Too Close For Comfort
Chapter Three - Insatiable Desire
A little before seven in the morning Detective Inspector Rose Callaghan clutches the takeaway cup of now cold coffee as she takes a final swig of the strong bitter tasting dark liquid through the plastic lid.
Callaghan turns her back on the electronic 'Crazy Wall' that illuminates the open plan office she strides across, the Crime Office that was infuriatingly quiet so far as she is concerned. The open plan office lined with empty desk upon empty desk at the commencement of a critical investigation was not a good look.
Swallowing the last of coffee she discards the cup into a bin just inside the doorway of her private office and closes the door. The frame of her leather covered swivel chair creaks as she takes her seat behind her desk and powers up the monitor sat amongst a stack of files relating to locally unsolved murders and missing persons.
The early days of any investigation were critical on numerous levels, Callaghan silently seethed in the knowledge that thus far neither she or the team of DC's operating below her had garnered any significant evidence, let alone clues with which to even launch a full blown investigation from. She had never known a case like it.
Aside from photos of the victims and crime scenes the genuine lack of crazy pinned to the 'Crazy Wall' is beginning to irk her. Four days after the discovery of Alice Thomas body and near enough forty-eight hours since the body of Virginia Masters body had been recovered there is little more than speculation and relative proximity of location to even link the two victims. A natural supposition made and being adhered to that there must be a common casualty between two female bodies being discarded within a square mile of one another in a matter of days.
A person of interest had been identified in the early hours of the investigation of the death of Virgina Masters. Virginias best friend Tabitha Greenslade-Jones had around two hours after the discovery of her body contacted the main switchboard of Police Headquarters to register that Virginia had not returned to the hotel room they were sharing after an argument during the course of a night out.
The male person of interest described as being in his mid to late thirties, had last been seen with Virginia having met and befriended both girls across the course of their night out. Callaghan had not met Tabitha herself but had spoken to her on the phone with a follow up call. The London based twenty-three-year-old had been concerned for the disappearance of her friend but had equally seemed somewhat guarded in nature and borderline aloof as to her movements across the course of the night that had led to Virginia's demise.
Not least Callaghan could not help but note an unexplained time gap from leaving Solaris, a basement bar nestled in the heart of the Cities busiest night spots and arriving at the City Plaza Hotel they were staying in across their weekend away.
Requests for CCTV had been duly made of both Solaris and O'Leary's where Tabitha and Virginia had frequented in the company of the mysterious Dan. That neither venue had been able to provide video evidence was as infuriating as it was unbelievable in the age of such easy and affordable technology.
In the absence of substantial evidence Callaghan knew far better than to dwell on the coincidence of the name Dan in relation to her own recent casual, highly charged, interaction with an internet hook up named Daniel. The name after all was hardly unique and likely to be shared by hundreds of males across the city alone, well dressed, with an athletic build and dark hair did admittedly narrow such coincidence but nothing within Daniel Fergusson's demeanour in her presence had triggered any red flags, even considering the sordid consensual act she had permitted and taken pleasure from.
Returning her focus to the task in hand Callaghan's eyes slip to the shockingly high stack of files containing paperwork in relation to missing persons within the demographic age range of the known victims. Any number of reasons exist as to why a person would simply appear to slip from society, she knew that only too well from first hand experience, but the stack of around twenty files going back over the past two years still shocked and concerned her in equal measure. Parking the ambiguity of missing persons Callaghan took a lighter stack of three files relating to unresolved murders. Three files that contained ten times as many paper reports as the missing persons paperwork combined.
Callaghan's preference was for what many of her colleagues considered to be old fashioned method of dissecting paper over electronic files. As she lifted the cover of the first file and in her mind immediately dismissed the possibility. Paper copies invariably contained infinite more detail than hurriedly input electronics versions of the same documents.
Glancing to the photograph paper clipped to the front inside cover brought a shiver of recognition on face from her recent past. A face she was all but certain related to another case that remained open and haunted her whilst staining her professional reputation.
Closing the file immediately and placing it to one side she felt the tremble of anxiety that gripped her immediately. The stain on her reputation professionally had mercifully not hampered her, the matter had never been perceived as an issue by anyone other than herself.
With the smiling image of Hetti Harper still etched into her mind Callaghan took deep breaths to suppress the angry emotions that raced around her mind.
Emotions that still shaped her years after the events that had surrounded the infamous Stirchley Grange Mills Investigation. The ruthlessness she had displayed ever since on a sharpened focus born of a need to never be as helpless in the face of an investigation as she had been back then.
Rose Callaghan's hands trembled as she reached for the next unsolved murder file, turning the cover to see the face of a peroxide blonde sex worker, Leila Stevens, whose body had been found in an underground car park eighteen month previous.
Even as she started to review the notes within the file Rose Callaghan's mind still fixated on the aftermath of 'Stirchley Grange' and in particular the memory of one man, Logan Hughes.
**********
Her breathlessness rasps in my ear
Her hands cling tightly to my shoulders, her fingers pressed into my skin despite the thickness of my t-shirt.
With her back pressed to the rough brick wall behind her she clenches her thighs around my hips as I grip the underside of her thighs.
"Fuck me," she offers on heavy sated breath as her head drops onto my right shoulder.
"I think I just did," I offer my own heavy breathed response.
Kat Adams lets go of a mischievous little chuckle as I hold myself deep in her, clenching my dick so as to ease the last of my ejaculate into the condom that nestles over my erect length upon which her lightweight frame is impaled
Raising her in my grip a little whilst lowering my waist I slip from her young body somewhat awkwardly, the chill of the night air in such contrast to the warmth of her body as I release the grip on the backs of her thighs and she unsteadily takes to her stiletto clad feet.
I rip away the condom, that's slick to the touch from being coated in her moist bodily fluids, discarding it at our feet where somewhere the silver foil wrapper that had until five minutes previous contained it also lay.
"Such a romantic location," I offer on unbridled sarcasm.
Kat looks to her left and then to her right, flanked by a large skip style bin on her right, my left, and a parked beaten up looking Volks Wagon Golf as a devilish little smirk crosses are face.
"Well, I did suggest the disabled toilet," Kat offers
"Yeah, there's something very unappealing about sex where people shit and piss," I offer pulling up my zipper as I watch her straighten the black denim skirt that I had bunched around her hips on the commencement of our hurriedly undertaken very public fuck. The alley to the rear of Sharkey's Bar is exposed but quiet, our need our urge had made the decision for us in the shadows provided by inauspicious location, irrespective of the very real danger of being discovered.
"I should get back to work..." Kat offers on a further devious grin, "...You'll be getting me into trouble."
"More trouble than you're already in" I state with little consideration to my words.
Kat looks up at me, reaching a her right hand up and gently rubbing her thumb beneath the swollen bruise that sits just beneath my left eye.
"A girl could wonder what she has gotten herself into," Kate softly states.
"You seem to be handling the attention so far" I reply.
There's an intensity to our words as I slip my hands over her waist as I gently press her back against the wall that I had just hurriedly claimed her against. She looks up before pressing a viscous kiss to my lips which she lets go of by gently biting down on my lower lip.
"Fraternising with the customers is strictly against the rules Mister Fergusson" Kat smirks on letting go of my lip.
"You're not one for following rules then?" I reply as she gently pushes me away and steps past me in the gloom of the cold dark alley.
"Perhaps I need disciplining" Kat states seductively as she prises open towards us the rear door of the Bar, silhouetting herself against the glow of the light that spills through the open doorway as she does.
"Maybe those handcuffs will be required again?" I offer as she steps through the doorway ahead of me.
Following her I glance my eyes up along the backs of her fishnet clad legs to the natural swagger of her hips beneath her dark skirt. As she walks I consider my point of reference. The wide-eyed reticence as I had applied the steel handcuffs loosely over her wrists in the confines of the hotel room only five nights ago. A spur of the moment decision that had been met by a reticence from her and exaggerated desire from myself. Kat's reticence dissipating on the slow sensual fuck that had transpired as she lay stretched out beneath me across the dishevelled bed, a deliberately tender fuck with which to gain her trust with. A fuck far more sensual than the brutal harshness that Rose Callaghan had willingly endured only hours previously.
Continuing to watch Kat as we step along the corridor that leads into the main of the bar that she works in my mind casts towards her eventual acceptance of my restraint of her wrists. My mind dwelling on how the young brunette would react to being restrained in a more compromised situation. Perhaps tonight being the night to discover further.
"Maybe you might have to," Kat offers without looking back as she rounds a corner and without a further word heads behind the bar that she had left a male colleague to tend while she had taken her fifteen minute break, nearly twenty five minutes ago.
Meandering through the bar I take my seat at a round table on the far corner of Sharkey's Bar. The venue is hideously quiet once more, Kat assures me the weekends are much busier than the two occasions I've have graced the location with my presence but as I take my seat and pick up the Bourbon left discarded prior to following Kat on her break I can't help but wonder if the false economy served with only seven other patrons sat amongst the empty tables and chairs around me.
The main door to the bar opens and I watch as two males in dark suits enter the premises, dressed far too smartly for the occasion and the venue in my opinion. They approach the bar immediately and Kat begins to serve them, greeting them both with a warm smile while tucking her dark, slightly dishevelled, hair behind her right ear. I cannot hear the conversation held over the sound of the music that is somewhat overpowering given the emptiness of the room.
For the next hour I continue to watch, watching her, watching them as they stand as deep in conversation with Kat as they are with one another. Every now and again the theology student who works part-time at the bar for income to supplement her studies looks over in my direction. I do not acknowledge, I do not respond, I can see their admiring glances towards her.
