Spring-heeled Jack - Part Two
TUESDAY
The postcard came the next morning. A view of an expensive hotel in Kensington with a window marked in biro. "Dear William, having a wonderful time, wish you were here. This is my room -- I can see all the lights of London. Your loving Auntie Rita." The only problem was his Auntie Rita had died in 1963, and the only person, apart from himself, who knew about her was Doyle.
He sat at the kitchen table drinking coffee, surprised at how relieved he was. About bloody time too. He was getting sick and tired of wondering what the fuck was going on.
Another day spent in apparently useless watch over 44 Minster View. By now the obbo had been going on long enough for a few creature comforts to have turned up. Someone had brought a couple of canvas chairs, a paraffin heater and an electric kettle, so at least the boredom was mitigated by the occasional cuppa. He kept watch with well-trained efficiency, but his mind kept wandering and he had to make a conscious effort to stay focused.
That night, as soon as it was dark, he set off for the Grosvenor Palace Hotel. In deference to the venue, and with a view to remaining inconspicuous, he wore one of his good suits. Doyle called the look `ex-armychic', a remark Bodie had not understood, and had therefore ignored, until the day he went to the wedding of an old mate from 3 Para, and found that all the blokes from the forces were dressed in virtually identical double-breasted suits.
The hotel was even more expensive than he had anticipated. The porters obviously doubled as security and he was reluctant to flash his ID until he knew what was going on. He had to hang around the bar for half an hour, before a family party headed for the lifts, and he could add himself to the group by the simple expedient of walking behind them wearing a social smirk. A quick calculation had given him the room number and he got off on the fourth floor, counting off the doors until he found room 427. When he used their knock and got the right reply, he went in without a second thought.
The room was in semi-darkness, the only light the sodium yellow backwash from the street below. The figure he saw silhouetted against the window was so unfamiliar that his reflexes sent his hand diving for his gun before his brain caught up and told him not to be such a fool. It was Doyle all right, but a Doyle he hardly recognised.
He switched on the lights, needing to see properly, to make sense to it all.
Doyle did not move, he just stood by the window and let his partner look at him, at how he had been changed, at what he had become. The familiar shaggy mop had been cut very short indeed, with an expensive expertise that had tamed the curls to a vestigial wave. His suit was several hundred pounds' worth of dark-grey wool, that somehow diluted the familiar steel-cord strength down to a lean and rather frail-looking elegance, an elegance enhanced by the snow-white shirt and the dull crimson magnificence of his silk tie. Doyle looked polished, wealthy and faintly unEnglish.
But most of all he looked old. The lines around his mouth and nose, that normally only showed under high tension or great fatigue, ran deep and there were dark smudges under his eyes. The haircut had taken out all the reddish highlights bleached in by the summer sun, and the grey at his temples showed up stark against the darker hair beneath.
Bodie stared at this elegant stranger and felt chilled. He had the sudden horrible conviction that the Doyle he knew, the scruffy little git who dropped his aitches and drank milk out of the bottle, was just another performance, an undercover job for the real Ray Doyle, a man he had never met. This was Doyle as he would be one day, when he tired of playing cops and robbers through the London streets and turned his attention to more adult concerns.
One thing was sure. If this was an undercover op, Doyle was in deep. Normally he barely changed himself, relying on quick wits and acting to get him into a role. Ray Duncan and Piet Van Niekirk could have been twins. Whatever this was, it was something different, something very, very serious indeed.
There was an open bottle of scotch on the table and a tumbler which matched the one in Doyle's hand, so Bodie helped himself, trying to cover his disorientation with movement. He lifted the bottle and whistled at the label, this stuff was costing someone a pretty penny.
He lifted his head and forced himself to look at the stranger with Doyle's face. "What's up?" he said.
"Hello Bodie, nice to see you too. How've you been?" The usual sarcasm seemed forced and Bodie's unease ratcheted up a notch. Doyle had stayed over by the window. One hand was stuffed in a trouser pocket, but the one that held the glass trembled slightly. After a few seconds he seemed to notice it, because he came over to the coffee table and set the glass down with an over-emphatic clunk, returning to his position by the window.
Bodie looked round: a big room, expensively decked out in imitation of a gentleman's club: dark wood and leather sofa and chairs, heavy curtains, hunting prints and a door, presumably leading to the bedroom and bathroom.
"Nice place you've got here." He couldn't think what to say. Something was obviously badly wrong and he didn't know how to go about finding out what. After four and a half years of working with Doyle, he was shocked by the realisation that he did not know how to deal with him.
"I'm not staying here, I just borrowed it for the evening -- the manager owes me a favour." Doyle grinned, the sudden urchin expression oddly incongruous. "You should see my suite at the Savoy."
"Blimey, who's paying for that?" He was still feeling his way. After years of saying more or less whatever came into his head, of not bothering to hold anything back, he found he was choosing his words with what felt like exaggerated caution.
Doyle gestured down at himself. "Jeffrey Cabot Christopher the Fourth, at your service." For a few seconds his vowels blurred and shifted. American with a hint of Boston; Doyle had always had a knack for accents.
Bodie took a seat in one of the leather armchairs, stretching out his legs, more comfortable now they seemed to be getting somewhere. "Who's he when he's at home?"
"Bagman for the Sons of Erin."
Well, that made a twisted and unwelcome sense. The sons of Erin, a group of wealthy and so far anonymous Irish-Americans, who chose to pay tribute to their heritage by spending huge sums fighting a vicarious war half a world away; dangerous because their own security protected them from the consequences of their actions.
Suddenly Doyle was moving, pacing back and forth before the window, shrugging out of his jacket and throwing it on chair before rolling up his sleeves. An automatic action that relaxed Bodie as perhaps nothing else could have done. "They picked him up off Concorde on Wednesday, taken ill. Appendix. He's flagged for Immigration as a `known associate', so they searched his stuff and then called Cowley. He had five million dollars in negotiable securities on him."
Bodie whistled appreciatively. You could buy an awful lot of death and destruction for five million dollars. "What was he buying? Do you know?"
Doyle was still pacing, wired, tense as a drum, his movements made strange and oddly bulky by the loose white cotton of his shirt and the tailored cut of his trousers. "Oh yeah -- that's the real kicker. Young Mr Christopher is looking to buy himself a guided-missile launch system and couple of Viper missiles."
"Bloody hell!"
"Yeah." Their eyes met for the first time and Bodie saw a sudden relaxation that mirrored his own. All at once the awkwardness was gone, the connection between them re-established. Bodie settled back in his chair and waited to find out what was required of him; for the moment quite content with the familiar to and fro of information.
"The Viper -- that's one of FDI's bits of kit. Wasn't there was some trouble with them a couple of years back? Collinson looked into it."
Doyle nodded, leaning on one of the high-backed armchairs. "Sanctions busting, small arms mostly, nothing much bigger than a mortar. They prosecuted a few company small fry but the men at the top turned up clean -- as usual."
"So you're out here pretending to be the buyer so that we can nab the seller?"
"That's about the size of it."
"So, who's your back up and why isn't it me?" Now he came to think about it, Bodie was beginning to feel insulted. There better be a bloody good reason for leaving him out of all this.
"Ah." Doyle's head dropped.
Bodie stiffened, instantly alert. "Ah?"
"Thing is, Bodie, I'm not on an op." Doyle's voice was flat and unemotional. He came round and sat in the chair.
"How d'you mean?"
"Just that. I'm not on an op." He looked up and smiled tiredly. "You didn't ask the sixty-four thousand dollar question."
He seemed reluctant to come right out and explain, and Bodie had to prompt him. "Which is?"
"The name of the seller." Doyle sat back and tilted his head at Bodie, his expression faintly smug beneath what Bodie was shocked to realise was fear. A familiar expression that said Bodie was about to get a nasty surprise. "This time we're going after big game. Anthony St John Claremont Fleming – the Fleming of Fleming Defence Industries. This time we're after the man at the top."
Bodie sat up, as shocked as even Doyle could have wished. "Jesus wept, Ray. Are you sure you wouldn't rather go after the Archbishop of Canterbury?"
Anthony Fleming, first Baron Amersham, industrialist, newspaper owner, philanthropist and friend of royalty. A man as close to government as it was possible to get without holding office, chairman of half a dozen think tanks, commissions and charitable boards, a governor of the BBC and a major contributor to Tory party funds. A man of enormous influence and impeccable reputation. The Archbishop would be a doddle by comparison.
Bodie shook his head, none of this made sense. "What the hell does he need the money for? He's rolling in it." He was beginning to get a nasty feeling about all this.
Doyle shrugged. "We don't know. Maybe he needs cash. He may be asset rich, but even he can't get hold of five million in an hurry without people wondering why he needs it. If he starts selling the Rembrandt, people are going to ask why."
"And where the hell is he going to get them from? He might own the company, but they're not exactly the sort of thing you keep in the garage in case someone wants to borrow one. `Here's your lawnmower back, and by the way you wouldn't have a couple of Vipers going spare, would you?'"
Doyle shook his head. "We don't know that either." He smiled at Bodie's expression. "And don't look like that. This whole thing's been arranged on the fly. The list of things we don't know is about five times longer than the list of things we do know. We don't know where Fleming's getting them from, we don't know how he's going to deliver them and that's just the beginning."
He counted on his fingers. "We don't know if Christopher is supposed to check in with his employers, for all we know the Sons of Erin have sent already someone after him to find out what's gone wrong. Hell, we don't even know if Fleming's ever met Christopher. If he has, I'm stuffed before we start." He sat back, rubbing at his eyes with the heels of this hands, exhaustion evident in every move he made. "There was a limit to how much Cowley could get out of the man before he had to go into surgery; he barely made it as it is and now he's too ill to talk."
"So why the fuck are you going after him on your own!"
"I told you, this is big game. We can't risk CI5 getting linked to a botched job to nab the bastard. If anything does go wrong, he'll get away with it, and if he does that...." Doyle blew out his breath and spread his hands in an oddly graceful gesture of helplessness. "He's got too much power and too much influence to fuck with. He'd have CI5 grubbed by the roots and sow salt on its ground."
"Could he do that?"
"Oh yes, this is one we have to get bang to rights. Word is he doesn't take insults lying down. There are some nasty stories around about his early days mining in South Africa. He's hushed things up pretty well, but the stories are there if you know where to look. He wouldn't even have to get his hands dirty, he's got his own newspaper now. He'd make the Coogan business look like a vicarage tea-party."
"So you're out here on your own?"
"Yeah."
"No back up?"
"No. Not until the meet with Fleming. I get followed – I hope -- and then I'm supposed to get the bad guy to incriminate himself for the benefit of the tape machines. If it all goes according to plan, the seventh cavalry comes out of the woodwork and...."
"And if it all goes wrong you get thrown to the wolves. Just so CI5 and George fucking Cowley can live to fight another day." Bodie was so angry he could hardly think straight; how could anyone ask someone to do this?
"That's about the size of it." For some reason Doyle's mood seemed to be improving even as Bodie's worsened.
This had to be the lousiest idea Bodie had ever heard – no back up, no intelligence, no knowledge of the enemy's positions, just a mad dash into disaster with only an outside chance that Doyle could pull it off.
"So you're going to turn up and try and get him to talk, and just hope there's someone outside, listening in?"
"Yes."
"You're mad!"
"Very probably." Doyle was obviously in no mood to argue with the assessment. "Not to mention scared shitless. What worries me is what's going to happen if the Irish lads are sniffing round. They know me, at least the men at the top do, and what's more they know Christopher. They're not going to be fooled by a hair cut and a fancy suit. If they've been invited to the party, or even if they're just checking up, they'll spot me in about ten seconds flat and when they do they'll start on my kneecaps and work their way up." He rubbed at his shoulder. "Hell, I'm not even carrying -- I feel naked."
"So why the fuck did you agree to do it?"
"For crissake Bodie, why do you think? Two Viper guided missiles, accurate to within 50 yards, effective range 150 miles. They could fire the missiles from anywhere and choose their own target -- Downing Street, the Houses of Parliament, Windsor Castle. Hell, Wembley Stadium on Cup Final Day if it comes to that, and there'd be bugger all we could do about it."
The only sound in the room was the breathy murmur of the hot-air heating system as Bodie took it all in. No bloody wonder Doyle looked so rough, sent out on his own, no one to talk to, no one to watch his back. "So how the hell is Cowley going to explain you away if he has to?"
Doyle ran a hand through his hair and shrugged. "According to Christopher, the Lambeth bomb came from the same source, one of FDI's landmines, a dummy run to show willing. If this little escapade goes pear-shaped, CI5 will ride to the rescue of an upright citizen and save him from the misguided attentions of that notorious nutter Raymond Doyle. A rogue agent on a one-man
crusade for vengeance -- crazed by grief at the death of his lover in the bombing.
"Officially I'm on a fortnight's compassionate leave. The story will be that I went off half-cocked, decided not to wait for a proper investigation of Christopher's ramblings about FDI and just went straight for the man at the top. Fleming can always claim he had no idea why some strange American wanted to meet him, and got a terrible shock when I started raving about the IRA."
His lips twitched. "You should see your face, mate. I know it sounds like the plot of a bad film, but it'll work, you'll see. Fleming will walk free -- there'll be some poor sod somewhere fitted up to take the fall for him -- I'll get dragged off to the nick, and CI5 will apologise profusely and leave me to it."
Bodie was appalled. Not only was this one of the most monstrously unfair things he had ever heard, there was an enormous flaw at the heart of it. "But the only person who died at Lambeth was that copper, what's his name? You went to his funeral."
"Harry Williams -- that's the one."
"Nobody's going to believe that. You're not even queer."
"No," agreed Doyle readily enough and then quite calmly, as though it were nothing important, added, "Not recently anyway. But Harry was." He picked up his glass and took a hefty slug. "Do you know -- apart from the Commissioner's rep and his C.O. -- I was the only bloke from the Force who turned up at his funeral. Plenty of women, bless `em but not a single one of the blokes who'd served with him. Bastards."
"So were you and he...." Bodie was surprised to find how much he minded. He had always prided himself on his lack of prejudice in sexual matters, but it was definitely a shock to find out that Doyle was like that.
"I barely knew him, a couple of months at the same station, a few games on the same football team." Doyle smiled, his face tight, unamused. "But that won't stop Cowley from providing plenty of evidence that we were at it like knives on a regular basis. I haven't swung both ways in years, but there's enough people about who'll remember when I did. No, if it has to -- it'll run. When he throws me to the wolves, Cowley'll make sure they don't choke on the details."
He got up again and began pacing but dropped back onto the sofa after a couple of awkward strides. He did not seem to know what to do with himself, what to do with his hands. "Besides," he said. "Cowley couldn't just give me the securities, I had to break into the evidence store and half-inch `em, not to mention Christopher's credit card to pay for all this. We can't have CI5 money involved, now can we? By the time I've pleaded guilty to B and E, theft, credit card fraud, forgery and attempted murder, I doubt whether anyone will be looking too closely at my motives."
He was trying hard to suppress it, which wasn't like Doyle for a start, but despite his efforts his bitterness was seeping out, acrid and unmistakable.
Bodie hated to see his partner like this, and hated even more that there was nothing he could do about it. Cowley had appealed to Doyle's sense of responsibility, had worked on that oddly pervasive guilt of his. A strategy whose success had not been the slightest bit affected by the fact that Doyle would have known exactly what Cowley was up to all along.
He realised that he was angry. He was angry with Cowley for setting it up. He was angry with Ray for letting him do it and he was angry because both of them were right. This was a chance that had to be taken, a risk worth running. The Viper missile could take a nuclear warhead, and they both knew from terrifying experience how easy it would be for some nutter to provide one.
"Do you know when the meet will be?"
Doyle nodded. "I got the word yesterday -- it's tomorrow night." He snorted, amused despite himself. "You'll never guess who the messenger boy was. Frankie Kincaid -- Fleming's got himself some hired muscle to watch his back."
"Fucking hell. Didn't he recognise you?"
"Nah, I was only a body in the background when we picked up him and Tony. Perhaps he never saw me, not to remember anyway. Gave me a hell of shock when he turned up though. Four days of nothing happening, and then Frankie Kincaid on my doorstep, large as life and twice as ugly. According to Frankie, Fleming's getting jumpy -- this isn't his usual sort of deal and he doesn't really know what he's doing. That's what Frankie and his brother are for. One false move, and there'll be some corner of a Kentish flyover that is forever Raymond."
Doyle dropped his head again, rubbing tiredly at his forehead. "I'd been sitting in that bloody hotel room for four days, waiting to hear. I was climbing the walls by the time he came. I had to get out before I went mad." He looked up. "You know what it's like."
Oh yes, Bodie knew what it was like. Kinshasa 1971. Waiting to drop into the bush, held back by weather that closed in unexpectedly and grounded all the planes. Five days of waiting, desperate to get on with it but desperately unwilling to go. There was a good chance the other side knew they were coming, but the money had been too good to pass up, so they all signed up for it. Five days of waiting in the rain; five days cooped up in a wooden shack beside the airstrip; the smell of sweat and oil lamps and fear; the stupid arguments; the tension; the metallic taste of tea from tin mugs; the craving for human contact; the way the risk seemed to mushroom the more you thought about it. Yes, he knew what it was like.
He knew what it was like, and he also knew that what Doyle was feeling had nothing to do with cowardice. This was fighting, not just fear, but also your own imagination. He had learned early how to stifle his, but he knew it was a skill Doyle had never managed to acquire.
He went over and sat next to Doyle, putting an arm round his shoulders, knowing he had done the right thing when his partner sighed and leaned into him. "Don't worry about it, Ray. Only the good die young, so that rules you out for a start." He felt a little hitch of breath, an almost laugh, and tightened his arm. "If Kincaid and that hairy oaf of a brother of his turn nasty, Cowley'll haul you out."
"If they've tracked me to the meet. If Kincaid doesn't find the wire. If the mike works." Doyle paused, rubbing at his bare arms, although the room felt stiflingly hot to Bodie. "And if Cowley reckons he can do it without compromising the Squad."
There was a moment's silence. "You don't trust him?" It felt disloyal even to think it, let alone say it out loud.
"Would you in my position?"
Quite suddenly Bodie remembered, a wood and the feel of a revolver barrel grinding into his skull, and shook his head. No, in Doyle's position he would not trust Cowley either.
Doyle shivered slightly. "Besides, even if he does move in, it won't be to rescue 4.5. It'll be to save a pillar of the community from Mad Dog Doyle. Hell of a choice Bodie, the Ugly Brothers or the Scrubs." He nudged his partner with his elbow. "Thanks for coming, mate. I was going mad trying not to think about it. I didn't dare leave the room in case Fleming phoned while I was out, and there was nothing to do but watch television and eat like a pig. I must have put on a stone."
"Bollocks, I've seen more meat on a butcher's pencil," said Bodie with rough affection, and felt Doyle laugh, not the notorious obscene chuckle, but a laugh nonetheless. He tousled the unfamiliar hair gently. "Poor old lad. Need someone to talk to, did you?"
Doyle laughed, a nervous, cut-off sound. "Not quite." He pulled away and stood up, retreating to the other side of the coffee table. "Look Bodie, I need you to do something for me."
"Anything, you know that."
"Don't be so certain." He pulled himself up, almost to attention, and looked Bodie straight in the eye. "I've wanted to say this for years, never thought I would. Never thought there'd be a time when I could." He took a deep breath. "Will you come to bed with me Bodie, please. I want you so bad."
It was such a shock that for several seconds Bodie could not think what to say. He got to his feet, feeling at a disadvantage sitting down. "Look mate if you're feeling randy, you go out and find yourself a girl," he said. "Hell, you're using Christopher's credit card, go out and buy yourself a girl. Or a boy. Or a bloody emu come to that."
Doyle did not even smile. "I don't want anybody else," he said, with a lack of emphasis that carried its own conviction. "I want you." And then the ultimate betrayal. "I always have."
Bodie went cold. A physical shock that raised the hair on the back of his neck. Whatever he had been expecting, it sure as hell wasn't this.
Doyle reached out but dropped his hands when Bodie stepped back. "Don't look like that!" he snapped, striking like a snake, belligerence an automatic response to Bodie's obvious revulsion. "And don't tell me you've never done it before! Out in the jungle, night of the battle, nobody you can trust but your own mates and the occasional passing hippo."
"That was different, Doyle!" Wasn't it? "We had no choice, we were all alone out there and it was war. We thought we were going to die."
"Bodie," the name was ground out. "I'm on a one-man Susie. I'm so far out on a limb it's a wonder I haven't fallen out of the fucking tree. If I'm lucky this op will only kill me, if I'm not I'll spend the next god knows how long in one of Her Majesty's jails with a lot of extremely unpleasant people who hate my guts. You know what happens to coppers in jail." He was shivering now, not even attempting to conceal it. He looked up at Bodie and his eyes were wide, the pupils dilated. "I'm scared, Bodie. I'm scareder than I've ever been. I'm beginning to think this is the one that'll do for me and I don't want to die without...."
He broke off, breathing heavily, his hands twisted round one another, the long fingers kneading the knuckles white. "Dammit Bodie, I'm trying to tell you that I love you and I want you and I don't want to sleep alone -- not tonight. I don't expect you to feel the same, I know you don't. If I get out of this alive, I promise I'll never mention it again. Just.... Please, Bodie."
His voice trailed away and for a long moment they stared at one another. Bodie felt sick, this couldn't be happening. He had never thought of his partner like that, never, and he was horrified to find that Doyle had. So much for friendship! He felt angry and he felt betrayed and he did not even try to stop it showing in his face. He watched with satisfaction as Doyle went white and dropped his head.
After a moment, Doyle brought a hand up to cover his eyes and took a deep, shuddering breath. "Well, that's that," he said softly. "I'm sorry, I should never...." He walked over to where he had thrown his jacket and tried to shrug himself into it. His usual absent-minded grace seemed to have deserted him and he had to make several attempts before he found the sleeve. "I don't know what to say, sorry hardly seems...." He swallowed hard. "I'd better be off." With an obvious effort he forced himself to look Bodie in the face. "Look after yourself, sunshine," he said hoarsely and turned to leave.
Bodie watched him and found, to his amazement, that he couldn't do it. He couldn't let him go, not like that, not with that look on his face. Quicker than thought, he lunged after his partner and caught him in the narrow passage to the door. For half a minute they struggled, and then Doyle collapsed against him, his head on his shoulder, his face turned away, the horribly bare nape pressed against Bodie's face. He could feel the poor little bastard was trembling, and all of a sudden it didn't seem too much to ask. This was Doyle, this was Ray, this was his friend, this was the man who had killed for him, who had almost died for him. Surely, surely, he could do this for him? Suddenly, blessedly, the automatic reactions kicked in. His cock didn't care about the sex of the belly it was grinding into, and Doyle felt warm and smelled sweet and no, it wasn't too much to ask.
Gently he shook the man in his arms. "Come on, Ray, we're both too old for knee-tremblers. Let's go find somewhere more comfortable." Doyle said nothing but his embrace tightened, and then he relaxed, letting his weight rest against his partner's broader chest.
After a few seconds, Doyle stepped back and looked him in the eye. He smiled, a little shakily, and reached out, cupping the side of Bodie's face. "Thanks," he said.
Then he took Bodie by the arm and led him through the suite to the bedroom. Bodie could feel them both trembling now, and wondered whether Doyle was as scared as he was. Not of what
Doyle might do to him, he was in no doubt that he could defend himself if he had to, but of what failure might do to both of them. What if he just couldn't do it? Whatever it was. What if he made things worse? What if he sent Doyle out to face the future with his dreams in tatters and his mind off his job?
Bodie sat on the bed and watched as Doyle switched on the bedside light, but left the rest of the room in darkness. Doyle removed his jacket and hung it over the back of a chair, then took Bodie's from him and hung it in the wardrobe. Neither of them could afford to leave in the morning looking crumpled.
Undressing was awkward and embarrassing, neither their usual changing room ease with one another nor an erotic game, his usual prelude to sex. The room felt faintly chilly and he found
he could not look at Doyle. The flare of arousal he had felt earlier had faded, leaving only a determination to see it through.
Eventually, barefoot and bare-chested, he turned and saw Doyle, bending to undo his shoe laces, and suddenly realised he did not know any decent ways of doing this. All he knew between men was the brief and brutal business of sex as a relief, as an aid to sleep, a fast and unloving encounter that was little more than a two-man wank.
Doyle straightened and must have caught something of this in his face, because he smiled gently. "It's okay, love," he said softly. "I'll take care of it -- just leave it to me." Then, his voice dropping even lower, "I've waited so long for this." And he walked forward and took Bodie in his arms.
That first embrace was a revelation, the slide of muscles below the warm skin, the crisp press of the hair on Ray's chest, the strength of his arms, the sure gentleness of his hands. There
was a warm rush of breath against his throat and he flinched, convinced that Doyle was about to kiss him, but instead felt the wetly exciting sensation of his tongue, lapping at precisely the
right spot just below his ear. Abruptly he was hard again. The excitement that had died during the prosaic business of undressing returned in a surge of heat that crawled over his body, a sensation at once familiar and desperately welcome.
He put his arms round Doyle and drew him closer. This at least he knew, the feel of someone's mouth, warm and hungry on the skin of his throat and chest and shoulders. He closed his eyes and shuddered, as Doyle's mouth and hands moved over him. Let it work, he thought, please let it work.
He did not think he could initiate anything, too afraid that anything he did would be wrong, not what Doyle wanted, not what he had dreamed, but it did not matter. Doyle knew what to do,
and as his partner tipped them both gently over on to the silk coverlet, Bodie was content to let him take them both wherever he wanted to go.
It was not at all what he had expected. It was stronger than the women he had known, gentler than the men and sweeter than either. Nobody had ever made love to him like this, nobody.
Everything he wanted and needed, exactly when he wanted and needed it.
How did Doyle know? How did he know just where to kiss, just how to touch, how hard to hold? How to turn everything that was unfamiliar into something that was neither shocking nor
repulsive but exciting and new. Long fingers stroked him over the ribs, there where he was most sensitive, and he arched and twisted in Doyle's arms, his breath hissing between his teeth.
Doyle bent his head, silent and intent, lapping at his skin, waking it to feeling, listening to the noises Bodie made and using them to guide him as he drew the sensations out and out.
Gradually Bodie relaxed, gave himself up to it, no thought of reciprocation or even contribution, just letting it happen, and, when Doyle reached down touch him where he ached, he was eager for it. He lifted his hips to allow the trousers and pants to go, and the deft tenderness made no interruption in the rush and flow of his blood.
It was all so strangely sweet. The sound of Doyle's soft-voiced "Oh" as he saw Bodie naked; the feel of Doyle's breath on the skin of his belly as he knelt on the floor beside the bed and bent his head; the tiny pause before Doyle dropped the last half inch and nuzzled him gently, so very, very gently, rubbing his cheek against the thick black hair.
Bodie could not wait, his heart was pounding high in his chest and he hurt. He raised his head and reached out. Doyle must have felt him move, for he raised his own head. His eyes were
wide, his face pale and wet with sweat. He blinked and shook his head, forcing himself to focus, and as he did, he smiled lovingly. "It's all right," he said softly, and bent his head.
Already wound to breaking point, Bodie came apart. Climax tore through him like flashfire, an explosion that tore screaming along muscles and nerves. He could feel his spine arching
uncontrollably, he heard himself shouting as pleasure wracked him. For endless seconds he hung, poised on the edge of somewhere he had never been before. Then he fell like a stone as velvet darkness gathered at the edges of his mind.
For long minutes he lay, shocked and shivering, the ebb of his pleasure still singing in his veins. He could feel Doyle's head resting on his hip and when he opened his eyes, all he could see
were shoulders, hunched and glistening with sweat and the back of the averted head. He struggled to sit up, dislodging Doyle and forcing him to turn. "Come on, mate, your turn now," and he
reached out to pull him up.
With a strange noise, half sob half moan, Doyle came onto the bed, shedding the rest of his clothes as he did, wrapping his arms tightly round the bigger man. Bodie held him back, shivering, as the press of Doyle in his arms brought a last ripple of pleasure when he had thought himself spent.
Then Doyle was moving again, pushing Bodie so that he lay on his side, facing away. The shift of skin on silk and then Doyle's body, the whole length of it plastered along Bodie's back, holding hard.
Still dizzy, still breathless, Bodie froze. He lifted his head, but Doyle was ahead of him, breath on his neck, the press of gentle lips against his shoulder.
"No, I won't -- I promise. Please. Just let me...please, oh please." The shift and rub of him, hard and hot between his buttocks, moving, stroking, not in but up and down. A sob, the feel of the arms tightening into a grip that would bruise, Doyle's forehead pressing against his shoulder as he bent his head to watch himself moving against Bodie's skin, breath rolling down Bodie's back.
Suddenly Bodie couldn't bear it. It was too lonely, it asked too little and he broke the embrace and rolled, pulling his friend into his arms. That was better. In it together. The way it should be. The way it had always been. He pulled Doyle on top of him, tucked the shorn head under his chin and thrust back.
It did not take long and he wrapped his arms round his partner as Doyle spilled his pleasure between them in warmly familiar pulses, his breath sobbing against Bodie's neck.
Doyle was still shivering minutes later. Bodie dragged down the covers and rolled him between them, crawling after his friend so that he could hold him. The protective feeling was
still there, the need to see that Doyle was all right, and he held the smaller man against his chest and rubbed his back until he felt him begin to relax.
"You okay, Ray?"
"Oh yeah." Doyle's voice was little more than a sigh; soft, satisfied and sleepy. "Shouldn't I be asking you that?"
"I'll live."
A sleepy chuckle. "Go on, admit it. Best you've ever had. That's the advantage of going to bed with your partner, all that yacking on stakeout means you don't have to wonder what they like." He yawned and his whole body seemed to unwind in Bodie's arms.
For a handful of heartbeats Bodie froze, gripped by a great wave of anger, suddenly realising that Doyle had choreographed this encounter from beginning to end. He had taken four and a
half years of tipsy confidences and half-serious boasts and saved them up, hoarding them until he had gathered enough scraps of information to make himself a blueprint of Bodie's body, hoping for a time like this. What Bodie had thought of as part of the small change of friendship, something of no more importance than his taste in food or music, had been something quite different to Doyle, something prized and secret.
He rolled out of bed, heading for the bathroom before he said something he would regret later. He wiped himself off with a wet flannel and looked at himself in the mirror; he seemed pale
and drawn in the white light reflecting off white tiles.
So Doyle knew what he liked and what he didn't; knew all about the appalling sensitivity of his ears, the way he hated to be bitten, the patch under his chin where a tongue could make him
writhe, and he had used the information with delicacy and restraint and a sort of grateful generosity that had swept them both away.
A lifetime of travelling light and alone had made privacy a settled habit for Bodie, he was not used to being known. Now Doyle had more pieces of the jigsaw than anyone else, more than
he would normally have wanted anyone to have. He tried to work out what he felt about it and could not. It was not so much that he felt betrayed, more that he felt that he ought to and, after that first shock, he didn't.
Did it matter that Doyle had got all that stuff out of him on false pretences? He grinned wryly at himself in the mirror, `obtaining naughty secrets by deception', was that it? He shook
his head at his reflection. When you came right down to it -- did it really matter?
He came back from the bathroom to find that Doyle had fallen asleep, so he pottered around, putting their trousers in the press, sorting out the socks. When he could not put it off any longer he went over to the bed.
There was something odd about his partner as he lay there, and it took Bodie a minute to work out what it was, but then he had it. Doyle had pulled the blankets up to his ears. Ray Doyle,
the man who drove everywhere with the windows open, the man who dressed for winter by sticking a flannel shirt on over his T-shirt and calling it sorted, was cold. Conscious of a strange burning sensation in his chest, Bodie climbed back into the big bed and pulled his partner into his arms.
When he awoke the next day, Doyle was gone.
Spring-heeled Jack - Part Three