Passion Patrol 2 - a Sexy Police Romance Suspense Novel With a Touch of Humor: Hot Cops. Hot Crime. Hot Romance. (32 page)

“Have you ever made a pie?” asked Shannon

“No. I’ve never really cooked anything. Have you?”

“A bit, but never with savory marzipan.”

“Oooh, it might have been marjoram or maybe margarine. Sod it! It’s gonna be fantastic!” squealed Selena.

“What sort of meat did you buy?”

“Pie meat. That’s what I asked for.”

Shannon explained to the butcher she wanted enough “pie meat” for three people. She ended up with two pounds of chopped steak. Next they hit Sanjay’s mini mart, bought onions, some ready prepared pastry, beef stock, some thickening granules, and a three-liter box of red wine.

“Wow! You’re a master Nigella Smith or someone,” said Selena.

“The wine is the true mark of genius. I got it instead of the marzipan,” said Shannon.

Selena lived with Vandervell in a large Georgian style townhouse. The kitchen was lovely and almost completely unused.

“I’m supposed to be working,” said Shannon.

“You are. You’re meeting your public,” said Selena.

Disgracefully, Shannon spent the last two hours of her shift making meat pies with Selena. She phoned Spencer and told her she was feeding him when he got back. He sounded excited. Selena opened the wine box and soon the two women knew nearly everything that a decent woman should never know about someone else’s life. Selena’s relationship with Vandervell was based on sincere platonic affection and ambition. By the time the pies were out of the oven, Shannon had made something of a woman friend. She revealed the ring and joined in at the red wine tap. Vandervell came home from a day directing a commercial for a budget airline.

“‘No bags—no snags! Flyin’ the lion—it’s wild.’ I ask you, Comrades, what sort of fucking slogan is that?”

“It does what it says on the tube,” said Selena.

“Wow! Let me write that down. You may have transformed that business. Why is there a policewoman splattered with gunge in the kitchen? I didn’t know we used this room.”

“This was how I was dressed when Selena got the urge to make a working man’s pie. And I’m getting married,” said Shannon.

“Where’s your man and his sexy son? They must come here now mustn’t they, Vandy Pandy. We’ll eat pies together and celebrate everything.”

“Marvelous. Phone him now. I’m going to ask him to convince you to play Boudicca.”

“And then I
can
be your lesbian love slave,” said Selena, kissing her cheek with just a little curious glance at her eyes.

Spencer and Ben arrived within the hour. It was a wonderful convivial evening. Ben was hopelessly in love with Selena. Just telling his friends he knew her had elevated him to some godlike status and he was happy to tell her so. She made no secret of loving it. He was handsome, young, and far too tender but Shannon suspected that Selena might extend his education as an act of inappropriate generosity if she got the chance. Ah well, an early broken heart makes a man kinder to a girl who falls for him later in life. You could marry at sixteen. He could come home in a body bag if he joined the army. Sometimes she wished she had superior adult police morals. But not now.

The three of them walked home, arm in arm. Yet another curious sight. Later, she lay in Spencer’s arms in Joséphine’s bed. She still wore the fabulous ring on her finger. After Jasmine had commented on it, she’d looked it up. The price tag was crazy. She set the thought aside.

“Do you realize I’ve never seen your bed,” she said.

“It’s part of another life. I wanted our life together to be written in a blank book.”

“Nothing can be blank. We all emerge out of some kind of history. Love like this is a blank book for me I suppose, but you’ve had a wife and a whole life before me,” she said.

“It’s still no less for me. Love may always be love just like gold is always gold. But a necklace isn’t a ring is it? Love is never the same experience twice because it is a discovery of the true other. The needs of the other select from that à la carte menu of your soul. You fill and add to each other. Love is infinite so no individual love ever competes with a past one. A past love may have left you with a hole or a mountain inside. A new love may fit like a jigsaw or just as easily be a river that washes away the old landscape. I am someone new because I love you and someone even newer because you love me. I’m going to spend the rest of my life getting to know both of us.”

“I’ll be there too,” she said.

She slipped into sleep in complete relaxation. She was safe in her place with the only man she would or could ever love.

In two days she was due a rostered week’s leave. She wanted to clear her desk and there was plenty to do. Before she could start, the phone rang. It was Tom Mitchell.”

“Shannon. We’ve got to move on Operation Kakkada. I’ll be with you in an hour. Get the kettle on.”

She tried to put everything else out of her mind. This was focused police work.

“A proper brew,” she said, handing him his tea.

“There’s a chance that one of our teams has been sussed. We’ve identified seventy addresses and at least two hundred individuals. The job covers people trafficking, prostitution, processing of cocaine, cannabis farming, and money laundering. Once we go in, there will be more. We hit the targets tomorrow morning at 0430 hours. There will be simultaneous raids up and down the UK, in Azerbaijan, Turkey, and Belgium.”

“Wow!” she said.

“We’ve got your talents to thank,” he said, “I’ve told you what I want from you when this is over.”

“I’m going to marry Spencer,” she said.

“What? The Earl of Bloxington?”

“Yes.”

The Detective Superintendent appeared to turn the matter over in his mind as if it were some clue in a case. He shrugged his shoulders.

“Can’t see it makes any difference to my plans for you. I can see a couple of tabloid headlines—you know—‘Countess of Crime’ stuff. This is the police not a romance novel. You’re still a cop.”

“Of course. Guv, I want to ask a big favor of you. Can you remove a police record from the PNC?”

“The answer is yes. Tell me the story.”

She explained the whole circumstances of Ben’s arrest without naming any other individual. When she’d finished she watched his shrewd expression break into a smile.

“Bring up the file and print out the entry for me,” he said. “I have absolute respect and trust for you, Shannon. You want this and I’ll do it. I won’t put any questions because on the face of it there’s someone who ought to be locked up.”

“You’re right, Guv, but sleeping dogs, eh?”

“I’ve got a meeting at the Yard now. Check the screen at 1700 hours. That file will be clean.”

“Thank you. Thank you,” she said, springing up and kissing him on the cheek.

“The house entry team will be here at 0400 hours. You go in with them. You have only one job. You arrest Ashley Arrowsmith for murder of the girl.”

“Murder?”

“We’ll start there and see how it goes. It’ll put the frighteners on him and his loving parents.”

She handed him the copy of Ben’s file. To see him in the street he would be just a smallish man with some ordinary job. In fact the freedom and security of society relied upon such men. He had tracked down evil all his adult life and had never bigged himself up. She had total belief in him. She offered him a bro’ fist and he responded with a grin.

“Respect,” she said.

Now, she really was short of time. She bundled together all her crime reports and forms and headed on out. By about 4 p.m. she could no longer resist the temptation to see Spencer. She drove to the Manor. She was thinking of her parents and her mother’s work issues. Her mind even played a trick on her. Right in the distance she thought she saw a red Ford Zodiac but when she closed the distance it had gone. Every cop knew eye witnesses were useless. She knew Spencer was spending a day at home. He was round the back in the stable workshop exactly as he had been when she’d first seen him. His blue overalls were open to the waist. It was a warm day and he was sweating as he worked on the old Jaguar. His chest hair thinned down to his belly button. A single track of dark hair ran down into his the waistband of his pants. She could see his wet skin. Dare she kneel and lick his flesh? She wanted to. He dropped his spanner and strode to her. She caught a whiff of hot male that zapped her back to those first days of her self-awareness as a woman. That surge of first exciting lust she’d felt among the garage guys as they’d teased her washed over her with that same intensity. Wow! A smell could take you so far back. She’d been a teenager with some ache in her. Some rocket longed to be launched as she had held eyes with these working men. She’d been aware of a pressure in her that she’d not known how to release. Now this man who loved her was there in front of her. She was soaking for him and he was kissing her. She wanted him. She pulled up her skirt and let her sex press against his hard thigh. There was that scent of him, the smile in his eyes. She was pressing her button through her panties onto this flesh that wanted her and was her own man. He felt her pressure and braced himself against her fabric, kneading her memory and her love for him.

“I’m coming. I’m coming,” she said, wanting to share her powerlessness with him as her gift for the joy in her soul.

He kissed her deeply, trying not to touch her uniform with his oily hands. She groaned out her aftershocks onto his powerful shoulder.

“Just you being there made me come,” she said.

“I love you so much,” he said.

“You’re too sexy for your overalls. I want you in me now.”

She bent to his chest and licked his salty skin. There was a musk of male that excited her more. She opened the poppers and pulled his briefs aside. His cock stood hard completely upright. She took hold and revealed the wet head. He held his greasy hands up to avoid touching her. She swung her buttocks against the wing of the car, hitched up her uniform skirt around her waist and pulled her panties aside. She was at the right height. She pulled his cock into her entrance. She smelled her own lust and his male juice. She pulled his lips to hers as he pushed in to her core.

“I’ve got you in me. I’ve got your hot cock in my pussy,” she said.

“Shannon ... oh, my God....”

He moved inside her. She let go explosively almost at once. His girth was holding her open and he was going to explode at any second. Her mind flashed to the first time she’d ever come, pulling her clothing aside, not knowing how to release but desperately thinking of a young guy who talked to her at the workshop. Now she felt Spencer reaching his peak. He was groaning. A cock was pulsing out hot cum and she was coming for that first time again. A hot cock was letting go inside her. She still had her panties on. That was so naughty. He was shooting out his seed. She was holding her man in this joy that she could bring him.

“My man. I’m a bad girl for my man,” she said.

“You’re a wicked paradise.”

“You’ve no idea how you turned me on the first time I saw you in here wearing those overalls,” she said.

“You’ve no idea of how much I thought of you that night.”

“Spencer, I hope I made you be a naughty boy thinking of me. I was a very naughty girl thinking of you.”

“Yes, it was such a surprise. I’d had no arousal since the accident. And then ... you walked in here.

“And I ain’t ever gonna walk back out,” she said, kissing his lips and readjusting her clothing.

“Believe it or not, this isn’t why I came to see you. Come down to the office about six o’clock. Bring Ben along. I’ve got something to show you.”

She made a last sweep of her area. The Arrowsmiths were at home, calmly living out their last hours of wealthy freedom. A growl and rumble of pleasure still fluttered inside her. She was damp with their juices. God, she was an animal and it was delicious.

Spencer and Ben arrived punctually at six. She’d showered and changed into a light summer dress. Tomorrow she faced who knows what. This evening she wanted to look feminine and carefree for him. The last thing she ever wanted was to turn their lives into a police discourse.

Ben hugged her at once.

“Hey, she’s mine,” said Spencer, pulling her into his strong arms. His hair was wet from the shower and he wore a classy cologne. He rocked her tenderly, his large strong hands covering her whole back.

“Come on. Let’s get this done,” she said.

“What?” said the two guys in unison.

She seated them at her desk and typed a code into her computer.

“This is the PNC, the police national computer. It’s a huge data base. It can tell you anyone’s criminal record, who owns a car, where somebody lives and much more. It’s where police or other agencies come to see if anyone has any record.”

“So, if an employer wants a check, this is where they look?”

“Yes. Not everyone is entitled to access, but for instance, the armed forces have this facility.

“Right. I’m typing in Ben’s details ... born 24th November, 1997.”

“I know what’s on there,” said Ben despondently.

Shannon smiled. The green screen blinked up. “No Trace.”

“What about that drug business?”

“Never happened, did it?” she said, smiling. “It never happened and we never need to think or talk about it again.”

“Can you alter these records?” said Spencer.

“It’s not a criminal conviction. It’s a police record. What the police create the police can remove.”

“So no laws have been broken?”

“None at all. You can apply for whatever you want and never mention the whole wretched affair.”

“Could anyone ever put the record back on?” asked Ben.

“Not without the file of evidence and that’s gone back to the Central Registry. It has been received and booked back in. It now contains a list of fruit and veg eaten by a pony. The original notes of arrest, interview, and your signed acceptance of a caution are here. There are no copies.”

She opened a drawer in the desk and took out some papers. Spencer and Ben flicked through them.

“There’s a fireplace and a grate over there. There’s some matches in the kitchen. Once we torch them, we can’t use them against Jasmine....”

“Would we ever do that?” asked Spencer.

“Nah. The fact is I can’t prove she planted the drugs. She’s admitted it to me but she’s not gonna send herself to jail by admitting it in court. I’d be certain that the Department of Public Prosecutions wouldn’t even run the case.”

Spencer went to the kitchen and returned with the matches. He picked up the papers and burned them in the grate.

“I could have done that myself, but I wanted you guys to see the physical end of it,” she said.

As the flames died away, father and son hugged each other.

“I couldn’t believe you would have let me down like that Ben. This injustice must have tasted very bitter to you.”

“It did until Shannon came. When she believed in me I felt worthwhile again.”

The lad turned to her with tears in his eyes. “I used to think it was better for my mother to be dead rather than be so ashamed of me,” he said.

She hugged him herself, feeling tears in her own eyes.

“Oh, Ben....”

“We need a pot of tea,” said Spencer, heading back to the kitchen.

“I’ve got the copy of your ring at the Manor,” he said, pouring the tea.

“I need you to take this one back with you tonight. Tomorrow won’t be a day to wear it. We’re hitting Badger’s Knoll at 4:30 a.m. I’m gonna chuck you guys out in a minute. I don’t need to say that this is top secret.”

She could see the concern in his face.

“There could be anything in that house. I’ve already met the killer dog.”

“I won’t be alone and I’ll be padded up.”

“Against knives or bullets?”

“There’ll be armed officers there and I’ll have all the kit I need. You were SAS, you did all this stuff and far worse.”

“Yes, and we lost men in the process.”

“You won’t lose me. I’m gonna spend a nice quiet evening getting everything together and a good sleep. I’ve done plenty of early raids before I came here.”

“You start some leave the day after tomorrow. Just stay safe so we can enjoy it Shannon—please.”

She made sure he took the ring, and kissed him and Ben. She didn’t want any big final love scenes. It was just going to be a day at the office. She set out her pepper spray, baton, handcuffs, stab and bullet proof armor, full face helmet, steel toe-capped boots and spare radio batteries. The phone rang. It was her father.

“Dad. What’s the problem?”

“No problem. Is Spencer there? Can you talk?”

“I’m alone. You’re worrying me now.”

“I just wanted to run something past you.”

“What? What?”

“I came down there today.”

“In the Zodiac? You know I thought I’d dreamed it.”

“Spencer has a farm place. There’s a house and buildings. He’s just been elected the new president of the VRCA.”

“What the hell’s that?”

“The Vintage Racing Car Association of course.”

“Duh! Why didn’t I know that? Everyone knows that.”

“He’s asked me to set up the farm as a restoration center. He’s seen my work on the Zodiac and I’m the guy he wants.”

“It’s a long way to commute every day Dad.”

“No child—we get the house with the job. It’s like a dream Shannon. He’s offering a good salary and I get to choose the staff I want. There’s going to be famous cars coming from all over the world.”