ONE

MONDAY MORNING AND I WAS already being called into see the boss. Never a good start to the week. If I’d known the week would end with me naked and spanked in front of a room full of people, I would have told him exactly where he could stick his undercover operation. But I had no idea just what was in store for me when he yelled my name across the office.

“West, get in here.”

I had just taken my jacket off and slung it over my chair. I hadn’t even sat down yet.

“Now!” he added before turning and vanishing.

“And good morning to you too,” I muttered as the office oohed and tutted at me.

“What you done, West?”

“His wife found out about you two?”

“Two sugars in mine once you’re done with him.”

I flipped the bird as I passed by the other desks, trying to keep the smile from falling away. I had no intention of letting them know I was nervous. I’d only been with the department for six months and I’d yet to be involved in a case of any depth. So far all I’d done was grunt work, tailing other detectives, none of whom took too kindly on having a rookie thrust upon them.

I pushed open the door to the chief’s office, finding him sat behind his desk, flicking through a file. “You called, Sir?” I asked as I closed the door behind me.

“Sit down and listen, West,” he said, pointing at the chair without looking up. He continued flicking through the file while I watched, wondering if this was some kind of power play. Keep me waiting, assert his authority. That would explain the nameplate on his desk. Etched brass. Detective Chief Inspector L Gayle. We all knew who he was, why bother with a nameplate?

He looked worryingly close to a heart attack, blotchy skin, veins bulging, running entirely on coffee and surreptitious cigarettes out of the window that he thought none of us knew about. The office stank of smoke, it didn’t take Sherlock Holmes to work out what was going on.

“What do you know about the Restraint Club?” he asked, closing the file and looking up at me at last.

“I think you’re a good boss but I’d prefer if you bought me dinner first.”

“Very funny,” he replied without smiling. “What do you know about it?”

“It’s a bondage club. Somewhere politicians go to get spanked by leather clad ladies of leisure. Licensed and legal as far as I know. Why?”

“Three girls have gone missing from there in the last month.”

“Murdered?”

“We don’t know. All we know is that they were there and then they weren’t. The club owner’s starting to get twitchy and I think you can understand why.”

“Because if word got out that his club wasn’t safe-”

“He’d be out of business, exactly.”

“So what do you want me to do?”

“I’m glad you asked,” he said, sliding the file across to me. “I want you to go undercover.”

I began flicking through the file. Three photos of girls younger than me.

“Cassandra Macintyre,” Gayle said. “Nineteen years old. Last seen on the third, vanished at the end of her shift and didn’t come back in.”

I moved onto the next photo. This one looked even younger. Was she even legal?

“Yvette Briers, also known as Babyface. She’s twenty-one and that’s a wig, she’s naturally blonde same as Cassandra. She went out for a cigarette halfway through the night and didn’t come back. That was a week ago.”

“Getting careless? Took the first one out and then got cocky, snatching the second mid shift.”

“Maybe. And then there’s Beth.”

I moved to the final photo. She looked happier than the other two. The shot was taken outside, it looked like it had been lifted off the internet, slightly pixellated, not great quality. There was an innocence to it. “That was taken three years ago, it’s the best we’ve been able to get.”

“What about Facebook? Instagram?”

“Privacy settings. Officially she’s not missing yet, she just didn’t turn up to work last night. Left a note in her dressing room that was to quote the club owner, out of character.”

I knew what he was talking about. Until twenty-four hours were up, she wasn’t even a statistic. Only then could we start to lean on the social media companies to open up access. Sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn’t. But if that was the only photo we could get of her, that would make her...

“Nineteen now.”

“What the hell happened between sixteen and nineteen to take her from smiling on a beach to abducted from a BDSM club?”

“You tell me, West, that’s what you’re paid to do.”

“When do I start?”

“How’s the Gleeson case?”

“Just mopping up really.”

“Think Halifax can spare you?”

“Would it matter if he couldn’t?”

“Not really. Any questions?”

“So many questions. Why me for a start?”

He coughed violently, unable to speak for a minute. The veins bulged more alarmingly than ever before he finally got a lid on it. “You’re the only woman here. If we go in mobhanded, the killer will see us a mile off and be out of there before we can blink.”

“So you do think they’ve been killed?”

“I, like you, withhold judgment until all the evidence has been gathered. But I doubt they’ve decided as a trio to join a knitting group. They might be alive, West, but all my years of service would suggest it’s unlikely. Is that a P.C enough answer for you?”

I nodded. “What do you want me to do?”

“It’s all in the file. Read it thoroughly. Tomorrow night, you sign up at the club, you get in, you look around, you ask the important questions and then you report back to me. That is, if you think you’re up to it?”

He caught the nervous expression on my face and I toned it down. I was nervous, but not for the reasons he thought. I wanted him to think it was because I was going to have to go undercover at a bondage club, an environment I knew nothing about. But, I was more nervous that I might let slip the fact that I’d always wanted to go there. I’d never dared, dressing as a sexy submissive, being ordered what to do by some muscleclad masked dominant. The thought was enough to make me shiver.

But it wasn’t the kind of place an aspiring detective could frequent, not without word starting to get round. So I’d filed it away in the mental drawer marked “Dreams never to be fulfilled,” alongside travelling to the moon and getting my cat to learn that my head wasn’t a pillow.

But now I had the perfect excuse. Not only that but the chief needed me. If I could get this right, it would do my career no end of good. All I had to do was work out where the girls were. Simple. Or so I thought.