Chapter Twelve

‘I’d like you to meet my two latest acquisitions. The big blonde is Karyn, spelt with a “Y”. And the little Indian maid is Odette. Cute, aren’t they? Quite a contrast. I call them my bookends.’ Everyone in the room laughed with dutiful heartiness, as Jack Palmer held out his arms and the two scantily clad figures moved into his embrace. They were indeed contrasting, for the bigger girl’s skin, plentifully displayed in the soft-cup plunge bra and a thong, whose minute triangle sparkled with a scatter of sequins, was like alabaster under the lights.

The other girl, apart from being almost a head shorter, had a figure much slighter and of elfin daintiness. She wore a similarly revealing set of underwear. Her skin was a deep shade of brown, much darker than many of the skin tones of individuals from the sub-continent. Her hair, a rich, thick, glossy blue-black, was cut quite short and suited her delicate, youthful features admirably. Her breasts were high, smaller than her companion’s but nestled equally snugly into the mesh bra that held them. The white girl, her hair pulled back and tied in a long ponytail, moved slowly, her face set in a passive, almost sleepy expression, whereas her partner was altogether more dynamic, in the flashing smile and movement of her large dark eyes as the duo took up their station either side of Jack Palmer. He was seated and his large, well-groomed hands hung possessively about their hips.

‘Odette?’ The interrogative came from one of the other smart males in the room. ‘That doesn’t sound very Indian.’

‘I’m from Goa,’ the dark girl offered pertly. ‘You won’t find - ’

‘All one to us, love,’ Jack Palmer cut her off, the little slap he gave to the top of her thigh as dismissive as his words. The laugh which followed, tolerant as it appeared to be, carried a hint of aggression and ownership. ‘She’s a bit of a mouthy little tart, this one.’ The fingers of the hand that still rested on her brown thigh tightened perceptibly. Meanwhile his right hand slid round to a buttock of the white girl, and massaged the swell of its bare smoothness with evident appreciation. ‘Should take a leaf out of Karyn’s book, eh, love?’ He turned his head, smiled up at her, and her face changed from its look of anxiety to an uncertain smile in response to his, and to his fondling. ‘Never get a word out of her. Mind you, not surprising, seeing as she can’t understand hardly anything you say to her, eh, my dumb blondie?’ He gave the buttock he had been stroking a resounding slap and the statuesque girl jumped, then her smile widened at the chorus of laughter that erupted around her.

‘Well, at least you won’t have any problem telling them apart, Jack!’ someone quipped.

Jill strove to join in the hoot of laughter and applause which followed the startling revelation, and was glad that the heat of the elegant room could account for any heightening of colour in her lavishly but carefully made-up features. Inside her tummy churned as though urgently signalling the need for a trip to the lavatory, but she was getting used to that now. After all, she lived with it for a great part of the time, and even Liz had shown her nervousness at being invited at last to one of these very exclusive and discreet get-togethers organised by the powerful man who was flanked by the two near-naked beauties. It was in a sumptuously renovated old farmhouse nine miles outside Benbrough, and owned officially by one of the numerous companies fronting Palmer’s varied activities.

Jill was afraid, in spite of Liz’s reassurance that all that was expected of them was to be on hand to look glamorous and to dispense drinks, along with amiable conversation, and maybe endure a few amorous gropings later on the dance floor. ‘Hillcrest House isn’t a knocking shop,’ Liz had declared the previous night while the girls were getting ready for bed. She gave a gurgle of laughter as she drew a lemon-coloured camisole off over her head. ‘At least it’s not the usual sort. It has to be kept fairly legit. It’s too near to home and the village folk are too nosy for anything too indiscreet. Most of the wild stuff goes on a lot further afield. And I know you’re not too keen on orgies, though if you saw what some of the girls can pick up at one of the real anything-goes, you might change your mind. Anyway, this Hillcrest thing isn’t one of that sort. Not that you mightn’t be able to set yourself up with some likely punter, if you fancy it. There’ll be a few of them there for the picking, believe me. Mind you, I’m beginning to have serious doubts about you, Crystal. You hardly ever see that feller of yours. I reckon you’re not half as keen on him as you make out.’ She posed saucily as she slipped down her knickers and swung the lace-fringed bit of silk around her head before tossing it carelessly aside. She stood legs astride, gloriously naked and placing everything blatantly on offer. ‘You’re really totally, one hundred percent dike, aren’t you? Go on, admit it. It’s really me you’re crazy about it, isn’t it, babe? So why not come and get me?’

There were times, increasingly so the more they were together, when Jill was afraid that Liz was beginning to suspect that she was not what she claimed, that the tall redhead could see through the false persona Jill was struggling desperately to maintain. This was one of those moments, so she desperately launched herself at Liz, the force of her attack bearing the girl backwards onto the waiting bed, and she buried herself in the eager body and limbs that welcomed her assault. ‘You’ve found me out!’ she breathed through the thick, fragrant cloud of chestnut hair. ‘No one’s got anything I want that you can’t give me.’

She hoped that such displays of passion were enough to allay any of Liz Grant’s doubts. They should at least convince her that Jill’s enthusiasm for lesbian sex, and her affection for the red- haired girl, was genuine. And why shouldn’t they? It was true enough. Jill’s feelings for her new partner were another source of dismay and confusion to her, for she was, indeed, growing increasingly fond of her and more and more uncomfortable with her fictitious role and what its result was intended to be. Such misgivings about her part in Operation Gresham did nothing to help her seriously strung-out nerves, and she wavered, indecisive and distressed as ever, on the brink of insisting on bringing an end to her covert assignment. Many times she urged herself to break away, to declare her part in it over, but she was never quite able to bring her courage to the point of action and face the wrath of her superiors - and one in particular. It was little wonder then that she seized on these bittersweet interludes alone with Liz to lose herself in the fierce joys of the physical relationship they shared, when the wild response of all her bodily sensations were too shatteringly real to be denied.

But during this comparatively restrained evening at Hillcrest House she became aware that her secret mission was taking a significant step forward, for Jack Palmer himself sought out Liz and her for special attention.

‘I’d like you to do me a favour,’ he said, when he got them to one side. He nodded towards his pair of ‘bookends’, who were now, for them, almost respectably dressed in two contrasting micro-minis. The black of the European girl’s dress set off the pale blondness exquisitely, while the white of the Goan girl’s did the same for her dusky complexion. ‘I need to keep them somewhere quiet, a bit out of the way of all this.’ His gesture took in the noisy conviviality of the groups all around them. ‘Also break them in a bit. Get them used to things here. Your little pad in Gresham Street will be just the job. I can fix up a few punters for them - I’ll take care of all that, you don’t have to worry about it. And you can get on with your own thing, know what I mean? But you can also keep an eye on them for me. See they know what’s what, how to go on over here. The Indian bit’s all right. Bit too mouthy, if anything, but the blondie... well, she hasn’t a clue. We’ve got her doped up at the moment - nothing heavy, just pills and that, keeps her placid. They had a bit of bother with her apparently, over in Holland and bringing her in here. But she’ll soon settle down, I’ll make sure of that.’

The words were accompanied by an ominous smile which made Jill shiver secretly, and also helped to shore up her wavering resolve a little. She strove not to show her inner feelings as Palmer suddenly switched his eyes to her - and not only his eyes. That well-groomed hand of his, the right one with the rather vulgarly ostentatious ring on its little finger, slipped to her hip and curved round her form to explore her haunch. Her buttocks clenched and he smiled, as though he interpreted the instinctive move as a kind of come-on for his caress. She managed not to pull away and endured the slow traverse of his fingers over the hollow and tight curve of her bottom under the dress. She realised he was addressing her directly.

‘Maybe you could teach her a bit of English? Show her how we go on over here? You’re one of those clever college birds, aren’t you? Teach her which knife to eat her peas off.’ He snorted with laughter and gave her bottom a playful slap. ‘Listen girls, we must have a proper get together some time.’ Now his hands were extended to both of them, his arms snaking round their waists and drawing them in for a quick hug. ‘Know what I mean?’ His glance moved around comprehensively. ‘Something a bit more intimate. A select few.’ The laugh was softer, deep with meaning. His gaze shot back to Jill. ‘Listen, I’d like to meet up with that punter of yours. Your special, you know. What’s his name again? Martin?’

Jill supplied his assumed surname. ‘That’s it. Got some connections out in the Med, I hear. North Africa and such. Might be able to put a few things his way. Tell him to call me; we’ll fix something up one of these nights.

‘In the meantime Gerry will bring the girls round tomorrow. Not too early, about noon, eh?’ He winked suggestively at Jill. ‘I know you ladies like a lie-in, especially you two.’ One last valedictory pat on their bottoms and he released them, like fillies being turned out to pasture, Jill thought, her heartbeat quickening with relief and excitement.

It was pouring with rain when Jill met up with Tony Pope again; a grey September afternoon that was more like November. The sombre setting of the ruins of the Cistercian abbey of St Mary’s, in the long river valley twenty miles south of Benbrough at the heart of some beautifully unspoilt countryside, seemed a fitting background. Jill was cold, in spite of the warm skirt and sweater under her long trench coat, and a pair of tights and neat lace-up walking shoes. The tights were not her thick black winter variety, not yet, though she was beginning to regret her decision, as well as that to put on a flimsy though pretty satin camisole and French knickers of matching purple as underwear. Her reasons for doing so were dubious - because she was meeting her one and only male lover, she savaged herself as she stood shivering under the porch of the entrance to the ruins. Then she saw him making his way towards her with a beaming smile. Her heart rate quickened and she mocked and hated herself even more.

She felt the blush rising, shocked in spite of herself when he embraced and kissed her, and she had to exert all her self-restraint not to thrust him away. He no doubt sensed the stiffness in her and the unresponsive coldness of her lips as they pressed against his, though her reserve was not obvious enough to be picked up on by any interested observer. He was enjoying this far too much for her liking, making too much of this lover’s role. She remembered, all too vividly, the feel of him fucking her in the bath, all of it recorded and poured over, not only by the loathsome likes of Jack Palmer, who had set up the whole disgusting spy thing, and possibly by untold numbers of degenerates on the net but, and far more catastrophic in her eyes, no doubt by the whole of the Benbrough police force by now.

She had only recently learnt this, and the galling fact that it had been those two hateful fellow detectives, Harris and Wills, who had been the instruments of her public shaming. Jackie Barlow might never have disclosed it to her, had it not been for some careless remark by that little Yorkshire girl, who had walked in on her and Sandra Roberts in the lavatory at the station that day, and who was yet another who had been roped in to Operation Gresham. ‘Believe me hardly anybody’s seen it; it was strictly on a need-to-know basis,’ Jackie had tried to reassure her unconvincingly.

Tony, aka Martin, kept his arm protectively around her as they turned away from the deserted entrance kiosk of the ruins. They trudged over the gravel, avoiding the bigger puddles, to the sanctuary of an equally deserted but thankfully open tearoom.

‘Shit,’ Jill declared feelingly, when after heading for a radiator fixed to the wall they found it clammily cold.

‘Heating’s not on till end of the month,’ announced the gloomy counter lady who had just served them with their coffee. ‘You’re only the second couple we’ve had all day. Couldn’t find nothing better to do?’

‘We could hardly be more conspicuous,’ Jill observed uneasily when they were seated. ‘Whose brilliant idea was it to use this place as a rendezvous on a day like this?’

Tony shrugged. His open face wore an expression of insufferable, stolid calm. ‘Still, there’s nobody here to be watching us, is there? Not unless the old biddy over there is a white slaver in disguise.’

Jill huddled down into her damp trench coat. Its stiff collar was turned up high about her neck, like a ruff. She was startled to discover how familiar she found his aggravating countenance, and his manner, how readily she could interpret his every gesture and train of thought. And yet they had not spent more than a few hours together in their entire lives. Was it because they were lovers? Lovers? Because he shagged her once, a ten minute bonk in the bath among the soapsuds? Not exactly Romeo and Juliet, was it?

‘You were right,’ she said flatly, staring at the cup she was holding in both hands, trying to find comfort from its warmth. ‘They were filming us at Gresham Street. We’re famous now.’ She gave a bitter little snort. ‘But I suppose you already know that. You’ve probably seen the movie by now. Worth an X certificate, is it?’

He shrugged. ‘It’s our job, kid,’ he guyed, in a hammy American accent. ‘Somebody’s gotta do it.’

She felt the tears welling in her eyes and gripped the cup fiercely, swallowing hard, blinking them back. ‘I’m beginning to think it doesn’t have to be me.’ Her voice was unsteady and close to breaking.

‘Hey, come on. We can’t quit now. Our man’s sniffing at the bait. There’s been enquiries about Martin’s connections in the Med. He wants to meet up.’

She nodded, drew in a deep, shuddering breath, and struggled to push her gloom aside for a while. She told him about the two girls staying at Gresham Street, and about Karyn’s history in particular. ‘She was tricked into coming. Virtually kidnapped. It’s a whole business that Palmer’s getting his claws in to.’

‘We’ll nail him.’ Tony Pope’s face was alive with his eagerness. He put out a hand and took hold of Jill’s wrist. ‘Don’t give up now. Let’s see it through, eh? How about I come to Gresham Street again? Maybe meet your two new inmates while I’m there? I could maybe fix up a meet with Palmer himself. Get you alongside me if possible. You are my girl, after all.’

Her voice rang with scorn. ‘I’m not your girl. I’m your tart. I’m your trollop. And you’re my punter, my regular.’

‘Whatever,’ he shrugged. ‘Suits me, though I doubt if one session qualifies me as a regular.’ She shrugged as well and glanced away, and he studied the smooth line of her jaw, her cute chin, and the uncertainty in her eyes. He realised suddenly just how tense she was, her nerves cracking almost, the tears very near to falling. He reached out again and once more rubbed his fingers over her cold, fragile wrist, let his thumb search out the beat of her pulse, where the blue tracery of veins showed against the whiteness. ‘Maybe we should make some time on our own to get to know each other. Not at our bosses’ bidding. Just for our own sakes. Come on, let’s go somewhere else.’

His gentle manner and voice brought her even closer to the edge. The tears were there, clouding her eyes as she shrugged again, almost a gesture of despair. She rose, buttoned up her coat, pulled in the belt, cinching it as tight as it would go, her waist tiny. She didn’t object when he slid his arm around her shoulder and leaned in close as he steered her out of the tearoom, nodding at the woman behind the counter, who was staring with interest.

‘Made her day,’ he murmured, their heads close together. ‘She’s probably got us sussed as two married folk playing away. What was that weepy movie called? The one that took place in a bloody railway station? Brief Encounter, wasn’t it?’

‘Way before my time,’ Jill answered. ‘Anyway, she couldn’t be more wrong, could she?’

His arm tightened even harder, drawing her right into him so that their progress into the drizzle-swept car park was momentarily halted. ‘Come on, Jill,’ his voice was warm and intimate, ‘give me a chance, eh? You might even get to like me, you never know. Leave your car here. We’ll go for a drive and come back to pick it up later.’

She was swamped by her fatalistic surrender to his initiative. It was a feeling she had known more and more since she had arrived in Benbrough, and it distressed her. She had always striven to convince herself that she was decisive and independent, in control of her life. Now she felt as though she had utterly yielded that control to others, and had learned that there was an inner weakness in her, an all too ready willingness to put herself under the direction of others, to submit to their will and, what was even more disturbing, so much so that she tried hard not to dwell on it for too long, that there was a powerful attraction in this submission which was a key part of her personality. It was as though there was a struggle going on within her, but that struggle, for the self-assertion she had always thought she craved, was becoming feebler and feebler with every passing day and each new situation.

She took little account of their wandering journey through the quiet country lanes, content to sit in the warm capsule of the purring car, to let her taut muscles relax into the protective scoop of the cushioned seat which held her as they meandered along. She had to make an effort to rouse herself when he suddenly pulled off the road and moved slowly along a wet track, whose surface was thickly covered with the dark detritus shed from the closely crowding trees of the woodland, like soggy tealeaves.

The steady drip of the rain filtering through the canopy of branches was punctuated every few seconds by a heavier, sharper sound, as a drop clanged onto the metal roof of the car. He had manoeuvred off the track, which curved away to their right, and pulled up with the front bumper only a foot away from a low dry-stone wall, beyond which there seemed to be at first glance - nothing, except the expanse of low, grey, weeping sky. The drama of it helped to stir her a little from her lethargy.

‘Come on. Take in the view. It’s worth seeing, even on a day like this.’ He opened his door and got out. Still she made no move, huddled down in the seat until he came round to her side and opened the door. It was like an unspoken order and she swung her legs out and struggled upright, his hand firm on her arm to assist her. They stood by the jagged, glistening wet stones of the wall. The massive shapes seemed piled at random, but fitted into an efficient whole. The surfaces of the top layer were covered with a velvety green moss and paler little crusts of lichen.

She was surprised at the steepness with which the land fell away on the other side of the wall. The dark woodland continued to reach down the slope away to their left, but ahead of them and to their right there was only coarse grass with outcrops of rock piercing through to the surface in places, sweeping down in a long plane to the river at the bottom of the valley and the dark, tree covered rise of the land on the far side. Over to the left, where the valley bottom broadened out, the ruins they had just visited stood, miniaturised by distance. The ground around them was a lush green and looked rich, like a well-nourished lawn, in spite of the gloom of the day.

‘Very impressive,’ she murmured like a sulky child, moved by the beauty of the view yet reluctant to admit it. ‘You obviously know your way round these parts. This where you bring all your girlfriends?’

‘You’re not my girlfriend,’ he reminded her. ‘You’re my whore, so what say we get some practice in?’ His sudden display of annoyance startled her. He jerked open the rear door and tugged her by the arm, thrusting her down onto the back seat, bumping her across the narrow space as he climbed in after her. She was pressed back, her head jammed uncomfortably below the window, her shoulders almost flat on the upholstery. She could feel his legs entangled with hers and he heaved himself roughly on top of her. She didn’t resist, after her initial stiffness at his assault. He kissed her with clumsy ferocity, his lips and face cold against hers.

She lay passive against his crushing weight and felt his left hand thrusting with savage intensity under the obstacles of her bunched clothing, the buttoned trench coat and the tightness of her skirt. She could feel the hardness of his arm, its fierce determination as it burrowed up, dragging up her clothing with it until she could feel the cold air on her thighs, and her skirt in a tight band around them as he drove it up and up, homing in on the hidden goal of her sex.

All the while his mouth was seeking hers, then finally his fingers achieved their target of the moist conflux of her thighs, and she felt his fingers pressing and tracing the soft furrow at the centre of her secret excitement, beneath its sheer concealment of the tights and silk knickers. She gave a soft moan against his crushing mouth, and her nostrils flared at the fiery strength of arousal the strokes of his hand were raising within her. She felt the gauzy material grow damp within seconds, and an involuntary tremor of her thighs in acknowledgement. The throbbing arousal began to take over and she felt her mind slipping, the weakness of her body and will part of that urgent need to which she was surrendering.

The fingers squirmed, became rough as they sought to remove the last fragile barrier, fought to seize the elastic stretched low across her warm belly, and to penetrate joyfully into the slippery wetness. Jill’s hips lifted clear of the seat, thrusting up as though to welcome the invasion, and she whimpered, their hot breath mingling, their lips moving constantly against one another.

‘It’s nearly... it’s going to happen,’ she panted hoarsely, clawing at the back of his head as he crouched over her. ‘Do it - do it properly!’

‘I can’t. Not in here.’

She was crying, but only in her need as he clawed savagely again, and hauled down the purple knickers and the tights together, down her thighs, down over her knees. The solid shoes, laces neatly tied in bows, were too formidable an obstruction, so he hauled her out of the car, left the tights and knickers stretched and clinging like bonds around her ankles, carrying her bodily across to an ancient tree a few yards away, close to the wall, as though seeking its protection. He slammed her back against the cracked bark and heard the rasp of her coat against its roughness. She put her arms round his driving shoulders. She would have fallen had he not clasped her firmly, pinning her against the tree. He scrabbled madly, released his penis from its confines and in wild desperation grabbed the hem of the skirt and forced it up, hauling it over her hips, baring her tummy.

She could feel the tight bonds of the garments at her ankles and she forced her thighs apart, turning her knees, accommodating him as he drove his body between them, his fingers working frantically between their bellies, then like claws hooked into the yielding flesh of her bottom until, at last, she felt the tip of his prick prodding, searching, then stabbing into her, driving deep, impaling her, her buttocks grating against the bark, a discomfort that was not registered, lost in the blaze of sensations exploding within her as they juddered in unison to their climax.

Afterwards, flayed with shame as painful as the physical grazes she would discover, she pictured it; how no secret observer could have seen anything, however close, apart from those knickers and tights stretched around her ankles, as they rutted against the tree. Screened by their enveloping garments, no flesh would have shown despite the conjunction of their deeply sealed bodies, for not one single article of clothing had been fully removed.

But at the time, in that voluptuous moment after orgasm, she had no room in her disconnected thought for any of the shaming speculations of impropriety which would plague her later - even the physical sensation of the pain, and the soreness following his withdrawal, the cold seepage from within and the wetness of his semen on the bare skin of her thighs, was somehow held at a distance.

He handed her a handkerchief and she turned away from him, her coat closing in a screen about her while she cleaned herself as best she could of his copious discharge.

The sight of the purple knickers, their narrow crotch tautly stretched between her ankles, and the rope of her tights, hardly registered in her brain. She only became aware of them when he gently sat her on the edge of the front passenger seat, with her legs facing out, her feet on the leaf-strewn sogginess of the grass, and began to unlace her shoes, which he slipped off before sliding the tights and the French knickers off her feet.

He bundled them up in a tight ball and pushed them into one of the deep pockets of her coat. Then he slipped the shoes on again, tied the laces carefully, and all the while she watched him like a little child.

Her hair was wild and her face raw and smeared with her tears and their kisses, but she didn’t blush, and leaned forward to accept his kiss when he whispered, ‘That was fantastic.’