Story Episode 5

Penny didn't arrive at the pub until quite late. Although it was past official closing time Stan gave her a big G and T and made her a nice sandwich.  Penny and I hugged each other, relieved to be back together again. We then went straight off to bed to try to get some sleep before what was going to be a busy next day.

What Dave and I had seen in the files earlier in the evening had been deeply disturbing. At the top of each file was the form that I had seen my interviewer using - the one where he seemed just to have put a tick in a box. In fact there were three boxes on the form, each saying "Confirm memory loss".  It seemed that each prisoner was questioned over three consecutive days to check for continued memory loss before being moved on.

Tom's file had ticks against all three entries. The next box said "Rendition to SA" and was also ticked. Underneath was written "Coronation Park, Joburg".   This rang a bell in the back of my mind. Then I remembered seeing a programme on BBC3 TV in which the black British DJ Reggie Yates had visited a squatter camp outside Johannesburg where poor white unemployed South Africans with no hope of jobs were living in squalor. The camp was known as Coronation Park.

Was the plan to dump Tom there? With his memory loss and the general confusion and helplessness of the residents he would effectively disappear.

I turned to Ken's file. This also showed the three ticks and a rendition comment with the words "Bethlehem, Pretoria". Presumably another squatter camp and some way from where Tom was. Both would now be in these camps and it may be hard to find them, but at least we had an idea.

Dave's file had three ticks but no comments yet about rendition or a destination.  Presumably he was still one day away from being moved on so it was lucky for him that we had escaped in time.

Looking at some of the other material in the files confirmed my guess that the rogue G4S guys had tumbled to our investigations into them and had then taken the action they thought was necessary. The files showed our places of work with various other comments about what we seemed to know.

 Next day Dave, Penny and I would have to get to work, photocopying the files and writing up a report on what we had discovered. Then we could produce multiple copies to send to our employers, the newspapers, G4S itself, maybe the Prime Minister. - all the outlets we could think of to make sure that the story got out whatever happened to us.

So that is what we spent all morning the next day working on. We would have to get some big envelopes and some stamps to post them off later. Should we go into Dorchester and risk being been or try to find a small village post office.  Stan said that, unfortunately, all the local village post offices had been closed down. To be sure of getting our news out we would have to risk a trip to Dorchester, or one of the other local towns.