When the two victims were driven away from Fox’s home under Police escort, their destination was the King Edward VII Hospital in London’s Marylebone district.

John drove his BMW with the two victims, Chrissy and Trish. He managed a small smile in the middle of a dark night. His car had served its time as a Police Interceptor in Hertfordshire. One of the Police drivers mentioned to John that he’d driven that very vehicle. John got a lot of respect from the escort when he identified himself as a former Chief Super.

With respect to the young girls, the journey was done using ‘Blue Lights’ and no Siren. Luckily, traffic was light at 05:00 in the morning.

Upon arrival at the hospital, two female doctors examined the two girls with great care. Trish and Chrissy were there all the time, holding their hands and giving comfort.

These doctors were most concerned about the level of anal tearing that they saw. Right away, they ordered a full blood screen that included tests for Hepatitis and HIV. They were taking no chances. Chrissy comforted them by saying that she’d had the same tests when she was released. It wasn’t quite true, but close enough.

After having a meal, a good sleep and a long shower, the girls became much more socially active. For Trish, their story mirrored Dido’s experience. She had been appalled when hearing Dido’s story during their trip to North Wales the previous summer, but this was possibly even worse because it was right there in front of her to see.

At times, both girls had been made to entertain two men at the same time. It was as if they were disposable objects. She’d seen Chrissie’s mental state, and if anything, theirs was worse, far worse. That made Dido’s desire to get redress all the more remarkable and made Trish all the more determined to support her in any way she could.

If Fox had walked through a door and onto the ward, she knew that she would have tried to kill him on the spot. That served to remind her just how much self-control Dido must have just to exist in the same room as the man who had repeatedly sexually abused a young Dido.

Just thinking about it made her appreciate the gentle guidance that John Proudfoot must have given her over many years. Her appreciation of Dido went up in her eyes almost every hour that she was with these young girls as she began to properly understand the horrors that all of them had gone through for the first time.

Later in the day, a senior officer, DCI Juliet Bristow from the Met Serious and Organised Crime Task Force, had arrived to begin talking to the two children who had been rescued from the Fox house. They had been checked over by their doctors, and after a good rest, they had been passed fit to be interviewed, but with softness and compassion.

She started with the eldest of the two.
“Hello. I’m Juliet. I’m from the Police, and I’m here to talk to you about what happened to you.”

“Have you told my parents?” said the young girl.
There was a terrified look on her face.

Juliet shook her head.
“We don’t know who we should contact. What do I call you?”

“He… He called me Cherry.”

“And before…?”

“Jason. Jason Nightingale.”

Suddenly, the name rang a bell for the DCI. She’d just been promoted to DCI when the child had been abducted from the family’s front garden, or that is what both parents maintained.

“I think that we should call you Cherry.”

“Thank you,” she said quietly.

“Thank you to you and everyone who rescued me. He… He was going to send me away in a couple of days. He said that there was a man who just loved objectionable girls like me and was willing to pay him a lot of money for me.”

Her face was ashen, verging on white.

Almost without thinking, the DCI reached over to take Cherry’s hand. Cherry reacted by taking it away before contact was made.

“Sorry,” said Juliet.

“I’m unclean,” said Cherry with watery eyes.
“He kept telling me that every time he raped me. ‘I need to do this to make you clean.’”

Her words shocked the DCI. With almost every turn, the case got darker and more sordid.

Trish listened to this, knowing Dido’s almost identical story. Bringing Fox to justice would only be part of the redress that his victims needed.

An exhausted Trish and Chrissy joined Dido at John’s home very late on Monday evening. They’d spent the whole day with the two victims at the hospital. For Chrissy, it was slightly unnerving to see heavily armed Police Officers at every door on the floor. According to the nurses, this was even higher security than when they had visits from members of the Royal Family.

Dido was still up when a black cab dropped them off at John’s home. Chrissy went straight to bed. The day had taken a lot out of her, but mentally, she was happy that she had been able to help the last of Fox’s victims in a small but significant way.

Trish and Dido’s reunion was very emotional, but it was Trish who shed all the tears. Dido held her and comforted her while she recovered. That experience would stay with Trish for the rest of her life. It served to bring the two of them even closer together.

They fell asleep in each other’s arms.

[New Scotland Yard, London, Tuesday morning]

“DCI Parnell, I’m given to understand that you know Peter Banks from your time with the Parliamentary Protection team?” asked Detective Superintendent Young, commander of the team handling the investigation into Professor Fox.

“Yes, Sir. I was the one who gave him the news about the abduction of his son.”

“Then you are the perfect person to give him and his wife an update on the case.”

DCI Abbigail Parnell had been called into Met Police HQ from her current assignment with the Marine Policing Unit at Wapping.

“Sir? I don’t understand. As far as I know, his son is still missing or at least he was the last time I checked the records.”

“That is what we want to keep the public believing for as long as possible. In the early hours of Monday morning, we rescued the boy from his captor. So far, news of the operation has been kept out of the media. The only reports even close to the mark were of a bomb scare at a house in Hertfordshire.”

“There has been nothing in the media about it?”

“That, DCI Parnell, was the whole idea. We… as in the Commissioner, both the heads of the NCA and Special Branch, the Chief Constable of Hertfordshire and the Home Secretary are at Chequers [1] at the moment preparing a joint statement for release later tomorrow. The Home Secretary will brief the Prime Minister and the cabinet at their regular Chequers meeting later this afternoon. So far, none of them and that includes the PM, have any idea what has been happening other than it involves someone with a lot of connections. Then and only then will details of the first set of charges to be laid against the people who were arrested. The PM will be able to fend off the inevitable Questions in the House of Commons at Prime Minister’s questions tomorrow. The public announcement of the first set of charges against Fox is due at ten in the morning. His case is first up at Woolwich Crown Court.”

“Sir? I take it that this is a really big case and goes right to the very top?”

“That is true, DCI Parnell. Because of the nature of the operation and the people involved, we want to delay the announcement about the true nature of the operation for as long as possible. This is a classic example where the law has to bend to the will of the politicians. In this case, I happen to agree with the political timing because of who the accused is.”

“Sir? What exactly do you want me to do?”

“Read this. It covers everything you need to know for now.”

She read the single sheet twice. Abby felt sick to the stomach. Fox’s name was not mentioned.

“How could…”
She was lost for words.

“Cases like this show the depravity of some of the human race. I fail to understand what makes people do this to other humans.”

“That is very true, DCI Parnell. But… you know as well as I do it is not for us to judge. That is for the courts.”

Abby looked at the sheet once more.
“Sir, am I to give them the whole story at the outset? Or should we wait until they come down to London and get to see their child?”

“I would use your judgment on this. If you need to give them the bad news, then do it in as sympathetic a way as possible. Since Mr Banks resigned his seat in Parliament, he has maintained a very low profile. Even his resignation generated a lot of speculation. Many commentators hinted that there had to be something else. Personally, having your only child taken from you as he was is as good as a death due to the lack of ransom demands.”

“It was slightly suspicious with him having just been promoted to the Cabinet. I gave him the bad news, and the next thing I heard was that he’d been to see the PM and resigned not only his position in Government but as an MP. I considered it right out of the old school. Most of the others would have brazened it out.”

“DCI Parnell, ours is not the place to reason why people do strange things, so don’t let any personal feelings get in the way here.”

“Sir… Why me?”

The DSI smiled.

“Normally, we would get a local Chief Inspector to make the call, but Mr Banks has, shall we say, had a slightly rocky relationship with his local Chief Constable. He named names in the house over their policy towards child grooming in their area. That won him the next election by a huge margin, and since then, he has been proven right, but some of the locals resent what he did. We, as a job, don’t like being put in our place like that, even if it is justified.”

“I get you, Sir. I take it that this is an ASAP job?”

The DSi looked at the clock on the wall.

“Today would be good. If you take the train up to Manchester and then the local to near where he lives, you should be there late afternoon. Give me a call once you have met Mr and Mrs Banks. If they are coming down today, then I need to give you the location where she is being looked after.”

“Can’t you give it to me now?”

He shook his head.
“At the moment, it is on a need-to-know basis. I’m working with the medics to resolve that, but the child is severely traumatised, as I am sure that you would understand.”

“Thanks, Sir. I get the message.”

“If they don’t travel today, then give them my number. I’ll meet with them and escort them to the location.”

“I will remember that. It makes my job a lot easier… as if a job like this would ever be easy.”

“Good luck.”

[Five hours later, Ramsbottom, Lancashire]

“DCI Parnell? What are you doing here? Is there some news?” said Gayle Banks as she answered the door.

“Hello again, Mrs Banks. Yes, there has been some news. May I come in?”

Abby tried to keep a deadpan face. That was how she’d been trained to act before giving bad news.

“Please… please come in. Vince is in his office. I’ll call him down.”

Abby was shocked at how Mrs Banks’s appearance had changed in the nineteen months since their last meeting. At that meeting, Mrs Banks was slightly overweight in her opinion. Now, she was almost anorexic in contrast. Abby knew the reason why she looked like she did, and it wasn’t the kidnapping of her only child. She was struggling with cancer. All the signs were there, and she’d seen them before with her half-sister.

Vince Banks appeared in the room a few seconds after Gayle had called up to her husband.

“I saw DCI Parnell getting out of a car. How are you, DCI?”

“I’m fine, Sir.”

“The DCI has some news for us.”

“Mr and Mrs Banks, early yesterday morning, we raided a house in Hertfordshire. During that operation, we found your son and one other young person in a cellar. Both of them are severely traumatised and are undergoing medical attention at a private clinic outside London. During the operation, two men were arrested in connection with the abduction and imprisonment of the two children.”

“Who was arrested? I have seen nothing on the news?” asked Mrs Banks.

“Mrs Banks, there is a media blackout on the operation for the time being. I am not privy to the exact reasons why, and I don’t know the names of those who were detained, but I would guess that there is a huge pile of evidence to go through before charges can be laid. When that happens, the media will be able to report the names of those involved. Because the two children are under eighteen, their names will be withheld.”

“How is Jason?” asked Mrs Banks.
Her voice was noticeably weaker than before.

“He is well enough, but there are some things that you should know before you even think about visiting.”

“Of course, we must visit. He’s my son.”

“Darling, you know what the doctor said, and besides, you have another chemo treatment in the morning.”

“But… we must go!”

“DCI Parnell, you said that you had some more information for us about the state of our son?”

“I do, and it is not what you are expecting. The people who took your son trafficked him after the kidnapping and surgically removed his male sexual parts. Since then, he has been given huge doses of female growth hormones. I am afraid that your son is no longer male but is, to all intents and purposes, female in appearance. Then, while in captivity, your daughter was forced to give oral and possibly anal sex to male visitors to the property. We do not know the identities of those perverts, and we are still waiting on the results of HIV, AIDS and other STD tests.”

The two Banks held each other tightly. Both of them were crying and trying to say something, but their brains could not formulate anything but gibberish.

Abby sat patiently while they processed the information. She felt sick to her stomach.

“DCI Parnell,” said Mr Banks.
“As you can see, my wife is not well. We had just received her diagnosis when our Jason was taken from us. That is why I resigned from the government and as an MP. Since then, I have devoted all my time to caring for my wife and leading the search for our son. I am overjoyed that he has been found alive. Given the precarious state of my wife’s health, we cannot travel to London for at least a few days. I hope that you understand our situation. It is not as if we don’t care about Jason, but we are at a critical point in her treatment. This is her third and final course of chemotherapy. We are still hopeful that the cancer hasn’t spread to her spine.”

“You don’t have to explain to me. If I may make a suggestion?”

“Please…” said Mrs Banks.

“If you could record a short video message from you, then I could make sure that it is shown to her at the earliest opportunity.”

“He is my son!” wailed Mrs Banks.

“Darling, those evil men have made him into a woman.”

Those few words summed up the case perfectly.

The DCI left the house two hours later. She was carrying a video message to their child on her phone. The nice thing was that they were not abandoning their child even after what had happened.

The DCI made it clear that the treatment for PTSD would be a long and sometimes painful business and that after they had seen their child, it would be best for everyone if they did not meet again in person until the outcome of Mrs Banks’s treatment was known. It was agreed by the parents that it would be better for the child if they didn’t know about their mother’s illness until their new daughter had at least started some form of counselling.

It was a troubled DCI Parnell who travelled back to London late that evening. The Christmas Lights and general good feelings were just the opposite of what she and a good number of officers involved with this case were experiencing. They had seen firsthand just how low a human being could go to satisfy their perversion and lust for power.

Two days after they arrived at the King Edward VII Hospital, the two girls were moved well away from London to a very private clinic where they could start a lengthy rehabilitation process. Only a very few people inside the NCA and Home Office knew their whereabouts. The Home Office authorised an armed guard 24/7, given the sensitivity of the case. Photographs of the victims could prove very lucrative for someone lucky enough to take them.

Both wanted to see their parents. For one, that was impossible, as both had committed suicide after social media posts had accused them of murdering their child.

For the other one, she was able to view the video that her parents had recorded. She knew that they had not abandoned her. It gave her some comfort, especially with their last words, ‘We never stopped looking for you. We will always love you no matter how you look.”

[The Wednesday morning after the raid on Fox’s home]

It was a refreshed Dido and Trish who sat down at the rear of the lecture theatre five minutes before Fox was due to speak. They had spent all day Tuesday in bed at John Proudfoot’s home, recovering from their part in the operation. Most of the time, they were sleeping. John played ‘mother’ all day. He even made his Lasagne dish for the evening. Dido and Trish were under orders not to talk in detail about the events at the house and after in front of Chrissie for obvious reasons. She knew that thanks to Dido and Trish, Fox had been arrested. Other than that, she didn’t want to know for her own mental health reasons.

John had arranged for Chrissie to go on a day’s ‘Cooking Course’ with a TV Chef. That allowed Dido and then Trish to be debriefed by John. He made copious notes about what they told him. For a while, it was as if he were back in uniform. He would write it all up and submit it to the Chief Constable of Hertfordshire and the right people in the NCA.

He’d been told unofficially that Fox’s legal team were trying to get the search warrant declared invalid. He mentally thanked the CPS for going to the Court of Appeal to get the warrant. That alone would make it very difficult to get it thrown out, especially when two young people were rescued from his cellar. Fox’s legal team was also claiming that he knew nothing about the cells or the existence of the explosives in the cellar, despite his fingerprints being all over the place. The only place where his prints were not detected was in the room where the Operation Chesil data was kept. Marcus’s prints were everywhere in that room.

John knew that he’d fail, but Fox, being Fox, knew every trick in the book and would use them to get off all the current and future charges. This was just stage 1 in his game of dodge, deny, delay and deflect, but John guessed that deep down, Fox knew that his goose was cooked. It was only a matter of time before his life would change forever.

At the lecture, Fox’s two assistants were looking nervous. From their talking together in hushed tones, it was clear to Dido and Trish that they didn’t have a clue about his whereabouts. As this was the last week of term, assignments for the new year would be handed out at the end of the lecture. It was Trish who sussed out that Fox made them up on the spur of the moment and was based upon the response of the class to his lecture. Both of them hoped that this meant at least one class where there was nothing to do over the holidays.

Five minutes after the lecture was due to start, one of the assistants, an ineffective post-grad law student named Rosemary Chambers, spoke to the class.

“It seems that Professor Fox has been temporarily indisposed and will not be teaching the class today.”

With those words, half the class started to head for the exit. Ms Chambers tried to keep them from leaving, but it was too late.

In less than a minute, only the two assistants, plus Dido and Trish, were left.

“Aren’t you going as well?” asked Ms Chambers.

“We will sit here for a while and prepare for Professor Thompson’s class.”

Ms Chambers turned her nose up at the mention of Prof Thompson. His class was on forensic evidence. Both Dido and Trish had seen more of that in the last few days than most of the others would see in a lifetime.

Dido looked at Trish and smiled.
Trish nodded.

“Ms Chambers, a little bird told me that Prof Fox will not be returning to the University again. That little bird suggested that he is currently an inmate of Belmarsh Prison. If that is true, then he must be facing some pretty serious charges.”

The assistant looked at Dido with an expression of disbelief.

“Who is this little bird then?”

Dido chuckled.
“Only a Chief Constable.”

“Now I know that you are lying,” said Ms Chambers.

“If I am lying, then please check your facts with Prof Fox’s former legal representative, Mr J.G. Reeder. He and Prof Fox had a parting of the ways on Monday, according to another little bird.”

“Who is this other bird? The Met Commissioner?”

“Not quite, but someone in the CPS.”

“How? How do you know all this?”

Dido giggled.

“All I can say is that on Sunday night, I was helping the Police with their inquiries, and those inquiries happened to involve both Professor Fox and his son. The reason why I was helping the Police is way above your pay grade. I can say that I will be a key part of making sure that Fox is sent to prison for the rest of his life when it comes to trial.”

A red-faced Ms Chambers stormed out of the lecture theatre.

“Well done, darling,” said Trish.
“The bit about helping with their inquiries was brilliant. Perfectly true but brilliant.”

Dido looked at Trish.
“All we can hope for is that he gets charged with all the nasty crimes and soon.”

Little did they know that Fox was at that very moment being prepared to be charged with illegal possession of a firearm, ammunition and explosives. His new legal representative was making sure that Fox senior would not be saying a word to the investigators. As John Proudfoot had guessed, she was planning on filing a writ of ‘Habeas Corpus’ and hoping to get a judge to declare both the search warrant and the subsequent arrest illegal. Fox Junior was going to be facing the same crimes with a different lawyer who, after lengthy discussions with their client, was not going to pursue that path. It had been made clear to both defendants that a lot more serious charges would be forthcoming once the rest of the forensic evidence obtained from the house had been processed.

All the other charges relating to the imprisonment of minors and everything else would come later. The CPS thought that the firearms and explosive charges would be enough for the magistrate to deny bail.

The team from AC-12 had commandeered all the Operation Chesil evidence and were conducting their own investigations thanks to a timely tip-off from John Proudfoot.

For the time being, at least, the involvement of Dido, Trish and Chrissy in the prosecution of Fox was at an end, and they could concentrate on their university work, but the case would never be very far from their minds.

Now that Fox and his son were in custody, it was time for John Proudfoot to take all of Dido’s video statements to the team handling the case. Once the lead investigators had digested them and the plethora of other evidence, she would be called in to make an official statement about her time as a prisoner of Fox. Chrissy would also be required to make a statement for the record, but everyone was hoping that she would not be called as a witness.

The phoney war against Fox was just about over, and the main battle was just around the corner.

END OF BOOK 3

[1] Chequers: the country home of the UK Prime Minister.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chequers

[Author’s Note]
That is the end of Book 3. Book four is scheduled to start being posted in early June. There is a long way to go before the story reaches a conclusion. Thanks to everyone who has taken the time to read it up to here, and even more thanks to those who have commented. I do appreciate them.

There are three stories to come before Book 4. One solo piece, which is a bit of whimsy and two short stories that are comments on the society of today, but from different points of view.