Chapter 9

Wendy and I were playing another couple of models in a game of beach volleyball. With our height we were the current champions but this game was getting too close for comfort.

There was a good crowd watching us and I noticed several guys standing oddly as four bikini-clad models jumped about. We did win in the end but it had been a good work-out. I hugged Wendy after she hit the winning spike and then we went and hugged the losing girls.
We were all in Monaco and had been for a week now. The shoots were all ultra-glamorous high-end fashion and we had spent a lot of our days draped over roulette tables in outfits that even we could not afford to buy. This was our day of rest and the game was the last one for the day so we all went to our rooms to shower and dress for dinner. Of course, being well known models meant that every night we were at some chic party or another. Tonight we were expected to show at the mansion of a French financier with an eye for lovely ladies. What I didn’t expect to see, when we walked into his ballroom, was Julia hanging on his arm.

As we were being introduced I saw Julia look like the proverbial deer in the headlights when she saw me. I guess that she had put London behind her for good. I had to admit that she was absolutely looking the part, with her designer dress and perfect make-up she was several levels above the London version. I led Wendy over to the buffet and whispered in her ear that our hostess was the previous Julian Banks in the flesh. Now, in all of her investigations, she had never actually been close to one of the surgeons’ creations other than me so she was surprised at just how good the final product could be.

We spent the evening being chatted up by well-heeled guys wanting a piece of the action and, I must say, Wendy was getting very good at the game. I was starting to think that she may be turning bi! There was a band playing in one corner and the two of us were dancing with a couple of the better looking guys when a waiter came up to us and said “Excuse me gentlemen; but your hostess would like to have a word with these lovely ladies. She will return them to you in a little while.” The guys were OK with that and the waiter led us to a side room where Julia was waiting for us. She looked at me and said “OK, how did you not get arrested? I was told that you were going to be locked up and that I could get caught up in it if I stayed around.”

I asked her if we could sit down as these heels were getting a bit painful so we sat in easy chairs next to a false fireplace. I firstly introduced her to Wendy and told her that Wendy was now staying in her old room. I then told her that all the police had was a picture of me going in with the victim and one of me being half carried out by Ritchie and there was nothing they could hold me on. I asked how she had been warned to leave and she said that a friend of Ritchie had phoned her at work and told her to go home, pack her clothes, and get to the Eurostar terminus for the next train to Paris as the game was up. When I asked about the timing, we discovered that it had been before I had been approached by the detectives. There must have been a leak at the Yard. I could see that Wendy had also taken this point. Julia told us that she was particularly instructed not to try and see Ritchie as he would be unable to help her. I reckoned that he must have been dead by that time. Julia asked how Ritchie was doing in jail and we had to tell her that he had been shot dead. She almost broke down at this and sobbed “I didn’t know.”

I asked her about her current position and she told us that she was the PA for our host as well as being his lover. She then stunned us by saying that Tess and Toni had left their job in Southampton and were working with her in the head office in Paris, still in the steno pool, though. She commented on Wendys’ height and I told her that we were now the ‘Sporty Twins’ in the fashion industry and that we were doing very well. She said that she was sorry she had run out and that it had weighed on her mind ever since. “You were so kind to me, Beth” she said “we had a lot of fun. I will try to keep in touch.” She dried her eyes and we all went back to the party. Wendy and I went back to our guys and we did, indeed, end up in separate hotel rooms with me getting some much needed sorting out. I only hoped Wendy was appreciating the one thing I was sure she had never had before.

Around two in the morning I got back to our room and found Wendy sitting on the bed, weeping quietly. I went to her and held her close and told her that everything was all right and that I was here to help her get over the experience. She said “I don’t want to get over it. I want to do it again, dammit!!! I am afraid that you won’t want me anymore! I became a lesbian because I was afraid of the power that men have and now I am so gorgeous I now have more power myself. That poor boy would stop at nothing to please me and I like it!” I held her close and kissed her wet cheek and told her that she was no longer just a lesbian and nor was I. I said that we were a couple of bi girls and that she will have a lot more fun in life as long as she makes sure she doesn’t get pregnant. “My God” she cried “I’ve never had to bother with that before, I had better get something in the morning from the chemist. It’s all right for you; even the surgeon couldn’t give you that problem.”

I stood up and undressed and then helped her undress and we fell into bed giggling, which turned into an hour of serious loving. We both looked haggard when we fronted up for breakfast and our make-up girl commented that she would need the heavy duty foundation today. She said that she was glad she didn’t get invited to the parties as she would never have the stamina for the late nights. It was fortunate that our shoot today was to be swimwear and on a yacht so we had a bit of time to make ourselves presentable for the camera. During a break we were swimming around the back of the yacht and Wendy said that we needed to contact the chief about the sisters and the parallel with my own experience. I told her that we may be in danger if Julia reports back to her minder in Paris and that we needed to take a lot more care in the future.

That evening we went for a walk to the casino and called the chief from a public phone. We told him about our discussion with Julia and he said that he would get the gendarmes` to start surveillance on the sisters and anyone else they may meet. He told us that there would be a package in our wardrobe when we got home and to make sure we carried the contents in future. We all agreed that the plant at Scotland Yard may be the reason I had not been contacted since the ‘arrest’. When we did get home we found a couple of nine millimetre pistols, ammunition and a cleaning kit so we were now not just beautiful but dangerous as well! We just had to go looking for a new handbag each, so that we could carry our weapons at all times. We ended up with stylish cross body ones with a zip closure so that no-one would accidentally see the gun in them. We bought three each in different colours as it just does not do to carry one bag all the time.

After the Monaco shoot we had a couple of weeks off and the chief got a message to us that he wanted to update us on the investigation. We met him and the Major at a posh London restaurant for lunch. As we ate our lunch we were given all of the latest details. The operation in Paris was just getting going but the French police had identified the ‘go-to’ man already, a low-life thug. They had reported that the target financier was acting quite normally at the moment. The company where Tess and Toni had been working in Southampton had undergone a take-over and restructuring and the manager that they had been looking after had been made redundant. The company where Michelle and Geri worked, from the flat along from mine, was being watched closely and the chief told me that the PA to the finance manager was none other than Lesley Johns.

I asked about the wellness centre that Adrian had gone to and the Major smiled and told us that the police had raided the place, only to find that there had been a sub-contract division that had now closed down, leaving some very tasty mind bending equipment behind. He said that he had been able to commandeer it all and his team was learning some new tricks from it. The rest of the wellness centre was just as it should be and totally above board. The hospital that had sent me to London was also uninvolved but my own case had been organised by a medical practise that was no longer open.

They also said that there had been no cases of teenage disappearances for a couple of months so it looked like the gang was laying low and just concentrating on current projects. I asked about other cases of finance officers disappearing with funds and was told that three of them had gone through the wellness centre and all had disappeared with substantial funds. The names of all the staff in every company had been looked at and, in every case, there was a PA or high level secretary who could possibly be one of the earlier kidnapped boys. All had vanished.

Wendy and I took a week off in Bristol and it was fun, but a little sad, to be walking around and only being recognised as fashion models, not as previous police detectives. We stayed well clear of our old station. Wendy was very quiet for a couple of days and then announced that she did not intend to return to the force as she was having more fun in her current position and also earning more money than the Commissioner. I knew that I could never return as Ethan was dead and buried. We had a drink to our future and allowed a couple of guys to take us home for a foursome. It was a blast!

Marianne G 2020