Chapter 13

"I said I was sorry Steve! What more can I do?" Lottie asked as she and Steve entered the flat mid-morning the following day.

"You can start by buying me a new pair of shoes" he spat back at her closing the door behind them. He was lucky he had his gym bag in the boot of his car with his trainers after she threw up all over his favourite work ones which ended up being thrown in the bin.

Steve brushed past her and headed to the kitchen to put the kettle on. He was in a terrible mood and wouldn't explain why. Lottie felt incredibly guilty for what happened. No matter what she said no matter how much she co-operated with the police, he had a face like thunder and apart from only asking if she was ok a couple of time he didn't comfort her. The police agreed that she had no idea the brownies were drugged and so there were no charges placed against her but they made it clear they had to do investigations before their agreement with her went on record. She had to give a statement and report Jack which she hated doing but knew she had to. When the police left a full on argument took place between the two in Lottie's hospital room about Steve's intrusion on her college life. As Steve predicted, according to her this was his breach of her rule even though he did nothing wrong.

"Fine, I will. Will you just please look at me?!" she snapped at him. He let out a frustrated sigh and turned around to face her. "I don't understand why you are angry at me. I swear I didn't know there were drugs in the brownies. Why would I lie about that?! I wouldn't lie to the police Steve, you know me better than that. I spoke to mum and dad and listened to them ground me for eternity and I have basically lost my entire friendship ring at college because I turned Jack over to the police. I've done everything I had to and quite possibly guaranteed Jack a prison sentence as well his being kicked out of school! I need you to tell me what I did wrong, please. I want to fix this."

"I don't think you can this time" Steve spat back.

"WHY?! What did I do?!" she demanded, her voice raised.

"You told EVERYONE I had a secret! My entire team know I have something to hide and now I have to go into the office and pretend nothing happened! What the hell am I meant to do with that?!" Steve yelled and he watched the colour drain from her face and her mouth open in surprise. "You said a variety of things like how I look like a hamster and how amazing Kate's cheekbones are and THEN you asked if everyone knew my secret." He headed for his room to find another pair of work shoes, a new shirt and tie. He was too angry now to have a drink or eat breakfast and soon came back out with the items. She watched him take off his trainers by the sofa and put them on in stunned silence.

"Please tell me I didn't-"

"No, you didn't" he cut her off before beginning to undress from the waist up to replace his shirt and tie. "You came close to though."

"Steve, I didn't know what I was saying! I don't remember anything that happened in the Winslow. I don't even remember being there! I can't believe I did that. I'm so sorry." Tears filled her eyes but it garnered no sympathy from Steve.

"Save your breath Lottie, I don't want to hear it" he hissed.

"It's been eleven years Steve" she said gently hoping it would ease the tension but it didn't.

"Twelve in four weeks" he corrected her. She closed her eyes for a few seconds. Now it was nearing December he was doing his annual routine of reliving what happened and distancing himself from her. Christmas Eve and Christmas Day for eleven years had always been a strain for the two of them and this year would be no exception.

"How many times do I have to say that I forgive you for the words to actually sink in?" she begged.

He stood in silence until he was dressed once more ready for the office.

"Honestly, I don't know" he shrugged and headed for the door. "I'll be working late tonight. Don't wait up for me" he said pushing past her again.

"When are you ever going to forgive yourself?" she demanded. He stopped with his hand on the door handle. It shook slightly but due to his position to her it was blocked from her view. He turned his head to look at her and she swore she could see fires of rage in his dark deep brown eyes.

"Only time will tell but one thing is for sure, I don't think I can ever forgive you for last night." He opened the door and left slamming it behind him. Lottie sank to the floor in floods of tears. How could she not remember what happened? How could she betray her brother like that? How could she be so cruel? She needed help so she pulled her phone from her pocket and dialled the number of the one person she desperately needed.

"Ted Hasting" she heard after several rings.

"Ted, it's me, Lottie" she said through tears.

"Petal, are you ok?" Ted asked concerned.

"No, it's Steve. I need your help. I need to understand exactly what happened last night."

Steve got to the AC-12 office one hour before Holly Lightstone was due to arrive for her interview. Kate had organised the interview and Holly was still local to the area so easy enough for her to come to the office. When he stepped into the office he expected everyone to be looking at him after the night before but nothing of the sort. Kate and Ted weren't around and only Maneet came over to ask how Lottie was. Hearing the positive update that she was back home made Maneet smile broadly and he couldn't help feeling good making her do so. Maneet's smile was one that always lit up a room and was one of her many great gifts.

"Steve" he heard his name called across the room and tuned to see Ted in his office doorway indicating for him to come in.

"Coming, Sir." He crossed the room leaving his coat at his desk and found Kate sat in the office waiting for him too, Ted sat behind his desk. Steve shut the door behind him. "Sorry I am late in Sir but Lottie was released this morning. I'll make up for the time today."

"Be sure you do Steve and I am glad to hear that she is back at home. We need to talk to you about what happened last night. Come sit down, son." Ted said indicating for Steve to sit next to Kate which he did so. "I thought you'd want to know that I have been calling around about the investigation into Jack Stevens following the little incident last night. It would appear that Lottie wasn't the only victim of his spiked brownies."

"Really? How many other victims?"

"That we know of? At the moment, thirty-seven" Ted said and Steve raised his eyebrows. Kate showed Steve her phone and a local newspaper website was on the screen where a picture of many ambulances and police outside a building was prominent and the heading read 'mass drugging at city college party'.

"Holy –" Steve began but stopped himself know Ted's feelings on swearing in his presence. "How did they find thirty-seven other victims and link it to him?" Steve asked.

"After Lottie left Jack's place he took the many batches of brownies he made to a party where he was working as the DJ. We think he used her as an experiment thus she had multiple brownies instead of just one in order for him to see the side-effects in person. Turns out he had done this before but not on this scale. Police are still trying to find out exactly why he did it from interviewing him but lots of people reacted to the brownies and call after call came in to ambulance services of people falling ill with the same symptoms at the same address. That triggered police and fire crews as well. Many of the victims mentioned the brownies and there were a few piles left full of the same mixture that Lottie had" Ted explained.

"And the link to Jack?" Steve asked.

"Cocky idiot had stashed the Tupperware boxes he brought them in behind his desk at the DJ stand and they were full of brownie crumbs. Police found he had a couple in a box for himself to take when everything kicked off so he could pretend he was an innocent victim too. Trouble was though that because one of the first victims collapsed near his stand, he had to step out of it for the ambulance crew to help the poor kid. He had no access to his boxed brownies or any of the others still out as the police shut down the party and people were removed from the building in case it was a gas leak causing everyone to fall ill" Kate explained.

"So Lottie's statement that she didn't know anything about the drugs was confirmed as being true and the drug combination from her blood matching the other victims is going to put Jack behind bars for a long time. I never doubted her but we wanted you to know" Ted explained.

"I didn't doubt her either" Steve clarified.

"Then why were you so angry at her?" Kate asked. "We have never seen you like that Steve. We don't want to pry but we want to know that you are ok" she explained. Steve looked at his best friend that then his boss. In that moment he wanted to tell them his secret but the thought of them knowing also made him sick to the stomach. It would fundamentally change everything. So he swallowed down his feelings and nodded his head.

"I'm fine, really. It was just something I didn't expect to have to deal with."

Ted stared at Steve as if he was trying to figure out the young sergeant in front of him. "I'm going to ask you one question Steve. I want you to answer me truthfully. Is there anything that we need to know which would impact your work? I only ask because whilst high Lottie mentioned a secret. I don't want to know what it is if the answer is no. Being your boss if your work is impacted I have to know. So, is there anything we need to know?"

Steve fell silent and after several seconds shook his head. "No, nothing."

"I'll hold you to that. Now that you're here we can carry on with Christopher's case. I have decided that Kate and I will interview Holly and you can continue to go through the diaries as well as monitor the interview."

"But Sir-" Steve began to protest and Ted raised his hand stopping him.

"No arguments Steve. We didn't know if you would be coming in today so we had already developed our plan for the interview before you arrived. Besides, Kate missed the interview with Gwen so she should get a chance to interview Holly. It is only fair." Steve couldn't argue with that.

Ted's decision for Steve to spend time going over the diaries turned out to be something positive. Not because Holly's interview went badly, rather that it allowed Steve to go over everything again. He hadn't read all the diaries yet for the years when Chris was in active service simply for being so busy but something from his notes for Nicholas' interview caught his attention. It was about how Christopher was around his disappearance.

No different than usual. I suppose he was a little off perhaps. Agitated but then he was going through some stuff with Holly and there was some trouble at home or something. I don't know the specifics but it involved Gwen.

What did that mean?

Luckily for Steve, all the diaries had been scanned so everyone had access to the diaries at any time and all documents previously scanned had been redone so that the scans were up to date and clear. Given the diaries were scanned he could simply do key word searches. They still had the original diaries to hand if they needed it but key word searches made the job much easier. He pulled up the 1974 diary and searched for 'Gwen'.

As expected there were a massive amount of entries for Gwen despite there only being six months worth of entries in the whole of the diary. He read the entries one by one until he hit April 12th 1974 which stood out. The tone of Christopher's writing of Gwen went from love to something else altogether and it read:

I took a call from mama today. She was in terrible distress over Gwen. If I was in Northumberland right now I'd ring her neck for what she's done. Bad enough she is pushing her luck with mama but now she is getting me rattled and there is nothing I can do about it. Another splitting headache after an hour on the phone to mama and when Gwen got on the line she hung up on me. She'll regret that.

Steve couldn't help feeling taken aback by that. Ok the diaries covered a mixture of emotions but that was the first really negative aspect of Christopher's personality that Steve had examined and being targeted at Gwen was shocking to him. That brought back memories of his interviews with Charles and Nicholas. Was Christopher a liar? Sinister? An asshole in general?

He then cross referenced the letters and found that for two weeks following the diary entry in April 1974 there were no letters to Gwen. He hadn't noticed the gap in no letters when he first read the letters but now it stood out like a sore thumb. There was only one person able to answer his question so he picked up the phone. After several rings he heard a familiar voice that made him smile.

"Gwen? It's Steve Arnott here."

"Steve, hello! How are you? Is Lottie keeping well?" she asked. She was clearly in good spirits and the fact that she remembered Lottie made Steve more assured in what a lovely woman she was.

"She is well thank you, keeping me on my toes as always. How are you and your family?"

"Can't complain. Although I am feeling a little nervous now you have called. Do you have an update?"

"No I'm afraid not. I have come across something in Christopher's diary and I need your help in determining what it means. Are you free to talk?" he asked.

"Of course. Which entry is it?"

"It's from April 12th 1974. I'm afraid it is about you and it's not in the nicest of lights. I'm sorry to ask but there appears to be a bit of a gap in correspondence and I am looking into patterns in Christopher's behaviour changing. The entry stands out quite a bit. You're the only person who can tell me what it means. I can read it out to you if you need reminding."

"No need, I know what it is" Gwen replied and her voice had dropped from light and cheery to downhearted. "In March 1974 I turned fourteen and in April I found myself in trouble."

"What kind of trouble?" Steve asked not understanding.

"The kind which meant seven months after that my life would change forever."

Steve wasn't expecting that. It wasn't out of the realm of possibility of course of her having a child as a early teenager, but given the ages of Gwen's children and her devote religion, it wasn't the first thing that sprung to mind.

"Can you tell me about it?" he asked. Gwen took a shaky breath.

"To put it bluntly, I was raped. Although at the time I didn't know that it was rape. I fell under the spell of someone I shouldn't have done. The new boy in the village who knew how to charm a girl. I was so stupid but I kidded myself that I was in love. He didn't want me of course, but he tricked me into believing that what we did together was what I wanted. When I found out I was pregnant I went straight to mama and all hell broke loose. I know she was disappointed in me and felt I had sinned against God but when I explained what happened she realised what he did to me and explained it was rape. The two week gap in correspondence was because of stubbornness. Mama found out first, she told Christopher who rang me. He was telling me how much of a disappointment I was and how I disgusted him. He never spoke to me like that and I got so angry so I hung up. I refused to take any further calls because I thought I was in love and it was God's plan. Then I learnt the truth of what happened. It took weeks for Christopher to take my calls and in that whole time he thought that I wanted to have sex and get pregnant which was far from the truth. During those weeks where I felt so alone I had a miscarriage. It was that which brought the two of us back together."

"I'm sorry you had to endure that" Steve said softly hoping she was reassured by his words.

"Like I told you before, always tell Lottie that you love her. You never know how much it will mean to her in later life. The good always outshines the bad but the bad has a nasty habit of hanging around. There are some words you will never forget being said to you. Take it from someone who knows."

"Steve?!" Lottie said into her phone as soon as she accepted the call. She didn't bother checking the ID before she did so.

"No sorry, it's Alex" she heard. She sank back into the sofa and let out a sigh.

"Oh … hi" she managed to say completely broken hearted.

"Are you alright? I wanted to call you after last night to check on you but you sound terrible."

"You know how to cheer a girl up don't you?" she asked a bit irritated. Realising how she sounded she shifted her tone. "Sorry, it's just that Steve and I have had a falling out. He's so angry and nothing I can say can make up for it."

"I'm sure that isn't true. He needs time to calm down. He'll be ok soon enough."

"No, he won't. What I did last night was terrible. He'll never forgive me."

"Don't be silly. Steve loves you. He just needs time. Where are you?"

"The flat, why?" she asked confused.

"I think you need a friend right now. I can come over to yours" he suggested but Steve's rule on no boys came to her mind. She could break his rule but the prospect of Steve's reaction stopped her.

"No, I'll come to you."