Chapter 3

“Me?” Peter asked, “but I couldn’t possibly have been there.”

“No, but perhaps you were just a symbol of a man there to help me when I needed it.”

“Well, I’ve never been described as a symbol, before,” Peter said.

“I don’t know,” Fiona said, “some of the girls at headquarters think you’re a bit of a sex symbol.”

“Well, whoever it was, he helped me to escape and found me a vehicle.”

“A vehicle?” Fiona asked.

“Yes, a car, a small car, like yours Fiona.”

“Perhaps that’s a symbol too,” Peter said, “like me being a symbolic man who helped you. Fiona’s mini is a symbolic car that you escaped in.”

“I think we need to get your father to hypnotise me,” Jane said, “we need to be probing deeper than just dreams.”

“Then I’ll ring him and arrange to go over,” Peter said.

Peter made the call and agreed with his father to go over after dinner.

He took the two women out to eat, Chinese. Half way through the meal a thought popped unbidden into his head, for no conscious reason he was thinking of them as his two women. They were after all two very attractive young women and he found himself very attracted to both of them.

Not that he would consider doing anything about it, he was far too professional for anything like that.

But still, he couldn’t help a feeling of, not proprietorship but of belonging.

As they walked out of the restaurant after Peter had paid the bill, each of them took one of his hands in hers.

“Thank you, Peter,” Jane said.

“Thank you, Sir,” Fiona added squeezing his had a little tighter.

“You know, Fiona, I think Peter would be all right in circumstances like this.”

She looked at him, her eyes sparkling in the light from the streetlamps.

“Thank you, Peter,” she said, her voice husky, breathless.

He ushered them into his car, they took the back seat and he set off towards his father’s house.

Once inside George greeted them, then turned to Peter.

“Right, you two,” he indicated his son and Fiona, “go to the pub and have a pint, come back in an hour, we’ll be finished by then.”

Then he turned to Jane, “Can you remember where my study is?” he asked.

“Yes,” she replied, “through there.”

She pointed back out to the hall.

“I’ll join you there shortly,” he said, “I just want a quick word with these two.”

Once Jane left the room he continued.

“You realise that she’s my patient, even though no money will change hands?”

“Of course, Dad, which means that you can’t reveal anything to us that passes between you, unless it’s reportable.”

“Exactly, however, I will let you know what I find on one very firm condition.”

“What’s that?”

“Again, unless it is reportable, you will not use anything I tell you against her in the case of any investigation either ongoing or in the future.”

“Agreed,” Peter said.

“Fiona?” George queried.

“Agreed,” she said.

“Good, now get out of here and let me do my job.”

While Peter and Fiona walked down to the Horse and Jockey, George joined Jane in his study and asked her to sit back, close her eyes, relax and try to empty her mind of all extraneous thoughts.

“You realise she’s in love with you, don’t you?” Fiona said as they settled down at a corner table.

“What?” he snapped, “don’t be ridiculous, Fiona. We hardly know each other.”

“Nevertheless, she’s fallen. Her body language, the way she looks at you, she at the very least has a hell of a crush on you.”

“Well, I just hope my dad can help her remember who she is and where she came from.”

Back at George’s house, he and Jane were in his study, Jane was sitting in a comfortable easy chair, while George was perched on a stool, one metre from her.

“Just relax, Jane,” he was saying, his voice both low and gentle, “let your mind go where it wants, breathe slowly, in, pause, out pause, in, pause and out, just in that rhythm.”

Her breathing became soft and regular just as if she was asleep.

“Can you tell me your name?” he asked.

“They call me Jane,” she said, her voice low and slightly mechanical.

“Is that your real name?”

“I don’t think so,” she said.

“Can you remember escaping from the house?”

“Vaguely,” she said.

“What do you remember?”

“I was locked in a room, managed to get the window open and escape, a man helped me by showing me a way I could get away.”

“Did you hear anything; did he say anything to you?”

“I remember him saying something, but I don’t know what it was,” she said.

She paused for a full minute.

“No wait,” she said, “it was, ‘this way Mara, take the scout’.”

“Mara?” George asked, “do you think your name may be Mara?”

“Yes,” she replied, “that’s what he called me.”

George scribbled a note on the pad that he held in his lap.

“What was the scout?” he asked.

“I don’t know, I don’t remember,” she replied, then continued in some language that George didn’t recognise.

“All right Jane, Mara. Just relax now and sleep for a little while. When you awake Peter and Fiona will be here.

At the pub, Peter and Fiona were just finishing the pints they’d ordered on entering when Peter’s phone rang. The screen told him it was his dad ringing.

“Hi Dad,” he said, “how’s it going?”

“We’ve made some progress. I think we now know Jane’s name, her first name anyway,” George reply, “are you two ready to come back, we do possibly have a slight complication though.”

“What’s that?”

“We’ll discuss it when you get here.”

“We’ll be there in about ten minutes,” Peter said, then hung up and turned to Fiona.

“Drink up, we’re going back, Dad has some new information for us.”

Back at the house they walked in to find George and who they thought of as Jane sitting in the living room drinking coffee.

“Hi,” George said, with a smile, as they walked in, “Peter, Fiona, I’d like you to meet Mara.”

“Mara?” Peter asked, frowning.

“Yes, it appears that our guest is called Mara and she escaped in what she calls a scout vehicle from some sort of institutional building. We don’t know where, but from her brief description of the scout vehicle it was a long way away.”

“Australia?” Fiona suggested.

“Much farther than that,” George said, “much, much farther.”

“There isn’t anywhere that much farther than Australia,” Fiona said.

“Oh, there is, my dear,” George said, “I think that we as a species have finally made contact with someone who was born somewhere other than on this planet.”

“What?” Peter almost shouted, “Jane, sorry, Mara is from another planet? If that’s true, then we must report it to the authorities.”

“No,” George said, “that’s the last thing we want to do. At least until we know more about her origins.”

“Dad, Fiona and I are serving police officers, we must report it. She’s living in Fiona’s flat.”

“Which is why I suggest that she moves into this house and you continue your enquiries into her origins. Then when I’ve had chance to find out more, we can decide what to do. And besides, until Mara gets more of her memories back, my pronouncement is just a theory. I’d hate to declare that she’s an alien from another planet or another galaxy, only to find out that other galaxy is Lancashire.”

“You think there’s more to discover?” Peter asked.

“I think now we’ve started a trickle of memories we’ll end up with a flood,” George replied.

“All right, dad, but I can’t wait too long before I report it, so maybe it’s better if Fiona doesn’t know any more than she already does. I think it would be safer if I transfer her to other duties and investigate this case on my own.”

“No,” Fiona protested, “I’m in this now.”

“And I want you out of it, Fiona,” Peter replied, “there’s no point in risking both our careers.”

“Surely, whether I risk my career is my business,” she replied.

“Yes, but if I crash and burn over this, you’d go with me and then we’d have nobody on the inside. But if you’re off the case then you can keep an eye on her if they take me off. And the biggest danger of all is to Jane, sorry, Mara. What do you think will happen if someone high up gets a whiff of this mystery girl being a genuine extra-terrestrial? Do you think they’re going to let her phone home?”

“Put that way, I can see your point. And it also means that I can be her friend without compromising my position.”

“That too,” Peter said, “I’ll get you replaced tomorrow, in fact, no I won’t I’ll be the sole investigating officer. Put you back on general duties.”

True to his word, by the time he finished work the following day, Fiona was no longer on the investigating team. Instead he was working alone, having explained to his Superintendent that he was putting the investigation on hold until they could get a DNA test to try and give them a clue to the girl’s origins.

They did get a DNA test done, two days later with a promise from the lab to prioritise it.

“Great,” Peter said to no-one in particular, “if we’re lucky we should get the results back in a month.”

The day after the sample was taken, Mara moved into the spare bedroom at George’s house. To avoid any possible comeback, Pete reported this to the divisional Superintendent, Ed Billings, who gave the move his blessing with two caveats. First Fiona was to have no knowledge of the investigation into who Mara was and secondly, Peter himself was to supervise the arrangement which was authorised only until the local Social Services could find ‘the girl,’ an alternative.

They were very lucky; they had the results back in less than a week, or to be more accurate, they got a request for another sample since the original sample was ‘somewhat compromised.’ On receiving that email, Peter picked up the phone and dialled the lab direct.

“What do you mean somewhat compromised?” Peter asked, after he’d been put through to the right person, identified himself and asked why they needed a second sample.

“Like we said in the message, there’s a significant problem with the DNA sample that you sent us,” the technician, Sarah Barnes said.

“What sort of problem?” he asked.

“I’m not sure, but we think there’s some contaminant that’s somehow got mixed in with the sample. Either that or the sample was taken from a non-human subject.”

“Can you explain what that means to someone who did GCSE biology and chemistry.

“Well basically human DNA contains 46 chromosomes, organised into 23 pairs.”

“Yes, I understand that,” Peter said, “and there are three parts to each, what’s it called, nucleotide.”

“That’s right, Phosphates, Sugars and a mix of four nitrogen bases. Well this sample has too many chromosomes and appears to have five bases. Like I said, the sample has been compromised. I’m pretty sure it didn’t happen here, so I can only think it happened at your end.”

“So what do we do?” Peter asked.

“Ideally, you bring the subject down here, we take a blood sample and put it straight into processing, then there can’t be any processing errors or contamination.”

“We’ll do that,” Peter said, “when’s best?”

“Well, how about this afternoon,” she replied, “make it five o’clock, I’ll take the sample and take it straight into the lab and start the tests. Then you can take me and buy me a drink.”

“All right,” he agreed, “five o’clock, but I’ll have Mara with me and possibly Fiona.”

“Then you can take all three of us out and buy us a drink,” she said, “who knows, you may even get lucky.”

“I can only live in hope,” he said, “some sort of clue as to this girl’s origins would be nice.”

Although he had his doubts as to whether that was what Sarah meant by his possibly getting lucky.

“Well, we’ll do what we can. At least we should be able to tell where she was brought up.”

They ended the call there and promptly at five, Peter stopped his car outside the lab building and the three of them got out.

“Where are we going?” Mara asked as they got out of the car.

“We’re going to meet one of our friends, Sarah,” Peter said, “she’s a scientist and she’s going to take some blood from you and use it to try and tell us where you come from so that we can try and get you back to your home and family. We have a computer at the office that gives us details of all the people who have been reported as missing from home and so far, there’s nobody in there who even comes close to matching you.”