Under Covers by Mark Danelaw
(Part 1 here)
Annabelle Crofton awoke and was instantly alert. She had trained for this; controlled sleeping was just one skill. Although it did occur to her that staying bed was a far better choice. She snuggled down and wondered if another reconnoitre could wait a night or two.
Alice was sound asleep and Annabelle was determined to keep her that way. She had given up going to bed dressed; it was too obvious and would soon draw attention. There were any number of reasons a student would be out and about after dark, the place was a veritable circus of debauchery and rebellion. The trick was not to get caught.
She felt the flash of tenderness in her hindquarters as she sat up. The unbidden hiss made her shoot a look at the sleeping Alice.
“Anthony,” she whispered, “Checking if the girl was awake.”
The girl shifted in bed and let out a snore that could only be real. Annabelle froze all the same and waited. “Game on,” she whispered.
She had left soft-soled sip-on shoes to hand, which she picked the up as she slipped out the door, careful not go wide so that the muted light from the corridor fell on Alice’s face in bed. She had been at the school to understand the rhythm and nightly customs to take a chance. A still very sore bottom also told her that the risk was real in that direction, but so long as she kept her cool would be unlikely reveal her true identity.
She paused only to put on the shoes and then walked briskly down the hall. Her first obstacle was the dorm mothers who slept light and lived to catch girls out of bed. Slipper sadists Alice had called them, it was ridiculous that a 24-year-old detective should be afraid of a getting a spanking from as a middle-aged woman, she tried to see the funny side, she knew guardian and the back-up team would.
Then there were the prefects. They were unpredictable; the keen girls looking to prove something or just have some fun were dangerous. They didn’t need to sneak about and sometimes they were in breach of the rules themselves, but they knew all the tricks and could be poised like vultures. She remembered her run in with Daphne that first night she had snuck out to report.
It could not be helped. She had to get some intelligence, and she had milked all she could from the girls for the moment. So instead of making for the grounds to report as usual she worked her way around to the admin area. The security was of the old-fashion kind, well one would hardly expect clunky cameras, but still, the locks were laughable.
Annabelle had two targets this time. The staff personnel files, if she could find them, and anything on school finances: donors, accounts, just about anything for now. Gaining access was a doddle but she daren’t put the lights on so keeping the torch low she had to look at filing labels one at a time.
A cabinet in a side room was unlocked, but all she could find were dinner menus and a list of prize winners for sports days going back to the 1960s. “Jesus, who the fudge cares…” she muttered in frustration.
Then she found a cabinet with a key in the lock. The policewoman in her shook her head in disbelief. Still it was a lucky break; luckier still when she realised that the key fitted all the locks.
‘It’s Christmas…’ she channelled Noddy Holder in her head.
Systematically one by one she checked filing cabinet drawer’s labels and opened unlabelled ones. Two bottles of whisky, an old slipper, one stout wooden hairbrush, three bibles and literally an old Christmas card with a Partridge on a pear tree were among the eclectic treasures she turned up.
Annabelle went through the rows of filing cabinets twice before she became frustrated. Then she saw down a side passage another room with a glass wall. Behind it sat a row of cabinets.
“Bingo,” she whispered and tried the door. The lock was a bit more challenging, but the more she scanned the cabinets with her torch, the more she knew they were what she was looking for.
The light coming on was a shock and did not compute.
“You girl, what are you doing here?” said an imperious voice.
Annabelle whirled around like a guilty schoolgirl and let her mouth hang open ready to make an excuse.
Rachel Denton regarded the interloper with a terrifying visage.
“I was… just eh…” Annabelle could not think of a thing. Why would a student be here?
“The exam papers are not so easily accessed,” the deputy head told her. She was adorned in a masculine-looking dressing gown and her hair was clearly not at its best.
She was cheating on an exam; Annabelle almost felt relieved, “Well no but… I was just…”
“Name girl,” Denton snapped.
“Crofton, Annabelle Crofton, Harwell House,” she supplied as was expected of a genuine student.
“Well Crofton, Miss Holt will want to see you no doubt, but tomorrow first thing you will report to the Head, is that understood?” Rachel told her.
“Y-yes Miss,” Annabelle agreed.
“Get out and go back to bed,” the deputy head snarled like a guard dog.
The detective fled.
***
After the utter failure of her first true intelligence sortie Annabelle could at least congratulate herself for not blowing her cover. Apparently the extreme prank of breaking into the school office was perhaps seen as par for the course in a school for miscreants. At least she had identified the set of files she needed, but how to get at them she wondered? It puzzled her too how Mrs Denton had discovered her. In all probability the light from the torch had leeched out into the night, but why was the deputy head of all people the one to catch it.
Still, Annabelle had other things to worry about for the moment. Margaret Clements was no fool and she would have to be on guard when she explained herself. No doubt it was her meeting with Helen Holt that she most had to fear, for Christ sake, she was a 24-year-old detective constable and the bloody woman would be all about ‘you let the side down’ and then that damn cane would make itself felt.
She could see it now. In her report she would have to say she was unable to reccie the office because she was caught, ‘oh then what happened, why wasn’t your cover blown?’ There was no way she could leave out the punishment this time. The team would be in fits. She would never live it down.
No breakfast for naughty Annabelle, she mocked herself as she headed down to the Headmistress’s office.
The corridor smelt of old oak and wood polish as she made the final turn. Her footsteps on the parquet floor sounded like war drums announcing an interloper in hostile territory. ‘Oh golly gosh, what jolly fun,’ she mocked the entire situation. It was all too ridiculous. She had once infiltrated an East London gang; her life had been in the balance more than once. She had been on the receiving end of a violent man in a domestic. The make-up sex with a man she despised hadn’t been as unpleasant as it should have been. The blowjob she gave her supposed boyfriend’s boss had. That had never made any report; Guardian had been understanding and left it out.
Then there was the headmistress’s door. It seemed large, like suddenly she was a child in front of the gates to another world. She knocked. Footsteps came ever nearer and took an age to reach her. It opened without ceremony and the woman who opened it was already walking away. For some reason Annabelle took note of the skirt bursting arse of the red headed young woman; almost a foreshadowing?
“Crofton is it? Go right in,” Ducky told her, “She isn’t happy, it is not how she wanted to start her day.”
“Right… eh Miss,” Annabelle didn’t quite know what else to say. She hung back for a moment until Ducky urged her on with a nod.
Annabelle forced a smile and nodded back. She took a deep breath and knocked on the inner door.
“Yes, yes, come in,” an impatient voice called from within.
Annabelle went in to be confronted with an attractive auburn haired woman in her early 40s at most. She knew who it was, she had seen her at assembly, but this was their first meeting.
“Annabelle Crofton, the new girl,” Margaret sighed, “I don’t usually get to meet innocents from the scum pool, except you aren’t quite so innocent are you?”
“Sorry Ma’am, I can explain…” Annabelle.
“Shut up Crofton, no you can’t,” the headmistress yawned. “You got lost on your way to the loos… you were on a dare… sneaking a peek at exam papers… blah, blah… I really don’t care. Your housemistress will sort all that out. I expect you will be for the high jump. I only have to see you because you were in the office and out of your house in the first place. There are fire hazards, HR and assorted other issues arising from your thoughtlessness,” she said.
“Yes Ma’am,” Annabelle decided to keep quiet.
The headmistress moved to her desk and began to perusing some papers. She paused only to look up and say, “Well skirt and underwear off and then face that wall with your hands on your head until I am ready.”
“My skirt…?” Annabelle was taken aback. She had expected to spin a yarn; surely that Hunt woman would cane her again. Until that thought she had somehow assumed that that would not really happen. But of course it would; her buttocks clenched.
“Three extra strokes,” Margaret said casually, “Don’t waste my time.”
Annabelle gaped for another second and then very hastily began to get undressed. Four seconds later she was facing the wall as prescribed. It was shocking to be standing with her bare bum facing the room under the gaze of this woman. Surreal even, what the hell was she going to say in the report?
Ten minutes can seem like a life time when one’s arse is in jeopardy and under scrutiny. Annabelle felt the heat rising in her face as she was utterly humbled. Somewhere beyond the door there was chatting and further away young women laughing and even some birdsong. The main sound though was the scratch of the headmistress’s pen on paper.
There wasn’t much in her line of sight either. There were books on a shelf to her right, she dared not turn her gaze too much, but a row of blue books had small gold letters she couldn’t read and above there were burgundy ones with the words Jacobite’s Vol I, II, III and IV, with the word Bailey printed underneath. There was a scratch on the edge of a book case and a dimple in the plaster just beyond her nose.
Behind her the headmistress sighed heavily, and sounded like she had stood up. There was a shush of a sliding door and a clack and clattering of wood on wood. Annabelle now knew the sound of canes touching. Her heart sank. This was happening. She thought about being punched in the face by Billy Bear Bates on her last job. Why was this worse?
The tension maybe, the psychology, it had to be the humiliation? For some reason the brag about the beating from Bates over drink on how it when he went down; and ‘And then Guv she caned my bare arse,’ didn’t quite have the same kudos.
“Now Crofton, I want you to turn round and bend over the back of that chair,” the headmistress was saying.
Annabelle took down her arms and turned. A red leather chair had been pulled away from the desk, she swallowed. She almost wished she had her warrant card on her; she might have chickened-out if she had.
“Come along girl, get over, we have quite a bill to pay,” she was told.
The leather was hard and cold under her tummy, but at least her face was hot and her arse well presented. She kept her heels together and allowed the two halves of her bottom close to half guard the purse between her legs.
Behind her Margaret Clements braced the cane as she regarded the jutting tightly split curves; two resplendent rounds both full square and in profile. A fine arse for chastisement and well deserved too. What had the girl been thinking?
“You know I am not going to count, let us see how you take them,” the headmistress said, “But I warn you cry-bay cowards get more than brave girls. So show me some school spirit and take you swishing like a true Saint.”
“Yes Ma’am,” Annabelle said; go fuck the school spirit, she thought. I can’t do this, I can’t, I feel stupid… I don’t deserve… but she doesn’t know that… in fact technically what I was doing was illegal, undercover officers don’t free passes for the law… this and other strange thoughts crashed through her mind even as she scanned the other side of the room for some salvation. More bookcases, a large bit of fluff on the carpet… someone should have…
There was a clack and swoosh that sounded so far away it might have been in another world. She felt that thwack on skin even as she felt contact with her arse, a line right across both cheeks. It was less than an instant after that the line of contact cut like a razor blade and she screamed. Surprise, true surprise, but she had never felt anything like it. Worse than before, Holt had being going easy on her… oh shit it hurts… how can it…?
The second stroke landed half an inch below the first line of fire. No surprise this time. No scream, just a blurted grunt. But the follow on was hellish and carried on cutting as it joined its fellow in slicing bottom.
“Better girl,” the headmistress said sharply.
The third stroke cut another half an inch below the second as was just as cutting. I got this, Annabelle insisted to herself and her knuckles tightened on the chair and she had to pump her thighs slightly. The first stroke hadn’t finished with her, the second certainly hadn’t and the third was only just getting started.
Annabelle supress a groan in her throat; you can do this, she told herself, you can. She thought of Billy and his friends and two other fights with grown men. She had lost but had gone down with style. ‘Well done Anna,’ Guardian had told her afterwards. She was a real cop, one of the boys.
“Taking one for the team,” this time Guardian was talking in her head, but he could barely stop laughing. “More than one I would say Sir,” Harris laughter burst out of him. They weren’t real.
The fourth stroke was. Annabelle screamed. Damn. Four lines of pain now, she had to stamp her foot. The sting was a burn, was a… Jesus H Christ; was something else: sting, cut, burn, throb…
The fifth landed right across where until this day Annabelle had taken for granted was reserved for sitting. So sensitive, an artist of pain, Clements knew her craft. The undercover cop’s eyes watered and she clamped her jaw against self-expression. I hope you are in on it bitch, she screamed in her head.
The sixth cut close to the last and was right across the point where her flesh bridged bottom and thigh; too much. Annabelle hissed and felt her face would explode with bawling.
The next, was it seven? That took her high; almost bearable, almost. It was slower to really cut, but it did all the same. Another came between the first and last and then another, the first and second… faster now… harder?
Was that nine or 10 or… the next hung in time and she almost thought it was over… then it landed on top of a previous, which one she could not tell. She had to shout out; she had to, and did. Some tears rolled down her face, but she was openly crying, not yet.
“I have no idea who you think you are Crofton, but hear me when I say I will break you if I have to. You have no business in school business, not for pranks and jollies, not for pointless cheating, not for anything. Do you understand?” Clements had a voice of gravel.
“Yes Ma’am,” Annabelle managed, but her hips took on a tilt and her toes curled in her shoes.
The cane fell again, right across the top of her thighs and then ascending to score across previously punished flesh. I quit, she told herself, the school, the job… I’ll activate the exit code tonight from the call box.
“I have no idea how many demerits you are on, but you can take three more and I will insist your house mistress ignore that when you are dealt with by her. And you will be dealt with. You are for the high jump my girl,” the headmistress told her.
The cane crossed the purple-ridged tapestry that used to be Annabelle’s bottom with yet another stroke. She screamed, full-throated, it almost felt good.
“How many is that?” Margaret Clements asked, she sounded completely indifferent.
Annabelle slowly shook her tear-wet and snotty head, “I don’t know Ma’am,” she sniffed.
“You’ll take six more and you will count them,” the head mistress told her.
Annabelle nodded but couldn’t speak.
The stroke had an iron bite and how Annabelle handled with a mere grunt was a mystery for the ages. “One Ma’am,” she said in a brittle voice. She found some anger and brutal determination as she braced herself and fixed her gaze on volume one of Winston Churchill’s’ History of the English Speaking People.
The stroke almost took her down. ‘We will never surrender,’ she drew on. “Two Ma’am,” she said.
The third was interesting and she hissed but her tear-drenched eyes found the book again. “Three Ma’am,” she all but shouted. She had this.
The fourth stroke cut and went on cutting and she nearly broke completely. “Four Ma’am,” she choked and this time switched her gaze to volume two, volume one was no longer working for her.
Five was good, five meant one more, but her knees sagged and she wagged her bottom up and down and took a firmer hold of the chair. “Five,” she growled and gritted her teeth to hold in a scream. Her departure from ‘Ma’am,’ was ignored and she thought just one more. ‘Come on Winston,’ she prayed.
Six led to an explosive tear-soaked wail, but she held back from full crying. “Six Ma’am,” she spat and followed it with some unladylike growls and she drummed her fists on the underside of the chair.
“Let that be a lesson to you,” Margaret Clements said as she returned the cane. She eyed the exposed bare bottom still jutting at her. Colourful and full of texture, she wasn’t losing her edge. A proper pencil rack, as they used to say. “Stand up, and go back to the wall,” she said.
Annabelle who was still holding it together, more or less, clambered up and painful stumbled back to the wall to face it. The hands on her head kept her from clawing at her bottom, which she would have killed to be allowed to do.
“You will be late for your first lesson; I hope you get swished for it. Actions have consequences and consequences are often in freefall and beyond our control. That is life, you will learn that,” the headmistress sounded almost kindly now.
“Yes ma’am,” Annabelle answered, and don’t I know it.
The Story continues in Questions and Answers
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