I surprise myself sometimes with the speed I update. Which may or may not be a pleasant surprise to readers, depending on your opinion. Still, here we go again. Warning for some unpleasant 'imagery' in this chapter. Sorry about that, but gangland villains are seldom well rounded individuals.

Rebecca Wright was angry. Not your average pissed off, got a parking ticket, then stepped in dog shit angry...but proper angry.

The sort of anger that precipitates an explosion of some sort. For months now she had been carefully cultivating a new 'client' for Max Zimmer. A major distributor of class A drugs in the Liverpool area. His normal import source and contact had been taken down by a special team from the Merseyside Police. At the moment he was buying from a third party in Holland...at a dramatically increased base cost. So he was looking for another 'safe' supplier for the 50 kilos a month he needed to supply his clubbers and street dealers.

And Rebecca, with a combination of judicious flirtation and hard nosed business negotiation skills, had all but persuaded him to use Max to replace his original importer. Max would gain a regular customer who could spend a cool million plus a month and the new customer would have peace of mind and a constant flow of powder.

But all that was completely out of the window now. Fucking Max and his insistence on wreaking lethal revenge on the Stonem girl, plus anyone who was in the vicinity, had upended a fucking termites nest. Killing the Stonem girl in Paris had been high risk in the first place. Foreign cities are much harder to micro manage. The police there have their paid informants and are usually taking money from their own crooks and home grown 'talent'. Crapping on someone else's doorstep is typically very bad for business.

But in his rage at the intended set up, Max had extended the contract to include the girlfriend, Emily Fitch and by recent association, the Campbell girl too. The ripples from this were spreading out of control.

And now to add to the shit storm, the fucking operative Max had given the contract to had royally screwed up. Her sources at Scotland Yard...the ones who hadn't run for cover at the first sign of trouble that is... told her the killer had been taken down by two have a go hero's and was now in custody in some Godforsaken carrot crunching police station in darkest Norfolk. Somewhere she had no influence and no contacts either.

Bad enough the paid killer was caught just before he carried out the hit, but now there were two live witnesses out there who were now under heavy protection, probably spilling everything they knew about one Maxwell Zimmer. Her main client. The man who enabled her to drive a sparkling new Audi R8 and own outright a Chelsea riverside apartment. The man who'd financed her extravagant lifestyle since she graduated from law school.

But worse than that, the man who could also bring it all down round her ears. To add insult to injury, her new potential client in Manchester… a man who was so averse to bad publicity that he made a Trappist Monk seem gregarious….had called her just after breakfast this morning (which she had been sharing with a rather pretty 2nd year university student she'd picked up at a gay bar last night and spent half the night noisily screwing) and informed her that the deal was off. He didn't do business with people who murdered without good reason. No doubt there were a number of weighed down corpses in the Manchester Ship Canal who would disagree, but the man was pragmatic about murder. Killing was a last resort. Killing out of pure rage was careless and led to lots of unwanted attention.

So the deal was firmly off. The £15,000 a month she was looking forward to as commission was gone too.

But it wasn't even the loss of money that burned. Lately, she'd been getting less and less sure about continuing her business arrangement with Zimmer. At first it had been easy just to do his bidding. Sort out complicated money laundering operations, arrange bail for the odd street dealer who got pinched by local cops...even act as a go between for him when he needed a favour pulling with the Met. But things had been getting a bit 1930's Chicago lately. Cooks little 'on the side' tart was just one of the bodies that had been popping up lately. It seemed like Max was doing a Capone. Getting rid of anyone who crossed him with lethal force. But unlike prohibition era America, the UK establishment looked on extreme violence against its citizens with a great deal of disapproval. The murder of Elizabeth Stonem and the attempted killing of the other two girls was attracting ALL the wrong sort of attention.

Rebecca's expensive heels clicked busily on the marble floor of the anonymous glass and steel office block foyer as she made for the lifts. The shell company which she had set up for him was based here. Nothing too flash, but opulent enough to persuade any casual observer that this was a legitimate business. She knew Max would be in this lunchtime, probably having one of those expensive restaurant order in lunches he loved so much.

Getting out of the lift on the 7th floor, she ignored the receptionist and made straight for the familiar corner office with its heavy plain hardwood door and blacked out glass floor to ceiling windows. She needed to talk to her boss, pronto...whatever high priced lunch or meeting he was in the middle of.

"Oh...Rebecca?...Umm...Max said he was definitely NOT to be disturbed, oh..SHIT!" she heard the girl call out. If she'd been less distracted by her own anger, she might have noted the genuine alarm in the girls voice and the scrabbling as Sarah tried to get in front of her.

The door was closed, but not locked. Normally unless there was a nuclear attack alert, nothing would persuade his PA to interrupt him. Max had made it very clear from day one that when the 'do not disturb' insert on the door was visible, no one was to come in. No one.

An hour after Rebecca pushed the heavy door open and walked straight in, she was still screaming mentally at herself for being such a stupid bitch.

…

Max had had a reasonable morning up to then. He hadn't yet got the bad news about his hired killers arrest and, as far as he knew his tame brief Rebecca Wright had used that sharp mind and those glorious tits to seal a very lucrative business arrangement with the Northern syndicate boss. Life was good.

So good in fact, he decided to give himself a special treat. He ordered in from an overpriced Japanese restaurant on London Wall, then made a short call to a private number. A few hushed exchanges and his 'special treat' was on the way.

Max liked his lovers young...very young. His tastes were not common knowledge, otherwise some of his criminal contemporaries might very much disapprove. But he was discrete...and he had enough money to buy what he wanted. Normally it would happen in one of his three Canary Wharf apartments. Anonymous, private. But today he was feeling a little reckless. A beautifully prepared Japanese sushi platter, followed by a beautifully prepared Japanese boy. Trained, willing and extremely eager to please. Even as he put handset back in its charger cradle, he could feel himself hardening in his trousers. He'd had the boy once before...as part of a double treat. His source had gone on for weeks about how pleasing the boy from Okinawa and his identical twin sister could be for discerning clients. So one night he'd paid the $5000 it cost for a single evening of carnal delights with them.

He had not been disappointed. Together and separately, they had drained him of every ounce of energy. When they left in the morning, he was hard pressed to even wave goodbye.

But strangely, after the event...it was the boy he remembered most sweetly.

So today he decided to treat himself to another, more specialised Japanese delicacy.

…

Rebecca opened her mouth to start the difficult conversation, but stopped before a word could emerge. Max was sitting behind his desk, tie undone and head back. He appeared at first to be sleeping...or so she assumed. In any case his mouth was open as he stared at the ceiling. But that was before she heard the...err, noises.

Rebecca was hardly an innocent. As Max's dedicated employee, she'd done more than her share of 'extra' work on his behalf. It was an occasionally unpleasant part of her role. Fucking Cook the other night had been less of a duty, even if his anatomy wasn't her preferred type. At least he had been predictable and surprisingly skilful. A horny male was easy enough to please. So, finally realising that Max was obviously getting a blow job wasn't totally shocking. If it had been one of the secretaries or a girl from an agency, she'd probably have reddened with embarrassment, shut her gaping mouth and quietly backed out.

Unfortunately for her, she'd walked in at the precise moment Max's little helper had got the gangster to the critical point of the exercise. While she stood there frozen with indecision, the choice was taken out of her hands. Max, eyes still closed, reached down with both hands and gripped the head of his fellator. His mouth opened even further, breathing so fast it looked to her as if he might overdose on oxygen. Guttural grunts came from him as whoever was under that desk diligently finished the job.

Just as Rebecca decided to try for a quiet exit, a head appeared from under the desk, followed by a half naked body. A very young body. She gasped as she realised for the first time that a: it was a boy, not a girl from the office and b: that whoever it was, he was of middle school age.

Her horrified gasp was what finally alerted Max to her presence. His expression morphed from satisfied delight, through absolute horror, into purple faced rage.

"WHAT THE FUCK?" he bellowed as she stood there with a hand over her mouth.

"Get the fuck out of here you nosy bitch" he screamed at her, spit flecking his chin. With a terrible certainty, she knew at that moment whatever her value to him as an employee had been up to now, her days were numbered. Literally.

So she turned and ran.

And ran….

By the time she'd pulled to the side of the road a mile away, the expensive Audi growling even as it idled, her mind was already made up. Max would hunt her down for this, for discovering his weakness. She knew with a sick feeling in her stomach that he would make sure she kept his secret. The killer now in custody wasn't the only employee who was prepared to have blood on his hands. Feverishly, she considered her (very limited) options as she sat with the doors locked, staring sightlessly at the road in front of her. If she carried on running, he would catch up with her eventually. Going back to apologise and reason with him would end badly too. It didn't take long for her to come up with the only other viable solution.

…

In a secret location in West London, Emily Fitch paced the room, biting the inside of her cheek in frustration. Instead of being taken to Scotland Yard as expected, the car had circled the capital south and ended up in an anonymous street in Wandsworth. As the police car had turned for the last time on the journey, she saw a street sign. 'Santos Road' it said. Not that it mattered at that point. All she knew was it was a long, long way from Great Yarmouth and her sick girlfriend. Her fellow travellers had been almost mute on the way down. Each attempt she made to engage in conversation only gained her a brief one or two word reply. It was clear they had decided any conversations would have to wait until they reached the destination.

Which turned out to be a mid sized Victorian terraced house, identical to its neighbours apart from one detail. Between this end terrace red brick and the next was a narrow access alley, barely wide enough for the unmarked car to navigate. Once at the rear of the property, the car did a slick reverse in the rear cobbled alley and backed into a three sided car port. Only then did the occupants appear to relax. The burly detective next to her sighed in relief and spoke.

"Right Miss Fitch. Sorry about all the cloak and dagger stuff, but now we're here I can give you some information about what we know. Lets get inside and have a cup of tea…?"

Unwilling to respond with her own fears quite yet, Emily shrugged miserably and waited until the driver opened her door, he nodded towards a grimy back entrance. The French detective in the other front seat had said nothing at all since they left the caravan park, and she didn't break her duck now. Silently, she followed Emily and the others inside.

Once the kettle was on in the small galley kitchen and the back door locked (Emily noted grimly that it appeared to be steel reinforced with the glazed top half covered in that silvered one way film people used for privacy), she was ushered into a large open plan lounge that looked as if it had originally been two rooms. There was a faint but pungent smell of curry throughout the place which tied in with the area. She'd seen lots of Asian people and children walking around as they drove down the road. A normal London street scene, if you discounted the coppers surrounding her.

"Emily...would you like to take a seat" the French detective said in only slightly accented English. It was a bit of a shock...not the perfect diction, but the fact that the woman actually had a voice, Emily thought bitterly as she sullenly complied.

She sat with folded arms, glaring at her captors.

"So...is someone gonna tell me what the fuck is going on?" she said flatly "...all I know so far is that my ex has been murdered in France and the guy who did it was looking to kill me and Naomi too?"

It was only as she said it out loud that the reality of her situation fully hit home. Instead of her boring, mundane normal life, she had been abruptly pitched into a world of drugs, murder and rape. Things like this only happened in films, didn't they?

The French woman didn't blink, just let the silence linger for a second.

"I know...its hard to take in Emily...but let me introduce myself first, now we're in a safe place. My name is Elise Wasserman. I'm a detective with the Paris Police Nationale… as you now know, we discovered the body of your uh...ex...girlfriend in the bath at the room you shared at the Hotel du Haut Marais. I'm sorry to say that she'd been strangled with a ligature...identical to the one found at the caravan park where you and...Naomi?...had been staying until today. There's not much doubt that the same man was involved. There isn't a lot of CCTV footage available..." she looked up at the other detective who was coming in with three steaming mugs of tea..."...we French are not quite so fond of constant surveillance as you British?" her mouth twisted in a wry smile. "...but on this occasion, there was a traffic camera directly outside in the boulevard. Its the same man"

Emily swallowed hard. Although it didn't take a genius to work it all out, for the first time it was becoming clear that the man who'd visited them in their hideaway wasn't just there for a bit of unwanted rough sex. Once she'd pleasured him sufficiently, both her and Naomi would have been strangled with the same length of wire he'd used to kill poor Effy.

Her throat constricted in sudden misery and her hands went up to her neck defensively. The detective smiled at her in understanding and continued.

"Now, I've spoken to these officers and we think we know most of the facts. Basically, we believe that there was a complicated little ménage going on between you and your next door neighbours?"

Emily's eyes widened and she opened her mouth to protest. Who said anything about group sex? The French woman had the grace to look a little sheepish about her phrasing.

"Sorry Emily...I forgot the translation can be a little clumsy. Ménage in French isn't just used for what I guess you are thinking. It just means a household arrangement. Although we are aware that there was certainly a sexual element, non?"

Emily reddened and sipped her tea as a distraction.

"So..." the woman continued. "You're aware that your gi...uh, Naomi, was originally living with James Cook, who was employed by a man called Max Zimmer? Well known in London as a major player in the narcotics world?"

Again Emily nodded reluctantly.

"Short version then...you and Naomi reconnect and Elizabeth..."

"Effy" Emily automatically corrected.

"Yes...Effy. Right...well, Effy is a little put out that you have resumed your affaire with Naomi...so she does two things. First she goes away with Mr Cook on some sort of drugs trade, she sleeps with him. Then, she sets him up on a sting with an undercover policewoman, hoping to get him arrested and Naomi implicated by association, therefore making you doubt her and presumably force you to end your liaison...am I right so far?"

"Yes" Emily admitted miserably. Laid out like that it sounded even more sordid. She had cheated with Naomi and Cook was a drug dealer. She had a tiny mental flash image of her mothers horrified face when the grim facts inevitably reached her. She shivered in spite of the warm weather and hot tea.

"OK...so the man Cook works for lashes out in revenge at his lucrative business being threatened. Finds out Eliz...Effy...is the person who set it up and has her killed. If you'd been in the hotel room when he arrived, there would have been two bodies found. But luckily you had left Paris already. So...he was tasked with finding you...as the unwitting, but associated loose end in all this. You and Naomi understandably had already decided to get out of town together. But he tracked you down. As luck would have it, the security guard and groundsman were suspicious about him and intervened. And here we all are…?"

She sat back in her chair, ignoring the mug of awful tea. Bloody Brits, never a decent coffee to be had.

Emily shivered and hugged herself as the three policemen waited for her to answer.

Finally she took a deep breath and spoke in a low voice.

"I've been so fucking stupid. Apart from the odd joint in college, I've not even been much of a user, let alone had anything to do with dealing. I knew Cook passed around the occasional wrap of powder at Roundview, but until Effy and me moved up here, I'd almost forgotten he was even alive. How did I get from starting a new job in London to being hunted by a hit-man in a couple of weeks?"

(The night of MDMA excess with Effy and the Paris whores had temporarily slipped her mind)

Tears stung her eyes as she let the self pity she had held at bay for hours come through. Just being with Naomi...even on the run as it were, had buried her doubts up to now. Even if she'd thought about what they were doing, she was easily diverted by the beautiful blonde. Her carefully manufactured new life post Roundview had collapsed like a pack of cards at the first flash of those mesmerising blue eyes...that was the truth of it. If she hadn't had the bad luck to move in next to Naomi and Cook, the only thing she would be worried about today would be where to go on holiday next. In a couple of turbulent weeks, everything she relied on to keep the world the right way up was smashed beyond repair.

The detective spoke again as Emily brooded darkly over her fucked up new life.

"Listen Emily.,,..you need to start thinking of yourself for once. I know the police have that assassin in custody, but from here on in you have to get your priorities straight. Naomi will be guarded by the police in Norfolk until she's well enough to be taken to another safe house. Until this Max guy is locked up...for good...you two will still be in danger, as will James Cook. A team from Scotland Yard are at his apartment right now, but unless the guy arrested talks... which if he's a pro is pretty unlikely...we have no direct evidence tying him to the murder in Paris or the attempt on your lives. Basically, we have to be patient. We may find some forensics to link our murderous friend with him, but these people are careful. You may have to stay here for a little while?"

Emily's heart sank at that. With Naomi in Norfolk for the time being and Effy now in a morgue in Paris, who could she rely on apart from these characters.

Then her mind clicked into gear again. Fuck...how dumb could she be...of course.

"My sister...Katie? She'll be frantic with worry? Can you..no fuck that...can I talk to her?...I need someone with me I can trust absolutely"

The woman glanced at the other detectives before answering.

"I think that might just be possible...but give me her number and I'll call her for you?"

…

A hundred miles north, Naomi was just getting the same sort of news. She was to spend a night in the side ward, complete with uniformed accessory outside her door. Then she was to be taken down to London too. But not to the house Emily was being held in. Instead she was going to be lodged with one James Cook in a North London safe house. The Met wanted them both to be available for further questioning, specially as Cook was still on bail and had a court appearance coming up.

…

At Kilburn Police Station, chosen because it was definitely not one of the places Max had coppers on the payroll, a smartly dressed woman stepped out of her shiny Audi R8, ignoring the curious and envious looks from the shift change going on. She walked briskly into the lobby and waited for the person in front of her to report a missing cat. Then she took a deep breath and smiled winningly at the civilian manning the desk.

"My name is Rebecca Wright and I would like...no I have...to speak to the station Superintendent. I have vital information about a major drug cartel, including several murders?"

"Blimey" the middle aged woman behind the glass said, "...now thats a request we don't get every day?"

The elegant visitor perched gingerly on the worn seat against the wall and waited for the woman to make the call. Rolling the dice, she thought to herself...just rolling the fucking dice.

More soon, if you want it, including an angry and protective KFF, who could resist?