Two Faced. Garry Bushell
Rachel Freeman, Harry thought: no opinion unexpressed, no prick unteased. She’d been out with two of the five blokes in the line-up since they’d got here, but neither of them had got past first base with her. Harry put his hand on her plump little bottom and squeezed it gingerly, hoping she wouldn’t bite. There had to be teeth down there somewhere, she was always talking out of it. Yeah, lips and arseholes, all right.
Harry Aaron Dean was 27. Born in Colchester, Essex, he had grown up poor but proud on a Romford council estate and drifted into the Essex police seven years before on the advice of his former father-in-law, a tough retired cop. The force served Harry better than the marriage. Dawn had run off with the six-foot-two physical training officer next door. Harry’s world fell apart the day he came home to the ‘Dear John’ letter on the kitchen table. She still loved him, she said, but she never saw him. She needed more. That’s where Harry had gone wrong, see, doing all that overtime to try and buy the bitch a better fucking lifestyle – the nicer house, the holidays in Benidorm and Majorca.
He didn’t tell anyone how much Dawn had mangled his insides. Who could he tell? His parents were dead, he had no siblings, he had never let anyone get close enough to become bosom buddies and it wasn’t exactly the kind of thing you chatted about in the canteen at the nick. So Harry bottled it all up. He never let the pain show; and he never gave all of himself to anyone again.
It’s surprising how quickly a broken heart heals up when you’ve got something to live for. Dawn left him in the February of 1985, the year Harry transferred into the CID after six years in uniform. A move to the Essex wing of the Regional Crime Squad followed swiftly as he threw himself into detective work. Harry was a natural thief-taker. His assured manner and innate gift of the gab helped him move with ease in the criminal underworld. He relished the shady demi-monde of strippers, drippers, bent publicans and snouts. This was his turf, this other Britain – a world of lock-ins, lock-ups and unlicensed brawls. And Harry notched up more felt collars than a Savile Row tailor. His superior officers recognised his natural abilities. Who better to send on the undercover course at Bristol?
So Harry and his fellow maverick gladiators went through four hard months of training. They were taught tactics and psychology, how to bluff and double bluff, how to deflect suspicion and get inside the heads of their prey. Their job was to bring on the parcel and make sure the top men on the firm they were targeting were caught ‘hands-on’ with the illicit merchandise. But you couldn’t incite a criminal to commit a crime he would not have committed if it weren’t for you urging him to do so. That was the cardinal rule – ‘the prime directive’ as they called it, Captain Kirk-style. The pitfalls were plentiful, the consequences of any mistake plainly life-threatening. And if the course were mentally and physically draining, the nine knew that it would be nothing compared to the challenge of the real job to come.
Studying was especially tough for Harry Dean because he had been placed in the smaller group with Rachel and his initial dislike of the woman was confirmed by her incessant chatter. He had sat next to her once in the canteen and paid a terrible price.
‘Why can’t they do summat healthy?’ she’d moaned as he tucked into a plate of ham, egg and chips. ‘I would kill for a bowl of broccoli soup, y’know? I’m trying t’stay clear of stuff like bread ’cos I was right poorly a while back and this fella in t’health shop said I should cut down on my wheat intake. But as a vegetarian that’s tough. I don’t want to turn into one of those foodie weirdos. Can I pinch one of your chips? Can I dip it in the sauce …?’ And so she had gone on for the entire dinner break. Verbal diarrhoea didn’t come into it. The woman would give an aspirin a headache. It was a mark of how good Harry was going to be at submerging his true feelings that nobody in the group even remotely suspected that he found her as irritating as thrush.
For her part Rachel took Harry’s polite coldness as a sign of hidden depths. He was a good-looking guy, a little over six feet tall with blue eyes and dark brown hair. He was fit and muscular, clearly with something promising in the trouser department. He dressed well, he was funny, wore no wedding ring and hadn’t made a single attempt to chat her up since they had arrived. That made him a challenge, and on their last night at Bristol, after six hours of serious drinking, Rachel Freeman engineered a situation where she and Harry were alone. Jeremy Tyler, the biker, had the hots for the busty blonde Denise Watts, the top-heavy temptress from Torbay. Inevitably she was known as ‘Dirty Den’ because of the character in BBC1’s new hit soap EastEnders; although, as Jeremy was to discover, the nickname was a triumph of hope over reality. ‘She just lay on that bed like a corpse,’ he had moaned to Harry the next day. ‘I might as well have been sticking my dick in a plate of cold suet.’
Jeremy had brought Harry along as back-up and so it was that all four of them ended up back at Rachel’s digs, until the Northern lass tipped Denise the wink and she scooted Jeremy away. Harry made a half-hearted attempt to leave but it was late and besides, he had started to get a taste for Rachel’s brandy. As she saw the others out, Harry went for a slash. There was nothing wrong with the toilet, but it amused him to use the sink instead and then clear up the splashes with her flannel. Coming back, Harry noticed that Rachel’s bedroom door was opened so he stuck his head inside for a quick shufti: no cuddly toys – she wasn’t the type – but there was a Man City scarf over the headboard, a Prince poster on the wall, and a picture of her and presumably a sister on the bedside table.
‘So what are you, Harry chuck, forward or just nosey?’
Shit. He hadn’t meant to get caught.
‘That Prince is some kind of ponce,’ he said, hoping to provoke a row. He’d wanted to ruck her since day one. Rachel changed the subject.
‘Let’s not kid around – you know you want me,’ she said, stepping into the room and shutting the bedroom door behind her.
‘Do I?’
‘Oh yeah.’
‘I think I’d better go …’
‘Sure you will. What’s the score then, pretend you’re not interested then go home and wank about what might have been?’
Ordinarily Harry would have walked away, but he was smashed, his resistance worn down by duty-free Courvoisier. He could feel his distaste for the woman battling with pure lust – and, as he hadn’t had a shag for weeks, the lust won hands down. He smiled. Rachel came at him like a predator, eyes blazing, mouth open. Harry kissed her roughly. Too roughly. He was hurting her; he knew it but made no attempt to stop. Oddly, his aggression seemed to turn her on. Rachel pushed against him, relishing his hardness. She reached down and grabbed him through the crotch of his Farah slacks, just as the sound of Ashford and Simpson drifted in from the other room: ‘Solid! Solid as a rock.’ That made them both laugh.
‘Fuck me,’ she said, barking out the words like an order. But Harry had other ideas. He wanted her to suck him before he gave the dog a bone. He unzipped his fly and urgently pressed her head in the right direction. ‘Right, cock,’ she giggled drunkenly. ‘I’m munchin’ on yer truncheon. But don’t come in my mouth, all right? And tell me if I hurt you with me teeth, I’m not very good at this …’
Shut the fuck up!
‘Shhh. Go on, you’ll be fine.’
She took him greedily. Harry looked down at her as her head bobbed away industriously. Finally he had silenced the voice of the North.
He came in her mouth deliberately, but apologised and blamed the drink. They made love violently three times that night, and woke up covered in bites and bruises. Rachel was flat-chested with large areolae and dark, prominent nipples which looked like Eartha Kitt’s face in the morning half-light and which sprang to attention at the slightest touch. This amused Harry no end. He could start to like her, he thought. But when the alarm went off she was straight up and out of the bed with her tongue in overdrive and he realised he couldn’t.
‘Do you think I’d look good with me hair in a bob?’
Not as good as you would with your head in a noose, he thought.