Dead Simple

Returning to court at 2 p.m., he discovered he was not going to be needed for the rest of the day, and went back to his office. With the time Operation Salsa was now consuming, a massive backlog was building up on the rest of his paperwork, and he did his best to deal with the most urgent of it.

It was an uneventful afternoon for him, right up until his arrival at the 6 p.m. briefing in the Incident Room. He could tell instantly from the team's faces that there had been a development. It was Bella Moy who told him the news.

'I've just had a call from a Phil Wheeler, Roy - the father of the murdered lad found this afternoon.'

'Tell me?'

'He said he didn't know if it was significant, but apparently his son told him that he'd been chatting with Michael Harrison on a walkie-talkie radio - since - Thursday.'

68

Ashley walked up behind Mark, who was hunched over his desk in front of his computer screen, trying to catch up on his work. He badly owed the architect, the quantity surveyor and the construction company responses to a whole raft of emails on issues that had been raised by the Planning Department over the company's most ambitious project to date, the new Ashdown development of twenty houses.

She slipped her arms around his neck, leaned forward and nuzzled his cheek. He breathed in the heady scents of her fresh, summery cologne and the faint citrus tang of her hair.

Bleary-eyed, he lifted his arms up and cupped her cheeks in his hands. 'We're going to be OK,' he said.

'Of course. We don't do not OK, right?'

'Right.'

Leaning further over, she kissed him on the forehead.

Mark shot a glance across the office at the open doorway, wary every second of the day and night of who might walk through it.

She kissed him again. 'I love you,' she said.

'I love you too, Ashley'

'Do you? You haven't shown me much affection the past few days,' she chided.

'Oh, right, like you've been all over me?'

'Let's put that behind us.' She nibbled his ear, then, unbuttoning his shirt front, slipped her hands inside and began to tease his nipples with her fingers and thumbs. She felt him react almost instantly, heard his sharp intake of breath, felt his chest tighten. Slipping her hands out, she- reached around him, clicked his mouse to exit the program, then whispered into his ear, 'Fuck me.'

'Here?'

'Here, now!'

Mark stood up, a little panicky, and glanced at his watch. 'The cleaners come around six-thirty - they'll be--'

Ashley unbuckled his suit trousers, and jerked down his zip. Then she pulled down his trousers and underpants together in one swift tug. 'So we'll just have to have a quickie, won't we?' She stopped and stared for a moment, as if in appreciation, at his engorged penis, then said, 'Well, somebody seems pleased to see me!'

Then she took him in her mouth.

Mark stared out of the window. They were in full view of the windows across the street. He tried to step sideways and almost tripped over his trousers and pants. He leaned down, fumbled with the buttons on Ashley's blouse, got his hands inside, unhooked her bra. Within a couple of minutes, naked except for his shoes and socks, he was lying on top of her, deep inside, the dusty, nylon smell of the hard carpet mingling with Ashley's scents in his nostrils.

Then there was a sharp buzz from the intercom.

'Shit!' he said, panicking. 'Who the fuck's that?'

Ashley pulled him tighter into her, her nails raking his back. 'Ignore it,' she said.

'What if it's Michael? Checking if anyone is in?'

'You're such a wuss!' she said, releasing him.

Ignoring the remark, Mark hauled himself to his feet and hobbled out of the room and over to the reception desk which Ashley normally manned and stared at the small black and white CCTV monitor. He could see a man in a motorcycle helmet, holding a package, standing outside the front door in the street. Mark pressed the speak button. 'Hello?'

'Package for Mr Warren, Double-M Properties.'

'Do you want to just put it through the letter box?'

'I need a signature.'

Mark cursed. 'I'll be down in a moment.'

He pulled his clothes back on, stuffing his shirt tails into his trousers, and blew Ashley a kiss. 'Back in two sees.'

'Don't worry about me,' she said unsmiling. 'I'll carry on without you.'

He hurried downstairs, opened the door and took a small Jiffy bag, with a printed label addressed to him but no information where

it was from, from a stocky hulk of a man in leathers with 'FAST TRACK COURIERS' embossed on the front. He signed the docket, was given a duplicate copy then closed the door and climbed back up the staircase.

The sender's handwritten name on the docket read, 'JK Contractors'. Mark had no idea what was inside it. There was so much damned paperwork on the planning applications that he was steadily sinking under the mountain. This was probably a bunch of technical drawings from the quantity surveyor. Typically extravagant to send them by courier when post would have been fine. He would open it later. Right now there was just one thing on his mind, Ashley, lying naked on his office floor. And he was feeling crazily, dizzily, rampantly horny.

Then, totally unexpectedly, within seconds of lying back on top of her it was all over.

'Sorry,' he said, taking his weight on his elbows. 'I--'

'Get turned on by motorcycle couriers, do you?' she asked, seemingly only partly in jest.

'Oh sure.'

'A lot of men are gay and don't realize it. You know, bikers in leather can be a pretty erotic thing for guys.'

'What is this?'

'What do you think it is? You leave me here naked and on the verge of coming; you go down and see a guy in leathers and the next moment you shoot your bolt before you've barely got back inside me.'

He rolled off and sat up beside her on the floor, a wave of gloom washing through him. 'I'm sorry,' he said. 'I just have a shitload of stuff going on in my head at the moment.'

'And I don't?'

'Maybe you're better at handling this than I am.'

'I don't know what you're capable of handling, Mark. I thought you were the strong guy and Michael was the weak one.'

He leaned forward and placed his face in his hands. 'Ashley, we're both tense, OK.'

'You shouldn't be tense, you just had a great orgasm.'

'OK, OK, OK. I have apologized. You want me to work on you? I'll make you come - you know - by hand.'

She stood up abruptly, picking up some of her clothes as she did. 'Forget it, I'm not in the mood any more.'

They both dressed in silence. It was Ashley, putting on some liptick, who finally broke it. 'You know what they say, Mark? Good sex is one per cent of a relationship; bad sex is ninety-nine per cent.'

'I thought we had great sex - normally.'

She checked her lipstick in her compact mirror, as if she was about to go out on a date. 'Yes, well, I did, too.'

Mark walked over and put an arm around her. 'Ashley, darling, come on, I apologized - I'm so damned stressed. We should go away for a few days.'

'Sure, that would look good, wouldn't it.'

'I mean when this is all over.'

She gave him a sharp look. 'When exactly will it all be over?'

'I don't know.'

She put her mirror away in her handbag. 'Mark, darling, it can never be over while Michael is alive. We both know that. We burnt our bridges on Thursday night when you took out the breathing tube.' She gave him a peck on the cheek. 'See you in the morning.'