Chapter Fifty Four
April 2009
Summer Bay, Australia
Charlie and Watson sat on one side of the table and Angelo sat on the other. His skin was ashen and he looked sick with anxiety. Charlie couldn't even meet his eyes and Watson looked like she would launch an attack at any moment.
"Why don't we start at the beginning?" Charlie suggested, her voice hollow and a little shaky.
Angelo sighed and nodded.
"It all started because of the stupid development site thing," he said. "I was using any means necessary to bring them down and prove that they were dumping toxic waste and causing the cancer cluster."
"But they weren't," Watson snapped. "You were wrong."
Angelo shook his head, knowing that he would soon have to reveal the next bad thing he did. His colleagues waited patiently.
"I was investigating Tim and I was getting close to the truth," Angelo said. "I was getting close to proof. I went down there that night to confront Tim and to close the case but... I heard a shot being fired. And then I heard a noise behind me. I thought... I thought I was in danger and I fired. The next thing I knew, Jack was dead."
He clenched his jaw in a bid not to become overly emotional. Jack's death was something he had tried to block out so many times and for the most part, he succeeded. But now, everything was coming tumbling out.
"So, you heard a noise and just fired into the dark?" Charlie asked. "You didn't think to find out who it was first?"
"If I'd have done that, I could have been dead!" Angelo insisted.
"Well, no, you wouldn't," Watson said. "Because it was Jack and he wasn't the kind of man who would hurt someone."
Angelo swallowed. Watson's words reached their target.
"I thought it was Tim or one of his lackeys," he said. "I didn't know it was Jack. I mean, why would it be?"
"Because he thought you were a dirty cop," Charlie said. "He was investigating you. And I guess he was right."
Angelo could hardly bear the bitterness in her eyes as he desperately pleaded with her to understand that it wasn't true.
"Until I pulled the trigger, I was as honest as the next guy," he said. "I'm not a murderer."
"Yes, you are!" Watson bellowed.
Angelo shrank back.
"It was an accident," he said sadly. "I swear. It was an accident."
Sam let Rachel into Joey's cell. The Doctor anxiously approached the woman she had been calling 'Kat' ever since she'd met her and perched beside her on the bunk.
"Hey," she said softly. "How are you feeling?"
"Peachy."
Rachel nodded.
"Listen, I've been asked to come and see you," Rachel ventured. "You see, the police think that someone has been hurting you and I need to check and see if they're right."
Joey curled up tighter.
"Are they right?"
"I just want to go home," Joey said in a timid voice.
She turned to look at her friend.
"It's not too late. We could all just forget about this. Hugo and I could go home and live with Martha and Xavier again. And I could see Charlie every day and everything would be okay. It's not too late. We can go back to what it was. We can. If they'd just..."
She began to cry again. Rachel put a cautious arm around her.
"Do you really want to go home?" she asked.
Joey nodded.
"Even though it's bad at home? Even with what the police are accusing Hugo of doing?"
"It's better than the alternative."
"What's the alternative?"
"They'll kill me," Joey said. "They'll kill me and they'll kill Charlie. I don't want Charlie to die, Rachel. I don't want anyone to die. It's not fair."
"Who's going to kill you?" Rachel asked. "Hugo is in custody now. He can't hurt you."
"Not Hugo," Joey said, shaking her head. "It's more complicated than that. Why won't anyone just let me go home? It's not too late."
"Joey, can you tell me what's been happening to you?" Rachel asked.
Joey shook her head.
"Listen, I have to give a report on your state of mind and your physical well being," the Doctor told her. "But I'm not the police. I don't have to give details on the content of our conversation. You can tell me anything you like."
"I just want to go home," Joey wept.
"I ran away," Angelo said. "And I'd been home all of five minutes when I got the call to tell me about the fire. I went and helped and then... then everything just went crazy from there. I wanted to tell the truth but I didn't have the words. And because I'd rescued Martha from the fire, she felt some kind of connection with me."
"So, rather than admitting you'd killed her husband, you befriended her?" Charlie asked incredulously.
"People kept pushing us together," Angelo said. "And she was in so much pain. I couldn't turn her away. I couldn't let her down. It just got out of control."
"Do you know how awful she's going to feel?" Charlie criticised. "She let her husband's killer comfort her during his death. She cares about you."
"I know!"
"And then when you had your chance to confess, you didn't. Why not?"
"I was scared," Angelo said. "I couldn't bear it to be the truth."
"But it was the truth!" Watson yelled. "You shot Jack and you left him there for his Dad to find all alone in the dark. You ripped so many lives apart and you've been swanning round the town without a care in the world ever since."
"I haven't!" Angelo insisted.
"Which part haven't you done?" Charlie asked.
She thought back over the last few months. Retrospectively, there had been something different about him since that night but she clearly remembered seeing him laugh and have a good time. She remembered him joining Martha round the table at the Diner on the first day that Charlie had really begun to get to know Joey. And he'd slept with her. He'd even made her feel so guilty about her accusations that she'd felt she had no choice but to make it up to him. She felt sick about it now. Looking at him, knowing he had kissed her and touched her made her skin crawl.
"I haven't been swanning round town without a care in the world," Angelo said. "I've hated myself ever since."
"Hated yourself enough to confess?" Charlie asked.
"I'm confessing now," Angelo snapped.
"Six months after the fact," Charlie pointed out. "And it's for a different kind of guilt, isn't it? It's for whatever the hell you've been up to since Jack died."
"It's for all of it," Angelo told her.
"Can I examine you, Joey?" Rachel asked.
"I'd rather you didn't," Joey replied, staring blankly at the wall ahead of her.
"Why not?"
"I don't want you to see."
"What will I see?" Rachel wondered.
"I was raped last night."
The words hung in the air between them. Rachel closed her eyes, reliving her own experiences. She hated to think of the horrors Joey must have been through.
"Did Hugo...?"
"No," Joey said. "He's never done anything like that. But... well, in some ways it might as well have been him."
She sighed and hung her head, resting her chin on her knees.
"What do you mean?" Rachel asked softly.
"He organised it," Joey admitted. "He was punishing me. I made a mistake. I should never have..."
She cried harder. Rachel kept her arm around her.
"What was he punishing you for?" she asked.
"I fell in love with someone else."
"And Hugo was jealous?"
"He was afraid."
Rachel waited patiently for her to continue. Every answer she received seemed to only drag her deeper into the confusion of Joey's mind.
"He thought the truth would come out," Joey said. "He thought I'd tell someone what was going on."
She looked desperately at Rachel.
"I would never do that! I wouldn't!"
Rachel hugged her a little closer.
"Well, maybe the time has come when you should," she said.
"I can't," Joey almost whispered. "I just... can't. Please ask Charlie to let me go home. She's not listening to me. I need to go home. We can forget this whole thing. I don't understand why she won't just... Why won't she just let it go?"
"Tim offered to get me off all charges in exchange for helping him cover up the toxic waste," Angelo said.
Charlie glared at him.
"And then... then Hugo got in on it all."
Sitting back in her chair, Charlie held her breath and waited for her one time boyfriend to explain.
"Hugo is in deep with a lot of stuff," Angelo ventured. "Serious stuff."
"Like holding an innocent woman hostage for nearly a decade?" Charlie asked.
"Amongst other things," Angel revealed.
Charlie and Watson waited.
"He's running a human trafficking organisation," Angelo said.
Charlie's breath caught in her throat in shock.
"There's a group of them. To be honest, I don't know how big it is and how deep it goes. Hugo has only ever told me what he thinks I need to know and nothing more. But he sends a crew out to collect desperate, broken people wanting to start a new life in Australia. They have a terrible journey in shitty conditions and if they survive, they get carted off into... well, I don't even know what. I think some end up in the sex trade. Hugo and his crew make money from them as long as they're here."
"What happens to ones who don't survive?" Charlie asked, her voice tight with the lump in her throat.
"The developers have stopped dumping toxic waste," Angelo explained. "But they're in league with Hugo. He's paying them to dispose of the bodies while they're building the place up."
"And how do you know all of this exactly?" Charlie asked. "I mean, you shot Jack, Tim bailed you out and then what?"
"Then he and Hugo started using me for whatever they needed in exchange for silence."
He sighed heavily.
"What kind of things did they make you do?" Charlie asked, dreading the answer.
"I went on a collection," Angelo admitted.
"A collection?"
"When I told you I had to take time off for a family crisis... it was a lie. I went to collect the next batch of 'cargo' as Hugo called it."
Charlie grimaced. Watson looked equally disgusted.
"And I had to tag Joey," Angelo added. "To force her to keep the curfew that Hugo set down."
"How could you do that?" Charlie asked. "Any of it? Hurt those people? Know that Joey was trapped in hell and not do anything about it?"
"I offered to help her!" Angelo said desperately. "Ages ago, I wanted to confess all of this... once I realised just how horrific things were for her. But she said no."
"Of course she said no!" Charlie snapped. "She's fucking terrified."
Angelo bowed his head. Charlie tried to force herself to calm down. Losing her cool was not a good idea. There was no way she was going to do anything to damage this case.
"I'm sorry," Angelo said quietly.
"I think it's a little bit too late for sorry, don't you?" Watson said.
"When I was a teenager, I was attacked by a friend of my brother," Rachel ventured.
Joey looked a little startled and gazed fearfully into her friend's eyes.
"I didn't press charges. I kept it a secret. But if... if I had told the police, or if they'd found out somehow... they would have been obliged to follow it up," Rachel explained.
"Even if you didn't want them to?" Joey asked.
Rachel nodded.
"It's their moral and legal duty to follow up any crime they think could have been committed," she said. "It's just what they have to do. And the facts are pretty clear. You've been recognised as a different person than who you've said you are. You've been recognised as a girl that was abducted from her home when she was only a teenager."
Joey nodded. She didn't think there was any point denying it. DNA if nothing else would prove the facts.
"And you know Charlie pretty well, don't you?" Rachel continued.
Joey nodded.
"You trust her? You care about her?"
Joey nodded again. Rachel was in no doubt that Charlie was the person that Joey had fallen in love with. She wondered if the police officer reciprocated.
"Well, then you know that she only wants to do her best for you," the Doctor explained. "She wants to take care of you and save you from this life you've been forced to live."
"But I'm scared she's going to get hurt," Joey protested. "I don't want her to get her, especially not for me."
Rachel gently held her hand.
"If anyone is equipped and capable of helping you, it's Charlie. She's strong, she's smart and she knows what she's doing. But honestly, if you want to make things easier for her, then you need to tell her everything you can. You may well not survive this on your own. The best way that you can come through it is by being honest and telling Charlie everything. She can help you. I know she can."
Joey sighed heavily and looked at the floor.
"I got someone killed last time they tried to help me," she said sadly. "I've never forgiven myself for it and I promised never to try and escape again."
"I think it's time to take back the promise," Rachel told her.
Next time... Joey is moved to a secure location...
