Payback

by Charlotte Mills

  Those searching fingers quickly brought her to orgasm once more. Their kisses were frantic as they panted through their pleasure. Helen’s hips began to twitch desperately against her fingers, signalling she was close. Keeping her fingers firm, she felt the release in Helen’s body and cradled her firmly as it shuddered.

  “I’m not sure I can walk after that,” she whispered, her voice a little husky.

  “Are you trying to put me in an early grave or just get me fired?” Helen replied, blowing out a breath.

  She pulled away and asked the question that she had originally come in to ask. “Would you like to meet up later?”

  Helen moved forward, using her free hand to remove damp hair from her face. “I can’t. I have to visit a sick relative.”

  She raised her eyebrows at Helen’s statement to hide her disappointment. She had been hoping for a replay of last night. “Nothing serious, I hope.” Her mind drifted back to the phone call Helen had received. She was relieved it wasn’t Helen that was ill.

  Helen ignored the question as she quirked an eyebrow and said, “I think I might need a lie-down.”

  Releasing a giggle, she spotted the tissues on Helen’s desk. They were probably for distraught victims on the worst days of their lives. Freeing her hand from Helen’s underwear, she sucked on her own moist digits, relishing the taste of Helen as she looked directly at her.

  Helen’s eyes narrowed as she leant forward, capturing her lips as soon as the fingers had left her mouth.

  “We shouldn’t be doing this.” Helen leant back on her desk with her free hand.

  She felt a sudden sense of bewilderment. Is this how she breaks it to me, with her fingers still inside me? Her face must have exposed her concerns.

  “Here, I mean,” Helen quickly added. “We should definitely be doing this, just not here.”

  Relief flooded through her. “Thank God, because I really like doing this with you.” She gently removed Helen’s hand from inside her underwear. Backing away, she buttoned up her trousers. She stepped to Helen’s side and then moved closer, softly kissing Helen on the lips. “Good night, Guv.”

  She winked as she backed away, then turned towards the door. She closed it softly behind her.

  Chapter 14

  Spotting Kate’s car in the small driveway, Helen parked outside the vacant house next door. She’d been curious to see where Kate lived on her first visit. Now she was just thinking up excuses to return. Walking towards the front door, she felt the flutter begin to rise in her stomach as her mind drifted to what had transpired last night in her office. Kate Wolfe could easily become someone who could make her rethink her priorities. That thought alone scared and excited her at the same time.

  “A domestic goddess too, I see?” Helen grinned down at the gloves covering Kate’s hands.

  “Am I late?” Kate asked as she pulled back a glove to look at her watch.

  “No. I couldn’t sleep. Kept thinking about our arsonist.”

  “Oh!”

  As Kate followed her into the kitchen, Helen noted the disappointed tone her single-word response.

  After tossing her rubber gloves onto the worktop, Kate picked up her mug. “Tea?”

  Helen’s response was swift. Shaking her head, she stepped towards Kate and took the mug from her hands, placing it back on the worktop. She kept her eyes on Kate’s as she lifted her hand to cup her cheek. “To be honest, I just wanted to see you. Alone.”

  She moved closer still, bringing their lips together, releasing a barely audible groan as they moved against each other. She had been mulling over ways to catch the firebug, but she was also unable to stop thinking about Kate.

  Helen felt her shirt being grasped, bringing their bodies firmly together as they settled back against the worktop. Their kisses soon became heated as their bodies melted together.

  Kate pulled away from her lips. “If we don’t stop soon, I’ll be forced to take you upstairs again.”

  Helen groaned at Kate’s words. She continued to leave lingering kisses down her neck. “You can’t say things like that to me now.”

  As she breathed in the fresh floral scent from Kate’s hair, she knew she was acting like an infatuated teenager, but she didn’t care. It had been so long since she’d woken up thinking about something other than work. Or, worse, Julia. Kate was a breath of fresh air in her tired life. She certainly wasn’t like any other police officer Helen had met before, and she liked that, more and more each day.

  Reluctantly, she stepped back from Kate, seeing the flush of desire on her cheeks and neck. Looking up to meet her gaze, she could see the passion mirrored in Kate’s darkened eyes too.

  Glancing up at Kate’s injury, she was glad to see some of the inflammation had subsided.

  With a breath, Helen tried to slip back into work mode as she remembered what else had brought her to Kate’s door so early.

  “Okay. I got the latest fire report through. They found a beer can with fingerprints and DNA right next to the garage. They’re trying to match it to the cigarette butts they found at the house on Morley Lane. I’m betting it’s at least one of the Whiting lads. The fingerprints are already confirmed as Kyle Whiting’s. We had his fingerprints on file from before.”

  “I thought all three had alibis for when the fires were started,” Kate queried.

  Helen released a long breath, annoyed that the uniformed officer hadn’t been clearer when he reported back to her. “Well, it turns out two of them alibied each other. So, basically, two of them, Curtis and Kyle, don’t have solid alibis. With the image you pulled off the CCTV, we’ve got enough for a warrant to search their place. Just waiting for it to come through.”

  “Sounds promising…Guv,” Kate smirked as she stepped forward, encroaching on Helen’s space. She slipped her hand inside Helen’s jacket, and the familiar warmth of a hand tracing the line of her body made Helen shiver. Her raised eyebrows did nothing to deter Kate as she pressed her lips against hers. It took only a second for Helen to react, lips parted as arms wrapped around Kate’s torso, pulling their bodies together once more.

  She was tired of clicking her heels while they waited for the search warrant to come through. The tape measure she had found earlier in her garage was burning a hole in her pocket. Jotting a quick note on a Post-it to let Helen know she would meet her outside, she walked into Helen’s office and watched her on the phone for a moment. She could see the buzz in her eyes at the thought of catching the arsonist, closing one half of their case. It looked good on her.

  Helen met her gaze. She was smiling, sparkling even. She stuck the Post-it on Helen’s desk, waiting for a response.

  Helen read the note, nodding.

  She quickly made her way outside. Taking the tape measure out of her pocket, she did a quick check of the car park before squatting down out of sight. Drawing out the tape, she held the end against the ground as she checked the height of the bumper on PC Kirk’s white Subaru Impreza. It was a wild idea, but she couldn’t resist checking. It was like a chicken pox itch she just had to scratch regardless of the fallout, although in truth she hoped to do this particular act discreetly. Her disappointment was instant: the height was all wrong. Kirk must have had some custom work done and not recently, by the faded look of the bumper. She even checked the back and side to see if there was any change. It was still too low. Unfortunately, this wasn’t the car they were looking for.

  A whistle behind her made her jump up in fright. Standing, she could see Kirk standing next to the driver’s side of his car. He was stony-faced as he glared at her. They had had very little contact since the evening in the pub, and the thought of him being close to her made her skin crawl. She could easily imagine him pulling the wings off flies when left to his own devices, just to see them suffer.

  “Now, what could you possibly be doing down there, Virginia?” Kirk sneered.

&
nbsp; Deciding it was best to try and defuse the situation, she tried to play it down and said, “Uh, nothing. Just thinking. Doing a bit of research.”

  Kirk pressed his key fob, unlocking his car. Opening the driver’s door, he threw his bag onto the passenger’s seat before refocusing his attention on her.

  “With a tape measure?”

  “Oh!” She casually threw the tape measure in the air a few inches, catching it easily. “Yep.” She didn’t bother to bluff an excuse, not that she had one anyway.

  Kirk stood inside the open door on the driver’s side, resting his hands along the top of the door and the roof of his car. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you were checking the height of my car bumper.”

  “Just getting an idea of the type of car we’re looking for. Don’t worry, you’re off the hook. It’s the wrong height.” She tried not to let her disappointment show, but she knew she’d been unsuccessful by the grin on Kirk’s face.

  “Is that what they teach you down there in London? You’re wasted up here. Maybe you should get a job in professional standards.”

  She bristled at his inference that she was a turncoat. “Fuck you!” she threw at him as he secured himself in his car.

  Kirk lowered his driver’s side window. “I tried that already,” he mocked before putting his window back up. The ignition fired up, and he quickly reversed out of his space, revving his engine a little too much as he glared at her through the windscreen.

  Standing her ground, she smiled back at him. She almost wanted to send him over the edge, to force his hand. If he ploughed towards her, she had options. There were cars on either side of her. She felt confident she could clamber over either one to get away if she had to.

  Kirk made the first move, speeding forward, turning his wheel at the last minute to stop perpendicular to the space he’d been parked in, forcing her to step back.

  She saw the laughter on his face as she caught her breath. He gave her a quick one-finger salute before pulling away.

  “Making friends?” Helen said, walking towards her as she stood in an empty parking space, her head turning towards Kirk as he drove towards the exit.

  It took a second for her to find her voice. “Not exactly.” She wondered how much Helen had seen of her interaction with Kirk.

  “You two should just get a room,”

  She tried to hide her distaste for Kirk as she watched him push his way out into the line of traffic outside the station. “There’s not enough alcohol in the world to make that happen.”

  “Maybe you should give him a wide berth for a while,”

  She stared at the passing traffic, waiting for her annoyance to dissipate. After a few minutes, she had a clear view across to the pavement on the far side of the road. “Hey, is he on our list?” she asked, watching the taxi driver who had taken her home the other night help an elderly woman put her shopping into the back of his car.

  “Who?” Helen asked, as she looked past Kate.

  “Taxi man,” she said fiddling with the tape measure in her hands.

  “I don’t think so. Was he on the list of registered drivers of the possible cars?”

  “What’s his surname?” She asked, pulling out her notebook.

  “Walters.”

  She made a note to check him out later.

  “We have our warrant,” Helen said, brandishing the folded papers. She pulled out her keys and walked to her car. “I’ve called for backup to meet us there.”

  She nodded as she got into the passenger seat. She was a little apprehensive about this search. She didn’t want Helen to think she wasn’t up to the job, but she was nervous in case she got hurt again. It wasn’t so much the injury itself; it was more the fear of it happening again, not to mention the twisted anger she had seen in Paul Wilson’s face as he lunged at her with a knife.

  Helen filled the silence that had developed between them. “They retrieved the car from the quarry; it matches the description of Jarvis’s car. The boot opened as they were landing it. No body inside.”

  She felt the guilt gnawing at her insides. Jarvis wasn’t coming home anytime soon. “Oh!” She busied herself with stashing the tape measure in Helen’s glovebox.

  “It’ll take Forensics a while to go through it, although it doesn’t look like it was down there very long. Looks like it was hotwired, apparently.”

  She looked out of the window, unsure of how to reply to this latest instalment. She hated the thought of letting Helen down. A warm hand on her thigh brought her back to the surface.

  “I, erm…wondered if you’d like to come around for dinner tomorrow, as we’re off duty. I’ll probably be on call, but hopefully it’ll be a crime-free night.”

  She smiled at Helen’s request. “I would,” she said, grateful for the change of subject. They made their way to the outskirts of Warner. “Can I bring anything? Wine?”

  “No. Just yourself.”

  Dreading the answer to her next question, but she needed to know. “Did you find anything when you looked around the quarry yesterday?”

  Helen sighed. “No, nothing.”

  Chapter 15

  Driving through the Sanford estate, Helen was surprised by the striking resemblance it had to the inner-city, rundown areas of back home. The only difference was that they had better views up here. The estate had all the main components: the renowned fly-tipped household furniture, cars with flat tyres, once-grassy community spaces now turned into barren mud patches.

  She pulled up outside the Whiting house and waited for the two patrol cars to arrive before pulling her keys from the ignition. Looking in her rear-view mirror, she spied the edge of the stab vest she had put on the back seat earlier.

  The deep barking of what sounded like a large dog made Helen look around. She hoped it didn’t belong to the Whitings.

  Biting the bullet, Helen reached back and grabbed the jacket. She pushed it towards Kate. “I need you to put this on.”

  “What? Are you serious?” Kate replied, as she held up the vest.

  “Yes. I am. I can’t have you being injured again.” Helen realised how stupid it was, considering how the vest didn’t cover anywhere Kate had been injured so far, but she continued to push. “It’s just a precaution. Uniform will have them on too.”

  Kate frowned back at her. “Exactly. They’ll think it’s stupid.”

  Helen settled a hand on Kate’s thigh, getting her attention. “Wear it for me, then. Please.”

  Kate’s frown disappeared. Her eyebrows threatened to leave her forehead. “Is that an order?” she asked with a grin.

  “Yes. I’m sick of filling out paperwork for your so-called exploits, regardless of how honourable they are.”

  “Yes, Guv.”

  Kate slipped off her jacket, throwing it in the back. Pulling the vest over her head, she tightened the Velcro straps around her middle. She made a show of adjusting them several times under Helen’s scrutiny before finally murmuring, “Happy?”

  As she got out of the car, Helen probably didn’t do a good job of suppressing a grin. Walking over to the huddle of uniformed officers, she gave brief instructions on what they were looking for before pulling out the warrant and heading for the front door. With no doorbell for Kate to take her frustration out on, she decided to knock instead. Hearing movement beyond the door, Helen mentally prepared herself.

  The door opened, revealing a mature, slim woman in faded jeans. Her long shirt had several of the top buttons undone, exposing an ample chest. The word brassy came to mind.

  “Maria Whiting?” Helen didn’t wait for an answer. “We have a warrant to search the premises.” She held aloft the paperwork.

  Maria Whiting’s face soured as she looked back at Helen. For a moment, it looked as if she was going to slam the door in their faces. It wouldn’t be the first time. Grabbing the paperwork, Ma
ria Whiting sighed and stepped aside as stampeding feet made their way into her home.

  Helen was just about to follow them inside when a blur of a figure sped past her. She turned on her heels and watched Kate immediately take off, after what looked like one of the Whiting clan. Which one, she couldn’t say as he frantically zig-zagged between parked cars, Kate hot on his tail. Helen instinctively wanted to call after her but managed to restrain herself. Instead, she decided to keep an unobtrusive eye on her while Uniform checked the house.

  But before she went in, she watched Kate, beginning to gain ground as the two running figures made their way across a field to a small playground. Kate managed to grab onto the jeans of the slower of the two, slowly reeling him in. Unfortunately for the Whiting lad, his low-slung jeans started to slip down his body, exposing his boxer shorts and impeding his progress. Now close enough to grab, Kate launched her attack, landing on top of him as she brought him to the ground.

  Helen’s ringing phone broke through her concentration. Pulling it from her pocket, she answered it without looking at the number. An unfamiliar voice echoed in her ear, the monotone informing her that he’d just sent a report over on initial findings from Sandy’s trolley and Rutland Lane. Her mind popped back into focus. She’d heard something about silver paint flecks. “Sorry, could you say that again?”

  She ended her call, relieved to see that Kate was heading back to the house with her bounty. Helen simply shook her head in Kate’s direction. “You should have let Uniform handle it,” she said mildly, not wanting to tear a strip off Kate for simply doing her job.

  Studying the man in the handcuffs, Helen estimated his age to be around eighteen. With no tattoos visible on his neck, it had to be the youngest brother. “Curtis Whiting?” Helen queried looking at the young man as he fought hard to avoid all eye contact.

  “Guv, we’ve got something in the garden,” PC Davies called from the front doorway.