After the episode with DI Farmer and the PI’s report, or rather what was implied by the report, but not said, and a couple of phone calls, John Proudfoot did something very much out of character for him: he booked a round of golf at the Army Golf Club in Aldershot.

This wasn't the easiest place for John to get to for a 09:30 tee-off, but he wanted the opportunity to have a quiet and very much off-the-record chat with one of the other golfers on the course that day.

The person John was hoping to meet was Chief Superintendent Steve Jones. Chief Jones was in charge of the National Crime Agency’s ‘Witness Protection Scheme’. He and John knew each other from a six-month stint together in the ‘Counter Terrorism Command’. From that time, he knew that Steve lived nearby in Church Crookham and played at the Army Club every Saturday.

London is a very cosmopolitan city with over 200 recorded languages being used daily. That makes it a prime target for all sorts of terrorists to meet, plan, get finance and even be a target for an attack. This is all despite London having more CCTV cameras than almost any city in the world. London is a big place, and the many parks and gardens are great places to meet as they are mostly out of CCTV range. Parks such as Kensington Gardens and Green Park are not the best place for ne'er-do-wells to meet because of their proximity to Royal Palaces, but Hampstead Heath, Richmond Park and others more than made up for it. Steve Jones and John had worked together to target a couple of Al-Qaeda operatives who were in London looking for a financial backer. They used parks outside central London for their clandestine meetings.

That was more than fifteen years before, but John hoped that now Chief Super Jones remembered his temporary senior officer.

Those doubts soon disappeared when the two met in the car park. As it happened, the partner for Steve Jones had cried off just before he arrived at the course.

John waited until the third tee before bringing up a hypothetical situation.

“If, and this is purely hypothetical, a family were in WP and one or more of the associates of the people that they had helped to put away found them and… instead of taking their lives, they abducted their child, what would your lot do?”

“I wondered when you would get around to the real reason you were here at the same time as me today. Someone on my staff must have talked behind my back. Never mind.”

“No one talked, Steve. You are a creature of habit, and playing a round here was one of those, so I took a chance on you playing here today.”

“Ok, ok.”

John remained straight-faced while he waited for Steve to answer.

“Hypothetically speaking, we’d relocate the family and make every attempt to erase all of the child’s history. Because of WP, there is no way that we’d let the media hear about the abduction. Is that what you wanted to hear?”

“Something like that. Again, hypothetically, I have come to know where that child is. They are now an adult, but starting with the abduction, which may or may not have had something to do with their pre-WP history, the child was trafficked to some really nasty people. It goes without saying that those people are paedophiles. Then, sometime after they got rid of the child, the now adult was raped and sodomised by an organised crew. Not only that, their life was erased for a second time.”

The Chief swore under his breath.
“Are you for real here, John?”

“I am. There is one more thing. Was DI Farmer part of your team at any point in time?”

“I heard about him yesterday at a Joint Chiefs’ meeting at the yard. Was it you who turned him in?”

“It was me, I’m afraid. The idiot was stupid enough to use the PNC to look up my home address. That allowed the chief of the operation to give me a heads up.”

“Serves him right,” said Steve.

“I think that we should call it a day and go somewhere very quiet and drop the hypotheticals. Agreed?”

John grinned. His golf game had not improved with age.

Half an hour later, the two men were sitting on a bench under a tree in Farnham Park. A few walkers, mostly with dogs, were around; other than that, it was a perfect place to talk.

John handed Steve the PI’s report. Neither of them spoke while Steve read it.

“That report is pretty good for what it does not say. Don’t quote me on this, but yes, the family are in WP and has been since a week after their son was born. Don’t ask me to say why they are WP.”

“I wasn’t intending to do that. Have you heard of ‘Operation Chesil’?”

“Only briefly. Is the boy… sorry man, a victim of that gang?”

“They are… only they aren’t a boy any longer. There is at least one more victim of the traffickers who suffered the same fate as a child and the subsequent abuse.”

“Fuck. There are some truly evil people in this world. I won’t ask if you know who is behind the ring. If you knew that, I know that we would not be sitting here today unless you didn’t have enough evidence yet to go public. Am I right?”

“You are spot on, Steve. We have a good idea who one of the abusers is, but don’t have enough evidence as yet to get you lot to apply for a search warrant.”

“From your description of the family and the PI’s report, I know who it is. Do I need to initiate a move of location for them?”

“I don’t think so. The PI who produced the report is a former officer from Thames Valley. They are well known for not having loose lips; otherwise, I would not have used them. So far, the child… woman concerned does not know that I know where her parents are and given what you have told me today, I think that it is preferable to let sleeping dogs lie. From my discussions with her, she’s aware of what could happen if she were introduced to them after all these years. She could not take being rejected by them.”

“You say she? The family I was thinking of had a son?”

“Had is the operative word. The people who kidnapped him did a number on him. They cut off his male parts and didn’t make a clitoris. Then they pumped him full of female hormones before trafficking him, or rather her, to a serial paedophile who kept her locked up for years. From the timelines shown in this report and from what I have obtained from the other victim, this boy, who was abducted in Derby, was the replacement for the other victim who managed to escape from where they were being held captive and abused.”

“Fuck. I can see why you started with hypotheticals.”

“All I want to know is this. Were they in WP before the abduction?”

“They were and had been for around nine years.”

John smiled.
“That’s all I needed to know. That leads me to think that the abduction had nothing to do with what they were in WP for, unless it happened to be related to child trafficking?”

“It didn’t. Naturally, I can’t say what it was, but it was most definitely not related to trafficking.”

“Then we are cool. I’ll keep this report to myself and get the young lady a new identity as part of her rehab.”

Steve smiled.
“That’s the John I know. You were always taking care of those under you. That’s why you are still missed. Those who have replaced you seem to have zero skills when it comes to compassion. For them, it is either black or white, good or bad and nothing in between.”

“You won’t get me to argue about that. Thanks, Steve, for being open with me.”

“No, John, I owe you so much for steering me on the right path as a rookie,” said Steve.
“I’ll update their handler in general terms about their son, but that will be as far as it goes from my POV.”

“Thanks, Steve. I’ll destroy the report, and then it can go no farther than us,” said John.
“One last thing. Do you think that DI Farmer is part of or associated with the gang that her parents ratted out?”

“That I don’t know. I assume that AC-12 is handling his case?”

“They are.”

“Good. I’ll have a word with them and get their detailed background file. If he wangled his way onto Operation Chesil, then he may have something buried deep that he wants kept secret. I have a legitimate interest because of my job. Any threat to the people we have to keep safe is treated very seriously, going right to the top in Whitehall.”

“Thanks, Steve.”

“John, keep what you are doing very close to your chest until you have enough to blow these abusers right open. My guess, and this is purely a guess… The person you suspect has connections and… well, I don’t need to say more, do I?”

“You don’t, Steve, but it is entirely possible that some very senior people in the Met are part of the abusers of these captives.”

John was about to say more, but declined. Dido had identified a Chief Superintendent from one of the photos of John’s leaving event. Steve’s grinning face was in the photo, and Dido had not picked him out as being one of the abusers.

The two men went their separate ways shortly after that.

John drove home with his worries about Joanne still uppermost in his thoughts. At least he understood a bit more about her family background. While stuck in traffic near Heathrow, he decided that neither Joanne nor Dido should know about the events of the day. The PI's report could be a vulnerability that needed rectifying as soon as practical. He knew just the location for the document, but Joanne's needs would prevent him from disposing of it for a day or so. In the meantime, he would leave it under the spare wheel in the back of the BMW. He had a safer place for the document, but that could wait a few days.

“Good game?” asked Joanne when he returned home.

“Dismal. Today showed me perfectly well why I didn’t follow many of my compatriots to the course after retirement. I’m not very good. Pretty crap if I am perfectly honest.”

“How much did it cost you? At the 19th hole, I mean.”

John chuckled.
“I wasn’t so stupid as to take part in their wagers. I haven’t played for years, unlike the people I was playing with. They play at least once a week, if not more often.”

“Then why did you go? I mean, if you are that bad?”

“I had to see a man about a dog.”

“That’s what my father used to say before he went off to Antwerp on business.”

The mention of Joanne’s father caused John to stiffen up.

“You have not mentioned him much before,” asked John, hoping that his surprise had not alerted her to his little game.

“While I was being held captive, I always believed that one day, he would come and rescue me. That’s how I survived. Not long after I was chucked out the back of a van in Liverpool, I found the city library. In the reference section, they had all the old newspapers on some sort of film reader. I looked back to when I was taken and nothing. I remembered that it was the week after Derby County had played Birmingham City. I found the match report and worked from there. The thing was that there was mention of my abduction or any police search going on, no, nothing.”

“That must have been a bit of a shock?”

“It was. I always thought that I had a good relationship with him. Whenever he was home and Derby County were playing locally, we’d go to the match, home or away.”

“What did you do then?”

“I left Liverpool and blow jobbed my way to Derby on a few lorries. The last one dropped me off right outside the ground. From there, I knew the way to where we lived. The house was occupied by an Indian Family. One of the neighbours told me that they’d moved away. I placed the date as less than a week after I was taken. That was when I understood that they simply didn’t care about me, and even if I found them, they’d probably reject me out of hand. Mum was always anti-gay. She made me go to Sunday School at the local Church. She was always quoting the bible at me when I goofed up or came home from school with a torn shirt.”

“I guess from that, you aren’t that keen on finding them again?”

“When I discovered that they’d moved and had not reported me missing, I felt betrayed and hurt, but after a while, I just put them out of my mind. I’m angry at myself for believing that he would come and rescue me, but at the time, I didn’t know the truth. As I said, believing that he’d come and rescue me, helped me survive.”

“Then we will have to make sure that no one in the Law goes looking for them then.”

“Do you think that they would?”

“I do. Because you were taken when you were a child, they would want to question them, especially if, as you say, they didn’t report your abduction.”

Joanne looked rather disappointed.

“Then, I will have to make sure that when the time comes, any proposed contact with your parents is strictly off-limits.”

“Thank you, John.”

“There is no need to thank me for anything. I am here to make sure that you are safe and help you get better. Fate has deemed that both you and Dido have given me a new lease of life. After Dorothy died, I immersed myself in restoring my old car. I have to admit that I let things slide quite a bit. Then Dido came on the scene, and I’d be telling you a lie if I said that I didn’t enjoy the task even though it has some downsides. I look at Dido and I see someone who is mostly in control of her life. Now I can concentrate on helping you get yourself back on track.”

Joanne didn’t say anything, so John continued.

“I know that you have heard most of this before, but you really are not alone.”

This time, Joanne came and gave John a brief hug. Until then, she had avoided physical contact with almost everyone, including Dido.

John smiled. He knew that this was just a small step on a long road to recovery for Joanne.

John pondered over the PI's report for another week. He'd said that he would destroy it, but he decided that it was better if he kept it safe. He made a trip into central London and put it in his safe deposit box alongside all of Dido's videos. He also placed a record of his conversation with Steve from the WP Team in the box. He'd felt unclean about recording it at first, but he needed a backup in case things went pear-shaped at a later date.
On his journey home, he found himself thinking that this case was more complicated than anything he’d ever had to handle in all his years as a police officer. He wondered what else would come out of the woodwork before Dido and Joanne were able to hold their heads up high.