Blood Red Roses

by S. J. Coles

  Every inch of Rick sang with heat and adrenaline. The stress, the fear, the anger the confusion balled themselves into an ugly black mass deep in his gut. It fought with the fire in his blood, the overwhelming wonder flaming in his flesh from dominating this man, this beautiful man who he’d never truly known. But in that moment, undone andf completely at his mercy, it was like he knew him better than he knew himself. He bent over him, deepening the angle of his thrusts, breathing the salty sandalwood smell of his skin and hair and wrapped one arm round his chest while sliding the other down his front to grasp his weeping cock. Cooper shuddered and swore, his voice cracking.

  “Come,” Rick ordered in his ear, not recognising his own voice. “Fucking come now.”

  Cooper arched into his embrace. He made a deep, guttural moan that seemed to rattle from so deep inside him that releasing it threatened to undo him. Then he was coming in hot spurts in Rick’s hand. The hard muscles clamped on Rick’s cock and the world exploded. The orgasm tore through him like a riptide. Rick was transported somewhere where nothing else existed apart from the feeling of being buried in this man he thought he’d loved…perhaps still loved.

  They sagged against the sofa. Rick’s weight pinned Cooper down. He held him close and panted into the soft hair at the back of his neck. He didn’t move. He knew that as soon as he let go, reality would return and everything would be wrong again.

  Cooper kept very still, his breath slowly calming. He didn’t try to pull away. He didn’t speak. But the seconds crept on and Rick didn’t release him, and his muscles tensed one by one. Cooper swallowed.

  “That wasn’t supposed to happen either.”

  Rick stepped away, his limbs shaking. He staggered through a door and went in search of the bathroom. He disposed of the condom and ran the cold tap, splashing his face and drinking from cupped hands. The fire of sated desire was fading, leaving a gaping, cold hollow behind.

  Cooper appeared in the doorway, his hair dishevelled again, the collar of his torn polo shirt askew. He watched Rick intently in the mirror.

  “Should we talk about this?”

  “No,” Rick said, turning off the tap and drying his face with a towel.

  “Don’t you think—?”

  “No,” Rick repeated and threw the towel into the narrow shower cubicle. Rick glared at the cracked wall tiles and the torn shower curtain, assailed by the memory of imagining how grand Kim's home must be and how he'd longed to see it.

  “Okay,” Cooper said, scuffing his feet on the worn linoleum as if guessing his thoughts. “Whatever you want, big guy.”

  Rick clung to the sink and hung his head, breathing through the nausea that roiled in his belly. “So what happens now?” he heard himself ask.

  “With what?”

  He stopped himself from saying “With us?” with a gargantuan effort. Instead he asked, “Shouldn’t we call the police?”

  “No,” Cooper said decisively. “Cecily Swanson will have already set up her version of events. You need to stay hidden here until I can fix this.”

  “Fix it?”

  “Yeah. That is my job, you know.”

  “I’m supposed to hide from the police?” Rick said, disbelievingly. “I’ve done nothing wrong. Surely hiding will make everything worse.”

  Cooper’s face twisted. “In an ideal world, sure. But newsflash, mate. We ain’t in an ideal world.”

  Rick scowled. “So what do I do?”

  “You lie low here until I’ve got proof of all this. Once I have proof, you’re safe as houses. We’ll go to the police together and the Swansons’ goose’ll be cooked.”

  “How long will that take?”

  Cooper shrugged and moved back to the living room. Rick followed him. The PI stood with his hands on his hips, glowering at the board. “I’m close. I know there’s something somewhere…something in the old accounts, maybe. It was harder to hide paper trails back then. I know there must be something. But I haven’t been able to get my hands on anything solid.”

  Rick fought back the stubborn hurt that was thrusting a stick into the gears of his brain and, gradually, his rational mind started to move.

  “What do you need?”

  “Summaries of these subsidiary accounts would be good,” Cooper said, tapping a list on the wall. Rick read it and his palms prickled.

  “I have those.”

  “What?”

  “I have what you need. I found it my first week.”

  Cooper’s bright eyes flashed. “You found proof of embezzlement in your first week?”

  “The summary papers aren’t proof on their own. But there are…indications—indications that information is missing. Revenues streams are unaccounted for. Profit margins don’t quite balance. Combine that with some of the other stuff you have here…then maybe you have something.”

  “And you kept this information to yourself the whole time?”

  “I wasn’t sure what I was looking at. Or I didn’t want to know. Either way, I didn’t dig any deeper.”

  Cooper’s frowned. “Why not?”

  “Because I finally had a chance,” Rick said, hearing himself speak as if from a great distance. “The chance I’ve been fighting for my whole life. Things were finally, finally going right and I didn’t want to ruin it. How was I to know it was all fucked, anyway?”

  “Money’s not everything you know, mate.”

  “You don’t get to say that to me,” Rick forced out. “You have no idea what my family’s been through.”

  Cooper’s expression softened. When he spoke, his voice was low. “Actually, I do.”

  Rick went cold. “Say what?”

  Cooper took a hesitant step closer. He lifted a hand and rested it on Rick’s chest. He stiffened but was surprised when he didn’t feel the need to tear the hand away. Cooper ran his fingers down Rick’s chest then up his arm and began to speak in a low, wondering voice.

  “Richard Llanzo Bennett. Born in Sunderland General Hospital to Stuart and Cherry Bennett in the early hours of 16th April 1995. Ella Requiem Bennett had arrived just over a year before. Your father’s family were miners but went into bookkeeping after they shut down the pits. Your mother’s family emigrated from Jamaica in the sixties and ran the Horse and Farrier pub in Landon Colliery for nearly thirty years before it closed in ninety-one, the year after your parents married.

  “Your dad moved you all down to London in 2005. He’d landed a job as a stockbroker after completing a finance course with the Open University. You did well in primary school, but after you moved to London, it started to go wrong. You either fell in or out with a bad crowd. I never figured out which. You were reported to Juvenile Services more than once. But then something changed…” The blue of Cooper’s eyes brightened, and Rick watched the muscles in his throat move. He couldn’t speak if he’d wanted to, even though the words were making a hundred unsaid things clamour inside his head. “Something made you turn things round in your late teens. Got your A levels and accepted by LSE on a bursary. Your mum got sick, right? And your dad wasn’t coping? That’s what happened?” Cooper dropped his hand. A slightly dreamy look filled the sea-ice eyes, even though the set of his mouth remained troubled. “Your mother taught you about music and dreams. Your dad taught you about money and the real world, but he didn’t understand either as well as he thought. You’ve spent your life trying to look out for your family the way he never could.”

  Finally, Rick found his voice. “Stop.”

  Cooper’s eyes flickered. He pressed his lips together. After a long moment of silence, he rested his hand on Rick’s cheek. “I told you that you were amazing, Rick. That was the truth.”

  “You don’t get to talk about the truth.”

  Cooper’s jaw tightened. “I guess not. But…” He drew his brows together, and Rick could see a fight in his eyes being lost.

  “But what?”

  Cooper swallowed again. “What we just did,” he said, throatily, “and all the times before that. When we
fucked…” The colour of his eyes was that of a bright, midsummer sky. “Mate, shit like that don’t just happen.”

  Fire chased ice down Rick’s veins. “What are you saying to me?”

  “I’m saying…” he started, taking a breath then speaking slowly, carefully. “I’m saying that was real.”

  Rick swallowed with a suddenly dry throat. “Why are you doing this to me?”

  “I’m not doing anythin’,” Cooper said, his voice shaking, “or leastways not trying to. I just… I can’t have you believing that I faked that, along with everything else.”

  “Why?”

  “Because we could have loved each other,” Cooper said, his voice thin. “And when we were together, it was the closest to that reality as we got. It meant something to me. And I’m truly gutted it never had a chance.”

  Rick looked away, his throat closing again. He stared at the safe on the kitchen counter, the drifts of papers, the tottering piles of files. There were three old laptops buried amongst the junk. A four-year-old Samsung tablet with a cracked screen perched on the edge of the coffee table. The shattered mug leaked the dregs of what smelt like lemongrass tea onto the floor next to the sofa. He didn’t know how to understand this version of reality, but he didn’t want to pretend it wasn’t real either. Cooper’s words, with his taste and smell still fresh in Rick’s mind, confused, hurt and thrilled him all at once but he didn’t know what to do about it.

  “It’s okay that it ain’t making sense right now,” Cooper went on softly. “It don’t ever have to. Life’s dealt you a hell of a hand, Rick. But I swear I’ll help fix it. I owe you that much.”

  Rick hung his head, all at once exhausted to the point of swaying on his feet.

  “You should get some sleep. You can have the bed—”

  “I don’t want to sleep. I want to end this. Tonight.”

  Cooper frowned. “How?”

  “I’ll go get you those summary papers. I’ll get them right now if it means an end to all this.”

  “All right, big guy,” Cooper said after a long, pained moment. “If that’s really what you want. Where are they?”

  “Never mind,” Rick said, heading for the door. “I’ll fetch them and bring them back here.”

  “You’re not going anywhere alone.”

  “I'm not spending a second longer with you than I have to.”

  “Don't be a prat,” Cooper said, stepping between him and the door. “I get that you’re pissed off, okay? I’d be pissed off too. In fact, I am, a little bit, to tell the ruth. I didn’t ask for any of this either, you know.”

  “You asked me out,” Rick growled. “You asked to get close to me. You asked me to trust you, when all the time—”

  “We’ve established that I’m a prick,” Cooper said. “You can’t be soft and be good at this job. And I’m fucking good.”

  “Clearly,” Rick said, scowling.

  “Yeah, yeah, all right,” he snapped. “That seeing-to on the couch showed me where we stand more than you glaring daggers ever will—”

  “If you’re trying to tell me you didn’t want that—”

  “Oh, I wanted it,” Cooper shot back. “Wanted it more than you did, probs. That don’t change what it meant.”

  “And what’s that?”

  Cooper glared. “That you hate me now but still want me. And that makes you hate me more.” Rick opened his mouth, but Cooper bulled on. “But that’s all by the by. Whatever’s between us, mate, it don’t change the fact that you goin’ alone anywhere tonight is bloody stupid. I’m going with you.”

  “Fine,” Rick responded. “If it means I can get the hell away from you quicker, more’s the good.”

  Cooper’s look darkened further and he seemed about to say something more. But instead he snorted, retrieved his gun then waved at the door. “After you, Mr Bennett.”

  “Where’s the Audi?” Rick asked with a sneer as he climbed into Cooper’s battered Honda.

  “Back with the rental agency,” the PI said, starting the engine without looking at him, “along with the suits, the watch and all that other pretentious crap.”

  "Never knew spies had such generous expense accounts."

  "What do you want me to say? Big clients can afford big expenses. And don't tell me you don't know nothing about playing and looking a part, matey."

  Rick directed his scowl out of the windscreen. He told Cooper to make for Canary Wharf then fell into silence. The events of the last few hours continued to whirl through his brain. The odd moments when they came close to becoming clear, it started to hurt and his mind skittered away again. He stole glances at the man next to him as they drove.

  “Was anything you told me about yourself true?”

  Cooper glanced at him then away. “I couldn’t possibly have gone travelling, learnt to cook or gone to Cambridge without being a toff, you mean?”

  “Just answer the question.”

  Cooper worked his jaw for a minute. “The truth is always far more convincing than lies. I gave you facts. You’re the one who filled in the blanks with the idea of me being to the manor born and swanning round the world on yachts and private jets.”

  “You’re right. It was all me. I wanted to believe you were a stuck-up snob, so I mentally projected it all onto you. I’m sorry.”

  “Sarcasm doesn’t suit you, Rick,” Cooper muttered. Then he sighed. “My folks really are hippies, but not the kind that go glamping at Glasto or on five-star pilgrimages to Goa. They’re the sort that bust their arses running a New Age shop on some backstreet all year round so they can go to a couple of festivals every summer and Stonehenge at solstice.” He shook his head a little sadly. “They brought me up to believe nature is all-powerful. I learnt the hard way that most folks spend their lives fighting nature.” He glanced at Rick then away again. He slowed at a junction, indicated and turned, shaking his head. “And I went to Cambridge, all right. On a scholarship, obvs.”

  “What did you study?”

  “Cognitive Psychology." He met Rick's disbelieving look and frowned. "Big surprise, but I never got people, right? Never had many friends. Other kids just confused or irritated me. Always so obsessed with stupid shit online or what size TV their folks were getting next. I reckoned I could figure people out better if I knew the way their heads worked.”

  “Did it work?”

  Cooper sneered. “The only thing I learned is that you’ve never known the world or your place in it better than going to that kinda place when you’re a nobody from a pisshole like Croyden.”

  Rick thought of Cooper’s scars and suppressed a wince. He watched the road in silence for a time. “My mum’s care home is in Croydon. I always thought it was all right.”

  “It’s better than it used to be,” Cooper murmured after a thoughtful pause.

  They pulled up outside Harbour Tower, and Cooper turned off the engine.

  “We’ll need to be quick,” he said, checking his gun and shoving it back in his waistband. “There’ll be cameras…and a security guard. But if we’re fast, we can be in and out before anyone twigs. Follow my lead, okay?”

  Rick swiped his access card through the reader on the front door. It blinked green and he pushed it open. “After you, Mr Cooper.”

  Cooper’s lips pressed together but he brushed past Rick, his hand on his gun, and crept down the dark corridor beyond, making straight for the stairs.

  “You’ve been here before,” Rick murmured, following him into the stairwell.

  Cooper didn’t answer. He took the stairs two at a time, heading to the seventh floor and Swanson and Gerrard’s public reception. He made Rick wait until he was sure the coast was clear then gestured for him to follow. Rick opened the main door with his card and stole across the dark, silent admin pool towards his office. He unlocked his desk drawer in a kind of dream and stared into the racks of suspension files. They were all empty.

  He reached to the back and breathed a sigh of relief when his fingers brushed the envelo
pe still taped to bottom of the next drawer up. He held it out of sight for a long moment, aware that the moment he handed it over that the last thing keeping Jack Cooper in his life would be gone. When he caught the man’s eye in the shadows of the silent office, he wondered if he was thinking the same thing.

  Rick stood and held out the envelope.

  “Summary papers from hardcopy archive records of S&G’s subsidiary company accounts dating back nearly twenty years. They’re ordered and highlighted, with comments and analyses.”

  Cooper looked at him a long time, his face unreadable in the dark, then reached out to take the envelope.

  The air exploded with gunfire. Cooper grabbed Rick and shoved him to the floor behind the desk. Rick covered his head with his hands, the sound of bullets slamming into the walls, the desk and the ceiling, splitting the air. A splintering sound cut through everything else and a spill of roses, glass shards and water poured onto him from the table under the window.

  He moved one hand away from his ear to reach for his phone and heard the sounds of Cooper returning fire. A furious yell came from the direction of the door and the firing redoubled. Cooper jerked and swore, sitting down heavily. He was moving stiffly, and Rick again smelled the horribly familiar mingled smell of blood and roses.

  Just as suddenly as it had started, the firing stopped.

  “You’re hurt,” Rick said.

  “Stay down,” Cooper said through clenched teeth.

  “Come out now, Rick.” Cecily’s Swanson’s voice was colder and sharper than the edge of a knife. “This has gone quite far enough.”

  “It’s over, Cecily,” Rick called back. “The police know everything.” He sensed Cooper’s glance, but Cecily barked a harsh laugh.

  “The police know what I want them to know. Soon they will know I had to shoot you in self-defence when you attacked me here in the office after I discharged myself from hospital to search for proof that you’d planned to kill me all along. After the merger and marriage, of course, when it was all mine and I trusted you enough to allow you into a position where you could steal everything.”