Chapter 7

I had to sit as I was feeling quite odd, as if someone was shouting at me inside my brain. They sat down and I said “Gwen, for the couple of years I have been thinking that there are things happening that I should tell you but I don’t know why.”

She told me not to force things and to answer the Majors questions while we ate in a relaxed manner. I was good with that so, while we had our meal, the major asked me about my memories, especially from when I woke up in hospital. As I described my week or so there he asked which hospital it was and I told them. I said that I had been transferred there from somewhere else so I could be near my friends when I woke up. I said that Julia had been a great help and Gwen pulled out an artist’s sketch, asking me if it was Julia. When I looked at it I said it looked like her but the artist had got the hair wrong.

The major asked why I was in hospital and I said that I had been hit in the head at a photo shoot and had been in a coma for a couple of months. I leaned forward so they could see the scar on my scalp. The Major commented that the reality that I had been given was absolutely brilliant seeing that the scar was from the time they had coshed me outside a pub. As I got into my story I mentioned Tess and Toni helping me getting the PA job and Gwen produced a photo of four girls in a hotel and I pointed out the two sisters.

When I described working for Adrian Miller and the events as they unfolded the Chief Inspector asked me if I had been involved with his crime. I told them that I had had an affair with him but that had stopped after he had been to the wellness clinic. Gwen noted the name of the clinic when I told her. They asked me if I made his tea and I protested that this was below a PA and it was Tess or Toni that kept us in tea and biscuits. Gwen asked me if I enjoyed having sex and I had to say that I really did. When she asked if I had experienced lesbian sex I had to admit that Julia and I had been quite close at times, particularly after we had been out drinking. She then asked me if I liked being a girl and I told her that I didn’t know anything else but admitted that I was not happy about not remembering my younger days.

The Major asked me if there was anything odd that I remembered and I told them it was the recurring thought that I should remember things for Gwen. He asked me what the earliest memory I had of that thought was and I sat and went back into my limited past. All of a sudden I sat bolt upright, knocking over a glass of wine. “I remember being in an ambulance and the nurse told me that the surgeon was looking forward to meeting me and that I told myself to tell Gwen that the surgeon was a woman; just before I blacked out.”

Gwen said “Bethany, that memory is before you woke up in London; it is a memory that is actually pre-Bethany. Go back to that moment again and try to think about the events that led up to it, here, look at this picture of the four girls again and see if it helps.” I was almost getting a headache with this but I tried hard to please them as they were trying to be helpful. I looked at the picture and then said “I took this, didn’t I?”

The Chief Inspector said “I think we have gone far enough for a public place. Bethany, can we all go to your flat and have a nice cup of tea to discuss this further?” As we walked to the flat Gwen linked her arm in mine and I had a sudden feeling of love and acceptance, as if this is what I lived for. At the flat I made the drinks and we sat around the kitchen table. I said that Julia was usually here by this time of the night and Gwen suggested that we have a look in her room to see if she was all right. When I knocked on her door there was no answer so I went in and her room looked like a bomb had hit it. On closer inspection we could see that she had left in a hurry, leaving her dirty clothes on the floor and pulling out drawers and leaving them open. Her wardrobe was empty and it was easy to see that she had just filled her cases and fled. I checked my room, which was as I had left it except for an envelope propped against my perfume bottle.

I took it out to the others and took out the note it contained. It was from Julia and she wished me luck but she had been told to get away and never come back. I looked at the others and said “OK, this is really messing with my head. Please tell me, straight out, what is going on.”

Gwen took a folder out of her big handbag and put it on the table. “This is your work on a baffling case from over two years ago. Read it and see if anything brings your memory back.” I opened the folder and read about missing boys, about Albert and the others that had gone. As I read the names of the boys with the likely names if they were girls I saw that Julia was there and also Tess and Toni. There were the artist’s drawings and they were very close. Finally there was a picture of me but the hair was a bit wrong. When I read who had written the report the blood drained from my face and Gwen rushed to support me before I fell off the chair. When she had given me a shot of spirits and I regained my composure she told me that the photo had been found on my computer in the office a couple of days after I had disappeared. They had tracked the GPS records on my car and had seen that it had been parked outside a hotel near Swindon. When they looked in the hotel they could see where the picture was taken from and, on interviewing the publican, had found out about a patron who had collapsed outside and had been taken off in an ambulance.

They had put a team into the local area and had also traced the GPS movements after the car had left the hotel. I was told that whoever took it was a bit of an amateur as they had driven it to a couple of houses before using it as a getaway car in a bank robbery the following day. It had then been dumped in an old quarry in Wiltshire where it had been retrieved a week later. When the houses it had been taken to had been raided they found the bank money at one, along with the robbers. At the other there were signs of it being a half-way house for four girls but it was empty when raided.

I took this all in and was starting to get flashes of memory and the Major looked at me and said “It’s snapping back, isn’t it?” I nodded and asked “am I that Ethan Davis?” Gwen held my hands and said “yes dear, you were, but you are Bethany David now, through and through.” I had to agree as I still felt like me, not some other me. It was difficult to comprehend but I said that it didn’t seem to matter as I had made my own life and was happy with it.

The Major told me that the brainwashing that I had been subjected to was some of the best he had ever seen and that he would love to examine me further. I told him he was a naughty boy and he laughed. The two men said goodnight and left, leaving Gwen and I to tidy up Julias’ old room so that Gwen could stay with me. It was all in vain as, when it was time to go to bed, I kissed her and we both slept in my bed, eventually.

In the morning I loaned her a nightie and gown to wear while we had breakfast. I was just about to drink my tea when I started giggling. Gwen asked me what I had thought of and I told her that I had suddenly remembered wishing that I would, some day, be sitting having breakfast with her while she wore a nightie and gown and that I had never thought that she would be wearing one of mine. This made her smile and she said “You really did love me back then, didn’t you?” I had to admit to falling hopelessly in love on day one and had done all I could to make her happy with me. She looked a bit sad and said “The other guys in the office used to call you my puppy and some even used to call you Fido.” I giggled and told her that if they saw me now they would call me Lassie.

I asked how my disappearance had been handled and she said “Well, we told the lower ranks that you had been killed before your car had gone into the quarry and there was a nice service for you. Your parents were very upset but not as upset as they would be if they saw you now. The upper ranks were told that you had been sent deep under cover and that they should go along with the death news. You are still classified as an officer but your weapons certificate has been withdrawn as you have not kept up with the required practise. I very much doubt that you would be accepted back in Bristol so I suspect they would ship you to some god-forsaken dale in the far north. If you do get reassigned, it would be at the sergeant rank and there will be a nice nest-egg of wages for you.”

I pondered this and said that I would not be likely to want that and then said “What if I am still in the game, what if they don’t know that I have remembered. I could still be useful to them, they just have to realise the fact sometime. I can support myself with the modelling and there were never any problems with me living here.” I thought a bit longer and asked, “Was I a good copper?”

She said that I had been one of the best and was the hardest working one she knew. I started to think about things from that standpoint and came to the realisation of what had been wrong over yesterday and the activities of the Yard boys. I said “They never did have Ritchie in custody, did they? It was all a fishing expedition. All they had was the photo of me going in with the victim and probably one with me being carried out by Ritchie.”

She agreed with that so I said “Then where is Ritchie now?” She said that she had been told that Ritchie was known to them and had form, they did not have a current address for him and that there was an APB out for him. I said “But he lives just across the corridor.” She asked me if I had access to his flat and I told her that we had matched keys as we were going backwards and forwards all the time. She then asked me if the sisters had lived close and I told her that they used to be next door but had moved to Southampton with a new job. Gwen went to her big bag and pulled out a can of pepper spray and some handcuffs and told me to get my key.

We went out into the corridor and she said “Right, let us take this systematically. If you have a master key, let us see how many of these rooms it opens as Ritchie would have been the minder of any girls that lived here.” I opened the door to the room where Tess and Toni had lived. The flat was empty and getting a bit dusty so we closed it up and moved on. The next one opened as well and it looked like someone was living here but not recently. We had a look around and I saw a photo of the other two girls from the one I had taken. We had a rummage in the drawers and came up with their names. One was Michelle DeJong and the other was Geri Coward. There was also a note telling them which train to catch for their new job in Scotland.

My key did not open the next door so we went over to the other side of the corridor and my key worked on the second one we tried. Gwen said that it looked like they had a block of five flats with three used by other girls. This one had the look of a place that was currently lived in and Gwen took photos of the pictures on the sideboard and made a note of the names we found. Neither of us recognised them and Gwen thought that they may be girls from other areas as there were still a number of outstanding cases in Reading and Southampton. We made sure not to disturb anything and left, moving on to the door we did need to open. When I unlocked it, Gwen led the way in, pepper spray at the ready, but the place was still. We found Ritchie in the kitchen, sprawled in a chair with a hole in his forehead and the splatter of blood and brains on the refrigerator behind him.

Gwen called her boss and told him we needed a forensic team but to do it covertly as she thought that I still have a chance to learn more. While we waited in my flat I remarked “You know, this group must only pay peanuts to the grunts on the ground. Ritchie had to do some blackmail to make ends meet, the guys in Swindon did bank heists. The only ones that have the investment in them are the girls. I am sure that none of those would be terminated until their usefulness was over.” Gwen wondered if they were sold to traffickers overseas when they got too old or too well known. She said “You are a case in point; you do not participate in the crimes directly but provide cover. You diverted Adrian while the sisters drugged him with something that brought on depression and there you were to be given the address of the very place he could be subjected to mind control. It may well be that there is something in the offing that a supermodel is going to be an ideal person to have in place.”

Marianne G 2020