The Dar Star - Hillcliffe

The Dark Star - Hillcliffe

Part 2

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Second instalment of a novella commenced (many moons ago) that can be found

here

for context ahead of reading. Wider knowledge of The Dark Star series is not essential but may provide valuable insight to character backgrounds/history.

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Chapter 4; The Stranger

"Harder... harder...." she begged on breathless gasps.

Feeling him respond to her command she soon grimaced, but only in disappointment on merely feeling his pace increase, not the depth of his penetration she required. He was fucking her like a lover, his style even under the circumstance not the brutal callous attention that she sought.

Looking up to her outstretched hands, cuffed with police issue handcuffs through the bars of the headboard of her double bed Rose Callaghan held still and endured the boredom of the sex, an encounter that had promised so much from the outset. Her body naked spare for the light denier stockings that sat upon her legs as she felt the girth of the potential slipping back and forth between her parted thighs.

"Harder..." she practically growled her demand.

His redundant failure to respond to her latest request irking her to the point that she gave up on the remote chance of receiving any satisfaction from the regularly instigated tryst. The taboo of their purely physical relationship the only exhilaration Callaghan now received. Even the sordid nature of their ill advised hook ups filled her more with disgust at her treachery these days than the initial feelings of gratified lust.

"I'm... I'm gonna..." Callaghan eventually heard him announce, and it was all she could do to clench and press herself back against him to comply with his own selfish desire from her.

Callaghan's eyes close tight imagining under these circumstances that it was anyone but him about to reach climax using her body.

The vision that passed through her minds eye shocked even her. A face that should induce terror, the face of a man she had grown dangerously close to. Yet as she pictures him, imagined him using her body as he once so dominantly had Callaghan finds a darkness in her desire. Clenching her body tightly on the fantasy she holds imagining the strong hand on the back of her left shoulder as his and not the man with whom she shares a bed.

"Not... not yet..." Callaghan pleads "...Hold off for me... hold off."

Feeling the tremble from his hips and he finally lanced her body deep enough to have satisfied her need Callaghan realised he had already cum even as she had begged him to hold off.

"Oh, fuck me... oh fuck me that was intense..." she heard him utter as his superior body weight lowered across her back.

Unseen by virtue of the way she lay Callaghan simply grimaced as her illusions faded as fast as she accepted there was to be no gratification for her out of the nights completely unspectacular crescendo.

The inevitable deposit seeping into her body simply now making her feel even sicker and the betrayal of her colleague and one time protege.

"Rose... Rose that was... that felt..." Aaron Chambers offer pressing himself up over her.

"Underwhelming?" Callaghan offered deliberately facetiously.

"What... what do you mean?" Chambers offered, she knew she had instantly offended him. Just as she had known he had only reluctantly agreed to her pressing suggestion to restrain her using the police issue cuffs, that now served to hold her in a compromised position far removed from that which had intended from the night.

"I... I didn't want to hurt you," Chambers offered his length still buried deep in her reminding her of the potential that could have been.

"You wouldn't have...you couldn't..." Callaghan was too apathetic to the situation to even begin to offer a firm rebuttal and argument of the circumstance, "...perhaps this ...all of this is a very bad idea."

"What... what do you mean?" Chambers offered on eventually easing himself from her body.

Callaghan drew her legs together but remained lay prone across the double bed in her restraint.

"Everything... you... me... the fact we are colleagues.... the fact we snatch time only when your severely disabled girlfriend isn't available." Callaghan offer quietly, her comment laced with spite born of her frustrations.

She knew she had hurt him with her words, not her insinuation of the loveless purely physical relationship that had existed for the last four months but in mentioning her, Sarah Myers. As Aaron chambers sat upright, swinging his legs over the edge of the bed Callaghan knew she had struck a raw nerve, perhaps intentionally.

Sarah Myers had been in a burgeoning relationship with Aaron Chambers when she had been hideously injured and disfigured in the line of duty, under Callaghan's stewardship. Her life changing injuries sustained following her abduction and brutal torture had always weighed heavily on Callaghan's conscience, no where near as heavily ironically as the fact that within little more than a year Callaghan following a drunken night out with colleagues had deliberately set to ensnare Aaron Chambers. The two of them having grown close over the weeks and months that followed Callaghan's own enforced physical recovery and psychiatric evaluation. Professionalism abandoned to mutual wanton desire and a need for them both of physicality.

Rose Callaghan was wary enough of her own fractured psychological status given the events of recent years without the need for a professional assessment, an assessment that as it turns out had been no where near as thorough as it should have been, the force was so light on detectives Callaghan had wondered if her return to work had been fast tracked by her superiors as much as she had yearned to get back to doing the day job, despite her intimately close encounter with the serial killer Noah Lucas or the alter ego she had known, Daniel Ferguson.

As she lay there, she looked to her cuffed wrists extending her slender fingers so that the tips of her nails grazed the wall behind the headboard, she felt the trickle of Chambers deposit seep from her body onto the freshly laundered sheets beneath her. An awkwardness building in the silence between them.

The silence immediately punctuated by the heavy vibration of her mobile phone sat on the surface of the bedside table to her left hand side. Screen down as she lifted her head she watched the illumination of the device creep across the surface of the low chest of drawers in the darkness of the room.

"I'm going to struggle to fucking answer that," Callaghan caustically offered pulling her cuffed wrists against the metal bars of the headboard, raising herself on to her elbows as she turned to look back at him.

Almost immediately a second vibrating sound accompanied her own mobile phone, she watched as Chambers picked apart the remnants of their clothing that littered the floor to the side of the king size bed. Callously rooting through garments until he located his own mobile phone. Rising to his full height she could not help but admire his strong physique as unashamedly naked he stepped towards the bay window as he pressed the phone to his ear.

"Chambers," the Detective Inspector bluntly answered the call.

Callaghan heard her own phone fall still and silent, but she kept her attention firmly on Aaron Chambers. Whatever the call related to she was quietly confident the subject matter would be the same for her as it was for the junior member of her team. She listened and watched not that his blunt single word responses to the information relayed to him offered her much inclination. Chambers was not much of a conversationalist at the best of times. A fact that suited her at times, but she could not help but wonder how such stoic taciturn traits ensured that he held down a relationship with the effervescent Sarah Myers.

Her own phone commenced vibrating heavily once more atop of the bedside unit as she heard Aaron Chambers confirm, "I can be there in thirty."

Ending the call, he turned towards her as he crouched to start pulling his clothing into some semblance of order.

"Loving me and leaving me" Callaghan stated on a mischievous chuckle as she lay restrained across the bed.

"You're coming with me..." Chambers responded stepping into dark grey suit trousers as he hitched them up over his muscular thighs, "...reports of a body called in... suspicious circumstances."

Callaghan was alert already, her mind immediately switching toward professional inquisition as she considered the plethora of questions Chambers revelation triggered, the first to pass her lips being "Where?"

"The Hillcliffe..." Chambers offered with a sneer etched across his features whilst slipping his arms into his hideously creased shirt as he drew it over the arms and shoulders that had pinned her barely ten minutes earlier, "...reportedly fell from a height."

Callaghan knew why he sneered, the reputation of the Hillcliffe was many fold. Investigations rarely gained any level of traction in the festering, lawless cesspit that lay to the north of the City. Police Headquarters files stacked high with countless unsolved murders, sex crimes and activity linked to organised crime. Gangs had ruled in territories for years, currently one gang had risen to prominence, if not dominance, over the notorious post code area, 'The Threes.'

Whatever the circumstances of the discovery of this body this was not a case Callaghan welcomed being drawn into. Given that her caseload at present was free of any major investigation her gut twisted in the potential to escape being made lead investigator given her capacity as Detective Inspector.

"Probably just a jumper if they're a resident of that shit hole." Callaghan offered callously as her phone started heavily vibrating once more.

The response to her insinuation was only met with a silent grimace by her colleague as the phone continued to vibrate on the third unanswered call in succession.

"Do you want to fucking uncuff me now Aarron," she snarled in frustration at her incapacity.

**********

A biting wind swept across the open space between the tower blocks that pierced the night sky.

Callaghan glanced all around her as the uniformed Police Officer lifted the taught white and blue diagonally striped scene of crime tape that her and chambers ducked under.

The scene before them a hive of activity, activity that she knew would focus heavily on protecting the crime scene to preserve any evidence that forensics in time could utilise to piece together as true a picture as they could on the circumstances.

Against the chill wind and the painful dark memory of the crime scene her own home had become months earlier she drew up the collar of her thick camel colour jacket. Instantly regretting not considering the conditions as she had hastily dressed, zipping inappropriate in the conditions black knee knee-high boots over her legs as she had hurried from her home and driven, separate to Aaron Chambers to the location sent to her following the snatched call with the despatch team.

As she cast her eyes up along the balcony's that lined the tower blocks around them, she saw the masses drawn away from their mundane existences to gawp and observe the scene that played out all but literally on their doorsteps.

"We going to clear them away?" She offered passing another anonymous uniformed colleague.

"You can try if you like Ma'am" he offered with a shrug of his shoulders. Callaghan immediately realising what a thankless task it was that she requested.

"Yet none of them will have seen what happened here will they?" she responded.

Callaghan did not wait for a further response to the brief exchange, she was confident she knew the answer, surprised to hear the officer slightly defensively state in her wake, "We have one witness."

Mentally noting the fact as she approached the screens erected around parked cars, considering the irony of protocol given that anyone from the second floor up of the high rises was afforded a view of everything that transpired behind the barriers whose sole purpose was to obscure and respect the victim who lay somewhere within the crime scene. To her left she observed the white tent being hastily erected that would be utilised to preserve and hide the actual crime scene.

Pushing through the melee of activity her badge in hand in case anyone question her level of authority she approached the hideously misshapen silver Mercedes estate. An expensive looking vehicle that amongst all of the chaos looked immediately out of place in its surrounding parked between a dark green Volkswagen Golf held off the ground on breeze blocks, and a rusting white Fiat Van daubed with the letters 'AJ's Electricals' down its right hand side.

"Still think he jumped?" Aaron Chambers offers as he lets his eye line drift up the tower block that the cars park in front of.

Callaghan's eyes fall across the victim, his body hideously contorted and twisted amongst the wreckage of the vehicle, her rudimentary assessment being that the vehicle broke his fall. Amongst the twisted wreckage while she cannot see his face, she can see the heavy blood loss that seeps on dark scarlet rivulets from his head alone.

Even from their vantage point she can see the one obvious presence that suggests this was neither an accident nor a suicidal plunge. Across the thick checked brown three quarter length over coat that wraps his upper body are daubed in thick yellow spray paint are a number three next to a smaller S shape that sit above 3 horizontal lines.

While Callaghan as a Detective had learned a long time ago to never make assumption the gang sign that scars his clothing is a more than obvious suggestion to an untoward demise.

"Victim is in his early to mid eighties..." she hears the voice on her left hand shoulder announce, "...We are awaiting formal identification but believe him to be a Mister Felix Jukowski."

Callaghan turned her head along her right shoulder as the recognising the insignia of the lead pathologist on the white hooded zip up coverall the male wore as he pulled his paper mask away from his face. Callaghan's first instinct being to try and recall if he had been present that night at her home address.

"Frank Walters..." he offered without offering to shake her hand, "...Senior Pathologist I'm also heading up forensics given the late hour and lack of resource."

"Well Frank Walters what do we know about what killed our victim ...other than the fall."

"It was the Mercedes he landed on that killed him rather than the fall..." he offers with the macabre humour only a man who deals with death daily can muster, "...causing massive internal injuries and head trauma.... Death would've been instant given the height he fell from."

"How far?" Chambers enquires before Callaghan can offer the same words.

Walter's eyes gaze up the sixteen storey building they stand at the base of. A fog slowly permeating the air between the buildings that adds to the ominous sense of foreboding amongst the heavy police presence and strobing blue emergency lights.

"I need to run far more invasive... comprehensive tests..." he states dropping his gaze back to hers with an overly confident grin, "...judging by the impact on the vehicle I would assume the very top."

Callaghan turned to Chapman, her colleague offering her a grim look. The pathologist's suggestion only adding to the evidence she could take from the initial interpretation made from the victim's circumstances.

"There was a witness..." Callaghan offers, "...I need to speak to her, and I assume we've a team already on the roof."

"We do," Frank Walter's confirms, "I appreciate you're not up to speed, but we've also reports of someone... a female fleeing the scene."

As the pair of them crossed the uneven surface of the Car Park towards the stairs Callaghan is brought up to speed on the escalating enquiry, confident enough resource is currently undertaking door to door enquiries but disappointed to learn that the area is thoroughly devoid of any functioning closed circuit television or security camera footage.

As they head to the main stair well, ill at ease with the prospect of the sixteen floors she has to navigate in the stiletto heels of her boots she stops in her tracks. A shiver breaking across her body as she looks up.

An uneasy feeling that she is being watched from one of the multitude of floors above her.

"C'mon Callaghan..." Chambers prompts "...I'll buy you a Coffee if you beat me to the top."

His attempt at humour is as unwelcome as it is puerile.

**********

Andrew Grainger watched on, in his mind he attempts to calculate his best course of action.

There was no panic, but he needed a plan an escape route from the festering location he had opted to visit in his search for answers. Answers he desperately seeks knowing full well that too much time has passed already in his pursuit.

Inexplicably now as he gazes down from his seventh floor vantage point his immediate plans are in ruins due to the hideously mangled state his C-Class Mercedes is in seven floors beneath him. The broken body of the male embedded in the roof of the vehicle was a concern but not his priority.

The surrounding area now crawling in Police activity, he cursed his decision to sit out the pandemonium that had ensued having witnessed the body land upon his vehicle a little over two hours earlier.

To have been picked up on security camera footage leaving the scene in the initial aftermath would have drawn too much attention and subsequent suspicion.

For the sake of such he had attempted to blend in and act natural. As the Police Officers swept along the balcony on which he stood as they tried to usher residents into their homes whilst conducting enquiries for witnesses, he realised he was fast running out of places to hide.

Amongst his concern his mind lingered, lingered on her, the svelte figured Detective he had seen arrive amongst the chaos. He had watched her as she commanded an air of authority, but he also dwelt on her physical beauty. A beauty and a body to accompany that he had known so intimately in the past.

Witnessing her ascending the concrete stairs towards to roof around thirty minutes previously in the wake of a well built male colleague, who he assumed to be her superior. His mind dwelt on Rose Callaghan distracting him from his need to disappear to become one with the shadows.

The plan he had begun to formulate seemed not just his best option, but his only option. As he looked up, he watched as he caught site of the male detective once more, this time descending the staircase that ran the length of the hideously sterile looking building. Looking around him he brushed past several onlookers who still bustled for as best a view as they could of the chaos, despite now only being able to observe the roof of a white scene of crime tent and the heavy police presence.

Pulling his collar up high Andrew headed up the concrete steps with a confident pace, despite his gaze being to his feet. Two flights of steps later he heard the strike of her heel on the hard concrete creep nearer. Keeping his head down hearing and sensing her on the stairs ahead of him.

Catching sight of her black boots as he passed her on a narrow landing his shoulder deliberately brushing hers as he felt her lose her balance, an unintentional consequence of his deliberate act, he heard her apologise even as her mobile phone skittles across the floor of the stairwell.

"I'm so sorry" she offered shaking her head as he she crouched to retrieve the device, checking the screen as she did so.

"Not a problem Rose," he offered as she stood back to her full height, and he turned to face her.