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Alex walked in to the room, Gene following her. Matt was led in a few moments later, handcuffed. He looked delighted.
Alex was scared. She was staring this man in the face, the man who was responsible for her months of suffering.
"Catherine! You haven't been to visit since I was put in here! I thought you'd forgotten me."
"How could I forget you?" she asked quietly.
"I honestly have no clue, but with the company you're in at present..." Matt looked at Gene.
"Has he tried to corrupt you yet?"
Alex looked at him. The anguish of the past few months passed through her mind. Finally, she couldn't stand it anymore. She leaned forward.
"Her brain was so blissfully empty," she whispered. "Like a clean slate, just waiting for the chalk to write on it."
"What?"
"You let them beat me, starve me, and torture me in any way they thought necessary. As long as they didn't kill me."
"Catherine, what are you talking about?" he asked nervously.
"What did I do to you? I lay in that room for months, just hoping to die. What did I do to earn those beatings? To be starved? Why did I have to lose my mind to get free?" Alex's voice was shaking. Gene moved up to her, and put his hand on her shoulder.
Matt looked at her. "He did this didn't he? He brainwashed you!"
Gene looked at him angrily. "I think you'll find that this woman is in better health than she has been in over a year, Williams."
"He made me remember who I truly was."
"He made you who he wants you to be! Catherine! I'm the one who loves you! I helped you through that horrible flu, through the time you couldn't remember!"
"Only it wasn't the flu was it, Williams?"
"It was an infection," Alex stated. "An infection caused from your men, who wouldn't have listened to me if I had told them about it. They wouldn't have taken care of it till I was almost dead if they had been aware. Oh wait. I was nearly dead." She laughed coldly
"Catherine! No! Never!"
"'I wanted her with a clean memory, not almost dead.' Then you saw me watching you. 'Sedate her until she's healed.'"
"Catherine, please! I love you!"
Alex wasn't afraid anymore. Gene's hand on her shoulder was giving her the strength she needed.
"I'm not Catherine," she said coldly. "Thanks to the Guv, I can remember now."
He looked at Gene. "How?"
Gene looked smug. "Nickname, mate. I didn't expect it. I just said a sentence with her nickname in it, and it all came flooding back to her."
"But her mind was blank! She had no idea!"
"If you were a psychologist, Mr. Williams, you would know that all memories stay intact, it's just a matter of retrieving them. One trigger can make someone remember anything," Alex stated.
Matt hung his head. Alex looked on in pity.
"Matt, why?"
He looked at her.
"It had to be a copper."
"But why did you need a copper, Matt?"
"Cause coppers killed my wife."
*
This was not the development Alex or Gene was expecting.
"What happened, Matt?"
"I've been 'in the business' for about three years. I used to work for a man called Layton; he was down here for a while too. But you know that, don't you Drake? You sent him down here. Do you remember the day you got him? Markham had kidnapped that girl, and you did a rescue mission. That idiot of a DC of yours decided to try and rescue her. There was a gunfight."
"How do you know all this?" Gene asked.
"I was there too, Hunt. Along with my wife Catherine. The gunfight started, and we ran. We didn't want to get caught. She fell. She had a bullet in her back. I took her to the hospital, they did all they could. She still died. That's when I decided what to do to get my revenge.
"It had to be a copper from Fenchurch and it had to be a woman. I told one of my men that, and sent him off with another to get one. I didn't care who she was, as long as she filled those two requirements."
"Woman for woman," Alex said, nodding.
"The man picked you out. His partner thought he was mad, going after CID, but I didn't care. I knew that even if uniform was chosen, Hunt would be in charge of the case.
"They brought you in, and rang me. I went into the room they had put you in, you was still unconscious. I had fully intended to kill whoever they had kidnapped, but seeing you lying there, I thought you were too pretty to kill. I decided that I would follow a different course of action. You would replace my wife.
"I would give it six months, I decided. If you were still Alex, I would have followed my first course of action and just kill you and dump the body for Hunt to find.
"You gave up though. Every once in a while, I would bring you food, to check up on you. I saw your fight end, replaced by despair. You'd lost all hope. Phase One complete.
"Phase Two would be harder. They told me that you wouldn't put up a fight, and that they had removed your restraints. I, however, was afraid that this might make you start fighting again. Much to my relief, you didn't."
"I couldn't," Alex said. "I could hardly even move." Gene's hand was gripping her shoulder so hard it was painful. Matt just looked at her and continued.
"We started Phase Two after two weeks."
"That was it?"
"It felt longer didn't it? I figured it would, stuck in that room like you were. We made sure we kept things random, so you couldn't figure out a schedule. Sometimes we'd give you water two or three times a day, some days we wouldn't give you any. It helped though; you were unconscious most of the time.
"We had two final phases planned. Final Phase A was if you hadn't lost your memory. We would have just killed you. The second one, Final Phase B, was harder. In this one, you had lost your memory, and then I would take you in, teach you my life. My men told me that you weren't responding as much. I didn't know what this meant, but I was hoping we were headed toward Phase B. Then I got a call. You were extremely ill and needed a doctor. I sent one over. Your leg was infected, and you were sick because of it. It took a while for the fever to break. They called me the day it did. I was angry with them; you had nearly died, only a few months in. But then they told me that you wouldn't respond to your name. I was hopeful.
"If you did wake up with no memory, I didn't want the first thing you asked to be why you had all the cuts and bruises. So I had you sedated. You healed, and finally I had them stop. You woke up, and your mind was empty. Final Phase B had begun.
"The first thing I did was send Hunt your clothes. I thought Alex Drake was dead; she would be replaced with Catherine. He thought you were dead. That's exactly what I wanted him to think. I didn't want you to be found, so I had you stay at home. I told you how the police were corrupt, so you'd hate them as much as I do."
"And you told me not to mention my memory, so that people wouldn't realise who I really was."
Matt leaned back in his chair and just stared at here. Gene was fuming.
"Who were your men?" she asked.
"Their names escape me at the moment."
Gene punched the window separating them, leaving cracks.
"If you don't tell us their names, I will personally make sure that you get the longest sentence possible! Give us their names!"
Matt just leaned back his chair on two legs looking smugly.
Alex looked at him. "Please?"
He looked at her, remembering her as Catherine. When she gave him that look, he couldn't refuse her. He tried to stop himself, remind himself she wasn't Catherine anymore, but he couldn't help it.
"John Black and Charles Moore."
Gene opened the door. "C'mon Bolly, let's go get these bastards.
Alex stood, giving Matt one last look. He looked up at her.
"Now my Catherine's died twice."
Alex and Gene left the room, the door slamming behind them. Neither of them noticed the angry look on Matt's face.
"As far as I'm concerned, Alex, it's been over six months, and you're you," he whispered to himself. "You killed Catherine again. And this time, Fenchurch East will be punished."
TBC....