Undercover

[JohnAubrey]

Here's the start of an idea I've been toying with - it will be a slow-burner and hopefully a bit different.


Undercover


It was a good knock. Firm without being intrusive, brisk without being impatient, and with a playful 5/4 time signature that suggested the person standing without was not all business. A lot of thought had gone into this knock.

No one ever noticed. After all, it was just a knock.

“Enter!”

Harriet opened the door and walked into a long, dark office, at one end of which sat a man reclining in his chair, feet on his desk, staring suspiciously at a cup of coffee as if he suspected it of harbouring seditious tendencies.

“DCI Beck?”

He ignored her, and sniffed at the coffee.

“I paid an extra twenty pence for the limited edition roast, and I reckon they’ve palmed me off with their standard slurry,” he announced, still not looking in her direction.

He swirled the cup and took a sip, closed his eyes and contemplatively swilled the coffee around his mouth, serious as a sommelier. By now standing in front of his desk, Harriet had to suppress the urge to take a step back, in the event he decided to spit.

“Top notes of camel rectum… gritty mouthfeel… burnt plastic finish… Yeah, this is their regular blend, all right; I’d know it anywhere. Great. I’ve been bilked by a beanmonger.”

“Sir?”

He glanced up at her, shaking his head ruefully, languorously uncrossed and then recrossed his legs.

“Can I help you with something?”

“I’m from the Serious Fraud Office, sir. I’m-“

“Fuck me, you guys are quick. And all for the sake of twenty pence? Still, the bastards have got it coming to them - they sold me a stale Danish last week too.”

“Oh. Um. No, sir…”

Harriet tailed off, unable to decipher the expression on Beck’s face, unsure whether or not he was being serious. He returned her stare, straight-faced but now raising an eyebrow.

“Anyway, throw the book at them, will you? Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m very busy, as you can see.”

He took a long draught of the remaining coffee, but kept watching Harriet closely. She surveyed his desk, crenellated with uneven heaps of files. It certainly looked like he had a lot of work to do, but whether or not he was busy doing it was another matter. She must have seemed unconvinced, because Beck sighed, removed his feet from the desk, planted his elbows there instead and made a great show of staring intently at a report.

“See? Busy. Largo al factotum della città.”

“Ah, bravo, Figaro! Bravo, bravissimo!” Harriet responded sarcastically, before she could stop herself.

Beck looked up from his desk, smiling, and then smiled even more broadly when he noticed Harriet was biting her lip, staring at the ceiling, wishing she’d kept her mouth shut.

“You got the reference! Well done. No one in here in CID ever gets my opera references. Mention Bellini around here and everyone thinks Prosecco, not Vincenzo. No, who am I kidding? If you went back outside and asked all of my Detective Constables to name a cocktail, at best, someone might suggest a lager top or a pint of snakebite.”

Beck absent-mindedly scratched his chin and stared up at the ceiling, apparently lost in thought. Harriet felt the need to fill the silence.

“My sister is in the London Symphony Orchestra, sir. She started playing the violin at school - well, actually we both did - but she was the one with the musical talent, really. These days, I just go to a lot of concerts and listen to a lot of opera.”

“She’s the Squilliam to your Squidward, then?”

“I beg your pardon, sir?”

Beck seemed to have reached a decision. He stood up rapidly, shuffled some files around on his desk like a dealer playing a three-card trick and then picked one up.

“Well, unless you’re from the SFO’s rapid response minor coffee crimes unit, I take it you’re the investigator I requested on secondment?”

“Yes, sir. That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you.”

Harriet tried not to sound reproachful, with only limited success  - but if Beck picked up on her tone, he didn’t show it.

“I can already tell that you’re what we’ve been looking for,” Beck said, handing the file to Harriet. “Here you go. Take this and go and see my Detective Sergeant. You will find her on the way to the gym, on the way back from the gym, or actually in the gym.”

He sat back down, selected and then began to read another report, seeming to forget that Harriet was still there. Eventually accepting that the conversation was over as far as Beck was concerned, Harriet started to edge towards the door.

“By the way…”

“Yes, sir?”

“Great knock.”

[seldom]

Intriguing start! Lovely wit too. I look forward to it!

[sevenpeight]

Great writing! Love it

[sgsg69]

Very nice start, like an old Columbo show...........has mystery wrapped up it. Nice style of writing. K+

[JohnAubrey]

Thanks for the feedback so far!

Some horrendous weather and a lot of disrupted travel over the last few weeks means that I'm still working on parts two and three, but I'm slowly getting there. Hopefully it will be worth the wait.

[JohnAubrey]

Here's Part Deux, hotshots:

Harriet walked down yet another anonymous corridor, absent-mindedly wondering whether the Minotaur ever felt this lost in the middle of the Labyrinth. She had been peripatetic for a good twenty minutes now, distracted and oblivious to the curious looks from the occasional uniformed passersby.

Not that she was keen to stop and ask for directions to the gym. Even though she was still in the early stages of her career she had spent sufficient time in various police stations to have learnt that the average copper, upon hearing her cut-glass enunciation, would stop and goggle at her, leaving her feeling as out of place as Brian Sewell ordering an Armagnac in The Rovers Return. 

Mostly Harriet was distracted because her mind was replaying her conversation with DCI Beck, trying to make sense of their brief discussion. She had been warned that he was unconventional, but their interaction had not revealed any further information about why she had been specifically requested on secondment by one of the force’s most renowned investigators.

She was also, however, trying to suppress the image that had popped into her mind of an increasingly furious Minotaur trying to remove an Ordnance Survey Landranger map from his horns, where it had become impaled as he had tried to work out if he was on a footpath or a bridleway, folding the sheets in search of the key.

She stopped and sighed, wishing, not for the first time, that her brain would not pick such inconvenient moments to indulge in comic flights of fancy. She could almost hear her sister sarcastically referring to the ‘benefits of a classical education’ in her best Hans Gruber voice, as she had so many times in the past.

Harriet glanced around for any sign that she was heading in the right direction. From somewhere outside, a dull thudding noise rattled the glass in the windows, presumably the result of some sort of excavation work happening out at the roadworks on the nearby dual carriageway.

Except, as she meandered a little further down the corridor, it began to sound more and more like the thudding noise was coming from inside the building. She took a few more steps, turned the corner, and saw a heavy set of double doors, painted the same uniform grey as the walls, but bearing a small, old-fashioned legend stencilled in fading white paint: GYMNASIUM.

Relieved to have her bearings finally, Harriet walked towards the doors and pushed them open. The gym was poorly-ventilated, warm and fusty; if this room were a body part, then it unquestionably would have been an unwashed armpit.

It was also almost entirely empty, but its sole occupant would have been capable of immediately drawing the attention even if the gym were at full occupancy: half-crouching with her back to the door was a woman, an unusually substantial woman, in cropped leggings and a loose vest stained with sweat, a generous blot that would provide an interesting start to any Rorschach test.

As Harriet stepped inside the gym, the woman began to slowly straighten her legs and Harriet could see that she was lifting a bar even longer than she was tall, and loaded with weights at each end. Legs wobbling slightly, a whistling of air escaping from the moue of her pursed lips, the woman slowly but surely raised the bar, pulling it up and driving her hips forward; Harriet stared as the woman’s callipygian buttocks solidified and pushed together, jostling for space beneath the leggings like two cowled men butting heads.

The woman held her position for a couple of seconds and then dropped the bar. If Harriet had remained in any doubt as to how heavy it was, the sound of the weight hitting the padded floor and bouncing a few times before eventually succumbing to inertia resolved the issue. 

The woman turned, rubbing her hands together like a miser anticipating a saving, a puff of some kind of powdered chalk scattering through the air, her upper arms balling and twitching with muscle. Noticing the new arrival, she started to walk towards the gym’s entrance, and Harriet couldn’t help but notice her slightly divergent strides, her legs moving forwards and outwards to accommodate the size of her thick thighs.

Harriet could not remember if she had ever met anyone as large and powerfully-built as this woman - perhaps, she thought, her mind travelling back to university and her college’s obligatory complement of rugger buggers, some of the members of the First XV were bigger, heavier, stronger, but only perhaps.

The giantess stopped in front of Harriet, her proximity and size almost entirely blocking out Harriet’s view of the gym. Although the stranger was definitely smiling, her broad mouth curling up at the corners, and nothing about her body language suggested she was trying to physically intimidate Harriet, her unexpected size made Harriet feel defensive and, for the second time today, she had to suppress the urge to take a step back.

“A’m DS Kane. Dae ye ken that you’re staring, pal?”

[Wookey]

Loving the slow build

[hatour]

Slow indeed.  But I love your writing style. Keep up the good work and you might get a pint for your troubles. Karma for all!

[JohnAubrey]

Part 3 should shed a little light on where I'm going with this story, and will hopefully be up tomorrow.

[JohnAubrey]

Part the Third:

Like so many miniature dogs, the dachshund currently standing on DCI Beck’s desk wore a look - currently directed at Harriet - of pre-emptive reproach, as if resigned to the fact that its ankle-height existence presented her with an inevitable trip hazard. Maybe not today, it seemed to be thinking, maybe not tomorrow, but at some point this stupid woman is going to fall over me; she’ll go arse over tit, and I’ll be the one to get the blame.

Not even the fact that the dachshund was at the moment well out of harm’s way and being fed cubes of cheese by Beck could make it look any happier about this potential scenario. It maintained eye contact with Harriet and paused for a moment between gnawing lumps of cheddar long enough to be lavishly flatulent, a peculiarly squeaky ebullition, as if it were a balloon animal losing all of its air.

The interruption seemed to make the little man, who had been droning on for the last ten minutes, lose his thread, and he paused to fiddle nervously with his collar. He had been introduced to Harriet only as ‘Pooter, from the Financial Conduct Authority,’ and if he enjoyed his job, he certainly didn’t give that impression. In fact, it was hard to imagine him enjoying anything.

Harriet didn’t feel particularly happy either. Even sitting down, her entire body ached, limbs trembling as if suffering from palsy, occasionally violently jerking in a sort of St. Vitus’ dance as her muscles spasmed; the taste of vomit still lingered in her mouth. Ninety minutes of working out with DS Kane had reduced her to this enervated state. A trip to the gym hadn’t seemed that deleterious a prospect yesterday, when she had first met Kane and the sergeant had told her to report back the next morning because apparently Beck wanted to know how Harriet would cope with a ‘proper gym sesh’.

The little man cleared his throat and peered around at the group, as if to make sure everyone was still listening to his litany. Harriet tried her best to look alert. Beck continued to focus on feeding the dachshund cheese. Kane stood leaning against the wall, her broad shoulders almost as wide as the lintel of the doorframe next to her, legs crossed like two inosculated trees. 

Harriet couldn’t stop thinking about that first meeting with Kane yesterday. The embarrassment of being caught openly staring at the woman’s muscles had been immediately compounded by her inability to think of anything to say, tongue-tied as she tried to ostentatiously not look at the sergeant, ending up able only to stare at the floor and thrust forward the file Beck had given her into Kane’s calloused hands.

There was little to no chance that Kane could have thought that Harriet had made a great first impression but, if anything, the sergeant had looked even more unimpressed once she had opened the file only to find a selection of paperwork which, she informed Harriet with no little Glaswegian asperity, she had been pestering Beck to sign for the last fortnight.

He hadn’t.

Perhaps Kane regarded her as a collaborator, Harriet thought as her legs cramped and she squirmed again, trying to get comfortable in the chair; it might explain the relentless punishment meted out that morning.

The little man continued to expatiate.

Harriet had not spent much time becoming acquainted with the free weights in any gym in the past. Even when she had played hockey at university, sport had been a secondary consideration - her academic work had always come first, always - and while she had been considered ‘sporty’ and enjoyed physical activity, she had lacked the necessary obsession and singularity of focus needed to devote herself to becoming a better athlete. Her purposeful approach to her studies was not matched in the gym, where she had mostly spent her occasional visits on treadmills and rowing machines, happy to maintain a decent base level of fitness without ever looking to build on it.

These days, she still ran regularly and she did a few sessions of yoga at home each week. Until this morning, she had naively thought herself to be quite fit still - until, that is, Kane had introduced her to the concepts of ‘reps’, ‘sets’ and ‘working to failure’, and had finished their session with a series of squats, dizzying, winding, repeated exertion until Harriet had vomited.

An officer working out nearby had guffawed, but he had been instantly silenced by a single look from Kane who, not unkindly, had then manoeuvred Harriet over to the water fountain for a drink. Harriet could still feel the sensation of Kane’s huge arm across her back; she had found its size and power unnerving. Perhaps that must be what it feels like to be caught up by an anaconda, she thought, and feel it start to coil and constrict, knowing that you were entirely helpless and would be almost effortlessly overwhelmed.

Harriet snapped back to attention as Beck pretended to throw the last bit of cheese to the dog, didn’t let go of it, and then flipped it into his own mouth instead. The dachshund barked, now sounding as disapproving as it looked.

“Much as we all appreciate your rundown of the relevant legislation, Pooter,” Beck said, his voice slightly muffled by the cheese, “but how about you just outline the bare details for Harriet now, hmm?”
 
“Very well, sir. In short, we are investigating the Peyton-Maxwells of Walton-on-the-Manor. The current baronet - the third, if you’re counting-”

“We’re not,” said Beck, wearily.

“Hmm. Well, the current baronet is Roderick Peyton-Maxwell. Along with his mother, the widow of the second baro… I mean, along with his mother and his sister, he has been responsible for turning the family’s country seat, Wimbourne Hall, into a very exclusive country club and hotel attracting many high-net-worth individuals. Gyms and spa, swimming pools, polo club, golf course, a well-regarded series of operatic performances across the summer months which, of course, while not of the same stature as Glyndebourne are-.”

“All very nice,” said Beck, interrupting. “All very expensive. Enough money sloshing around to give Scrooge McDuck a hard-on big enough to open a Melchior with. As a result the Peyton-Maxwells seem to be doing terribly well, it would appear. Not that we’ve been able to unpick their various companies’ finances. As Pooter was, erm, so succinctly outlining earlier, the baronet’s non-dom status and offshore banking arrangements make it difficult to say with any certainty exactly what is going on there.”

Beck grinned mirthlessly and pointed at Harriet. 

“I know what you’re thinking: I smell a muroid and I am in need of a talpid.”

“You smell a rat and you need a mole, sir,” hazarded Harriet quickly, delving into the slightly dusty corner of her brain where she kept her Latin vocab.

“You fit the bill,” said Beck, nodding. “Worst case scenario, we give you an alias, you go in, you spend the next few months there, and maybe that’s as good as it will get... but at least we’ll have some eyes in the place. Best case scenario, you befriend the Peyton-Maxwells, get to know their inner circle, maybe manage to do a little sneaking around behind the scenes.”

“What about the other aspects?” piped up Pooter. “The drugs and the disap-”

“Thank you for your time, Pooter. I’m sure you have things to be doing. DS Kane will show you out.”

The mismatched pair walked out of the room, Pooter entirely eclipsed by Kane as she moved in his wake, a tanker behind a tugboat. When they were gone, Beck stood up and lifted the dachshund into the top drawer of a filing cabinet, from where it surveyed the room like a soldier from a watchtower.

“This will be a big commitment,” said Beck, turning to Harriet. “Months of your life. And… there is something else.”

Harriet managed to sit upright, her heart starting to pound again, this time because of a nervous excitement rather than physical exertion.

“Yes, sir?”

“The Peyton-Maxwells are all very much involved in the day-to-day running of Wimbourne Hall, but they tend to deal with different aspects of the business. The mother, the relict of the second baronet, for example, runs the charitable arm of the family business, which organises the al fresco opera festival; hopefully you’ll get to know her later. But I want you to concentrate on the daughter for the time being. She’s a personal trainer with a big online following. She has a track record of befriending young female gym clients who want to undergo radical body transformations and compete on stage. I want you to attract her attention.”

“So I would join the club, work out in their gym, catch the daughter’s eye?”

“More or less. But, in this case, to catch her eye as quickly as possible, I think you’ll need to undergo a radical body transformation of your own. How shall I put this? You need to get… big.”

Harriet looked puzzled.

“Big like DS Kane, sir?”

“Well, it wouldn’t hurt.”

[JohnAubrey]

Life under lockdown has proven to be unpredictable, but I hope to have the next part up tomorrow!

[JohnAubrey]

Life under lockdown has proven to be unpredictable, but I hope to have the next part up tomorrow!

Yeah, that didn't happen. Anyway...


Vier: The Peepers

"Welcome, gentlemen, welcome.”

The men moved slowly, quietly, along the length of the narrow hallway, Savile Row suits barely rustling, ice clinking in their cocktails, their attention already diverted by the view through the floor to ceiling window forming one of the passage walls.

“I’ll let you inspect the merchandise at your leisure, gentlemen. Of course, if you have any questions, feel free to ask me and I shall endeavour to give satisfaction. I have already been furnished with choice biographical details and I shall be happy to share these with you, if required. Sealed bids may be submitted at any point after we leave this room until midnight tonight.”

One man, whose girth and old-fashioned style of dress gave him the air of a gouty Dickensian bon vivant, pressed his face to the glass like a child at an ice cream shop, excitedly rapping the ferrule of his walking stick against the floor. The young man next to him recoiled, shying back like a nervous pony.

“Do not worry, sir. The glass is an extremely robust one-way mirror. They cannot see you. It is largely soundproof, also - certainly the music would make it almost impossible for us to be heard - but discretion is the better part of valour, and we advise our clientele to maintain a certain serenity at all times, lest an unfortunate incident occur.”

“Her!” said the fat man loudly, ignoring this advice and jabbing a generous forefinger against the glass, a gesture which made the man next to him flinch again, despite the reassurances. “Oh yes. I want her!” 

“Ah yes, sir, an excellent choice, if I may so. Her name is Chardonnay, and she is what I believe is commonly known as a WAG. She is twenty-two years old, and she is currently dating her third professional footballer - they have all been lower league players, but she has worked her way up from the Conference to the Championship, so I warrant she is an ambitious young lady.”

On the other side of the glass, the woman flicked her straightened, bleach blonde hair over her shoulder, ratcheted up her pout another notch, and took a cluster of selfies with her phone. Between each photo, she moved her head to a different angle, always staring into the camera, first this way, then that, in a manner that brought to mind sparrows or, perhaps more pertinently, great tits.

She did not appear to be dressed very practically for a gym environment, and her shorts and sports bra certainly did not conform to the dress code, being in many respects closer in form to that of a bikini than sportswear. However, as she had oh-so-slowly leaned over the front desk to sign in and fluttered her false eyelashes at the young man on duty, he had found that all thoughts of demurring had suddenly been waylaid by other, more prurient notions.

And perhaps it did not matter that her sports bra did not seem to conform to the usual standards of compression, and had apparently been designed for a woman several cup sizes smaller, or that her shorts appeared to have shrunk in the wash. After all, she did not appear to be doing any actual exercise. Granted, as the group of men watched her from their clandestine viewpoint, at one point she did pick up a pair of dumbbells, but that was only to place them carefully on the floor next to the branded water bottle at her feet, props for her next series of selfies. Shortly afterwards she wandered off, making no attempt to replace the weights, leaving them lying askew on the floor, heading to the adjacent spa to find a tanning booth, her version of the Fortress of Solitude.

It did not take long for the other bidders to start making enquiries as they observed various oblivious women going about their business in the gym - the young mother looking to get back into shape, the trophy girlfriend trying to make sure she stayed in it, the recovering anorexic, the model and TV star wanting to look her best, the Pony Club twins - they ran the rule over all of them.

Eventually even the nervous young man gestured towards the glass at someone who had caught his eye, and he watched her keenly as a personal trainer talked her through the required technique for a power clean.

“Are you desirous of knowing more about this young woman, sir?” enquired the auctioneer, quietly.

“Erm, yes. Yes, please!”

“Her name is Dina, sir. An athlete of some promise, I am given to understand. She is in contention to be named in next year’s squad for the European Athletics Under 20 Championships. She is a sprinter, and she has been sent here for a high-level training camp to improve her ‘explosive power’, I believe was the phrase her Performance Director used.”

Dina’s approach to training could not have been more different to Chardonnay’s: she watched her coach intently as he demonstrated each movement, and then replicated the lift, first, with an empty bar and a frown of concentration on her face, and then, once she had mastered the movement, several more times, on each occasion with an increased amount of weight on the bar.

Her limbs were long and surely gave her good leverage, but she was still slender, and obviously lacked the power of more mature competitors. She did, however, already have noticeably defined legs and a chiselled backside, and it seemed to be this was holding the young man’s attention.

In due time, expressions of interest had been registered in several of the gym-goers the men were there to inspect. Many had clear preferences for their bids; others clearly had lots to think about and decisions to make.

As a general movement back towards the doorway began, one man stopped and pointed at a new arrival in the gym, a lithe brunette with her hair pulled back into a no-nonsense ponytail; she headed straight for the dumbbells and, without hesitation, started a superset of hammer curls and tricep kickbacks. If anything, her approach was even more meticulous and determined than Dina’s had been.   

“What about her?”

“I’m afraid that I have no information on this woman, sir; I am uncertain as to whether she is one of the allocated lots for today.”

Looking disappointed, the man rejoined the rest of the group as his companions filed from the room - all but the auctioneer, who remained behind and wandered closer to the glass and stood and stared at the mystery woman, watching her intently. Eventually he reached for his phone and made a call.

[Jaguar]

Great start!  Please continue, I am certain you'll pick up more readers as you get further into the story.
 

[JohnAubrey]

Great start!  Please continue, I am certain you'll pick up more readers as you get further into the story.
 

Cheers! I've got more of this one sketched out, but got distracted toying with some other story ideas. Just about ready to crack back on though, so watch this space...

[JohnAubrey]

Cinq (or Swim)

Naked and glistening, Harriet walked from the shower and into her bedroom. It was not exactly a cinematic sexy entrance - seductive femmes fatales tending, as a rule, to sashay rather than limp, and to do rather more in the way of looking winsome, than some wincing - but it was still a beguiling sight and, all things considered, it was a shame that there was no one present to witness it.

And anyway, bending down to put on a honey of an anklet was not even an option after leg day.

She sat down heavily on the edge of the bed, the softer portions of her body continuing to jiggle for a little while after she did so. There were certainly fewer softer portions than there had been at the start of this mission, but she retained an improbably perky pair of breasts; they had always been much rounder and much fuller than one would have expected on a slender woman of her size, and in her typically understated clothing. Her sister had always said that Harriet had breasts like the Spanish Inquisition: ‘nobody expects them’. 

And anyway, she wasn’t so slender any more.

Absent-mindedly, she ran her hands up and down her thighs. This was not only a reflex, her aching muscles requiring a massage, but also a response to the changing size and shape of her legs, which fascinated her. Her whole body was transforming, it was true, but perhaps nothing told the story of the many hours she had now spent in the gym as eloquently as the newly undulating lines of her legs.

Harriet’s entire life had changed. A standard routine of commuting, paperwork, and evenings out had been replaced by lifting, eating, and sleeping. She was no longer working nine to five, but her life had never been so structured. Early in the mornings, she discreetly visited the station gym for a beasting overseen by Kane, primarily focussed on the big, compound lifts, and now involving loaded barbells that weighed more than she did; in the afternoons she visited Wimbourne Hall for a second gym session of the day, peacocking her way around the public gym, powering through a range of isolation exercises and then paying a visit to the pool and sauna.

If anything, Harriet had found the eating more of a challenge than the lifting. She had, after all, some experience of pushing herself physically on the hockey pitch or during a run, and even if her current exertions were several orders of magnitude greater, she at least had an idea of what to expect. But going from a standard three meals a day up to seven - not including all the supplementary pills and powders - was a completely new experience, and her body had struggled at first to digest the huge amounts of fish, chicken and steak she was now having to eat. She felt like a dinner guest at La Grande Bouffe. For the first few days of her diet, eating ad nauseam had not been a figurative expression. She had felt febrile as her metabolism accelerated to deal with digesting the caloric surplus. Eventually she returned to a state of general eupepsia and - although she never would have believed it to be possible - she even started to feel hungry between meals.

Her hand lingered on her vastus lateralis. It was not the first time today that she had lovingly run her hands over her body. Earlier in the evening as she stood in front of the oven, impatiently waiting for her salmon to finish cooking, she had suddenly realised that she was no longer standing arms akimbo, but had slid her hands round from her hips to the top of her glutes, and was enjoying the feeling of the muscles hardening and changing shape as she swayed gently from side to side. She was alone, but she had still blushed furiously at the realisation of her own vanity.

Now she reclined on her bed and turned her body, reaching for the open laptop by her pillow and pulling it nearer to her, relaxing like a Roman diner in a triclinium as she stared at the screen.

Once again, she started to browse Florence Peyton-Maxwell’s insta**** page.

It was now a daily ritual. It had started as research, but had become an obsession. Over and over again she studied the progress pictures and workout clips of dozens of clients shot in various locations around Wimbourne Hall, all interspersed with pictures of Florence herself, bronzed, buffed, and beautiful. It was noticeable that, no matter how impressive the transformations of her clients - and many of them bordered on unrecognisable after submitting to her tuition - none ever looked as sleek and sexy as Florence herself, apparently always photoshoot-ready. Perhaps Florence ditched her clients before they became as hot as she was, Harriet speculated.

There were many workout clips on the page, but Harriet selected one she had watched many times before - a recent compilation of Florence spotting a succession of her clients on the incline leg press. Every clip in the montage was much the same, indeed it was almost a signature of Florence’s personal training program: a young woman, face incarnadine and often stained with tears, contorted by a tortured rictus, howling, legs wobbling, her shoulders pinned back by Florence, unable or unwilling to let her quit, and bellowing “Come on! Two more!” at her.

Once again Harriet watched, enraptured. When she had first found these videos at the start of her assignment, she felt as if she were back at school, a novice language student asked to study some foreign news bulletins. Always keen to learn, and knowing that what was happening must make sense, she had tried to work out the meaning of it all, but it was as if she then lacked the required vocabulary to fully understand. She could explain in outline what she was watching, but she could not explain why it was happening.

Now though, now she spoke the same language as these young women. She knew why they begged to stop even while they fought on; she could decode their screams of pain, and had even cried the same tears. Kane had bellowed in her face too, as Florence did to these girls, and as her training had progressed that shout of ‘Two more!’ had gone from what felt like a promise of absolution, to a finishing line tantalisingly close, to a mere suggestion, a target to be smashed.

The compilation finished with Chardonnay, recognisable if only because of her lip fillers, fake tan, and the fact she was looking like she was about to burst out of her gym clothes. But this time she was wearing proper athleticwear, her body was just subjecting it to an entirely different set of challenges to those imposed on the flimsy glorified bikini she had worn when she first walked into the Wimbourne Hall gym. Bug-eyed and snarling as she lifted multiple plates, she looked like a woman possessed, and Harriet half-expected a priest to pop into shot and start sprinkling the holy water. Anyone who had been familiar with Chardonnay’s voice - a babyish, vacuous affectation - would have been forgiven for assuming the guttural growling noise that escaped her lips was made by Zuul hearing Gozer coming home from the office. 

Harriet’s time at Wimbourne Hall had seen her body develop in ways she could not previously have imagined, but had so far been a failure in the sense that she had still yet to encounter Florence, who mostly seemed to train with her clients in various private rooms around the main gym. But if Florence was elusive, Harriet often saw Chardonnay in and around the swimming pools, clearly angling for attention as she splashed about with all the subtlety of Anita Ekberg in the Trevi Fountain.

Harriet was weighing up a new scheme of her own invention, which was to attract Florence’s attention by first befriending Chardonnay, and she had been considering how to share this idea with Beck. Beck had been clear that he did not want Harriet to initiate contact with Florence, but to wait until she was herself approached. It had seemed a reasonable idea when it was first outlined, but it had become clear to Harriet that continuing in this vein might mean she would never get to meet her target.

But how to tell Beck she wanted to change the plan? It was not so much that she thought that Beck would dismiss her idea out of hand that gave her pause, as the fact she had hitherto always meekly done as she had been told and she wasn’t sure how best to argue her case.

As she weighed up the problem, her phone rang. It was Beck.

She panicked - she was naked. It may not have been a video call, but she couldn’t talk to her boss on the phone without any clothes on; it just wasn’t the done thing. She rolled off the bed, dashed across the room, grabbed a dressing gown, clumsily wrestled herself into it, realised she’d left the phone on the bed, dashed back across the room, lunged across the mattress, and answered the phone in bit of a tizzy.

“Hi-llo?” she said, deciding too late to abandon her initial casual greeting for something slightly more formal, mangling the words together in the process.

“‘Hi-llo’? Interesting greeting. I like it. Makes you sound a bit like an indecisive contestant on Play Your Cards Right.”

“Erm, sorry, just a slip of the tongue, sir.”

“No need to apologise. This is just a quick check-in. I'm hoping today might be the day you have a 'Brucie Bonus' for me?”

“Sorry, sir, still no contact made, I’m afraid.”

Beck sighed, and Harriet cleared her throat.

“Do I get the sense you do have something to discuss, at least?” Beck ventured.

“It’s just, well, sir, I thought, perhaps… it might be time to change your plan - just slightly.”

“You have something in mind?”

“I’m just not sure I’ll ever make contact, unless… unless I attract her attention through a third party, sir.”

“Ah, you have an intercessor in mind?”

“Yes, sir - are you familiar with Chardonnay Green from the case files?”

“One moment. I have them right here.”

“I see her quite often in the swimming pool, sir, and she’s a client of Florence.” This was going much more smoothly than Harriet had feared. “I thought it might be a good idea to befriend Chardonnay and then try to meet Florence through her.”

“Yeees. Yes. I can see that working. Very well. You have my approval. But we’ll need to give Chardonnay a codename.”

“A codename?”

There was a rustling of documents.

“Let me see, where was her photo? Ah, yes. Yes. How about ‘Duckface à l’orange’?"