Hot Blooded (4 page)

I woke up the next day groggy and slightly hungover. I'm not a morning person on the best of days, either. It took me a good couple of minutes of going through the motions on autopilot. I turned off the alarm, forced myself out of bed, then sat on the edge of the bed with my head in my hands, trying to figure out how bad the headache was. As I stumbled towards the bathroom, the previous night came flooding back. And with the memory came a sharp pang of what I could only describe as happiness. Happiness edged with lust.

Callum Cross. Sexy, smart and totally fascinating Callum Cross. I patted myself on the back for having managed not to invite him in. I'd wanted to. I’d wanted to so much that I couldn't quite believe I hadn't. There was a heavy, familiar discomfort in my lower belly.

It crossed my mind to call Sam - my friend-with-benefits. I'd met him the previous year at a bar in Brighton and he fulfilled the saying 'young, dumb and full of cum' in every way. Which was good, because he had nice big hands and I didn't want anything complicated. But it was also bad, because he'd obviously expected me to fall for him. When I didn't, he'd started playing games. He made plans and then cancelled them at the last minute. He tried to turn me into one of those whining girls who needed men like him to shore up their fragile self-esteem. Unfortunately for Sam, I wasn't one of those girls. I'd already considered breaking it off a few times, but the sex was easy, he was hot, and I didn’t have as much self-control as I liked to tell myself I did.

Sam was attractive - not as attractive as Callum, but muscular and blue-eyed like him, just my type. Unlike Callum, the more time I spent with Sam the less interested I was in anything other than his dick. He was just another man who seemed to have some secret well of self-belief inside him, some unquestioning faith that he was interesting, worthy, a 'good guy.' It never ceased to amaze me how certain some men were of their own inherent charm.

It had started out well with Sam, with declarations on both sides that it was sex only, just a bit of fun. Inevitably, though, it began to curdle. I'd caught myself making bitchy remarks a few times, making fun of him for not understanding some reference in a movie or a book I was reading that I was futilely trying to interest him in. He, too, was revealing a few less than wonderful parts of his own character, including a tendency towards sexual jealousy that I just didn't have any time for.

But I didn't want Sam's hands on me anymore. I wanted Callum's. I wanted his mouth on mine and his thick, male hunger demanding from me the things I already wanted to give. It was in the midst of these thoughts that my phone chirped at me and I picked it up off the bedside table, distracted. There was a message from Superintendent Akin - my boss:

"We have the video. Msg me when you're in."

Fuck. As I read the text, I could feel the happy excitement of the previous night physically draining out of my body. They had the video. That meant I was going to have to watch it, probably repeatedly. I was going to have to face the terrible act that I had, through my own neglect, allowed to happen.

There was another text. Callum.

"Fuck waiting three days. I want to see you again. Message me or the monkey puzzle gets it."

I smiled at that but didn't reply right away. It would have to wait for later, when I hadn't been suddenly jolted out a hot little reverie and thrust rudely into an entirely different headspace. I drove to work full of foreboding, knowing I was about to see something I wouldn’t be able to forget. Something it was my job to put right.

The station was just coming to life as I walked in at 7:45 a.m. Shelley, the front desk receptionist, nodded at me. I returned the gesture before turning left to walk, like a condemned person, down the corridor to Akin's office. The fluorescent lighting made me want to cower away from it or cover my eyes. I stood outside his office door and quickly swallowed a couple of ibuprofens before knocking.

"Morgan? That you? Come in." Akin's voice came from behind the closed door. I opened it and found my boss sitting gray-faced at his desk. I knew immediately that he'd seen the video.

"You watched it."

"Yes."

I looked down at the floor. I focused on the threadbare blue carpet for a few seconds and took a slow, deep breath.

"Anything useful in it?"

"Not much, Lily. He's wearing a hoodie. There's no clear shot of his face."

"How about the other cameras? Did we re-check the other footage?"

"Yes, and still nothing. He knew enough to keep his head down."

I was stalling. I knew this day was going to come. I knew there were cameras all along Church Street and that some of them must have caught the crime. It had to be done. I had to watch it. I walked over to where Akin was sitting and stood beside him, leaning over the desk slightly to get a better view of the screen.

"OK," I said, steeling myself.

Akin hit play and Linda Trout appeared before our eyes in grainy black and white, walking down the sidewalk carrying a heavy burden of shopping bags from Waitrose. She'd been working, running general errands and grocery shopping for a wealthy family in Islington when she died. For thirty seconds I watched other pedestrians walk by her, absorbed in their phones or their thoughts, before another figure appeared behind Linda, following her. My stomach twisted at the sight of him. Linda was completely unaware, completely vulnerable. She spent the last seconds of her life hauling someone else's shopping down a London street, probably thinking about seeing her son later that night, happy at the prospect. I had to believe that. I had to believe she'd been looking forward to something.

"What's that on the hoodie? An animal?"

The man's hoodie had a logo or graphic on the back, some kind of animal roaring.

"Not sure," Akin replied. "You should get on it, though."

I nodded without taking my eyes off the screen. The man in the hoodie walked confidently - almost casually. His body language gave no hint of what was to come. He held a cup of coffee in one hand, a gesture that struck me as almost cruelly normal. It was only at the moment he pulled out the gun that he seemed to transform into a person with a purpose. Linda Trout stood at a pedestrian crossing, waiting for the light to change. And in the space of about four seconds, he had the gun pointed straight at the back of her head.

I forced my eyes to stay focused on the images in front of me. Linda slumped forward onto her knees, then she collapsed into the road. A pool of blood immediately bloomed around her head and began to flow into the cracks in the asphalt. I took in a quick, sharp breath.

"She was dead before she fell. She didn't suffer."

It was Akin's voice, but it sounded faraway. There was a roaring sound in my ears.

"Lily? Lily!"

Akin was gripping my shoulders tightly, looking into my eyes as they re-focused.

"This wasn't your fault, Lily. You couldn't have known. None of us could have. We've gone over everything. There was nothing to indicate that Linda Trout was in any danger whatsoever."

I leaned away from my boss as bile started rising into my throat. I retched pathetically over the wastebasket, staying there for a few seconds, breathing heavily, until my stomach calmed down.

"Jesus Christ, Akin."

"Listen, I'm going to go and get you some water. Stay here and get yourself together. We're meeting at nine to go over everything, as well as anything you may have learned last night."

"OK," I whispered, collapsing into his chair after he left.

Superintendent Akin was the main reason I made Detective Chief Inspector before I was thirty. He was the closest thing I ever had to a mentor - a kind, stern and thoroughly British man. He wasn't wrong, either. There had been absolutely no warning. Linda Trout had been due to testify at a fraud trial involving an amount of money so small it was impossible to imagine anyone thought it was worth threatening her over, let alone murdering her in broad daylight.

We had checked, crosschecked and rechecked all of Linda Trout's acquaintances, everyone who had been in her life. The only thing we'd been able to come up with was a tenuous link between Wayne Karswell - whose fraud trial Linda Trout had been due to testify at - and the Streatham Men's Club. There was nothing else. I suspected Akin had pulled some strings to even get me the go-ahead for undercover work - the connection was that flimsy.

I had something, though. I had Gazza. I was itching to untangle his connections. Bare-knuckle boxing is one thing, but homegrown organized crime in London didn't die out with the Krays, it just got less visible, went further underground. And even when it had been out in the open, illegal fights were always one of the many activities that swirled around the underworld like a classic London fog. If I was lucky, Gazza would offer me another strand to clutch in my hands, some semblance of hope that Linda Trout's death and the orphaning of her son wasn't for nothing.

I didn't just have Gazza, either. I had Callum. Just thinking of him brought a wan smile to my face as I sat at Akin's desk, trying to beat down the urge to throw-up. I wanted to see him again. There was a chance he could be a useful source of information, yes, but it was more than that. After watching that video for the first time, I just wanted to be near Callum. It wasn't like I couldn't envision a point in the future when the two reasons to see Callum - the personal and the professional - currently so nicely aligned, might shift positions and come to some kind of loggerhead. But I told myself I would cross that bridge when - and if - I came to it.

When I felt well enough, I made my way to the meeting room and found the team there: Superintendent Akin, DI John Larkin and Sergeant Jenny Holmes. All three of them wore kindly expressions on their faces, expressions that failed to hide the dark bags under their eyes. I wasn't the only one who felt guilty about what had happened to Linda Trout.

Akin spoke up first. "DCI Morgan. Tell us about last night."

I sat down and took out my notes.

I was in the little café under my flat when Gazza texted me:

"The Club. Now."

Fuck. I'd barely got stuck into my lunch. Gia, the old Italian woman who ran the café with her husband and her teenage daughter, saw me getting ready to leave and came bustling over, solicitous as ever.

"Callum! Where are you going?"

"Work," I replied. I pulled my jacket on as Gia tried to flap her hands hard enough to get me to sit back down.

"No, no, Mr. Callum! You haven't had your lunch yet. Let me pack it up for you to take. Yes?"

I felt my shoulders slump slightly. Gia Caraveli was the only woman on Earth, apart from my mum, who had the ability to make me feel like a misbehaving five year old. I tried to protest, knowing from the tone of Gazza's text that he wasn't in the mood to wait.

"I'm sorry Mrs. Caraveli, but I have to go. I have to be at work. I'm late already!"

"No. No, you sit Mr. Callum. I will be right back. Jiffy time."

I sat back down in defeat, smiling at Mrs. Caraveli's English as she disappeared into the kitchen with my lasagna. Five minutes wouldn't make a difference, I told myself. If Gazza was in a shit mood, Gazza was in a shit mood, and it didn't matter what time you showed up.

I was annoyed at the interruption to my afternoon. The little café might’ve been my favorite place on Earth - well, along with my mum's kitchen. The Caravelis doted on me - Mrs. Caraveli in particular seemed to think nothing of positioning herself as almost a second mother, fussing over whether or not I was getting enough sleep, or enough to eat, peppering me with questions about the girls I was seeing, that sort of thing. It didn't bother me at all. Quite the opposite. There wasn't much better in life than hearing the little jingle of the bell when you opened the door to the café and felt the blast of warm, home-cooking scented air.

I looked up as Mrs. Caraveli reappeared with my lasagna in a takeaway box. "Mr. Callum, here you go! Everything is there, plus some pieces of garlic bread. You look tired and garlic is very healthy, very good for the immunity."

She put the box in a white plastic carrier bag and handed it to me, giggling like a schoolgirl when I bent down to kiss her on the cheek.

"Naughty boy, Callum! Have a good day! No more late nights for you!"

I left with a smile on my face and walked to the club, my stomach rumbling with hunger. As expected, when I got there Gazza was pacing the floor in front of the deserted bar, muttering.

"Alright, mate?" I asked, knowing full well that things were not alright.

"Callum. Where the fuck have you been?
Where the fuck have you been?"

"Jesus, Gaz," I said, taken aback. Even for Gazza, he was looking very worked up. "What's going on?"

"Come into the office, Callum. Come on, hurry up."

I followed Gazza into his horrible little office and sat down opposite him at the desk. He lit a cigarette and leaned back in the chair, then blew out a cloud of blue-gray smoke and closed his eyes.

"We're fucked, Callum. We're
fucked
."

I leaned forward with interest. Not because I was particularly interested, mind you, but because I know Gazza likes his audiences to take his own emotional states as cues.

"What's this about, Gaz? Problems with the lease renewal?"

"Nah, mate. This is much bigger than that."

I waited for him to continue, wondering just what it could be that had him so shaken.

"You remember that geezer Wayne? The one with the limp and the bad breath?"

"Yeah, I remember him."

I did vaguely remember Wayne. And his bad breath. He'd appeared at the club on a semi-regular basis for the past few years, always disappearing into Gazza's office and leaving soon afterwards. I never liked him.

"He got done, didn't he?"

"Yeah, did he?" I asked.

Where was this going? Wayne had, as far as I knew, never been a significant presence at the Club. And I knew Gazza didn't give a shit about who got done, as long as it wasn't him.

"Yeah, he did. He got done for fraud,” Gazza said.“Stupid bugger murdered the witness, now the coppers are looking into all his associates."

I looked at Gazza, hoping maybe he was playing a prank of some kind.

"What was that, Gaz? He
murdered
someone? Fucking hell, just what was he into?"

Gazza took a long drag on his cigarette and ashed it into a half-filled cup of cold coffee, which made me feel slightly sick.

"Everything, Callum. He was into everything and Linda - uh, the witness - she knew about it. Those coppers are looking into everyone. That means they're looking into us."

I raised my eyebrows, genuinely surprised to hear that Wayne Karswell was anything more than your run-of-the-mill petty criminal. Murder. Christ.

Apart from that, I still wasn't quite sure what exactly had Gazza so distressed. The police knew about the Club. They knew about the fights and they almost certainly knew about the dealing. It was all very local, very tidy. We were more worried about the Brixton boys than we were about the police.

"Gaz. I, uh, I'm not sure I understand. First of all, how do you know any of this? And second of all, it's no big secret what goes on here, is it?"

I sat, waiting for him to answer and annoyed with what was fast becoming a wasted afternoon. Gazza liked to play the father figure to some of his fighters, but it was always on his own terms and only when he was in a good mood. He let me stay in my flat rent-free in return for fighting at the Club, but I wasn't under any illusions about his charitable nature. The money I brought in was a lot more than the rent was worth. I took it because it let me live the life I wanted to live and avoid the life I didn't want - a life of 6:30 a.m. commutes, suits and evenings in, too exhausted to do anything but watch TV or fuck around on the internet. That wasn't for me. It never would be for me. Responsibilities gave me hives.

It took Gaz a few solid minutes of silently rubbing his forehead before he finally raised his head and looked me in the eye.

"Callum, are you thick or something?"

"What?" I asked. Was he drunk this early in the afternoon? "Gaz, no offense mate, but could you get to the point?"

"The point is it isn't just illegal fights here. You know it isn't."

Yeah, I did know. The dealing. Again, small-scale shit, nothing that was going to get anyone life in prison. A year, maybe two, at most.

"I need you to go to Paris for me this weekend," he said.

That got my attention. A nice little jaunt across the Channel and a few quid in the bank sounded good. Maybe even some action. "Yeah? Alright. What's the job?"

"Protection. Got a meeting and need some muscle. You'll be armed."

Armed. Maybe there
was
more going on at the Streatham Men's Club than I knew. I'd carried a gun before doing jobs for Gazza, but I'd never had the feeling it was for anything more than show - and Gazza's ego. He liked to think of himself as a bit of a hard man.

"Right. Well, tell me what it's about and I'm there. Tell me how much you're paying me, too."

Gazza rubbed his forehead again and sighed.

"It's a deal, Callum. No one I haven't dealt with before, but you know how these things are. Shifty fuckers everywhere. I just want you there to make sure everything goes nice and smooth."

A deal. He meant a drug deal. I'd done it a few times before, it had never been difficult, never any problems. Also, I enjoyed it. I enjoyed the feeling of danger, of knowing that if things went wrong, there was no one to call, that it was on me to deal with it. I was good at it, too. Gazza knew it. He knew I was one of those men with the ability to project a certain seriousness, the kind that comes in handy when you're dealing with criminals and thugs.

"How much?"

"Five thousand quid."

That was a lot more money than I'd ever been offered for a single job before. I doubt I would have hesitated anyway, but I'd got it into my mind to take Lily out. To properly take her out, and not just to my local pub for a quick beer before taking her back to my flat. Five thousand pounds would more than pay for a meal at one of those Michelin-starred restaurants downtown and a show afterwards.

"Sure, right," I agreed, as thoughts of Lily in an evening dress danced through my head."I'll do it."

"Good, good. You get paid when you get home."

"So this is just the usual, Gaz? You know these people?" I asked, slightly suspicious about the sudden pay-raise.

"Yeah, yeah, Callum. No worries. You're there for show only."

Sounded good to me. I buzzed with excitement as I stood up and Gazza gave me a curt handshake. I was almost out the door when I remembered the mood he'd been in when I first arrived. And the abrupt subject change before he'd told me much about it.

"One more thing, Gaz. How do you know - about the police, I mean? How do you know they're looking at us?"

"Got someone on the inside, don't I? Some crooked sergeant with a coke problem. He was fairly easy to convince. He's pretty useless, but he saw a document with the name of the Club on it and let me know. So do me a favor and keep your eyes and ears open, Callum. Anyone new, especially anyone new who seems, you know, suspicious, who doesn't fit in, all that jazz."

Something inside me jolted slightly. There was someone new at the club. Someone who didn't fit in. Someone who seemed scarily sharp. Lily Parker.

No way, I told myself. No fucking way.

"What?" Gazza asked, noting the look of consternation on my face. I shrugged it off.

"Ah, nothing, Gaz. Just trying to remember what mum asked me to pick up at the shops. Dinner at home tonight."

"Well, send her my best."

"Will do."

I left Gazza's cramped office shaking my head. Lily Parker must have made more of an impression than I’d thought. No way the coppers would send a sexy little thing like her, alone, into a place like the Streatham Men's Club. Besides, she was in with the Posh Fillies. The only reason she stuck out was because she wasn't, herself, posh. At least not that I could tell - there's no deciphering North American accents. I willed any thoughts of her being someone other than who she said she was out of my head, with some effort.

Looking back, it's so easy to see where I went wrong. I was probably half in love with her already by that time. And all those feelings - feelings I'd never experienced, feelings I half-believed were just lies people told themselves - they were already there. They simmered under the surface, waiting for Lily to pull them out of me like it was the easiest thing in the world.