Hmm. I mean, not impossible, but.
There is one service area with a pub in it (near Beaconsfield). But it’s probably not that one.
Otherwise, well, every service area has a non-motorway access road, usually with gates and “no entry” signs and so on. And I suppose if Alice had her phone she could tell it “find the nearest pub”, and if she were lucky it would be less than an hour’s walk away. And then I suppose Brian could guess what she’d done and do the same thing. But it’s thin, devilish thin.
Yep. Near enough impossible as to make no odds.
Meanwhile the programme has handed would-be abductors/rapists/experimental anatomists a handy new tool.
‘She’s an alcoholic! I’m taking her to rehab!’
Do we reckon Brian has shares in G4S?
Brian had the car with him outside the pub, to wrestle her into. So he must have managed to get it through the gates on the non-motorway access road somehow. Would he have been given the keypad numbers for the gate if he explained to the services’ manager? How long would that have taken him to arrange?
There are suggestions elseboard that it was in fact a garage with loos and shop attached rather than a motorway service station. In which case the acoustic in the bogs was wrong, though that kind of set-up would perhaps have had a boozer nearby. (So why did it take Brian an hour to find her?)
That echoey bog was rubbish wherever it was; they are actively designed not to do that. (Because who wants to have other people taking a leak or a dump amplified?)
How do I know? No idea why, but someone who was involved in designing them told me, some time probably at the end of last century.
I suppose one could go and test the theory by shouting “Alice!” into a service area bogs, but one wouldn’arf get some funny looks…