After Mary calmed down, Sarah got up and went to the door to hear if there were people nearby. Then she looked for something heavy to put behind the door. She returned to her place and said, "I'll call Commander Lawan to help us get out of here."
She asked: How can you trust him after what the two investigators did?
Denied: It can't be my mom mentioned him in her last letter and I'm sure he's a good person we can trust.
She said: How do you know that? Ninety-five percent of the policemen are corrupt in my country!
She smiled: You said it! Ninety-five are corrupt, so there are five left, and I'm sure he's one of them. Let us not lose hope now and try, okay.
He turned towards the house and thought: Where are you, Sarah?
The commander received a call and replied: Hello Lawan speaking? Miss Sarah! Are you okay?
She replied, "Don't worry, I'm fine. I can't talk for long so we can save the battery. There's something you should know about Nurse Jane... She's dead."
Shocked: She died! are you sure?
She answered: Yes, she was with us in the same place before the men moved her.
Someone shouted: Commander! You must come to see this!
The commander turned and then said to her over the phone: Hold on.
All the men went upstairs, where they found the nurse's body lying beside the bathtub, her wrists cut off, blood all over the place. The forensic team entered the toilet and started their work.
The investigator came out and moved away from the police for a while, then said: You're right, we have just found the nurse and she committed suicide.
Mark got up after inspecting the body and found the commander waving to him. He approached him and said: What's the matter?
He was holding his phone, he answered, "It's Sarah!"
He wondered, "Is she okay?" Where's she?
He took the commander's phone and said: Sarah Are you okay? What happened to you?
As soon as she heard his voice, she shouted angrily: You traitor, don't talk to me! Wait till I get out of here, I won't save your skin, I'll kill you and that fast boiling!
Before he was justified, the commander took his phone back and continued his conversation with her: Calm down, please, we don't want them to know about the phone, we have to keep calm...
"You're right," she sighed, "but I can't stop thinking that they ran away and left us."
He walked away from the crime scene and said, "Miss Sarah, I can't explain on the phone, but whatever you saw wasn't real."
She sighed, then said: What do you mean she committed suicide? I'm sure she was dead when she was here with us!
He replied: This means that they transferred her until the play was completed... (Then he wondered): "With us!" Who is with you?
She replied: You won't believe it! It's Mary, the girl who went missing.
He said: It is unbelievable! So, she's who was with you that night?
Yes, she answered, she had been kept in the basement of that house all that passed years.
He said: Can you tell me where you are? Anything so we can reach you?
She replied: This will be difficult, because we're now in a dark, deaf room, but I saw the decor of the house from the inside, which indicated that the owner is wealthy.
He said, "Okay, I'll manage it. listen carefully, don't do anything reckless, I'll come to rescue you no matter what happens, trust me!"
She hung up, then sighed in relief.
Tuesday, 5th May
Mark personally interrogated Mr. Tan, angry at his cold-bloodedness and indifferent responses to other people's lives.
Mr. Tan said, "Do whatever you want, you have a few hours until the period of custody is over."
He sighed angrily, then remembered something and said, "Okay, then let's connect the events that have happened so far together. First you told us that you sent the letter to Mrs. James, Miss Sarah's mother. To get her response, you added some information she needed, so you made sure she took the bait, but you were surprised that Sarah was here instead. And with that, you took advantage of her goal and went on with your plan.
He furrowed his eyebrows: What plan are you talking about?
He smiled and turned between the pages of the file, saying: Come on! Are the symptoms of aging already started? The plan to find your missing granddaughter, Mary, you've known Sarah since the first day you met her, not like you claimed, you went with her in her case and made her investigate another case and throw her into danger just for your own sake.
He refused, saying: This is not true! The two issues are intertwined, she may go a little further at some times, but she always gets back on track!
He said: So, you admit the fact that you took advantage of her.
He answered: Yes, I know how her search for her stepfather will end. She was the right person. I wanted a person whom no one would suspect. A stranger who would not be questioned.
He asked: What is the result of her search?
He replied: You must have already heard of Max's having a twin, Max kills his older brother to get his money, but he ends up going to a nursing home because of a car accident.
Then he added: He got involved in gambling and owed to some people thousands, he didn't stop here and continued hoping to win some money and get out of trouble.
Mark said, "These guys were the ones who attacked Mary's house that night?"
He nodded affirmatively: Their attack on the house at that time was due to the great similarity between the brothers, the men of that gang thought that he was trying to evade them and evade payment, which made them break into the house and harm everyone who was in it. Because of the shock, his brother's wife died, and her father moved with his two granddaughters from the house, and they abandoned it completely.
Mark said: By this time, Max had already left Thailand and immigrated to the United States.
Mr. Tan continued: That's right. A year after the incident, I received a mail telling me about his condition and how he became. He did not ask about the conditions of his family or what his actions caused losses, he was happy to obtain a new nationality and family.
Mark asked, "That's weird!" If he was happy there then why would he come back here? And why was Mrs. James texting you? What did she discover?
He replied: She discovered her husband's secret. The truth is that I never text her, but she was texting me as Max because of her doubts.
Mark: Well, we found in your house the letters you were getting from her, let's say that what you have said so far is true, why didn't you say anything?
He answered: Because of Mary, I knew that she was still alive, but I didn't know where she is, for the sake of her life I preferred to remain silent.
He said in an angry tone: Your eldest son's life has been destroyed because of his reckless brother, and you say that you preferred silence! What a gentleman you are!
Food was brought to Mr. Tan, so Mark went out for a while and met with the rest of the team. Jan said: He is lying. The wife didn't die because of trauma, but because of childbirth.
Mark: We can't trust what he's saying because he's been lying all the time.
Then the commander took out his phone and called her: How are you two?
She whispered: "I'm not sure, but since yesterday they have been moving around the house, what happened with you? Did you find anything new?"
He said: We have questioned Mr. Tan, and he told us that he had sent that letter to find someone to find his granddaughter.
She said: Mr. Lawan, Mary, told me that Mr. Tan is not her grandfather, nor her relative, he's a friend of her family.
He asked: Did she say that?
She replied: Yes. There is something I don't understand! Why all the trouble to find a girl he has nothing to do with?
It makes sense, Mark whispered, he was too calm for a grandfather who had found his granddaughter dead.
Tell her what they found, then she hung up and hid the phone. Mary said, "But why would Mr. Tan lie?"
She replied: I was wondering about the same thing, but I found out the reason when Jane kidnapped me, in other words, he planned to kidnap me, but not directly, Mr. Tan apparently didn't know where you were exactly but he was sure that you were alive, and because Jane's question was going to get him in trouble, he came up with that plan, Sending a letter to seduce me coming here, all this was in order to find you, Mary who had mysteriously disappeared, but I don't know what he meant by it all.
Then she added: The issue of my stepfather Max was just a bait until I came here, and he gave me the evidence to search for you, your picture, the puzzle and the old house, all these things were connected in one way or another so we can found you, and after he came close to finding you, he told me where my father is.
She denied, saying: This is not possible! All these years, I have been praying to God to send someone to rescue me from these walls, but I didn't know that someone would have to pay the price for my survival.
She replied: He didn't just sacrifice me, but your grandfather and my father... Everything that happened to me would have happened to my mother if she had been alive.
She asked her: Do you mean that my grandfather...
She nodded: Yes, he just passed away, I'm sorry, I didn't want to carry your heart any more grief.
She stared at the floor: It's okay, living in that dark room, made my heart dead from feelings.
Then Sarah said: When we get out of here, I will make him apologize for the trouble he has caused. I want to hear from him the reasons why he did all this.
***