Heated Beat 02 - Lucky Man (3 page)

Even crazier than you….

Finn drove home hoping that, for once, he was right, but it wasn’t to be. There was no sign of Danny, and the empty house felt like a sinking stone in the pit of his stomach. Crowded places freaked him out, but being all alone in the big old house did his head in just as much. Without another presence to guide him, he rarely felt sure what was real and what was just his malfunctioning imagination.

And that was without the sight of his stripped bed.

It’s like he was never here.

Finn pushed the thought away and went in search of his bedsheets. He found them in the tumble dryer, warm and clean, and mourned the loss of his Danny-scented bed. To cheer himself up, he ordered a pizza and spent the evening watching
Spartacus
and messing around on the guitar. He was halfway through a mental list of the Verve’s back catalogue when his phone rang.

He dove for it, hoping it would be Danny, but it was Jack, calling from Berlin to check in. Finn rolled his eyes. He’d been renting his spare room to Jack for the past two years, and he was still getting used to having a roommate who gave a shit. He answered the call with a rueful grin. “All right, mate? How’s Germany?”

Jack sighed. “German. And cold. And wet. I swear this place gets more bloody British each time I’m here.”

Finn snorted, though he felt bad for Jack. Jack loved his work, but he hated being away from his partner, and traveling always put him in a bad mood. “I fed your fish, if that’s why you’re calling.”

Jack had the good grace to laugh. “Yeah, you’ve caught me out. You know I can’t sleep unless they’ve had their dinner. Seriously, though. I saw you hitting the beer at the weekend, so I wondered….”

The sentence hung between them like a dark cloud. Jack knew Finn well… too well. “I know, I know. I just felt like being a normal bloke for once. Think I got away with it.”

“And the rest?”

Finn scowled. Danny and Jack hadn’t crossed paths, but he knew Jack would’ve noticed the extra pair of shoes by the door. The notion irked Finn. Until that moment his time with Danny had felt like a precious secret, untainted by the real world. “Don’t start. How often do I have to listen to you and Will shagging?”

“I’m not complaining, mate. Just curious. You never let anyone stay the night.”

Finn shrugged before he remembered Jack couldn’t see him. Jack’s statement was kind. Finn never let anyone stay because he never brought anyone home. Never wanted to. Home was his sacred place… his safe place, when he wasn’t climbing the walls by himself. “He was nice.”

“Did you tell him?”

“Yeah, I rolled over right after he fucked me and said, hey, guess what? I’m a fucking—”

“All right, all right.” Jack cut in before Finn could get truly annoyed. “I’m sorry, okay? I just want you to be happy.”

Finn’s grunt was noncommittal, but Jack let it go. They were good friends… good enough to know when an awkward conversation had run its course. Jack rang off after reminding Finn to keep an appointment that had been stuck to the fridge door since the beginning of the month—an appointment Finn was hardly likely to forget.

Still, he drifted to the kitchen to check it anyway. Paranoia was a lifestyle choice. Why worry when he could just fucking look? And there it was:
Monday 2:30 p.m. Nurse Stutby
. Same as it was every bloody month.

Finn started to turn away. An out-of-place card stopped him in his tracks. He frowned and plucked it from the fridge door. The nondescript business card had nothing but a mobile number printed on it, and was probably Jack’s, but Finn hadn’t seen it before, he was sure of it, wasn’t he?

Finn turned the card over and over, searching for a clue that wasn’t there. The logical side of his brain slowed to a crawl like it always did when doubt clouded his mind. If the number was meant for Jack, it had been there for twenty-four hours, and Finn would’ve seen it that morning or even the night before. True, he’d been distracted by an extended one-night—
two
-night—stand, but the card was white… and almost all of Jack’s music contacts used funky black cards. A tiny detail, but Finn had learned the hard way the small things mattered.

He took the intriguing card upstairs and left it on the bedside table while he remade his bed. It taunted him. He stared at it for far too long before he turned his back on it and stomped off to the shower.

It was still there when he came back, towel around his waist, hair dripping. He skirted around it, averting his gaze while he dried off and pulled on a pair of softly worn jogging bottoms, but when he slid into his empty bed, his resolve ran out.

He turned out the lights and lay down. He’d often found his nerves less potent in the dark. He punched the number in and waited for it to ring, figuring he’d hang up if the voice at the other end wasn’t the one he wanted to hear. Irony struck him. How many times had he done just that? Turned his back on the wrong kind of voice?

Too many to count. He closed his eyes and searched for his happy place. For once he didn’t have to look too far….

“You missed a bit.”

“Hmm?” Danny glanced up from the sudsy sink. Since their late lunch, he’d seemed in a world of his own.

“The tin. Look.”

Danny frowned at the grease-streaked roasting tin. “Is this where you sing me a line from the Fairy Liquid advert?”

“I’m not drunk enough for that game anymore.” Finn leaned over Danny’s shoulder and pressed their cheeks together. Danny felt warm and solid, and though he sensed Danny was gearing up to leave, he didn’t want to let go. “Still beat you, though.”

Danny chuckled. He’d tried to catch Finn out all the way home from the gig the night before, but to no avail. Sad but true: Finn knew the theme song from every cheesy ad Danny could think of. “I want a rematch.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.” Danny rinsed the last dish and handed it over.

Finn shoved it in the cupboard with little care, noting Danny’s gaze sliding to the clock on the microwave. “Got somewhere to be?

“What? Oh no… not really. Just figured it was getting late.” Danny turned and pulled Finn against him. The embrace felt casual and easy… too easy. Finn sighed and kissed Danny’s neck, and for the third time since they’d met, he convinced Danny to slope back upstairs and fall into his bed….

“Hello?”

Finn jumped. His mind had wandered too far, and he’d forgotten what he’d been waiting for, but there was no denying the flat, bored tone was a poor incarnation of the voice he’d been daydreaming about all day. “Danny? That you?”

“Yeah. Who’s that… shit, hang on.” Rustling. A car door slamming, then Danny came back on the line. “Finn?”

“It’s me.”

“Sorry, mate. I was driving. How’re you doing? Long time no speak.”

Finn laughed and relaxed.
See?
Wasn’t so hard, was it?
“I think we last spoke at 2:00 a.m.”

“Yeah? What did we talk about?”

Finn felt warm all over. Danny hadn’t seemed the type to talk dirty over the phone, but perhaps he’d misjudged him, which wasn’t hard to believe. Even naked and moving over Finn, Danny had proved a bit of an enigma. He’d seemed unsure of himself at first, especially when he’d taken his clothes off, but there was something about him… a strength, an edge that told Finn there was far more to the quiet man than met the eye. “You sound miles away. Did you emigrate Down Under since I last saw you?”

“Even if I had, I wouldn’t have got there yet. I’d be in… I don’t know, Singapore, maybe?”

Finn laughed again. “So… where are you?”

“I just got home.”

“Where’s that?” Finn pushed his luck. “You didn’t tell me much yesterday. You could be a reggae dancer from Timbuktu for all I know.”

“Would that be bad?”

“No, just unexpected. You don’t look like much of a dancer.”

Danny snorted. “You’ve got me there. I can’t dance for shit. I’m a… policeman, actually. And I live at the bottom of Marsden Heights.”

Finn heard Danny’s hesitation like a fucking siren. Policeman. Wow. That explained a lot. “Marsden Heights? In the flats?”

“Yep. Top floor.”

Finn hummed and turned it all over in his mind. “You don’t look like a copper. You’re not old enough.”

“Don’t you start. I get that from cons all the time.”

“Maybe they fancy you.”

Danny laughed. “Hope not. I work Vice.”

A pause stretched out between them, an awkward silence that hadn’t been there the day before. Finn wondered if this was what happened when one-night stands went on too long, so he broke it first. He’d called Danny for a reason, right? “So… I’m not gigging this weekend. Do you want to grab a curry or something?”

“I’m working all weekend, but I get off shift at ten on Saturday. That too late for you?”

“No, it’s perfect, actually. I’ve got a jam session in the city that will probably go on late. Have you been to Moja before?”

“That all-night dive behind the coach park?”

Finn rolled his eyes. “It’s not a dive. It’s a canteen and it’s awesome. What do you say?”

Danny was silent a moment, deliberating. Finn wondered what he was doing, what his flat looked like. You could tell a lot about a man by the way he kept his home. In the darkness Finn’s gaze fell on the fire he’d built out of Jack’s discarded drumsticks.
Yeah? So he probably already knows you’re a nutjob….

“Finn? You there?”

Finn felt a flutter in his stomach, and the endearing hint of uncertainty in Danny’s voice made it worse. “Sorry. What were you saying?”

“I said you’ve got yourself a deal. See you Saturday.”

Chapter Four

T
HE
NEXT
six days crawled by. Danny couldn’t get Finn out of his head and found himself preoccupied even at work… especially at work, where he didn’t have time for distractions.

Danny eyed the paperwork on his desk. Like most aspects of his life, it was stacked into orderly piles—neat, clinical, nothing out of place—but something was irking him, something that overrode even his fixation with a certain blond rock star. Danny opened a file and flipped through a few pages. The haggard faces of Nottingham’s prostitutes stared back at him, all with neatly written notes beneath them cataloguing their known habits and stomping grounds. Danny’s colleagues often laughed at him for his meticulous records, but he didn’t care. How would you notice something amiss if you didn’t know what it had been like to begin with? And on Danny’s patch, something had definitely changed: the dynamic; the vibe; the footfall. Something was off.

“Evening, Danny. Got a minute?”

Danny glanced up. Somehow he’d missed his boss, DCI Brown, taking a seat on the edge of his desk. “Guv?”

“Memo from Greater Manchester. Thought it might be of interest to you.”

“Yeah?” Danny scanned the e-mail detailing a spate of missing prostitutes, five in total. The link between them all was tenuous at present, but detectives working the case were concerned enough to alert every force in the country. “That’s a lot of missing persons.”

“Certainly is. Have you noticed anything? Any toms you’re worried about? Girls gone walkabout?”

Danny shrugged. As the newbie on the squad, his main role was the job no one wanted: monitoring the welfare of the city’s toms—the sex workers. An impossible task when the department as a whole had been charged with running them off the streets. How could he observe what he couldn’t see?

But that was a debate for another day. As far as the DCI’s question was concerned, there wasn’t much Danny could say. Toms disappeared off his patch all the time, lost to drugs, trafficking, and God knew what else, and despite his anal approach to record keeping, Danny couldn’t keep track of them all. “I’ve got a few snouts I can ask. In fact there’s a source I’ve been meaning to touch base with for a while. I’ll head out tonight.”

“Good idea. Take Bob with you. Get the old goat some fresh air.”

The DCI retrieved his briefcase from the floor, shrugged into his coat, and bid Danny good night, done for the day while Danny was on shift until dawn.

Danny glared after his retreating back. He wasn’t in the mood for company, at least not the kind Bob Jenkins had to offer. Bob was an old-school copper—conditioned to bust easy collars and wait for the real trouble to fall into his lap—and he’d made his opinion on Danny’s “newfangled” methods well known.

An hour later, parked up in the city’s red-light district, he was still making them known.

“This is a waste of time. Let’s go down Trinity Street and do a curb sweep.”

Danny scowled. Busting johns for curb crawling did nothing but push the toms further into an underworld that was much harder to police, a world of poorly lit streets and dark alleys where Danny was as likely to come across a body as he was a crime. “Not yet. My snout doesn’t stick her head up till late. Give her a bit longer.”

Bob grumbled under his breath but for once let Danny have his way. “Fine, but I’m not driving around this shithole all night. If she ain’t there, we’re heading back to the factory to finish that paperwork from that bollocks pimp bust you roped me into last week. Bloody youngbloods. Think you know it all.”

Danny rolled his eyes. He
was
young to be a vice-squad detective, but he’d worked hard, slogged his way through uni and two years on the beat in Brixton before he’d made the jump to CID. He’d earned his place, and Bob knew it.

And as luck would have it, Danny’s informant appeared on the streets just as he was running out of excuses to wait around for her.

Danny left Bob in the car and approached the street corner, head down, low profile, until he was close enough to call out without attracting unwanted attention. “Hey, Lexi. How’s tricks?”

“Well, well, well. If it isn’t my favorite copper.” Lexi loomed out of the shadows and huffed a cloud of weed smoke into the frosty night air. “Come to smack my wrist for my dirty habits?”

“Maybe. Got anything juicy to distract me with?”