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?"
