Chapter 28

Lucy and Gabbie stood hand in hand as they watched Diane drive away, “what were you talking about with mum just then?” Lucy asked.

“I just wanted to make sure she still wanted to be my mum, you know, after all this.”

“Of course she does!”

“Well, you know, I’ve caused nothing but trouble for you all.”

“We love you, it’s simple, nothing you’ve done, or that’s been done to you, can change that.”

“Yeah,” Gabbie replied quietly, “I just don’t understand why.”

Lucy hugged Gabbie as they walked back to their room, she kissed her as the door closed, and they collapsed onto the sofa, their emotions overflowing as they removed each other’s t-shirts and underwear.

Afterwards, as their breathing slowed and heartrate settled Gabbie said, “how are you at writing letters?”

“Not bad, but Steve would be better, why?”

“This is what I was talking to Diane about, I don’t want Katherine to be my mum anymore, so I’m going to write to her telling her that I don’t want her to contact me ever again, and that I’m going to ask Diane to officially adopt me when I’m 18 and the guardianship ends.”

“Oh, that’s a big step.”

“It is, so I want the letter to be just right, and I’ve never been good at that sort of thing.”

“Not a problem, let’s give Steve a ring, if he’s not around we’ll talk to Millie.”

Steve was in the 6^th Form library, there’s no way they could meet him there, so Steve asked the librarian to open the lower school library, which was usually closed on Sundays, they met him in there and took a table at the back of the room, just in case anyone walked past the door and heard them.

Lucy opened her MacBook, opened Word and started to explain to Steve what they wanted.

“So, do you want this to sound angry, or calm.”

Gabbie thought for a while, getting up to pace around, she clearly did her best thinking on her feet, eventually she slapped the desk, “Dammit,” she said, “I so want to be angry, but this is important, so it needs to be calm and measured, I want her to know, in no uncertain terms, that I’ve found out what she did, that I’m not pressing charges for my own benefit, not hers, and I want nothing else to do with her.”

“I think that’s the right approach, jot me down some phrases you need to include, and I’ll write the letter.”

“Thank you so much Steve, you’re an absolute legend.”

Lucy pulled out her notepad and pen, handing them to Gabbie, she spent 10 minutes writing things down and crossing them out until she had a few perfectly precise phrases which she passed to Steve.

“It’s ok if you need to reword them, but these are the kind of things I need to say.”

“Great, leave it to me, you go do your own stuff for a while.”

“I want copies of the letter to go to her, DCI Kyle Morris, Sylvie my therapist, mum’s lawyer and Katherine’s lawyer. I don’t know if that makes a difference to the wording.”

“It shouldn’t, you write the personal letter, then just send copies with a cover note.”

“Cool, thanks Steve,” she kissed him lightly on the cheek, and he blushed as he always did. Steve knew Gabbie’s heart belonged to Lucy 100%, but still, she was damn sexy and set everyone’s heart a flutter with just her smile.

Gabbie’s phone chose that moment to ring, she pulled it from her pocket, “weird, it’s DCI Kyle, what’s he want?”

She accepted the call, ‘Hello DCI Morris, how are you today.”

“Hi Gabbie, I’m so sorry to bother you on a Sunday.”

“Not a problem, I just said your name and my phone rang, which is a bit weird.”

“You said my name, why?” he asked, curious.

“Ahh, nothing massively important right now, how can I be of service to the constabulary, or is this a social call?”

“Ahh, not a social call, this is business I’m afraid.”

“Do I need to sit down?”

“Maybe.”

“Can you phone me back in like 5 minutes Kyle, I need to get somewhere a bit more private, is that ok?”

“No problem,” he cut the call.

“We’ll be back in a bit Steve, just need to talk to the police.”

“No worries Gabbie, I’ll be about half an hour writing this.”

Gabbie took Lucy’s hand, “we need to get back to the room.”

“What’s up?”

“I don’t know, he wants to ask me something and when I joked about needing to sit down, he said maybe.”

“Ahh, I’m sure it’ll be ok, let’s get back to the room before he calls back.”

Five minutes to the second later Gabbie’s phone rang, they were sitting on the sofa, her phone on her knee, she activated the speaker.

“Hello again Kyle,” Gabbie said as brightly as she could manage.

“Am I on speaker,” DCI Morris asked.

“Yes, but it’s just me and Lucy.”

“Fair enough, ok, as you know, we’ve been going through Chelcey’s diary and drawings, and one in particular concerns us.”

“Ok,” Gabbie said warily, “what’s concerning about it?”

“Well, there’s a number of people in the cellar with you and Charles.”

“And you want to know who they are.”

“Well, it would be nice.”

“Right, Sir Peter Wheeler, Duncan Collins, Malcolm Johns, Katherine Dixon, Jack Simms, Tony Turvey and Will Turvey. Malcolm was filming the night, I don’t know if the footage exists, keep it to yourself if you find it, I don’t want to know.”

“Err, ok, I didn’t expect you to just reel off a list of names, coincidently the same number of names as people in the picture.”

“I can even tell you where they were standing if you want. You see I had some hypnotherapy yesterday, I needed to bring some memories out, and this was the memory, part of the memory was I saw Chelcey drawing in her caravan, I think that’s the drawing you’re talking about.”

“And you’re absolutely certain Sir Peter Wheeler and Duncan Collins were there that night.”

“Positive, they abused me that night, I now have the whole night in high definition in my brain, I can tell you exactly what happened. You see Katherine, she’s wearing a strap-on dildo, she anally raped Chelcey that night.”

“You’re calling your mother Katherine now.”

“She’s not my mother anymore, I’m drafting a letter instructing her to never contact me again.”

“Don’t you want to press charges if she was involved in the abuse, along with the other people there?”

“I’m not pressing charges for entirely selfish reasons, I’m not going to court to be quizzed on my sexual history by Katherine’s lawyers, so I’m calling a close to the matter. To save you looking for the others, they’re all dead. I’m sure you know what happened to Sir Peter, Duncan Collins died in a car crash, Malcolm Johns was murdered in Newcastle, Jack, Tony and Will were killed in a fire in a brothel in Amsterdam.”

“Ok, this is very useful information, especially the Malcolm Johns character doing the filming, we can probably check through our case logs.”

“Just don’t involve me, I’m out of this, I can’t be dealing with it.”

“Fair enough, speaking of Chelcey, we had a call from someone called Sylvie Peters, she claims she’s your therapist and wants to help Chelcey.”

“Oh great, Sylvie is my therapist, she and her friend Allison managed to work my hidden memories free yesterday.”

“So you’d trust her to work with Chelcey, assuming Chelcey wants the help.”

“Oh yes, definitely, she’s absolutely lovely, and patient and caring.”

“Very good.”

“Err, sorry, Lucy here, can I just say one thing?”

“Yes, of course Lucy.”

“The Malcolm Johns character, when you’re looking into his history, don’t look too close unless you really have to.”

“What are you suggesting?”

“Well, you see, he was a predator, and he’s dead now, so is there any need to go rooting through the bins, so to speak, to find out stuff that’s really not that important. Some of his victims may not appreciate the light being shone on them, that’s all I’m saying.”

“Right, but this might be important in connection with other enquiries.”

“Oh shit, look, he’s my dad right, my biological parent at any rate, he got my mother into porn and got her pregnant. Digging through his past might bring stuff up about my mum, and other people who would rather an unfortunate part of their lives was left buried.”

“Ahh yes, I see, so let me get this right Gabbie, in the room there were the following people, Sir Peter Wheeler, Duncan Collins, Katherine Dixon, Jack Simms, Tony Turvey and Will Turvey, along with yourself, Chelcey Horton and Charles Dixon. Seven adults and two minors. Chelcey was confused when she drew 8 adults.”

“Yes, exactly.” Gabbie replied, excited when she realised what Kyle had just said.

“Great, this will help, oh and by the way, we’ve found Chelcey’s mother, we’ll probably never identify many of the bodies we’ve uncovered, there’s dozens, adults as well as children.”

“Oh god, this is just horrible.”

“It gets worse Gabbie, or considering what you’ve said before, better. You’ll be getting a call, probably tomorrow, from our legal team, and maybe someone from Historic England.”

“Why? I’ll be in lessons most of tomorrow, I can’t be taking calls all day!”

“Let the calls go to voicemail if they happen in lessons, but call back, this is a very important matter, basically we need to excavate in the building, we may need to pull it down, so we need your permission, Historic England will call to arrange the permission and details of the process.”

“No, no, I literally can’t handle that, I don’t have the experience. Have you got Diane’s details?”

“Yes, I have.”

“Then can you call her and get the details of her lawyer Phil Poole, he’ll know what to do, he’s handling the sale of the property, it was Katherine’s lawyers dealing with it, but Phil has taken over.”