CHAPTER 61

Tom Edwards appeared on screen, this time in what looked to be the foyer of some big BBC office building.

“Good evening. I’m Tom Edwards, and I make fly on the wall documentaries, but you probably already know that. Tonight will be a little bit different, however, as we will be following the impact of such programmes, and teasing out a tangled web of connections that have left me in awe of human resilience, set against the worst that certain human beings can still manage to inflict on others”

He continued to voice-over a clip of the studio discussion, running through the names of those involved.

“Ernie and Ian passed away at the ages of eighty-four and seventy-nine respectively. Joe made it to one hundred and one, one of our last surviving Normandy veterans. Chalky developed cancer and passed away at the age of sixty-four, and his family continue to push for an enquiry into the use of depleted uranium in anti-tank munitions. We covered Gerald’s funeral as a separate broadcast, and I will simply say that I remain in awe, humbled, at this quiet, unassuming war hero”

They cut to a funeral scene, as Edwards explained that the current programme would be in two parts, either side of the nine o’clock news.

“Where to start unpicking those threads? Well, we go back many years to the Grand Union Canal near Tring, and a man named Michael Rhodes”

I was on screen now, as that extended family cheered and whistled.

“It was the name on the back of the boat, Tom. Such an odd one it stuck in my memory: Acaster Malbis. I looked it up, and it’s just outside York. I asked some friends who knew more about the boats, and they explained a business scheme where two boatyards played a sort of shuttle system with each other’s boats, so that customers could do one-way journeys without the boat needing to be recovered”

More Edwards.

“Mike emigrated to Western Australia a few years later, working as a business consultant, and in a moment of inspiration involving hired camper vans crossing the whole country, he swapped Camden Lock and Acaster Malbis for Perth and Sydney. Tragedy was then to strike, for Mike’s pregnant wife was abducted and feared dead, and he was left to bring up their young son Ishmael”

The camera cut back to Edwards, who was grinning now.

“Those of you who follow the news will have heard of the Rhodes family, so you already know there’s a happy ending. This is where the twistiness comes in, and why [he held up a clipboard] I have to carry a schematic diagram of it all! I really wish I had known all of this many years ago, simply because it would have helped support, honour even, the heroes we featured in the original programme. So… Chalky White spoke of a comrade, Mike Stevens, who had served shoulder-to-shoulder with him in the Falklands and Bosnia, but then seemingly vanished from sight. We found him, or rather her grave”

External shot of that stone in Horley.

“Yes, that was correct. Melanie Stevens had been fighting gender dysphoria her whole life, and after leaving the Corps she finally found someone to talk to, her therapist Sally”

Sally McDuff, looking a little ruffled.

“She was, well, not fortunate in her genes, but, well, as soon as I could see past her height and strength, there she was. All woman, no possible doubts”

“What happened to her, Sally?”

“She… I had signed her off, finally, and she had a place for surgery. I… I rang her with the news, and she was doing a sort of tape diary and…”

“Take your time, Sally”

“She… She was ecstatic on tape, getting all done up, full steam ahead, then out to celebrate”

The camera cut away from a weeping Sally to Edwards, doing his best ‘grim face’.

“Melanie met four of the wrong people, those I mentioned at the start, and there is no easy way to say this”

A set of four mugshots, all showing bruising of one sort or another.

“Billy James Anstey, Alfie John Smith, Billy Boy Smith and Alfie Obie Smith were delivering illicit alcohol to the pub chosen by Mel Stevens for her celebrations. They decided to have what they considered fun. That fun consisted in beating and chasing Mel until she went off a footbridge and fell to the middle lane of the M23, where her body was hit by multiple vehicles”

A cutaway to Steph and Annie laughing between tunes at their Music Day event.

“Police Sergeant Annie Johnson, awarded the late Queen’s own gallantry medal for other issues, was the poor Officer tasked with recovering Melanie’s remains, and Stephanie Woodruff, here with the violin, took it upon herself to work with Sally and others so that Melanie could have a proper burial. Her four murderers remain in prison”

Back to Edwards.

“We have here a record of deep inhumanity, but that isn’t what I hope to deliver. To get there, I have to return to Mike Rhodes, who is a seriously enthusiastic rock climber. During his years in the UK, he spent a great deal of time in Eryri, Snowdonia, where he met Steph Woodruff, as well as acquiring a semi-official niece in the form of Enfys Hiatt-Edwards, who is, as far as I know, no relation to myself. Here is where this story goes seriously international. For that, we need to introduce yet another friend of Mike Rhodes, as well as one more utterly unpleasant excuse for humanity”

Neil’s wedding photo.

“Neil and Maddy Strachan ran a photography business, which Neil now manages alone following his wife’s suicide after a horrendous campaign by this man”

A photo of that bastard Forbes.

“Nigel Forbes harassed Maddy Strachan relentlessly, both by personal, face-to-face abuse and multiple pieces of paper slipped through the Strachan’s letterbox. He even sent a gloating message to Neil following Maddy’s death. He was, he thought, untouchable. And our web becomes even more complex”

A picture of Di’s team, lined up by their ‘lighthouse’.

“Mike’s courtesy niece Enfys had been instrumental in helping South Wales Police’s Serious Crime Review Unit recover their strength after dealing with some truly horrendous cases involving murder and child sexual abuse on what can only be described as an industrial scale. So, Enfys spoke to the SCRU, they looked at the evidence in Neil’s case…”

Edwards went through the salient points in that case, complete with an interview of the poor sod whose number plate Nigel Forbes had cloned.

“…and a conviction was duly secured, not just for Forbes, but also for three corrupt police officers. Forbes is also due to be sentenced for multiple cases of what is sometimes called ‘love rat’ fraud”

He suddenly grinned at the camera.

“Are you keeping up? There’s even more to this. It turned out that Detective Sergeant Diane Sutton, of the SCRU is also a friend of Stephanie Woodruff and Annie Johnson. By that time, Sally Flint had met, and married, Mel Stevens’ best friend in the Marines, and comrade of Chalky White, Stewie McDuff, and Diane Sutton knew someone in Cardiff who knew one Gareth Sheridan, another mate of Mel Stevens”

A photo of Stewie and what was clearly ‘Gareth’, arms around each other’s shoulders as they stood before that grave.

“But I digress, which is rather easy, given the mind-boggling complexity of the case. Let me just say that Detective Sergeant Sutton is somewhat notorious for her tenacity in investigation, and together with her team, as well as support from the Foreign Office, SCRU undertook to reexamine Maryam Rhodes’ disappearance. Which little cliffhanger ends the first part of this programme. Join us again after the news to hear the rest of this remarkable and fascinating tale”

I paused the disc, looking around my family and friends.

“Breather, folks? I suspect the next part is going to be a bit heavy. Carolyn, love?”

“Was that the lady who gave me sweets, Dad? The nice one?”

The bloody scary one, love, but that phrase Shan had used, ‘scary outwards’, came to mind.

“If nobody minds, let’s top up our drinks and get this over. Then I need to drop Neil a message, make sure he’s okay”

Kul took a quick look at Maz, and nodded.

“We need to, Mike. All of us. Family stuff, mate. While you’re up, then, son”

Dal looked down at his father, a theatrically exasperated sneer on his lips.

“You just get lazier and lazier, Dad. Don’t you ever think of anyone else?”

“Oh sorry, son. Anyone else want the lad to fetch them a fresh drink?”

Melissa waved an arm, grinning.

Some things, thankfully, never change. Dal and I brought in a tray of fresh bottles, as Sangeeta topped up some of the nibbles, and then I took a quick look around the room.

“Ready?”

Multiple nods. I pressed ‘play’.

“Welcome back. In the first part, we left you on the edge of a crucial moment, and I won’t spin it out: Diane Sutton and her team, led by Inspector Samir Patel, did what seems to be their forte, finding new ways to look at existing evidence, spotting previously unnoticed clues. That earlier example of the cloned car is just one of many. We have another documentary in production as this is being broadcast, in which we follow several of their most important cases, For now, we take the story to the island of Sumatra, in Indonesia, where that attention to detail, as well as high-level diplomacy had led to a major breakthrough”

Edwards’ voice continued over footage of troops boarding helicopters, three women I knew so well in stab vests and police ‘baseball caps’, plus—

“Dad! It’s you and the nice ladies!”

The camera cut away once again, to me and Ish on a sofa as I answered a question from the Aussie BBC woman, Ish nodding along.

“Our expectations? A shallow bloody grave, but at least we would KNOW”

Back to the Indonesian footage, and Edwards’ voice, coolly describing the search.

“What was found almost beggars belief. A number of underground storerooms held large quantities of harvested drugs, cannabis as well as brick upon brick of opium, but that wasn’t all”

The footage I had witnessed firsthand, as the trapdoor was pulled open, so many guns trained on the hatchway. Ish reached out to tap the pause button.

“No, Dad, not a problem. Look at Diane’s hand. She’s trying to find something.”

He flicker-flicked the image back, then forward again, and Dal laughed out loud.

“She’s trying to find her hitting stick! You were right, Mike---a bloody scary woman!”

Ish let it run on, LC mute between Maz and myself, her trembling increasing as she saw herself, and her mother, appear on screen. Geeta’s voice was soft.

“Nobody was going to get in your way just then, were they, Mike love?”

I needed no words, simply shaking my head slowly. Edwards was almost as soft as Geeta in his speech.

“Slavery, as simple as that. I won’t call it ‘modern’, for it was of a kind sadly endemic in mankind, ages-old and worldwide. Maryam and Mike were finally reunited, along with Ish and a daughter born to Maryam in her captivity. Their captors were dealt with under Indonesian law, and after appropriate legal process were executed by firing squad. All Maryam, her men and their little girl had to do was learn how to live once again, or, in the case of Carolyn, the little girl needed to learn what living was about from the beginning”

Edwards gave some filler about our tour of England and Wales, with footage of our interview with Bevan and Sammy after leaving Ish glowing red with a comment about meeting and falling in love with a Welsh girl.

“And now we come to the final twist in this wonderfully mazy story, for Ish’s girlfriend knew Gareth Sheridan, which was a crucial factor in our finale”

More footage from the Aussie crew, this time a ‘tourist highlights’ run through Esperance’s highlights.

“Carolyn’s seventh birthday was celebrated in Western Australia’s beautiful Bay of Isles, where she got to watch little penguins heading for their roosts and sealions at play. Teenagers need a little more, and Ish ran into a girl of a similar age, Gwen Horvath. No, this isn’t one of those stories! Gwen was due to marry her fiancé a few weeks later, and Ish was, as his father says, smitten with his Welsh girl. The point to all of this is that Gwen was in Esperance with her family to celebrate her grandmother Trudi’s eightieth birthday. We spoke to Trudi in her home in Albany, Western Australia”

Cutaway to my Aussie BBC woman, faced with Trudi, Friedl, Winny, Nora, Gwen, Andy and Manfred, who was seated on Nora’s knee. Carolyn called out “MRS OMA!” as Maz quieted her.

“Trudi Horvath, your family, thank you for agreeing to speak to us”

The old woman smiled.

“After the kindnesses I have been shown by the Rhodes family, how could I refuse?”

“What is it that ties you to the Rhodes’ story?”

“My own, love, particularly this”

She rolled up one sleeve and that bloody ugly, jagged tattoo was there, a clear “Oh my!” coming from the interviewer.

“Mike and Ish, such a sweet boy, ey, Gwen?”

“Don’t tease, Nan!”

“Well, they all were, love. Anyway, we left them with an invitation to the wedding, and they brought the finest gift imaginable”

“What happened to you, Trudi? Where were you born?”

“Bit vague there, I’m afraid, but we believe it was Vienna. I… it was the end of the war for the Nazis, but those bastards could never let go. I was moved to a place in Germany called Bergen-Belsen”

The image cut away again, this time to that stock black and white footage of hell that we all knew, and Edwards did his ‘background’ bit with clips of Gerald, Ernie and the two doctors telling of how truly awful the place had been, how futile their efforts had felt.

Back to Trudi, now alone in an armchair.

“One morning, the guards just moved over to one side, even the Black Devils, the dog handlers. I… I don’t do dogs. Too many memories. Then all these other men came in, different colour uniforms. I mean, I was only little, but some of the memories are so, so clear. I had learned very quickly how to be frightened, that’s one memory, and these new men, some of them were crying? And then… the new soldiers had food, but wouldn’t give it to us, and that’s another clear memory, hunger. There were people who spoke German, and they explained that we couldn’t just eat, and I know the reasons, now, and they were simple: it would have killed us.

“They gave us lots of wet stuff, and it was weeks before we were finally eating solid stuff, but it worked for some of us. Too many people kept dying, though. We… We would find new bodies outside, on the ground, or on the bunk shelves in our huts. By the time I noticed them, someone had stripped the rags off them, another layer of warmth, I suppose, and then one morning there were three bodies, fat ones, and they were the Black Devils, and like I said to Mike, I may only have been young, but I was old enough to fucking hate and spit on their corpses”

“Do you know how they died, Trudi?”

“Nope, but I suspect that some decent men had just seen more than they could take, and snapped. It was funny, you know: all those young soldiers, and there were quite a few of us kids, and I think, in other places, they’d have been dishing out lollies or chocolate, but those rules, from the doctors, ey? Anyway, a few days after they came in, we had a load of tourists, Germans from the town. I don’t think they really wanted to be there, but the British soldiers made sure they got a bloody good look, and then I read that they put the bastards to work clearing the dead.

“And our soldiers, we each had our favourite, mine was a really tall man with red hair, mates called him ‘Ginge’, he was always ready to play with us, throw a ball; one day he and some of his mates left the camp for a while, and when they came back, they had a pile of toys with them. I mean, I know now where they must have come from, and I don’t think there was much asking for permission, but fuck those people. I ended up with Pookie here”

She waved a familiar old bear.

“I am told he was originally a very expensive edition, but he’s been mine since Ginge gave him to me”

“What happened to you afterwards, Trudi?”

“There were two doctors, brothers, and they gathered most of us together, us kids, ey? Back to England as orphans, and then I was part of the scheme that shipped Brit orphans out to Oz. Ended up with lovely foster parents, running a general store out at Elleker, and the rest, as they say, is history”

Back to more of Edwards’ original footage, showing Gerald and the two doctors, plus mates, at that place.

“Julian and Charles Hemmings were the two doctors who gave Trudi a new life, and Gerald Barker, with whom this whole tangled web starts, was her tall red-haired soldier. We spoke to Gerald’s adopted nephew Wilf, son of that mate he lost in Belgium, one of far too many, about his memories”

An ageing man and woman, a gentle smile playing on the man’s lips as he spoke of endless summer days by the river, and his astonished delight on being invited over to Yorkshire for Susie’s wedding, with associated footage. Pictures of Gwen’s wedding, as Edwards explained the trip in the reverse direction, Susie rhapsodising at finding, as she put it, something more of her Dad.

There was more footage of the modern day camp, interviews of Dad Pete and Susie, and then final footage of Pete, Susie, Andy, Wilf and his wife, along with the entire Horvath clan as they paid their respects, followed by much the same crew laying a wreath at what was clearly the Barkers’ family plot.

“And there we have it. One very good man, a true hero, left ripples in the world that linger with his passing. Evil is vanquished, dragons slain—and yet more still remain, for example people like Nigel Forbes. Next month, we start our series on the Serious Crime Review Unit, but for now, with thanks to all involved in this mammoth effort, please raise your glasses, whenever you can, in memory of Gerald ‘Ginge’ Barker”