Henry drew his head away, gave a quick smile and fumbled for the door again. ‘Must go.’
Danny could not stop herself. She reached out and laid a hand on the side of his face, beating herself up as she did so, yet finding it impossible to resist. Why, she demanded, do you want another married man, another heap of trouble and consequences? Why? Because you love the soft sod, that’s why.
‘ You don’t have to go, Henry,’ she breathed. ‘Not yet, anyway.’
She stood on tiptoe and covered his mouth with her lips, forcing her tongue inside. He responded immediately, discarding his jacket and holding Danny’s head between his hands as they kissed urgently.
One hour later, Henry shook himself out of a doze. He was lying on his back, his left arm wrapped around Danny’s shoulders. She was tucked up underneath his armpit, her hand idly stroking his chest, touching his nipples as she dozed dreamily. Henry blinked and focused on the ceiling. Danny murmured contentedly and huddled in even closer to him, folding a leg across his thighs. Her hand drifted down to his groin and took hold of his limp penis which began to grow, but not by much.
Henry was drained. The act of a long bout of wonderful sex had taken all his energy and emotion out of him. He touched Danny’s cheek with his fingertips and they looked at each other.
‘ That was out of this world,’ he admitted with a grin. ‘Sex doesn’t seem to be a problem after all.’
‘ Now I want more and more.’
Henry’s manhood responded to Danny’s gentle manipulation. He groaned throatily and languished in the sensation for a few moments before the reality of the situation dawned on him. Here he was, once again, lying beside a woman who was not his wife. Cheating.
He rolled on to his side so they lay face to face. His eyes flickered down to her wonderful, soft breasts with the big nipples hard as stones again. He kissed her, lingering for a moment, biting her bottom lip.
‘ I need to tell you something.’ He ran his mouth across her cheek to her ear. ‘I’m… ahhh!’ She had gently squeezed his testicles.
‘ That we’re going to make love again?’ she guessed.
‘ Very, very probably.’
She kissed him hard, and slid her long leg over him, pushing him back and straddling him, never once breaking the kiss or letting go of his cock which, now solid, she positioned for entry.
‘ I want you to make me come again and again,’ she whispered.
‘ I’m not sure I’m that good,’ he admitted honestly.
‘ Oh, you are,’ she promised, ‘you are, you are,’ and slowly eased herself down on to his thick shaft, straight away starting to moan as her next orgasm built quickly… only to be interrupted by the sound of Henry’s pager which, during the throes of ripping each other’s clothes off earlier, had been tossed across the bedroom. ‘Shit,’ she said.
‘ Don’t stop,’ he warned her. ‘Finish what you’ve started.’
And she did. Twice for herself, once for him, to the accompaniment of the high-pitched bleep.
Only then did Henry respond to the message, which was for him to contact Control Room immediately. The Duty Inspector told him that a security van had been found abandoned near to Stafford with a great deal of blood on the passenger side and no trace of the security guards or the money it had been carrying.
‘ We’ve got the job,’ he told Danny, outlining the phone call.
‘ Do we need to go in now?’
‘ No, but let’s get there for seven.’
They were sitting side by side on the bed, naked. Henry rubbed his eyes. He was exhausted and needed sleep. ‘Can I stay here?’ he asked.
Danny hesitated. ‘Yeah,’ she said unsurely, ‘but what about Kate? Won’t she be worried?’
His face wrinkled shamefully. ‘No, it’s OK. She thinks I’m at Headquarters.’ And already he was feeling the guilt of the lie he had spun to Kate on the phone before turning up at Danny’s house at midnight. He had told Kate he was stuck on a big job at Headquarters which looked likely to run through the night; as a consequence he had taken a bedroom at the Training School. Even at that early stage, he had subconsciously wanted to end up in bed with Danny.
Now that it had actually happened, something he had been resolutely trying to deny to himself struck him like a mallet blow. The difficulties at home over the past few months were down to this one thing alone: he had fallen in love with Danny Furness.
Ever since working with her on an enquiry which pre-dated Jack Sands’s suicide, and then helping her through the aftermath of that tragedy, they had grown very close to each other. That was the underlying reason why he’d taken the undercover job against Jacky Lee. His professional instincts had told him not to take it, but it had offered a convenient escape route from an increasingly uncomfortable domestic life and a working environment in which he was in daily contact with Danny. Outwardly, at work, he had maintained a completely professional stance towards her, but below the surface something had been bubbling; and intuition told him it had been happening to her, too.
The undercover job had been the ideal opportunity to break away, put Danny out of his mind and get his marriage together.
But, as tonight proved, it had not worked.
‘ We need to talk, Danny.’
She kissed him. ‘We do, but not now. Now we need to get some sleep and give ourselves a fighting chance of getting through the day ahead, because it’ll be another long one…’
Two a.m. Another motorway service area, this time on the M1.
Billy Crane sat in the 24-hour self-service restaurant, staring blankly down at the plate full of food he had not touched. It was going cold, but he did not have the energy to lift a fork up to his mouth. He looked around at his fellow night-time travellers and wondered when the man would turn up, the one contracted by Don Smith to deal with the money. The one who would launder it, then make it reappear clean and as if by magic in bank accounts around the world — half for Crane, half for Smith. At least, that’s how it should’ve been. Now it all belonged to Crane.
He was exhausted, felt like a zombie, unable to be enthusiastic about the thought of all that cash. The events of the day had drained him, mentally and physically. Just as the commission of the crime had been a greater rush than maintaining hard drugs, the aftermath was even worse than the worst cold turkey. All he wanted to do was lie down and sleep and then get back to Tenerife and recuperate in the sunshine. But even that wouldn’t be so easy now because the cops would be hunting him worldwide: they might not know exactly who they were looking for, or where he lived, but they’d definitely want him. He would have to keep a very low profile for a long time. Wind up the drugs business, sell off his bars — without too much of a show — maybe just keeping Uncle B’s going, maybe not, and spend lots of time at the villa on La Gomera being a model citizen.
Lost in his thoughts he did not see the man approaching, but was suddenly aware of someone standing nearby. His dark eyes rose to see a young man, smart but casually dressed, looking at him uncertainly. Crane knew this youngster was the one — a twenty-three-year-old financial whizz-kid from the City who worked at a futures desk during the day but whose clandestine speciality was making bad money look good… for a flat fee of ten per cent.
Chapter Nineteen
Two days later, on a clear, fresh, chilly morning, Detective Inspector Henry Christie stood outside the public mortuary situated behind Lancaster Royal Infirmary. He stamped his feet in order to keep them warm and drank weak, hot tea from a plastic cup. He was accompanied by the overweight, sexist, racist DC Dave Seymour. Seymour was munching a bacon sandwich bought from the hospital canteen and the slapping noise his mouth was making as he ate made Henry feel a little unwell.