the couple who’d already started screaming at each other again and saw a teenage girl, no more than sixteen or seventeen. Intelligence and sexuality blazed from her almond-shaped eyes that were so brown they appeared quite black. Her strikingly angular face was covered with flawless olive skin and framed by long deep brown curls. Her tight jeans and top showed off her curved hips and full, shapely breasts. Despite the complete lack of style or subtlety in her appearance, she was undeniably beautiful.
‘Who’s this?’ he asked the screaming woman, before realizing his virtual whisper was being drowned out. ‘I said, who’s this?’ he shouted loud enough to match them as he continued to stare at the girl standing halfway up the stairs. She looked straight into his eyes, a slight smile of seduction on her lips as she seemed to ignore everything in the house but him.
The couple momentarily stopped shouting and looked in the direction he was facing. ‘That’s my eldest,’ Royston told him. ‘Kelly.’ She looked to King and then back to Kelly before bellowing at the girl. ‘I thought I told you to stay upstairs and watch your brother and sister.’ Kelly casually shrugged and began to climb the stairs, looking back over her shoulder as she did so, her eyes never leaving his as she seemed to float from step to step with the grace of an old movie star.
‘How old is she?’ he asked Royston once the girl was out of sight.
‘Why d’you want to know?’ she asked, suspicious.
‘For my report,’ he told her, not even sure if he was lying or not.
‘She’s seventeen,’ Royston finally answered. ‘Be eighteen in a couple of months.’
‘And the other children in the house?’ he asked, recovering from the distraction of Kelly.
‘Jason’s thirteen and Sharmane’s eleven,’ she told him, before re-igniting the battle with her boyfriend. ‘Not that it’s got anything to do with the fact that I want him out of my house.’ She stabbed an index finger at the man’s chest.
‘I ain’t going nowhere,’ he shouted back as King and Renita got in between them, easing them further apart. ‘I paid for everything in here, so why the fuck should I go anywhere?’
‘’Cause it’s a council house and it’s registered in my name,’ she screamed back with an ugly smile.
‘All right,’ King spoke loudly enough to be heard and silence the bickering couple. ‘You,’ he talked to the man. ‘What’s your name?’
‘Chris O’Connell,’ he answered truthfully. King could smell the alcohol on his breath.
‘Is the house registered in your name?’ King continued.
‘No,’ O’Connell admitted.
‘No, it bloody isn’t,’ Royston refused to remain silent for long. ‘I told you – it’s in my name.’
‘So fucking what?’ O’Connell called to her over King’s shoulder.
‘Do you want this man to leave?’ King went through the procedural questions he needed to ask.
‘Course I want him to bloody leave,’ she confirmed loudly.
‘Then, Mr O’Connell,’ he told him, ‘you have to leave.’
‘I ain’t fucking going nowhere,’ O’Connell hissed.
‘I was hoping you were going to say that,’ King replied before moving faster than O’Connell could anticipate, spinning him around and pushing him up against the nearest wall as he twisted an arm up behind his back, making O’Connell call out in pain. ‘Chris O’Connell,’ King began, ‘I’m arresting you for causing a breach of the peace. You have the right to remain silent, blah, blah, blah,’ he continued as he pulled O’Connell’s other arm behind his back and locked quick-cuffs around his wrists.
‘Argh,’ O’Connell complained. ‘Get the fuck off me.’
‘Be quiet,’ Renita told him as she helped King restrain the struggling man.
‘Oi, what you doing to him?’ Royston tried to come to O’Connell’s aid.
‘What you wanted,’ King told her, breathing a little heavily as he battled with O’Connell, who’d been made strong by anger and alcohol. ‘We’re removing him from your house.’
‘Yeah, but,’ she argued, moving towards them, ‘there’s no need for all this.’
‘Back up,’ Renita warned her, ‘or you’ll be getting nicked too.’ Royston stopped in her tracks as Renita pinched her radio and called for a van to transport their prisoner. At the same time King looked over his shoulder to check any danger Royston could be to them, but he found himself looking past her to the figure that now stood in the shadows at the top of the stairs, looking down on him with the same smile of unknown intentions. For a moment it felt as if he and Kelly were the only people in the room before she gave a silent giggle and disappeared into the upstairs darkness.
‘You all right?’ Renita asked without being heard. ‘Sarge. You all right?’
‘Yeah,’ he answered as her words cut through the intoxicating effects of Kelly. ‘I’m fine.’
‘Good,’ she told him. ‘Van’s on the way.’
King had keys, but still he knocked on the front door then took a step back. He wrung the neck of a bottle of wine while he waited next to Sara, who was holding an elaborate bunch of flowers and a box of expensive chocolates.
They listened as heavy, military-sounding footsteps approached followed by the sound of at least two locks being freed. The door swung ceremonially open, revealing the tall, straight-backed figure of a man in his sixties standing unsmiling in the entrance, his hair cut short and neat, his clothes as clean and pressed as his uniform had been before he retired as a full colonel from the army.
‘Made it here at last then,’ he greeted them.
‘Dad,’ said King.
‘And how are you, Sara?’ his father asked, ignoring his son as he stepped aside to allow them to enter.
‘I’m fine thank you, Mr King,’ she answered through a nervous smile.
‘No need to stand on ceremonies,’ he told her. ‘I keep reminding you to call me Graham. Everyone else does these days.’
‘Sorry,’ she apologized. ‘I keep forgetting. I’m fine thank you, Graham.’
‘You’d better come and say hello to your mother,’ he told King. ‘Let her know you’re still alive. For some reason she still worries about you. Can’t think why.’
‘No,’ King rolled his eyes at Sara when he was sure his father couldn’t see. ‘Nor can I.’
The two couples began to eat their way through the meal that King’s mother, Emily, had taken hours preparing. King couldn’t help but think
