Chapter 9: Fast Neutrons

A Decision.

Joe is at work and Jenny is at home. At home, but not un-occupied. She is no longer quite so obsessed with housework, no longer quite so much in the grip of the mind-set she had at the Dacha. Today, she has made Joe’s breakfast, and something for him to have at lunch-time and then ... and then she has sat herself in a comfortable chair in their lounge and is listening to music. To Sibelius. She enjoys the pictures it conjures in her mind, in sound. She finds it easy to imagine the wide-open spaces of Karelia but, now she is a Russian herself, the wide-open northern spaces naturally appeal.

Jenny’s mind wanders to her time with Joe at IWB. She thinks about his freshly pierced nipples. About the morning when they were due to depart and he asked if Cynthia might have a free appointment? She went to hold his hand, though that was hardly necessary. She thinks about the only other time when she had attended a piercing, when she was an assistant, when Neena had pierced Tracy’s septum. She remembers how Vyera wrestled with feelings of sadness for Tracy and regret at the cruelty involved but also her interest in the gauge of the jewelry Tracy had been given and satisfaction at the result: how it made the rude, headstrong and angry Tracy seem so much more a slave. A just punishment for her unpleasantness.

Jennifer returns to her memories of Joe’s piercing. The way Cynthia’s cannula slipped so effortlessly through Joe’s nipples which seemed to enjoy their ordeal by becoming nicely erect and how erotic they looked with a bright silver-titanium barbell transfixing each nipple. At the memory, Jennifer’s mouth waters. Yes, she was very grateful to Joe for being so brave. It was not a case of braving the pain, but doing something that Jennifer liked, something which was not what Joseph might want for himself, at least not the “normal Joseph,” not the steady, careful, conventional man she had married. He had summoned up the courage to change.

Jennifer’s mind moves back a few hours more. In her mind’s eye, she sees Joseph in Ylena’s Studio — “Dungeon” does not seem to be the right word for a place where people can discover more about themselves and be themselves more completely.

His hands are strapped to the trapeze and Jennifer has raised the bar so he is on tip-toe. In imagination, Jennifer relives the flogging she gave him, remembers the way the leather tails of the whip caressed his back, remembers the feeling of the flogger in her hand and the feeling as the tails spread over Joe’s back, and how she had to follow through with her arm so he could enjoy each stroke properly.

And then, there was the effect on Joe. His breathing. The way his skin reddened, and then marked to show the kiss from the tails of her flogger.

Jennifer is thinking about beating Joseph again, but not only in imagination. Jennifer realizes she wants to beat him in reality. In their home. In the intimacy of their bedroom.

Jennifer’s mind moves to the practical. At Inward Bound, all the best equipment was readily at hand and Ylena was present to supervise. If Jennifer is to beat Joseph at home, she would need something which was not too severe. What about the classic BDSM tool, the riding crop?

A crop is bendy enough to be good for beginners, stingy enough to be remembered, and riding crops are widely available.

Jennifer goes to the PC, to launch Google and discover where she could buy one in Warwick.

She is about to switch on and then remembers that Neena might come! As the thought forms in Jennifer’s mind, she becomes Vyera...

If Neena comes, Vyera will have to ask permission and Neena might say no. After all, is it appropriate for a slave to spank her partner?

It would be if the slave is instructed to do so by the Supervisor, but what would Joe think about being spanked on Neena’s instruction?

In any case, Vyera is not training Joe. She wants to spank him because it makes her feel good. It makes her feel as if he belongs to her. It makes her feel as if Joe is her possession, instead of her always feeling like someone else’s possession — which she is, of course — but Vyera does not always want to feel so, not all the time, and not now she is in England.

Vyera looks at the computer. If she logs on, Neena might come...

Vyera makes a decision. The sensation of taking the initiative and making a decision of her own feels like it did when she decided to go to IWB. It feels good!

Vyera gets up to go downstairs, but it is Jenny who arrives. By now she is smiling. She knows how to deal with this problem. If she can’t Google “Saddlery Warwick” for fear of Neena, she can look up “Horse and Riding” in the Yellow Pages. That is one place Neena cannot lay in wait, ready to pounce on her. Jenny can thumb through the pages in complete safety!

It is a simple idea! Well, simple ideas are best. Isn’t that what she was told recently, by Neena herself?

In hardly any time at all, Jenny has found the Yellow Pages, usually neglected in favour of Google, but now centre stage. The easiest suitable shop is in Coventry. Jennifer likes the irony of that. Joe will be safe in his office but, outside in the streets of the same city, Jennifer will be buying a riding whip, a whip especially for his buttocks. Jennifer likes the idea very much! She is about to return to the study to get the map of Coventry to confirm where the shop is but stops herself. With sudden clarity, knowledge she had before she ever went to IWB in the first place, re-awakens. There is no need to go to Coventry. In Warwick, there is only one possible place to buy a riding crop. There is no need for maps, only the need for a clear memory and Jennifer’s memory is now as clear as the sky on a frosty day!

The day is actually cold and grey but, to Jennifer, it feels dry and warm, like a summer’s day and, inside herself, Jennifer is very sunny! She has made a decision. She has avoided reporting her wishes and her idea to Neena and having to ask Neena’s permission. It is her secret. Only she knows. Jennifer slips on her trainers, her anorak, and a yellow beanie hat in case of rain, checks her purse for her credit card, and leaves the house.

Corinne makes her move

“Dr Aimes? Good morning. I am Chief Inspector Grantby. This is my colleague, Sergeant Borland. I understand that you wanted to have a word with me? Something about a case we are dealing with at the moment?”

Corinne pauses before replying.

The Chief Inspector’s studied disinterest is almost certainly a front. He must know that she has made an appointment especially and come all the way from Suffolk to London to see him. She is sure he is actually keenly interested in everything she might have to say...

“Chief Inspector, we are both busy people with far too much to do, so I will get straight to the point. About four years ago, a Transport and Logistics Company invested in my business. My senior colleagues and I now suspect they are involved in people trafficking and are using us in some way, perhaps to identify potential victims. The first possible victim was a Mrs Jennifer McEwan, who I think you know.”

Grantby gazes tight-lipped at the woman before him. She is young — well, considerably younger than he himself — but she has a determined face set with piercing eyes. Her hair has a tendency to be wavy, but has been scraped back from her face and disciplined into a short wiry pony tail by a leather hair slide, black against her light brown hair. She is completely self-possessed and (he thinks) she would be a tough nut to crack if he was trying to get information out of her in a police interview. She is dressed as if she is an established member of staff at a bank or some other hard-bitten financial institution and her visage is only softened, or perhaps that should be “spiced,” by a gold stud in the side of her nose. Grantby, whose job is to notice things, spots that there is a slight redness around the stud which suggests Corinne has been pierced recently. He knows she is the Chief Executive of the adult experience company Inward Bound and now he knows that she is not afraid to “enjoy” some of the experiences she arranges for her clients...

Grantby clears his throat. “Yes,” he says carefully, “Mrs Jennifer McEwan is known to us. It’s not every day that someone tells me their business associates are involved in serious criminal activity. Can you tell us how you came to this conclusion?”

Corinne is finding the Chief Inspector’s excessively skeptical approach to be increasingly irritating. Having made a decision to report her fears to the police, she expected them to be received with more interest than Grantby seems to be showing. Corinne steadies her temper. He could be trying to provoke and, then again, he might be a careful mountaineer, testing each handhold and every foothold. Corinne takes a breath or two to steady her nerves. She remembers her PhD viva, another occasion when she knew much more about the issue in question than her examiners. She begins...

‘About four years ago — I should have checked this but I am relying on memory — anyway, about four years ago I was contacted by a Mr Lawrence Ross who said he wanted to invest in our company.”

“Our company?” queries Grantby

“Inward Bound and Huntingdon Management Sciences are two companies owned jointly by me and two other partners, Charlotte Smythson and Josephine Brownlie. Mr Ross was interested in Inward Bound.

The important point is that Larry (that’s what he calls himself) turned up out of the blue wanting to spend money. We were managing reasonably well but we were a fledgling company with some significant debt and his offer was very attractive.”

“Hmm. Go on.”

“Larry said that he represented a Transport and Logistics group called Freddie Clegg Enterprises who liked to make occasional investments in new and innovative companies and had been alerted to us. Some people like to gamble on “penny shares” and sometimes they are right to do it. Apple and Microsoft were both small start-ups, once upon a time. Well, Inward Bound is never going to be Apple or Microsoft, but we are unique in the market, so to speak.”

“Yes,” says Grantby. “I think you could safely say that. Did Mr Ross supply any ideas about how you could spend his cash?”

“Spending the investment money was covered in quite a bit of detail with Larry Ross and a financial colleague of his from FCE, but there were four main areas to think about. The Estate. The Equipment. The Staff. The Marketing and Administration. Marketing and administration, well, that explains itself. The Staff — we pay expenses to the people who help us on the Inward Bound courses. Some of the more specialist equipment is not all that cheap but neither is it a king’s ransom and it is widely available.”

“Specialist equipment?” asks Grantby, for clarification.

“Things like canes, floggers, whips, restraint straps, restraint benches, electrical stimulation kit,” Corinne replies without hesitation. She notices that whilst Grantby winces, Borland smiles and looks down. Clearly, Borland is more sexually sophisticated and knowledgeable than her boss!

“The main financial commitment is the estate and buildings. We had managed to buy an old property in Suffolk. It needed quite a bit of money spent on it to make it ideally suitable for what we had in mind, as well as the usual mundane things like catering, electrical wiring, water supply, drains, the roof, some windows needed to be replaced, internal joinery and so on and so on. Anyway, our original idea was that the main business would be Huntingdon Management Sciences and that Inward Bound would be a light-hearted interlude between the management courses. In the event, it has generated income much more easily and, quite frankly, it is much more fun. Putting that to one side, the FCE investment went into the bricks and mortar. That way, if the whole project collapsed, they would be able to recoup at least some of their investment from the sale of the Estate.”

“Seems sensible,” comments Grantby. “How much oversight did they want?”

“Larry Ross was — is — with us a couple of days each week but, to be fair, they have left us pretty much to our own devices. I kept them in the loop about the day-to-day operations and building conversion and renovation and they agreed to release funds as we needed them. Frankly, it could have been far more burdensome but, on the other hand, it was not the same as being one hundred percent your own boss and being solely responsible for the performance and development of the business.”

“So, when did you begin to have misgivings? From what you have told me so far, you seem to have had a very benign business relationship?”

“Well, firstly, a group of staff from FCE came to see an Inward Bound course in operation. This was a bit of a surprise. I would have put money on them wanting to sit in on a management seminar. After all, that is much closer to the world of business than Inward Bound, but it was Inward Bound they wanted to see.”

“If I can comment, Dr Aimes,” interjects Grantby, “Management Training is safe. Adult Experiences are not. If I was a corporate lawyer, I would be much more anxious about a public company being associated with BDSM goings on than I would be about any association with Management Training courses.”

“That is exactly the point, Chief Inspector. That’s what we thought. That was what we thought when Larry Ross appeared in the first place. Anyway, when the FCE people arrived for their site visit, I was expecting them to be somewhere towards the anxious and or embarrassed end of the spectrum, but they took everything in their stride and — I think this might be significant — even made suggestions about how the BDSM play and the slave training games could be made more effective for the participants. The kink scene, if I can put it that way, the kink scene in the UK is not that large and one of us should have at least heard about someone from the FCE delegation if they were serious and experienced players, but we knew none of them and we knew no one who knew any of them independently.”

“You are speaking as if this was the first time anyone from FCE had visited their new investment or taken anything more than a passing interest in it?”

“It was the first time apart from Mr Ross. It strikes a bit of a false note, don’t you think?”

“You mentioned Mrs McEwan...”

“Yes, I did. Jennifer McEwan booked herself a place on one of our courses. She came through the screening procedure we put candidates through...”

“Screening procedure?”

“We have to be sure that course participants are psychologically ready for what they are letting themselves in for. We try as far as we can to weed out candidates who are being pressured to take part by partners and we need candidates who can give informed consent to the games they will play.”

“I’m glad you mentioned “informed consent”...”

“Yes, Chief Inspector. I thought you might be. Just to make things crystal clear, the Inward Bound experience is safe and sane and consensual — and we are very keen to keep it that way and to keep it well inside the law.

“So: Jennifer McEwan. Jennifer attended a course and about half way through, a Professor Dawney contacted to tell us that Jennifer was her research student and could she please have her back at work! At this point, we learned that Jennifer was actually a research student in psychology preparing the ground work for a PhD thesis about stress and play behavior in adults. Her research supervisor, Professor Dawney, thought Inward Bound would be a good experimental model. I thought — we thought — that Dawney should have contacted us before hand to discuss the project and to agree some ground rules. We were taken aback by how presumptuous she had been, to say the least.”

“Yes, well, I have a colleague who has met Professor Dawney and I think a suitable word to describe her might be ‘focused.’’’

“Focused? Yes, all right. Focused will certainly go some of the way. So, I had a bit of a bad feeling about Professor Dawney and mentioned the affair to Larry Ross, who did not seem too concerned at the time, but I thought it was probably the sort of thing that the FCE contact ought to know about.

And now we come to the next curious incident. Two or three days after, at about 11pm at night, a posse of gentlemen arrived with identification documents to say they were from the Police and the American CIA, demanded access to Mrs McEwan, arrested her, and took her away...”

At this point, Grantby holds up his hand to stop Corinne.

“Dr Aimes, can I just be clear here. The people who came — were there men and women or just men?”

“Just men.”

“Are you absolutely sure?”

“I was not present so, to be absolutely sure, you would need to speak to Josephine Brownlie and Charlotte Smythson who were on duty overnight but as far as I know, the group was all male.”

“Dr Aimes, if we — that’s the police in the UK — are going to arrest a woman as a planned operation, we would always take a female officer, for obvious reasons. In the UK, only the Police have powers of arrest. The Security Services do not. And they had police identification?”

“Yes — well, one had UK police identification. The Americans had official looking ID.”

“So what happened next? I am sure you have been asked this before but if you can bear with me.”

“Actually I don’t think we have been asked in this amount of detail. So they took Jennifer away in handcuffs and left us with a receipt for her and some contact numbers for the United States Department of Justice and said it would all be sorted out in a few days.”

“What steps did you take?”

“Josephine called me. I called Larry Ross and I also called the numbers we had been given.”

“Ah ... so the numbers?”

“They were in the United States...”

“How did you know?”

“From the international dialing code.”

“Did you get an answer?”

“Oh yes, I spoke to someone — they were American, or sounded so — who seemed to be aware of the operation and said that I would be given an update in ‘due time’.”

“Do you still have the numbers?”

“I think so. We wrote them in the diary.”

“Did you do anything else? Call Jennifer’s next of kin for example?”

“Her husband was abroad and we did not have any other numbers apart from Professor Dawney, who turned out to be uncontactable. Larry Ross advised us not to speak to anyone else until he could speak to some of his contacts.”

“His contacts?”

“The FCE legal people — I assumed they would be more experienced at dealing with other jurisdictions than our own solicitor. I am sorry, this all sounds so feeble and careless now but I — we — were all completely beyond our experience and Larry Ross seemed completely unfazed, so we placed our trust in him.”

“Just tell me again what he said about his ‘contacts’...”

“He was talking about people he — but I supposed I understood him to mean people FCE knew in the Foreign Office. They are on the Government List of Approved Contractors and do international work so, once again, we thought they were best placed to help. In fact, we began to think how lucky we were that we had formed this business arrangement with them because, when the chips were down, we had experienced people to fall back on.”

“Hmmm, well, it’s a fair assumption to make. Just tell me again. Larry Ross said his company had contacts in the Foreign Office and he said FCE would speak to them to try and resolve the situation. Is that what you are saying?”

“Yes, that’s what he said, as far as I can recall and this is not something you forget easily.”

“No, I bet it’s not. So how did matters develop?”

“Several days passed. Larry told us they (meaning FCE and the Foreign Office people they knew) were making progress and then Jennifer was returned in the middle of the night once again.”

“Ah ... and how was she?”

“She was emotionally very frightened and I thought she had been tortured. Beaten. There were whip marks on her body.”

“I am sorry, Dr Aimes, but didn’t you think that was odd?”

“Well, at the time, Inspector, the media was full of very lurid stories: ‘extra-ordinary rendition, ‘ about secret CIA ‘facilities, ‘ about what the Americans had been doing in prisons in Iraq, in particular. I am afraid it all seemed completely believable.”

Grantby sighs. Yes, all so very believable — except for the absence of a female officer at the arrest of a female suspect and vague talk of “contacts” in the Foreign Office...

“This brings me to the straw that broke the camel’s back, as far as I was concerned.”

“Tell me.”

“Jennifer McEwan came to see us last weekend.”

“Did she?”

“She had quite a lot to say about what had happened to her.”

“She told you?”

“Yes. I think this was pretty much the first time she had been able to say much at all about what had happened to her when she was away.”

“You know we need her to speak with us, otherwise what we learn is only ‘hearsay’?”

“Yes, I understand that, so do you want me to keep my counsel, so you have an open mind?”

“A clear and open mind is always an important asset for a policeman, Dr Aimes, especially during an investigation, but a policeman also has to know where to look and has to find clues to follow up, so, in that context, what would you like to tell me?

“Jennifer told us that when she was away, she was given a new name and citizenship of her new country. She is now a Russian and her name is Vyera Anatolyevna Kuznetsova.”

At these few words from Corinne Aimes, just two short sentences, Grantby feels his face flush bright red. For a moment, he finds words of his own hard to find. Finally he manages to regain his equilibrium and proceed with his careful, measured questioning. With effort, he manages to say quietly, “You came because you were worried about Mr Ross and FCE... ?”

“When Jennifer was away, she was ... I will choose my words carefully ... given the opportunity to complete her research work. She gave a presentation and, at the end, one of the people present apparently said, ‘so that’s why they are interested. They do not have to go looking for people. The people come looking for them.‘

“Jennifer wanted to know if the people she was with meant us. I wonder if the people she was with meant Larry Ross and FCE?”

After Corinne has gone, Grantby returns to his office — and then goes to find Borland. He sits down at her desk and the two of them gaze at each other for a long moment.

Grantby says, “Well, what do you think about all that? What do you think about that? It seems we now know where Jennifer McEwan was and some of the things that happened to her when she was there. On the one hand, I am astonished to learn there was all that to find out about and we are only learning about it now! On the other hand, at last we have an opportunity to make some progress.”

“To be abducted and to be formally re-named and given citizenship,” says Borland, “this is completely beyond anything I have ever heard of. Do you think we should take what Jennifer has said to be literally true, because if it is true, we are up against a State and not merely a criminal gang?”

Grantby glances down for a moment. Like Corinne, he chooses his words carefully. He says: “This is where our training has to stand us in good stead, Sergeant. Careful collection of evidence. Verification. Corroboration. Analysis. Careful inference. Finally, to draw the conclusions which the evidence actually points to.”

“The original interviews were done by someone from Suffolk,” replies Borland, “and we thought we were dealing with a ‘domestic’ issue of a wife disappearing. There was no clear evidence of foul play. I think Suffolk Constabulary went through the motions and passed on their report to us.”

Grantby sighs. “Maybe. Anyway, I want you to go to IWB — find a time when the mysterious Mr Ross is not there — and check through their diary so we have some contemporaneous record of exactly when this all happened — and get those phone numbers!

“Meanwhile, I will contact that smarmy bastard, Appleyard — you remember the Foreign Office bloke who turned up at the case conference we had? It seems we are now right in his area of expertise. Let’s see if he can trace any approach by Mr Larry Ross or by FCE. If there is, good for them. If not, well, that puts an interesting complexion on their story...”

A Purchase

When Jenny arrives, for a moment she freezes. What does she have to do next? She is not very used to shops anymore, and panic starts to rise inside her. She has her mobile. She could call Neena and ask for help — but, if she does that, she would have to provide an explanation, she would have to ask permission, she would have to confess that she has taken an initiative without first establishing that what she intends is appropriate for a slave.

Vyera’s mouth is dry and there are knots of anxiety in her stomach. She glances quickly around the shop. A few feet away there is another young woman, about her own age, with a pram with a small baby and, with them, another, older woman, perhaps the mummy’s mummy? The young mummy must have a horse. She is looking at bridles.

Jenny has a flashback memory. She is in Mothercare, in Moscow. She has been sent on an errand. She is to buy baby wipes but, in the end, Vyera exerted herself and also bought a little baby-grow with the change, for Dmitry. Vyera bought because she could, because she wanted to, because she was in a baby shop and that’s what women who look after small children do, in baby shops. She did not care that she had no instructions and she did not care if her maternal impulse would be rewarded with a caning — and in the event, it did not. Her Supervisor was pleased with her. She went on her errand as Vyera and came back as Vyerochka.

This happy memory steadies Vyera, that and the way the young mother is examining the bridles. The way she slides the sweet smelling leather through her fingers, testing it for strength and suppleness. Vyera notices her mouth is watering because Jennifer is thinking about how nice Joe would look in a bridle and harness, like the one Vyera wore on occasion, except this time she would be in charge of him, not Neena or Anna or even Alana in charge of her.

Vyera had not completed her pony girl training by the time she left the Dacha for the last time. Now the memory is in her mind, she feels a sharp stab of regret. She had enjoyed the sensation of the harness closing around her body, the firm caress of the straps as Anna Simeonova tightened the buckles. She has enjoyed the moment when she and her harness was united with the sulki, the sensation of Anne climbing aboard and the sting of her whip to signal Vyera was to start moving...

“Can I help you?” There is an Assistant at Jennifer’s elbow. “You look a bit lost?”

“I’m a new customer. I am sorry. I have not been here before.”

“Don’t worry about that. We like customers. The more there are, the better we like it. What are you after?”

“A riding crop...”

“They are over there. What sort of a horse do you have?”

Before she can stop herself, Jennifer (or perhaps Vyera) immediately tells the truth.

“It’s for my husband!”

“Ah. What sort of a horse does he ride?”

And then the Assistant notices how Jennifer is blushing and laughs herself.

“Oh, I see what you mean! He is going to be the one who feels it! Don’t worry. We have a steady trickle of wives, girlfriends, and partners who have had the same idea as you. Is he a beginner?”

“Yes, I suppose you could say that he is.”

The Assistant puts her head slightly on one side and says reflectively, “If I were you, I would start looking at those on the right hand side and those with the larger slapper at the end. They are good to begin with. If he likes it, the heavier and stiffer ones are at the bottom of the display.” The Assistant winks in a conspiratorial way. Jennifer finds it easy to smile back and make her way over to the selection of crops. There are various colours, handle styles, shapes of tongue, thickness of shaft. She has quite a large choice...

As Jennifer hands her selection to the Assistant, the Assistant holds it gently by the handle and the end of the shaft. “Good choice,” she says, slipping it into an anonymous brown paper bag. She smiles again. “You will enjoy using this. Your boy might enjoy it too, in time!”

Sarah contemplates her future