I've dedicated this piece to Hobnails, for tremendous support, and for a great story read his Cousins novel.
Thursday went to plan. Mandy with a wide grin on her face took a Jaguar to Ruth's caravan and brought clothes and toiletries. Ruth spent the day on the word processer, tapping out nearly two hundred letters to clients and other organisations, trawled from the records. Mandy joined her later.
We asked Ellen to leave us out for a few days but paid her standard cleaning wage, and asked Steven Rampling to continue with his work. I sent him to get a large incinerator.
Liz, once more stylishly dressed, was almost continuously occupied on the phone, leaving it to talk to various local delivery people and to make Maggie Stenson and Phillipe Lancombe redundant. The two seemed pleased with their settlements, and made us an enjoyable lunch. Mandy had changed, not quite competing with Liz but I'd not seen her look so smart.
"Don't worry Pat," I said, as in contrast to the other three, we sat for lunch in our dirty jeans and sweaters, "The proletariat will have their day."
Pat and I moved the files and tapes into the study and furniture onto the first floor landing. We looked in the low sun heated height of the roof space, but it was empty.
We found and dismantled the camera system.
The bug detector arrived at three o'clock, and we found voice activated radio transmitters in every room except Eve's flat. We searched high and low for the receiver. In frustration Pat switched on the hi-fi in Eve's bed sitter. It looked normal until we found that the digital VHF tuning range which ordinarily topped at around 108 MHz on domestic receivers, went on to 130. As I raised the frequency beyond 110, Liz's, Ruth's and Mandy's activities came clearly into the room.
I looked at the casettes that were in the rack by the Hi Fl.
"Oh bugger," I said, "more stuff to listen to. Look at the titles. They're monitoring tapes for this set up."
"What a life," said Pat.
"You what, love?"
"Eve's. Writing up all those files, listening to the tapes and looking at the videos. Getting the thing organised. Where was she? Looking over everybody else's shoulder to get her life. That's really sad."
"Don't say you're starting to feel sorry for her?"
"Well, if you had the choice of this whole house and set up for what - ten years? and one cuddle with Ruth, what would you go for?"
"No contest, but I'm a different animal from Eve. Hell, so's Ruth."
"That's what I mean, Mandy and I see you and Ruth get a great charge from every second of your time together, what could anyone get from this?"
"Pat, think back to your care home days. Some people get a bigger kick from power than they ever do from sex or comradeship. The knowledge in Eve's libraries is her power. I'm sure she used it. I'd guess she's a rich woman on the quiet. Whether we'll ever prove it I can't say."
She sighed, her young face full of puzzlement, "I suppose so."
Rosemary came at four. Ruth and Liz broke off from their labours. Ruth and I explained our dilemma, now compounded by the audio tapes.
"Amanda's sampling idea is good, but I think we can do better still. Feed the tapes through the computer system at work and it can analyse the picture material for children by image recognition, and the audio by speech spectra. Image recognition is difficult for computers. It'll have to be a week-end or night job. We flatbed scan the written material and turn it into a database, and you can surf that however you like.
"You'll get problems with marginals, like physically immature eighteen year old women, but those are the images you review personally. If you're looking for a zero occurrence of children that's the best way of achieving it. I haven't done the math, but sampling would give you say a five percent chance of missing an occurrence if you reviewed thirty percent of the whole. I'd guess that's more of a risk than Ruth wants."
Ruth nodded.
Liz said, "I'm uncomfortable with the material going off this site."
"We can bring the reader down here, and send the data electronically to the office, using the computer in the study as a terminal. In fact the files would easily fit in that computer. You only need the greater power and speed of the office one to do picture and speech analysis. We'll have to hire some equipment. I'll organise that for you. I'll sort out a secure environment for it in the computer too."
Rosemary went back to York at five thirty. "Let's review where we are," said Liz. She was using a checklist on her lap top. "Graham and Pat. Software into study?"
"Done."
"Cameras and bugs?"
"Neutralised and dismantled."
"Safe?"
"Still looking. We have yet to search the cellars."
"Ruth and Mandy. Letters to known clients of Railton House, possible one hundred and sixty three?"
"Ready, but no stamps."
"Routine suppliers known, twenty seven?"
"Same again."
"I'll nip down to the Post Office tomorrow and post the lot," said Mandy.
"Liz - phoning. I have phoned everyone with a diarised event for the next three months. I have twenty more calls to make to complete this year's diary. That's for tomorrow.
"Right, we have, as I see it, the following to do.
"Find the safe.
"Turn out the directors and Eve's desks and offices, and analyse what's there, and return any property that's theirs.
"Once Rosemary's got the electronic kit together we have to input data to the computers, and then analyse it.
"Until those are done, we can't bring anybody in to start house clearance proper. At least that's how I see it. We also have a time limit on the evaluation of the tapes and files of Wednesday next."
I said, "You could get an extension on that if you rang Barlow on Tuesday to report where you were up to. Also I don't feel comfortable bringing anyone in to see that SM room. We should remove the bed and burn the whips and bonds, and strip the sound insulation. The swords could be sold as a sort of collection."
Mandy said, "Looks like it's all physical work till we get Rosemary's kit. I'll change and get at that SM room. I feel I want to destroy something here. What about you Pat?"
"Looks like it's the directors offices for you and I, Ruth, and the cellars for you Graham."
I found the safe in the back of the wine cellar. It was made by Chubb, connected to the burglar alarm with a keycode switch, and had a combination lock.
I returned to Liz and Ruth, one curly, one straight dark haired head intent over a set of files.
"Found it," two remarkable pairs of eyes regarded me intently, "combination lock. Seen anything like the number anywhere?" I described the layout of the number.
"Well, until it's found we won't know what's in it."
There was a blundering noise from above, and a piece of plaster board fell past, briefly illuminated by the light from the window, and flapped onto the ground.
"We must get a skip," I said, "I'll get them not to sky it out until we have."
I left an order for a skip on an answering machine somewhere in Harrogate.
Ruth and I went to Burnley on Friday morning, stopping only to pick up the guitar, at the caravan.
As Joan Davenport had said, it was a horror as the things were packed into her van, and a nightmare when others were dumped in the skip. Ruth's presence held me sane. When they'd gone, Helen invited us to a late lunch next door. She fell under Ruth's spell, particularly when she partially eased Ken's pain and rigidity, by putting a hand each side of his head, and looking into his eyes.
Ruth was subdued as we came back into the house. "What's the matter love?"
"It's MS."
"Go on?"
"Well, I'm not a doctor, so I don't know the scientific explanation, but it's how I felt the disease. It starts with Ken's thoughts and they make him unwell. He has dark vengeful thoughts. This is what life has done to me, so this is what I'll do to my body. It's chicken and egg.
"Enough. I'm probably wrong. Let's make music."
I set up the keyboard in the empty sitting room, with the amplifier on the floor and two hi fi speakers on window ledges.
With our minds twining together we found a liquid pool of musical creation.
"Oh God, you don't know how superb that is for me," she said.
I put my arms round her, "I do, because I feel it too."
"All I have to do is wish a chord or a sound or a riff or an emotion even, and there it is, you play it."
"You have a direct connection to my fingers."
It had been four in the afternoon on Friday when we started. At seven Ruth's fingertips became too sore to continue on the guitar. At nine her voice was giving out too.
She laughed, pulled me to her and said, "Well we've made love with our minds, what else but upstairs."
Saturday morning we made a bacon and egg breakfast and returned to Railton House.
Liz was in jeans and sweater.
"We've cleared the SM room, the whips and things are burning in the incinerator. The skip's full of plaster board, timber and mineral wool, and a chopped up bed. We've revealed a nice panelled room, with two windows, and a painted and plastered ceiling. Damaged but restorable.
"Rosemary says we can start transmitting to the computer as soon as we like. She's left a file of instructions under a password she phoned to me."
"I found the safe code under Eve's desk drawer. There was a hundred thousand pounds in there, which I've banked apart from some petty cash, and more drugs. I think the time has come to burn them. I wanted to agree that with you, in case we need them for evidence."
"Burn them," I said, "we've got the tapes. Did you find a way of changing the combination of the safe?"
"No. We'll have to talk to Chubb on Monday."
I said, "Thinking about scanning with the computer, we didn't give Rosemary a time frame. She's assumed we have a task to do, and given us the means. But we haven't thought it through. If we're going to have to use the office computer at weekends and at night, between now and Wednesday is too short. It's eleven now, thirty six hours to eleven on Sunday night. We've catastrophically run out of time. One of us is going to have to do this at Wolfenden, so that someone else can read the files into the computer here with the flatbed reader. Even then you're going to have to tell Barlow we'll miss his deadline by a mile."
Liz asked "Are you saying the tapes are going to have to leave here after all?"
"Seemingly," I said.
Liz looked troubled. "Let's burn the drugs together. I want to think."
The five of us ceremoniously added the drugs to the red hot incinerator, stoking it up with the timber from the skip to ensure it was really hot.
"How much was that lot worth?" asked Amanda.
"Top end of twenty thou' I'd guess," I said.
"That's not the point," said Ruth,"how much human misery have we prevented?"
Liz said, "Right, I've decided. Graham, you and Ruth take the tapes to Wolfenden in your car. Keep them in the locked boot and only take batches into the office. Set the reader up in the board room. Come back as late as you can manage Sunday night to the hotel here and bring all the tapes back. The computer can start analysing as soon as you've input some information. That way we can have an overlap. I'll read the written files into the machine here with Pat and Mandy. Rosemary's left me instructions on how to organise the files."
Ruth and I loaded up the car and returned to the hotel, picking up clothes and toiletries. We shopped in Northallerton for a sleeping bag, air mattress, and food.
I parked the car inside Wolfenden's stores.
We camped in the boardroom, using the small kitchen to make simple meals, and taking it in shifts to feed the video tapes into the reader, watching one monitor screen across which streamed numbers as the analogue material was digitised, and another which mostly said 'No. of occurences..., on tape no..., elapsed time ... mins. Occasionally the screen would beep and we would see some scene of intimacy or depravity usually involving a young woman, for one reason or another looking like a younger child, whether of a small figure like Ruth's, or with short hair or just very petite. In some instances we weren't very sure either, but felt confident that they were adults, after scrolling through either side of the trapped frames.
I woke Ruth at ten in the evening, we were doing two hours on and off. Distress was evident in her face. I kissed her but her response was very weak.
"This is killing you emotionally. There has to be a way out for you."
"It's the same for you. I reach into your normally transparent mind, and it's all smoky."
I said, "Let's just input after this tape and get a break from the pictures. How many have we done?"
"This is the sixth. God, out of a hundred and forty seven"
Ruth returned with coffees.
I said, "We're not approaching this as intelligently as we could. We've seen the same lass picked up by the computer on three occasions."
I generated a screen report. The occurrences were on three of the six tapes. I picked up the tapes and read the titles. Each was labelled Stephanie and then a handful of other names, forename and surname.
"That means, my dear, if we see a Stephanie tape, and known names who didn't trip the computer warning, we can skip the whole process. We've established she's a very inventive skinny short haired prostitute who is actually into her thirties."
"All we have to do is keep a list of the tapes and do a cross check," said Ruth.
"We'll input the names on the tape before we digitise it and get the computer to tell us. I can program that."
After half an hour I had a database being created of the images of identified borderline people, and names in tape titles. When we typed the name of the next tape in, the machine told us if the people had been checked, ask if we wanted to see pictures of the borderline ones, and if we did not process the tape, add it to the list of tapes treated, with a statement that Ruth and I were satisfied as to the people on the tape without a scan.
Ruth said, after I had explained the set up, "That means we're relying on Eve's labelling to list everyone on the tape."
I waved a hand across the tapes with their labels facing us.
"Do you think somebody as obsessively neat and tidy as this would get it wrong? This was her power base together with the files upstairs. Did you see those?"
She shook her head.
"Well I have. Now, normally I'd have a residual worry about a flatbed scanner turning handwriting into electronic medium. Not with this woman. She's neat, consistent and thorough.
"If she's got two, three or six people on a tape, they'll be listed in the title, I'd bet on it."
Ruth still looked uncertain.
"OK. My final offer. Do it this way, and we'll have a number of tapes we've not looked at. If we have time before the end of tomorrow we'll process them to see what happens. We create a second database, give it to Rosemary and ask her what is the probability that Eve's labelling is true. If we don't finish before Sunday night it's academic; we stop anyway. We've just been doing the tapes in a different order. Which is random anyway, because by the time we took them off the shelf, then into thestudy, then into the car boot and then batchwise up here it's anybody's guess what order that is."
"OK, darling. That sounds fine. It might reduce the burden."
I updated the title database with the names on the tapes we'd done, and we continued.
At one in the morning I obtained some sticky labels from stationery, and labelled the tapes we'd treated in full, and those eliminated only through the title database. I left the the last in the board room and took the former to the boot of the car and took another untreated batch back to the board room.
I woke Ruth at two.
"How are we doing?"
"Tape nine is being examined, and ten digitised. The good news is that two were trapped by the database. Which hopefully means that we can expect things to build up."
Ruth said, "I've just thought. That's only if we can get them into date order."
"Damn, you're right."
"The cameras have dated them."
"Trouble is Eve didn't on her labels. No hang on it's simple. There's the video and TV over there, just run through the first few frames to get a date, write it on the label and we'll shuffle them on the table, number them one, two three etcetera."
"Liz said we were to batch them from the car."
"I suspect she thought the car would be outside, not within the building. Anyway once we've shuffled them we can."
For the next two hours we worked together, and had arranged the tapes in date order in the boot of the car.
"I'll do the next two hours," said Ruth, "otherwise you'll be doing three sessions on the trot. We've done twelve tapes but no more trapped by the database."
"OK, sleep tight darling."
Light was beginning to filter through the slats of the venetian blinds as I woke to feel Ruth's lips on mine.
"Thirteen and no more from the titles."
Tape fifteen was being scanned, and the computer alarmed. One obviously adult man was beating another equally adult one with a whip. I scanned either side of the stop point, but couldn't understand why it had alarmed. I turned the sound on, and a baby's cry emanated from the one being whipped. The uncanny combination of what I saw and heard sickened me. I told the computer this was not a child, and ran for the toilets, now sick in the stomach.
Wearily we carried on the routine for another eighteen hours, until midnight on Sunday. Liz telephoned Ruth on her mobile.
I heard Ruth say, "Yes, Liz we're knackered, and emotionally very low, but we're OK. We're shutting down and coming back. No don't wait up for us, we'll be alright. But don't expect us to get up too early. We're both going to need a big shot of whisky to get any sleep. Oh, we've done twenty eight, and eliminated six others. I'll explain tomorrow. Goodbye Liz."
"That's still less than a quarter through," I said, "This is a nightmare."
We removed the evidence of our work and picnics, closed access to our computer environment, took the tape digitiser back to the car, and by one o'clock were on the A19 to Thirsk.
We stopped to stretch our legs under a huge hemisphere of sky filled with bright stars.
Ruth said, "I want rid of that nastiness from my mind and body. Bring the sleeping bag. I want to make love under the purity of the universe."
In a field, partly in the company of baffled sheep, our white breath filling the air around us, we intensely regained the high emotional and physical equilibrium point of our love, driving from it the contamination of the previous thirty six hours.
An early morning mist cocooned us in cold invisibility, and we were warm in each other's arms. It was nearly dawn when Ruth's phone trilled, frightening the sheep.
"Hello? Pat, what's the matter? No we're alright. We're - er - in a sleeping bag in a field of sheep, and I feel very warm and happy, and comforted."
"What do you mean - too old? Cheek. No, he isn't either. Go back to bed. We're alright. Yes, dear. I love you too."
She shut the phone and laughed, "She sends her love but thinks we're both thoroughly irresponsible."
I kissed her; we had regained our intensity. "Thank you," I whispered.
We dressed in our dew laden clammy clothes, and shivered, but we didn't feel stone cold inside, as we had when dealing with the tapes.
As I drove to Northallerton I wondered whether we could take another hundred odd hours. Would our love recover for us after each session, or would our bond be corroded and eventually broken. I felt fear.
"And I," said Ruth, "We have to talk to Rosemary. I know we've recovered this time," she put her hand on my arm, "so well, but it will get worse. Maybe I'll have to sacrifice certainty, to retain something more precious."
We had a whisky together watching from the bed some inane game show on TV. Ruth fell asleep first, her glass still in her hand. I gently prized it from her fingers and made her comfortable. Her breath was noisy with exhaustion. I finished my drink, and lay beside her warmth, thinking with dread that once this exercise was over we wouldn't be together nearly every day, with the wonder of our music, companionship and love. In her sleep she half rolled on top of me and subconsciously tightened her arm and legs around me. I kissed her smooth sinewy shoulder, and told myself to enjoy the now. Tomorrow might sort itself, I prayed.
At eleven o'clock we reached Railton House. The Jaguars had gone. A mid-range Rover was there instead.
We entered the lounge, Pat was putting a tray of coffee out, "Oh, you both look haunted."
I said as Ruth and I sat together on the sofa, "I don't really think we're the right sort of animals for this work. We feel too deeply about our own relationship to calmly accept how little others value something mechanically similar, and we can't treat the images merely as electron stimulated phosphor on a screen.
"We've got over what we've done, but having another hundred odd hours to do, unless something changes, fills us with foreboding. Pat could you organise one thing? Take the tapes out of the car and arrange them in the same order on the table in the study."
Liz and Amanda came in, both looked at us. Liz said nothing but her face tightened. Amanda put her arms round our necks and kissed us both, "Was it very awful?"
Ruth nodded.
Liz poured coffee and Pat handed it round.
Liz scrutinised both Ruth and me.
"I'm asking too much of you both, but there isn't anyone else in the team bar me, and truthfully I can't be spared at this time. I must go to Foot's operational office, otherwise they're going to fall into total chaos."
"Has the management help arrived?" I asked.
"Yes, they're physically there, but they need leadership and direction and that's my job. And I can't do it at the end of a phone."
I nodded.
"And I'm going to add to your troubles, Graham," said Liz, then, laughing sardonically, "or maybe it'll be a welcome distraction. I've made an appointment for you with Carlton at three o'clock. You'll be subjected to an hour of abuse. But I don't think you need have any fears that he'll refuse. Offer a one percent goodwill reduction after thirty minutes and come out when he says yes. Then go to site and get them rolling on the first tasks."
I said, "Then I have to come back to York to do the computer night shift with Ruth. OK. But I want Ruth to talk to Rosemary before we carry on. Just to see if we can reduce the burden somehow."
"I'll ask her to come over as soon as possible, I'll do that now," Liz rose and went into reception to use the telephone.
She returned saying to Ruth, "Splitting you and Graham leaves you short of transport so I've arranged for Hertz to deliver a car later today. You take charge of that, although Mandy can drive when necessary. The contracts for you three have arrived. If you sign that'll make everything OK. This is yours. I have put a secrecy clause in. I hope you don't mind."
Ruth nodded and signed, and said, "What next?"
"Nothing till Rosemary comes. Pat and Mandy are finishing inputting Eve's files to our computer here. I'll be going to Foot's after I've checked a few things. I suggest you get a breath of fresh air. The grounds go right down to the river. It's very pleasant. Try to rest your minds as much as possible."
"Suits me," said Ruth, taking my hand, "come lover; walkies."