Chapter 21: Private Investigations

Corinne and Jo are watching Jenny's sexual torment on the monitor fed by the camera in her cell. "What do you think we should do, Corrine?" Jo says. "Do you think she is actually researching us? It could equally be some sort of put up job by some of the tabloid press."

"Hmmm, well Fifty will not be the last person to try to capitalise on her experiences, I'm sure," Corinne responds. "On the other hand again, if she has organised her visit was solely as part of a research project and did not tell us — that's a bit rude to say the least."

Jo points to the monitor. It is obvious that the electrical impulses and the feedback from the laptop's microphone are having the expected effect. "Well, whatever she is up to, I think this little piece of erotic punishment is richly deserved."

Corinne smiles slowly, "You're right. I think we should keep the situation under review and see what happens."

Gerry appears and joins in "What are we doing with Fifty now?"

"George served her up to Nineteen as a treat and then switched things around so that Nineteen was having to both give and take. After that we've put Fifty on a feed-back routine."

"Nineteen? Oh yes, she'd been getting a bit full of herself. That will have helped." Gerry looks at the monitor. "And now Miss Fifty seems to have something to take her mind off whatever else she might have been up to."

While Jenny is paying for her careless remarks well into the early morning, Professor Angela Dawney has also makes an early start to the day and, back in the university, she is sitting at her desk.

She is working on a research grant application for a longitudinal project into the differences in play behaviours in young and mature adults. One of the down sides of the academic world is that it seems that the process of gaining the funding for research consumes almost as much effort as the research itself. One of the other downsides is trying to find quality time to do it.

She brews herself a strong black coffee and savours the warm, strong, black, liquid. Taking a few moments out from important business, she finds her mind wandering to one of her post graduate students. The Prof smiles as she thinks about Jenny McEwan; reflecting on how she managed to get Jenny herself to come up with the idea of going on a two month consensual slavery course as part of the research for her PhD thesis.

What a brilliant idea! Useful for Jenny's project; well perhaps. Useful to get Jenny back into the arms of Angela; almost certainly. Angela ponders how, with any luck, this exercise will drive a wedge between Jenny and her husband, Joe. When Jenny broke up with Angela, she gave the impression that he wasn't comfortable with BDSM play. Since Angela happens to know that Jenny is rather keen on BDSM play, it seems unlikely she'll be happy to go back to good old vanilla Joe after this episode. Angela smiles, wondering how pliable Jenny will be when she gets back. According to Angela's analysis, Jenny should be anxious to prolong the sensations and experiences that she has undergone at Inward Bound and she should be more than willing to follow advice on the best way to do that. Angela's advice, Angela's carefully considered advice. Which will be that, by and large, Jenny should go on doing just as she is told.

Angela's mind begins to drift to what Jenny might have had to endure on her course. Spankings? Canings? Bondage? Nudity? Mmmmmm...

Suddenly her reverie is broken by the 'phone. She jerks back irritably into the real world, almost spilling her coffee. She has come into the office early precisely to avoid interruptions!

"Professor Dawney speaking."

"Oh, hullo Angela, it's Roy. I thought I saw you in the building and I'm glad I caught you." It was fairly unusual for the Dean of Faculty to call. Mostly he preferred to drop by. It probably meant this was something urgent, and that, in Angela's experience was rarely good news.

"Yes, Roy. What can I do for you?"

"Well, I have been in a meeting yesterday with the other Deans and the Vice-Chancellor about the Research Assessment Exercise." Angela's spirits dropped at the mention of the RAE process. "We've now had a date from the Department of Education for their visitation. Ministry Aparatchiks in the guise of colleagues from other institutions and their repulsive hangers on, as we all know, but a necessary evil of course. You will not be surprised to learn just how important the Vice Chancellor regards our preparations? Arnold is particularly keen that we put up a good show"

"No, of course not." Angela is hardly surprised, quite apart from Arnold's need to maintain the academic reputation of the University and the funding that brings with it., The Vice Chancellor has his eye on the next steps up the rungs of life's ladder and a consistently high score in the RAE always helps.

"Well, at the risk of being tedious, I have been asked to take the message back to all the Professorial Heads. The University is determined to maintain its last grading and intends to increase its Star Rating this time." Angela rolled her eyes: star ratings, gradings, assessments, approvals, why couldn't they let them get on with the research and let the results speak for themselves? "There is nothing more important in the forthcoming year. All other considerations are secondary. You will do all in your power to see to it that all post grads get their degrees and write theses to the highest standard. We will expect you to take every opportunity to have work published: papers, lectures at conferences, poster demonstrations at meetings, you know the sort of thing."

"Yes, Roy. Of course." Angela feels exasperation rising, what does he think the department spends its time doing, anyway?

"Erm, well now we know the dates for the assessment, we can all plan accordingly. Anyway, Arnold is also intending to meet with professors personally. Ginger things along, you know the sort of thing." Angela knows well enough. A complete waste of time in her view. "Oh, and you should expect the Research Assessment Team to take a close interest in the thoroughness of PhD supervision. And, they'll be taking particular interest in Research Ethics. So, for goodness sake, make sure that any of your students who might need Ethics Committee approval have got it before they do any experimental or field work.

Angela manages to produce a confident chuckle as she replies, "Yes, of course Roy. I will look forward to seeing Arnold. When does he to want to see me?"

"No idea at the moment. This is just a distant early warning, as it were. I'm speaking to everyone as soon as I can. Just so we can all have our house in order, get all the ducks in a row. You know."

Angela does now. "Thanks Roy. Leave it with me," she says.

"Good. Good. So please, can you make a preliminary sketch, so to speak, of what your final submission will look like? At your earliest?

"Yes, Roy. Of course. Just leave it with me."

Roy rings off and as she puts the phone down Angela's mood has darkened. Considerably. She's thinking again about Jenny and a worm of doubt starts to wiggle in Angela's brain. Angela hadn't actually got quite as far as gaining Ethics Committee approval for Jenny's jaunt. Without any doubt it should have been. This was after all research with human subjects (Jenny) and research involving a student as subject (Jenny) Damn! Damn! What to do?

Since Jenny broke with Angela, their relationship had been — strained. And, Angela's eye had not been quite on the ball. She'd certainly slipped up with that.

Then again, how was her research actually going? And, was it really research at all at this stage? Thinking about it really, what Jenny is doing doesn't really qualify as proper research, yet. It's more a sort of experiential immersion, getting to grips with the subject matter rather than research per se.

Angela could always claim that she'd considered ethics approval would only be needed when they moved to a more detailed exploration of the subject.

What is needed is something that made this look sufficiently interesting to justify the work done so far, but sufficiently tentative as to leave aside the question of why she hadn't gone for ethics approval. Was there anything which she could put in her Research Assessment Exercise submission which was worth writing and which Jenny would also put her name to? The RAE is a pain but the University takes it seriously. There has to be a way to get something into that. What else? What about an early publication?

Angela shook her head. It was far too soon for a paper and that made it look like the whole thing was further on than she wanted it to appear, but what about something for the next British Association meeting? Some sort of short presentation maybe. Perhaps a flyer for the attendees outlining the areas that she is working on? That might be a possibility...

So, thinks Angela, what are we going to do? The first challenge is to get the little bitch back at her desk here and start to prepare the poster, that's what! Her Inward Bound expedition was supposed to be a pilot project anyway. No, more like an exploratory observational exercise. Something to see if this was a line of research which could be followed. Now that sounds better, there wouldn't be any issue over her judgment that the Ethics Committee would not be interested in it at this rudimentary stage. Rudimentary. Yes! That's the right word. Rudimentary. Provisional. Yes ... That's more like it! Angela starts to feel more comfortable.

But, what to do in practice? How to get her back? And, not to raise Jenny's suspicions?

Angela slowly assesses the problem. The line of attack seemed to be sound enough, but the issue is what to do next? How to find some reason for Inward Bound to end the sessions and send her back. But, thinks Angela, they'll be happy just as long as they get their money.

Of course, Angela realises, money is the answer! Inward Bound is being paid from Angela's endowment fund. What about a convenient cash flow problem? Inward Bound is a commercial outfit, after all. If the money dries up, they'll want to terminate Jenny's little adventure. Pity it could not have run a little longer, thinks Angela, regretfully. Still, this is now a survival exercise. Angela's survival. She considers one final time. She decides. Finally.

Angela opens "Contacts" on her cell phone and dials the Inward Bound number. Corrine answers the phone.

At the end of the conversation Angela feels much happier, but Corinne doesn't.

"Larry, can I have a word?" Corinne says, putting her head around the door of the room that Larry is currently using as his office.

"Sure," he replies, "come on in."

Larry is enjoying his trip out to Suffolk. He hasn't seen much of the Inward Bound facilities in action so far and it has been useful to see how Corinne has spent some of Clegg's investment.

"How can I help?"

"I'm not sure. It may not be a problem, I guess. It's one of the participants in the current programme. Here, have a look at this, first of all," Corinne tosses a folder across Larry's desk. "See what you think."

Larry opens the folder. It's the transcript of the discussion between "Fifty" and Jo and a collection of print outs of the e-mails between "Fifty" and Angela. Larry reads them through, with a furrowing brow.

"And on top of this," Corinne says, "there is supposed to be a problem with her payments, too. Together it all makes me feel uncomfortable."

"OK," says Larry. "Lets deal with this 'research' question first."

"I guess the main worry," Corinne says, "is what happens at the end of her course. If she is using her time here as some sort of research opportunity, I mean. I'm not concerned by the academic analysis — I suppose I'll be interested to see what conclusions she comes to. And I don't think she'd go shooting her mouth off to the media herself."

"I thought you'd got the participants tied down with a sort of non-disclosure agreement?"

Corinne nods. "Yes, that's why I don't think she'd blow any whistles. I suppose I'm more concerned about what happens when she writes up her research. You can imagine the sort of grief we'd get if one of the tabloids found out about her research, can't you? Those trolls have a way of turning even the most academic papers into something sensational. Now, while some of our clients are pretty up-front about their interests most of them would rather what goes on here weren't spread across the front pages of the papers. I think it's manageable, but I thought you'd want to know."

"And the payment problem?"

"Well yes, that's odd too. I just took a call from Fifty's 'safe contact' — you know the person they have for their bail out." Larry nods. "It's a Professor Angela Dawney at Fifty's university. She's saying there may be some problem with the final payment for Fifty's last four weeks."

"I thought you took the payments as a direct transfer from the participant's account. If Fifty is here with us she's hardly in a position to stop the payment."

"We do but it seems that the bank account that Fifty gave us is actually some university account. There hasn't been a problem until now but Dawney says that she thinks there might not be enough to cover the final payment. She tried to sound like she being helpful."

"Do you think she was?"

Corrine shakes her head. "Not a chance. I had the definite feeling that she was in 'spanner in the works' mode. What I'm not sure is whether she's trying to throw a spanner in our works, or in Fifty's. In any case there can't be a real problem because I checked the bank statements and Fifty paid up front in full. Maybe, Dawney is worried in case we've discovered what Fifty is up to and she thinks that stopping the payment is a way to get her out. Maybe, she just wants her girlfriend back."

"I thought Fifty was married."

"Yes, but — well - there's definitely something going on there."

"Mmm, yes," Larry seems abstracted. "Well, yes. Errm. I need to think about this. We don't need to do anything right now, do we?"