A Shorter History of Tractors in Ukrainian with Handcuffs Read online

  She declined his offer of bourbon on the rocks in favour of white wine, which turned out to be just as sour and nasty as in the Slyther Inn.

  ‘Here’s to us,’ he said, as they clinked their drinks. ‘So how’s life been treating you, lovely Laura? Still with Gruesome Graham?’

  ‘He’s not gruesome, and yes, we’re still together.’

  ‘Not gruesome, just a bit boring? Doesn’t light your fire any more, if he ever did?’

  He scrutinized her through narrowed eyes, and she couldn’t help but blush.

  ‘I’ve not come here to talk about my personal life,’ she retorted stiffly. ‘I’m trying to resolve an old case that may have come back to life.’

  She told him about the young couple in the street and the footprint on the inside sill of the house. ‘The wearer of the shoe was obviously a tall supple man, slightly bow-legged, with an interest in athletics. It could be Stanislav. Of course, I don’t know whether Stanislav is bow-legged.’

  ‘Bow-legged?’

  ‘The sole was worn on the outer edge but not in the centre. Elementary.’

  ‘This Stanislav – is he some kinda new love interest?’

  ‘For goodness’ sake! I thought you were supposed to be a detective, Jim . . . I mean, Justin. No wonder you were fired from the police.’

  ‘I was fired for insubordination. And I’m not a detective, I’m a sleuth, if you don’t mind. A detective either exists only in books or, at best, he’s a greasy little man snooping around hotels.’

  ‘OK, a sleuth. Can’t you be a bit more helpful?’

  ‘Depends on what kinda help you need, lady.’

  There was something very irritating about his American accent, Laura thought, and the cocky way he fielded her questions.

  ‘Stanislav was Valentina’s son. I need to know whether he’s come back, and why.’

  ‘He used to live in the house. Maybe he left something behind.’ The stubbly shadow crinkled around his self-satisfied leer as he spoke.

  ‘Or maybe his mother, Valentina, sent him.’

  ‘I thought she cleaned the old guy out then vanished with the loot like a virgin in a whorehouse.’

  This was getting a bit wearing.

  ‘No, that’s the thing, Jim . . . sorry, Justin. The judge didn’t award her anything. But she retained the possibility to come back to court another day. Or Stanislav, of course, if she’d died in the meantime.’

  He sat up and looked interested. ‘She died? What makes you suspect foul play?’

  ‘Nothing. I just said if she’d died.’

  ‘So it’s nothing to do with the slightly worn sole of the right-foot trainer?’

  ‘I guess not. Do you have to talk with that awful American accent?’ she snapped.

  ‘I don’t like your manners, lady.’

  ‘And I’m not crazy about yours. You’re not a proper detective at all, you’re a pathetic pastiche of a hard-boiled has-been.’

  She jumped to her feet, feeling a powerful urge to fling the remains of her sour white wine and soda over his powder-blue suit and dark-blue shirt and tie, and soak the black wool socks with the dark blue clocks on them. But she held back, and simply remarked, ‘I loathe masterful men! I simply loathe them!’ as she made for the door.

  Which was not, strictly speaking, true.

  6

  Next day she rang Jim from the office to apologize, and remembered to call him Justin.

  ‘I’m sorry about my behaviour yesterday, Justin. I don’t know what got into me. I can’t seem to let go of the Mayevskyj case.’

  There was that hint he’d let slip yesterday, about people asking questions, that she wanted to probe further.

  ‘You’ve become obsessed with something that happened fifteen years ago?’

  ‘It’s as though a lid has been lifted off the past. You were part of it too. Don’t you remember?’

  ‘To me it was just routine sleuth-work. Get it through your lovely head. I work at it, lady. I don’t play at it.’

  Laura reflected that it was just as well she couldn’t throw a glass of wine down the phone line at him. Instead, she mollified her tone.

  ‘You know, I’ve always dreamed of being a detective, Justin. If you ever need an assistant, you’ll let me know, won’t you?’ She giggled girlishly. ‘What are you working on right now? You mentioned something about people asking questions. It sounds so fascinating.’

  He gave a hard-boiled chuckle. ‘That’s between my clients and me. You stick to law-work. It’s more appropriate for a lady such as yourself. And don’t you go snooping around no more empty houses.’

  ‘You’re right, Justin,’ she said contritely. ‘It’s just that I sometimes feel a strange urge to go back into the past; as though things are slipping out of control.’

  ‘No need to apologize, my lovely – I’m used to that kinda women’s stuff. Irrational behaviour. Mood swings. Hot flushes.’

  ‘Thanks for your advice, Justin.’ She kept her voice even as she put the phone down gently, careful not to slam it.

  Hot flushes! How dare he! And him with his American drawl, powder-blue suit and clock-motif socks – a sure sign of the male menopause if ever there was one. She paced around her office furiously. In the pit of her stomach, a growl was gathering, a growl that would only be satisfied by a frothy coffee and a fat slab of cake. She looked at her watch. Ten thirty. Her next client was due any minute. If she could spin it out for half an hour, the pleasure would be more intense.

  She glanced out of the window at the row of shops, to check that the patisserie was open, and that’s when she saw them again: the girl in the pink jacket; the young man with shaggy shoulder-length hair and a backpack. They were staring at the pastries in the window of Dina’s. Then they turned and sauntered along the road towards the shopping centre and the bus station.

  This time, she didn’t even grab her coat – she just ran. When she got down into the street, she saw that they had broken into a run too. She trailed them, but they were gaining speed. Then she saw why they were running. It wasn’t because of her, it was because of the bus waiting at the stop with its engine running. They ran and leapt on to it just as it started to pull away. At the lights, it stopped, and she managed to catch a glimpse of the destination: it was not Duckwith but Leicester.

  7

  Laura Carter and Judge Maddox agreed to meet at the Heath Hotel, a country inn halfway between Stamford and Peterborough at six thirty on the following Wednesday.

  She told Graham she was going to a colleague’s birthday bash, and spent the day in lacy black underwear and a state of nervous anticipation. She forwent the carrot cake, which had become such a feature of her mornings, but drank three cups of coffee while she mugged up on the Mayevskyj divorce case – so that she could recall all the details by heart, and would not appear ignorant in the conversation that would inevitably precede whatever came after.

  As she headed northwards out of town in the late rush-hour traffic, just past the end-of-speed-limit signs, she spotted in her rear-view mirror a low-slung silver sports car a few cars behind, and felt a frisson of anticipation. There are probably thousands of cars like that on the road, but not that many in Peterborough. Maybe it was him! But when she arrived at the inn he was already there, waiting for her in a discreet corner of the restaurant, his nose buried in the Law Society Gazette, almost as though he wanted to avoid being seen. Which suited her just fine.

  ‘Laura!’

  He stood up and leaned towards her for the ritual two-cheek kiss. He smelled of something quite a lot more expensive than Gillette Foam or feral man-juice. He appeared older than she remembered him, but more attractive too, with that sun-bronzed wiry look that some men get with age. He wasn’t wearing aviator glasses, in fact he wasn’t wearing glasses at all. His eyes were bright blue, with craggy crow’s feet at the corners. His hair was silver, thick and short with just a thinning patch above his forehead, which was interestingly wrinkled with sun lines, not stress lines.r />
  ‘Hello, Judge Maddox.’

  ‘Please, call me Grayson. So glad you could come. We have a lot to discuss.’

  ‘Yes indeed.’ She felt a blush rise in her cheeks. ‘I’ve been going back over the case notes of Mayevskyj v Mayevskyj. It seems there are some things that are still unresolved.’

  ‘Of course. We’ll get on to that. But, if I may be so bold, Laura dear, it seems to me that the main thing that is unresolved is the mutual feeling between us.’

  ‘Ah!’ she gasped on a sharp intake of breath, so the sound came out as a breathy squeak.

  ‘Forgive me if this comes as a surprise. I have thought about you so often, Laura, but without being free to act on my desires. Which I dare to hope are mutual.’

  Laura closed her eyes and said nothing. In the back of her mind Graham hovered, pink-cheeked and earnest, leaning over her with a cup of tea in his hand. In the gusset of her black lace panties, an unexpected dampness had transpired. Oh dear.

  ‘I . . . I . . .’

  ‘You don’t need to say anything.’

  He took her face gently in his hands and started to kiss her, on the nose, cheeks, forehead, mouth. Her lips parted involuntarily to receive his kisses. Her breath came fast and shallow.

  ‘Can I get you anything to drink?’ A spotty teenage waiter with a notebook in his hand popped up beside them.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Maddox briskly. ‘A bottle of Veuve Clicquot. Well chilled.’

  The youth scurried away.

  He pulled her towards him again. ‘You can’t imagine how often I’ve dreamed of doing this, Laura.’

  His lips sought hers with hungry urgency. She closed her eyes and surrendered to the powerful magnetism of his body.

  ‘Excuse me, sir, would you like to taste the champagne?’

  Another waiter had appeared, an adult this time, officious in a black apron with a white cloth wrapped around a bottle of bubbly, which he popped with silent skill. The judge sipped and nodded. The waiter filled two flutes. They clinked the glasses and gazed into each other’s eyes.

  ‘Laura! Darling!’ He grasped her free hand and crushed it against his lips. ‘It’s been so long.’

  ‘Would you like to order anything from the menu?’ The original youth had popped up at the table again.

  ‘For God’s sake!’ Grayson barked. ‘Didn’t I sentence you to youth custody five years ago? Is this what you learned?’

  The youth looked blank. ‘We’ve got a special menu on the board, if you’d like to take a look, sir.’

  ‘Thank you. Now go away.’

  Laura trembled. This is how she’d imagined him. Impatient. Masterful. Yet tender.

  After a carpaccio of turbot and a warm mousse of artichoke hearts, with a bottle of Pinot Grigio, followed by fillet of dindon Great Witchingham à l’Alsacienne accompanied by goat’s cheese rösti aux choux de Bruxelles, with a bottle of Chianti, and rounded off with a clafoutis à la Reine d’Angleterre and half a bottle of Beaumes de Venise, Laura suddenly realized that there was absolutely no way that she could drive home.

  So she offered no resistance when he gripped her by the elbow and murmured, ‘I took the precaution of reserving a room. Come upstairs.’

  ‘I must phone my –’

  ‘No. The only thing you have to do tonight is exactly what I say.’

  ‘But –’

  ‘Laura, believe me, you will enjoy it much more this way.’

  Their room was on the top floor at the back of the inn, with a double window looking out over the car park, and beyond that a dark vista of featureless fields broken here and there with pinpricks of light. Far away to the south, she could see an orange glow in the sky which must be the location of Peterborough. Home. Graham waiting by the phone in his John Lewis terry dressing gown and his M&S pyjamas.

  Quickly, she drew the curtains and turned away.

  Grayson Maddox’s small wheeled suitcase was already on the luggage rack, and his obviously-very-expensive coat was hanging on the back of the door. She, of course, had brought nothing, apart from her handbag, which she hoped would contain enough make-up to repair tonight’s damage tomorrow morning.

  The room was decorated in a traditional style, with red floral wallpaper, ruched chintz upholstery and lots of little lamps with brocade shades – all a bit flouncy for her taste, but the sort of thing that holidaying foreigners appreciate as being typically English. A vast carved oak four-poster bed dominated the room, and Laura was quick to notice that a pair of leopard-skin-covered handcuffs already dangled from each post. She gasped and a violent quiver ran through her.

  Grayson pulled back the covers and sat down on the bed fully clothed, watching her with a fixed gaze that made her tremble with anticipation. Although she had trembled quite a lot already, it was clear that there was quite a lot more trembling still to come.

  ‘Get undressed,’ he ordered. ‘Tonight, you will be my slave, and obeying my commands will bring you unimaginable pleasure. Get undressed and kneel at the foot of the bed.’

  She undressed slowly, both embarrassed and elated under his scrutiny.

  He said nothing, except once when he murmured in a low voice, ‘You are as beautiful as I imagined.’

  Time for another tremor. Graham had never said anything like that.

  When she knelt at the foot of the bed, he got up and noiselessly stood behind her, and a moment later she felt a soft silky cloth pulled tight around her eyes and tied in a knot at the back of her head. Then he grasped each of her hands in turn and cuffed it tightly to the bedpost at the wrist.

  ‘Don’t try to struggle,’ he said. ‘Just wait.’

  She held her breath and waited.

  Suddenly she heard a sharp crack of leather, and an intense flame of pain seared across her naked shoulders. And another. She buried her face in the scented damask bedclothes, shutting out the everyday world of reason and routine, and laying herself open to the terrible waves of sensation that ran through her body, no longer knowing whether it was pain or pleasure that she was feeling, only knowing that she wanted more and more.

  Behind her, she could hear the subtle sounds of clothing being removed, and then she felt his warm naked body press against her back, his cock robust and insistent against her neck and shoulders, his hands reaching round to caress her breasts, grasping her nipples and kneading them in his fingers, unleashing hot spasms of delight.

  As she felt herself starting to twist and moan with pleasure, he uncuffed her hands and ordered, ‘Now, get up on to the bed.’

  She scrambled to obey, and he grasped her thighs to push her up, then in a moment he was up on top of her, pounding into her from behind, so hard that she could do nothing but surrender to the waves of pleasure that engulfed her.

  ‘I want to take you from the front. Turn over!’ he commanded.

  She lay there, breathless and sticky, waiting for his cock to enter her again.

  And again. And again.

  After this had gone on for a couple of hours, she began to lose track of what had gone into where. Or where one juddering climax ended and the next began. Oh dear, she thought. I seem to have blundered into the wrong novel again.

  By the time dawn broke, with yet another thrusting climax and juddering orgasm, she was thinking how much nicer it would be to have a warm mug of cocoa with a man in a terry dressing gown and M&S pyjamas.

  While Grayson was showering, she stood at the window once more and searched the pale comfortless sky for the rosy glow that indicated Peterborough. There it was, taunting her with its banal homeliness, reminding her, as she had so often found in her professional work, of the beguiling gulf between fantasy and reality, which we mortals strive to bridge at our peril.

  Like the poor old man in the Ukrainian case.

  A movement in the car park below caught her eye. A man was crossing the asphalt and getting into a car. The car backed out and pulled away into the new day. She watched, and a different kind of tremor ran through her – a tremor
of dread. It was the low-slung silver sports car.

  8

  Next morning, over a full English breakfast, Grayson told her that one of the old man’s daughters had been in touch with him (Laura gathered from the tone of his voice that they had in fact been more in touch than he was letting on), because Valentina’s son had phoned her out of the blue to ask what had happened to the house in Duckwith. The sister was worried that he might be about to stake an ownership claim, since the house was still unsold.

  ‘Yes,’ said Laura, ‘I checked. It’s still empty. Apparently it’s said to be haunted.’

  ‘Ah,’ he said, squeezing her hand over the dish of morning-gathered mushrooms. ‘How the past comes back to haunt us. Or maybe it never really leaves us.’

  ‘Mm,’ she said, trying but failing to think of something profound to say, and wondering whether her daughters had remembered to pack their gym kits.

  She and Grayson parted affectionately in the car park of the hotel, with sweet lingering kisses and promises that they would meet again. But in her heart, she knew they never would.

  She went straight to the office and called Graham, who was already at work.

  ‘I’m so sorry. Had too much to drink. Couldn’t trust myself to drive. Legless, actually. Don’t know what got into me. Are the girls alright? Left phone at the office.’

  That last bit was the only actual lie.

  His voice was cool and distant. ‘Not a convenient time to talk. In a meeting. Catch up tonight – if you’re planning to come home, that is.’

  Oh dear.

  She had a penitential salad for lunch, and gazed out of the window at the patisserie over the road, longing for a crusty tart with raspberry mousse and whipped cream topped with freshly grated chocolate to sweeten her afternoon tea break. It was drizzling again, people were scurrying along the glistening pavement with hoods up and umbrellas out. So she didn’t immediately recognize the couple crossing the road. The man had a cagoule on with the hood up covering his hair, but his backpack was visible as a bulge between the shoulders. The woman was carrying an umbrella, spinning it gaily as she skipped along, avoiding the puddles. They were talking animatedly and walking towards the bus stop again.