Seven Days and Counting 5
Disclaimer:- Don't own them just borrowing!
Episode:- Lots of little things from early series no major spoilers
Pairing:- Sandra / Gerry
Rating:- M
Achieve:- . /group/new_tricksff/
Summary:- Sandra's missing can the boys work out who's taken her and get her back before it's too late.
Author's Note:- Ok let me think, not really sure how to authors note this other than to say it's not the usual thing I write. It's angsty and tense and involves serious character danger and so if you are opening this expecting my usual sort of fluffy sexy smut for the sake of smut STOP NOW. If you don't like to see our fav characters in distress or danger STOP NOW. To be honest I can't think of any other way to warn you so here goes and please review if that's what you're into since this will be as hard for me to write as for you to read lol
Day 3
"Esther says she'll go over to Sandra's this morning and get started sorting things out. I warned her it wasn't pretty and I said we'd go with her if she waited but she said for us to concentrate on finding Sandra and she'll do the rest." Brian explained as he handed out plates of casserole that Esther had made and he was heating up in the office microwave.
"She's a diamond that woman I still don't know what she's doing with you." Jack smiled as he started to eat while examining the photos he'd just finished putting on the incident board.
"We got an email back from the florist." Gerry sighed as he joined them taking a plate from Brian. "No good. The flowers were ordered online using one of those prepaid visa card things. They don't have to be registered to use them so no trail back to the buyer."
"Jesus this guy knows what he's doing when did it get so easy to make someone's life a misery and leave no paper trail?" Jack asked "In the old days if you wanted to buy something or send something you had to actually walk into a shop and do it and people actually saw you. Is it any wonder that stalking is becoming so common and so many people are getting away with it?"
"Yeah I know." Brian agreed as Gerry abandoned his barely touched food and stared at the photos on the board.
"Hey is this the stuff that was in Sandra's handbag?" He asked turning to face Jack and Brian as they nodded "Well this is wrong. All this stuff the keys the make- up and purse and crap that's all right but this Natural History Museum leaflet shouldn't be there. She's never been certainly not recently enough for this to be there."
"Well she's a woman Gerry." Jack replied "that could have been in the bottom of her handbag for months, years even, someone could have given her it in the street you know they are always leaflet dropping these days. Women's handbags are a law onto themselves I used to joke that Mary's was like a black hole things went in but never came out."
"No you don't understand. That handbag…." Gerry continued pointing at the picture of a red shoulder bag on the board. "is new. I bought it for her at the weekend she'd been eying it in that fancy women's shop round the corner from her place and I bought it and gave it to her on Sunday. She only put stuff in it to come to work the day she disappeared I watched her do it and there was no museum flier I know there wasn't."
"Well if she left home and came straight here then there is no way for her to have picked it up along the way." Brian said "Maybe he's sending us a message. We need to get hold of Strickland and get him to bring us that back from forensics it might be nothing but it's the closest we've come to a clue so far."
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I've no idea what time of the day or night it is and I'm amazed how quickly I have become disorientated. If he hadn't said so in his note I wouldn't even know I'd been here for two days now and that is only adding to my fear. I need to try to work out where I am and as I look around the room I know there's something familiar about it. The mustard yellow walls, antique furniture and modern bedding in stark contrast is there somewhere in my mind. I know I've been here before and if I was it must have been work related because my days of waking up in strange bedrooms have been over for more than a year now and I don't miss them. Think Sandra come on why would you have been here before you can do this it's you job for god sake think! Getting off the bed I stand in the middle of the room taking in as many details as I can in the dim light. I try to set aside the fear and dread that overwhelms me now and imagine myself here in daylight, relaxed, comfortable seeing this room as somewhere innocent. It's there, the memory, I can feel it teasing me, tugging at my subconscious but refusing to make itself known.
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"Right I've got the original leaflet from forensics but I still don't see why you think it's relevant are you planning on explaining?" Strickland said as he arrived back in the office holding a clear evidence bag containing the museum leaflet.
"Sandra's never been to the museum." Brian explained taking the bag from him "we're pretty sure that the guy put it in her bag for us to find."
"That's a bit of a reach isn't it?" Strickland replied "I mean women and their…."
"We've had the women and their handbags conversation." Jack interrupted "the bag was new so…."
"How do you know it was new?"
"Well we….. I mean ….." Gerry stammered before Brian interrupted
"When you've had her handbag thrown at you to hold as often as we have you notice when it changes sir." He smiled "We're constantly wondering which one of us is going to end up in hospital someday with a hernia when she flings it at us."
"Yeah it's a standing joke in this office." Jack added as he saw Gerry breathe a sigh of relief when Strickland appeared to accept the explanation.
"Right this looks like any normal leaflet." Brian said quietly holding the leaflet up open at the map page "Except for this there's a question mark drawn on in red pen in the middle of gallery 3."
"And what's in gallery 3?" Gerry asked putting on his glasses and looking at the map.
"Well according to the key on the back gallery 3 is a travelling exhibition just there for 6 months on the History of Artic exploration."
"Oh I've seen that." Strickland replied "I took Hermione and Rufus last weekend. It's one of those timeline exhibitions charting different expeditions to the artic and ant-artic. Very interesting."
"Well I'm glad you enjoyed yourself sir but why is he pointing us there?" Jack asked "What the hell as that got to do with anything?"
"I don't know but as soon as the museum opens we need to get down there and see if there's anything specific he wants us to see." Gerry replied feeling a tiny surge of hope that they were finally getting somewhere. Even if they didn't know what it meant it was something which was more than they'd had for the last two days and he was going to cling to that no matter how flimsy a hope it might be.
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Pulling out the drawers in the dressing table and the beside cabinets I'm looking for anything that will make it clearer, any clue that might let me pull the memory rom the back of my mind. So far I'm getting nothing, generic male clothes that could belong to anyone, cufflinks, a watch, aftershave the smell of which evokes no memories and in the night stand drawers there is nothing but a collection of European road maps. I mean what the hell? Ok one more time. Closing my eyes I try again to put myself in the room in a different situation. Opening my eyes again I turn a final time on my heels and suddenly it's there, the memory, the room in a completely different context and for a second my heart stops in my chest. No! No it can't be that was months ago! Can it really have been going on that long and if it has why haven't I noticed? More importantly if I'm right I have no idea how unpredictable this guy might be and I'm in serious trouble!
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"This is just getting weirder by the hour." Jack sighed when Strickland had left the office again informing them he was going home to freshen up himself and would be back in a couple of hours. "I mean what can he possibly be trying to tell us with this?"
"Damned if I know." Gerry replied sinking on to the sofa and staring again at the board of photos as Brian examined one of them closely.
"Gerry, Sandra doesn't have a pet does she?" He asked his tone distracted.
"No not since she was a kid and even then only a gold fish her mother hated. She's not really a pet person." Gerry replied as he and Jack exchanged confused glances.
"Then why is there a receipt from that pet shop round the corner where I buy Scampi's treats?"
"A receipt?" Jack asked as he put on his glasses and approached the incident board with Gerry by his side.
"There in the handbag contents. That white receipt is from the deli remember she went and got us all lunch that day, but the yellow one behind it that's from Mc Mans pet shop I recognise it."
"Maybe she was buying Scampi a present." Gerry sighed in a "how the hell should I know" way.
"We'll get Strickland to get it back from forensics in the morning but it's probably nothing, it might not even be from there." Jack added wondering if Brian was having one of his obsessive turns due to the stress of what they were doing.
"Yeah ok but I definitely think it is." Brian agreed "this guy is messing with us we need to look at everything again and see if he's left us anything else we've missed. Both videos, letters and parcels because I don't know about you two but I don't want to get to the end of this and realise missed something that could have made it all end soon.