EXTRACT FOR
Debt Slave - Book 2
(Ted Edwards)

     Jill Bentley is an investigative reporter or, as she would prefer it: a modern-day crusader for truth and justice (and like many similar self-styled `crusaders`, failing entirely to appreciate that the original Crusaders were a blood-thirsty bunch of barbarians who murdered, tortured and debauched their way across Asia Minor and the Middle East). She lives in a Britain that is in a state of great change, thanks to the upsurge in the growth and influence of the financial industry, which has meant that those in debt can find themselves indentured to their creditors as what amounts to slaves until the debt is repaid. The political climate too, has changed to one in which the Order party now governs, bringing with it the re-introduction of corporal punishment for misbehaving youth and much greater powers for the police to act against misdemeanours and felonies.

      None of this would matter much, because there are what those in power believe to be `strong and adequate` safeguards against the new measures being used in any inappropriate way. Unfortunately for Jill, she chose to target John Griffin, the multi-millionaire owner of a number of companies and a man with an extremely vengeful nature. Even more unfortunately, his acquaintances include the local Superintendent of police, Jill`s bank manager and the district medical officer: with their connivance, Jill has been, quite legally, placed in Griffin`s hands for restitution of an entirely fictitious debt. The events leading up to and stemming from this are described in `Debt Slaves, Part 1`.

      Jill`s informant about Griffin`s shady dealings is Carol Wilson, a manager in his head office. At the suggestion of Chambers, the policeman in their group, she will be charged with the theft of a large sum of money. Coupled with a confession, that means that she, too, can be placed in Griffin`s charge. The fact that the confession will come before the charge is a matter of pure administrative inconvenience; one that will be adjusted with a stroke of the pen.

      One further note about our four `heroes`: Griffin, Robinson the bank manager, Atkinson the doctor and Chambers the policeman are all novices at this new game they`re playing. They`ve fantasised, of course, and some of them have experience on the fringes of sadism and control, but until the arrival of Jill, none of them had actually done anything about it. Now that they have, every one of them has found himself wondering just why he hasn`t started before: they have all discovered the power-lust and sheer arousal that goes with dominating, torturing and using a helpless, unwilling woman. Because they are tyros, Griffin and the doctor have insisted that the punishments they inflict on Jill are limited - though she wouldn`t necessarily agree with that assessment - to things that aren`t likely to damage her. That has meant that caning - apart from a touch of the bastinado - has been ruled out. Out of consideration that is; until thanks to a thoughtful Government, things have changed: Chambers, as a senior police officer, has been sent on a course in the administration of corporal punishment in police stations, a course of instruction that dwells, as such things often do, on some of the finer points of the art: things that would not normally be applied in the normal course of events. Everything he has learned with an assiduity that impressed his instructors has been passed on to his three friends in perversion.

      Life is soon to take on a more interesting turn for Jill and a drastic dive into the unknown for Carol.

      



Chapter 1

      

      Carol was worried; she put the phone down, stared at it and chewed her knuckles. What had happened to Jill? Her home telephone number was unobtainable and, according to the operator, `a terminated service`. Her boss said that she no longer worked for him and she hadn`t appeared at their normal rendezvous on the last three schedule occasions. She seemed to have vanished from the face of the earth!

      She stood, smoothing down the skirt of her summer frock and began pacing, still chewing at her knuckles. What could have happened? The brown folders on the soda caught her eye; could it be Griffin? Had he found out? She felt a flash of panic, quickly stilled. No, that couldn`t be right: there`d have been a fuss; she`d have been bound to hear something. Still, the thought gave her a queasy feeling in the pit of her stomach. So what to do? Contact the police? Report a missing...

      The door-bell rang; automatically, she glanced at the clock: ten past eleven; just as automatically, her hands went to her hair, a glance into the mirror beside the door showing that her make-up was perfect.

      It was a policeman, a senior one, judging by the crowns on the shoulder straps. He smiled at her pleasantly enough, but there was something in the way that he looked at her that sent that shiver to her stomach again. She looked up. "Yes?" she said.

      "Miss Wilson? Miss Carol Wilson?" he asked.

      "That`s right," she said. Then a thought struck. "Is this about Jill? Jill Bentley?"

      He smiled and once again something struck her: that smile wasn`t quite right. "My name is Chambers," he said. "Chief Superintendent Chambers." He held out a card: it carried the words: `Warrant Card` and his photograph; it looked perfectly genuine. "And no, this doesn`t concern Miss Bentley; not directly."

      "I don`t understand."

      "Her name has come up in the course of certain investigations, as has yours. I wonder if you`d be good enough to accompany me? It would be of assistance, I assure you."

      She frowned. "Investigations? I`m sorry, but I still don`t understand. What`s happened to Jill? What`s going on?"

      His face closed. "All I can say is that certain... complications that make your presence necessary. Might I recommend that you bring a coat: there is a cold wind."

      She looked at him uncertainly but then shrugged, accepting the inevitable; nowadays, you tended not to argue too hard with policemen. But as she turned to fetch her coat from the bedroom, her thoughts were in turmoil: what was going on? When she came back to the door, she didn`t notice that the folder from the sofa was gone, or that the tall officer`s tunic was a little more bulky than it had been.

      "This is my office!" she exclaimed as they stopped at the closed gate. It swung open as she spoke and the car drove through. The policeman had taken the front seat next to the driver, leaving her in the back of the police car.

      Chamber turned. "Quite so," he said. "Mr Griffin was good enough to open the office for us specially."

      The sound of that hated name made her shiver. That man had ruined her father with his dirty business methods, which is why she`d forced herself to take a job with his principal company. When she`d found herself in a position to delve into his secrets and especially when she`d found Jill, she thought that it was only a question of time before Griffin was exposed as the crook he was. But now that ominous feeling came back, redoubled. The office open on a Saturday? And why were they coming here? "I don`t think..." she began, her doubts surfacing.

      "Won`t take long," said Chambers. "We`ll soon have this sorted out." He helped her out of the car then bent to the driver`s window. As he ushered her to the door, the car drove off.

      She stopped as he held the door open. "Why has the car gone?" she asked.

      "We have only so many cars," he said. "We have to make the best use of our resources. After all," he smiled, "it`s your money."

      Mollified, she allowed herself to be led to the lift, though when it arrived at her normal floor, she took the lead, striding in front of him to her office. She opened the door, walked in then stopped again, staring. John Griffin was sitting in her chair, smiling at her in a way that wanted to make her turn and run. She tried, but found her elbows captured in a strong grip.

      "Let me go!" she squealed. "How dare you!"

      "Very easily," said Griffin, "especially when it comes to a dirty little Judas who`s tried to sell me down the river!"

      She gaped at him, an icy pall settling over her. He knew! "Wh...wha...what do you mean?" she stammered past the shock.

      One hand left her; she felt it fumble behind her back. Then it came into sight round her side and the breath caught in her throat: it carried the folders she`d thought were safe in her flat. "He means these, among other things," said the policeman, tossing the files on to the desk.

      Griffin took them, opened one and glanced through the papers at random. As he recognised some of the things in them, his jaw tightened: this stuff could really have put him a difficult position: explaining some of these things away would be nigh on impossible; clearing up the mess would have been as expensive as hell and even then traces of the mud would have stuck. He looked up at the white, drawn face of the woman being held by Chambers. "You bitch!" he snarled.

      Bright colour flooded to her cheekbones, her chin tilted. "You ruined my father!" she spat.

      He frowned for a moment, then peered at her closely before recognition dawned in his eyes. "A street trader selling shares in a South American gold-mine could have ruined your father! He was an idiot!"

      Tears filled her eyes. "He was not! You cheated him, you swine! He killed himself because of you!"

      "Balls! He killed himself because he wasn`t man enough to stand up to the fact that he was a failure!"

      Tears fell. "You filthy bastard!" she struggled in the policeman`s grip. "Let go of me! I`m leaving!"

      Griffin smiled grimly. "Oh no, you`re not," he said. He stood, feeling the power-lust coursing through him; his fingers twitched. "Would you bring her along, George? Oh, just one thing first: hold her nice and still please."

      Carol was first numbed with shock then infuriated and outraged by his casual dismissal of her dead father. Now she looked up at him, aware for perhaps the first time of just how big and powerful he was. She barely heard the words he spoke to the policeman holding her, but then his hand lashed out and smashed into her cheek. It would have knocked her to the ground had she not been held. Her head rang with the impact, but it brought her back to life.

      "You swine!" she howled. "How dare you!"

      She saw the man grin. "If you think that was bad," he said, his voice savage. "Just wait a little while."

      More words died on her lips when she saw the look on his face, instead, she tilted back her head and screamed. It echoed in the room and down the corridor.

      "Help yourself," he said. "There`s no one to hear and you might as well get into practice." Then he walked past her and the man holding her. 

      She was lifted easily, her weight nothing to the policeman. She struggled and screamed some more, but he carried her effortlessly. She didn`t know where, but she was beginning to form terrible suspicions, which she gave voice to, along with her fury and outrage. Her struggles, though, were easily contained by the powerful man: she was carried along corridors and down stairs, all of which she recognised, vaguely. But then they passed though a door into an echoing, uncarpeted area that was entirely unfamiliar. Through another door, then an opening in a brightly-lit area. She caught sight of a panel sliding closed and them the big man bent and dumped her, unceremoniously, on to the floor.

      Carol blinked against the lights and glared round from her sitting position, then realised that her skirt had ridden up and smoothed it down. That gesture brought laughter from more than just Griffin and the policeman, which had her head whipping round. Two others were lounging in armchairs, drinks in hand; both were older than Griffin and the policeman... and both were looking at her in a way that had her skin crawling.

      "How dare you!" she blazed one again, scrambling to her feet. The room was quite small, she saw, with no real sign of the entrance they`d come through, but with two heavy-looking doors at on end. Apart from four armchairs and a table containing drinks and a litter of things, the only other things in the room were a baulk of wood about four inches to a side and four feet or so long lying on the floor at right angles to a white-painted wall, with equally strange triangular bar, narrow side up, extending into a slot in the wall itself. That slot seemed to extend up to, then across the ceiling; dangling from it was a length of chain. That last item chilled her.

      Griffin had giving her time to take in her surroundings and had seen her face change when she saw that chain. "You`re beginning to repeat yourself," he said. "But I suppose that`s quite understandable, in the circumstances." He glanced at Atkinson and Robinson. "Perhaps I should introduce you to these gentlemen: This is Doctor Atkinson and Mister Robinson; they are here as independent witnesses to hear and testify to your confession."

      Her head shot round to him, lips drawn back to expose her perfect teeth. "Confession? Confession?" she shouted, astonishment and anger overcoming her growing alarm, though her voice was a lot higher than it would normally have been. "Confess to what, you foul excrescence? Trying to tell the world that you`re a liar and swindler?"

      He was absolutely unmoved; in fact, he seemed amused, which infuriated her even more. "My, my! `Excrescence?` Such a vocabulary! No, my dear Miss Wilson; you`ve got it all wrong: you`re going to confess to the theft of sixty-three thousand pounds. Plus a few pence, but I`ll forget about them."

      Her mouth dropped open; her eyes widened; she stared at him as if mesmerised. "Six..." She gasped, recovering some of her voice. "You`re mad! I`ve never touch a penny of your filthy money, you bastard! If I hadn`t had to eat, I wouldn`t have touched the salary you paid me!"

      "That`s not what the books and your computer files tell us. Mr Robinson there is a financial wizard and he`s checked it all: you`ve stolen eighty-seven thousand pounds from me. Now you`re going to confess."

      She was aghast. "I haven`t!" she cried, looking from face to face desperately and finding no comfort in any of them. She clenched her fists and stamped her foot. "I`ve never touched your money! It`s a mistake!"

      "Oh, no. No mistake at all. Or there better not be; it took Mr Robinson a long time to fix your computer records and your bank account. The evidence is absolutely irrefutable. Isn`t that right, Chief Superintendent?"

      Chambers smiled wolfishly. "I am entirely satisfied," he said.

      

      Carol felt her knees go weak; she couldn`t breath through the suffocating cloud that had descended over her. Once more she stared at the faces round her: they were laughing at her! Her brain reeled under the sudden onslaught; she shook her head. "You... you can`t...," she stammered, her voice weak. Then, with an effort, she pulled herself together. "You filthy bastard," she hissed, looking directly into Griffin`s eyes. "I don`t know what sort of game you`re playing, but you`ll never get away with it! Never! I`ll fight you in every court in the land, you swine!" 

      "Oh, that won`t be necessary, you know," he said, still smiling that cool, unsettling smile. "Once you confess, there won`t need to be present in court at all."

      Anger flared in her, dispelling the effects of shock. "Confess? Confess? You`ll roast in hell before I confess to anything!"

      Once more that infuriating smile that had her nerve ends tingling. She wanted to leap at the man and put her fingernails to his face. "Are you a betting woman, Carol? No? Pity, because I`d give you odds of five to one that you`ll be confessing anything I ask you to inside an hour."

      Her knees weakened again, and something fluttered in her stomach. Once more she looked round their faces: there was still amusement there, but now there was something else, too: a feral anticipation. She began to feel very afraid, but she licked her lips. "In your dreams, you bastard!"

      "We`ll see." He looked at Chambers. "Do you happen to have your cuffs about you, George?"

      "Of course." He produced them. "In front?"

      "If you please."

      Carol was looking round for a way of escape while this conversation was going on. There was none. She screamed, high and clear, as the cold metal fastened about her wrists. "Cowards! How can you be so foul! I`m innocent!"

      "Not for long," someone said, sotto-voce. They laughed.

      Carol screamed again as Griffin stepped forward and grabbed her wrists. She twisted away, but he was too strong; besides, Chambers was close behind her. Apparently effortlessly, he lifted her arms up over her head while she struggled and cried protests. He clipped the chain of the cuffs of the hook of the chain dangling from the ceiling and stepped back. She struggled some more, then realised just how vulnerable her position was. With that realisation came another; together with an explanation for the look she`d seen in those eyes; she was seeing it again now, but this time they made no effort to hide it: it was naked lust. She screamed again, this time with the ragged edges of panic clear.

      Griffin smiled at the others. "I think she`s just realised," he said.

      Robinson levered himself out of the chair; there were beads of sweat on his upper lip and brow. He stared at her, standing there with her hands held over her head. "Can I have a feel?" he asked, voice thick with desire.

      "Be careful," warned Griffin. "She`ll kick."

      She did; as soon as the balding, rotund figure was close enough, she lashed out with a foot. Robinson leaped back, only just avoiding what would have been an extremely painful blow. It brought laughter.

      "Almost gave you a touch of the high-pitched and squeakies, there!" called Atkinson.

      Robinson flushed angrily. "Strip the bitch!" he snarled.

      Carol screamed again. She was rewarded with a swat across the backside from Chambers. "Stop that row," he snarled. She burst into tears.

      "What about that?" asked Griffin. "I made the other one do it herself, but I`ll go with the majority."

      Eyes blurred with tears, Carol could only watch and listen as they discussed whether they were going to strip her or whether she`d be forced to do it herself. "Stop this immediately!" she howled; they ignored her.

      Griffin saw three hands go up. "Fair enough," he said. "Would you like to do the honours, Peter?" he asked the rotund banker.

      The small eyes gleamed in a face that had begun to sweat; the tongue flickered over the lips. "Yes," he said, his voice thickening. "I`d like that a lot. But," he glanced at Griffin. "Can you fix her feet?"

      "I should imagine so," replied Griffin. "George, there`s some rope behind you, near the table. Put a turn or two round her ankles and hang on to them, eh?"	

      The policeman grinned. "Should do the trick nicely," he said.

      Carol had followed all this with growing horror, the initial disbelief and shock fading as the terrible certainty of what was happening became crystal clear. "Stop it!" she shrieked, kicking out with her feet. The steel of the cuffs bit into her wrists, but she ignored the pain as she flailed about to avoid the grinning man approaching her with the rope in his hands. The grin changed to a smile as he caught one foot and lifted it, dragging her forward, the cuffs biting deeper. She screamed at the sudden pain; and the fact that he kept on lifting until her leg was above the horizontal, exposing her thighs and underclothes.

      "Look," he said. "They go all the way up."

      They laughed. She screamed again, a sound of outrage, mortification and terror. "Stop! You swine! Stop this!"

      "Not a chance!" crowed the exultant Robinson, coming close now that there was no danger. He was three inches shorter than her, his hair thinned, his body apparently flabby: the sort of late middle-aged male creature that she`d have brushed past without so much as a glance. Now he was close; close enough that she could smell him; feel the heat of him. His hands went to her waist, resting on her hips. She twisted.

      "Hold on, Peter," she heard the policeman say. "Give me a chance to get the rope on!"

      The man`s eyes looked up into hers as he backed off. "Sorry," he said. But that look, perhaps more than anything else, told her just how serious they were: that look was pure, naked lust. She felt rope going round her ankle and tried to kick, but Griffin had her other leg. Then she felt on that one, too; she screamed again, panicking. Then she say the short, fat one move in as the ropes were pulled down and out, pulling her legs apart, the pressure on them and her wrists increasing. He was smiling, with beads of sweat clearly visible on his brow. But it was his hands she watched: they were up, crooked: heading for her breasts. 

      "Nooooo!"

      Robinson`s fingers sank into the woman`s breasts as her head tossed and she screamed her protest. He looked round at Griffin, beaming. "They`re real!" he chortled, working his fingers. "No plastic in them! Lovely! You like that, my sweet?" He clutched at the breasts where he thought the nipples might be with thumb and crooked forefinger, squeezing. "We`ll have those nips perked up in no time, just you see!"

      "Stop it! Oh, stop it! You vile beasts! How can ... Get off me, you bastard!"

      Robinson was in his element, the beam of mingled pleasure and anticipation never leaving his face. "I thought I saw that you`re wearing sexy French knickers when your leg was in the air," he said, confidentially. "A hot little bitch, are you? Well, you`ve come to the right place, my sweet. We`ll give you all you need!"

      Griffin looked at Chambers. "I put some ring-bolts in the other day," he said. "We might as well tie these off and settle down to watch this. I think Peter`s going to take his time."

      Robinson looked round at the sound of his voice, his hands still mauling the breasts through the dress and brassiere. "Oh, yes," he said. "I`m enjoying this." He squeezed both hands; she screamed again, tossing her head. "But poor Carol isn`t. Not yet."

      Chambers found the metal ring sunk into the floor and tied his rope to it as Griffin did the same. Then they retreated to their chairs and sat. Seeing them seated, Robinson turned his attention back to the sobbing woman. His hands moved from her breasts to the sides of her body under her armpits then moved down, caressing, to her hips, then down over her thighs. She twisted around, but she had little movement; she was entirely vulnerable. His hands moved down to mid-thigh then slid in and back up.

      She twisted away, as far as her bonds would allow. "Please," she begged. "Please, don`t do this! I haven`t hurt you! It`s only Griffin who`s making you do this! Please let me go!"

      He grinned wolfishly. "There`s no one making me do this," he replied. As he spoke, his hands moved over the top of her thighs and the hump of her pubic mound, drawing a distressed, protesting cry. "I`m doing it because I like it. What`s your excuse?" That last drew a laugh from the other men and a sob from her.

      His hand moved back up, over her stomach and between her breasts: all the way up to the neck, where they stopped at the top button of the dress. There they paused while his eyes bored into hers. Once more that tongue came out and moistened the lips, though this time it was a deliberate, rather than instinctive gesture. "Are you ready?" he asked softy.

      "Please don`t," she begged. "Don`t do this to me!"

      His fingers moved; the button popped. She sobbed; his grin widened and the tips of his fingers stroked aside the material to rest on the newly-revealed flesh: his eyes never left hers.