It was a damp day in late November, when three men made their way to the small Cornish church. All wore overcoats against the wind that was blowing from the West; one of them carried a bunch of flowers. As they passed through the lych gate two of the men stepped out to the sides. They kept a close view on the third as he walked along the lines of graves. It was a small church yard and a new grave was quite easy to spot.

He made his way to it and stood still looking down at it. He made the catholic gesture of crossing himself, before he put the flowers on the grave. He looked at the black marble headstone; it bore a simple inscription in gold lettering:

 

GISELLE

Died a Free Woman

31 October 2013

 

He bowed his head and said, 'I forgave you, straight away but Uncle would have none of it. I wish I had fought him harder. I should never have let this happen. Now I ask you for your forgiveness'

A voice from the side and slightly behind him, answered 'I believe that she probably has.'

He turned, his right hand moving inside his overcoat to his left shoulder. A hand reached out and stopped him. Its grip was like a vice. The man looked around to see a face he knew from photographs.

'You're David Williams', he said. 'Yes, Enrico', came the reply. Enrico Andrezzi or Rick to his friends and family realised that his two men had made no move to stop this intrusion. He looked around for Sergio and Paolo but could see no sign of them. David realised who he was looking for and answered his unspoken question. 'I think they are taking a nap'. 'Time to go', David added.

Rick knew he had no choice but to go with Williams. His dossier had outlined his military career and identified him as a genuine threat to even the most able killer the family could employ. Rick, though, had no desire to resist. He had been a virtual prisoner since Don Luigi had decided that Giselle had to die. Luigi Andrezzi viewed his nephew as soft and a risk to the family. Rick knew that even being Luigi's nephew did not mean that he could not or would not be disposed of, if necessary. He had managed to escape with his two bodyguards but it had taken him a long time to make his way to the UK. On the way he had read French newspapers which reported the shooting in a short article.

Rick was not in fact a weak man. He was a realist who knew the old days were over. When a Pope excommunicated the family, eventually even the Sicilians would listen. He had tried to move away from the traditional rackets of gambling and prostitution to a more acceptable legalised form of both. His past had caught up with him when the evidence of money laundering by Giselle and his brother Sergio had come to the attention of the FBI. Now Sergio was in jail serving a 30 year sentence for involvement in murder and fraud and Rick was a fugitive.

David guided him to a parked BMW X1 hidden off the main road. They set off for a safe house where Scotland Yard officers were waiting, along with an FBI agent, who had flown in the previous day, forewarned of Rick's arrival in the UK. They could have arrested him when he came ashore from the fishing boat that had ferried him from France. However they wanted to ensure his complete and unobserved disappearance.

The house in question was in a small Cornish fishing village that saw very few tourists between October and March. Waiting for him was Chief Inspector Pauline Atherton of Scotland Yard and Agent Frederick Scully of the FBI. They were met at the door by David's Head of Security, Jill Anders, a former colleague of Fred Scully, who with her deputy, Irene Palmer, had been instrumental in the arrest of Sergio Andrezzi, Rick's brother.

Jill showed them into the front room where the two law enforcement officers were waiting to interview him in relation to drug related crime, money laundering and fraud.

Jill and her deputy, Irene Palmer, had also been primarily responsible for uncovering the murders of Helen Johnstone, the Senior Accountant at Daresbury Projects and her sister, Ruth. Aided by the Carabinieri, they had traced them to Sicily but too late to prevent their torture and murder. The discovery of two bodies on a Sicilian beach had confirmed their worst fears. Jill's persistence, together with the aid of the local Carabinieri Captain, had led to a constant watch on a quiet villa. In turn this had raised the Carabinieri interest in Rick and his subsequent identification just north of Naples. Rather than arrest him, he had been tailed through Europe till he landed in Cornwall.

David, having handed Rick over, drove to his farmhouse overlooking Mount's Bay. There his wife and personal assistant, Andrea was waiting for him along with Irene, Gwen and Nazira. David had a brief conversation with Irene, asking her to keep in contact with Jill and be prepared to leave for Italy at short notice. He wanted the Andrezzi organisation destroyed once and for all.

He then checked with Andrea to confirm that everything was in place for S-Day (or Slavery Day, the coming first of January). He was assured that it was as far as Project Dominus was concerned. This was his plan to enter the Slave Supplies Industry.

The key problem for his business lay in the particularly the wide powers granted under the Female Enslavement Act for fathers to enslave unmarried daughters over the age of 18, with no upper age limit. This threatened to deprive him of some key female employees.

An unholy combination of employers' organisations such as the Confederation of British Industry and feminist groups had lobbied for concessions. The two had not worked together but the effect of both of them was to create a shift in the arrangements for the introduction of female enslavement. David had been part of one of the employer groups, which had got him noticed both by his colleagues and by the government.

The lobbying resulted in the promise of an Amendment Act in the very near future the immediate introduction of new rules which meant that businesses could now designate key female employees as assets of the company. This prevented them being enslaved by fathers or husbands for a period of up to three months. In the case of voluntary enslavement, they could enslave with their employer at any time during that period but not with any other person or organisation. When the three month period expired then, if they had not enslaved with their employer, they could be enslaved by anyone else satisfying the terms of the Act.

The only limits on the use of designation was that judicial enslavement could still occur for a scheduled offence and only 10% of the female labour force of a company was eligible. However, in the first case, the employer would still have first refusal when the female employee came to be sold.

There was currently a scramble to register employees under this concession. Nazira Khan had just been given Designated Female Asset (DFA) status 'She's number two on the list', said Andrea.

Who the hell is number one then,' said David, with a broad grin and automatically moving backwards to avoid Andrea's swinging handbag.

'I'm not your slave yet, I can still get the others to strap you over the whipping bench and give you forty whacks.' she said, breaking into laughter

Whilst business was more or less satisfied with the idea of DFA status for its key employees, the feminist groups had continued pushing for the exemption of daughters and wives entirely. The government had now announced a Female Enslavement Amendment Bill, to limit the rights of fathers to daughters aged 18 to 20. This would bring the UK into line with the USA but with a slightly more restrictive right to enslave. Many of the feminist groups had accepted that this was the best that could be achieved but there were still a few who were aiming to get the rights of fathers and husbands repealed entirely.

Lobbying was still continuing. The newly formed Slave Traders Association. The STA was afraid that mass enslavement by fathers and husbands could virtually wipe out the supply of slaves entirely. Even where fathers and husbands decided to sell, they might be able to demand very high prices, at least for several months until a market was properly established.

A few extreme feminist groups had come together under the umbrella organisation 'Women Against Re-enslavement' or WAR. They were urging women to resist the Act and any Amendment Act that might be passed, by refusing to give the required urine samples if their father or husband tried to enslave them. These samples were used in a pregnancy test, as pregnant women were exempt from enslavement.

WAR argued that the women were free at the time the sample was demanded and any attempt to take a sample by force would be both an assault and would render the enslavement invalid.

That night, the Ten O'clock News, had a lead story in which this argument was refuted by the Minister for Female Enslavement Affairs (shortened to the 'Minister of Slaves' by the press) who announced the issuing of new guidelines. These stressed that enslavement by fathers or husbands was a legally enforceable right and that solicitors should take no notice of threats from WAR about private prosecutions for assault and actions for damages. He further announced that women could now sign an 'intent' to enslave and have their sample tested during the last week of December. This would allow for instant enslavement on January 1^st, simply by logging on to the National Register of Slaves website and entering the appropriate passkey that had been given on receipt of a satisfactory sample.

The proposed Act would also allow the Minister for Slaves to make a variety of orders under the Act, setting out revised sentencing rules for women who were to be judicially enslaved. This was as a response to criticisms that a murderess would receive the same sentence as someone convicted of careless driving. The new proposals added the ability of the court to either impose a death sentence or a sentence of corporal punishment, as well as the sentence of enslavement.

At the moment it was not clear whether the Amendment Act would be passed in time for January 1, even if all possible Parliamentary procedures were used to speed its passage.