Introduction.
I lay in the bath, the Badedas working its magic, as I relaxed. The scented candles added to the overall ambiance, the glass of wine might have helped.
Ok it was my second, don't judge, I needed it.
The past month had been intense, without doubt the most intense in my life. I thought back over those weeks, trying to analyse where, and if I could have done anything differently. With hindsight of course I could have, but then hindsight is always twenty, twenty, isn't it?
"Mum! Dinner will be ready in twenty minutes!" Andréa, my eighteen-year-old daughter called up the stairs.
"Ok!" I called back at the same time sinking just a little lower in the water, so it came level with my chin. I closed my eyes, trying, and failing to block everything else out. While I was here, I didn't have to face either her, or the world. It was no good though, I couldn't hide here all evening. Was I hiding? To be honest I think I was, not from the world, but from her. I am thirty-six, a so-called grown woman, and I was hiding from an eighteen-year-old girl.
I pulled the plug, and got out, wrapping myself in a white fluffy bath sheet, then I wrapped a towel around my hair, and went into the bedroom. I dried myself, then threw the towel onto the floor, and reached for my moisturiser. As I worked it into my breasts, my fingers brushed my nipple rings. I needed to be careful, they were still new, and hadn't fully healed yet. I wasn't sure I liked them, they were a something gauge or other, the piercer had told me, but at that time I wasn't listening. They hadn't been my idea, and I was still getting my head around them. I had another piercing as well, one between my legs, a vertical hood piercing he called it, and it was fucking annoying as hell. It hadn't hurt like my nipples, but every time I moved it, it rubbed on my clit, arousing it, arousing me, just pulling my knickers up caused me to gasp.
"Mum! It's on the table! She called.
I rubbed the needle marks on my arm, they too were new. Andrea said they were giving us something called meth, which would in a few weeks make us more sexually adventurous, and be permanent, she'd looked it up on the internet. It was given as a reward, when we'd orgasmed, well that's what she said. Neither of us wanted it, again we weren't consulted, but I had started to look forward to the buzz it gave me, gave us.
I tied a wrap around me, knotting it between my breasts, slipped on my mules, and went down. She was in the kitchen. It wasn't on the table, but she was about to serve it up. She smiled, as she reached for a stainless-steel slotted spoon, having drained the pasta, she added it to the sauce she had made, stirred it in, then began plating up. I poured her, and me another glass of wine.
Yes another, alright!
I looked across the table at her, she shouldn't be involved in this. Try stopping a tsunami! We'd shouted and yelled at each other. Said things that neither of us meant. The vase of flowers had taken the brunt, as I'd thrown it across the room, thankfully missing her, but not the photograph of her, and her grandmother. Never did like the woman, and she never liked me. I should have taken the hint, I didn't and married her son. Of course, if I hadn't then I wouldn't even now be having dinner with my daughter. He was long gone, good riddance, while she was my beautiful if headstrong girl.
And I'd fucked up!
"How are the nipples?" She asked.
"Sore, yours?" I replied, taking mouthful of my food, it was delicious.
"Alright, need to put some peroxide on them tonight, a bit of dried pus," she laughed.
No not the sort that some of us put on our hair, for fuck's sake!
"And the other?"
"Don't go there!"
We'd both had them done at the same time, not exactly the mother daughter experience I imagined we'd be having, even so, a shared experience.
Are you judging again?
"And your tattoo?" I asked.
"It's scabbed, that cream he told us to use once it had scabbed has stopped it itching, and seems to be working, what about yours?"
"About the same, who would have thought hemorrhoid cream would be so effective. I still don't like it, in fact I fucking hate it," I said.
"Me too. Having an ownership tattoo inked on me isn't what I would have ever wanted, same as you. But I am not sorry Mum, we're in this together."
"No darling, I shouldn't have let you. It all seemed so easy, but I just...."
"What else can we do? We can't just walk away can we. It's down to us, and it's a small price to pay, isn't it?"
We'd finished our meal and loaded the dishwasher. We took our drinks through. I lay on the sofa, as she did whatever she does on her phone. My mind took me back to how it had all happened, even though I just wanted to blot it all out. That afternoon couldn't be blocked out, it now defined us, defined us both, but that wasn't how it started.
Oh, you're interested now are you!
Chapter 1
I woke as the front door was smashed open, before I could get to the bedroom door, it was opened, and they rushed into the room. The woman I had been sleeping with pulled the sheet up over her naked body, covering her well-shaped breasts, with their pointed pierced nipples.
"Police, police, police. Nobody move, STAY WHERE YOU ARE!"
Their eyes were bright above their masked faces. Excited? Frightened? A figure pushed through their ranks, a figure I knew. One I didn't like.
"D.S. Peter Headley, I have a warrant to search these premises, and you are under arrest on suspicion of conspiring in the supply of class A drugs and money laundering, you don't have to say anything......"
She droned on, cautioning me. Why I had no idea, there was nothing here, but then I wonder why they were ......
"Ma'am, here ...."
She turned and left the room; it was then it hit me. I'd been setup, this was deliberate. It wasn't her, fuck she didn't understand what a good detective was, all she'd ever done was deal with shoplifters, and even then, not very well.
When she returned, she had a look of triumph on her face, and I knew I'd lost. In her hand, a bag, tightly wrapped with cling film. I knew what it was, fuck even she knew. She was still smiling like a Cheshire cat when they handcuffed me. I looked across the bed at Amy, and she smiled as well, then pulled the plaster off her upper arm, to reveal the tattoo she'd kept hidden from me. I recognised it as straightaway, the red star and the letters "UCK." The fucking bitch.
*************
I'd never been into a Police Station. He was being held here, prior to going to court. He refused to see us, and together we left disappointed, though not surprised. It was just like him. Proud.
"I saw a Costa around the corner, might as well have a coffee," I said.
"That bar looks more like what we want." Andréa replied. Correctly as it happened.
So, the bar won out. We sat back in our seats, sipping our vodka and tonic's, wondering what the fuck to do now.
"Mind if I join you?"
He didn't wait for a reply, pulling up a chair opposite us.
"Look, push off, we're not...."
"I know you're not. I am DI Johnson, Phil, a friend of your brothers."
"Oh, I see," I said rather stupidly.
"First off let me say we all know he didn't do it, well those of us that know him."
"Then why is he locked up?"
He went on to say how strong the evidence against him was, cast iron he said. Then the rest.
"He's been fitted up, and not just the drugs at his place. He'd been working on a case and was getting close. Now we've got no one on the inside and can't begin to clear him."
"That's fucking defeatist, you're giving up!"
"I won't ever give up, I'll do all I can to clear his name, but right now there is nothing I can do."
"What can I do?"
"No Mum, what can we do!"
"You two, nothing, the gang is from eastern Europe, Kosovo. They're dangerous drugs, prostitution, money laundering, trafficking. They're dangerous, as Pete found out."
"And you've no one on the inside, tell me more," I asked.
He told us, and that meant for us prostitution was our only way in, something no Copper was going to do. That should have been reason enough to frighten us away. It wasn't. I should have listened. We should have listened. Neither of us did.
Well, would you?
**********
It was a formality; the wheels of Justice were put into motion. I was committed to the Crown Court, and appeared there the next morning, where the case was adjourned to a date to be set. Not that I was there, I appeared by video link from prison where I'd been remanded. I was in solitary, for my own safety. Half the prisoners were Eastern Europeans, the other half I'd had a hand in putting in here. No wonder I was in solitary.
I didn't have any visitors, not even my sister, or my niece, and that surprised me, not that I'd have seen her, but she hadn't made an application. Did she think I was guilty? No of course she didn't. Then why?
That Amy my girlfriend of six weeks hadn't been, wasn't a surprise, I'd seen the look on her face that morning and I'd known with absolute certainty, and then when she pulled the plaster that covered that tattoo, then there was no doubt. It was what all their women had tattooed on them somewhere. She was one of them, and I'd been totally taken in by her.
"And so would you have been."
**************
The "nice" Police Officer pushed me hard in the back, making me stumble into the cell.
"Fucking bitch," I shouted, meaning it, as she slammed the cell door closed.
I looked around me. Sitting with her feet up on the only bed was a woman, about my age, blonde, with expensively cut hair, you could just tell, as for her clothes, a silk blouse, and Parisian cut trousers. She looked up from what she was reading and smiled, her makeup just perfect, though why a perfect woman like her was at this very moment reading a book in a Police cell I could only guess.
I sat down on the bed beside her, my tight and short bandage dress riding up my thighs, and rubbed my feet, although the Police officer had made me take my heels off before I was unceremoniously pushed through the door, my feet ached, as they were higher than I was used to, and they pinched.
"What are you in for?" She asked.
