Destroying Angel (2 page)

‘I am the maid,’ Susan continued, aware that she sounded both defensive and rather pathetic.

‘But…’ Paulette began softly, and then suddenly with a sharper tone, ‘oh okay, but really!’

Before Susan could respond in any way, Paulette had rounded on her and pushed her to the floor.

‘Hey!’ she squeaked, trying not to giggle as Paulette turned her face down and settled her bare bottom across Susan’s shoulders, pressing her face to the tiles.

‘Okay then, girl,’ Paulette growled as she squeezed her hand under Susan’s belly and fumbled for the button of her jeans. ‘You wanted it; you’re going to get it!’

Susan did start to giggle and kick as Paulette unfastened her jeans and tugged them down over her hips. Her panties followed immediately, Susan sighing as her bottom was bared for punishment. It had always been her favourite moment, maybe even better than the actual spanking; that exquisite instant when her pants were pulled down and her naked bottom was exposed to whoever was about to discipline her.

With Maria Lyle, it had started out on the seat of Susan’s uniform skirt, then with the skirt pulled up and her panties her only protection, finally with Susan’s white bottom bare. On her return from the Carapines, her experience of bare-bottomed beatings had increased, including sessions with hairbrushes, several men’s belts, a cane and birch twigs. However hard her punishment, having her pants taken down had always been the most exquisite, delicious indignity. Now Paulette was doing the same, peeling Susan’s most intimate garment away without a thought of leaving her any modesty.

‘Right, girl,’ Paulette said, her weight shifting on Susan’s back as she reached for the bath-brush, ‘I’m going to smack your lily-white behind until it’s the colour of a tomato!’

Susan sighed and then yelped as Paulette brought the brush down hard across her bottom. It was the first spanking she’d had in a while, and she’d forgotten how much it stung, especially with a wooden implement in place of a hand. Paulette laughed at Susan’s response and brought the brush down again, even harder, then once more before Susan had even time to get her breath back.

Paulette laughed aloud as she watched Susan’s bottom wobble under the brush, the soft, white flesh turning rapidly pink. Even though most of her fantasies involved being on the receiving end of a punishment spanking, she was thoroughly enjoying using the brush on her flatmate’s naked behind.

Each impact of the brush made a meaty smack with Susan’s bottom, drawing a fresh yelp from the kicking, wriggling girl. Paulette carried on, laughing at her friend’s struggles and the way her bottom bounced and quivered with each smack. Susan’s breath was coming in short gasps, her hips bucking to the rhythm of her beating, making her cheeks part to show Paulette brief glimpses of dark hair and the wrinkled spot of her bottom-hole.

Unlike Susan, Paulette had always felt the need of a spanking, revelling not just in the physical sensation of a warm bottom but in a wonderful feeling of release that only came with being thoroughly punished. Also unlike Susan, she didn’t take her pleasure from the humiliation of the experience, indeed not even finding it humiliating. Instead, she felt that regular chastisement was something she deserved, simply for being her cheeky, teasing self.

Like Susan, however, she had wanted to play from the first, finding Susan’s petite muscular figure, girlish haircut and sensitive yet determined character immensely appealing.

Only when Susan began to sob did Paulette stop spanking her, dismounting and kissing her friend tenderly before taking her gently by the hand and leading her into the bedroom. Susan followed, rubbing her bottom and looking at the floor, but with her mouth set in a happy smile.

Paulette knew how the game went. She herself had played it many times before. Susan would now be compliant to whatever she wanted; Paulette’s plaything until they had both come and were lying in each other’s arms.

Paulette turned and sat on the edge of the bed, motioning Susan down to a kneeling position between her knees. She saw Susan gulp, her eyes rising to look her in the face, and then travelling down over her throat, breasts and belly, coming to rest on the moist pink flesh of her pussy. Susan’s tongue popped out, moistening her lips as Paulette curled a hand around the back of her head and took her gently but firmly by the hair. A whimper escaped the well-spanked girl’s mouth as Paulette eased her down between her legs, watching Susan’s mouth open and sighing as her friend’s lips touched her vagina.

‘Oh, Susan,’ Paulette managed, as the tip of Susan’s tongue found her clitoris and started to lap. She began to stroke Susan’s hair, her thighs squeezing together as her muscles started to give the small, rhythmic contractions that came before orgasm. It was happening really fast, far faster than she had expected. She screamed as her orgasm hit her, then again, pulling Susan’s face hard against her pussy. Every muscle in her body tensed, then abruptly relaxed, and she was lying panting on the bed.

A moment later, Susan climbed up on top of her and they were in each other’s arms, kissing. Without a word they worked their way under the covers, Susan lying back as Paulette burrowed down the bed to return the favour she had just taken.

Detective Inspector Ted Gage kicked at a piece of charred wood and stuck his hands deeper into his pockets. The wood snapped, releasing a puff of ash into the damp morning air. Around him, firemen still worked among the burnt-out remains of what had been a furniture warehouse. ‘World of Pine’, a collapsed sign declared from on top of what had once been a reception desk. The rest of the warehouse was much the same: a smouldering ruin, the stock either burnt or soaked beyond restoration. Not that it had been good furniture, he considered, looking critically at a piece of wet chipboard from which staples protruded at odd angles, but it was still a pity.

What was worse was that it was the fifth similar fire in three months. The MO was always the same: a warehouse at the edge of a big trading estate, a petrol bomb through a high window and that was it. The fires had been scattered across London, but most had been in the east or north. Gage had little doubt that they were linked, and almost as little that whoever was doing it had no deep or complex motive but was simply out for kicks: a fire-raiser.

That was what made the case so difficult and so frustrating. The vast majority of crimes were committed either for gain or because people couldn’t get along. In both cases there was always something to go on; leads to be traced, motives to be investigated, suspects and witnesses to interview. With the fire-raiser, it was different. He struck at night, randomly, and taking good care not to be caught on estate surveillance cameras. That was what made the bastard so hard to catch, but neither the press nor his Superintendent saw it that way.

The press were particularly irritating. On the one hand they would write serious articles on the inadequacy of the police in coping with a task that, from the way they made it look, should have been easy.

Then they would produce a huge picture of one of the fires and several paragraphs of dramatic text. Gage could imagine the fire-raiser gloating over the articles, pasting cuttings on his wall in some grubby bed-sit, and when the fuss died down going out to do another one so that he’d be back in the papers. Nicknaming him the Fire Ghost hadn’t helped either, a name that was sure to boost his ego and might also spawn copycats.

Detective Superintendent Keeson was nearly as bad. Gage’s record was good, if not spectacular, and he had handled some pretty tough cases in his time. He got results, even if they were usually down to long experience, patience and hard grind rather than brilliant detective work. The way Keeson spoke, anybody would have thought Gage was an idiot beat-pounder, being told off for not following the book. What was especially galling was having to take orders from a woman, and a woman two years younger than him at that. Okay, so Julia Keeson did have an enviable record that had earnt her fast track promotion, but it was still annoying to be her subordinate.

Between them, the press and Julia Keeson were putting a lot of pressure on him that would not otherwise have been there. Five fires and still he had no lead. Still, it was just possible that the remains of the World of Pine would reveal clues where the previous four fires had failed to do so.

Gage turned, watching the sun rise above the skyline of Walthamstow to the east, its orange light reflecting briefly in the oily waters of the Lee Valley canal. The air had the typical feel of a summer morning, cool and fresh, promising another hot dry day. Had it not been for the smells of smoke and molten plastic, the scene would have been rather pleasant, for all the surrounding industrial squalor of Edmonton.

Opposite him, across the canal, were buildings of grey concrete and crumbling red brick, a double line of pylons and a half-built flyover; hardly an idyllic scene. Nevertheless, the canal had a certain tranquillity, with its perfectly smooth surface and ragged line of early morning fishermen spaced out along the bank. For a moment, Gage wondered if one of the fishermen might be the fire-raiser, come to watch the aftermath of his crime. He dismissed the idea as fanciful, or at least impractical from an investigative point of view.

Turning back to the wreckage of the World of Pine, he sought out the owner, a Mohammed Khan, and steeled himself to the inevitable angry interview.

Paulette curled herself into a comfortable position on the bed and opened Alan Sowerby’s diary. Naked under a light robe, she felt drowsy and satisfied. With one hand she began to turn the pages, the other gently stroking her bottom. She read quickly, scanning the words as her fingers, and her thoughts, lingered on the roughened lines of skin where Susan had put six strokes across her bottom with a length of bamboo.

Most of Sowerby’s remarks had no obvious relevance to the wine scandal he had been intent on exposing. Among his other papers were the original tasting-notes, the name of the restaurant at which he had first become suspicious, and the name of a wholesaler. The name of the wholesaler was de Vergy Fine Wines, a company that Sowerby had clearly viewed as of only moderate importance in the hierarchy of the wine trade.

As she read his diary, it soon became clear that if Sowerby was unimpressed by the company, then the opposite was true of his attitude to its proprietor. A whole page was given over to a description of Annabella de Vergy, Sowerby writing in a manner that managed to be simultaneously pompous and smutty.

Paulette read it with interest, amused at the way he pictured her as an untouchable goddess and then went on to speculate how she might look naked. The description became pretty intimate, although clearly based only on his fantasies. One piece in particular amused her, ‘…naturally the cunt of such a flower of English womanhood must be a neat purse of soft flesh. No swollen lips and rude red centre, no coarse black hair or dangling labia; such things are for common women, not my glorious golden Annabella. Hair like yellow duck down must hide sweet lips, firm and demurely closed, yet inside moist with the dew of Cupid, awaiting Priapus with both modesty and passion. Deeper, more secret still, her anus will be like a pink rosebud, tiny and puckered, virgin yet eager…’

Paulette laughed out loud at Sowerby’s bizarre attitude. On the one hand, he viewed the woman as an immaculate ideal, impossibly perfect. On the other, he wanted to bugger her. A flush of guilt suddenly shot through Paulette at the thought that the author of the purple prose was dead and would doubtless have been horrified by the thought of his words being read. She continued anyway, reminding herself that she was now intent on exposing the scandal he had been so proud of discovering.

There was no evidence that he had done more than fantasise about Annabella de Vergy, but he had met her several times, either at her warehouse or for dinner at her home in Little Venice. Reading on, Paulette discovered that Sowerby had discovered that Annabella’s company was the main victim of the scandal. He had gone to great care to inform her gently, as if she were likely to collapse in shock at the news. Given that she was the owner of a presumably successful business, this reaction struck Paulette as unlikely. After that came the most telling remark, Sowerby stating that he had told Annabella de Vergy that she was being cheated by one of her French suppliers. This had been at a dinner party given by Annabella’s warehouse manager, a Philip Ruddock.

It didn’t say how she was being cheated, or which supplier was involved, and after that the remarks in the diary became increasingly florid as Sowerby became more and more besotted. During July he had seen her once a week or so, still without consummating his passion. Finally the diary came to an abrupt halt in early August, obviously at the point he had left his briefcase in the Pipe of Port.

Paulette shut the diary with a snap and rolled over on the bed. Whatever Susan came up with, the next move was obviously to visit Annabella de Vergy.

Susan shut the door of her car and stood to look out across Hampstead Heath. London was spread out beneath her, towers rising against the clear blue sky, sunlight glinting from windows, the occasional movement of a vehicle, the low line of hills with their two masts to the south. The day was beginning to warm up, but the air was still fresh enough to clear the cobwebs from her head. The previous night was a blur: punishment, sex, more sex and more punishment until she and Paulette had fallen asleep sprawled naked on the bed. In the morning she had been too tired to do more than briefly inspect the state of her bottom and kiss Paulette goodbye, leaving with the clear understanding that going to bed together had been neither an accident nor a mistake.