The Bookmark

There was a knock at the door; that took me by surprise. I opened it to find Joyce and Martin standing there.

"Sorry, Mike. I thought you might need a referee. Martin will stay outside but if you don't object - look you're a very level headed guy, Mike, but I think I'd better stand in on this one, just in case you do lose your temper."

"Come in if you want, Joyce. But I don't think we will be needing you, Martin. I've had plenty of time to get used to things. Thank you anyway, my friend."

Martin nodded to me as I closed the door, but it didn't look to me as if he had any intention of leaving and I could see what I assumed was the master key in his hand. Joyce sat on the other chair beside Sarah and I sat down on the bed.

"Sarah, Mike's my boss, but I've always considered both you as my friends. I probably don't know quite as much as Mike does about all this, but I believe I know most of what Mike does. However I fully intend to stay neutral in this; I think you need someone you can both talk to. If this evening turns into a slanging match? Well!"

Joyce reached out and took Sarah's hand. Sarah looked at her and they exchanged comforting smiles. I can't say that I was over-enthused with Joyce's presence as I was actually playing a tremendous bluff. I really needed to know what had happened on that night all those years ago and why. I worried that Joyce might be a little too neutral; Sarah and her had always got on so well together.

"Are you going to tell me about it now, Sarah? Or do I leave this room a single man?"

"No, oh, please, no," was all Sarah could say before she was lost in tears again.

Damn it, after all the build up, I was beginning to get impatient. Maybe it was a good idea for Joyce to be there.

"Okay, Sarah, let me tell you what I know. Guess what? Back in 1986, they weren't all that computerised at this hotel. Everything was written on little bits of paper and believe it or not it turns out that all those bits of paper are still down in the basement somewhere. You might not think so, but Martin was very kind and looked out the booking for this room for me."

I pulled a photocopy from my pocket. "It's all a bit cryptic but I think we've worked out what it all means. On April the 21st 1986, at just after ten in the morning. Accurate, aren't they? A woman called reception and booked a room - this room - for the night of the 23rd. She gave the name Mrs S Garret. But they must have told her that they needed a credit card number to hold the room, the same as they did me a year later. They crossed out Mrs S Garret and wrote in Mr M J Garret and my American Express card number. When I was using American Express you had a duplicate card on my account, didn't you. I should imagine the number refers to that card.

"On the night of the 23rd of April a man and woman, had a meal in the restaurant and that was charged to this room. Then at eight thirty that evening an international telephone call was made from this room. Strangely, or maybe not so strangely, to the hotel that I was staying at in Germany, I remember receiving that call. You told me you had been out at a neighbour's when I had called home and you were returning my call. You had counted on me being a creature of habit.

"The following morning just one breakfast was charged to this room. Why, I have no idea. Were you not hungry? Had you had enough protein for breakfast that morning? Perhaps you can enlighten me on that one.

"At 9 AM on the 24th a Mr Forester paid for the room by cheque. It appears that he was planning paying by cash, but you pair must have spent too much money on your evening meal and room service; the word cash was crossed out and cheque was written in instead. Perhaps he didn't have enough cash left on him. By the way how much did you charge him, for the night Sarah?"

"That was uncalled for, Mike!" Joyce butted in. I ignored her comment and continued.

"Anyway it must have caused some minor fracas because they felt they needed some proof of his identity. It appears your Mr Forester was a police sergeant. How many other times did you - excuse me, Joyce - fuck the bastard, Sarah?"

Sarah, who had been looking at the floor quietly sobbing, looked up at me. "I don't know what you want me to say?"

"I want to know the truth. You had a liaison with this arsehole Forrester in this room whilst I was out of the country. Nine months later Christina was born. What the hell were you doing, trying to get pregnant by him?"

"Oh, my god, no. I took every precaution I possibly could. I had a Dutch cap in and filled myself with spermicide. And I made him wear a condom."

"So you admit you slept with this Forester Pratt then."

"I can't very well deny it, can I? You've got the paper work."

"But why? Did you love him or something? How long did it go on for?"

"Love him? You've got to be bloody joking; I hated that bastard! He had me and there was nothing I could do about it. But he talked too much that night and I had a recorder with me that he didn't know about. That was why I booked the room so that I had access to it before he arrived. I recorded everything he said to me in this room that night so that he couldn't blackmail me into bed again."

"Are you telling he blackmailed you into sleeping with him?"

"Yes, he did. I only wish I'd had the sense to go to the police instead of giving in to the bastard. But I was young, stupid and naive. That's what Jenny did when he tried the same thing on her.

"Jenny. Where the hell does she fit into this?"

"Jenny had the same problem as me. But she had a damn sight more savvy than I had. I didn't realise the police and courts would keep our names and the details secret. You never even knew anything about it when I went to court to give evidence against the bastard."

I was totally lost by then, but I was beginning to feel a little relieved. What Sarah had said about being blackmailed had taken a massive weight off my shoulders. If she had been blackmailed into going with the arsehole, I felt I might be able to live with her betrayal. I went over to her, pulled her up and took her in my arms. She sobbed on my shoulder.

"But what about Christina and the DNA results?" she mumbled."

"Those papers say that Christina is my daughter. Apparently your precautions must have worked."

"But you let me think..."

"I had an empty gun, Sarah; I just wanted you to tell me the truth, that's all. But I'm afraid that now we come to the hard part. Just what on earth did Forester have on you that could possibly make you agree to his demands for sex?"

"Oh, god, do you really want me to tell you that?"

"In a word, yes. And no lies if you don't mind. I will be checking things out."

Sarah disentangled herself from my arms and sat back down. I returned to sitting on the bed.

"Oh, god. It goes back to long before we were married. ---- You've seen those old photos of Jenny and I at those children's summer camps in America. We worked in them two years on the trot." Sarah broke off and started crying again.

"I don't know how I'm going to explain all this to you. I'm so ashamed about it even now." She stopped and sobbed for a little while again. "Well, at the end of the season they give you up to four weeks before you have to fly home. The first year Jenny and I teamed up with some other English girls and we drove down to Florida. We had a great time in those four weeks. It made it worth spending summer looking after the little brats."

"Yes, I do remember you telling me about that."

"It was the second year that I didn't tell you about, Jenny and I were the only English girls on the staff at the camp. So we teamed up with two American and a Canadian girl. When the season finished we went in one of the American girl's car, over to Atlanta on the coast.

"I'm afraid that we spent much more money than we had intended to in the first couple of weeks. Jenny and I were talking about having to go home early as we were so broke. Well, all of us were a bit short of cash and then one of the American girls said she knew of a place where we could stay for a few days for nothing.

"We really should have known better. Mich was a real tearaway. She took us to this big country club hotel. There were lots of girls there all hanging around the pool in swimsuits when we arrived. Michelle told us it was a private gambling club for rich folks and they liked to have pretty girls around in bikinis to take the guys minds off the money they were losing. God, we were so bloody naive, but Mich made it sound so innocent she was very convincing."

"Anyway, on the Friday we hung around the pool in our bikinis all day. There were a few guests about and some of them were chatting us up. I really didn't think anything of it - there were always guys chatting us up over there in the States. Friday evening they were playing cards and drinking in the bar. I noticed that most, if not all the guys finished up with one girl or the another. I'm not sure what time Jenny and I went to bed but we both went alone.

Saturday was the same as Friday, but there were a lot more men about. A really nice guy called Tony started talking to me and I took quite a shine to him. He was quite young, not like a lot of the blokes there. He did gamble for a little while and I think he won quite a lot of money. But then he spent the rest of the evening dancing and talking to me.

"Jenny got herself hooked up with another nice guy and around midnight we all went swimming. After that it seemed so natural for me to go to bed with Tony. You know, I've never made a secret of the fact that I had slept with a few guys before we met. I didn't normally get into bed with guys just after I had met them, but you know how it is when you're on holiday and that's what I was on.

"Anyway about three in the morning all hell broke loose. Tony, the guy I was with, jumped out of bed and had his clothes on within moments of the shouting starting. He went outside for a while and when he came back he told me to get dressed quickly as Jenny had been hurt.

"I found Jenny downstairs with the paramedics treating her. Someone had knocked her about quite a bit. The police turned up and asked Jenny who beat her up. When she told them, they didn't appear to go looking for him. They just kept on asking her if she was sure she wasn't mistaken.

"Then Jenny and I were loaded into an ambulance and taken to a hospital. Jenny wasn't badly beaten up but she did have some cuts and bruises. Just after dawn the police came to the hospital and asked us to go with them to the police station. We assumed they wanted us to make statements about Jenny's attack. But when we got there they charged both of us with prostitution and put us in a cell. We couldn't believe what was happening. We weren't prostitutes.

"Some defence lawyer guy turned up and told us he had been assigned to represent us. He said he had been talking to the police and with what evidence they had he advised us to plead guilty. He told us that as we were foreign nationals, they would do no more than fine and then deport us. We told him we hadn't done anything but he informed us there were several witnesses who were going to swear on oath that we had propositioned them and at least two guys who were prepared to say that they paid us to have sex with them on the Friday evening.

"When we asked what was gong to happen about the attack on Jenny he said there was no record of any attack on her. When I asked him to look at her face, he told us the police report said that Jenny had fallen down the stairs when she tried to run away from the police officers. The lawyer told us our only option was to plead guilty to prostitution.

"A little later Tony came to see Jenny and me. Tony told us that there were a few politicians in the club. He said he didn't know who the guy was that had attacked Jenny, but he thought it must be someone important. I asked him if he would vouch for us and tell the judge that we weren't prostitutes. But he told us that whoever had the power to get the police reports changed was not anyone he wanted to tangle with. Tony told us to plead guilty; then he would see that our fines were paid and take us to the airport so that we could get out of the country.

"A little later in the morning we were bundled - that's all I can call it - into a court room. Almost before the charges were read out, our so-called defence attorney was pleading us guilty and the Judge gave Jenny and me a fine. I'm not sure how much; I was in a bit of a daze. I can only assume that Tony paid it, because before we knew what was happening he was driving us to the airport.

"Tony was acting like a friend and we thought he was trying to help us. But when Jenny and I discussed it all later we think he knew a lot more then he let on to us. We even thought it was him who was in charge of the cover-up of Jenny's assault.

"You see at the airport Tony somehow managed to produce our luggage, then before we were put on the plane some other guy came up and told us that it wouldn't be a good idea for us to try to return to the US. He told us as we had convictions for prostitution we would not be welcome over there and the embassy in London would not issue us with visas.

"That's why I didn't want to take the children to Disney World the other year when you suggested it. If I try to go to the US they are sure to refuse my Visa application and knowing you, you would have insisted on investigating why. I didn't want you to find out about any of this after what I went through."

"Is that why you went with that arsehole so that I wouldn't find out you had a trumped up prostitution charge against you?"

"Yes. Somehow he got hold of the police reports from the American police. He told me he was going to send you and both our parents copies of it. Your parents always had reservations about me; I was terrified about what would happen if they saw those reports."

"My god, girl, what did you think I would do, divorce you or something?"

"Well, yes, I was frightened you would divorce me. We hadn't been married all that long and I was at my wits' end; I didn't know what to do. I didn't even have the sense to tell Jenny about it, when he contacted me. Jenny was a lot more sensible than I was; she went straight to the police. When she confided in me I told her that he had already blackmailed me. She was furious with me and told me I'd been an idiot. She convinced me to tell the police about it; they took the recording I had made and told me that they were going to charge him with raping me. I was terrified of the publicity but they assured me they would keep my name out of the news.

"When he found out that he was going to be charged with blackmailing and raping me as well as trying to blackmail Jenny, he pleaded guilty. The police said he pleaded guilty to try to curry favour from the judge, so that he would get a lighter sentence"

"But why did you tape him raping you in the first place?"

"Well, I might be stupid for not going to the police in the first place, but I'm not entirely dumb. I was damn sure he wouldn't have been satisfied with having me just the once. I think he was planning on it being a regular thing.

"About two weeks after that night he called me one day and told me that he wanted me to meet him again. I played him the tape recording down the phone and told him that if he sent those American crime reports to anyone, I'd go to the police with the recording."

"And he left you alone after that?"

"No, not exactly. You remember we had that burglary in 86. Well, I'm pretty sure that was him searching for the tape. For a while I was very worried about what he was going to do, but then about six months later Jenny called me and told me he had approached her and that she had gone straight to the police."

"God, I'm having trouble taking this all in. That guy Tony or whatever his name was did you ever hear from him again?"

"No, but I've seen him more than once on the TV. It was a few years ago they were showing one of those convention things they have over there on the news. You know where they pick who's going to stand for president. Well, I'm sure I saw Tony standing in the background. I switched over and to watch the news on the BBC, they showed the same piece of film and it was him."

"God, I think I remember that night. I couldn't understand why you were suddenly so interested in who was going to stand for president. You've never been interested in politics."

"Now you know why, I wouldn't trust any of those buggers as far as I could throw them after what they did to Jenny and me. One of those perverted bastards knocked poor Jenny around because she wouldn't go to bed with him and then he got the pair of us branded as prostitutes so that he could avoid a scandal. Who was going to believe a prostitute if Jenny kicked up a fuss? They even managed to get us barred from entering the bloody country again."

Sarah who had appeared to gain some control over herself then started crying again. I sat there in silence running everything that she had told me over in my mind. Sarah was correct when she said my parents had not been enamoured with my choice of life partner. When I told them we were engaged they had tried to discourage me from marrying her. I had never realised how blatantly they must have made their opinion known to her.

Joyce coughed; both Sarah and I looked at her. "Well, Mike, Sarah has said her piece. Now its time for you to say something. You can't keep her waiting forever."

"Is Martin still out there?" I asked Sarah. She got and opened the door and Martin stuck his head around it.

"Martin, have you got another room available?"

"Plenty of them, it's a quiet night. What sort of room would you like."

"Well, I was thinking along the lines of the honeymoon suite. I think my wife has unpleasant memories of this room. I think we need a room that we can both feel relaxed in. Don't you, Sarah?"

Sarah didn't reply, she just dived off of the chair and flattered me on the bed. I'm not sure when Joyce and Martin left. But I hope they didn't hang around very long.

Life Goes on

Epilogue:

I found that I could put Sarah spending the night with Forester behind me. Sarah's conviction was a slightly different matter though. I sought out the police officer who had been in charge of the case against Forester. Mainly because I was thinking of a little personal revenge, but I didn't tell him that. He told me that Forester had bad time of it in jail, since he was an ex-police officer and apparently not a very pleasant one. Somewhere along the line someone - probably some poor bastard he'd put behind bars in the first place - got to him. He was beaten so severely that now he was a virtual cabbage in a nursing home somewhere.

But the officer went on to tell me that the story that Sarah and Jenny told him about the trumped up prostitution charge had peaked his interest. Some months later he had related the story to an FBI agent with whom he was working. The story must have piqued the FBI agent's interest as well, because after the agent had returned to the States, he came back to him later and said he thought that the girls were more than likely telling the truth.

He'd checked out the Country Club and it wasn't the sort of place the police would have normally raided looking for hookers, as he put. The club would have quietly shepherded them out of the place, rather than invite the bad publicity of having a hooker arrested inside the establishment. Although the agent reckoned half the female staff were "on the game" anyway.

The thing the FBI agent found to be a little strange was that Sarah and Jenny's case files had been sealed by the Judge who had originally heard the case. When the agent applied to have access to the files, he quickly found that he was put under pressure to let sleeping dogs lie, by his superiors. The FBI agent was pretty sure that the girls had been framed to keep them quiet.