Chapter 4: Preparation Is Everything

As it happened my visit to the Prep Centre coincided with when the girl I had helped to snatch turned up.

The Prep Centre was a big shed — 'Distribution Depot' it said over the outside — sitting like a great white shoe box on the edge of a small airfield. A truck pulled up and backed on to one of three loading docks at the right hand end of the shed. "F.C. Meat Products" it said in large lettering across both doors and beneath it in smaller script, "Prime Quality — Farm Fresh — Organic", a telephone number and the web site address "www.FCMeat.co.uk".

The doors at the back of the truck swung open with a loud clang as they slapped back against the sides of the truck. Inside there were four girls, taped up and gagged, strapped to the back wall of the truck. They were all looking startled and scared. I watched as each of the girls was loaded onto a four wheel trolley. A hook from the frame held them up on tip toe by the tape or rope that joined their elbows behind their backs. The trolleys were rolled off the truck, passing us and off into the depot. Jackie was rolled off first; startled to see Harry and me standing at the end of the truck's ramp.

"Don't we need masks?" I said to Harry.

"Oh no," he said shaking his head as Jackie was pushed away. "No masks except on operations, and only then if there's a risk that someone other than the target will see us. The boss doesn't like them. Says they encourage sloppiness — this way it keeps people's minds on the need to make sure our young ladies don't wander off. We don't blindfold them either once they're here, for the same reason." Jackie was squeaking quietly into her gag as she was wheeled away.

Next off was a girl in a long, electric blue, strapless evening gown. She was still wearing her jewellery — pearls and diamonds so big they had to be fakes, though I guess they might just have been real. "Hope she enjoyed her party," Harry grinned. Just like Jackie, her mouth was taped shut, cheeks bulging like an over-fed hamster. "The lads did a good job when they picked this one up. With her mouth stuffed like that there's no risk of her making a noise. It's no good just taping over their lips — they're likely to push the tape off with their tongues if you leave them for long."

The other two girls looked like they'd been snatched off a tennis court. One in shorts, a blonde, the other, mousey haired, in a short pleated skirt, both in white, both wearing short sleeved tops and trainers. They'd used one trolley for the two of them. Harry leant forward as the trolley came by. He reached out and groped the blonde's breasts. "These are nice," he said, squeezing and pinching as the girl tried to struggle away from him. "Not too big, nice and firm. I might get together with you later on." She looked at him, her eyes wide in terror, as the trolley rolled her away.

"Don't you have to leave the girls alone, then?" I asked. "I mean, shop-soiled merchandise and all that."

"Nah," said Harry. "We're encouraged to. It lets the girls know what they are in for from day one."

"That's it - look cute and be ready for pain 'Chic and Ow', we call it —," said a voice from behind me.

"Bloody hell, Rick, your jokes don't get any better," said Harry, turning round "This is Rick, he runs the place. Rick, meet Lawrence — he's doing some stuff for Mr. C."

I put my hand out to shake his.

"Great," he said, with a grin. "When Harry met Larry."

"Whatever," responded Harry, "Mr C, thought he should have a look around. Can I leave him with you? I thought I might take up some tennis lessons. See you later, Larry" Without waiting for Rick to reply, he stalked off in pursuit of the trolleys.

Rick gave a snort as he watched him go and then pointed to a door at the other end of the loading dock. "Come on through," he said, "I'll give you the grand tour."

Through the door lay a corridor with a series of doors leading off it. "What's through here?" I asked. "Cells? Weapons rooms?"

Rick looked almost embarrassed and opened a door revealing a few desks, some computers and two large filing cabinets. "Nothing so exciting along here. Just offices, I'm afraid. All this stuff takes a load of admin. You've no idea how much effort we have to put in just to keep track of where the girls are."

"Uh, huh, I grunted. I wasn't hard to be unimpressed.

"This, though," he went to open another door, "is more interesting." The room inside was a dark corridor. From it viewing panels looked into a series of rooms each of which seemed to hold a captive woman. "Come on in — these are one way mirrors in the cells, the girls can't see us. Not that it would matter anyway, I guess."

We stood beside the panel looking into the room that held the party girl. Under the panel was a frame which held a card with a number — 06/034 — and a name - Vivienne - after it in brackets. She'd been stripped of her blue, silk, dress but she was still wearing the underwear she had put on that evening, no doubt in hopes of an intimate encounter different from that which she could soon now expect. She had been left in her silk basque and knickers, together with her stockings and shoes. The tape had been taken off her wrists, elbows and ankles and now all that held her was a chain padlocked to the wall at one end and her ankle at the other. The gag had gone as well but I could see the red rash where they had pulled the tape from her face. The screwed up tape and a wad of cloth lay on the floor beside her. Her cheeks were tear streaked with mascara. Her hair was a mess - she had put her long brown hair up but some of it had come loose in her struggles and now tumbled across her naked shoulder. The room was empty apart from a single, naked light bulb hanging from the ceiling and a small metal bucket.

"OK," said Rick, "this is how it starts. We bring them in here and keep them in one of these rooms for a couple of days. Mostly they think they're being held for ransom fro some reason. Two days - three days on their own; then they start to get a bit twitchy. The cells are all wired and video monitored so we can keep an eye on them. Let's have a look in the next one." We took a few steps along the corridor. "This one's been here for a week."

The girl in the cell looked less than twenty years old but a haunted look in her eyes suggested that she had seen more in the last week than in the rest of her young life. '06/022 (Anya)' the label on the frame said. She was completely naked apart from a collar around her neck with a small metal tag hanging from it. Her head had been shaved. She wore the same chain as the girl in the cell next door.

"Watch this," said Rick pressing a button on a panel below the viewing panel. A buzzer could be heard sounding in the cell. Almost at once the girl got to her feet and turned to face the wall we were looking through, she put her hands on her head and looked blankly towards us. "That's pretty good. After a week they're already conditioned to respond to simple instructions like that. It's all part of encouraging them to get used to doing as they are told. When they leave here, they are ready to be trained for whatever specific role they are going to take up. We don't do anything more than get them set up for it."

The girl was standing only a foot from the viewing panel. Red wheals were clearly visible across her breasts. "Do they need much 'encouragement' in the early stages," I asked pointing at the marks.

"That's quite mild," Rick said. "We haven't asked her to do anything difficult yet. She'll still be in the state where she thinks she can go along with some things but hold on to some control herself. She'll learn. Of course it's difficult to strike a balance — enough encouragement to get them to comply, not so much that they end up damaged." He pushed the button again, another buzz. She dropped her hands to her sides and then sat down again on the floor. "Each little buzz, each piece of obedience helps reinforce things. We don't mind if it takes a while."

The room alongside held the girl that Harry had gone off in search of. '06/038 (Carol)' her label said. As we walked by she was being manhandled, still bound and gagged, into the cell. Harry followed her into the cell. "Put her ankle chain on," I heard him say, "and then I'll see what those titties are like close up." He turned to the girl. "Don't be upset little cunt," he said, almost affectionately as he reached out a hand and cupped one of her breasts, "you'll have plenty of gentlemen callers while you're here." She tried to pull away from him, earning a slap on the face. He grabbed her by the hair and forced her back against the wall of the cell. Pushing her sports top up over her breasts he started to pinch and squeeze her tits.

"That's pretty much the shape of things here - sex and violence," said Rick as we walked on. By the time we send them on they're ready for what they'll have to cope with."

We walked on passing five or six more cells, all occupied by naked, chained, prisoners. At the end of the corridor a door opened out into a brightly lit lobby area. At a desk to one side, next to what was evidently the door to a parallel corridor serving the cells themselves, a bored guard sat, working away at a cross-word puzzle. Manilla folders were piled up on the desk in three trays, Incoming, Outgoing, Storage. Rick walked across to the desk and picked up one of the folders from the tray marked Storage. "Here you go," he said, passing it to me, "these are the sort of records we keep."

It was the file for the girl I had helped capture. On the front the word "collected" had been stamped in red. Inside the front cover was a full face photo and a form listing a set of basic data; name, age, height and weight, vital statistics, home address, work place. There was space for details of medical conditions, educational qualifications, close associates. In the rest of the file were a series of what seemed to be surveillance reports. There were more photos of Jackie — her in a coffee shop chatting into her mobile phone, emerging from a clothes shop clutching a large carrier bag and wearing a big smile, skipping up the steps of the university library. The final document in the file was a short memo which said. "Subject authorised for collection for internal use. Not for re-sale. FC." I handed it back.

"You see, we try to run a professional operation."

"Sure," I said, "why wouldn't you?"

Rick showed me through another door. "These are the research facilities," he said. It looked just like another room full of computers to me. "We do some from here, most of the major stuff is done elsewhere but if we've got an opportunity for a pick up we can carry out the basic checks — make sure they won't be missed too quickly, that sort of thing."