Chapter 17 - The Truth Revealed
"TELL US RAYMOND!"
Raymond looked into Emmy's eyes, a saddened expression on his face.
"TELL ME!"
"I wish I could..."
"NOW!"
"I can't Emmy, please, if only you understood then you would know..."
"Raymond."
There was a tense silence as Emmy gave him a desperate look.
"Please, Raymond."
"I... I have to go, Mrs. Layton..." He turned on his heel and headed back up the stairs. But someone stopped him.
"Hold it, Raymond."
Emmy looked up sharply, recognising the voice.
"Hershel?"
"Emmy?" the professor called. "Is Alfendi with you?"
"Yes! Yes he's here, I've got him!" Emmy quickly took him back in her arms and smiled at her father.
"I've called Bronev, he's rounding everyone up and they're on their way."
Raymond came back downstairs, followed by the professor and Flora and, to Emmy's surprise, Desmond Sycamore and Aurora as well.
"I was wondering when you were going to show up," Aleks commented in the background.
"Desmond headed me off at the airport in Glasgow and told me of your location, Raymond. He told me that you had a personal stake in all of this. Though, I had my suspicions that it was you since Alexander Bronev got in touch and told me who owned the car. Ray Lowe. That is you, am I right?"
Raymond nodded.
"And that corresponds with the message you left for us in Farmborough."
"That was you?" Emmy asked.
"Yes," Raymond nodded. "I left that letter in your office as well."
"And then you trashed the place?" Emmy asked dubiously.
"Well, that was my daughter," Raymond admitted. "She was looking for... For photographs."
"My photographs which went missing," the professor concluded.
"But Andrea already had my son. Why would she want pictures of us too?" Emmy asked angrily.
"This was before we took him. We had already planned to take him and stay in Bronev's old place, but there was a change of plan and she wanted to go to Scotland instead, so I planted the puzzle in the photo album with Bronev's wedding photo. I thought he'd spot it."
"What puzzle though?" Emmy asked. "All you left was a note saying that you were going to shoot Alfendi..." She cradled him closer as she said this.
"It was an anagram, Emmy," Flora piped up.
"But what about the photos?"
Raymond sighed. "They're upstairs. I expect she is too. Come with me, and we'll talk to her together. I promise I will explain everything."
Emmy hesitated.
"Emmy, Flora and I will take the baby and look after him in the professor's car whilst you speak to Miss Lowe, if you would rather she didn't see him?" Aurora offered.
"Er... Alright..." Emmy handed him over to Flora, who immediately started cooing and kissing him as she carried him away. Aurora took Emmy's hand briefly before following Flora out of the basement.
Raymond sighed heavily. "Follow me... I only hoped that you wouldn't have to see this but... It will provide you with the answers you seek..." He leaded the way up to the ground floor and continued up another flight of stairs, followed by the professor, Emmy, Desmond and Aleks. They went down the hall and entered the last door on the right.
"This is Andrea's room," Raymond told them. "As much as I hate everyone intruding on my daughter's privacy, this is the only way you can understand..."
Everyone entered and looked around. There was a single bed and a dressing table, but the walls were covered with photographs.
"I believe your photographs are somewhere on these walls," Raymond said.
Emmy studied the photos and swallowed a lump in her throat. "What the fuck..."
The professor didn't bother scolding her; he just nodded. "This supports my theory. Her obsession is not with me, Emmy... But with you... I'm sure you have also noticed that every single photograph here has you in it."
That they did. There were hundreds of pictures of Emmy covering the walls; some of her when she was a teenager, hanging around with her friends, walking home from school, going shopping with Bronev; others of her in the gym on a treadmill or in combat training with Grosky; many of her with the professor and Luke, a couple of her and Flora in a dress shop, a couple of Emmy in the shower (which she immediately ripped off the wall and stuffed in her pocket), and many of her and the professor kissing and hugging, or walking in London hand in hand or with the professor's hand on her belly when she was pregnant.
Emmy stared red-faced at the pictures. "What... Why..."
"Why are they in here?" came a whisper from the doorway. Everyone turned to see Andrea at the doorway, tears in her eyes.
"What do you want with me?" Emmy demanded. "What is it with you? Why can't you just leave me alone? Why have you been stalking me and taking weird pictures of me, like some twisted freak?!"
"DON'T CALL ME THAT!" she roared.
"WHAT DO YOU WANT WITH ME?!" Emmy yelled. Andrea turned to run away, but Emmy grabbed her and shoved her up against the wall. "WHY? WHY HAVE YOU BEEN DOING THIS TO ME AND HERSHEL?! WHY DID YOU TAKE OUR SON?! WHY! WHY?!"
"I only want to take from you what you took from me..."
"WHAT? WHAT HAVE I DONE TO YOU THAT WAS SO BAD, HUH?!"
"I lost everything... I lost my boyfriend and my baby girl and that was all down to you! If you'd never been born none of this would have happened! If they'd let me have my baby everything would be okay!" she bawled.
"What are you talking about! TELL ME!" Emmy screamed.
The professor took Emmy's shoulder and pulled her back. "If we all calm down, I believe I can shed some light on things. Please, Emmy, let go of her." The professor pulled her towards him again and wrapped his arms around her middle.
Raymond hurried over to his daughter and pulled her into a hug. "Come on now, Ger, sit down on the bed and let Layton talk. We knew this day was coming, didn't we? Didn't I tell you?"
"You promised you'd help me..." Andrea sniffed.
"I told you that I couldn't keep this up anymore..."
"You never cared about me..."
"You know that's not true, Geraldine..."
"Of course it's true! You never wanted me, or mum, that's why you left and I found mum hanging herself in the basement! Nobody's ever wanted me until I had my baby girl and then you took her away!" she screamed.
"She wasn't yours..." Raymond trailed of and sighed, wiping his eyes. He lead Andrea over to the bed. "Just explain, Layton..."
"Very well..." the professor relaxed his grip on Emmy and took a scrap of paper from his pocket. He showed it to Emmy.
"My dear, here is the message Raymond left for us.
YOU WILL NOT SEE ALFENDY BEFORE HE GETS SHOT ON Wednesday seCOnd feBruary ."
"Yes, I remember..." Emmy frowned.
"You see how most of the letters are capital letters? Well, these are an anagram, used to make another sentence:
YOU WILL NOT SEE ALFENDY BEFORE HE GETS SHOT ON Wednesday seCOnd feBruary
SHE WILL BE GONE OFF TO SCOTLAND BY NOW SEE YOU THERE."
"That's how you knew to look in Scotland? And that's what you told Alex?" Emmy asked.
"Precisely."
"But..." tears started in Emmy's eyes again. "But why did you leave me? Why did you and Flora go to Prague?"
"There was another lead I had to follow up."
"In Prague?"
"Yes. You see, when I was in Scotland Yard looking at Andrea's file, I heard from Inspector Chelmey that you had broken out of prison, Aleks." the professor turned to him.
"Yes," Aleks said. "Adrian - or rather, Raymond here - broke me out."
"To look after Alfendi," Raymond added. "His crying was driving Geraldine here up the walls."
"Geraldine?" Emmy asked.
"Andrea," the professor corrected. "Geraldine Lowe is Andrea's real name. That was also hidden in Raymond's message. You see the underlined letters in the message?
OWILLNEEAEDRG
Well, this is also an anagram of her real name; GERALDINE LOWE."
"But that still doesn't explain whatever lead you had in Prague," Emmy said.
"I'm getting to that... Anyway, when I was told of your father's release, I checked his file, just to see if they had ever been linked in any sort of crime. And, as it turns out, they have."
"What do you mean?" Aleks asked sharply.
Emmy glared. "What? What other secrets have you been keeping from me?"
"Emmy, this is going to be very difficult for you to hear... But I'm going to come straight out with it. You see, when I checked his file, I read about a crime he committed in the late 1980's, where he sexually assaulted a number of young girls."
Emmy froze.
"I take it you never heard about this." the professor let go of Emmy and reached into his bag, taking out a file. He flipped through it. "Here is the list of victims."
"Record of sexual abuse of girls aged between twelve and fifteen between the years 1983 and 1991."
"Chantelle Krauze,
Agata Corvelle,
Moira Moriarty,
Geraldine Lowe,
Romilda Lyons,
Marcel du Pontavice.
Accomplice; Dr. Darnel Alecksa. Sentenced to three years imprisonment."
"Here we are. Geraldine Lowe, number four on the list."
Everyone in the room turned and look at Aleks.
He sighed. "Emmeline... It's really not what you think..."
"No it isn't." The professor nodded at Aleks. "Please explain it to her."
"What the hell is going on now?!" Emmy cried, holding her head in her hands.
"Please, Emmeline, I can explain. I never touched any of those girls, I swear... I'll start from the start. About thirty years ago, your mother and I started trying for a baby. All your mother wanted was a little baby of her own, and she wanted it even more after your cousin Carla was born, so... We decided to have a little one of our own. We tried, but your mother just couldn't have children. She got pregnant twice, but she miscarried both times. We were told that the chances of her getting pregnant were very slim..."
"Then how was I born?" Emmy asked. "And what about Daniel?"
"We needed a surrogate mother to carry a child for us, but we didn't know anyone who would do it. Your mother's sister, Juanita, was recovering from cancer at the time, so she couldn't...as for Daniel... He was our little miracle, the chances were so slim, but he made it..."
"So you kidnapped girls and-" Emmy began, but Aleks cut across her.
"No, Emmeline, it wasn't like that at all. There were young girls on the streets, and they needed the money, as I needed the baby, so I paid them to try and become a surrogate mother. At first, I tried girls on the street in Prague, but they were both unsuccessful. I went over to Ireland and picked up a couple from Dublin because, you know the Irish, they have ten or fifteen kids per family over there, but one was unsuccessful, one chickened out and the others parents found her and took her abroad for an abortion. So I was in England on a business trip and that was where I found Geraldine. As she just said, her mother was dead and her father abandoned her, so she was broke and on the street, so I made a deal with her."
"You took her to Doctor Alecksa and got her pregnant," the professor finished. "She carried your child, and in return, you gave her a new life, a house in London, got her a job and paid her college fees so she could study archaeology."
"What..." Emmy stared at the professor. "So she's... She's my..." She turned to Geraldine. "How old were you... When..."
"I gave birth to you when I was twelve," she sniffed. "I had you, and I loved you. But he sent you back to live with Paloma!" She glared at Raymond.
"She wasn't yours, not biologically, and Paloma wanted her daughter back..." He turned to Emmy. "When your father was in prison, there was a big court case over what was to happen to you. You were put in mine and Geraldine's custody. The judge ruled that you were to go to your biological mother, but Geraldine... She had bonded with you. She loved you and she wanted to raise you as her own."
"You're not my mother..." Emmy whispered. "You're not... You-you can't be my..."
"I'm the one who gave birth to you," Geraldine wept. "I'm the first person you ever saw. Isn't that who your mother is?"
"No. My mother bathed me, and brushed my hair, and hugged me when I had nightmares," Emmy sobbed. "My mother, Paloma, picked me up on my first day of school, and blew out the candles with me on my birthday... You don't even know anything about me."
"I know everything about you, Emmeline Bronev," Geraldine whispered. "How could I not? I've been watching you for the last fifteen years."
"What started all of this, Geraldine?" The professor asked. "I remember you in university. You clearly had moved on from the past and were enjoying the present. What caused you to start stalking Emmy?"
"You did."
The professor frowned.
"I liked you. More than any friend should. I approached you, but you laughed at me."
"What...?"
"New Years party, 2000. In Gressenheller. Ring any bells?"
"Oh." the professor went red.
Emmy frowned at the professor. "What happened...?"
"Geraldine, believe me, I was very drunk that night, I don't remember a lot of what happened, let alone what was said, and I would have laughed at anything..."
"You didn't love me, my father didn't love me, my mother didn't love me enough to go on living with out my father... The only person who ever loved me was Emmy... When I had her, when I looked into her eyes, I saw that innocence, that love..." Geraldine cried. "And then she was gone..." She turned back to Emmy. "I started watching you... I tracked you down and I started taking pictures... I wanted to talk to you, to tell you everything, but I was scared you'd never accept me... So I watched you from a distance, and it kind of gave me comfort to know that you were okay..."
"So why did you do this to me?" Emmy asked gently.
"In Ireland... You and Hershel started seeing each other..." She burst into tears. "I was so angry... I lost my child and the man I loved... Just seeing you two so happy together... Seeing you and Hershel when you were pregnant... The happy little family..."
"You thought if I suffered in the same was as you did, it would make you feel better," Emmy finished.
Geraldine nodded.
Emmy nodded too. "Now tell me; do you feel better now?"
Geraldine sniffed and shook her head.
"I know you're not well. And I know that's down to my father." She looked at Aleks.
"Emmeline..."
"Be quiet. But Geraldine, if you forget the past and focus on the future, you will feel better. Despite what he's done, despite him leaving, you have a father here who loves you."
Geraldine looked at Raymond.
"He wants to help you. He wants you to get better. But he wants this to end, and I can tell that you do too."
"Yes..."
"I know exactly how you feel. I know what it's like for your past to control the present. He's hurt me too. At one point, I thought that I couldn't take it anymore and I couldn't carry on anymore... But I found someone who taught me how to put the past behind me and embrace the future." She took the professor's hand. "I know what it's like to lose a child... You taught me that..."
Geraldine choked. "I'm sorry..."
"Emmeline? Layton?" Bronev's voice could be heard calling them from downstairs.
"Up here!" Emmy called.
Bronev made his way upstairs and hugged Emmy. "Alfendi..."
"He's in my car with Flora and Aurora," the professor said. "He is safe."
"And her..." Bronev gestured to Geraldine crying on the bed.
"Raymond will look after her until the police come," the professor decided. "She is very unwell..."
"What the devil is wrong with her?" Bronev whispered.
"It's... A very long story... I will get you up to speed on the way back."