‘I’ll just process this, write you a full receipt for insurance and wrap it up.‘ Mr Grimswade got to his feet and made for the door. ‘You sit there and warm up a bit more and finish your tea.’
It was odd, but I didn’t feel cold any more. I tipped the remains of the tea into the base of the aspidistra and hoped that their legendary reputation for toughness was correct. As I got to my feet Mr Grimswade came back holding a small tissue-wrapped parcel.
‘Shall I put it in the desk until you have finished your patrol, Officer?’
‘Thank you, but I’ll take it with me.’ I couldn’t leave it – him – now and there was just room in my crowded shoulder bag. When the package was safely stowed I let out a long breath, strangely apprehensive. No, that was the wrong word. I felt as though something was going to happen but I didn’t know what. Very odd.
I said goodbye to Mr Grimswade and walked off down the street towards Tompkins and Hethersett, Jewellers of Distinction, my next call. As I turned into the High Street I passed the Georgian frontage of Polworth, Prendergast and Ponsonby, Solicitors. They’d been there since 1760, apparently. I could imagine my Regency gentleman walking through that door.
I shivered, uneasy. Perhaps I was developing some sort of copper’s instinct for trouble. I scanned the street as I had been taught, but there was not even a minor parking violation or a litterbug to be seen. I gave myself a brisk shake. It was probably only a guilty conscience about doing personal sh
opping on duty. I opened the jeweller’s door to the accompaniment of buzzers and dug in my bag for another list.
Chapter Two
Whatever else distributing flyers on a raw Spring day did, it allowed far too much time for erotic fantasy, not the kind of thoughts a Special Constable should be having, not if she wanted to keep her mind on the job. By the time I got home I was simmering gently in a state that would normally only be produced by too much chocolate, a steamy novel and the sight of a semi-clad hero sweatily scything in a TV costume drama, all in one evening. And all I could think about was those dark eyes watching me from the portrait.
It didn’t help having broken up with Mike four weeks before, I knew that. After six months he was enough to make my ears bleed with boredom – everywhere except in bed, when he would finally stop talking and demonstrate his undoubted, if selfish, skill between the sheets. But there were limits to what a girl will do for good sex and pretending passionate interest in his job as sales director for a local company making designer kitchenware was more difficult than faking orgasms. There are, after all, only so many responses you can come up with when confronted with a radical new interpretation of spaghetti tongs. For an awful moment when I’d first seen the drawings I’d thought they were some kinky sex toy.
I stood in the hall stripping off the layers of kit and gently pulsating with lust for my Regency gentleman while trying to ignore Trubshaw’s Oscar-winning impersonation of a cat dying of starvation. He wound his way between my feet, tail up, purring like a tractor.
‘That’s all very well, Trubble, but what I want is someone gorgeous in breeches and boots stroking almost any other part of my body, and not with his moulting tail either. Obviously what I need,’ I explained to him as he followed me into the kitchen for his smoked salmon off-cuts, ‘is another man. And time to find him in. An intelligent one who’s interested in more than himself. Then I wouldn’t be fantasising about historical hunks.’
I put my shoulder bag on the floor and he backed off hissing, tail like a ginger bottle-brush. ‘Idiot, it’s just my bag.’ Perhaps he could smell the musty odours of Mr Grimswade’s shop.
I made myself tea, still chatting to Trubshaw who gulped his fish and retreated to the far corner of the kitchen to glower at me while I sat down at the table and picked up my bag. ‘See what I’ve bought, Trubble. A prezzie for me – no more smoked salmon for you for a month.’
The package was warm to the touch again. How odd. I unwrapped the tissue and held the portrait flat on my right palm. This was no Mr Darcy, or Poldark. This man was leaner, harder, more dangerous. As my thumb stroked along the simple carved oval of the frame the heat throbbed up my arm, into the pit of my stomach, turned my insides liquid with desire, my…
He was tall, well over six foot, the shadows mysterious behind him. The air was moving between us, hot and dark. Candlelight and blurred figures swirled in the background as he turned, balanced on the balls of his feet, his eyes searching as though peering into darkness ahead. A fighter, poised, alert for danger. There was glint of gold on his hand, the gleam of a gem in the folds of his neck cloth. And then he saw me, the dark brows coming together as his eyes narrowed in hard-controlled surprise. For a long moment his gaze held mine and I stopped breathing. The corner of his mouth curved as he reached out –
There was a slash of pain across my knuckles and I yelped, shot to my feet and clutched at my bleeding hand, dizzy and confused. Trubshaw jumped down from the table, spitting with anger. The miniature portrait spun on the table top, once, twice and then toppled over to lie flat, face up. I sat down hard on the kitchen chair, sucked the raking claw mark on my hand and stared at the still, mocking, face.
It was the man I had just seen. The almost-smile, the mole, the ocean-mystery eyes that had found me, had seemed to read my thoughts in those few crowded seconds. And deep inside me the same response, the heat, the need, the answer to the question that had been silently asked almost two centuries ago.
‘Yes,’ I whispered. But he was gone.
Trubshaw wandered along the landing outside the flat to meet me when I got home that evening. When I bent and picked him up, he butted me under the chin and I wrinkled my nose at him. ‘Tuna. You’ve been round Mrs Harrison’s pretending you are half-starved again, haven’t you? I’ve a good mind to seal up the cat-flap, that’ll stop your scrounging. You are in disgrace anyway – my hand still hurts.’
I got a paw’s-worth of claws flexing into my shoulder by way of reply, although, as the damn cat was purring loudly, that was presumably intended as an affectionate greeting.
‘Stop it, this is my best yoga gear,’ I muttered, unlocking the door. My sister Sophie had bought it as a Christmas present and, true to Soph’s expensive tastes, it was a designer cashmere set of pants and top, too good to actually do anything energetic in. But it was great to change into after a work-out and shower at the dojo down at the police station.
I untangled Trubshaw’s claws with minimal damage and wandered into the kitchen wondering what to do about supper. Some of the other Specials were going for a pizza, but I’d work to do – a dull, easy job involving translating a washing machine instruction manual into English from German. The only interest was in the fact that it appeared to have been badly translated from Serbo-Croat into German in the first place. Possibly via Japanese.
Still, it paid well and besides, I’d comprehensively flattened Pete Franklin in the unarmed combat session and he was a sore loser, inclined to sulk, which was enough to put anyone off their Marinara.
There was the remains of yesterday’s chilli in the fridge, that would do. I pottered about, checked my messages, found a plate, poured wine, waited for the microwave to ping, then realised I hadn’t put away my bag or changed my trainers for a pair of thick socks. I was halfway to the bedroom when the question of what my Regency gentleman would have for dinner struck me. Not chilli, that was for sure.
Where was he? I turned back. Not on my desk where I’d left him like a paperweight on the printout of the German washing machine manual. When I looked I found the papers strewn across the floor and the miniature lying under the chair.
‘Bad boy, Trubble!’ I crouched down and shuffled pages together, then reached for the miniature. ‘If you’ve damaged the frame any more, you’re on tinned cat food for the week.’
I closed my fingers around the oval then dropped it like a hot coal. Literally. ‘Ow!’ I straightened up, staggered as dizziness hit me, then I was falling, spinning through the air and the room had gone dark and there was a foul smell –
I was tumbling over and over and my nostrils were full of the stink of raw sewage. Then I sensed the ground coming up to meet me out of the gloom and I rolled on instinct, hitting something hard and uneven beneath a yielding surface that squelched disgustingly. Mud and worse, not the thick mat of the dojo floor. There was some light, a candle? A lantern? And people.
I came to my feet, spun round in a half-crouch, hands up defensively as I’d been taught, trying to make sense of what was happening.