Chapter Four

The beating with the hairbrush marked a crisis point for Jill. It was the pivot on which the continuation and nature of this unique new relationship depended. For a while the significance of her compliance with it didn’t dawn on her; at least, not consciously. She was too wrapped up in the blazing, throbbing pain scorching her delicate skin, the intense agony of those blistering blows, so that the tenderest touches of the cold wet cloth, which Jackie immediately applied to the enflamed flesh, the softest contact of her lips on the swollen ridges which she lovingly bestowed, were part of that pain.

Only later did Jill acknowledge the importance of that first real instant of submission, when capering in what might be seen as ludicrous comedy after that first blow, clutching at her burning bum she danced about, mouth gaping in childishly incredulous shock, she had nevertheless instinctively obeyed the smiling command to bend over and prostrated herself over the back of the chair once again, like a female Isaac at his father’s altar.

This later contemplation carried its own, different pain. So much so that she continued afterwards to try to cling to excuses, to avoid the shocking truth. She had been too afraid of what further excesses might have been inflicted on her, she told herself. And there was an element of truth in that, of course. But it was the other strand in Jill’s personality, as strong if not stronger than the fear; something deeper, hidden until now in the recesses of her nature. It had surfaced only in her most private thoughts, through childhood and growing up; figured only in her most personal and intimate fantasies, the vivid images flickering through her mind, of violation bestowed upon her ever passive, ever willing body.

She was an accomplice in her own downfall. She let herself be lost in the tenderness which followed. The marks of the brush stood out in dark brands, their edges hard, raised lumps, and after bathing them Jackie smeared them with cold cream until Jill’s buttocks shone in the lamplight. She laid another damp cool cloth over them, and helped Jill to lie as comfortably as possible on her front, with her right leg draped over Jackie’s body nestling comfortingly at her side. ‘You’re my own good girl,’ Jackie whispered, her lips nuzzling at Jill’s temple. ‘Aren’t you, sweety?’

And she was. It was too mind-blowing to dwell on. In less than three days she had been transformed from an incisive, independent, go-ahead young woman embarking on a new career, to a helpless creature, a sexual plaything, totally subservient to the sadistic figure who possessed her.

Next morning, when she awoke after a restless night of stinging torment and teasing gratification, from searching lips and skilful fingers, she felt the difference in this attachment and her own complicit part in it. She endured the throbbing ache, the discomfort, and stared at the darkening, livid marks across her buttocks, while Jackie once more tended her after their shared bath.

‘Be easier to keep you on your feet as long as possible today, sugar,’ Jackie said as both of them stood naked in the sun-bright kitchen, powdered and perfumed and made-up. ‘Now let’s go and see what you can wear.’

Jill felt her heart rate quicken with nervousness. ‘Am I coming into work with you?’

Jackie grinned. ‘Of course you are. I can’t keep you chained up in here forever, much as I’d love to.’

Jill felt the deep blush rising from her throat. She lowered her eyes, felt too the shiver of pleasure at the tactile contact and her meek response. ‘Yes, Ma’am.’

‘Just wait a sec till I get dressed.’

Jill obeyed, and watched while Jackie quickly hauled on a pair of Sloggi briefs, with a broad elasticated waistband. She smoothed them into her crotch and flanks and they clung like a second skin. Their colour too was skin-tone, but the material was opaque enough to hide the dark triangle of pubis, and to mask the darkness of her buttock cleft. She wore a bra of a generous depth, like a sports bra, with straps of half an inch in width. The white cups were seamless, but held her breasts proudly.

‘I don’t want those leching bastards copping even a glimpse of my underwear, even under my clothes.’ She need have no worries on that score, Jill thought, staring at the trim figure when she had completed her dressing in white shirt, fitted with a checked silk cravat at the neck, and a dark power suit. The cuffs of the narrow, knife-creased trousers slipped snugly over the tops of the ankle boots of rich, soft, highly burnished brown leather.

All the while Jill stood there passively, like a tailor’s dummy in a department store, waiting to be dressed. ‘OK, babe, let’s get you sorted. We need to be careful with that poor little arse of yours. I must say I love your frillies. They’re gorgeous. Here, these’ll do for a start.’

‘Oh but,’ Jill let out a soft gasp of protest, and then her voice faltered as she stumbled on, ‘I don’t usually wear those in the daytime. Somehow they don’t seem appropriate for when I’m on duty.’ She stared in mute distress at the tiny scrap of material Jackie was holding out. It was a thong, and when she reluctantly took it from Jackie and slipped it on the two straps hugged her hips, and where they met the thin band emerging from the cleft of Jill’s bottom all three were joined by a small silver metal clasp in the shape of a tiny butterfly, which fitted snugly just above her coccyx.

‘Very cute,’ Jackie purred, giving it a little flip with a fingertip. Then she rummaged in another drawer. ‘Now then, stockings.’ Her smile broadening, she turned and thrust into Jill’s hand an even less substantial tangle of black straps; a suspender belt of the narrowest elastic and silk ribbons, with the little metal clips with which to fasten the stockings which Jackie now produced from the bundled mass in the drawer.

Jill’s face was an eloquent picture of her discomfort. She wanted to protest, but already she knew better than to try. Instead she fitted the thin belt around her waist, drew the gauzy dark stockings over first one foot then the other, to roll them up over her knees and fit them snugly to her thighs before clipping on the suspenders. It felt strange, and somehow shockingly provocative. She caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror on the inside of the wardrobe door, and was startled at the blatant sexuality of her reflection; the crisscross of narrow black webbing against her pale skin, and the dark nylon encasing her legs up to mid-thigh, the provocative breasts highlighting the nakedness of her body from the top of that saucy satin triangle at her belly.

‘A bra?’ she said inadequately, as Jackie rooted among her undies once more and brought out a wisp of a black camisole.

‘This’ll go fine with that little ensemble.’ It was of gauzy, almost transparent satin, with a deep edging of black lace at the bust and the hem, which hung just above the navel. It clung coolly to the breasts, whose small nipples nudged at the silk.

Jill had rarely gone without a bra in public. ‘I look like a tart!’ she said involuntarily, staring at her scantily-clad reflection.

‘My tart,’ Jackie corrected. ‘And you don’t. You just look sexy. And nobody’s going to see, only me. Don’t worry; you’ll look like Little Miss Fauntleroy on the surface.’

It was only a slight exaggeration, for Jackie chose a demure white, square-neck top, under a short-sleeved linen jacket of deep brown, with a matching flared skirt of a respectable knee length. The elegant, dark, four-inch heels completed the outfit.

If Jill had been nervous at her first entrance to Benbrough Div HQ, her second was ten times worse. She felt as though every pair of the many eyes encountering her could see straight through the pretty girl garb to the delicate frippery beneath, and the Technicolor bruises adorning her behind. She felt as though she were still chained to the briskly confident DI Barlow striding a pace ahead of her through the double doors, and even if the chain were invisible her enslavement to the ‘boss’ must be apparent. She did little to attempt to refute or disguise it, blushed like a schoolgirl at every reintroduction and was lost, like a Christian thrown to the lions, when Jackie left her to the mercy of the crowded outer office, with the adjunct, ‘Make yourself at home, sweety. Get to know the dregs you’ll be working with. Somebody might let you share a desk with them if you’re real nice. And being nice to this lot means going all the way and back again!’ There was a chorus of ribald laughter as Jackie headed for the seclusion of her own office.

‘Don’t take any notice of the boss; it’s not true. You don’t have to go back again; all the way will do!’

She had tried to imagine what it would be like working here. She was gripped with anxiety, of course, but she had also been optimistic that she would be able to use her feminine charm, and if necessary, her sharp wit, as she had done plenty of times in the past with importunate males at university. But Benbrough CID room was a very different kettle of raw fish. Besides, she was not even the same girl who had striven to breeze through those doors three days and a whole lifetime ago. That wide-eyed little pretender had gone, been blown wide away, and she had the scars to prove it, throbbing under the neat summer suit. She felt more like a helpless child surrounded in a hostile playground by its bullying peers. It was almost as bad as those terrifying minutes when those harpies had borne her aloft and held her over the balcony railing. And to her further dismay she discovered that the incident, or some version of it, appeared to have been noised abroad, despite Jackie’s assurance that it remained a secret.

‘I hear you had a run-in with some of the bitches up at Westlands. That right? Sorted them out good and proper, did you? Good on you!’

Jill stood hopelessly at bay, her cheeks as hot and scarlet as those other cheeks hidden beneath her skirt. The leader of her tormentors was DC Tom Harris, a would-be Lothario with a head of yellow fuzz as short as the baize on a billiard table, a thin, pale moustache and silly little vertical trickle of hair from the centre of his full lower lip to the cleft of his chin. He had introduced himself with an absurd leer and suggestive wiggle of his all but invisible eyebrows. ‘Thomas Harris. But known universally as Chopper!’

There was a burst of bass macho laughter, while Jill blinked in mortified acknowledgement.

‘And not after the bike, either!’ another voice called, to even louder amusement.

After what then? she should have fired back acerbically, but she stayed mute, at bay, her toes curling in the smart shoes, while someone burbled on about some ancient footballer from the days when even her father was a school boy.

Her unlikely rescuer was the very pretty, yellow-haired girl she had nodded to on her first appearance three days before, who manned the desk in Chief Superintendent Sharp’s outer office. ‘Hello again. I’m Sandra Roberts. Ms Sharpe’s asked me to give you the tour - take you round and meet everyone. Uniformed branch and so on. She’ll be having a chat with you later on, when you’ve had time to settle in. She’s busy with your boss at the moment, so we’ve got all the time in the world.’

She was a breath of very fresh, dainty, feminine air in the heavy breathing masculine atmosphere which had hemmed Jill in so powerfully, and she was profoundly grateful as she followed the trim figure away from the lip-smacking, hot-eyed stares. It made her all the more appreciative of her saviour’s delightful appearance. She was wearing a light summer dress, sleeveless and moulded to her graceful bosom and slender waist before widening to a full skirt of a modest length identical to Jill’s. Her legs were bare, increasing the effect of an attractive pale honey tan which complemented the pale oatmeal colour of the dress. The magenta shade of the toenails was on display in the open, heeled sandals.

‘Thanks,’ Jill gushed impetuously. ‘For rescuing me from that lot. I’ll have to get used to it, I suppose.’

Sandra turned to her and tilted her fair head towards her in a touchingly friendly little gesture. She gave a breathy little laugh. ‘Oh, I’m sure you will. I’ve been here over a year now and they never give up. Especially that Harris. Chopper!’ She emphasised the word eloquently with a roll of her pencilled brows, and gave a girlishly smutty chortle that made Jill recall the countless similar shared confidences and innuendos she had known with Sharon. Though completely different in appearance from Sharon’s dark, volatile beauty, Sandra Roberts’ petite feminism reminded Jill so powerfully of her former lover that she felt an immediate empathy with her.

She was glad to be distracted by the comprehensive tour of the three-storey building, and the scores of new faces she met. ‘Fancy having to work permanently with that lot,’ a chunky girl with a broad Yorkshire accent declared, nodding in the general direction of CID. ‘Last bastion of sexism, that lot are. Fuckin’ tosspots!’

Jill was grateful for the sentiment, and hoped the forthright speaker had not noticed her instinctive, fastidious flinch at the expletive she could never quite relate to, even in this age of equality.

She and Sandra spent a long, leisurely break in the main canteen, bonded in exclusive femininity around one of the plastic topped tables, and at the end of it Jill felt a lot better, though she was glad to stand after half kneeling on the metal chair, and squirming to avoid her sore bottom coming into contact with its hard surface.

After a visit to the front desk and general office where a surprisingly large number of civilian workers, the majority female, were manning work stations and phone lines, and a look at the row of cells and interview rooms, they headed back at last to the CID rooms.

‘After all that coffee I’ll have to go to the loo again,’ Jill said. ‘Where are ours?’

‘I’ll show you. I’m lucky,’ Sandra confided. ‘Ms Sharp lets me use hers. She’s got a private loo and shower off her office. But there’s a small Ladies just on the left here, just this side of the swing doors. It’s for anybody really, but not many get down this end. But if you want a shower you have to use the main women’s locker room back there.’ She nodded in the direction they had come from. She steered Jill towards a door marked Ladies. ‘Here we are.’

There was only one cubicle and one washbasin, with a small mirror above it. Sandra gestured towards the lavatory and smiled. ‘Go ahead, you first. I’m not so desperate.’ Jill swung the metal door closed, but didn’t slide the bolt across.

‘Hey, is it true what they’re saying about Westlands?’ Sandra asked through the door. ‘That one of those girl gangs had a go at you?’

‘Yes,’ Jill answered tersely.

The voice came again, still a little diffident. ‘Did they really hang you upside down over the balcony?’

Jill stood, carefully drew the thong back into place, and adjusted the suspenders, which had twisted a little out of line. ‘Yes. I suppose everyone thinks it’s hilarious. Certainly those pigs back in CID were sniggering over it.’ Her voice quavered a little. She turned and thrust the handle down to flush with an extra degree of force. She shook out her skirt and pulled open the door. She made her way to the basin, washed her hands then dried them on a paper towel, and delved for her make-up in her shoulder bag. Meanwhile, Sandra had taken her place and was relieving herself. When she came out Jill was still working with her lip pencil, and she moved aside to let Sandra at the basin.

‘Listen,’ the blonde girl said, brushing against Jill. ‘I’m not laughing. It must have been absolutely terrifying. I think I’d have died on the spot.’

Jill pulled a face that was meant to indicate humorous regret, but was nearer to tragedy. ‘I really thought I was going to. I literally have never been so frightened in my life.’

‘Oh, you poor thing.’ Her hands came up, rested on Jill’s shoulders, and stayed there, her bare arms bent. They stood only inches away, and suddenly their eyes seemed to lock. Jill stared at the candid blue gaze, brimming with sympathy and compassion... and something else, which Jill’s dizzy mind could almost but not quite grasp. She found herself staring at the glossy lips, which were very slightly parted, showing neat white teeth and which, she discovered startlingly, looked extremely desirable. She could feel the hands on her shoulders, the fingers digging in slightly, increasing their pressure, not letting her go. The lips were moving. Jill’s heart was hammering now, the feeling of giddy breathlessness increased. She had to concentrate hard to understand what Sandra was saying.

‘You’re with DI Barlow now? Is it... is she all right? Is she good to you?’

Jill could only stare. She could sense herself trembling under Sandra’s touch, feel the hot shame flowing up her throat to her face. She knows! She knows about us! The words drummed in her brain, yet she could not move, could not even look away from those huge blue eyes, alight now with tenderness, luminous with it.

‘I know about it, about her.’

The words were so close to those echoing in Jill’s head that she thought for an instant she must have imagined them, put them into that lovely mouth only inches away from hers. It moved closer; the fingers hooked on her shoulders drew her in, until their breasts were touching.

‘Are you happy with it? With her?’

Jill thought about her sore bottom, the tenderness of her vagina, the bruises of love dotted about her flesh; the chafing of the dog collar, the hours of solitude chained in the silent flat. Her own brown eyes filled with tears but she said nothing, only nodded.

‘You’re very beautiful,’ Sandra whispered. ‘I want us to be friends. I want us to be good friends.’ The mouth was nearer, its warm breath fanned softly over her face, then the lips touched, settled over hers, and they kissed, their heads turning slightly, accommodating, their noses brushing, their teeth gently nudging, tongues caressing, flickering in and over and under, and the kiss grew harder, they strained to make contact.

Then the main door suddenly opened and they sprang apart, gasping, crimson-faced, dishevelled, ablaze with guilt, shoulders touching in front of the basin. It was the chunky Yorkshire girl. Jill felt crucified on a burning cross of shame, but the WPC gave a throaty little chuckle and went past them into the cubicle.

‘So this is where you’re hiding out!’ she called through the half closed door, out of their line of vision, and Jill and Sandra stared at one another in subsiding fright and relief. ‘I’ve just been over to you lot. Your boss is looking for you, Jill. You’d best get back there quick. Something’s come up. She wants you right away.’