Story Episode 9

The mood on the train back to Waterloo was a bit despondent. “Do you think he believed us?” wondered Dave. “Hard to tell” said Penny “But I’ve got a feeling that he did. I think he will pass it up the line all right, but who knows whether his superiors will feel they need to do anything or not”.  “Well at least we can post the envelopes” I commented.  “I’m not sure about that” replied Penny.  “If the story is splashed all over tomorrow’s newspapers the G4S top brass may react badly and conclude that we were just out to cause trouble. The important thing right now is to get Ken and Tom back. I think we should hold off contacting the press for now. We can always do that later if nothing seems to be happening.”  Dave nodded in agreement. On reflection I agreed that Penny had it right.  We wanted the rogue G4S people to be tracked down but this wasn’t as important as getting Ken and Tom back with us.  So we should hold onto the envelopes for the moment and just get on the train from Waterloo back to Dorchester.

A little way into that part of the journey Penny’s phone rang. It was Mike our friend and next-door neighbour He asked Penny if she was OK. Usually we let Mike know if we are going away and he keeps an eye on our house for us. We do the same for him. Mike said that he was a bit worried as there seemed to be people keeping watch on our house. He had noticed a man sitting in a car opposite our house.  At one point the man had got out of the car and gone round the back of our house. Mike thought the man was a burglar and was about to phone the police when the man reappeared and got back into his car. Since then there seemed to be a continuous watch on the house. Another man had relieved the first man during the night.  Mike asked if he should call the police or just keep an eye on our house watchers.  I took the phone from Penny and went down the corridor to an unoccupied part of the train where I could talk to Mike without being overheard. I gave him a full rundown of what had been going on. “Unbelievable” was his reaction. I asked Mike not to tell anyone about it for now, with the exception of course of his wife Karen. I asked him if he could see the registration number of the car. “Not a problem” he said “already done” and he proceeded to give it to me. Sure enough I recognised it straight away as the one the jailers had been in when they chased us. This was good news in two respects.  First it suggested that a relatively small number of people were involved with the rogue G4S group. If there were more they could have called upon someone else to watch the house. Also, so long as the car was outside the house it meant we wouldn’t be running into our jailers back in Dorset.  

  

By the time we got back to Dorchester it was quite late and we took the risk of getting a taxi to take us back to the pub.

Stan got us drinks and sausages and chips in return for an update on our day. All we could do now was to wait a bit and see if anyone from G4S made contact.