Life Less Lived Ch. 12

"Were you the first one to get out of the inferno?"

"No, a couple of the kidnappers plus the fat lass got out first. The guys were leggin' it back to the path by the side of the house, presumably to where their getaway car was if it were out front. The fat lass only ran a few yards but couldn't get her breath from breathing in all the smoke. Sir Philip, Miss Sophie and Giles were outside and were left gagged, blindfolded and hand tied by the barn door. I was still struggling to get out of the bonds what was still tying my hands and feet up when Matt here turned up."

Jessica could hear instructions over her earphone, "I'm afraid that's all we got time for, many thanks Mr Hammond, Mr Jamieson, and back to the Studio," she said to the camera, then spoke to the two men, "We are not live on air any more, but we will carry on filming, so we can stitch together another report later."

Jessica turned to Matt, "Mr Jamieson, would you like to take up the story at this point?"

"Aye, well I were on me way rahnd to get t'barn, when these two kids ran rahnt' corner."

"They must've been the ones that dragged Sir Phillip and Giles, along with the fat girl that took out Sophie. When I got myself out by rolling outside, the two guys had gone."

"Aye, reckon they left her behind, she'd never 'a' caught 'em, they were travellin'! One of 'em thumped us as soon as I spoke to 'em, so I knocked him dahn, an' then I 'it 'is mate, too. When I got in front of t'barn, I saw Mr Hammond here ont' ground, the silly fat girl standin' there wringing her hands an' wettin' herself, an' my boss Sir Phil and another guy coughing their guts up, both still blindfolded and hands tied behind their backs. I know the classy bird, that Mr Hammond said he saw earlier. She's Sir Phil's PA, and is a reet toffee nosed bitch, who goes by t'name o' Patience Page-Turner, what all the blokes at the depot call Patty Perknickerty-Twister. She weren't tied up or nothin' an' as soon as she saw me comin' she hightailed it off dahn that path over there."

"That leads down to the poly tunnels," chipped in Hammond, "where I think she must've left her car. There were already a van an' car parked there this mornin'. I noted the numbers on me pad but that's probably still in the barn."

"Aye, mebbee. Later, when Paul were telling the Sergeant what happened, I informed the coppers who she were and where she went." Matt continued, "I had a set of blunt-nosed pliers in me pocket, with cable cutting and cable stripping capability, so I cut Sir Phil's wrist bonds first an', while I were cuttin' the young man's, Sir Phil pulled off his gag an' blindfold, sayin' Lady Babs were still in't side and staggered off back towards the barn. I left ma pliers wi't Young lad, to free Paul here, while I ran off to stop Sir Phil. By then the whole roof seemed like it were alight. The smoke'd stopped comin' aht the doors, as air were bein' sucked in by t'heat ta feed t'flames. I could see that the young red-headed lass'd also made it out but were still tied up and blindfolded. The old fella, that Paul said were on fire, was on the ground rollin' abaht, tryin' ta put 'is flames aht. I held onto Sir Phil to stop him goin' back in, 'til the other two caught up, then the roof of the barn caved in at one end, blowin' smoke and flame at us. We had to move back then. The 'eat were terrible."

"By then, me an' Giles caught up with Matt and Sir Philip,"

"And Giles is?"

"He's Ginny's boyfriend, another Doctor. He helped restrain Sir Philip, while I used Matt's pliers to free Sophie, then Matt took off an' used his jacket to put the flames out on the old man."

"Sophie is Councillor Medcalf's youngest daughter." Jessica added for the viewer's benefit. "So we have the Councillor, his girlfriend, his daughter Ginny, Lady Barbara and the abductors Andy and Mark all still in the burning barn?"

"Not exactly," Hammond said, "as we were being driven back by the heat, and I was dragging the old man away, Mr Medcalf staggered out, held up by Ginny, blood still streamin' from his head. I ran over and grabbed them, pullin' them away from the heat, before they collapsed. By that time the firemen had arrived and were spraying us with water from the cherry picker. Straight after them came the paramedics, who took Mr Medcalf, Sophie, Ginny and the old man off to the ambulances for treatment and wrapped the rest of us up in metal foil blankets. The police turned up and started questioning us to find out what had happened. The fire chief came over and wanted to know who was still in there and where. They got some guys in protective gear to go in and they dragged out the two bodies under the tarp over there," the camera was panned by Dave to where the covered bodies lay to one side, "an' said that were all they could find. It were too dangerous to send the firemen in again, cos more of the roof caved in as well as the wall on one of the short sides. They reckon the bodies of the two women are probably under the wall nearest to where the stall was at the seat of the fire. Ah, here's Ginny and Sophie now."

The two sisters were walking back from where the ambulance had been treating them with oxygen and attending to a few cuts and abrasions.

"Doctor Medcalf, Miss Sophie Medcalf, could you spare a moment to let us know how your father is?" Jessica asked, as Dave panned the camera on the newcomers.

"He's being taken to hospital for an X-ray, I persuaded him to go, he may have a fractured skull and concussion. There's nothing he can do here for now." Ginny was calm and precise, her training as a doctor kicking in, "Sir Phil is of more concern, his heart is not what it was, so he has been sedated to reduce his heart rate and his ambulance left quite a while ago. We promised them both before they left that we'd check on what was happening and ... look after things here."

"Of course," Jessica thanked them, "our condolences, for the loss of, presumably family friends?"

"More than friends," Sophie spoke up, "they were both irreplaceable members of our family that we are devastated to lose right now." Her eyes flashed with passion, her jutting jaw, set firmly and her back straightened, as her sister comforted her with an arm around her shoulders. "Auntie Barbara has been a part of our family all our lives, our mother's best friend from their school days, who helped our parents cope with the crippling disease which tore our family apart. And she stayed on, always there willing to help us through the bad days."

"And a comfort to your father?"

"A dear, dear friend," Ginny confirmed, "not to be confused as anything more than a concerned friend who is as good as family. Despite scurrilous rumours to the contrary, Uncle Phil was the only man in her life and, no doubt vice versa. She stayed on here to help Sophie cope without her mother, while I was in Med School."

"I see, so what was the relationship between James Johnson and your father?"

"None at all," said Sophie, "other than my father in his role on the prison board was determined to see that Johnson served his full term of thirty years, or until he was too old to prey on young girls any more. I guess the crazy old coot thought that my father was picking on him, while we all know that his work on the parole board was purely based on the merits of each case."

"So why was your other guest also singled out by Johnson?"

"Because -" started Sophie.

"Because," interrupted Ginny, "I'll tell this Soph. While I was the first one taken to the empty stall, the idiot called Andy, was being torn off a strip by this woman who he called Patience. She was telling him in no uncertain terms that she had planned everything meticulously and that Daddy would be taken care of in due course, according to her plan. Andy, it seemed had only just been brought on board, by Patience, as he was her last half brother that had joined the team, he had one simple task to do and he'd taken it too far, mentioning that the infantile invitations he'd apparently printed off and sent round to everyone was incriminating evidence."

"This sounds fascinating, Dr Medcalf, please go on."

"Is this going out live?" Sophie asked, stepping in front of her sister.

"No, we finished broadcasting a few minutes ago. Unless, er ... there are other developments, I will do another report in 55 minutes and the producer/director will put together snippets of the interviews to add to my live feed."

"Well, a lot if this will be sub judice and cannot be broadcast until after the trial," said Sophie, "actually, trials, as I'm sure there'll be more than one. But I did see you interviewing Daddy earlier and heard you say to your director in the studio that the recording was too upsetting to use. I liked that."

"I promise you, Miss Medcalf," Jessica said, "and I can speak for Pat, the producer/director here," the producer/director behind the camera nodded to confirm at this point, "we will not broadcast anything detrimental to your family, who I am sure the whole country will be firmly behind in light of this tragedy. We will only make it available to the police for evidence. If, at a future date, after the trial, we will show you what we could put together for a documentary account of this tragedy. Nothing will be broadcast however without your explicit approval. You are the victims here and we do not want to worsen your experience, just help set the record straight."

Sophie nodded and pushed Ginny ahead of her into Dave's camera light. "Go on Ginny. Tell them what you told me."

"I walked to the stable early this morning, intending to saddle my horse and take a ride up to the top of the Downs. I seem to have been cooped up in London for too many months. As soon as I opened the stable door, two men wearing ski masks jumped me, dragged me into an empty stall and tied me up, gagged me, too, and left me there. I could hear them unscrew cans and then I smelled the petrol they were pouring in the end stall. While they were doing that, a woman turned up at the edge of the stall, so I couldn't see her face, and stared an argument with the two guys."

"What was the argument about, Dr Medcalf?"

"Ginny, please. The woman called Patience ranted to them about how she had planned everything to the final detail for years and this stupid abduction and fire that the stupid boys had introduced into the plan would undo everything she and her father had worked for in revenge. They'd already had all the fun that they needed back in Cambridge. Then she said they should stop what were doing and wait until their father confirmed her plans. They argued back that their Dad was outside and that they had the second daughter, me -"

"And what do you think they meant by they had the second daughter, Dr Medcalf?"

"I will get to that later," Ginny looked at Sophie, who returned the slightest of nods. "The boys added that my father was in the house, so they could finish it all off in one go rather than wait for her plan. The woman with the cut glass-accent spoke to them like they were children, saying something like, 'I can't believe you're my brothers!' 'Half-brothers!' they replied in unison. 'Well, brothers, half-brothers, I have been planning this for years. I am the one who has done all the preparatory work. The idea, agreed by Daddy, long before either of you were brought in on the scheme, was to break up his family one at a time until only Medcalf was left. Then, and only then, the boys could finish him off once we we'd told him what we did to his family, to pay him back for keeping our Daddy behind bars all this time."

"So what was it you think that this woman Patience had been doing?" Jessica asked.

"That's exactly what one of the youths asked. He sneered and said that all she did was sit in an office on her arse all day and, at that, she exploded! She explained how she was raised by a family, she called them 'do-gooders', and was discovered to be quite smart and was well educated in the best schools, and that she was always aware of her adoption by them. When she needed a passport for a school trip, she noted the name and address of her birth mother and tried to contact her without success. But, she persisted and eventually found her mother mentioned in a rape case, the rapist being identified as their father."

"Ah!" Jessica intervened, "James Johnson."

"The man with the severe burns!" Hammond realised.

"Yes, she called him Daddy the next time we saw her with the old man. When she saw that we still weren't blindfolded, she took him outside to presumably tell him off!"

"They don't sound well organised."

"That's why she was so mad at the students. She told them how she began by writing to Johnson in prison, being careful not to say too much and, after two or three more letters, he eventually replied. She didn't explain how, but she told her half-brothers that she devised a code in the letters and eventually he entrusted his 'treasure' to her. This treasure was an exercise book containing all the notes of his victims, because there were so many he couldn't remember them all."

"Our researchers have looked up the trial notes," Jessica spoke to the camera, "apparently Johnson owned up to 100 cases of assaults on young girls, but was vague on details, the police managed to identify about thirty victims from his list, who were all drugged senseless before being raped."

"The police never found his complete set of notes." Ginny continued, "This Patience boasted that it was well hidden at his mother's house and he was afraid his mother would soon go into a home and his notes either lost forever, or found by someone else and used to prosecute him for acts he had not asked to be taken into account. Patience discovered through her meetings with her father that he wanted revenge on certain people who had blocked him or had some other significance in his life. It was she who found some of the people involved, our father probably had the higher profile and therefore easiest to find. She could have studied anything, this Patience woman told them, but she decided to read for a chemistry degree. Her do-goody adopted parents were delighted, she said, laughing at them. On graduation she went in for laboratory work, testing cancer cells."

At this point, Sophie, off camera, started crying and Ginny moved to comfort her, the camera panning to frame both sisters in the shot.

"So she plotted for years to get at your family?" Jessica asked.

"She was driven by her evil father. In her spare time in the lab, she perfected the drug that, Jimmy Johnson, was it?"

"Yes, James Johnson, 51, convicted twenty years ago to thirty years and released from custody earlier this year."

"She boasted that she had made Johnson's drug untraceable. Which is ridiculous, I prescribe drugs all the time, and they all leave traces that can be tested for. Then she trained as a nurse, and worked as an agency nurse at Mummy's hospital. Somehow, she drugged Mummy's drink, before retiring to the bed where the night duty doctors rest when they can. While asleep under the influence of the drug, Patience infected her blood by injecting her with cancer cells."

Both Giny and Sophie were crying now and Paul Hammond put his big arms around both of them. Helen Hammond, waiting at the side for her husband's interview to finish, also came up and held the girls.

"We'll cut there, Dave," Jessica said quietly to the cameraman.

"No, I want to get all this out now." Ginny said, wiping tears from her eyes. "Can we?"

"Of course. All set, Dave?" she queried. At Dave's thumb up and Pat the producer/director's 'go for it, sweetie', she nodded for Ginny to continue. Hammond and his wife stepped back, holding each other for comfort.

"Didn't work, she said to the boys, the first injection didn't work. Even though she had taken on a new job, several months later she said she came back and did it again. She said she'd acquired phials of highly virulent frozen cancer cells while working at the testing lab. She boasted of her success to the two brothers. Within weeks our mother was terminally sick. That was why everyone was so surprised how quickly Mummy died, all her organs failed so catastrophically, not through negligence of her health, not by an accident of nature, but our Mummy was murdered by a lethal injection of cancer cells."

"Oh Ginny, I am so sorry, for both of you."

Ginny nodded wanly and continued, "She told them she wanted to drug Daddy at Brussels, he was a European Member of Parliament then, and she had a cameraman and prostitute lined up for a damning set-up photoshoot, to destroy his reputation, all part of her crazy plan. But Daddy went home immediately he heard of Mummy's diagnosis and resigned from his seat a week later without going back."

"She must've been so calculating," Jessica said, pressing an earpiece harder to her ear. "We now have more details coming through of who this woman might be, Patience Page-Turner, 28, who has been personal assistant to Sir Philip Sands for just under three years."

"I didn't know her name, but that explains a lot. It seems she used the same tactic of prostitute and photographer to discredit Uncle Phil, sorry, Sir Philip Sands, expecting Aunt Barbara, Mummy's good friend, would leave him, hoping to either throw Daddy and Aunt Barbara together, as if that was ever going to happen, or try and drug and photograph them in a compromising position at home. But, because Daddy turned into rather a recluse and neither of them went to pubs or coffee shops, giving them no opportunity to drug them both at the same time."

"That must be a relief."

"Patience boasted that she tracked down this Andy and Mark as Johnson's offspring. Then got Johnson to manipulate them ready to form WWAG as an extreme protest vehicle to force Daddy to join the campaign as an alternative and respectable opposition. She even made sure this motorway scheme was SandRock's only major project by leaking vital tender proposals on a series of other projects to the opposition, having access to the info through being Sir Phil Sands' PA. That, she told them, was financing the operation. Then..." Ginny hesitated, holding onto Sophie, who urged her to go on.

"Andy and Mark, under Johnson's direction from a distance, drugged and raped my poor sister Sophie at a party last September, encouraging other partygoers to join in. This bitch Patience ensured that Andy and Mark were safe from prosecution, because they had no DNA on record and no history of activity in Cambridge. They had rented the flat through an estate agent using a made up address and a disposable phone and put three students in as sub tenants as fall guys. They ... they laughed about what 'fun' they had had with poor Soph, and whether they had time today to use me as a live subject for their depravity."

"Oh Sophie, so sorry for you," Jessica said, "if we do screen any of this, Pat and I guarantee that you have the final say on what goes in or not."

"Thank you, Jessica," Sophie's voice was strained, but she stood up straight, defiant. "She, this Patience bitch, said she had planned on posing as a nurse again at Ginny's hospital, looking for opportunities of drugging and injecting more cancer cells, so it would look like the disease runs in the family. Then do the same to me, leading to a pair funerals that my father would have to endure before they eventually put the knife in him to finish him off."

"Then," Ginny resumed, "for that last funeral, she'd get Sir Phil to allow her to orchestrate the arrangements for his dear friend and, staying behind afterwards to clear up, she'd get Daddy all alone at end of the evening, drug him and use Andy and Mark to help with the heavy work to make it look like Daddy hanged himself in his grief. Then she berated the half-brothers for thinking she just sat on her arse in an office all day."