women and groping men, and settled on the small nondescript sign to the side of the door. Black with gold writing.

  Enter at your own risk. For here lies the sweetest of miseries. The hottest of infernos. The nine circles of Hell.

  “Well, that’s welcoming,” I quipped, nodding toward the sign.

  Jones glanced at the golden writing and then the rest of the well maintained back area. His hand reached out and he fingered the leaves on a nearby tree. I think he’d managed to get the woman’s breast, but I wasn’t sure.

  “More upmarket than the front,” he commented.

  “Yeah,” I agreed, taking another look at the Rolls Royce. “This is where the big boys come to play.”

  Locks behind the door began to clunk and clink as if being unbolted. My eyes flicked around the alcove that covered the rear entrance trying to find cameras. If they were here, they were discrete. Hopefully like the front of the building. Which meant we could have a picture of our perp by the end of the day.

  The door opened on well oiled hinges, darkness meeting our eyes.

  I flicked a glance up at Jones, his hand was already on his gun, at his hip. Not even trying to hide the weapon behind his jacket now. Jumpy. I didn’t realise Jones was jumpy.

  Or maybe I’d been so consumed in fear lately that it took more to rattle me than a purposely ominous greeting at the back door to a hell.

  “A little light, please?” I said.

  “Of course,” came a voice from deep within the darkness.

  A softly glowing light flicked on, showcasing a small table and lamp, with a red velvet covered chair to the side. A man sat in it. Late thirties, or a well maintained early forties. Dark hair, firm jawline, long legs crossed at the knees, superbly tailored suit open and displaying trim hips, a thick chest, and expensive silk shirt and tie. The tie was loose, the collar undone, dark hair peeked out at the hollow of his neck. Shadows made any more facial features harder to discern, but the overall image was one of indulgence.

  He reeked of sexual prowess.

  Jones cleared his throat.

  “Detectives Jones and Keen. Auckland CIB,” he announced. “You might have seen us across the road.”

  “Across the road,” the gentleman repeated. “I have not seen anything of across the road.”

  He spoke with an accent I recognised. I took a step closer to the threshold and the darkness beyond. Head tilted, eyes narrowed, a gut clenching foreknowledge settling its claws in and leaving deep grooves behind.

  “Detective Lara Keen,” the man said, voice soft and familiar. “How long has it been since you last came home?”

  Jones turned his head, body still facing forward, hand still resting by his gun, and looked at me.

  “Trevor Jones,” I said, somehow keeping the reluctance I felt from my voice. I flicked a hand out towards the man still reigning supreme on his velvet chair, more like a king than Jones could ever be. “Kyan Marcroft. My neighbour while I was growing up.”

  Silence for a beat. No cop likes having a connection to anything that might involve a crime.

  The law is there to protect us, Lara-Marie. Stay on the right side of it, and it will always be your guiding light. Cross it, and it becomes a laser beam.

  I’d spent more time across that divide recently than I cared to acknowledge. Having my father’s words reverberating inside my head the moment I walk back out into the guiding light was not at all welcome.

  Having a connection to Sweet Hell felt just as gut-twistingly bad.

  The look in my old neighbour’s eyes when he stepped forward spoke volumes. His words had told me even more.

  Although the Marcrofts had shifted to much greener pastures than my father’s somewhat modest house in Redoubt Road, they’d clearly remained in contact with him.

  Otherwise, Kyan wouldn’t have known I’d not been hom
e for six long years.

  Chapter 3

  “Keep pushing and pushing and pushing, Sport. But the moment you hear them snap back, shut the fuck up and watch them unravel.”

  “There’s been a murder,” I announced, not exactly with the finesse of a seasoned detective, but both men had remained silent too long, forcing my hand.

  “Across the street?” Marcroft offered, amusement at my discomfort apparent on his too cool facade.

  But his indifference, to a dead person no more than twenty metres away, was what really set the alarm bells clanging inside my mind.

  “Yes. Right across the road from Sweet Hell’s front doors.”

  “And you’d like to know if anyone saw anything?”

  Too smooth. Too peremptory.

  “Did you?” I asked.

  “No.”

  Jones shifted on his feet, finally coming to my aid and asked, “Are you the owner here, Mr Marcroft?”

  “Part owner. It’s a family business.”

  “Were you here between four and six this mornin’?” Jones added.

  “Yes. Why do you ask?”

  “It would help in our investigation,” I provided, stepping in with the whole cohesive concerned-cop/professional-cop front we’d been going for, “to have access to any security camera footage you may have for that time. Or any staff who would have been working near the front door.”

  “Of course,” Marcroft replied. “Anything to help our boys in blue.” He chuckled, flicked eyes over my clearly not boyish frame and then waved us inside. “You’ll have to excuse the route we take. There are still members inside the venue that have paid good money not to have their identities disclosed to the general public.”

  “We’re not the general public,” Jones countered.

  “Ah but, Detective, you are not a member either.”

  I raised my eyebrows at Trevor, who rolled his in reply behind Marcroft’s back.

  “You had an open night, last night, I believe,” I said, taking in the hidden access Marcroft led us through and the barren, perfunctory, thin hallway he took us down. There were no windows, showing what had to be the club proper on the other side of the plainly painted walls. No plush carpet or decor to soften the harsh glow of the overhead lights. This was purely for staff only. And the fact Sweet Hell had it at all made me wonder just who made up the members of this esteemed establishment.