'On that basis, the Director of the CIA and the DG of MI6 have pronounced Hawkins dead. We humble beat-pounders have to accept it. So, like I said, you can stand down, Mario, and you, Neil, can forget about co-ordination and daily reporting.' Mcllhenney smiled and nodded.
'Andy, Karen Neville will be back on your staff as of this morning.'
He looked back towards McGuire. 'By the way, what's this I hear about her pulling a suspect?' he asked, sharply.
'I think it was the other way round, boss, he pulled her,' McGuire answered, more than a little defensively.
'Come on, Mario, she didn't exactly batter him with her handbag, did she. Didn't the words "No thank you" occur to her?'
'She did what she thought was best at the time, sir. She saw this guy, he had no obvious reason to be at the conference, he fitted the Hawkins profile and he had a limp. When he asked her to have dinner with him she accepted as a means of making contact rather than anything else.'
The DCC grinned, finally. 'Okay, I accept that.'
McGuire continued. 'The first thing she did after she made the date was to check him out; before she even told me about it. The guy is legit. He's who he says he is, beyond doubt. I know because I did a back-up check myself; even had the guy's photo faxed across from Australia.'
'That's fine, but once she'd checked him outthere was no need to keep the date, was there?'
'No,' the inspector conceded. 'Other than the obvious: she likes him.'
'But he turned out to be gay.'
'She told him the same thing.'
'She did?' Skinner laughed. 'And he believed her?'
'Ah, well,' McGuire murmured, hesitantly. 'I'm not so sure about that. Karen seemed very pleased with herself yesterday morning. I think those cover stories might have been blown.'
The DCC shook his head. 'Let's just draw a veil over the whole thing,' he said. 'Sounds like Neville was the only person who got anything out of this operation. If that's so, good luck to her.'
51
She raised herself up on her elbows, with a broad smile on her face.
'God,' she said, at last. 'You don't know how satisfying that was.' She felt the heat radiating from her body; glancing down she saw, silver in the moonlight which shone through the second-floor window, the sheen of sweat on her breasts, and clinging to it, a few light, curly hairs, shed from his downy chest.
'I've got a fair idea,' her young lover laughed. 'You told me often enough while we were doin' it.' As he looked up at her she seemed to see him in a new light. His face was gentler than she had appreciated before; his eyes softer, his hair more lustrous, his features more fragile.
In some ways he looked as feminine as his cousin, in whose flat they lay.
'Ah, but you don't,' she assured him, 'nor why. Usually, when I have sex, however good it's been, I've always feel just a wee bit flat afterwards… and sometimes more than a wee bit. Not this time, though: this time I feel…' She searched for the word.
'… triumphant.'
She chuckled at his expression. 'Don't flatter yourself, though, boy. It's got a lot more to do with me than with you: energetic though you surely were, for a beginner.' She patted his chest, approvingly.
'Look, we haven't known each other long, and I don't want this to get complicated. All I'll tell you is that for a while I've been in an enveloping relationship with someone… my fiance, as it happens.
'I love him; there's no question of that. But he loves me too much.
Lately it's become worse and worse, until; ach, I've just felt overwhelmed by the need to be myself again, to express myself… in all sorts of ways.'
She threw back the duvet and took his balls in her hand. 'Luckily, I moved in with Gina, and I found you, just in time to help me.' She grinned. 'Lucky for us both, maybe.' Rolling his testes gently in her fingers, she lowered her head down upon him, and took him in her mouth, sucking, licking, swirling her tongue around him, until, gently, yet firmly with his lean, youthful strength, he raised her up, eased her back as she yielded to him, and rolled on top of her once more.
'Yesss,' she hissed, still holding his sack as he slid into her, long and slender, delicately made in that part, too, just like the rest of him.
'We're all two people really.' She moved supply as she spoke, taking him deeper. 'There's the one everyone knows: and then there's the other one, with all those secret lustings and desires that we feel, but we're afraid to satisfy.
'Myra wasn't afraid though; she let the other person out. She lived her wicked dreams.'
'Who's Myra?' he whispered in her ear.
'My mother,' she answered.
He raised his head and looked at her. Yes, she thought. He really is only a boy.
'You said "wasn't". You used the past tense.'
'She was killed when I was very young. In a car: driving way too fast. She did everything too fast, did Myra, and paid for it in the end.
I didn't have the chance to get to know her. Like I said I was only a child; I barely remember her. But when I became a woman, I discovered her, and how! I read her diaries. No one ever had, not even my father. I found out what she was like. I learned about her other self, and how she let it loose. It shocked me at first; then I was frightened, because I sensed the same thing in me, the same… wantonness, if you like.' She smiled, bent her head down and bit the young man lightly on the nipple.
'But now I understand Myra completely, and I'm not scared of myself any more. I know why she was as she was. It was the power, you see. She loved having power, not over other people, but over herself, over her own life. The sort of power that most men take for granted, yet deny to their women.' She smiled, far away for a moment.
'She loved my dad, but she never surrendered herself to him, not completely. There was always that other person; that other Myra. The wild one; the free one, the one she kept from him.' She squeezed the youth's scrotum, quickly, teasingly: heard him gasp, felt him stiffen even more within her.
'Just as there's this other Alexis,' she whispered, 'the one that Andy almost smothered, the one who broke free just in time. Heredity reveals itself, always; you can't suppress it. I know that now. I've taken power over myself, and I'll use it in the way my mother did. I have the same hunger she had. Sure, I'll be a giver for Andy, as she was for my dad; but I have to be a taker, too, for me.'
'What do you want?' he asked her, his voice hoarse and cracking in her ear.
'What do I want to take from you?' Her eyes shone, fiercely.
'Nothing much. Only your body in all the ways that we can use it.
What do I want to give you? For tonight, the time of your young life.
After that? Maybe a few more nights, then the memory, that's all.'
52
At the same time, on the other side of the city, Kai-en Neville propped herself up and looked at the bronzed, bearded man who lay beside her.
His eyes were closed, but there was a satisfied smile on his face.
'You see,' she murmured. 'I told you there was more where that came from. And more…' she chuckled, 'and more…' She laid a hand on his chest.
'Are you sure you can't stay the night?' she asked. 'You have to admit, my bed's a damn sight more comfortable than that sofa contraption you sleep on.'
'You'll get no argument about that,' said Wayne, opening his eyes, 'but I really gotta get back to Dennis.'
'I thought you said he took a sleeping pill.'
'He does.'
'Well…?'
The Australian looked up at her. 'Well… if you set your alarm and run me home by seven-thirty…'
'It's a deal. That'll leave me plenty of time to get to work.'
'What have you got on tomorrow?' he asked. 'Is it that marketing seminar you talked about?'