Dark Web-Dark-Commissions Chapter One - Peter
The laptop alerted the email delivery. Peter swiped his finger across the mouse pad and the screen came to life. He tapped on Outlook and typed in the password and accessed the email.
I HAVE ANOTHER ONE OF THOSE CASES FOR YOU.
DETAILS TO FOLLOW.
SEE YOU IN AN HOUR.
USUAL PLACE.
S XX
Peter closed the email and closed the lid of the computer down. His small, neglected office was dark and dusty but here he, was obscure and an unremarkable, no-one could find him, unless he allowed it. He only interacted with the world on is terms, only his people brought him mysteries and puzzles and very occasionally, intrigues in the criminal world and that was Sam, Samantha Archer. The upper floor had three sub-offices. Peter had the front facing one, with a view of the street below. The other two were vacant. Peter paid the landlord to keep them empty, spinning a lie that he needed extra room for his files and for storage. Peter had set up a futon in one of the other offices and a coffee machine and all the little comforts of home, he often slept over.
Peter stood up and gathered his coat and put his laptop and charger in his black back-pack and headed out of the door. He made certain to lock the door carefully. Two Yale locks and a dead bolt snapped into place. He made his way downstairs and out onto the street, locking the street door, with a Yale lock and further dead-bolt lock. He enjoyed the jangle of keys in his hand and made off down the street in the quiet town of Buntingford. He liked the market town, and it wasn't London. The town had a cloak of sleepy mediocrity about it, nothing of any importance would ever come from this little town.
That was exactly what Peter liked.
Because Peter needed to be invisible and to see them coming. It was less than an hour, when he pulled up at his usual pub in the village of Clavering, made famous by its association with the parents of famous TV chefs. As usual, Peter took the furthest table from the door, with a nice view of the comings and goings from the bar and the restaurant. Peter's counter-surveillance was second nature now and only slightly paranoid. Peter would smile at his super-spy attitude, but he quite enjoyed the 'cloak and dagger' world, he had insinuated himself into.
A familiar face came through the restaurant door and walked over and joined him. The bar-staff sensed a order and came over smartly.
"Can I get you some drinks?" The slightly built teenager, on a summer job, asked politely.
"I'll have a flat white and my friend will have a Latte. We will both your tasty Bacon and Brie Panini, mine without the cranberry." Peter always had the same thing, the certainty and familiarity, and it was his only carbs of the day. He kept a iron grip on his calorific intake. His lean, taut physique was achieved only though iron will, an expensive gym membership and 15Km on his Peloton bike every two days. Money was no object for Peter, enjoying a private revenue stream, kept hidden through clever accounting and only the absolute minimum taxation. Peter's solitude was everything to him, burdened with high functioning autism, his time had to be filled but he decided how.
Samantha smiled at Peter; she enjoyed these clandestine meetings. It was the only fun part of her job, she found her job as a collator in the police force was usually hum-drum, but just occasionally she would get treasure, from the depths of computerised text and still the good old paper back-ups, and the latest reports from the victims and would email Peter. Now she was here, with an encrypted memory stick in her shoulder bag and a three folded A4 pages.
"I have a report for you," Samantha smiled, "this one might give you something to work on."
Samantha, or Sam to her colleagues had known Peter since their school days. His white, blonde hair and intense personality had made him an easy target for the school bullies and also made it hard for him to make friends and impossible to have a relationship. Of course, now Peter would have been placed on the autistic spectrum, but in the 1900's,he was just weird. Sam had no problem using his talent for analysis to further her career, he'd been good news for her. Peter had given her three great leads that she passed off as her own work. Sam knew who to feed the information too and claimed that she'd pieced it together from the records. Sam knew this case would get her out of the collator's room and on the fast track to the good life. She reasoned that if she didn't apply him to these unsolved cases, he'd be even more lost than he was already.
"Good," Peter smiled back, anticipating his coffee and toasted sandwich.
Peter wasn't interested in fame and notoriety, and he was fully aware that Sam was passing off his discoveries has her own. That didn't matter to Peter, he had his own reasons for doing what he did and fame was of no importance to him. Samantha paid him in other ways.
Samantha
In his rented first floor, one-bedroom, flat Peter made a cup of tea and opened his laptop and unfolded the pages. It took a couple of hours, to digest the sad details of yet another abduction. those bastards had struck again. Another collection of lives that will never be the same again, and will not, unfortunately, fully recover. The partners will probably separate and perhaps never see each other again. It had happened with the only two other reported cases. Only three such abductions had been reported in three years. Peter, familiar with the pattern of the abductions reviewed the recorded deposition made by the woman.
"Take your time Anna," the female police officer urged," you have all the time you need, and we can take a break at any time." The comfort room had excellent acoustics and Peter could hear every sigh and word. He put on his Sony Wireless headphones and listened closely, with the volume high.
Peter noted that Anna, the victim. was well spoken and was succeeding in controlling the violent emotions prompted by her reliving of her abuse by the men that abducted her. Peter listened intently and took details notes on a black notebook held on his lap.
Anna began her story, "the first thing I noticed as a black van slowly pull up beside me as I walked down the road, while I was walking my little dog. The driver wound down his window down, he was wearing a blue mask and asked me if I knew where 11, Walnut Road was. As I turned to answer him, I noticed the door on the body of the van slide open and two other men in black and for the life of me, I just got in. I just let go of the lead of my dog, and got in their van, voluntarily! One of the men fished around in my gilet jacket for my house key and took my dog away. Then the door was slid shut and I was made to be quiet, but I didn't scream. I suppose I was frightened; I think?"
Peter listened and noted that the van had been different in each of the cases. There were three men though in each of the other abductions. There were following a pattern. Anne's voice shook but continued "Once they had me in the back of the van, they held me and I let them put a ball-gag into my mouth and a band fastened around my head, but I didn't choke. Finally, I can't remember much after that," Anne paused and Peter wondered if she was holding back in some way, "but the van drove off."
Peter forwarded the recording to the next segment. He wanted to analyse what they said to her. Anna's voice had recovered some of its composure, " I don't know how long I was in the van, I just sat, waiting. All I could think off, was what had happened to my dog. After the van stopped. They helped me out of the van and led me into a building, but I couldn't see much of anything, I may have been blindfolded. I just don't know.
Peter, with a hovering finger over his laptop, paused the recording. He realised that this group used different locations, which suggested an excellent knowledge of the area and impressive forward planning. The lack of recall was definitely a feature of these cases. It troubled him.
"I had no idea what was going on, until I was sat down on what had to be the edge of a mattress. I discovered that they were all standing round me, I was waiting for them to tell me what they wanted. I saw that there were three of them now, they all wore full masks, white ones that looked like ones in science-fiction films. I was a bit frightened, and I think I was going to cry. But then I stopped."
Peter noted the masks were the same ones that had been reported in the other two cases.
Anna continued, "I asked them what they wanted and the only one who spoke, told me to undress," Anna started to sob again, Peter noted down that the gang had copied the pattern again, only one spoke, the other two were silent the whole time. Again, Peter was impressed, if not dismayed at the group discipline. After the interviewing officer paused and then restarted the recording Anna was more in control, but Peter knew the next part would be the worst.
"He told me that they were going to take what they wanted from me, so it was up to me how it would go. He told me that if I didn't resist, then I wouldn't be hurt." Anna began to cry again. Peter nodded, unconsciously, the gang made the victim choose how they would endure their time. These men know how to use psychology in their approach. Making Anna choose to cooperate, made her submissive to their will, and of course, using the threat of harming her, tipped the balance completely. Peter now understood that this gang was completely different from other kidnappers. They never actually used violence, the implied threat and then something else happened. Peter couldn't put his finger on it, it was almost as if they had another way to get these women to engage in these acts. Whatever it was, it meant that his investigation would be much more difficult to conduct. Peter, understood that there was a real problem. These men wouldn't stop.
Anna continued with a detailed and quite harrowing recount of her attack, "They told me that if I cooperated and don't fight them, then not only would they use condoms but they wouldn't have my daughter join in." Peter knows how they would use the threat to make her submit to their demands. And of course, she did, what choice did she have? No actual violence, just the threat of making her daughter suffer like her.
"I had to let them do it, and...." Peter didn't want to listen to the rest of the recording but made himself sit through it. He needed to hear if these men would do something new or different. After sifting through Anna's recollection of the sex acts, Anna revealed something new and even more disturbing. Her face blushed on the screen and her voice became a coarse whisper, "They made me sort of enjoy it."
Peter stopped the recording, 'made her enjoy it? 'He thumbed the play button again.
Anna's breathing gasped in her throat, but she felt compelled to describe what she had done, "I took my clothes off for them, I let them touch me and use me, "Peter could hear her tears again, but then a sudden calmness as she recalled the next part of her ordeal," I let them use me in every part of me. I asked them... I wanted them to put themselves in me, all at the same time. I gelt like I wanted them, and they wanted me and I let them. Is this even an attack?"
Peter stopped the recording. This was it! This was confirmation of that this gang was the same men, in the other two cases. Peter immediately thought of drugs. Had they slipped her a drug to make her more pliable? He sifted through the files and found a report showing that nothing had been found in Anna's system. Of course, many drugs didn't show up. Systole? Ketamine? Peyote? Or even Mescaline? All these drugs wouldn't show up in a blood screen, especially after the four-hour abduction period was another feature of these abductions. Ann continues with her interview.
