Silk Over Razor Blades

  ***

  This time Lenina rejected the offer of coffee. She wouldn’t have been able to drink it anyway, not with her wrists cuffed to the arms of her chair.

  On the other side of the table stood a small rat-faced man in a garish pink shirt with the sleeves rolled up. His jacket lay over the arm of another chair, on which he leaned, thrusting his neck forward. Behind him, PC Jackson slouched against the wall, gazing down at his shiny black shoes. The small interview room deadened all exterior sound and the wall clock picking out the seconds sounded flat in the still air.

  Lenina twitched her arm, frowning when the extravagant cuffing prevented her from even flexing her wrist. Her nose itched.

  ‘Ms Miller, I want to help you here. I really do, but you’re not making it easy.’

  She stared at the plain-clothes detective and felt the weight of Saar’s anger in her gaze. ‘What do you want me to say?’

  ‘I want you to tell me why there’s a dead policeman in another policeman’s house.’

  ‘I already told you.’

  ‘Yes, Tristen attacked Brad when he tried to take you away. But why, Ms Miller? Why? Tristen Blake was a good, experienced officer. He knew better than to take a witness to his house. Why were you there?’

  ‘I didn’t want to go to my friend’s house. I thought it would put her in danger.’

  ‘So you asked to go to his house?’

  She bristled. ‘He suggested it.’

  ‘Really? Not a hotel? Or one of our safe houses? That would have made more sense.’

  Lenina tossed her head and wrenched on the cuffs pinning her to the chair. From the corner of her eye, she saw the plastic cover on the right one crack down the middle.

  ‘I can’t tell you what was in his mind. Only what happened.’

  The irony of it all almost made her laugh. She would have if not for the intense stare from the detective across the table, and the concentration it took to keep Saar from snapping both sets of cuffs to fight his way free. The old vampire prowled through her mind like a lion in a zoo, looking out through the bars and wishing for freedom. Occasionally he roared and rattled the bars, but Lenina held him at bay with a steady mental image of an impenetrable steel cage with no doors or bolts.

  ‘Fine.’ The man wrinkled his nose in an incredibly rodent-like manner and sat down in the opposite chair. He steepled his fingers on the table before him and exhaled long and deep through his thin, moustachioed lips. ‘Let’s start at the top.’

  Saar roared and jerked forward, snatching Lenina’s hand off the chair arm. The weakened plastic broke away, revealing the metal bar within that was bent almost in half. At the same moment, the door to the interview suite crashed open and slammed into the adjoining wall.

  ‘Daddy?’ Lenina jerked straight, snapping the damaged metal bar.

  Her father marched into the room, shaking off the desperate grasp of a community support officer.

  ‘Hey, chuck,’ he offered her a brief smile before turning his attention to the man at the table. ‘Chief Inspector Hobb?’

  Rat-man sat straight. ‘You can’t be here. We’re conducting an interview.’

  ‘No, you’re bullying my daughter.’

  Hobb stood, stretching his spine to reach his full height of five feet and little else. ‘I have one dead detective, another missing, two dead bodies and no answers. No weapon. This woman—’

  ‘Lenina,’ Ray cut in.

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘Her name is Lenina.’

  ‘Right. This woman—’

  ‘Lenina. Use her name, Chief Hobb.’

  Half-hidden behind the door, PC Jackson smirked into his hand.

  Hobb wiped his hands down the front of his bright pink shirt. ‘Lenina . . . Lenina is involved with two of those three things and I’d like some answers. Now if you’d step outside—’

  ‘Have you been answering the chief’s questions, chuck?’

  ‘For an hour,’ she muttered.

  Ray nodded. ‘And do you have anything else to add?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then surely you’re free to go?’ He directed the question at Hobb whose neck had taken on the colour of beetroot.

  ‘I’m not done.’

  ‘Fair enough. I’ll just need a second.’ Ray tugged a mobile from the front of his leather jacket.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Calling a solicitor.’ He smiled. ‘I assume since you’re keeping my daughter here, that you’ve arrested her. She’s entitled to legal representation, am I right?’

  Hobb’s cheeks and forehead coloured to match his neck. ‘That isn’t necessary, Mr Miller, is it?’

  ‘It is, and by “not necessary” do you mean Lenina isn’t under arrest?’

  ‘Yes, but—’

  ‘And she isn’t going to be charged?’

  ‘Not at the moment, but I still need—’

  ‘If there’s no charges and no arrest, we’ll be on our way.’

  ‘I can hold her for twenty four hours, Mr Miller. I don’t have to arrest her.’

  Ray didn’t lower the phone. ‘I understand. In that case, if you’re going to hold her, I trust you’ll be providing her with a counsellor or some other support? My daughter has been through a number of traumas in a short space of time. Did you know her fiancé was murdered less than twelve hours ago? He worked for the local newspaper.’

  ‘Newspaper?’ The change to Hobb’s face was startling. His gaunt cheeks now resembled the white table on which he suddenly leaned. ‘Yes, I . . . I did know that. A terrible, terrible thing.’

  ‘Terrible.’ Ray’s voice hardened. ‘And I’m sure you’re all working hard to catch the madman who’s clearly been stalking my daughter.’

  ‘We have his description. All officers are on active search.’

  ‘I’m not talking about the homeless man. I mean the detective who was grooming my distraught and vulnerable daughter from the moment he met her.’

  Hobb opened his mouth but no words came out. Eventually he managed, ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Did you tell him how he came to the house alone, Chuck? How he gave you his personal number when he thought I wasn’t looking? How he touched you?’

  Learning that her father had been eavesdropping shouldn’t have surprised Lenina at all. She looked at him, watching his face and the sympathy there mingled with frustration and anger.

  Hobb’s lips twisted as though he’d bitten a lemon ‘Did Detective Blake touch you, Miss Miller?’

  She hesitated. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Inappropriately?’

  ‘He said I was beautiful,’ she murmured, skirting around the question. ‘He said he would take care of me. I wanted him to— I was so scared. Everything happened so fast.’

  ‘And he came to your house without Inspector Thorne?’

  ‘This morning.’ She glanced at the clock. ‘Yesterday. He said he wanted to check on me.’

  Hobb looked like a man realising he’d lost his winning lottery ticket. ‘You never told us about that.’

  ‘You didn’t give me a chance.’

  Nervous fingers fanned his pink shirt against his chest. ‘This changes things somewhat.’

  ‘I don’t know what your rules are on victim support,’ said Ray, ‘but we have every reason to file a list of complaints about the conduct of your officers and your personal handling of this investigation. Fortunately for you, taking my daughter home and looking after my family at a time like this is far more important than embarrassing you or your staff.’

  The threat couldn’t have been clearer if he’d shouted it. Lenina bit her lip and kept still, trying not to bring attention to the broken cuff dangling from her right wrist.

  ‘Get those things off her.’ Hobb jerked his head at the uniformed officer. ‘She can go.’

  Ray beamed. ‘Thank you, Chief. I’m glad we understand each other.’

  PC Jackson pushed away from the wall and walked around his boss. Though he kept his gaze averted,
Lenina saw the smallest hint of a smile playing over his lips. The left cuff flopped against the chair with a clang and he reached across her for the second. He sucked in a sharp breath.

  ‘What the hell?’

  ‘Maybe it was faulty,’ she murmured. ‘I didn’t want to say anything.’

  Saar took the opportunity to lash out with his power, cracking a whip-like line of invisible energy at the officer’s head. Jackson shook himself. Swayed. Shot out one hand to grip the back of Lenina’s chair. ‘Right. Must have been.’ His voice was a toneless drone.

  She stood. ‘Does that mean I can go, Chief Hobb?’

  Interrupted from his glaring match, Hobb turned away from her father and rubbed his furry upper lip. ‘Not far. I’ll need your passport and don’t even think about leaving the city. We’ll be watching you.’

  ‘She’ll be with Ramona Phillips,’ Ray cut in. ‘I’m sure you remember her from earlier.’

  The twist of Hobb’s mouth confirmed he did. ‘We have her address at the front desk.’

  ‘Good. Come on, chuck.’

  Determined to get the last word, Hobb leaned over the table. ‘Make sure you get changed before you go, we need those clothes for processing.’

  ‘I’ll take care of it,’ Ray murmured, leading the way out.