Chapter 3

During that week, we tidied up the aftermath of the track day. We banked the money and filled in the ledger of accounts. Lena did newsletters and receipts for the new members, and then started thinking about the next social, which we thought may be one that was only by invitation, with the meal at Saxmundham and a visit to the place where the cars had been created. When Lena rang Grayson with the idea, he was enthusiastic. Two dozen would be a nice number.

We made an appointment to see Janine at the end of the week, so that I could be perfect for my weekend. When we were there, Janine brought out a stunning wig.

“When the rep showed me this, I just had to get it in for you, Lena. That one you had for the races was good, with that green pantsuit. This one would be stunning with a green dress for Christmas.”

Lena stood when it was put on her head. She looked magnificent, the hair was like a mane down her back and almost glowed cherry red.

“It’s great, Janine. I bet that it’s expensive.”

“Not really. The rep told me that it had been in stock for more than two years. It’s a colour that not many women could make their own. He said that it was the last of stock that they used to get, but the supplier had stopped supplying. The hair is different to Asian real hair, a lot thicker, with more body and shine, if looked after.”

I spoke up.

“I’ll buy it for you, for Christmas. We can take it now and put it on my card.”

We walked out of the salon, two renewed women, with me carrying the bag with the wig. I put it in my wardrobe and made ready to be picked up by Bertie. With a spray of perfume and the bottle in my bag with other cosmetics, I was dressed to kill and waited in the office, looking down at the road. If I went outside to wait for him, I would get propositioned. I had an overnight bag with a change, or two. I was ready for anything, and if we ended up at his place, I could start to commandeer some of his wardrobe.

When he arrived, I locked up and got in the Aston.

“Where to, my Lord?”

“Tonight, my lady, we will be dining in Brighton, sleeping in Bognor, and will be looking at the Museum at Beaulieu on Saturday. Saturday night we sleep at Lymington, and Sunday we look at the motor bikes at New Milton before I deliver you back home.”

“Now, that’s my idea of a romantic getaway. Drive on, my Lord, and make this lady happy.”

We had a wonderful weekend. He drove steadily, unwilling to lose his licence again. The meal was good, the hotel cosy, the loving glorious. The next day we did one of the best car museums in the world, looking at the record-breaking cars from the previous century. The day was relaxed, and we had a lot of laughs. Sunday was a visit to the Sammy Miller motorcycle museum. I hadn’t been into bikes, but some of these had engineering that was way ahead of their time. I hadn’t seen a supercharged motorcycle that raced before the war before.

On the way back to London, I was driving the Aston and he started asking me about my days as a Private Investigator. I was telling him some snippets of old cases when something that I had seen came to the front of my mind. I didn’t say much more and concentrated on the drive. We stopped at a country pub for dinner. It had been a lovely time, and I was happy.

We stopped outside the office, and he kissed me and said that we could do it all again, next week. I told him that we could hang around Canary Wharf, and he smiled.

“That’s what I was hoping you’d say.”

I pretended to punch him, gave him another kiss and he got into the car and drove away. I was smiling when I went inside and had a bath before going to bed. I had lots to do during the next week.

Monday morning, Lena came in and I let her carry the office while I started with a phone call to Veronicas’ father.

“Tell me, Sir. When you reported Veronica missing, did either of you give a DNA sample to check against unidentified bodies?”

“My wife did. Do you have something new?”

“Just a hunch at the moment. You’ll be the first to know if it becomes more than that. Do you have a card from the investigating officer?”

He told me to wait and came back with the name and number. I thanked him as I wrote it down. I then called the officer in the Oxford station. When he answered I told him who I was and asked him if he would do a DNA test on a piece of hair that I would send him. He was hesitant but agreed. I took a few strands from the wig and put them in a sterile bag, addressed it to him and went out to the post office to send it priority.

I spent the rest of the week working with Lena. On the weekend I spent a lot of the time in bed with Bertie, or just sitting around his apartment, naked. On Monday morning, I got a call from Oxford, asking me if I could go and talk to them.

Hassam drove me to Oxford, dropping me at the police station. I had a bag with my copies of the information that I had given the father, and another with the wig. We sat in an office, and I was asked to tell them everything, while being recorded. If I showed them a paper, the officer would stop me while he described what the paper said for the recording. I told him about the girl that the parents never knew, and her boyfriend Duane. I told them about her sheet from Ruislip. Then he asked the question that my guess pivoted around.

“Why did you think that this wig is actually Veronicas’ hair?”

“I was thinking about old cases a week or so back. One that I was involved in took place in Yarmouth. It involved human trafficking of teenage girls. When the girls were released, all of them had been shorn. When I saw the wig, it took me a while to remember the picture I had seen of Veronica. Her hair was unmistakable. That’s why I sent you the sample, to see if my guess was right or not.”

After that, I had to wait while he checked with Ruislip and Yarmouth. When he came back, he led me to a much better room with his Superintendent sitting behind the desk. There, I had to go through what I knew. He took it all in and then asked me what I wanted to do now.

“I would like to speak to the girls taken from that boat. Hopefully, they would be more settled from the terrible experience. If we can’t speak to them, hopefully there would be statements that they had given. They might be in storage by now, it is a few years since that case.”

I was told to go off and have lunch but come back in the afternoon. I gave Hassam a call and he picked me up, taking us into the town centre and finding somewhere to get something to eat. He told me that he had explored the shopping centre while I was at the police station. I told him that he may have time to do a guided tour of the University during the afternoon.

The afternoon session was as long as I thought it might be. There was discussion, there were more questions, but there was, finally, emails with scans of the girls’ statements. One seemed more aware of her surroundings that the others. She described being with her boyfriend when someone grabbed her and put a rag over her nose and mouth. When she had come round, she was in a cell, in a group of other cells, with just a bucket and a bunk.

In her statement she told that she was bored and could just sit on the bunk and listen to the noises outside, knowing that she was a prisoner. She wasn’t asked what the noises were. Her statement said that her boyfriend was called Duane.

I was being treated as part of the team, as they had received corroboration of my involvement from Yarmouth, with another that came through from Lowestoft. I pointed out the name of the boyfriend that could be a link to Veronica, and they told me to go home. I would be contacted when the girl had been located.

I called Hassam and he picked me up, delivering me back at the office. Lena had already closed up by the time we got there. I nuked an easy dinner and sat thinking about where it will go from here.

Two days later, I got a call that I would be picked up and taken to see the girl. I stood outside and got into the back of the police car when it arrived. I was taken to the police station near Wembley. Inside, the girl was waiting. They allowed me to sit with her in an interview room, knowing that everything said would be recorded. I told her that she looked a lot better than the last time I had seen her, after she had been released from the boat.

“I’m told that it was you and your friend that saved us from a fate worse than death. It had been bad up until then, but we knew that once we were at our destination, our lives would be hell.”

“Tell me. When Duane knocked you out, where were you?”

“At a party. His cousin was there, a real brute. He was in the gang that was taking us away. He was the one who was shot.”

“Did you tell that to anyone at the time.”

“Nobody asked, they were just trying to make sure we didn’t melt down.”

“In your statement, you said that you could hear noises. Take your time and tell me what you could hear.”

“The constant sound was a railway. We must have been near a main line.”

“We?”

“It took a while, but the other girls were brought in a few days apart. It was always Duane or his cousin. We didn’t see the others until we were at the boat. We were cable tied and blindfolded when we were taken to a van. I know that it was the early hours because of the quiet.”

“Any other sounds?”

“One that sounded like a big shopping centre. There was a lot of traffic noise and then quiet.”

“How did they feed you?”

“A box of cornflakes every couple of days and bottles of water.”

“When was your hair cut off?”

“A little while before we were taken out, Duane said that it was his bonus, and that he knew a wigmaker who would pay well for it.”

“Did you go directly to the boat?”

“No, we were another couple of weeks in a cellar, first.”

“Thank you for your help, I think I know where you were.”

“Thank you for giving me my life back.”

We hugged and I waved at the two-way mirror. I was led back to the police car, and it took me to the Yard, where I was taken up to see my old friend George Hounslow, now a Chief Superintendent of the murder squad.

He had the pile of files on his desk.

“Maxie, I’ve been told that this is down to my squad to see through. Do you know where the girls were kept?”

“I think I do. Duane was also involved with Veronica. He lives in Ruislip. There is an industrial estate next to the main line by Ruislip station. On the other side of the tracks there is a large shopping centre and cineplex. I think that’s what the other girl heard. I have Veronicas’ hair, the thing that made me make a few assumptions. My salon told me that it was the last one left in stock from her supplier, as the wigmaker had stopped supplying him about two or more years ago, about the time the gang was caught.”

“How do we go about finding which building is where they were kept?”

“We need to see if there was anything in the contents of the cousins pockets that would help. A bunch of keys with an address tag would be good. Other than that, Duane may be able to help.”

“No joy there. He overdosed about three months ago.”

“Has his house been searched?”

“I don’t think so. It will stay empty until the file is closed. We may be able to have a look. I’ll check on that and give you a call.”

A police car took me back to the office, where Lena wanted to know what I was up to. It took a while to tell her about the way the old case fitted into the new one, and we were out in Little Italy before I got to the end of the narrative.

“Looks like you’re scoring more brownie points with the coppers, Maxie.”

“I just want to see it through, as usual. Any brownie points are a bonus.”

After another nice weekend with Bertie, I got another call, this time George would be picking me up and we would be meeting a team from Ruislip to search the house. I was picked up, sitting in the back with George as we went to Ruislip. At the house, I had my gloves on as the Ruislip team made their search. My wish came true when they searched the dead cousins’ room an came up with a key on a ring, with an address tag. They had also found a wealth of information which would move them forward with cases against local bad guys and drug dealers.

The address was a small place at the end of a dead end, right next to the railway line. When the key turned in the lock, we all held our breath as the door was opened. It was a good job we did, as the smell that wafted out was unmistakable. We all went and stood well back as extra help was called for, in the shape of a forensic team who got kitted up in the coveralls and breathing masks before they went in.

I waited with George outside, both of us dreading what we would be told. Eventually, one came out carrying a laptop, which he gave to George. He took off the mask.

“Three girls, all in advanced stage of decomposition. They must have starved to death and that would have been about a year or two ago. There is a lot of other stuff in there, one room is full of packets of cannabis, as well as about twenty kilo of what looks like cocaine. We’ll get the cells open and the bodies removed, but there’s no need for the Yard to waste any more time. I’d thank you for leading us here, but it’s going to be a very long day for me.”

George and I were quiet as we went to the Yard. I didn’t know about him, but I was sick to my stomach. He must have known what I was thinking.

“Don’t be hard on yourself, Maxine. Nobody knew they were there. There wasn’t any link to this place in the Yarmouth case. They could have been in those cells for another twenty years if it wasn’t for you. If I had my way I would offer you a job at the Yard.”

“I wouldn’t take it, George. Doing the humdrum work allows me to forget the bad times. But you never do completely forget, do you?”

“No, you don’t. You just tell yourself that solving a case is what matters. It is always someone else who commits the crime. Hopefully, this laptop will give us more to go on.”

Instead of going to the office, I asked them to drop me off at Canary Wharf. Up in the apartment, I interrupted Bertie at work on another tour, and he held me in his arms as I cried my eyes out. I wouldn’t tell him why, but we were sitting in front of the TV when the lead story came on the news.

“In breaking news, police have discovered a private prison in Ruislip. Inside, we are told that there were the bodies of three girls, locked in cells. It appears that they had been left there two years ago.”

I started crying again and he held me closely. We went to bed early, and he just held me until I went to sleep. The only thing that I told him was that the smell will be with me until I die.

He took me home the next day, and I had to suffer a grilling from Lena. She could understand what I was going through, having seen, and smelt it, and worse, in her time in the SAS. Eventually, real life helped me get over it. George came to see us in the office one day, to tell me what the laptop gave up.

“They had recorded the names of all the girls that they kidnapped, which is clearing up a lot of missing persons cases. Veronica is there, with her destination being one of the Gulf States. There’s no way we will be able to track her from there, as they trade the girls by number. We’ve told her parents the information, but what you told them earlier had deadened their feelings already.”

He went on to say that the laptop was also helping investigations by both the drug squad and the vice squad. When he left, Lena came over to me to give me a hug.

“More brownie points, Maxie. Just think of it that way. It’s passed and gone. I think we should go to lunch.”

Lena never got to wear the wig, nor did she want to. We gave it to Veronicas’ parents, and they had a small funeral, with the coffin containing the wig and pictures of their daughter in happier days. We attended and he thanked us for bringing part of her home, as it allowed them closure.

Between the two of them, Lena and Bertie worked together to help me come back to normal. Lena got her Stag, and Veronicas’ father offered her garage space. Grayson came good with my Daimler. As it was ex-police, he didn’t have to do a lot mechanically, just reinforce the chassis and replace the brakes with competition discs. After the seats had been reupholstered and the body painted in a high gloss black, I kept it in the spare space in the garage at Canary Wharf. I was living with Bertie now, like a couple of married folk. The doorman always tipped his hat when he saw me.

I had never wanted to be second fiddle to a successful man, but Bertie was contracted to organise band tours that would last for more than a year. He gave Max Force the contract to supply the security for them. The only way we could make that happen was to grow our business. I still went to the office in Soho to oversee both the PI business and the security business, which was now housed upstairs in what used to be my living quarters, with two girls keeping tabs on a large group of mainly ex-police or ex-military, many that Lena and I had recruited. The two rooms were now the nerve centre of Max Force Security.

Lena had a second girl in the lower office, to look after the car club. It was a very busy place, the security part of it being a seven-day operation when tours were on. I found myself jetting all over the world to manage the setting up of our operations at every venue. In Germany, Bertie proposed, and I accepted. We got married in a little church in Bavaria, just us and the crew. Lena was mad at me so we put on a party at the house of one of the band members, just so she could dress up.

We attended the track days when we could, with them now being major operations, with paid gatekeepers, paid track marshals and ambulance crew. The meetings got big enough to open up for the paying public and now went over a two-day weekend. They became very popular, and more enthusiasts joined the club so that they could play.

Over the course of a few years, Lord and Lady Woodward became well respected in the motoring family, as well as creating a family of our own, and a successful promotions company. I still help out with sleuthing, to keep my hand in. Who knows when I might need to use my superpowers again.

Marianne Gregory © 2024