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

by Claire, Nicola

  We stayed like that for several moments, neither of us capable of speech or movement beyond that necessary to breathe right then. He eventually moved off me, stroking a hand through my hair, whispering words I couldn’t decipher but knew I should try to translate. He pulled me into his chest, wrapping his stomach and legs around my rear. And held me close, as though allowing any distance to come between us could prove fatal. He clung to me and for a moment I wanted to ask… why?

  Why risk finding his sister by turning up in my bed tonight? Why the demands now, when he’d been slowly building to a more dominant performance in bed for a while? Why me when he’d pushed me away and I feared that he meant it? Still meant it.

  This was a lapse, nothing more. Lust brought on from his undercover sting. Heightened emotions needing an outlet. They teach you many things at Police College. One of them is the dangers of false intimate reactions post traumatic scenes. The Irreverent Inferno was hardly traumatic, but then again, maybe it was.

  If Damon’s sister had been on that altar at some stage then he would be feeling a hell of a lot.

  I let him hold me. I didn’t ask a single question. I buried my doubts and fears, I suppressed my wild emotions. In other words, I acted like a Keen.

  The emotional cop, is not necessarily a good cop. But that doesn’t mean we’re not meant to feel.

  When I awoke in the morning, he was gone. No note. No rose lying on his pillow. Just his cologne and the smell of him, and the heady scent of lust. I lay there and watched my neighbour’s tree wave in the wind through the slim crack in the curtains. Every now and then a leaf would fly free and I felt its loss deep inside my chest. A part of me being swept away on an inexorable breeze.

  My life was out of control. A homicide case that had little evidence. A missing informant. A colleague possibly betraying the only family I’d ever truly believed in. And a boyfriend who was becoming a ghost to me.

  It was amusing to note that Carl didn’t even feature. Right now he was the least of my worries.

  I rolled off the bed feeling every burn and stretch from the night before and took a long, scalding hot shower. It was the phone ringing that saved my power bill. I reached it just before it switched to the answer phone, dripping steaming puddles of water onto the floor.

  “Keen,” I said, a little breathlessly, which only managed to remind me of how breathless Damon had made me last night.

  I felt uneasy about his visit. But that didn’t stop me from wanting him to visit again tonight. I sat down on the edge of the bed and crossed my legs, trying to dull the throb that had taken up residence between my thighs. What was wrong with me? One debauched scene in a fire lit cavern and I was as horny as a teenager.

  “Hello?” I said, realising no one had replied to my greeting over the phone line.

  I let a little breath of air out, recognising my silent caller.

  “You have to say something,” I whispered, unsure why I was lowering my voice. “I can’t help you unless you talk.” It wasn’t until that second that I realised that was what the caller wanted.

  Did Carl need my help after all?

  The phone clicked dead, but I didn’t lower it from my ear. I stared blindly at the puddles I’d made on the wooden floor and gripped the phone as though it possessed some magical remedy to the imminent shattering of my heart.

  “I’m here,” I said to the disconnect tone. “I’m not going anywhere,” I added. “Just talk.”

  The room was silent. My heart cracked.

  I lowered the phone and forced myself to my feet. Ten minutes later I was leaving the house, fully dressed in chocolate coloured dress trousers, a crisp white fitted blouse, and a caramel lightweight trench coat that hid my service weapon as well as a dogeared book.

  I phoned Pierce once I was in the car.

  “Have you seen Hart yet?” I asked, before he’d managed to even acknowledge the call.

  “Good morning to you, too,” he replied, voice dry as a desert.

  “Well, what did he say?”

  “He’s not convinced,” he admitted.

  I ignored the stab of irritation I felt at those words.

  “I received a delivery last night,” I told him, as I made my way to Karangahape Road. It was automatic. The scene of the crime. I needed to walk it again, feel the moment. Connect some dots.

  “Sounds interesting.”

  “Dante’s The Divine Comedy.”

  “And this means what exactly? We knew Irreverent Inferno was connected somehow to the nine circles of Hell.”

  “Do you even know what the nine circles of Hell are?”

  “Purgatory?”

  I snorted. “Try lust, limbo, gluttony, greed, anger, heresy, violence, fraud, and treachery.”

  “That in order?”

  “Yeah.”

  “So violence is before fraud. And what the hell does treachery entail?”

  “We can assume violence speaks for itself,” I said, finding a park down East Street. “Now fraud, what a coincidence.”

  “Just because the Serious Fraud Office is interested in Kyan Marcroft does not necessarily mean it has anything to do with the Irreverent Inferno.”

  “Doesn’t mean it’s not either.”

  “And if it is, we’d have to hand over part of this investigation to the SFO. You want that?”

  No, I didn’t. Complications would undoubtedly ensue.

  “OK, how about treachery?” I said instead of answering. He knew how I felt about governmental departments. The fact that the Police Service was considered a governmental department by some was irrelevant. “The last circle of Hell. That would indicate the most perverse.”

  “Perverse. Like where you’re going with this. These guys are definitely perverse.”

  “So,” I said, drawing out the one syllable, “what constitutes treachery?”

  “A betrayal of trust.”

  Silence.

  “There was something else in the delivery I received.”

  “Your wise old helper?”

  “Well, he wasn’t in the delivery, but I am assuming it came from him. It was on my kitchen table. The house alarm had been switched off.”

  “Jesus, Keen.” I knew what he meant, but what could I do? Carl was a force of reckoning and out of everyone’s, especially my, control.

  “Anyway, there was a photo inside the book. Taken with high powered surveillance equipment.”

  I could hear Pierce scrubbing his goatee.

  “Go on,” he said, almost resigned.

  “Cawfield pulling a cloak very similar to those worn at the Irreverent Inferno out of his police issued sedan.”

  “Motherfucker.” It was whispered. But sometimes Ryan Pierce whispering was more threatening than if he yelled.

  “Circumstantial,” I admitted, wanting him to know I had both eyes wide open. Well, they were opened and currently narrowed on Detective Joseph Cawfield. “But enough to convince Hart we need another twenty-four hours just to be sure?”

  Pierce breathed heavily though his nose for a moment and then sighed.

  “Yeah, I’ll convince him.” The relief was short-lived. “But we’re not shutting down other avenues of investigation. Samantha Hayes’ employer, David Gordon. Meet Jones in Remuera and question him about his whereabouts Thursday night.”

  It made sense, but anything that took me away from nailing Cawfield chafed.

  “Keen? Here’s where you say, ‘Sure, Sarge. Anything you ask, I’m on it.’”

  I smiled and let out an amused huff.

  “Sure, Sarge,” I repeated dutifully. “Anything you ask, I’m on it.”

  “I knew there was a reason why I liked you.”

  “Not just my good looks?”

  “Nor the bitching coffee you brew.”

  “Or my sharp wit and time perfect one-liners.”

  He laughed down the phone and then asked, “You OK?”

  I shook my head. I liked Ryan. I liked him a lot. But I wasn’t ready to let him th
at far in. Invited or not.

  “Fine. I’ll phone Jones and arrange a time to meet.”

  “You do that,” Pierce said, following my lead automatically. “And we’ll touch base over doughnuts later.”

  “Daisy’s?”

  “You betcha.” And then he was gone, no doubt smiling a mile wide thinking of his wee daughter.

  I slipped my phone away and climbed out of the car, checking my surroundings. Damon had parked here last night, before heading into Sweet Hell. I checked for the CCTV cameras I knew were situated down this small roadway. Spotted the one ASI had hacked into and wondered if Kyan Marcroft was watching right now. It was early Saturday morning, so the chances were that he wasn’t. But it still left an icy feeling trickling down my spine.

  Those cameras were meant to help the Police not hinder them. I suddenly realised how human rights activists feel when they complain about freedom from government spying.

  I walked up onto K Road and took in the early morning bustle of Auckland’s premier sex street. The gloss of neon lights had rubbed off in the harsh glare of the day. What had seemed salacious in darkness only appeared rundown when doused in the sun’s rays.

  I ignored the condom wrappers and fast food litter blowing in the wind. I inhaled impassively the petrol fumes and overcooked oil tainted with a sweetness that was either vomit or spilled alcohol. I simply crossed to where Samantha Hayes had been killed, neither unobservant nor affected.

  There was no chalk outline like you see in b-grade movies. No yellow police tape to indicate where it had happened. No stained concrete reminding people of spilled blood. There’d been no blood. No bodily fluids to speak of. She’d had sex earlier that night, but had showered afterwards. Dressed again to go out on the town.

  I crouched down and stared at the spot where she breathed her last breaths. Ignoring the strange looks I received from passersby. He’d held her against the window of The Whiskey Lounge, but forensics hadn’t found any DNA at the scene. The pathologist believed he’d been wearing gloves.

  No semen. No spit. No fingerprints. Nothing. Just a dead woman with a ring of bruises around her neck.

  I reached up and touched my own neck, feeling the ghost of Damon’s kisses. Then I touched fingers to wrist, pulling back the sleeve of my jacket. Darker indentations marred the pale skin. Three little dots. The size of his fingertips.

  I stood up and glanced across the street. Sweet Hell looked polished, whereas the rest of K Road seemed dulled in comparison. I sighed. There was nothing to speak to me here. The victim had moved on. Her killer was in the wind. All I had was a gut feeling and a hollow chest.

  And then someone screamed.

  Chapter 16

  “Life sucks. Death sucks harder.”

  It came from across the road, down Boardman Lane. My gun was out and I was running across the road, hand up to stall traffic, before I could think. That scream had sounded terrified, but not the kind a victim gave at the time of death. More like a shock that tore at the fabric of life, rather than destroyed it outright with its fists.

  Several members of the public had begun to congregate at the entrance to the small lane, faster to respond than a police detective functioning on such little sleep. And didn’t that evoke images inside my mind. Karangahape Road, though, was busy even on a Saturday morning. No street workers or club goers, but plenty of cafe strollers and Queen Street shoppers wending their way to greater things.

  “Police! Let me through,” I ordered, shouldering between the raised cellphone cameras and stretched rubber neckers, to see what had caused all the fuss.

  A woman stood over the slumped form of a man. She was dressed in running shorts, had her earphones hanging limply around her shoulders, and had gone a shade paler than white.

  The man was breathing. But only just.

  I moved forward and reached down to check his pulse, despite having seen his chest rise and fall shallowly.

  “Call an ambulance,” I ordered one of the cellphone camera bearers. My fingers came away bloody. Rookie mistake. One I could well do without making right now.

  I wiped them on his shoulder surreptitiously and then pulled ever present latex gloves from my pocket, and donned them after the fact.

  “Do you know him?” I asked the woman jogger.

  She shook her head, while I lifted the man’s eyelids, seeing little to no reaction to the light that filtered in. He was dressed in a dark dinner suit, finely made, but it had seen better days. The wear was recent. He had a swelling on his right cheek and blood dripped from a crooked nose. A contusion had started to form on his right temple.

  “This how you found him?” I asked the woman, as I searched his pockets for a wallet. It hadn’t been stolen; the first indication this wasn’t a simple mugging.

  “I live back there,” the woman said in way of answer, indicating the rear of an apartment building down the back of the lane. “Just coming back from my morning run and found him like this.”

  I flicked through the gentleman’s wallet and located his driver’s license. Malcolm Francis Warren. Three surnames for a name. Aged fifty-three.

  “You leave for your run using this lane?” I asked, returning his wallet to his jacket and rechecking his breathing and pulse.

  “Yeah. An hour ago.” She knew why I was asking. Clever girl.

  “And he wasn’t here then,” I guessed.

  “No.”

  I looked at the man, tried to put a personality to the slack features, but couldn’t. He was breathing. His pulse still beat. He’d been battered to a pulp. I didn’t move him any further.

  I pulled my cellphone from my pocket as I heard the nearby ambulance from Pitt Street fire up its siren as it approached. While I waited for Police Communications to answer I pulled a pad and pen from my pocket and stepped toward the crowd. Some of those at the back started to move away.

  “No one’s going anywhere until I have your name and contact details on here.” A few groans sounded out just as Kathy at Northcom answered. “I have a 14:10 on Boardman Lane, in the CBD,” I said into the cellphone. “Detective Lara Keen 10:7.”

  “Roger, Detective. Sending a unit now.”

  I disconnected and started taking details just as the ambulance crew arrived to treat the man. He remained unconscious throughout. When the uniforms turned up, I let them take over name and details duty, and turned my attention to the scene of the crime.

  Another assault, just down the road from Sweet Hell. Another victim dressed up for a night on the town. Two obvious dissimilarities: This was a man and he was alive.

  I confirmed Auckland City Hospital as the victim’s destination with the paramedics and waited for forensics to arrive. Something told me there’d be little evidence, if any.

  Something also told me this was tied into Sweet Hell.

  All circumstantial, and I was beginning to hate that word. But if the murderer had tried to strike again, then I’d take circumstantial over hard evidence any day. Maybe this would convince Hart that we had to dig deeper into Sweet Hell.

  Pierce put a stop to that happy train of thought.

  “An assault versus homicide,” he said when he finally arrived on scene. “Near K Road but not on it. Male versus female. You count up the ways this does not connect.”

  “So, coincidence,” I said, voice a low growl.

  Pierce flicked his eyes to mine, but didn’t comment on my tone.

  “The guy got beaten up on the way home from a night on the town. Happens all the time.”

  “There’s cash still in his wallet,” I pointed out.

  “He pissed someone off. Probably high as a kite and obnoxious to boot.”

  “Cameras?” I said, looking up at the CCTV lens above our heads.

  “I’m on it,” Pierce advised. “You need to be on David Gordon and your official case.”

  I snorted. Official, that was a laugh. I had so many unofficial cases that the official one seemed lost in the chaos. Which, I guess, was his point.


  “OK,” I said, rubbing at my face.

  “You had coffee?”

  I shook my head. Coffee hadn’t been on my mind when I’d left my bedroom this morning. I rubbed at my wrist instead.

  “Grab a coffee, meet up with Jones, and find me something to work with.”

  “Sure thing, Sarge,” I said, offering him a mock salute. I could hear his grumbling all the way back onto Karangahape Road.

  I drove towards Remuera alternating between amusement at Pierce and frustration with this case. And as Jones was running late, I had time to flip and flop some more. I sat outside David Gordon’s multi-million dollar home and sipped at a triple shot latte. Letting caffeine create magic and accelerate my heart. My fingers kept getting pulled back to the ever so pale bruises on my wrists. A visceral memory of Damon’s touch. The callouses interspersed with smooth skin. The firm press of his fingers. The pounding of his cock.

  The blood on his knuckles.

  I hadn’t seen them in the darkness of the bedroom, but they’d still have been there. Healing? Or reopened?

  And where had that thought come from? Coincidence and an exhausted, emotionally spent mind.

  That’s all.

  A finger tapped on the side window of my car. Jones’ moustache twitching face beamed back at me through the glass. The wind making his hat lift off in the breeze. I watched on as he chased it across the street.

  I was smiling when I emerged from the car, minus coffee and with a perfectly blank mind. I’d force those emotions deep down inside if it meant I could just do my bloody job.

  “Keen!” Jones exclaimed, hat in hand as he walked back toward me. “You and me again. We make a good team.”

  “Everything all right at home?” I asked, as we made our way to the front gate on David Gordon’s property.

  “Yeah, yeah, just had to collect the wife from treatment. She’s all good.” I think Jones forced those emotions deep down inside as well. His wife had a rare form of cancer.

  I took his lead and nodded my head, not asking anymore invasive questions and not offering empty platitudes. Life sucks. Death sucks harder.