Knockout! A Passionate Police Romance (3 page)

How a split second in life could change everything. How well he knew the joy and sorrow that could flow from a chance moment. He took out his cell phone and called his driver. The poor guy was probably still waiting for him outside Scotland Yard.

The phone jolted her from the nightmare. She thought for a moment to ignore it. Few people had her personal number - other than her family and of course her ex-lover Commander Beaumont Locke of Scotland Yard. As the caller clicked off, she pushed the mobile back in her pocket and rested her head on the seat. Probably a random wrong number. If she had time tomorrow she would check it out.

On and on the lives of unknown strangers rolled and swarmed along the Edgeware Road and Kilburn High Road. She was tired but had never felt more alive! By chance she had met this ridiculous chancer and experienced a brief out-of-body experience. Just in an instant her perception of life had changed. She’d always been inclined to rash decisions. How well she knew the price. Now things were real and she had to organize her actual life and career and maybe deal with the consequences of her deliberate dishonesty.

She paid the driver and took the stairs to her flat. Even though it was going to cost her twenty years salary and took half her pay each month, it was only a tiny flat – four small rooms above a tanning salon. She had refused all help from her family. What she had was her own. It wasn’t much.

She slipped out of her coat, poured a good glass of Pinot Grigio and headed for the bedroom. She wanted to think and to strip off the grime and gray of the London day. She would shower and then get an early night.

She let her charcoal business suit and cream silk blouse fall carelessly to the ground. She sat down on the bed wearing nothing but her ivory satin underwear. She released her bra and let her full firm breasts fall free like a sigh. For a moment she lay back and swung her legs onto the bed, staring at the ceiling. She ran her hands comfortingly across her belly.

For all the urgent complication of the jingle-jangle day, she was flesh and a beating heart. For the first time in a year she felt herself alive and warm, aware of the pulse and thrill of the life that was in her body. She thought of the enigmatic Freddie, some kind of con man she knew but still with his laughing eyes and strength. No man had ever touched her soul in the way that he had. Everything about him was like a rhythmic stroke - his cheesy humor, his powerful hands - creating a soft force that pushed everything aside and caressed her feminine core. The wine and the vodka shook hands in her empty stomach. Ok - she was drinking too much.

How she hated this loneliness knowing that at any moment her mind could flip back in time. She had no lover although often enough men had told her of her beauty or at least wanted to get in her knickers. No one had ever got this close, not reached the power of her responses that she knew she possessed, yet withheld. This man had no concept of knocking on doors. He had a key and would walk right into her, would know her rhythms, would dance and burrow within her, pulse and share ecstasy with her. This she knew now as if she were the first ever woman to know true oneness with a man. Her loneliness oppressed her and for a few moments she could lose herself. She felt the jolt of her own touch as she focused on her pleasure. This had always been her small secret delight until the crash had wiped out her desire. Now she was flying in circles up and up and up and losing control. It had been so long... just so bloody long.

The pleasure sank away into nothing, like a beautiful wave crashed onto sand, disappearing without a trace. She felt the chill of the air and found herself in tears. Sounds rose from the street and shadows of street lamps patterned her solitary room. She let the tears come silently and turned her face into her pillow. She had always held herself above fully giving in to a man, and now she had let the image of a stranger overwhelm her. No one would ever know. He would never know. She tried to analyze her feelings. Sure she had felt a strong sexual response - but she had felt a longing not only for sex, but for love mixed with her own need to give love. She dreamed briefly of his face - how she had wanted to touch him tenderly and know his soul and being. The absence of him left her reaching out and finding nothing. Now she felt empty. This was not her - not the Detective Inspector Anna Leyton of Interpol.

She got up and switched on the TV. She needed the sound of its company, but rarely watched. She pulled the curtains, showered and fixed a sandwich. A sense of barrenness drifted like an encircling mist around and within her. She wrapped herself in her dressing gown and put on her slippers. She brushed her long raven hair and cleaned the make up from her creamy skin and deep gray blue eyes.

She had cried - for the first time in months she had allowed feelings to surface. It had been just under a year since her split with Beaumont Locke. At last she felt as if she had moved on and that she could begin to put away at least one episode of her life. Her mind flashed back five years. There had been a murder - and if ever a murder could ever be routine, this was as close as it got. A story of drugs and gangs on the streets of South London had left a youth stabbed and dead on the pavement. She had been a young Detective Sergeant for whom this had been just another file. No one doubted who had done it, but as always a wall of silence and fear sheltered the killers.

Just at this time, questions of gang crime had been raised in Parliament. Police bosses scrambled to get their names on TV and their own heads off the block. Commander Locke of the Scotland Yard murder squad travelled down to South London with his entourage and personal driver. Anna first saw him on the steps of Brixton Police Station with his handsome face to camera. His hair was graying at the temples but otherwise dark and wavy, touching his collar. He wore his uniform for the media but removed his peaked cap so that the public could see his strong suave features, his smile, and accept his unctuous assurances that Law and Order would always prevail. It looked like he believed it - but he’d not spent much time behind a riot shield. Once you’ve seen a mob running wild, human life is a different concept. Once you’ve nicked an old dear dragging a fridge out a broken shop window you really understand the psychology of the impulse buy.

As the cameramen and journalists fled with their scoops “Brixton Cops Baffled - Yard Called in” Beaumont Locke made for his temporary office and changed into his double-breasted pin-stripe suit, white shirt with blue collar and matching blue handkerchief flopping from his top pocket. A few minutes later, Anna was seated in his office. She smiled at his name - Beau Locke…he looked too serious to follow her drift.

“You don’t want me here, I don’t want to be here - let’s solve this and go home,” he boomed in an upper class English tone. “Full report Sergeant - Shoot!!”

Anna bridled at this arrogant monster, yet at the same time was drawn to his sheer self assurance. She gave her report while he leaned back in his chair, appraising her, taking in her willowy beauty and mysterious gray blue eyes. When she had finished he looked at her directly.

“Good girl,” he exclaimed with an irritating and patronizing clap. “You’re going a long way in your career my dear... or should I say 'Cher', looking at your beautiful hair– dinner together at 8.”

“Well... ” She began.

“Well Sir!” He corrected,

“Well Sir - 8 will be fine.” She said, swallowing her anger.

Within a month they were lovers. Commander Locke - a man destined for the top. 35 years old, Oxford graduate in law and politics, was already divorced from his high flying lawyer wife.

The affair had been just that - an affair - wedged between their careers and egos. For her it had been a release from a detective’s life - the tyranny of piss stench stairwells, the halitosis of lies. She knew that she had never been an equal partner - had always been at his command. He had never asked to be called Sir in bed - but if he had, it would not have surprised her.

Then came that day. That day. That second. That lifetime of “if onlys” that would play and play again in her head. How she had been proud of her promotion to Inspector, even though it meant a return to uniform service for a year. She had had no need to chase those kids…no need to push them to... to their death. There she had said it again. Beaten herself with it again. And what a failure he had been! How she had needed him and how he had rowed away from her sinking ship when it looked like his career could be tainted by her troubles. She had stood alone when the mob had brayed for her head. He had scrambled away down the back stairs.

Her mind turned back to Freddie - the silly jokes, his philosophical remarks about truth, the arousing lick of his glance, his wounded brow and gentle brown eyes. That place in her soul that she had sought herself and wondered if it even existed - he had known and caressed in an instant. Something had been released within her and she would never be the same. And hell - she had lied, maybe damaged her father’s business and could even have compromised her career - and all because for a few moments she had wanted to be just Anna.

She slept fitfully, disturbed by fragmenting images of Freddie La Salle and her father. She imagined them together discussing the Nereus 74 motor cruiser over a glass of wine. He was telling the younger man about his detective daughter who had turned her back on the family business, preferring to fight criminals on the streets of London. How she had sat alone in the cells awaiting the verdict at the end of her trial for manslaughter...

She awoke with a start. It was 4 am and outside the traffic still bundled and buzzed through the night and into the dawn. The harsh light from the street lamps patterned her room. The wail of sirens brought her mind back to her real current life. How often she had floored the throttle of a patrol car hurtling through the streets of London... just that once too often. She saw the flames, heard the screaming voices. Maybe she should talk to someone... maybe she should get on with her job... maybe this guy...

In a few hours she would be at a briefing for her new assignment. An international squad had formed to combat the many headed monster of organized crime. In its latest incarnation, the internet allowed billions of dollars to be laundered through anonymous gambling. The money hatched in the swamps of drugs, prostitution, people trafficking and illegal weapon sales was set to work in pursuit of even bigger gains. Sports events could be fixed, players bribed or intimidated, officials corrupted. Huge amounts of cash flowed around the worlds of sport. Players could become the property of criminals. Just in the last few weeks football, cricket and tennis had been hit with revelations and scandals. The London Olympics were scheduled for 2012. The British and International governments wanted not only a level playing field, but also a clean one. She would know more after the briefing, but broadly their task would be to identify the criminals and infiltrate the networks inside sport.

As she took the tube to Vauxhall she was both excited and apprehensive. She was about to meet the other members of the team who would be from all over the world. She had dressed in a neat dark blue suit with a white blouse. In the end she had chosen high heels, to show off her legs and somehow to reflect her new awareness of herself. For the same reason she had selected her sexiest underwear and had paid detailed attention to her makeup. She told herself it was all because she was meeting the new team. Deep down she knew that it was for someone else - someone she would never see again.

It was a short walk to the National Criminal Intelligence Service offices just off the Embankment in Spring Gardens, near to Lambeth Bridge. The first leaves of autumn drifted along the footway. The pushing tongue of the Thames licked around the pillars of the bridges. Instead of focusing on the meeting, her mind turned to Freddie. Of course he would never phone her. She was just a woman he had met by chance in the street. His looks, easy confidence and obvious wealth would mean that there would always be admiring females on hand. How could she let herself dream that there had been a special spark between them? For one stolen hour she had come to life and now it was time to get back to business. She smiled at the way he had put on the heavy accent, took a deep breath and bit her lip as she recalled the maleness of his presence when he had kissed her cheek. She looked out at the sunlight catching the muscle of the river currents, thinking of his large powerful hands and the depth that hinted behind his brown eyes. Everything around had reminders of him. For a minute she stopped and took in the view. She let the picture of him fill her, feeling her body begin to respond. This was crazy! She had met this guy for about an hour and for sure he had some kind of dangerous agenda. He had swept her defenses aside and had simply invaded. The thought of him was like an urgent profound stroking within her body that wouldn’t stop.

She was first to arrive at the office, grabbed a coffee from the machine and took it directly to the conference room. She rarely bothered with breakfast beyond an espresso doppio. Next to arrive was a pretty bottle blonde woman of about her own age. For a couple of seconds they looked at each other in disbelief before letting out a shared squeal.

“Judy... Judy... I don’t believe it, I thought your were on maternity leave for another couple of months?”

They hugged and stood back. Anna’s thoughts raced back to Brixton Police Station where she and Judy had been the first all girl crew on the emergency response area car Lima 3.

Judy had... well... gone blonde and expanded a little since those days! Anyone taking her for a plump Earth Mother would be making a big mistake. She could drive like a demon and toss a violent man over her shoulder.