‘ Go on, fire away.’
‘ Why haven’t you talked to Kate about it?’
The question stumped Henry. He was silent for a few moments, then: ‘I love the girls, I really do. They mean everything to me. I’d die for them without hesitation.’ He sighed through his nose. ‘But as for Kate… I don’t know any more. She’s a really good wife. Ugh! I hope that doesn’t sound patronising, but she is. But there’s something not right any more. Over the last few months we seem to have drifted slowly away from each other. We hardly speak, other than in monosyllables. We never even sit down to watch TV together. Hardly ever make love…
‘ I feel as if I’ve fallen out of love with her, and other than for the kids, I don’t feel like going home any more. I’ve been off sick nearly two weeks and it’s been crap at home. I’ve just avoided her.’ He sighed.
‘ I know she suffered a few years ago — when she herself got raped — and I suppose that should give us some common ground. I just don’t want to tell her, though. I haven’t told anyone but you, and that counsellor I saw down at Occupational Health. No one in the job knows, though like I said, Terry has an idea. Thank Christ he turned up when he did. That bastard Gunk was going to kill me. He’d threatened to stick a knife in my anus…’ Henry shuddered, ‘but he panicked when he heard Terry’s van coming back. No, I’ve just told people I got bubbled and that was why I pulled out of the U/C job — because I’d been compromised.’
There was a pause, then Henry regained eye-contact with Danny. ‘I don’t know if all that answers your question. It sounded like a jumbled mess to me, like all I’ve been saying. Did it make sense, or what?’
It was 2 a.m. Henry and Danny stood in her hallway. Henry was preparing to go, jacket in one hand, rolling his shirt-sleeves down with the other. They stood by the front door, facing each other.
‘ Thanks again.’
‘ No problem. Are you sure you won’t let me call a taxi? It’s a long way on foot to your house, and you’re not going to drive, are you?’
‘ No.’ His car was outside the house. He had already driven there having had a few drinks and with the amount of alcohol he’d imbibed since, he would have been well over the limit, although he was not drunk. It was a risk he wasn’t about to take. There were too many uniformed PCs who would have liked the scalp of a DI on their belt. ‘The walk’ll clear my head.’
‘ I’ll pick you up in the morning.’
‘ Thanks.’ He reached for the door handle, bobbing down quickly and kissing Danny lightly on the cheek. Instead of pulling away immediately, he hovered longer than was necessary, inhaling the aroma of her body. She gasped.
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.
