Catherine Somers stared at the wall, feeling physically sick, and wondered how the hell she got to this place in her life. When she'd been promoted to her current post she was the youngest female Assistant Commissioner in the history of the Metropolitan Police. Now, at the age of 44, she just felt washed out, incapable of coping with her life anymore. Of course, a lot of that had to do with her husband. A senior solicitor with the Crown Prosecution Service, she had known for a couple of months that he was having an affair with a girl in his office, a kid young enough to be their daughter; well, his, anyway. They had never discussed it, but he knew Catherine knew, and he hardly bothered to make up lies anymore about why he'd had to stay late at the office, or why he had to stay somewhere overnight on business.
Then there was the new bloody Commissioner. Promoted over her head -- and those of the Deputy Commissioners, and the other Assistant Commissioners -- he had come in from a rural county with lots of new ideas. Of course, they always changed things, they had to make their mark and impress their political masters. This one's brilliant idea, one of them anyway, was that his Assistants were out of touch with modern policing, so they needed to go out onto the streets, and re-learn what it was like on the front line. In Catherine's case, she had to admit that maybe he had a point. Educated at an exclusive girls' school, then Oxford, where she'd achieved her honours degree in criminology, she'd been recruited by the Met on a fast track programme that saw her sitting in an office conducting policy reviews from day one. She'd never done any real life policing in her entire career. So that's why she was now here, on a wet Tuesday night in South London, in a dingy little flat which smelt of sweat, boiled cabbage and stale cigarettes, while a drugs task force corralled the residents downstairs, racially abused them and searched the place for illegal substances.
The wail of a terrified infant drifted up the stairs. Catherine sighed and drifted into what she thought was a bedroom. Strictly speaking, she was supposed to stay with the other officers; but the upstairs had already been swept for booty, and she wanted a bit of peace, to get away from all the macho posturing of her erstwhile colleagues as they tore the downstairs apart. She was surprised, though, to see that it wasn't a bedroom. At least, that wasn't what it was used for. It was almost bare, save for a potter's wheel in one corner, what she assumed was some sort of kiln, and a table. And on the table was the most extraordinary sight. It was a clay model of, well, a man's genitalia. The testicles formed its base, and it stood upright, like a space rocket, pointing at the ceiling. It was undecorated and retained the original reddish brown colour of the clay. It was huge -- a good ten inches high, clearly larger than life, and incredibly detailed. She stared open-mouthed at what appeared to be a vein running up one idea of the model. Strangely fascinated by it, she moved closer her eyes fixed on the thing. As if in a trance, she reached out a hand, and ran a finger slowly, delicately up the vein...
"Lifelike, innit?" At the sound of the voice she gasped, and withdrew her hand as if the clay penis had bitten it. She whirled round to see a figure leaning lazily against the frame of the open door. He was an IC3 male (West Indian), mid-thirties maybe, about six feet tall, with a slim but apparently well muscled body, sporting a Bob Marley T-shirt and rather grubby jeans. Shoulder-length dreadlocks framed a thin face with eyes as black and hard as lumps of coal, high prominent cheekbones and a chin that tapered to a sharp point, covered by a thin line of beard, rather Marleyish itself. The guy repeated, "I said, the cock -- lifelike, isn't it?" His accent was South London, with a slight Jamaican twang, his voice a deep rumble.
Catherine felt her face unaccountably flush, and she felt confused -- she thought the coppers downstairs had everyone in the house under control. Glancing at the phallus again, trying not to let her eyes rest on it for too long, she replied to his question. "I wouldn't know, is it?" Christ, she was a senior police officer, with a dozen baton-wielding heavies one flight of stairs away -- why did she feel so nervous? Almost unconsciously, she rested her hand lightly on the handle of her own baton, a gesture which didn't go unnoticed by the rasta.
He nodded slowly, and pushed himself away from the doorframe, standing in the doorway with his arms crossed over his chest. "Yeah, it is. Talented lady, my Belinda. I can show you if you like." He grinned at the lady cop's bewildered expression, displaying large teeth with a gap between the upper incisors. Speaking more slowly, as if to a congenital idiot, he said "Would you like to see just how lifelike dat dere dong is?" Grinning even more widely, he spread his hand suggestively over his groin.
Catherine couldn't believe it. Did this idiot have any idea who he was talking to? She could take him in and throw the key away just for looking at her in a funny way. Her eyes were drawn magnetically once again to the clay model. Of course it wasn't lifelike, it was obviously far too big. She turned back to face the man, and saw with horror that he had unzipped the fly of his jeans about an inch. Her mouth felt terribly dry. Why was she just standing here like a rag doll, staring at him as the zip dropped another quarter-inch? He must know about the racist uniforms downstairs. God, why wasn't she doing anything herself?
Grinning more widely by the moment, the rasta continued to slide his zip down, infinitely slowly, as if waiting for her to tell him to stop and nick him for gross indecency. Then the fly was all the way down. Giving Catherine a sly look, and stepping a pace closer to her, he half-whispered, apparently with a mixture of amazement and relish, "White cop lady do want to see the big black man's prick, don't she?" Catherine watched in dumb paralysis as, his eyes locked on hers, the leering man reached inside his jeans. A moment later, there is was. Oh God, the model really was a true representation. She stared at it, the biggest cock she had ever seen in the flesh. She honestly recognised it from the model, right down to that vein. Swallowing nervously, she took a step closer to the man, eyes fixed on his crotch.
At that moment there was a pounding of feet on the stairs, and a uniformed sergeant burst through the doorway, grabbing the frame to slow his pace. Pushing the black guy -- who had quickly stuffed his knob away -- into the wall he ranted, "Oi sunshine, I thought you wanted a piss? Are you all right ma'am?" Catherine nodded then, belatedly finding her voice, said she was fine. As two constables entered the room and pinned the rasta to the wall, the sergeant noticed the clay model for the first time, and advanced on it with a malicious glint in his eye. With a sweep of his baton he knocked it to the floor, where he smashed it under his boot.
The black guy roared in fury at that, and tried to shake off the hands which firmly held him against the wall. Catherine jumped at the sound, as if some sort of spell had been broken. Sharply, she said, "Sergeant, was that entirely necessary?"
The man was obviously thinking quickly, an act which Catherine doubted came naturally to him. "Well ma'am, it was possible there was drugs moulded into it, we had to check."
Scowling, Catherine turned her back on him and snapped at the constables, "Unless you're arresting that gentleman for anything you found in this house, kindly release him." The young PCs did so, reluctantly, and stood tensely waiting to grab him again if he made a wrong move. But he simply slumped back against the wall, staring miserably at the shattered remnants of his girlfriend's handiwork.
Back at her desk at New Scotland Yard, in the early hours of the morning, Catherine stood in the ladies, splashing water on her face. She stared at her reflection in the mirror and saw a face drained of blood and haunted eyes. She was mortified. How could she have been so, what, stupid? Pathetic? What the fuck was she thinking of letting some suspect flash her? Maybe her cheating bastard of a husband wasn't the only one going through a midlife crisis. After completing the report she'd drafted of the evening's events -- having left out any reference to her encounter in the art studio -- she gathered herself and left the building. The apartment she and Peter, her husband, shared during the week was in Pimlico, only about 15 minutes walk from her office, and she felt the cool night air, and the steady drizzle, might do her some good.
She let herself into the cold, empty flat. Peter was away in Birmingham for a few days, working with the local force on something. No doubt his slag girlfriend was with him. Sighing, Catherine towelled off her damp, short curly brown hair and switched on the kettle for her 500th coffee of the day. A few minutes later, having carefully hung up her uniform, she stripped and prepared to climb into bed. As she did she caught sight of herself in the full length mirror, and paused. She really wasn't a bad looking woman, for her age. She'd never been considered beautiful, but she'd kind of matured into her looks, and her face was certainly attractive now. Her cheeks were showing the first signs of plumpness, but she didn't have a double chin. Her quite large breasts were still firm, with no hint of drooping. There was only the smallest swell of extra flesh at her tummy, and her trimmed, dark brown pubic hair stretched down to firm thighs. She'd always been proud of her good legs. She sank onto the bed and started at the ceiling in the darkness. She was still desirable; Christ, a couple of the blokes at work openly flirted with her. Okay, it was all just a bit of fun, but...why hadn't Peter screwed her more than three times in the past year, and not much more for the two or three years before that? More to the point, why would a 51-year old man want a skinny, plain-faced little girl when he had Catherine at his beck and call? She rolled over, furious at the teardrops which had formed in the corners of her eyes.
Catherine was back at her desk by nine o'clock the next morning, dark circles under her eyes. She hadn't slept well, being disturbed by alarming dreams she couldn't quite recall. Sighing -- she did that so much these days -- she sipped a strong black coffee as she checked her schedule for the day. Oh good, she was actually going to be allowed to get on with her real work, a couple of reports to write, a few to study, a briefing in the afternoon on a staff morale review...no more playing cops and robbers for a day or two. The Commissioner's rather creepy assistant had scheduled her to go out with the vice squad on Friday, for a raid on an illegal brothel. Oh great, just what she needed: bursting in with a bunch of Met heavies on a gang of gun-toting Russian mafiosa, and arresting a load of terrified teenage Albanian girls who had escaped a life of grinding poverty back home for a life as sex slaves in a country whose language they didn't even speak. That would do wonders for her morale - not! Taking a deep draught of coffee, she wondered what she had done to piss off the creepy assistant so mightily.
