12. In the Cold Light of Day

Charles Bingley did not sleep well. He had phoned Jane the moment he got home, told her everything that had happened. He could hear the relief in her voice and wondered if she thought him capable of assaulting someone.

Almost as if she had read his mind "I could not believe that they would think you capable of such a crime, I knew it had to be a terrible mistake and I am so relieved they realised it. It was good of that man to clear your name right there and then." She paused, "Do you think George Wickham assaulted that poor man's niece?" followed by "That poor girl!"

"I don't know but Mr King seemed convinced that I had, rather he had; I hope she is alright." Like Jane, Charles did not like to think of people suffering or hurting others.

Even after speaking to Jane, Charles was restless, exhausted but unable to fall asleep. He made himself some tea, checked in on Caroline, tried to read and then eventually just after 4am he finally fell asleep only to jolt wake two hours later from a horrific dream about being incarcerated again.

He then gave up on sleeping further, got up, got dressed and headed off to work. He debated taking his Audi, but it really was not practical, so he drove the company branded truck to his office. Well, it was more of a compact building on a small holding, he had a greenhouse for his speciality seedings and grafts, some sheltered orchards for his ornamental fruit trees, around the edges of the property he had planted bamboo, it seem to come and go in garden trends and was always handy to have around. Bingley loved working with plants, soil, and the elements of nature. His mother had always scoffed at his dreams of running a business like this, she had pushed him hard to take over his father's steel business, but this was the one area where he stood his ground.

Sadly today, even this did not bring him peace. It did however allow him to order his thoughts and break down the events to a singular disturbing fact. Someone, possibly George Wickham, was going around pretending to be him, and doing some pretty awful things to other people, destroying his reputation; this could have some serious repercussions for him.

He dialled William; he needed some sort of action plan.

"Hello Charles, how are you this morning? No worse for wear I hope?" William answered, he had been expecting a call, just not this early, Charles was not a morning person.

"Hey William, physically I am fine, but I am starting to realise that Wickham could do some serious damage to my reputation, and I need to take this identity theft a little more seriously. What should I do about it?" he knew his friend would have answers, or at least know someone who had answers.

"You need to open a case with the police, get a case number as soon as you can, that will afford you a certain amount of legal protection. Because he is going around saying he is you, you have no idea what he will do next. You need to go and see your banker, ensure that he has not somehow gained access to your accounts, check your transactions for the last three months, or long if necessary. Change all your passwords and do not give them out to anyone, not even your sisters. Make sure that the bank knows to authenticate every single transaction executed against your account, make use of the OTP functionality, update your security questions. And get your sisters to do the same."

Bingley was stunned, all of that, that was at least a whole day at the bank, and who enjoyed spending time at a bank? No-one, that's who!

"Anything else..." he was actually afraid to ask, "How do you know ALL of this?"

"Pemberley is a high-profile business; I get asked to do interviews from every kind of publication from business to gossip. This makes me a target; I have an IT security department at Pemberley to protect our authors and ourselves." William realised that this was a whole new concept for his friend, who despite his age was a little bit on the innocent side. "Let grab some dinner tonight and you can ask me any other questions, I realise this is new for you."

"That is a great idea. Where did you have in mind?" Bingley was relieved, he could really rely on his friend to give him the moral support he needed.

"Meryton's, they have just launched their new menu." William chose an old favourite, it was too 'common' for Caroline's tastes, but the guys had always enjoyed going there.

After he ended the call with Bingley, William found himself wondering if Lydia had been reunited with her family yet. Because he was not family, they would not give him any information regarding her specifically, William Lucas said he would provide an update when he could,

but he would not put a current investigation at risk. Richard was still with the task force as they search the cabin and surrounds with a fine-tooth comb, to gather all and any evidence that would lead them higher up the food chain; Wickham was sly and sneaky, but he was too lazy to be the master mind of an operation like that.

Richard was battling with the implications of all the evidence they found. The size of the trafficking ring was larger than they had anticipated, and of the pages of girl's names in the ledger, only 10% of them had been found or returned to their parents, that was 57 girls out of a possibly 574. The demographics were vast spanning races, ages, sizes and where they were from. From the dates which they were assuming were the dates the girls were taken; this had been going on since a few months after they had recovered Georgina. Only on the last page were there girls without dates, like the remaining Bennet girls.

Statements had been taken from both the girls recovered last night, they had both mentioned that they were apparently the first of a batch of girls. Had the other girls already been taken? And if so, where were they?

Richard found himself wishing he had gotten Charlottes number, he wanted to ask William if he had contact details for Elizabeth but remembered their rather icy reactions to each other and thought it was not likely. He also did not want to answer any awkward questions about why they were at her fathers' offices. At least not until the whole situation was put to bed. He would love to tell her about the part he played in it, would that impress her?