by JL Merrow
Maybe he wouldn’t want me to give him a key? What if I handed it over and he ran a mile? Nah, it was way too soon. Best leave it. I opened the door. Phil was standing there, bags of groceries in both hands. There was a stiffish breeze whipping down the street, and it just ruffled his short blond hair on top. He looked solid and warm and fucking gorgeous in his blue cashmere sweater. “Do you want a key?” I blurted out.
His eyes—same colour as the sweater—widened. “What?”
Shit. “Nah, it’s daft. Forget it.”
“You’re offering me a key to your house?”
“Well, you know. Seems a bit weird you having to ring the doorbell. Number of times you’ve slept over, and all. And if we were going to meet up here, and I got held up… Just thought it’d be convenient. That’s all.”
“Okay.”
“Right. Good.” That was it? No Are you sure? Or Hang on, this is a big step, we’ve only known each other five minutes?
Phil gave me a flicker of a smile. “You going to let me in, now? I’m not sure how long these carrier bags are going to hold together.”
“Right! Yeah, sorry.” Feeling like a right muppet, I stood back to let him come in the front door. “I’ll get some pans out.”
“This is pretty good,” I said half an hour later as we sat in front of the telly with our plates on our laps. I mopped up some spicy sauce with a bit of naan bread and shoved it in my gob with relish.
Phil shrugged, one-shouldered, and forked up some more of his lamb jalfrezi. “The sauce is just out of a jar.”
“So? If I wanted gourmet food cooked from scratch, I’d be shagging Gordon Ramsay.”
“And there’s a picture I didn’t need in my head while I’m eating.”
I shuddered. “Me either. Or at any other time, for that matter. Seriously, that bloke is a dire warning of what getting all het up over your job can do to you. He’s got more wrinkles than a bloody Sharpie.”
“Shar Pei.”
“Whatever. Hey, do you ever think about getting a pet? Dunno why, but I’ve always thought of you as a dog person.” Course, I wasn’t sure how well that’d work in his top-floor flat.
“Yeah, well. The cats are growing on me.” He stroked the nearest furry head, which happened to belong to Merlin, sucking up as usual.
“What, even Arthur?”
Phil smiled, put his mostly empty plate on the coffee table and leaned back. “It’s a work in progress. I still like his owner better, don’t worry.”
“Well, I should hope so. There’s laws against that sort of thing. Plus I’ve had him seen to, so I think you’d be in for a bit of a disappointment anyway.” I slid my plate underneath Phil’s, seeing as I’d practically licked it clean. “So what’s for pudding?”
“Even you can’t still be hungry after that lot.”
I gave him a saucy smile. “Oh, I can always manage a bit more.”
“Yeah? Bit of what?”
“What are you offering?”
Phil let his legs fall open. “See something you like?”
“Mmm, think I’m going to have to get closer to see for sure.” I knelt down between his legs and ran my hands slowly up his thighs, loving the feel of all that muscle under the fabric of his trousers. When I got to his hips, Phil shifted a bit, giving me plenty of access to what I was after. I traced the outline of his balls and his rapidly hardening cock with one finger, deliberately teasing.
Phil wasn’t amused. “Are you going to suck it or just tickle it to death?”
“Any more sarcasm from you and it’ll be neither.” But I took pity on him and undid his zip. Phil’s dick, still covered in stretchy cotton, erupted from his flies like a slo-mo version of Alien bursting out of whatshisname’s chest. I raised an eyebrow. “Someone’s in a hurry.”
“Someone’s a fucking prick-tease.” But his hand stroked my face as he said it.
I carefully peeled away Phil’s underwear to free his cock. The tip was glistening, and my mouth watered instinctively. I licked all the way up his erection, then circled the head with just the tip of my tongue. Phil shuddered. I teased him some more, then plunged my mouth over his cock.
Spreading his legs even wider, Phil groaned and grabbed hold of my head with one hand, which ordinarily I’d be fine about. Unfortunately, he managed to zero in on that lump on the back of my head with painful accuracy. I let out a muffled yelp.
Phil pulled out and frowned at me in concern. At least, I think that was his expression. I kept getting distracted by his dick still bobbing in my face. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. Well, bit of a bruise on the back of my head, that’s all.”
Phil’s fingers were probing under my hair, and I sucked in a breath as he found the sore bit again. “Christ, there’s a lump here. When did this happen?”
“This afternoon. Job on Fishpool Street.” Phil junior was looking a lot less perky, I noticed sadly.
“What, fall off the pavement on the way there, did you?”
“Har, har.” Fishpool Street is one of those streets in St Albans where the pavement is set a bit more than your average three inches higher than the road. But not by that much. “Nah, I was plumbing in a washing machine. You want to hear the story, or you want to get your dick sucked?”
Phil zipped up his flies and pulled me back up onto the sofa.
Flippin’ marvellous.
“You daft… Why didn’t you tell me? I thought you’d just had a bad day, not got a bloody concussion.”
“I haven’t got a bloody concussion! And oi, get your fingers out of my eyes.”
“Just checking. You got a headache?”
“Only a bit. Getting worse now,” I added pointedly. “I hear sexual frustration can do that.”
“Dizziness? Nausea?”
“No, and no. I’m fine, all right?”
“So what happened?” God, he was a persistent bastard.
“I was on my hands and knees under the work surface in the kitchen, having a look at the pipes, and something startled me, all right? So I jumped, and bashed my head on the bottom of the worktop.”
“See a spider, did you?”
“Saw two of ’em, actually.” I held up the appropriate two fingers.
“Come on, then, what was it?”
I rolled my eyes, then wished I hadn’t. That headache really was getting worse. “It was the customer, all right? Copping a feel.”
“You what?”
“You heard me. And before you tear down to Fishpool Street to put the fear of God into him, the bloke’s eighty if he’s a day. It was probably the most action he’s had since the original Summer of Love. And oi, stop laughing. What happened to being all worried about me?”
“God, I can’t trust you anywhere, can I? Every time I look round, you’re charming the pants off someone.”
“Mr. C’s pants stayed very firmly on, thank God. And so did mine. God, now I’ve got wrinkly arses in thermal long johns stuck in my head, fuck you very much for that.”
“Better than having wrinkly bits stuck anywhere else.”
“Are you seriously trying to put me off sex for life? Because you’re doing a pretty good job.”
“Bloody diva.” Phil slung his arm around me and pulled me in close. “Come on, let’s just watch the telly.”
I sighed and cuddled into his side. Bloody cock-blocking head wounds.
Chapter Eighteen
Next morning, we had a lazy breakfast and then a confab about the Literati so Phil could get me up to speed on all the dirt he’d managed to dig up on them.
Which, frankly, wasn’t a lot. I supposed all would-be murderers didn’t come with handy criminal records so you could point to them and say, that’s a bad’un, but I’d been hoping for something.
Phil had found out a bit more about David Evans, the late Literati chairman. He’d been eighty-four when he’d died, so it hadn’t exactly been a life cut tragically short in its prime—then again, it seemed he’d still been pretty fit, heart
troubles notwithstanding: playing bowls regularly at a local club; doing the garden. At any rate, he’d still had all his marbles, and I bet if you’d asked him, he’d have said he wasn’t ready to go just yet.
He’d been a retired bank manager, but nobody’s perfect.
“So did anyone cry foul when he tottered off to the big bowling lawn in the sky?” I asked, lolling on the sofa.
“Nope.” Phil scrolled through his notes on his laptop. “Good turnout for the funeral, apparently, although the neighbour I spoke to reckoned he—Evans—wouldn’t have approved.”
“Why not?” I grinned. “When I go, I want the works—horse-drawn hearse with black feathers, weeping women, pomp and bloody circumstance. If you’ve got to go, you might as well do it in style.”
“I’ll bear that in mind.”
“What, for when you off me with the toaster?”
“Something like that. They had a big church service for Evans, the vicar going on about how he’d been a pillar of the parish. Thing is, according to this neighbour, she knew him pretty well and he hadn’t been to church for close on five years. Lost his faith when his wife died, she said.”
“Poor sod.”
Phil looked up from his laptop screen. “Didn’t reckon you were into religion.”
I shrugged. “I’m not. Just, it’s a comfort, innit? For old folks. Believing it’s not the end when they pop their little orthopaedic clogs, and they’ll see their loved ones again when they get to the other side. Just seems a shame, if he had that all his life, to lose it when he really needed it.” Phil was still staring at me. I picked up my mug. “Want another coffee?”
“If you’re making.” He handed me his mug, and I took them into the kitchen, Merlin trotting hopefully at my heels.
“So what did old Evans leave in the way of family?” I called back to Phil as I got the coffee out.
“Couple of grown-up daughters. One married, one divorced, both with kids in university.”
“Huh. I’ve heard those fees can be a right bastard these days.”
“Suggesting they did him in for his money?” Phil’s voice sounded close, and I looked up from the cafetière to see him leaning on the doorframe. With his arms folded like that, he looked like an advert for cashmere sweaters. And gym subscriptions. And sex. Giving up on me, Merlin padded over to rub his cheek on Phil’s leg adoringly.
“I’m just saying, a bit of money from Gramps’d probably come in handy. Course, we don’t know yet that anyone killed him, do we?” I poured in the hot water and put the lid on the cafetière. “And I s’pose it’d be a bit of a funny coincidence, both him and Cherry getting poisoned. If it wasn’t the same poisoner, I mean.” I leaned back on the counter. “So why do writers kill other writers? Apart from wanting to prove the pen really is deadlier than the sword?”
“Mightier.”
“What?”
“It’s mightier than the sword. Same reasons anyone kills anyone. Money. Sex. Love. Jealousy. Revenge. Fear.” He nodded, presumably to himself, seeing as I hadn’t said anything. “The interesting question is, why does a writer try to kill two other writers? Assuming the old chairman was murdered.”
I frowned. “Well, I can see Morgan offing someone to get the top job. And he never did like Cherry. And him and Margaret are pretty tight. Maybe she helped?”
“Unlikely. Think about it—if you want to kill someone, are you going to take a chance on trying to bring someone else in on it? Chances are they’d be horrified, and then there’s no chance you’d get away with it, ’cause they’d shop you if you did it.” He stared at the wall for a moment. “What about her doing it off her own bat? Just how tight are her and Morgan?”
“You mean, are they shagging?” I thought about it. Then I wished I hadn’t. “Dunno. He’s a bit of a puritan, old Morgan. I s’pose it doesn’t necessarily mean she wouldn’t have killed for him, either way. Actually, there’s Hannah too, in that camp. She seemed to have a bit of hero-worship going. Called him the next someone-or-other. Come to that, him and Raz had their heads together a lot at that meeting I went to. And Raz was definitely unfriendly to me.”
“What about Peter?”
“Yeah, what about him? Bit of a dark horse, that one. Although he looked more like a rat. A dark rat.”
“Don’t let him bite you, then. I hear bubonic plague can be nasty. So who’s he in with, in the circle?”
“Not sure. No one, particularly, far as I could tell from one meeting. Oh, and I’m pretty sure Morgan’s a drinker. His tea smelled funny.”
“Sure it wasn’t some herbal stuff? Maybe he had a dodgy heart, got told to stay off the caffeine.”
“Positive. It reeked of rum. And Tetley’s.”
The coffee had to have brewed by now, so I pushed down the plunger and poured it into our mugs, taking a deep, coffee-scented breath as I did so. Lovely. It’s got texture, proper coffee has. Even filter coffee isn’t the same—too watery. Give me a rich, thick cup of cafetière coffee any day.
Phil made a noise, sort of halfway between a grunt and a huff. I looked up. “What?”
“You want to drink that coffee or shag it?”
I grinned. “Both.”
“Well, don’t blame me when you get third degree burns on your dick.”
“Wanker.” I passed him his mug, and we took them through to the living room.
We were halfway through our coffee when Phil’s phone rang, and he stood up from the sofa to answer it. As one-sided conversations went, it wasn’t all that thrilling to listen in to. “Yeah? Right. Right. Yeah. I owe you.”
“Well?” I said as he put his phone away.
“Interesting.” Phil sat down again.
“I’ll reserve judgement on that until you tell me what the bloody hell it was all about.”
“Morangie junior. I asked a mate to do some digging for me. It’s a girl. Elizabeth.”
“Congratulations. I’m very happy for you both.”
“Piss off.” He only said it halfheartedly, too busy staring out of the window. I didn’t reckon it was because he thought the view was interesting, because, trust me, it wasn’t. Plus I could practically hear the cogs going round in his brain.
“Old Mr. M went a bit over the top about it then, didn’t he? I mean, me getting the sex of his kid wrong. Assuming that’s why he chucked me out of the house.”
Phil turned to look at me, still thoughtful. “Maybe he was just looking for an excuse—any excuse? Trying to buy time by seeming to agree, but still not letting you search the place? Did you get anything from there? Anything at all?”
“Well, no. Didn’t have time, did I? I mean, I thought I was going to have all the time I wanted, so I didn’t bother getting a shift on.”
Phil huffed. “We need to get you back in that house.”
“Maybe. I’d be more chuffed about the prospect if I was certain he wasn’t trying to kill me. Still, I suppose if I find what he’s hiding, he won’t have a reason anymore, will he?”
“You’ve got a short memory. That list of motives for murder I gave you? Revenge was in the top five. No, if you go back in that house, I’m going too.”
I grinned at him. “Watch it. People are going to start thinking you care about me.”
“Wanker.” He gave me a shove, and my coffee sloshed in my mug but didn’t splash onto my lap. “I do, all right? Care.”
“Yeah, well,” I muttered to my knees. “Me too.”
By the time we’d finished our coffee—and all right, a fair bit of slobbing around on the sofa talking the case round in circles—it was late morning, so we decided to have an early lunch and go interview the Literati after that.
First up was Margaret. She actually lived in St Leonard’s, it turned out, which must be nice and handy for murder attempts in the Old Deanery. We probably should have rung before we went, but based on my last experience of phoning her, I thought we’d be better off surprising her. Of course, she might not be in, but in that case, we could go and
have another chat with Greg.
Bit of a lose-lose situation, that.
Margaret’s house was small and cottagey, but there was something very Margaret about the way the box hedge had been trimmed with the aid of a spirit level and all weeds ruthlessly exterminated from her brick driveway.
Nicotine was a weed killer, wasn’t it? Or a pesticide or something? I was sure someone had said so.
“Nice little house,” Phil commented. “Must be worth a bit.”
I might have known he’d like it. I rang the doorbell and cringed as an ear-piercing, high-pitched buzz sawed jaggedly through the midmorning peace. I half-expected neighbours’ heads to pop up over the hedge and go, Do you mind? Still, at least you knew you’d rung it. I hate it when you ring a doorbell and you can’t hear it from outside. Do you press it again and risk pissing them off? Sod’s law, if you don’t, you’ll end up standing on the doorstep like a lemon for the next ten minutes, until the neighbours or the postman or, if you’re very lucky, the householder him or herself happens by and lets you know the doorbell hasn’t worked for months.
Margaret kept us waiting long enough for me to worry she was out or, more likely, had spotted who it was through the window and was lying low. Eventually, though, the door was opened a crack, chain kept firmly on. “Yes?”
“Hi, Margaret. It’s Tom. From the Literati? I wondered if we could ask you a few questions.”
Suspicious eyes glared at us through the crack. “What about?”
Phil got there first. “Can we come in? It’s not really a suitable subject for the doorstep.”
He’d got Margaret’s number, all right. She shot a worried glance over at the neighbouring cottage, then opened the door fully, her mouth tight. “Come in,” she said curtly, the I suppose you’d better understood.
I got a weird case of déjà vu walking the short distance down Margaret’s hallway to her sitting room. It took me a mo to realise both rooms were done up like Morgan’s, only on a smaller scale. I wondered who’d copied the other—or did they plan their home decor together? There were the same echoey tiles on the hallway floor and the same horsehair furniture in the front room. Even the colours were similar: brown mud and green sludge. A sort of septic-tank chic. Although unlike at Morgan’s, here and there I could see splashes of rose pink attempting to enliven the mix. It didn’t.
