In the snow she tiptoed to the bird-table and checked to see if there was any food on it. A moment later she was back in the house, patio door closed, and in Munrow’s arms.
They attacked each other with a passion, kissing wildly, necking, tearing at clothing. She didn’t have very much to remove and within a couple of seconds her dressing gown was on the floor and she was naked. Together they removed Munrow’s clothes and she took obvious delight in peeling his boxer shorts off him, revealing what Rider had always suspected. A very big penis. Which she greedily took in her mouth as she knelt in front of him.
Munrow’s head drooped back in ecstasy.
The woman clawed her way back to her feet, heaved herself onto Munrow by wrapping her legs around his waist and hands clasped around his neck.
Thus engaged, Munrow walked them both out of the room, easily holding her weight.
When they disappeared, Rider emerged from the shadows and sprinted low to the house. He flattened himself against the wall, gun in hand.
The security light went out. Rider moved and it came back on. He darted to the patio door and silently pushed the handle. Yes! It was open.
He was inside the house.
Munrow’s discarded clothing was on the floor. Rider went through the pockets and found a single car key which he slid into his own. He trod carefully through the lounge and emerged in the hallway.
From upstairs the sounds of unbridled lust bounced down the walls. She was moaning to a rhythm, Munrow was gasping a beat behind. Oh, the din of sexual rapture, Rider thought.
He pulled a ski-mask over his head. Not because he wanted to hide his identity from Munrow, but from her. If things went pear-shaped in the next few minutes it would be better if she didn’t see his face. He made his way cautiously up the steps to the landing, where the racket of intercourse became much louder from the bedroom second on the right.
After checking the first bedroom and finding it empty, Rider stepped lightly to the next door, which was open. He adjusted the ski-mask and tried to control his breathing — and the urge to scream and run away, forget it all, become a hermit. He counted to three and twisted into the bedroom, gun in right hand, supported by the left.
They did not notice him enter, being far too preoccupied in their own world of thrusting and grunting.
The couple were on the bed, facing away from Rider. The woman was on her hands and knees, face buried into a pillow, groaning wildly and Munrow plunged himself into her from behind with no subtlety whatsoever. It looked like he was meting out some form of medieval torture as he grabbed her thighs with white knuckled fingers and jab-jab-jabbed into her. She didn’t seem to be complaining, meeting each of his rams with a powerful reverse thrust of her own. At the same time she was reaching backwards between Munrow’s legs, cupping and squeezing his balls in the palm of her hand.
Not that he was a good judge of such things, but Rider made an educated guess that Munrow was not a zillion miles away from his climax. Rider wondered if it would give him an even greater thrill with a gun poked in his ear.
He decided to find out.
Two strides and he was standing right behind the heaving Munrow whose arse flexed, tightened and relaxed each time he drove his cock into her.
Without warning Munrow emitted a rhino-like squeal which made Rider jump.
The reason for it was that the woman had reached further back than Munrow’s testicles and inserted the tip of her forefinger into his anus.
‘ Shove it in, baby,’ he hissed. She obliged. He let out a long ‘aaargh’ — somewhere around middle C — and responded by slamming his full length into her. Rider wished he’d thought to shove the gun up there instead of in his ear. That would have been a real wheeze. Alas, the opportunity had passed.
Instead he sidled up to Munrow and stuck the muzzle under his left ear and cocked the weapon with an ominous click which always seems much louder than it really is.
In mid-forward thrust, Munrow stepped on the brakes, came to a dead halt. He contorted his head round, eyes wide, knowing exactly what he was feeling behind his ear.
Rider put more pressure on and said, ‘Don’t stop.’
‘ Honey, what’s wrong?’ the woman said. She looked round and saw the hooded figure of Rider pressing a gun into her lover’s neck. She did what any normal person would have done: screamed and tried to wriggle free.
With his left hand, Rider grabbed the back of her neck and forced her face roughly down into the pillow, muffling the noise, suffocating her. He kept the gun pointed to Munrow’s head and said, ‘Shut it, you bitch, or I’ll blow his head off and then rape you in the blood.’
He hoped it sounded convincing. Personally he was not remotely taken in by the threat.
Munrow hadn’t moved.
Rider let go of the woman. She stayed where she was, ass in the air with Munrow stuck inside her. She started to shake and sob.
Suddenly Rider’s resolve petered out. There was no way he could bring himself to force Munrow to finish the job.
‘ OK Charlie, we’re gonna go for a ride. I suggest you come out of there, real slow-like — unless you want to take her along too.’
Munrow withdrew with a ‘plop’. To his credit, despite everything, his manhood towered majestically, sparklingly damp, up to his belly button.
He opened his mouth.
This was no place for a debate. Not wanting to miss the chance, Rider inserted the gun into that orifice. ‘Now then, Charlie,’ he growled dangerously, ‘this is a double-action revolver with the hammer cocked, so I don’t even have to pull the trigger, just touch it, and I’ll blow your fucking brains all over this pretty wallpaper. I want you to remember that because we’re going downstairs now with this gun stuck in your mouth, so you need to be very cooperative, otherwise you’ll be brain dead and she’ll be dickless. Get my point?’
Jacko jumped. The security lights at the front of the house came on as Rider and the naked Munrow came out of the door, down the steps and walked towards the car — an old Ford Granada, like something out of The Sweeney.
Jacko could see the gun stuck in Munrow’s gob.
Nausea ripped through the barman’s insides. ‘Oh shit,’ he breathed. He coaxed the gear lever into first, released the handbrake, then the clutch gently — but could not stop the van from kangarooing the first few metres as the engine and gearbox merged into one entity. One day he’d get the clutch fixed properly.
By the time he had pulled onto the driveway, Munrow had been forced unwillingly into the boot of the Granada which was akin to a freezer. Rider had slammed the lid down over his shivering body.
Ski-masked, gun in hand, Rider walked casually up to Jacko who wound his window down. ‘Follow me.’
‘ Where we going?’
‘ Fuck knows… just follow me.’
Rider got into the Granada and pulled the mask off. He slid that and the gun underneath the seat.
The car started first time.
From the boot he could hear Munrow’s muffled banging and shouting.
There was no going back now.
The real bad weather had hit London. Public transport was at a virtual standstill. Traffic hardly moved in the heavy snow.
Even so, the conscientious Karl Donaldson crawled into his office at 7.30 a.m., having left home at 5.00 a.m. in the Jeep.
Some faxes and correspondence had appeared on his desk overnight.
One of the faxes gave the result of the second autopsy on Sam Dawber.
It came to the same conclusion as the one performed on Madeira. Some more specks of human tissue had been found underneath her fingernails and was being DNA profiled. The bruising on her body was inconclusive.
‘ Goddam,’ he sighed, resigning himself even more to the fact that he would probably never be able to prove Sam had been murdered. His only hope was a lead from the tissue, but being a pessimist at heart, Donaldson doubted anything would come of it.