Unconditional Love

I think the sight of that farmhouse kitchen will live with me for the rest of my life. I'd attended my fair share of murder scenes before, but I felt slightly faint when I first saw that. The man's body was face down on the floor, his head still attached to the rest only by a small flap of skin, a black pool of dried blood staining the floor tiles beneath his torn throat. The woman was on her back, her eyes wide in shock, her white cotton dress scarred by an ugly red stain across her midriff, the material revealing the gash where the meat cleaver had slashed deep into her.

But it was the boy who really caught my attention. The poor kid was huddled in one corner, his back against the join of the walls, his arms locked tightly around his legs, which were doubled up in front of him. He was as white as a sheet, and his whole body shivered as if he was suffering from hypothermia. His eyes were fixed unwaveringly on the floor. At a nod from my boss I went over to him and squatted by his side. Slowly, carefully, I wrapped an arm around his shoulders. I untangled his knotted hands from each other, and held one of them in mine. He was as cold as ice. Softly, I said, "Peter, my name's Jenny. You can't stay here sweetheart. We need to take you to a doctor, and make sure you're okay."

His head swivelled, almost like an owl's, and he turned fathomless black eyes on me. "I can't go. I've got to stay with mum and dad. I've got to look after them." He gestured vaguely with one hand towards the two lumps of meat on the floor.

I felt my throat tighten and my eyes prickle with tears. Working at keeping the emotion out of my voice, I said, "We'll take care of them now sweetie. But we've got to take care of you too. Your mum and dad would want us to make sure you're all right, wouldn't they. Come on, there's an ambulance waiting for you outside, and we need to make sure you're fit and well."

I edged the arm around his shoulder down beneath his arm and stood, gently pulling him to his feet with me. Carefully, both staring fixedly at the exit door, we picked our way past his mother's body. Peter clung to me all the way to the ambulance. I'm only five-feet-four and, although quite thin, he was nearly six feet tall and his weight bore down on me. I was going to hand him over to the paramedics, but he made a desperate grab at my arm. "No, please, don't leave me alone, please." I glanced at my boss; he gave a helpless shrug, and nodded to indicate I should go with Peter. After all, he just might say something important.

All the way to the hospital he held on tightly to me with his arms around my waist, his head on my shoulder, while I continued to cuddle him and hold his hand. I didn't ask him to tell me what had happened - it wasn't the time or the place. The last thing I said to him before a harassed young doctor sedated him at St Luke's was "You're safe now Peter, no-one's going to hurt you here. I'll come back and see you tomorrow, I promise."

I'm Jenny Cross, and I'm - well, I was then - a detective sergeant with the South Thames Constabulary. At 31 I was the youngest female DS in the region, and the only Indian detective. (Well, half Indian, on my mum's side.) I took a pride in my work, but I didn't sleep very well that night. I tossed and turned in bed, unable to close my eyes, afraid of what I would see if I did. I was worried I might keep my husband awake, but he continued to softly snore beside me. In the morning I looked at my reflection in the mirror in dismay. My short black curly hair looked as if rats had made a nest in it; my normally glowing olive skin looked grey and baggy; my eyes were dull and bloodshot, and had dark circles beneath them as deep as the Rift Valley. Basically, I looked every bit as shitty as I felt.

Naturally, as soon as the entire team was assembled in the office we got into the inquest on the disaster that had happened at Eastgate Farm. The dead couple, John and Sheila Richmond, had been key witnesses in a high profile murder case we were bringing to trial. They'd seen a road rage incident in which the killer had leapt out of his car and blasted a van driver in the face with a double barrelled shotgun. The killer had then calmly climbed back into his car and driven away. Within two hours he reported his car had been stolen the previous day, but he hadn't noticed the couple sitting in their car in a side street, with their 18-year old son in the back seat. They had a grandstand view of the whole thing.

All well and good, except that the accused just happened to be Craig Marston, a member of a notorious South London crime family. John and Sheila had picked him out of a line-up without hesitation, and were key to the prosecution. Their son Peter would be a witness to what he saw, but his parents had not wanted him to go through the trauma of the line-up procedure. The Marstons had been tampering with witnesses for generations, so naturally we were concerned that Craig's brothers would want to persuade the Richmonds that their memories were faulty. We had provided police protection for them, and with less than two weeks until Craig was scheduled to stand trial everything seemed to be going well. Until the previous night.

My boss, Detective Chief Inspector Andy Purvis, had a face as black as thunder as we settled in the briefing room - not an easy trick for a blond bloke with a fair complexion. He scanned us like a lighthouse, then started. "The Richmonds were the key to getting Craig Marston put away. They had a right to expect us to protect them, and we let them down. Well, bloody uniform let them down. The farm's 23 acres, for God's sake, with access from fields on all sides - and the fucking woodentops on duty last night were parked at the top of the fucking drive!"

When I'd arrived at the farm the previous night I had seen the two patrolmen Andy was referring to, standing by their car. They were both young, deathly pale, and looked as if at any moment they would burst into tears, throw up, or both. It wasn't their fault, they were only doing what they'd been told. Of course we should have done better by the Richmonds, and I didn't envy the senior officer who would have to answer to the inevitable inquiry. He of course would argue that budgetary constraints didn't allow for more personnel to be assigned to the family 24 hours a day, for the weeks it would have required, let alone accommodating them elsewhere, even if they'd agreed to that. That's the problem with modern policing - the service isn't run by coppers anymore, it's run by men in suits with calculators and slide rules in their hands. I wondered bitterly how two slain, innocent witnesses to murder, who had shown the courage to come forward, figured in the cost benefit analysis.

I realised with a start that Andy was speaking to me. "Jenny, are you with us? Sorry, I know you had a rough night, taking the kid up to St Luke's, but as I was saying, he's the key now both to the Marston case and to catching the bastard who wasted his parents. We've got him under armed guard, and we've got photo ID on every member of staff who's looking after him, so he should be safe enough. But you made a connection with him last night - could you go up there today and see what you can get out of him?"

I nodded absently. I could still remember the haunted look in Peter's eyes, and I wasn't looking forward to asking him to recall the previous night's events. But I had promised him I'd visit him anyway. We discussed the way forward on the new case for a while, with top of the agenda being to get the Metropolitan Police to check out Craig Marston's brothers. It was a safe bet that Richie and Scott would have cast iron alibis, but it had to be done. Then we'd start looking at the scumbags who we knew worked for them.

At the hospital I spoke to the consultant treating Peter, who told me he was still pretty heavily sedated. The door to his room was guarded by a chunky uniformed officer, with a short vicious-looking automatic weapon slung obtrusively across his chest. I knew him slighty, but he still asked to see my warrant card, which I was happy about. The window curtains were drawn, and it took my eyes a moment to adjust to the dim light. I stepped softly across the room and sat in the stiff metal-framed chair beside the bed. Peter stared at the ceiling, and didn't seem to notice my presence, even when I took his hand in mine.

I stayed two hours, nearly dozing off in the still, dark room, but it was obvious I wasn't going to get anything out of the boy that day. I went back the next day and things seemed a lot better. He was wide awake, although he still looked very pale, his face a stark contrast to his mop of unruly black hair. The curtains of the room were thrown open, revealing a bedraggled vase of daffodils standing on a table in front of the window. I asked Peter how he was feeling, then launched into my spiel. "Peter, I need to ask you about what happened at the farm."

He rolled his head away from me, and threw his forearm over his eyes. Feeling awful about what I was doing, I gently squeezed his hand. "I'm sorry lovie, I know it's the last thing you want to think about. But if we're going to get the person who did this to your mum and dad we need to know what you saw, while you remember it, and it's clear in your mind. I hate asking you this Peter, especially so soon, but it has to be done."

He nodded reluctantly, and swallowed, his Adam's apple bobbing. Then, after taking a sip of Lucozade from a bottle beside the bed, he began to speak, slowly and hesitatingly. He'd been up in his bedroom, on his computer, when he heard what sounded like a scream. At first, he dismissed it as the cry of an owl or a fox, but then he had gone to the top of the stairs and called down to his mother but got no response. He went down to see if everything was okay, and walked in on the bloodbath in the kitchen.

He started to shake at that point, and I pulled him to me, my arms around him, stroking his hair and making soothing sounds. After five minutes or so he pulled away, clearly embarrassed, and continued his narrative. He'd seen a movement through the kitchen window, and a man had looked in at Peter. The boy saw him quite clearly in the neon light from the kitchen: his description couldn't have fitted Richie Marston better if the thug had been standing in the room as Peter spoke.

The intruder had looked as if he was going to return for Peter, but the kid screamed with shock and the guy fled. Peter immediately rushed to the kitchen sink to throw up, then he'd phoned 999. After a few minutes the message had been relayed to the patrol car at the entrance to the farm's drive and the two young lads there had rushed in and found Peter sitting in the corner, where I saw him nearly an hour later.

My heart went out to the poor little sod. With two swipes of a kitchen cleaver he'd become an orphan, and had seen his parents lying on the floor of his home, slaughtered like pigs. It was a shame he hadn't gone straight to the officers on site, we might have caught the assailant. But anyway, the one good point was that he wasn't in the kitchen with his folks -- if he had been, Marston would probably have done for him too.

Nevertheless, there were things that bothered me about Peter's account. If the purpose of Marston's intrusion was simply an assassination, wouldn't he have taken a weapon with him? Why did he grab a cleaver off the kitchen wall? Also, there had been two screams: it was a warm night, and the coppers parked forty yards away had their car windows down - how dopey were they not to have heard anything? Come to that, Eastgate Farm was a good two miles from the main road, and there isn't much traffic on those country lanes at night. How had Marston arrived? He must have driven, and even if he was parked some way from the front of the farm the patrolmen might have been expected to hear his car engine, especially as he left, surely in a tearing hurry? I made a mental note to mention these points to Andy, fearing the worst for the two poor young plods.

I visited Peter for the next few days as well, not to ask him anything - I kept my concerns about his confused recollection from him -- but just to keep him company. He had no other family, and nobody else to visit him. After a couple of days I heard Richie Marston was in custody. Andy was cock-a-hoop. "Naturally he's got an alibi - a 22-year old tom" - his slang for a call-girl - "who admits she was high on smack the entire night. Who do you think a jury's going to believe, her or the bereaved offspring of the deceased?" Andy and I went to see Peter with a photo line-up. Richie's solicitor tagged along, but we needn't have worried. Peter took one look at the snaps of the six heavy set, bearded men and instantly pointed to Marston, as a tear rolled down his cheek.

With our suspect in custody the investigation began to wind down a bit and I switched to catching up on my reams of paperwork: another triumph of modern policing - bureaucracy 1 rainforest 0. I wound down my visits to Peter too. I told myself it was for his sake, that my continued presence would only remind him of that dreadful night. Nothing to do with the ache of pity I felt every time I saw him, and the way the sight of him brought the vision of that kitchen back into my mind.

It was a fortnight after the murder that Andy called me into his office. I was surprised to see that our superintendent had actually rolled his fat arse down from the fourth floor to grace us with his presence. Andy gave me what I thought was a nervous smile and asked me to sit. "Young Peter's about to be released from St Luke's. He's got no relations, and we need to find him somewhere to stay." I was slightly surprised at that. Obviously Peter must still be in a delicate mental state, but at 18 he was an adult, and finding him digs seemed unusually paternalistic for us, almost human.

Superintendent Petty took over. "The point is, we're worried about him. Not so much psychologically, the head shrinker's given him a clear bill of health, but his physical wellbeing. He's now the star witness in two Marston trials, and the family aren't going to be best pleased."

Like a pair of well-drilled relay runners, he passed the baton back to Andy. "We've decided a safe house is the only option. We've found a place up north, nice and quiet, where he won't be noticed. Thing is, Jen, we need a minder for him."

So that was it. They wanted me to babysit the kid while the legal process worked its agonisingly slow course. I sat forward in my chair and squawked, "Sir! I'm sorry but...can't the local force look after him?"

Andy was already shaking his head. "We've already let him down once, we're taking full responsibility this time - I mean the detective branch." He'd cleverly scotched what he'd guessed would be my next argument: if someone had to do it, why not someone from uniform, let them dress up in civvies for once.

It was clearly a stitch-up between my two senior officers, but I was determined to fight my corner. "Why me? And how long for? I'm not sure my husband'll be too chuffed."

Petty made calming gestures with his hands. "You, because DI Purvis tells me you've already laid good groundwork in building a relationship with the boy. He trusts you, and that's important. How long - well, we'll need you to be ready to leave tomorrow afternoon. I'm sorry for the short notice, but I suggest you take the rest of today off to prepare. We're trying to get Craig's trial rescheduled for the end of the month, and accelerate the other brother's to take place immediately afterwards. After that we'll look at options for the boy - resettlement, a change of identity, whatever is considered appropriate. And as for your husband - I'm afraid, Mrs Cross, that this sort of thing is part and parcel of joining the detective branch."

I walked straight into that one! Petty by name and by nature, he was one of the old school, convinced that it was pointless having lady detectives, because they'd just up and waltz off with women's problems and babies and things five minutes after they were appointed. If he had his way, we'd have burly moustachioed officers in Vice, posing as hookers. Utterly defeated, I grumbled, "Well, do I at least get someone else with me? Or am I on a 24-hour shift?"

Petty avoided my eyes. "Unfortunately, the budget won't really stretch to two officers for this, not in the current financial year. You will be paid overtime of course, plus the usual allowances, and we can work out something about time off in lieu." I groaned inwardly. So I really was expected to nurse the kid 24-7. Great! I had expected it though -- thanks to the sodding budget the squad was already carrying two vacancies the force couldn't afford to fill. I was seriously tempted to contact my union steward, but their bureaucracy was as bad as the force's - by the time they got their fingers out the Marstons would have completed their sentences! As I rose to leave, my shoulders slumped, Petty called me back. "By the way, Detective Sergeant - your firearms certification is up-to-date, isn't it?"

I'd been certified to use firearms for three years, but apart from the annual test and the required practices I'd never carried a gun, let alone actually fired one. I hate the bloody things, and it was only because that was the last hurdle to becoming a detective that I reluctantly complied. Andy assured me that there was a weapon waiting for me with the armourer, and I reluctantly went and signed for it, and 20 rounds of ammo.

Jim guessed there was something wrong as soon as he got home that evening. I'm not sure what gave it away: I suppose it could have been the fact that I'd cooked his favourite dish, chicken chasseur with Yorkshire dumplings. Maybe it was the very intoxicating wine that I served with it. But I think it was probably the fact that I was wearing what he called my 'come and fuck me frock', a thin body-hugging black number with a plunging neck to reveal my plumped-up C cup cleavage, and side slits right up to my hip bones.

After he'd eaten, before he had a chance to start questioning me, I took his hand, led him to the couch, and thrust my tongue into his mouth and my fingers into his fly. Jim loved it when I played the whore. He groaned as I pulled his cock out of his trousers, and I dipped my head down and wrapped my lips around it. I tucked my knees up so he could get at me, and the groan turned to a growl as he reached under my dress and discovered I wasn't wearing panties with my stockings and suspenders. He cupped his hands around my bum cheeks and kneaded them as I stroked my lips up and down his member, flicking the tip with my tongue and grazing his balls with my fingernails. I could tell his climax was going to be a big one, and steadied myself as his hips jerked and a stream of hot jizz hit the back of my throat.

Jim sank back into the couch and regained his breath. Then, peering at me through half-closed eyes, he said, "Right, what is it? What are you softening me up for?" We both snorted with laughter at the inappropriateness of the reference to 'softening'. I told him slowly, between long, sexy kisses, making the fact that I was going to be away at least two weeks sound almost incidental. By the time I'd finished he had my boobs out and one of my engorged, dark chocolate nipples locked between his teeth. I could tell his main interested at that point was getting me upstairs and giving me a good seeing to, and he sighed and said, "Okay, we'll talk about it in the morning."

The sex was great. Jim buried his face between my thighs and had me weeping with arousal as he licked and fingered me to a massive orgasm. Then I sat astride him and bounced up and down on his prick, gasping with each downward thrust as he reached up and twiddled my nips like radio dials. Finally, after a recovery kiss and cuddle, he fucked me long and hard, my legs over his shoulders as he pounded into me with his last ounces of strength, his balls slapping against me. I'm not sure he had any ammunition left, but I certainly did, and I had another quaking, roaring climax. Jim would never have claimed to have the biggest equipment in the world, but he always knew how to make the most of it. I went to sleep that night a happy, well fucked woman.