JAMES
By Patrick

He knew what they were as soon as he saw them. He’d moved the stuff on hang­ers in the bed­room wardrobe to one side, and caught sight of them at the back of the wardrobe, stood on their ends. One was bright yel­low and thick, the oth­er dark brown and thin, and although they did not have the clas­sic crooked han­dle, he knew imme­di­ate­ly that that they were pun­ish­ment canes. He stared at them uncom­pre­hend­ing­ly, his brain refus­ing to accept the evi­dence from his eyes.
‘Ah, I see you’ve dis­cov­ered my new toys.’
He spun around to see his wife stood in the bed­room door­way. She was still in her uni­form and look­ing at him with a neu­tral gaze. James imme­di­ate­ly knew he’d walked into a trap.
‘I got them from the evi­dence store,’ she con­tin­ued, ‘Vice squad gets a lot of this stuff from raids and it usu­al­ly gets destroyed after con­vic­tions, but the evi­dence cus­tody clerk will gen­er­al­ly sign off stuff to me to be destroyed.
‘I knew some­thing was up, of course. When you start­ed wear­ing pyja­mas after that last busi­ness trip….well, James, you’ve nev­er worn pyja­mas. And stay­ing up late, so you could go to bed lat­er than me and get up ear­li­er? Not like you at all… you’re intol­er­a­ble if you don’t get your sol­id 8 hours.’
‘Then I came into the bath­room last week when you were hav­ing a show­er and I saw the marks on your bot­tom – pret­ty sav­age, they looked like.’
James’ mouth was sud­den­ly very dry.
‘Pret­ty sim­ple after that, real­ly. You know that you can’t move a car in Lon­don with­out it being tracked by CCTV, and they all have ANPR, so check­ing the records found out the area where you went and after that it was just a ques­tion of a bit of basic legwork.’
‘Yes,’ said James, ’some­times I do go through town — makes a change from the M25’.
‘I see,’ she mused qui­et­ly. ‘And it must have been a hell of a traf­fic jam to keep you in North Lon­don for an hour and a half. Did you vis­it Miss Svenson?’
Oh shit, he thought. She knew it all. How on earth did he think he could fool her? She was a Detec­tive Chief Super­in­ten­dent in the Met for Christ’s sake, and she had more smarts on her worst day than he could muster when he was on the top of his game. Well, that was it. Game over. He’d be check­ing into a hotel tonight and she would be phon­ing a divorce lawyer. Pene­lope did not mess around.
James thought of what he could say — what inno­cent expla­na­tion he could offer for the delay. Noth­ing remote­ly plau­si­ble came to him, so in the end, he gave up and said nothing.
‘So, what’s this then, sex with two women?’ she asked in a voice that was almost conversational.
Now she was giv­ing him the laser stare. The one that the sus­pects got in the inter­view, when she’d seized on the one dis­crep­an­cy in their sto­ry that they couldn’t explain. And he saw some­thing else, not just the anger in those eyes, but the hurt beneath the anger.
‘No’, he said mis­er­ably,’ noth­ing like that, just watch­ing Miss Sven­son spank­ing her secretary.’
She con­tin­ued to stare at him for what seemed like an eter­ni­ty, say­ing noth­ing, and he knew it was des­per­ate­ly impor­tant that he held her stare, and not drop his eyes. She was watch­ing him for the clues; his eyes flick­ing up to the left, the moist­en­ing of the lips, the swal­low­ing, any of the hun­dreds of invol­un­tary indi­ca­tors of a lie. Final­ly, she took a breath.
‘OK, I believe you,’ she said.
She reached past him into the wardrobe and picked up the yel­low cane, held it in both hands and flexed it into a gen­tle curve. She faced him.
‘Lis­ten care­ful­ly James, because a great deal depends on you get­ting this right.’
‘You will not see Miss Sven­son again. Ever. At all. No excep­tions. Nei­ther will you email, text, phone or con­tact her by any oth­er method. Is there any part of this instruc­tion that is, in any way, unclear?’
James did not trust him­self to do any­thing oth­er than shake his head once.
‘I blame myself for this,’ she mused, almost absent-mind­ed­ly. ‘I should have been more atten­tive to what you need­ed from this mar­riage. Well, the sit­u­a­tion is not irre­triev­able, and I do intend to recov­er it.’
‘The fact is that you are an addict. Not drugs, not alco­hol, not gam­bling, but addict­ed to phys­i­cal pain. Noth­ing wrong with that, for­tu­nate­ly it’s not yet ille­gal. How­ev­er James, and this is the deal, you are chang­ing your sup­pli­er. Do you under­stand me?’
James looked at her. Dressed as she was, in her uni­form, flex­ing the cane, Pen­ny looked every inch the stern dis­ci­pli­nar­i­an, beau­ti­ful, awe­some, unbe­liev­ably sexy and con­fi­dent in her pow­er. Oh yes, he under­stood, and a small voice inside told him that it might, just might be alright after all.
She held the cane out to him han­dle first.
‘Now, kind­ly put this away and remem­ber where you put it — you will need it lat­er. Abi is on a sleep­over tonight and Tom is going to foot­ball prac­tice, so we will have the house to our­selves. That will be a good time for you to meet your new sup­pli­er, and to learn a few rules.’ She smiled at him, and just for a moment, he won­dered if the sin­gle hotel room might have been the bet­ter option.
As she left the bed­room she allowed her­self a small inward smile. That went well, she thought.
Because, she had not seen any marks, nor had she tracked James’ car. She didn’t need to. She had found a clue, and then used what her first sergeant had described as ‘a damn good copper’s nose’ to fig­ure out what was going on.
A fort­night ago, she had bor­rowed James’s lap­top rather than use hers. The lay­ers of encryp­tion soft­ware made her machine inter­minably slow and she only need­ed to print a doc­u­ment. She didn’t need to vis­it the inter­net but the brows­er start­ed auto­mat­i­cal­ly…. and it had help­ful­ly asked her if she would like to vis­it the last, fre­quent­ly used site – Lon­don Spank­ing Ser­vice. Unable to pre­vent her­self snoop­ing on her hus­band, she fol­lowed the advice and acquaint­ed her­self with what her James had been visiting.
After 10 min­utes, she erased her brows­ing his­to­ry, slow­ly closed the lap­top and sat think­ing. She had con­clud­ed that Miss Sven­son posed a con­sid­er­able, if indi­rect threat to her mar­riage and, like the alpha female that she was Pen­ny for­mu­lat­ed a plan to ruth­less­ly erad­i­cate that threat.
James had accept­ed her sto­ry of where she had got the canes from. If he hadn’t been on the back foot he would have seen through that straight away. Get them from the evi­dence store? That would have been pro­fes­sion­al sui­cide for her. The sto­ry would have been around the force in 24 hours. Worse, it could have dis­ap­peared, only to find its way into the tabloid press if and when she was poised to be appoint­ed as London’s first female police com­mis­sion­er, as she ful­ly intend­ed to be. It was far eas­i­er and much less risky to buy them off eBay.
Also, James’ car could not have been tracked – although the tech­nol­o­gy exist­ed, the bud­get didn’t. And in any case, it would only have told her the area that he went to, not which house.
But she had enough clues and had worked it out. She even sent James to the wardrobe when he asked her where his for­mal din­ner shirt was, so he would dis­cov­er the canes. That way she would know when the con­fronta­tion would be, and she would there­fore always be in con­trol — inter­view­ing tech­niques 101, real­ly. After that it was just a case of putting her hypoth­e­sis to him and watch­ing his reaction.
His only poten­tial escape was when she asked him if there had been any sex involved. She was pre­pared for him to deny every­thing at this point and to say that he had just been surf­ing porn
and actu­al­ly hadn’t vis­it­ed Miss Sven­son. That was why she had watched him so close­ly. She had to be able to tell if he lied. But he’d con­fessed, so it was easy.
Pen­ny was sat­is­fied. She had moved their rela­tion­ship on more eas­i­ly than she thought it would be, and Miss Sven­son was, she judged, no longer a fac­tor to be con­sid­ered. Pen­ny would beat James, and then make love to him. Elsa would just cane him. It was no contest.
Lat­er, after the first of what would be many mutu­al­ly sat­is­fy­ing ses­sions, Pen­ny would tell him her news, the rea­son why she was in uni­form today, instead of her more usu­al busi­ness suit…that her pro­mo­tion to Com­man­der had been announced, and she had been at the press con­fer­ence to be intro­duced as the next head of the Met Police Anti-Ter­ror­ism Unit.
She mused on what her new boss had said to her that morning.
‘Don’t have any explo­sions, do get a few fun­da­men­tal­ists in the dock at Wool­wich Crown Court and for fuck’s sake don’t have anoth­er Jean Charles de Menezes. Do that and the ADC’s job will be in the bag, because both the Com­mis­sion­er and the May­or like you.
Yes, every­thing was going very nice­ly indeed.

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