Probus Enigma- The Abused

By Donahue B. Silvis

A hyperactive, but bright child is neglected by his parents.
Sexually abused first by a professional nanny, then a schoolmaster turns him into a seething serial bi-sexual abuser himself, determined to get revenge.
As an adult he reaches great heights in his City career but his anger at his parents and the world turns him into a psychopath prepared to stop at nothing for the one person in the world for whom he has respect.
Sally, a pretty London secretary starts to suspect a financial scam and he orders her to be abducted, raped and murdered by two low-life villains as a reward for their help.
Sam, a professional photographer, who's escaping from the Friday night London rush hour, takes a shortcut across the Chiltern Hills and sees the abduction.
He chases the car and manages to rescue her, but the culprit escapes. Her car is damaged and Sam arranges a room for her in the hotel he was booked into. He inexplicably falls head over heels in love with her over dinner, but the next day she has vanished.
All he has of her is a miniature photo from a locket she had left behind. On it is a picture of her with a man, possibly her father. In the background is a tiny clue.
Without any notion of the danger he is getting himself into, he is determined to try, but can he possibly find her?

All characters are completely fictitious and no connection with any actual person is intended. However, a scam similar to the Probus Enigma was actually perpetrated, and the author, John Hale, was instrumental in rescuing a number of people who would have suffered from it. Many of the small events detailed, places and establishments described and used, actually occurred, and geographical and historical information, is based on actual fact.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Donahue B. Silvis
• Release date: Sep 18, 2018
• ISBN: 9780463682005

Donahue B. Silvis

D. B. Silvis lives in Naples, Florida. He is the author of five novels, of various genre, and one illustrated children's book.

Book preview

A hyperactive, but bright child is neglected by his parents.

Sexually abused first by a professional nanny, then a schoolmaster turns him into a seething serial bi-sexual abuser himself, determined to get revenge.

As an adult he reaches great heights in his City career but his anger at his parents and the world turns him into a psychopath prepared to stop at nothing for the one person in the world for whom he has respect.

Sally, a pretty London secretary starts to suspect a financial scam and he orders her to be abducted, raped and murdered by two low-life villains as a reward for their help.

Chapter One

The Meeting

Alex McPherson finishes his lunchtime sandwich and pulls the silver pocket watch from his waistcoat pocket; it reads 1.27. The 1.30 from London’s Marylebone station, terminating at Aylesbury, some 10 miles further along the Chiltern Line, is due in three minutes. He drains the last few drops of tea from his plastic cup, shakes it, and screws it carefully back on to the Thermos flask, pauses to put on his Station Master’s cap and ambles out of his cosy little office.

Some thirty miles from London, Great Missenden, like most of the smaller towns in the area, is steeped in history, both local and national, and consists of one long narrow main street full of shops, pubs and restaurants, most of which buildings date back several hundred years or more. In the heart of the commuter-belt and on the edge of the Chiltern Hills, the town is in part of the so-called Home Counties, which encircle the capital city of London.

Alex peers up the line, to see the platform empty, but for two teenage girls. At the first glimpse of the approaching train, he checks his watch again. While the leading carriage is passing, both he and the driver give the ‘nod’ – the standard casual acknowledgment indicating their camaraderie and the mutually satisfied confirmation of being precisely on time.

The train consists of only three carriages at this time of day: most of the rolling stock is in London, ready for the mass exodus home. When it eases to a standstill, he glances up and down to see just one door opening. This is at the end part of one carriage, its yellow stripe above the door indicating that it is reserved for ‘First Class’ passengers. In a few hours, even that will be packed with standing-room-only before the extra long train gradually pours out, stop-by-stop, the masses of work-weary home-comers, scurrying to their cars in the crowded station car-park and heading off, or not, to wives and children to hopefully relax, for what will be left to them of the evening.

He stood watching as a tall, smartly dressed man in his mid-thirties alights. With the folded Financial Times under his arm, and carrying the familiar furled umbrella and brief case, he drew no particular attention. This is virtually the standard uniform of the typical male passenger at Great Missenden. The only query that briefly pops into Alex’s head and out again, is that it is not normal to see such people at this time of day, but it registers that the passenger is a stranger. Alex nods and touches the peak of his cap with one finger, but the stranger hurries past without responding to the small proffered courtesy, deliberately avoiding eye contact.

Miserable sod, thinks Alex, as he turns to watch him walk towards the exit. Olive skinned. Looks a bit like a Mediterranean type. Italian probably, he muses.

*     *     *

The two girls hesitate and look at the tall handsome man as they stand by their open carriage door, nudging each other, they giggle. Again, the stranger just strides purposefully past, eyes straight ahead. He has no wish to be remembered, and if the three on the platform who see him, were to have any notion of who he is or why he is there, they would not wish to be remembered by him either.

Handing his used ticket to the collector at the exit the stranger steps outside. His eyes briefly meet those of a man waiting there. Barely perceptible tilts of the head are the only acknowledgment that passes between them. Dressed in a raincoat, the other fellow simply turns and walks down the hill from the station forecourt. The stranger follows. It is not until they reach the road junction and turn left, away from the town centre that the stranger catches up.

They should be waiting there now, states Raincoat-Man. The stranger nods his understanding.

I only hope they are capable of the task, he says.

Rest assured they’ll do whatever they are told to, without question.

"Well, for starters, I assume that they will not be dressed in their normal way; Jeans with the crotch between the knees and a baseball cap turned back-wards, are not exactly the sort of garb that will blend unnoticed in this community."

I have told them to wear smart suits so they do not draw attention.

The two cousins are waiting, as instructed, in the beer-garden of the pub. The stranger winces as he sees them. Proudly dressed in cheap flashy suits with a wide pinstripe, and adorned with earrings and various ostentatious finger-rings, they look the absolute antithesis of anonymity. Raincoat man tries not to meet the stranger’s eyes as they join them at the table. The younger cousin is dispatched to get two Perrier waters before conversation commences. When they are all seated, Raincoat man reveals the task that he has for them. They sit in silence, all ears, while he explains that the project is at risk because of a busybody secretary. She has stumbled on a flaw in the carefully planned scheme, and it is important to its success that she has to be removed, permanently! This is just the sort of job that the cousins delight in and already their minds are working well ahead.

Chapter Two

The Evil Plot

Ahmed, the Raincoat man, took them the short drive to the chosen spot. This road was a little known short-cut across the Chiltern Hills, and at the particular point selected, it took a sharp turn to the right, followed by a straight of some 200 yards, before turning sharp left. Ahmed had chosen carefully, because the almost 90 degree bends, made it virtually invisible from either direction as it was approached. The location was very quiet anyway and the layout would make the abduction highly unlikely to be seen. If she was being followed by any other vehicles, Mohammed, the stranger, would hold them up for the few moments that it took for them to achieve the exercise. Ahmed would be at the other end, to hold up any vehicles approaching from that direction. Yusuf, the older cousin, was then able to use his innate abilities to frighten her into complying with his instructions but to use force should it prove necessary. He was looking forward to the task.

This was to be a dummy-run. Ahmed set them up at the exact spots where they had to wait out of sight. He laboriously explained how the walkie-talkies worked. Yusuf had great trouble with the one-way speech. No matter how many times it was demonstrated, he could not grasp the fact that he had to press the speech button to speak, but release it to hear. Each time, Yusuf messed it up Mohammed gradually became more and more angry. Normally cocky and superior, now, for once in their lives, Yusuf and Faisal were intimidated by Mohammed’s barely contained rage. At a convenient moment, Yusuf pulled Faisal to one side.

For fuck’s sake, don’t upset ’im any more. He’s a miserable shit even before he starts.

It’s not me. It’s you with the friggin phone thing. He’s got that bloody shit-eating face on again, and that’s your fuckin’ fault.

Okay, I got the crappy thing grasped now. Leave it to me.

It still took a half dozen more runs-through before Mohammed and Ahmed were satisfied that the pair had finally got the idea. Faisal opened the door of the Mercedes to let Mohammed in, who, in his temper, grabbed the door and slammed it, while the unfortunate Faisal still had his hand on the door with his fingers over the top. He shrieked in agony as they were mangled between door and car. Mohammed opened it and used it forcefully to push him away. Faisal danced around in the road, hurling obscenities into the air as he clutched his fingers with the uninjured hand. Yusuf fell about laughing while Mohammed just sat and simmered. Faisal wrapped his bleeding fingers with his grubby handkerchief, and climbed sourly into the car, with Yusuf still sniggering at his cousin’s misfortune. Mohammed directed more accusing looks at Ahmed, who could do nothing but shrug.

Now Ahmed had to show them the designated safe house that he had arranged through the imam. This was on the hill leading up from Great Missenden station, towards the village of Prestwood. It had large houses well-spaced and set back off the road, opposite woodlands. They drove up to the gated entrance, and Ahmed spoke into the entry phone. The gates opened automatically. He explained that the lady who lived alone in the house was in her fifties, plump, childless, and very wealthy. Her late husband, having been involved with Hezbollah had vanished off the face of the earth after a covert operation carried out by the S.A.S. for MI5. This had made the widow a fanatical supporter of anything and everything anti-American, and anti-British. Very reclusive, she was a perfect choice for the purposes of Mohammed and his partners in crime.

More than a little deranged, her only companion was her Cairn terrier called Hamish: a slightly batchy dog, which due to an accidental near-death experience with some poisoned slug pellets had been left with a quirk whereby he either took an instant liking to individual visitors, or an intense hatred. The vet had explained to his doting mistress that, having spent several days in a coma, Hamish had lost a quantity of brain cells. He told her that most people would not be able to spot the difference in his personality, but she would. She worshipped the dog with a passion and dismissed his ferocity towards certain random visitors. This had lost her the services of more than one gardener, and a daily cleaning woman.

As the four men stepped out of the car to be introduced, Hamish appeared at the door with his mistress. He scanned the visitors for about three seconds, then, just like Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, switched from a friendly terrier into his raging lunatic persona. Unfortunately for the victim, he had decided that Faisal was the enemy. Though not a large dog, he was chunky and fairly broad of shoulder, if somewhat short of leg, and though he would have liked to have seized Faisal by the throat, his maximum leap was only the same as the distance from the floor to his mistress’ bed. Like a grey-brown rocket, he leapt at him with jaws wide open, the highest point of his trajectory coinciding with Faisal’s crotch, where the beast, screaming in full battle-cry, clamped his jaws. It was now Faisal’s turn to scream. With the full weight of Hamish clamped on his gonads, he grabbed the dog’s ears in the hope that its jaws could be opened before he became detached from the most precious part of his anatomy.

Stop playing with the bloody dog Faisal, shouted Mohammed.

It’s not a dog, it’s a fuckin’ hyena! He screamed.

It’s all right. He won’t hurt you, said the mistress; a claim which gave Faisal no shred of comfort.

Get the fuckin’ thing off me, he howled.

Kick his ball, she shouted, and Faisal brought up his foot between the dog’s legs with every ounce of strength that he could muster. Unfortunately for both man and beast, that particular part of Hamish’s anatomy was nothing more than an empty scrotum flapping in the wind. His mistress had had the important bits removed whilst he was a puppy on the advice of the vet, who suggested (quite erroneously) that he would be quieter and more loyal if he were castrated.

No you idiot, I meant the one on the lawn, she cried, waving her arms and looking skywards for some kind of divine assistance. They were eventually separated and Faisal spent the rest of the time locked in the car, wrapping his new injury with an already blood stained handkerchief, the pain from his throbbing hand now paling into insignificance by comparison.

By this time, Mohammed was quite livid. He took Ahmed to one side and expressed his severe misgivings about the two idiots that had been foisted on him.

In the name of Allah, Ahmed, where the hell did your imam find them? They both stink, and the older one’s halitosis could strip paint! Ahmed went to great lengths to convince him that they were up to the task. The imam had promised them all sorts of rewards, telling them that if there was any hint of a problem with the British police, they would be whisked away to the Lebanon, where they would be living in luxury and treated as heroes for the rest of their lives. He had also reminded them of the reward of doing whatever they wished with the girl, before doing away with her.

A rendezvous was made for the four men to meet a few days later at the same pub, to carry out the abduction. As they all left the widow’s house, Mohammed declined the offer of a lift in Yusuf’s Mercedes, and chose to walk back down to the station with Ahmed, while lecturing him all the way on the absolutely vital importance of the task. Ahmed, who had recruited Mohammed in the first place, was left in little doubt that any vestige of friendship between them, would evaporate in a split second, if the two low-life idiots let them down.

Chapter Three

Wasp In The Honey-pot

Friday evenings on any roads leading away from London are always crammed with frenetically escaping traffic, and High Wycombe was certainly no exception. Though he had no particular reason to hurry, Sam James did not relish the thought of the frustrating delays while the three drivers in front of him argued their points – modest dents in their vehicles, bigger ones in their egos. By each driving too close behind the other, a minor concertina bump had occurred. So he squeezed his way into a fortuitously convenient side road and dodged out of the traffic jam towards a back-road route. Gradually unwinding, he felt the stress pouring out of him like the sand in an hourglass, though for rather more important reasons than the poor driving habits of others. Conscious that he was still tense, he took a deep breath, exhaled slowly, and relaxed his grip on the wheel of the Jaguar to hold it lightly again as the big cat purred quietly along the Hughenden Valley road.

Today was special because the decree-absolute had, at long last finally become effective. Sam was starting out on a break from his work as a successful fashion photographer, having been press-ganged by Bill, his business partner and his wife, Zoe, their shared secretary, to take time out to gather up his thoughts, reflect on what the future may hold, and, take time to Smell the roses, as Zoe had put it. However, when he had turned off the M40 London to Oxford motorway at High Wycombe that evening, he had no notion of the drama that was about to engulf him.

*     *     *

Sam knew this part of Buckinghamshire better than most, having been born and raised in the area. On his way from his London office to spend