Page 12 of Dropping Like Flies

With the folder Baros had given him tucked under his arm, Ben led me into a busy room full of desks. I was curious enough about the inner workings of the CID to stand and take it all in for a moment.

“Who’s your friend, Benedict?”

The question had come from a middle-aged man wearing a tan jacket, his paunch sizeable enough that the desk he sat at seemed to struggle to keep it in check.

“Benedict?” I queried as Ben ignored his colleague and led me into a small side room. It was empty of anything except for a large table, a couple of chairs, and a whiteboard.

Ben made a production out of closing the door firmly and pulling the blind down. Satisfied that no one could see in, he threw the folder on the table and turned to face me, his expression tight. “What are you doing here, Griffin?”

Within the confines of the relatively small room, and with no one else present, the bond we shared flickered to life, making me want to touch him, to remind myself what his stubble felt like beneath my palm. I could push him up against the wall and I could kiss him. He’d put up a token fight, but it wouldn’t last longer than a few seconds before he gave into it.

Ben’s fingers wrapped around the edge of the table, gripping so hard his knuckles turned white. “Don’t.”

“Don’t what?” I asked pseudo-innocently.

His eyes flashed a warning. “You know what? You don’t get to dump me, refuse to talk to me for three years, and then just turn up here and think about sex?”

Sighing, I hooked my foot around a chair and dragged it away from the table. Once there was space, I eased myself into it, stretching my long legs out in front of me. The best defense with Ben was attack; it always had been. “Did you have a good time the other night? What was his name?”

“I’m not doing this,” Ben said between gritted teeth. “Any of it.”

“I’ll take that as a no,” I said. “You should choose more carefully next time. There are plenty of perfectly adequate lovers in London. You’ve just got to know where to look.”

Ben shook his head. He took a deep breath in and then let it out. “You want me to get angry about the olives. You want me to kick up a fuss and give you an excuse to walk out of here. You want it to be my fault so you can run to Cade and pretend you did everything you could, but that your position was untenable.” He lifted his gaze to mine, his gray eyes stormy. “You’re forgetting that I know you. I know how you work. I know all your tactics for sliding out of things and pretending they’re not your fault.”

His words stung. Not because they weren’t true. They were. But because I’d convinced myself that I’d only been that way after we’d split. After Whitney. It seemed I’d been in denial. “Fine,” I said. “We won’t talk about the other night.” I gestured at the abandoned folder in the middle of the table. “Aren’t you supposed to be briefing me on the case?”

Ben let out a snort. “What’s the point when we both know you’re not sticking around?”

I pulled the folder toward me. I only got it a couple of inches before he snatched it back. “That’s confidential. And there are things in there, you’d probably rather not see.”

That piqued my curiosity. “Like what?”

Ben rolled his eyes. “It’s a murder case, Griffin. I hate to break it to you, but murder is frequently unpleasant. This is real life, not Law and Order.” He tapped his fingers on the folder, those long fingers of his that I remembered so well. Stroking over my skin. Wrapped around my cock. Deep in my arse, rubbing over my prostate. “These men were just going about their daily lives, and they didn’t deserve what happened to them.” He paused, choosing to ignore the inappropriate sexual thoughts he’d no doubt felt. “What I’m trying to say is this isn’t a game.”

I held his gaze. “I never said it was.” Keen to put us back on something of an even keel, I changed tack. “You got promoted. When did that happen?”

“Eighteen months ago.”

“Congratulations.”

“Thanks.” His face didn’t say thanks. His face said he thought I was taking the piss.

“Tell me about the case,” I repeated. I’d attended the meeting with the DCS with every intention of listening to what he had to say and then politely informing him that his plans wouldn’t work for me. Despite Ben’s presence, something had changed my mind. Maybe I was tired of people thinking the worst of me. Maybe I just wanted to see if my abilities really could be used to solve murders. Or maybe it had nothing to do with me and everything to do with the weariness leaking from Ben now his guard had dropped a little. He wasn’t just tired; he was exhausted. Knowing the true answer required a level of self-analysis I wasn’t ready for, but whatever my motive, I had no intention of leaving without finding out what was going on.

Ben sighed as he flicked the folder open, making sure I knew it was against his better judgment. He pulled out a photograph and laid it in front of me, the young man in it smiling at the camera. “Nineteen-year-old Duncan Whitaker,” Ben said. “Recently moved to London. Politics student. Came out as gay while he was in high school, according to his mother. On the evening of the twenty-third of May, he brought someone home. His next-door neighbor, your typical busybody type, heard him talking to someone and then sounds of sexual intercourse. The walls in that building are thin and sound carries, so it’s entirely plausible without her having had a glass to the wall. Roughly thirty minutes later, she said she heard a shout like someone was in trouble, followed by someone leaving the flat. Not surprisingly, given she’s in her seventies, it took her a while to pluck up the courage to go next door to see if Duncan was alright. She discovered the door ajar and when he didn’t respond to her calling his name, she called the police rather than stepping inside. A wise decision as it turned out.”

Ben shoved another photo my way. It showed a naked body lying face down on the bed, the sheets stained with blood. “Whoever Duncan picked up, presumably killed him.”

“How?”

“They cut off all his fingers and suffocated him. I’ll spare you the photograph of Duncan’s hands.”

I held my hand out for the photo, Ben treating me to a long stare before grudgingly handing it over. The photo captured a closeup of both hands, or what remained of them. “You don’t have to keep things from me,” I said.

“I can feel your nausea.”

I waved the photograph at him. “I’d be more concerned if this didn’t make me feel sick.” A slight tip of Ben’s head conceded the point. I studied the photograph some more and went back over what Ben had said. “What came first, the suffocation or the finger splicing?”

---