Screaming Yellow
SCREAMING YELLOW
Laverstone Chronicles, Book 1
RACHEL GREEN
LYRICAL PRESS
KENSINGTON PUBLISHING CORP.
http://www.kensingtonbooks.com/
For the holder of my own tattooed sigil, DK
Acknowledgements
Thank you to DK and Luisa for living with a writer, Nerine and the staff of Lyrical Press for all the help, and to the players in the UK Leather and BDSM scene for letting me watch and play.
Prologue
The rope went taut, followed by a frantic drumming of leather against the old oak banisters, a kicking and jerking of legs until one shoe, a sensible brown slip-on with a decorative buckle, slipped from a stockinged foot to drop twenty feet to the carpet below.
Above, the legs shuddered and were still. A line of urine ran down, soaked up by the coarse nylon but copious enough to drip onto the Persian runner on the ground floor. Fingers that once held a flute in the Wiltshire Women’s Symphony Orchestra before arthritis took its toll fell limp and lifeless, the wedding band that hadn’t budged in forty years slipping off and following the shoe, though it hit the floor on its edge, bouncing and rolling silently away.
Grace Peters would look better in her coffin. Hanging from a rope around an open beam in the loft was not how she’d have wanted to be remembered. Her tongue protruded from yellow teeth and her eyes were red from burst blood vessels. Hanging was an uncommon means of suicide for women, but was still in the top five.
She swayed slightly in the breeze from the open kitchen window. Grace had been a recluse for the three years since her husband’s death and there were few visitors to the three-story house on Wightwick Drive. At least in winter decomposition was slowed: there would be little change in her appearance before she was discovered.
Downstairs Mitsy, Grace’s tabby cat, sniffed at the fallen drops and looked up, just the tip of its tail twitching.
Chapter 1
Susan Pargeter winced as a fourteen-gauge needle sank into her skin then again when it poked out an inch farther along. It was a shallow wound–she could see the ridge of metal under the flesh, the last in a long line of parallel needles down the top of both breasts from her collarbones to her areolas.
“Keep still.”
Robert’s voice was commanding, a tone expecting absolute compliance. His fingers slipped another sterile needle through, perfectly parallel with the rest. “There.” He dropped the plastic cap into a yellow sharps bin. “A pretty ladder for an angel to climb.”
He ran his finger down each set of ridges in turn, causing Susan’s heart to flutter. Her pelvis flooded with warmth.
The overhead lights went out as Robert set up his digital camera. Her blissful expression would not appear in any photograph, just the needles taken from the perspective of a surreal landscape. She would have the honor of appearing, albeit anonymously, in his latest collection of fetish photography.
Lights flashed as he took several photographs from different camera positions, changing the direction of the floods when he felt a new angle warranted it. His voice softened as he stroked her cheek. “Do you need water?”
When she shook her head, he straightened an arm, cleaning it with an alcohol wipe. He inserted a sterile hypodermic, finding the vein with the assuredness of many years of practice and drew out a few fluid ounces of blood.
“The ancients thought this was the life essence.” He removed the syringe and pressed a wad of cotton wool onto the spot, securing it with a plaster and tucking it out of sight of the camera lens. “Many still do. God forbade His creation to drink of it lest they become as demons.” He set his cameras on automatic shutter and poured the blood over her breasts, the splashing accompanied by the twelve frames per second shutter clicks.
As both cameras beeped to indicate full memory cards, Robert threw a towel over Susan’s stomach to catch the drips. “All done. I’m proud of you. You took it without a murmur. Not even a single call of ‘yellow.’”
She smiled, watching him withdraw each needle and drop it into the sharps bin. “It might have spoiled your design if I’d asked you to stop. Besides, it was very relaxing.”
“Good.” Robert smiled and leaned forward to brush her lips with his own. “Come to my room later.”
“I will. Thank you, sir.” Susan stood and held out her arms as Robert drew a silk dressing gown over her naked body. The marks where the needles had been were a series of raised scarlet ridges that would be gone by morning. Beads of blood from the deeper needles were already scabbing over.
She raised his hand to her lips and kissed it. “Thank you.”
Robert smiled. “Away with you.” He gave her bottom a gentle pat. “I have work to do. I’ve got to download all those pretty pictures I’ve just taken and work on them.”
Susan nodded and turned, skimming up a five-pack of the sterile needles and slipping them into the deep pocket of her robe.
The door closed softly behind her.
Chapter 2
The front door slammed hard enough to rattle the leaded glass in its eighteenth-century fanlight. Jennifer winced, remembering the time it fell out and they’d had to find two hundred pounds to have it repaired before the bishop visited. Simon had been forced to ask the people at the manor for help and they’d been crowing about it ever since.
She logged her status to “global away” and pushed her executive chair from the computer. She stood and padded to the study door, her bare feet sinking into the antique Persian carpet. “Simon?” she called. “Is that you?”
Her brother stood in the hallway shrugging off his overcoat and dripping water all over the runner. His face was an angry red as he pulled his arm out of the sleeve, heedless of the cotton turned inside out in the process. “Who else would it be?” he asked, a little too harshly for Jennifer’s liking. “I live here, don’t I?”
Jennifer drew herself to her full five feet, eight inches and flicked her long hair out of the way. “I’ll thank you not to take that tone with me, Simon Brande. I may only be your sister but I think I deserve a little more respect than that. More than the carpet, at any rate. Look! You’re dripping everywhere!” She tutted and swept forward to take the coat from him. “Here, let me. How many times have I asked you to take your coat and shoes off in the porch?”
She opened the cloakroom door and pulled out a coat hanger, pursing her lips as she thrust an arm into the wet sleeve to pull it out again. She hung the coat in the downstairs cloakroom where the tiled floor was easily mopped. “Honestly, anyone would think I was a harridan when really I’m just concerned for your well-being.”
Simon’s shoulders sagged and his face relaxed. “Of course you are, Jennifer. I’m sorry.” He stepped toward her and offered a peck on the cheek. “I’ve had a rotten day.”
“Oh?” Jennifer looked down. “So have your shoes by the look of it. What have you been walking in?”
Simon looked down and grimaced. “I parked too close to the rose bed. I must have stepped in the mud.”
“Oh, Simon! You’ve probably crushed the aubrietia I planted yesterday. I wish you’d be just a little more careful. Take your shoes off before you tread it through the house.”
“Sorry.” Simon used the toe of one shoe to lever his foot halfway out of the other, then swapped feet, leaving him in just his socks.
Jennifer took two sheets out of the property section of the newspaper and laid them next to the front door, Simon’s shoes on top. She passed him his slippers. “What happened to give you such a horrid day?”
“I don’t know if I should say.” Simon worried his feet into the slippers, picked up his battered old briefcase and carried it into the living room. “I don’t want you spreading it all over the bloody internet as soon as my back’s turned.” He poured himself a scotch and drank it in one swallow.
“I don’t know why you’d say that.” Jennifer took a seat on the sofa and patted the cushion next to her. “I never say anything you don’t want me to.”
“Ha!” Simon poured himself a second drink and sat. “Like that time I found Mrs. Westman and the verger going at it like hammer and tongs in the belfry? ‘I won’t tell a soul’ you said, but the following Sunday there was a lynch mob outside the church doors.”
“I’m sure that was nothing to do with me.” Jennifer picked up a
Homes and Garden
and began flicking through it. “I didn’t tell anyone other than Marge.”
“Yes, exactly. Marge at the grocer’s. I’m surprised the bishop didn’t turn up to re-sanctify the church.” He sighed and leaned back against the horsehair stuffing. “Well, it’s not as if you wouldn’t find out soon anyway. Grace Peters is dead. I’ve just had to identify her body.”
“Oh, that was you, was it?” Jennifer turned away to reach for a glass.
“What do you mean, ‘that was me?’” Simon stared at her. “Do you mean to say you already knew about it?”
“Of course.” Jennifer smiled and poured herself a gin. “Margaret told me. She works on the emergency ward at the hospital and dispatched the ambulance.”
Simon threw his hands in the air. “I should have guessed you’d already have all the gossip. You and your webcam cronies. I bet if I wanted to know Sergeant Davies’s cock size you’d be able to tell me.”
“Don’t be so crude.” Jennifer smacked his arm lightly as she sat. “What did she die of?”
Simon rubbed his eyes, the third finger of each hand digging into the corners to wipe away the grit. “Suicide. They found her hanging from a beam, the rope through the trap door to the loft. The poor soul. I shall say a prayer for her.”
“Nonsense.” Jennifer put the glass down on the coffee table, careful to use a coaster to avoid leaving a ring. “She took a long drop because couldn’t take the guilt anymore.”
Simon sat forward in his seat, frowning. “What guilt? What are you on about?”
“Henry, her husband. Everybody knows she killed him for the insurance.”
Simon shook his head, unable to stop a bark of laughter. “Don’t be ridiculous, Jennifer. Everybody knows that was an accident. The inquest cleared her of any complicity as I’ve told you before. I’d know if it was anything else, wouldn’t I?” He stood, leaving his glass on the wooden surface.
