Story Episode 10

Waking up the next morning I had an idea. If the two jailers were still keeping watch outside our house maybe we should take the initiative and go back to our place of imprisonment to see if we could find any clues to their identity. We discussed the idea over breakfast. Stan overheard our conversation and asked if he could come along with us. A good idea, I thought. Just in case anyone does turn up to challenge us the more people on our side the better.

So, having checked with Mike that the lookout was still outside our house, we set off in Penny's car for the place where we had been held. We took with us various tools supplied by Stan that might be helpful for breaking and entering.

We found the place again quite easily. I suggested that Penny should stay in the car in case we needed a quick getaway. Also, three people would be more than enough to carry out our search.

It was surprisingly easy to break open the exit door. Dave, Stan and I went inside to take a closer look, starting with the first room at the end of the corridor where the jailers rested. I wondered how long the building had been there, why it had been put there originally and how it had come to be used as a jail by the rogue G4S employees. 

There wasn't room for all three of us in the jailers' room so Dave went next door to look in the interview room while Stan and I searched for clues about the jailers.  The fridge was empty now and the cupboard just had a few biscuits in it. There was nothing else to be seen either on the table or the worktop. No jackets, keys or anything else to give us a lead. Dave came back to tell us he could find nothing in the interview room either. He had looked in the filing cabinet and the draw in the desk. Not a thing.

Reluctantly we left the building and got back into Penny's car.  On the way back to the pub Stan wondered if the jailers themselves were actually G4S employees at all.  The interviewing man almost certainly was, but perhaps he had just hired two local men to be the jailers.  We had the car registration number and Stan reckoned that we could track down its owner. He knew most of the people running the local garages and MOT centres. The car in question was certainly old enough to require an MOT. If we could find the garage that had been used we could perhaps find the home address of one of the jailers.

So it was that instead of going back to the pub we had a tour of the local garages.  At our third stop we struck lucky. For a small consideration and the promise of a free meal for him and his family at Stan's pub the garage man gave us the name and address of the car owner, Nathan Roberts. He lived in a council house on the outskirts of Dorchester.  We knew he wouldn't be at home and decided to take a look.

Parking our car just down the street we observed a young boy of about six playing on his bike outside the house.  It was an end of terrace property and we could just see round the back where a woman was putting out some washing. There was no point in confronting her so we returned to the pub to sit down to think what we might do next.