This story is COMPLETE.
Mona Hume, professional thief, is annoyed by her girlfriend's distraction over a set of human luggage sitting in the city morgue. That said luggage was being used to mule hard drugs into London by the Crown Cartel is an added...
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Say what one will about the NHS, one couldn't dispute the decadent pleasure of heated flannel blankets.
Though her head felt as though it was slowly being pried in two with a rusted crowbar, the splitting starting at the back and ending in the centre of her forehead, Mona was otherwise unscathed and the soothing warmth of the brown and white blanket cocooned her in a steaming bath of soft fabric. Her room, private and paid for in cash courtesy of John's efficiency, was full to bursting with an array of colourful flowers, and though the riot of beauty would have otherwise made her heart sing, the combination of strong scents were only making her terrible headache worse. Grace, as usual, had shown up with a ragged bouquet clutched in her grip, the sad daisies within it wilting, the leaves the spindly stalks bent and bruised.
"Get a vase for those," Mona murmured. She placed her hand across her eyes, shutting out the bright morning sunlight and Grace's propensity to open windows and curtains when they should have stayed shut. "Daisies are my favourite. It would be a shame to see their brief life cut so short because of your silly, sweaty palms."
Grace was too choked with emotion to speak properly, and Mona allowed her the soft moment, her hand clasped in Grace's as the flowers were whisked away by John who miraculously found a suitable vase within minutes. "I'm not sure what happened after we went into the cellar, so you're not going to get a whole hell of a lot
of notes from me, I'm afraid. But you can jot down that Arthur Billingsworth III and his entire family are a pile of creeps whom I will never visit in either a work or social capacity again. Pour me a glass of water, won't you, Grace? Dear me, look at the way your hand trembles, you're going to spill it all over the place. Just relax. I'm fine. I'm perfectly fine."
But emotion was wearing Grace down and though she was a true bloodhound of a copper there was no mistaking that this particular case had hit too close to home. Mona didn't dare ask how the vicar was doing. The last thing she remembered was falling down the stairs and the vicar lying in a large, circular puddle, unconscious.
The sight of his life's blood seeping onto the dirt floor in black mud was still making Mona feel queasy.
"The vicar is fine," Grace assured her, not needing the question asked and for this Mona was grateful. "He's in the same boat as you, pretty bad concussion and a broken collarbone, but he'll fully recover, as will you.
You're damned lucky, you silly cow. You should have called me! You never should have gone in that cellar alone!"
Mona let out a huff of frustration. "Right, because it was so painfully obvious that Arthur was into corpse twaddle. Don't look at me like that, I feel sick enough without you dry-heaving at my side." Grace held out a glass of water for her, and Mona refused to take it, gesturing instead that she leave it on the side table beside her bed. "It needs ice. Why don't you go and have a little walk to clear your head a bit, you're not yourself at all, you're usually reprimanding me non-stop at this point. No, my darling woman, retirement is not yet on the table. I need a good cup of tea more than tepid, stale water. Two sugars, organic if they have it, and a slice of lemon."
