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"Tom? Hi, it's Peter here. Look, that woman who turned up at reception earlier was a close friend of mine." He explained, once his junior colleague answered, "I'm afraid she's had some bad news and she's in a bit of a state at the moment. I've taken her back to her place to settle her down a bit. Can you take over from me and get on with compiling the Hakkaido Prosthetics schematic drawings, ready for Monday's conference call? I should be in tomorrow, but just in case I'm still tied up here, can you step up and get as much of it together as you can?"
With a sudden flash of irritation, he realised that some of Tom's upward inflection may have rubbed off on him.
"Yeah, sure thing, Pete." Tom replied.
Peter hung up after their brief conversation just in time for the kettle to boil. As he opened a jar of instant coffee and tipped a spoonful into two mugs, Lindi came and stood in the doorway into the kitchen.
"Thank you." she said simply, as she stood and towelled her hair.
"That's okay, it's only instant." Peter replied as he poured from the kettle.
"I meant thanks for bringing me home!" Lindi said as she took the steaming mug of black coffee from Peter, "You didn't have to leave work early on my account."
"Look, it's no problem - a friend in need and all that." Peter answered.
Lindi sipped the hot coffee, taking comfort in its warmth and its soothing aroma.
"As soon as you've finished that, you're going to take me to this studio of his - if he's there I'm going to have it out with him right there and then!" Peter said as he sipped his own coffee.
"And what if he isn't?" Lindi asked.
"Well, if he isn't then we'll have ourselves a nose around the place." Peter replied, "I wouldn't mind betting there's more to this 'studio' of his than meets the eye."
Wednesday, September 1st 2010 - 4:03pm
"This is the place." Lindi said as Peter pulled up outside Clive's photographic shop in the market town of Swanborough, a few miles north of Westborough-on-sea, "The studio itself is up on the top floor, you can only get to it through the back of the shop."
"I see." Peter replied as he parked up.
"The staff there already know me, so hopefully there won't be any trouble getting in." Lindi added.
"Right then, let's do this." Peter said as he unclipped his seatbelt.
Lindi followed him closely, as they crossed the street and went into the shop.
"Can I help you?" The young woman behind the counter said as the two friends approached her.
"Is Clive, Mr. Datchet in?" Lindi asked politely.
"I'm afraid not Miss... Vernham isn't it?" The young woman replied.
"Ms. Vernham actually." Lindi corrected, "I'm afraid I accidentally left something valuable up in Clive's studio the other day, is it okay for me to nip up and retrieve it?"
"I er... I don't know... I'd better give Mr. Datchet a call to make sure."
"No need, he knows I'm coming - I called him earlier to check with him." Lindi continued.
"Well, I suppose." The young woman replied as she rummaged around in a drawer for a key, "Just don't be too long okay - he'd have my guts for garters if he found out I'd let anyone have his spare key!"
"Thanks." Lindi said curtly as she took the key.
Peter followed Lindi up several flights of stairs before arriving at the green door that led into the top floor studio.
"This is it." Lindi said as she tried the key in the lock.
She opened the door to the studio and they stepped inside, she made sure to lock the door closed behind them. The room was exactly the same as when she had last been there, a few days before they left for their American road trip. In the corner stood the small screened-off changing area, with its full length mirrors. The variously coloured backdrops dominated the far wall in their ceiling mounted rolls, the lights and flashes stood on their stands dotted around the room, and directly in front of the backdrops stood a large camera tripod, albeit with no camera mounted to it. To the side of the room stood the desk, with its powerful desktop PC, and directly opposite that sat a large leather couch.
Peter looked around, scrutinising the large open space that was flooded with natural light by several large skylights in the roof.
"Hmm... I wonder." Peter said as he stepped over to the screened-off changing area, "Doesn't this strike you as being a bit unusual?"
"In what way?" Lindi replied as she followed him.
"The mirrors." Peter observed as he moved the screens out of the way. He cupped his hands against one of the mirrors and pressed his nose against the glass.
"What is it?" Lindi asked as Peter scrutinised the mirror.
"I have a suspicion that this mirror might not be all it seems." Peter said as he stepped back and rummaged in his pocket for something.
He took out his trusty Swiss Army knife, and opened out its screwdriver attachment. He set about unscrewing the mirror from its frame. With some surprise, he found out that the screws were actually quick-release fixings, designed to undo with just a quarter turn. These mirrors were clearly intended to be removed and reinstalled on a regular basis. Sure enough, once Peter had removed the last screw and took the mirror off the wall, both he and Lindi gasped at what they saw.
It was a small alcove, within which, stood on its own little tripod, was a small video camera.
"What the fuck?!?" Lindi gasped in disgusted astonishment, "He's been spying on me?? As I've been getting undressed here?!?"
"I knew it!" Peter exclaimed, "I knew I had a bad feeling about him. I couldn't put my finger on it, Lin, but I knew there was something about Clive that just didn't seem right to me."
"He didn't seem right to you?" Lindi said, clearly sounding very hurt, "And you didn't think to tell me?"
"What good would that've achieved?" Peter replied, "You were far too besotted with him for you to notice anything sinister about him - if I'd have voiced my suspicion to you, would you have listened or just told me to piss off?"
"Well I... I, er..." Lindi stuttered.
"Exactly." Peter continued, "It was none of my business - and you were in love. The only thing I could do was to be there for you if he hurt you in any way, and that's exactly what I'm doing right now."
Lindi sighed, she knew he was right.
"I'm sorry, Peter." Lindi apologised, "I shouldn't have said that. It's just..."
"Shh, it's okay, Lin." Peter interrupted, and gathered her up in a brief hug and kissed the top of her head, "I understand."
"Well, I guess we'd better see just how much of a bastard Clive has been then, hadn't we?" Lindi sighed eventually.
Peter surveyed the studio, scrutinising the ceiling and the heavy roof timbers.
"Look! Up there!" He pointed to one of the large oak beams, "Sitting on that beam up there - another camera!"
Lindi followed Peter's gaze. There, sat discretely on top of the beam, was another tiny video camera, screwed onto a little bracket. In the minutes that followed, they found more and more cameras - it seemed that there wasn't a single inch of the place that didn't have at least one hidden camera watching over it.
"What the fuck has he been doing in here?" Peter gasped.
"I feel sick already." Lindi replied.
"I'm going to take a look in this desk of his." Peter said determinedly, as the strode across the room.
"You can't do that!" Lindi gasped.
"Just watch me!" Peter retorted angrily.
The desk had a number of drawers, all of which turned out to be unlocked and were merely full of various paper invoices and statements and other assorted paperwork. All except for one particular drawer that was locked. Peter took a couple of paper clips from the desk tidy next to the PC monitor and opened them out to form two improvised lock-picking tools. He carefully inserted them into the lock barrel, and twisted and turned them inside the mechanism.
"My friend Alfie from school taught me how to do this." Peter said as he attempted to pick the lock, "It's been a few years, but it's just like riding a bike. You never forget how to pick a lock!"
Lindi watched as Peter worked on the lock, unsure if she actually wanted to find out what it was protecting.
"And this kind of lock," Peter continued, "is a pice of piss!"
Click!
Peter had managed to successfully pick the lock in under a minute.
"Neat trick, huh? I'll have to teach you how to do it myself some time!" he said triumphantly.
"Let's just see what's in here, okay." Lindi said with a sigh.
Peter opened the drawer. To begin with it just seemed to contain yet more paperwork, but buried towards the bottom of the drawer was the unmistakable outline of a USB memory stick. On it, scratched into its surface were two initials - 'LV'.
"No way." Lindi groaned, "He couldn't have!"
"There's only one way to find out." Peter said, as he set down his bag and pulled out his laptop.
"Of course," he continued as he powered it up, "If you don't want me to see what might be on here, I'll totally understand. But I think we ought to at least confirm our suspicions, don't you?"
"I guess." Lindi answered.
"If you want me to stop at any time, you just say so, okay?"
Lindi nodded in reply.
Peter inserted the memory stick into his laptop and opened the file explorer. The USB showed up as 'Lindi V - 2010', and, once Peter double-clicked on it, two folders appeared marked 'pics' and 'vids'. With Lindi's permission, he opened the 'pics' folder. Contained within it were literally dozens and dozens of photos of Lindi, that Clive had taken during her visits to his studio over the summer. Some of them showed her in a number of different bikinis, a whole lot more of them showed her in only her bra and panties. But most of them showed her naked.
"Oh my God, Lin!" Peter gasped as he clicked open an image of his friend, naked on the floor of the studio, inserting a vibrator into herself. Normally he would've been turned on by such an image, but in the knowledge of the circumstances during which it had been taken, he just felt utterly sickened and desperately sorry for her.
"Did he make you do this, Lin?" Peter asked.
"Not as such." Lindi replied, her voice clearly wavering, "But he was pretty, umm, persuasive."
"In what way?" Peter asked for clarity.
"Well, he just said stuff like "c,mon babe, do it for me - it's just between you and me, right, I'll delete these as soon as we're done", I should've known the bastard would bloody well keep them!" Lindi said tearfully.
With a lump in his throat, Peter closed the folder and turned his attention to the 'vids' folder. Just like the other one, it was full of dozens of files. Peter opened one at random marked 'C & L couch loving'. It opened to show Lindi completely naked, being led by Clive to the leather couch in the studio - it had clearly been filmed using the hidden cameras. There was no audio, but he could tell that Clive was whispering into Lindi's ear as he pulled down his trousers and pants. Within a matter of seconds, he was inside her, rutting into her with a ferocity that took Peter's breath away.
"Jesus, Lin." He muttered.
He had seen enough. Peter closed the file and yanked the memory stick out of his laptop.
"This is coming with us." he said determinedly, "And when we get home we're going to fucking destroy this thing!"
He turned to see Lindi stood trembling just behind him. Tears were streaming down her cheeks like rivers of betrayal and despair.
"How could he...?" she muttered almost inaudibly.
Peter stood and held her closely in his arms, the only right thing he felt he could do at that moment. Her body heaved into his as she sobbed deeply.
Once he had managed to calm her down, if only a little, Peter delved a little deeper into the desk drawer. The memory stick he had uncovered was just one of half a dozen, each one with initials scratched into its surface; 'VF', 'MS', 'AR', 'SC', and so on. Peter picked up the one marked 'VF' and inserted it into his USB slot. Like Lindi's memory stick, this one also contained two main folders. He opened the pictures folder first, and was unsurprised to find that, just as with Lindi's USB stick, it contained hundreds of photos, this time of a very young looking woman who could have only just turned 18 years old. She was stunningly beautiful, with long blonde hair, sumptuously nubile curves and beautifully proportioned breasts and thighs. Her face looked so beautiful and innocent, her perfect complexion only marred by a small pink birthmark above her left eyebrow. As Peter flicked through the images, as with Lindi's set of photos, they showed her in various bikinis and lingerie.
"Oh my God." Lindi muttered in barely concealed distaste, "She's wearing the very same bikini he made me wear! Ewww!"
The girl reminded Lindi of someone, but at the time she couldn't put her finger on it.
The pictures gradually became more and more pornographic, many of them in the same poses that he had seen in Lindi's photos, including a near carbon copy of the pose with her on her back as she parted her labia, that Clive had sent to Lindi's headteacher. Feeling increasingly sickened, but with a morbid fascination, Peter opened the videos folder. There were videos clearly filmed from the camera behind the mirror, as he watched the young woman stripping naked behind the screens, and there were videos of her having sex with Clive. But there was one particular video that set Peter's teeth on edge. It's file name was '18yo VF first time fisting'.
The video opened to show the blonde girl lying naked on her back, and looking extremely anxious, with her hands tied together above her head, and with some kind of metal bar keeping her legs apart. She was joined moments later by an equally naked Clive. Peter noticed with a raised eyebrow that Clive appeared to have been circumcised. He scrubbed quickly through the opening few minutes of the video until around five minutes in, he resumed it. The young woman was writhing on the floor, clearly in distress. Just as before, there was no audio, but it appeared fairly clear to Peter and Lindi that the young woman was begging Clive to stop what he was doing to her. Clive meanwhile, could clearly be seen appearing to enjoy every minute of it, judging by the expression on his face and his powerfully erect and drooling penis. He had his entire right hand inserted into the girl's vagina, and he was pumping his fist in and out of her in the most disturbingly animalistic manner.
"I think we've seen all we need to see." Peter said as he closed the file and pulled the memory stick out of his laptop, "I mean holy fuck, Lin, Clive is a... he's a fucking sicko!"
Lindi merely stood behind him in stunned silence.
"Did he do that to you?" He asked her gravely.
Lindi, still speechless, simply shook her head. During her visits to Clive's studio they'd had sex on numerous occasions, and he had taken pictures of her using a variety of sex toys, which, she now realised nauseously, had been used by the other girls that had been in the place, but he had never done anything to her like he was doing to that poor girl in the video. It made her feel physically sick.
"I... I think we'd better call the police." Lindi said eventually.
Wednesday, September 1st 2010 - 8:25pm
A few hours later, Clive's photographic studio/sex lair was swarming with police forensic officers and vice squad detectives - a search warrant having been hastily obtained. The few memory sticks in the desk drawer were just the tip of the iceberg - many more had been found, stashed in boxes in one of the camera equipment cupboards. They had eventually found more than a hundred of the things, most likely filled with photos and videos of naked young women being forced to do all manner of humiliating or painful things. Lindi didn't want to imagine the sheer scale of Clive's apparent depravity, but with a grim sense of hurt, betrayal and downright disgust, she knew now that it was only a matter of time before she too would've been persuaded by him to do such things. "It's just a bit of fun", he'd said to her, "just between you and me". Lindi shuddered as she recalled his voice.
Peter had stayed by her side the whole time, as the police went over the studio with scientific scrutiny, and she was truly thankful for his comforting presence. After a while, a man in a smart jacket and neatly pressed trousers approached her.
"Ms. Vernham?" He asked her.
Lindi nervously nodded in reply.
"I'm Detective Inspector Mark Crawley, Brighton CID Vice Squad, I'd like to ask you a few questions if that's okay. However, if you'd prefer to talk to a female officer I'd be happy to..."
"No, that's fine." Lindi interrupted, "I don't mind, so long as Peter can stay."
"Of course. Is he your partner or..."
"He's just my friend!" Lindi interrupted a second time, "Sorry, I just... I get a bit sick of people always assuming we're a couple."
"That's okay." DI Crawley replied, "Anyway, I'd like to say thank you for alerting us to this creep, Datchet. Frankly I'm amazed he managed to slip under our radar for so long. It looks like the two of you have stumbled across quite an amazingly talented pervert."
The vice squad officer asked Lindi all the usual questions; where had she met him? How long had she known him? Was she aware of any other women in his life? After a short while, his questions became increasingly more personal; how often had she had sex with him? Had he forced her to do anything against her will? Did he ever physically assault her or attempt to rape her? All the while, Peter sat silently by her side, holding her hand and generally trying his best to comfort her as she tearfully answered the questions as best she could.
"Okay, thanks for your help, Ms. Vernham." DI Crawley said eventually.
"Please, call me Lindi."
The Inspector smiled back at her.
"Thanks. With your help we could nail this bastard." He continued, "Now, I won't beat about the bush here, but this could be a very traumatic experience for you. Especially if this ends up with you having to testify in court and being cross-examined, but I would like to assure you that we'll be here to support you in any way we can, and if you ever need any counselling we'll put you in touch with someone you can talk to."
"Well, thanks for the offer." Lindi sniffled, dabbing her cheek with a square of tissue that one of the female officers had given her earlier, "But I just want to go home. There's only one person I ever need to talk to - and he's sitting right next to me now."
"Okay, as you wish Ms... Lindi, but the offer stands, all right?" DI Crawley replied. He handed her his card and circled his mobile number, "Any time, day or night, if you need to ask anything, or if there's anything you want to tell me about Mr Datchet, even if you think it's not important, you give me a call, okay?"
"Yes. Of course. Thanks." Lindi answered as she took the card from him.
Thursday, September 2nd 2010 - 8:12am
Peter knew that Lindi wouldn't want to be alone after the traumatic events of the previous day. But he also knew she needed to feel comfortable amid familiar surroundings. So he offered to stay the night with her and sleep on her settee, if only so that he could satisfy his masculine desire to protect her. She had agreed, gladly, and she provided him with a blanket and pillow. At some time during the night, Peter had awoken to the sound of sobbing coming from her bedroom, and he went in to comfort her and just hold her close to him. How could he have just left her to that creep Clive? He chastised himself. Why hadn't he mentioned his unease about the guy, he asked himself over and over.
He awoke that morning on her bed, with a finally settled Lindi sleeping peacefully in his arms. In all their many long years of friendship it was the first time he had ever shared a bed with her, and it felt...
