Free Destroying Angel by Sam Hastings

now.’
    ‘Really?’ Annabella’s tone of slightly amused disbelief annoyed Susan, even though it was by no means the first time she had faced such a reaction.
    ‘Are you really cut out for that sort of work?’ the man asked.
    ‘I have a moderate track record,’ Susan replied, trying not to sound defensive.
    The man merely gave her a look of scepticism; Annabella responded instead. ‘It’s very sweet of you, dear, but I’m afraid there’s not much to do. The police think it’s the work of that serial arsonist, the Fire Ghost. They’ve been after him for months, so I don’t suppose you could do anything, anyway. Oh, by the way, this is Philip Ruddock, my warehouse manager. Philip, Susan MacQuillan. She’s terribly sweet; she and a reporter friend of hers thought we might be being cheated in some sort of wine scandal and came over to tell me yesterday.’
    ‘I hardly think they’d be qualified to judge such a thing,’ Ruddock answered with an arrogance that further infuriated Susan.
    ‘Oh, no,’ Annabella continued, ‘it was Alan Sowerby who thought he’d found a scandal, something to do with an exporter selling table wines as quality wine. Of course, I said it was nonsense; just poor old Alan being an idealist.’
    ‘Sowerby did at least have a moderate palate,’ Ruddock put in, ‘but he was no businessman. Now if you’ll excuse us, we are very busy.’
    Susan left, seething at their attitude, particularly Ruddock’s. Annabella had been condescending, and probably more so than she would have been had Susan not submitted to her sexually. That was a common reaction though, if annoying; many of Susan’s partners had expected her to be meek and submissive in ordinary life, just because she enjoyed sex that way. Such relationships never lasted. Annabella was arrogant, but Ruddock was both rude and arrogant. He was an unpleasant little shit, but she still knew that next time she fantasised over being sexually humiliated by a man, Ruddock’s image would creep into her brain, whether she liked it or not.
    What had been a casual interest in an investigation, done purely to help Paulette and fill in time until another case came her way, had now turned into a burning need to get to the bottom of things. Of course, there was also the chance that the fire genuinely was another Fire Ghost attack and that, by further investigation, she would only make an idiot of herself. There was also the fact that nobody was paying her to make the investigation, yet her natural stubbornness wouldn’t let her back down.
    No, she would see it through, and preferably with police help. Paul Berner, for all his cock-sure arrogance, had a brain, and it was possible he could be persuaded to take an interest in the case. Given that the investigation into the Fire Ghost was obviously getting nowhere, it should be easy for anyone involved with the metropolitan detection squad to get onto the team. That was what she intended to get Berner to do, even if it meant sucking his cock for him every day for the next year.
    Bob Tweed watched as the small, curvaceous woman walked towards him. On a normal day he would have knocked off some hours earlier. But with the fire at de Vergy Fine Wines, an apparently endless succession of policemen and reporters had wanted to talk to him. All in all, he felt thoroughly pleased with himself. He would now be on television and in the papers: famous, if only briefly and only by chance. Still, it was a good feeling.
    He half-expected the woman to come and speak to him, as so many of the other people who had visited the fire site had done. Looking at the way her big breasts strained against the fabric of her T-shirt he was hoping she would, too, if only so he could admire her at close quarters. But instead she turned towards the rank of cars drawn up against the trading estate fence and made for the small black one she had arrived in.
    As she bent a little to open the door he was treated to a view of a bottom