Detective Superintendent Jim Norris climbed out of bed, and gazed down fondly at its other occupant. She was a 23-year-old redhead, and no stranger to that bed. Norris was no fool; he was under no illusions that Mandy freely bestowed her stunning charms on him because she loved him or had the slightest affection for his greying hair or middle-aged figure, slowly deteriorating despite all the exercise he did. He had earned her favours by being invaluable to her because he could assist in her and her accomplices´ criminal – there was no other word for it, though he winced as he thought it – criminal activities, by providing valuable information and covering things up.
And the little fool probably thought that she had a hold on him for life because if he ever decided to pull the plug on her activities, she could blackmail him. Not a chance, of course, he smiled to himself. Better people than her had tried to blackmail him, and failed. There had never been a shred of evidence that would stand up against him; he´d checked and double checked that in innumerable ways. After all, he´d been investigating crooked police since before she was born; he knew what they did and the mistakes they made, and he wasn´t going to make any mistakes.
He glanced over to the bedside chair where her black satin thong and seamed fishnet stockings lay in a heap. Under the chair, he saw a pair of shiny black shoes with very high stiletto heels. That girl wasn´t just gorgeous; she really knew how to turn him on. How many other men had she done that to – and how many was she doing it to now? Norris shook his head sadly. It was best not to worry about such things.
It seemed such a pity to wake her up; as she lay there, her tousled red hair strewn across the pillow, a faint smile on her lips, she looked oh so very sweet and innocent, more like a teenaged schoolgirl than a hardened (though still unconvicted) criminal. Still, wake her he did, very gently.
“Sugarplum, it´s time to get up,’ he said, rubbing her shoulder. Slowly, she opened her eyes and flashed a sleepy but devastating smile at him. “And I forgot to tell you last night, I´ve made some good progress tracking down that long-lost twin sister of yours. I should have a file on her by the next time I see you.’
Norris waited long enough to see Mandy climb out of bed, so that he could get another look at her magnificent naked body. Then he set about making them breakfast and getting ready for the day ahead.
****
“Here´s the file on that girl you asked about, sir.’ Norris smiled in acknowledgement at his special assistant, Detective Constable Lisa Carter, as she handed him a stack of paper in a pale blue cardboard folder. She was, he knew, only a few days older than Mandy and had a figure quite as good. What´s more, she was wildly ambitious and knew as well as he did how much he could help her career; she had always been only too willing to do whatever he asked. Still, despite the great temptation he had never made any attempt to seduce her; that would be a very silly thing to do. As he knew quite well, there was no way that he could keep an affair within his own office secret from a pack of well-trained detectives.
“Thanks very much Lisa,’ he said, opening it and glancing at the top sheet. It included her passport photograph. That immediately dispelled any shred of doubt that this was the right girl. If he didn´t know that Mandy would never be seen dead in such a prim outfit, he´d have sworn that it was her. She even had a little freckle on her cheek in exactly the same position as Mandy´s. He had a quick flick through. “Looks like a very thorough job – well done.’
Lisa remained standing there at attention. “That will be all for now,’ he said curtly. She saluted, turned round and walked out of the office, her hips swaying gracefully. The skirt was a bit too short and tight for a policewoman, but what the hell, she was in plain clothes and it was a nice bit of eye candy for him and all her male colleagues. She quietly closed the door behind her.
He read through the file carefully. Suzanne Peters, obviously not the same surname as Mandy since both were adopted at birth. There was no record that Suzanne had ever enquired about her natural parents; maybe she didn´t even know she was adopted or that she had a twin sister.
Unlike Mandy, Suzanne had stayed at school until she was 18, and then gone on to university, taking a degree in economics. She was now the assistant to a top banker. Had he picked her for the role because she was so pretty, wondered Norris. Whatever, Mandy would surely be very pleased with the file. And keeping Mandy pleased meant that she´d try even harder to keep him pleased. He smiled a self-satisfied smirk.
****
Mandy sat next to Jim Norris on his leather sofa. As she read the file, an ecstatic grin spread over her beautiful face from ear to ear. “Oh Jimmy, this is just great. Better than I could ever have hoped for. She´s just perfect.’
“Perfect for what, Sugarplum?’ he asked as she laid the file down on the coffee table and he wrapped his arms around her. The tightness in Lisa Carter´s skirt was nothing compared to Mandy´s, which was also a great deal shorter. What´s more, Mandy´s had ridden up far enough to expose her lacy stocking tops. She put her arms around him, and they hugged each other tightly.
“For staging a little financial irregularity, you big dumpling,’ she replied. “Do you know why I was so keen to track her down? Was it because I wanted a sister? Hell no, I need a sister like a hole in the head. No, I somehow had a gut feeling she´d be useful – call it women´s intuition. If I can pull off pretending to be her then it shouldn´t be too hard to redirect quite a few millions to some bank accounts in various suitable parts of the world. She´ll get the blame and the prison sentence, of course. Then we can both retire to some tropical paradise and spend all our days just doing this.’ With that, she hugged him even tighter and gave him a very long, lingering kiss.
****
Suzanne Peters was, by no means for the first time, leaving the office very late on a Friday evening. International banking was a very demanding job, because at almost any hour of the day or night there was likely to be frantic activity going on somewhere in the world – New York, Tokyo, Hong Kong. Today, it had been Brazil. Still, it was a job she enjoyed and the pay was jolly good. Anyway, she was taking next week off. She crossed the lobby of her building, with its polished marble floor, past the uniformed security guard who as ever paid her no attention, and through the revolving door to the street outside. Her office was in a fairly quiet side turning, and at this time of night the street was almost deserted.
She was mildly surprised to see a policeman standing next to a large blue van in the street, and very surprised when he stopped her. “Are you Suzanne Melanie Peters?’ he asked, speaking slowly in a deep voice.
“Yes, officer, how can I help you?’ she replied politely.
“I´m afraid, Miss Peters, that it is my duty to ask you to accompany me to the police station to answer some questions regarding your possible involvement in terrorist activities,’ he said, speaking even more slowly and deeply so that he sounded like a knell of doom.
“What?’ shouted Suzanne. “You can´t be serious! I mean ... look, I´m white, I´m a regular churchgoer. How can I be a terrorist?’
“Please don´t commit a breach of the peace, Miss Peters. Now we´re not racially prejudiced, you know. We don´t assume that all terrorists are coloured or all coloured people are terrorists. Please would you get into the van.’
In a daze, Suzanne climbed into the back of the van, where a second policeman was waiting. The first policeman followed her in, closed the doors behind them and handcuffed her hands behind her back.
“Now, there´s a routine security precaution, Miss Peters,’ said the second man. “We have to stop you from spitting, because of the risk of AIDS transmission. Open your mouth please.’
“But I don´t have AIDS ...’ Suzanne´s protests were silenced as the policeman pushed a large rubber wedge into her mouth. It forced her teeth wider and wider apart until they suddenly closed with a snap around its broad end. The wedge was attached to a wide leather strap, and the first policeman buckled it tightly at the back of her head. The wedge completely filled her mouth and pressed down firmly on her tongue.
While she was still in shock from the bewildering turn of events and from being handcuffed and gagged, the policemen pushed her gently into a seat. Wide straps buckled across her chest and lap held her firmly in the seat. There were fetters attached to the floor just in front of her. One man knelt down and fastened them on her ankles. “Another routine security precaution, just to stop you kicking us,’ he explained. Suzanne wanted to explain that it was unnecessary and she had no intention of kicking anyone, but the rubber wedge, forced tightly into her mouth by the strap, made coherent speech quite impossible.
The men sat down and drove off. Suzanne had her back to the front windscreen, and could only see the windowless interior of the van, so she had no idea where they were going. They seemed to drive for a very long time before the van suddenly tilted, as if it were going down a steep slope. She heard a creaking sound, and guessed that they were driving into an underground car park and the door was opening. The van moved forward a bit, then levelled off and stopped. Then she heard the creaking again, so the door must be closing behind them.
The men came and unstrapped her, and unfastened the fetters from the floor. Then they helped her, still gagged and handcuffed and now fettered as well, to climb down from the van. They were in an ill-lit basement, with plenty of room for the van. They went through a doorway into a much better-lit room, where a policewoman sat behind a desk.
“Sandra, here´s the suspect,’ said the first policeman. “Can you process her.’ And both men walked out through another door.
“They shouldn´t leave me alone with a terrorism suspect,’ fumed Sandra. “It´s not safe.’ Despite her predicament, Suzanne smiled. She could not at the best of times have posed much of a threat to this burly policewoman, and handcuffed and shackled she was a hundred times less threatening. “Anyway dear, what we have to do now is strip you off, search you and get you into regulation wear for the cell,’ continued Sandra, smiling cheerfully. Suzanne wanted to ask about getting a solicitor, but asking anything was out of the question with that rubber wedge strapped into her mouth.
Sandra bent down and removed Suzanne´s black low-heeled shoes; Suzanne compliantly raised one foot at a time to help her. The shoes went into a large bag. Next, she undid the button and zip on Suzanne´s neat pinstripe skirt, and pulled it to the ground. “Step out of it, dear,’ she said. Suzanne obeyed with difficulty, restricted by the fetters and unable to use her arms for balance. The skirt joined the shoes. Sandra grabbed the waistband of Suzanne´s tights, put a thumb in each side and pulled them down to the ground. She repeated the procedure with Suzanne´s plain cotton white knickers. The policewoman then put another pair of fetters on Suzanne´s ankles above the knickers. Suzanne noticed that the chain on these new fetters was shorter than on the first pair, so it would be almost impossible to walk in them.
Sandra put a wooden stool behind Suzanne. “Sit down now, there´s a good girl,’ she said. Suzanne complied, though the stool was cold and hard on her naked bottom. The first pair of fetters came off her ankles, followed by the tights and knickers, leaving Suzanne naked from the waist down.
“Stand up now, dear.’ Suzanne did so with difficulty. She was helped over to the radiator and her left wrist was handcuffed to it. The policewoman then removed the handcuffs between her wrists. Suzanne moved her right arm gratefully; it had been getting very uncomfortable, being held behind her back. Sandra undid her pinstripe jacket and removed it from her right arm. Suzanne´s silk cream blouse received the same treatment. Her bra was unfastened and the strap was taken over her arm, leaving her breasts showing.
Her disrobing was nearly complete. The policewoman handcuffed her right wrist to the radiator and freed her left wrist. It was then easy to remove her remaining clothes; they joined the others in the bag. Her left wrist was again handcuffed to the radiator, leaving her with her face to the wall and her back to Sandra.
The policewoman put a latex glove on her right hand, reached round and pushed two fingers deep into Suzanne´s vagina. Suzanne was startled and went rigid, but did her best to stay still and keep calm. The fingers wriggled about inside her for a while, and then the policewoman startled her again by repeating the procedure with her anus. This hurt a bit and was even more humiliating. “Sorry about that, dear, just had to check you didn´t have anything hidden there. Now let´s just give you your gown.’
She wrapped a sheet of white plastic round Suzanne´s torso. It was barely long enough to cover her breasts and her hips, scarcely enough to be decent. Three straps, at the top, waist and bottom, held it tightly around her body. The policewoman unfastened her right wrist from the radiator, fastened her wrists together behind her back then unfastened her left wrist from the radiator. “Nearly done, dear,’ said Sandra cheerily. She pushed Suzanne´s elbows together and fettered them. “That´s to stop you bringing your handcuffs under your feet and having your hands in front,’ she explained.
It was far from easy for Suzanne, even with help, to walk across the room and through a door. The fetters allowed her to take only tiny steps, and her pinioned arms made it hard to balance. She found herself in a little cell, lit by a bulb buried in the high ceiling behind a sheet of glass. There was no furniture whatsoever. “Now dear, you know that when you´re detained by the police you´re entitled to see a solicitor?’ Suzanne cheered up at that and nodded frantically. Surely a solicitor could get her out of this nightmare. “Well dear, unfortunately for you, we´re not real police.’
With that, Sandra was out of the door. Suzanne heard it slam and lock before she could react. The light went out, leaving her in the pitch dark.
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