Victims

At first she just sat there and wrote nothing, not a thing. Not one word stared back at her from the computer screen. Until she realised, glancing at the clock above and to her right on the bedroom wall, that almost three hours had passed.

Shit, maybe this return to writing wasn’t such a great idea. Even when she eventually typed that first word, ‘I’, and followed it up with ‘hope’ a few minutes later, it all felt alien to her. Amy Lane had two published books under her belt – each had sold over 500,000 copies – and yet here she sat, at her familiar desk, in her comfortable old tatty leather swivel chair with shreds torn off here and there, that her parents had bought her back in high school, gazing fondly out of the window at the beloved greens and browns of the Welsh countryside outside her window, surrounded by all the tools she was accustomed to using as a writer; laptop, notepad, pens, a plethora of contemporary and historical novels, dictionary, thesaurus and several non-fiction writing guides. Cups of coffee and cans of cola were consumed in vast quantities and strewn about her, as were chocolate and sweets of myriad varieties and even more colours. And, yet, now she felt almost unable to comprehend how to use them. 

After a little while longer words staggered, then trickled out of her mind and on to the virtual white sheet in front of her. With the classic old banker’s lamp on one side of the stained solid oak desk and a new-fangled modern tiered contraption from IKEA on the other, it came to her attention that she was engulfed by manifestations of the past and present. Amy loved writing, was damn good at it, and had already enjoyed some success in her fledgling career. Why couldn’t she do that again? But, to get to that point again, she knew she’d have to confront the things that lay dormant in her past. She’d avoided them for too long, buried them in the shadows of her mind. She’d got this far with inspiration mined elsewhere; her imagination, her experiences, or those of others she knew growing up. But now, following the revelations that had come to light following the reappearance of her uncle after the publication of her second novel and his subsequent arrest for what he’d done when she and her sister were kids, it had been three years since she’d touched a pen or a keyboard with the intention of really writing. 

Uncle Elijah – she shuddered and cowered in the chair at the very thought of his name – had been sent down a week ago, ordered to serve 25 years. Here she was now, back at a computer, with the intention of writing something serious and meaningful, thanks to the help of her therapist and best friend, Norah, who’d helped her through the darkest of times. Norah, unbeknown to Amy, went through the exact same thing as her. It was bad enough she and her sister, Emeline, had been molested by Elijah, but it turned Amy’s stomach to think that someone outside the family had also gone through what they endured. It somehow made her embarrassed, even more ashamed. She knew now she owed it to Norah, all her uncle’s victims, not just her and Emie, to speak up and speak out. She saw the novel as a way to channel the nausea, the shame, the pain; all of it, into something positive.

After the lamps seemed to light up her conscious, belatedly, the words eventually came tumbling out. After a frenzied and fruitful period of getting in the zone and bashing out a couple of thousand words, she eased back from the desk slightly and read back her opening sentence: ‘I hope my uncle gets murdered in prison for what he did to all of us. In fact, I’m going to make sure it happens’.

***

“Right, Ms Lane. Enough of the bullshit. It’s time to start playing ball.” 

The gauntlet is being laid down by the older, gruff, pitbull-looking detective. But he’s so hilariously ugly, cartoon-like, that I almost burst out laughing rather than into tears, which I’m sure is their intention. 

“But I’ve done nothing wrong, I’ve been dragged in here, unceremoniously in the middle of the night, I’m still wearing my pyjamas for god’s sake. And you’re questioning me without a lawyer present,” I reply, calmly. 

I’ve been writing long enough, studied enough of the law and police practices – not to mention been addicted to cop shows long enough – to know that if they’re trying to intimidate and probe me without having a legal representative present, that the cops must be pretty desperate. I’m sure that, added to the fact I’m just a fragile little lady, has them believing they can make light work of me. I decide to humour them. 

Besides, I’m a bleeding heart for cop or detective shows, obsessed with them. Grew up on The Bill, wanted to be Dana Scully and was in love with Fox Mulder in the X Files – okay, that wasn’t a cop show per-se, but the same ball park – fell in love with the grittiness of Southland and have watched every single episode of Blue Bloods, despite the acting being mostly terrible. I watched them all intently, for years, longing to be a perp, being ‘sweated in the box’, getting to go one on one with a slick, wild-eyed detective in a battle of wits and nerves. In the shows and films though they almost always direct it for the benefit of, or from the point of view of the detective, never the guy being detained. They’d haul in this tough as nails, tattoo-clad kingpin drug dealer or gangland thug from the Warrior Kings, Los Reyes Del Infierno or whatever bullshit gang name they can come up with and, quite quickly, the tough exterior of the perp gets quickly exposed as merely bravado, worn down rapidly with the threat of jail time or other consequences – being a rat – hung over their heads, until there’s no rugged veneer left and the cop has them right where he or she wants them, nothing remaining but a sad, whimpering, emasculated little coward. 

I love those shows dearly but always found that favouritism kind of pathetic and misleading. It wouldn’t always go down like that. Hardened cons who’ve been in the joint before or career criminals wouldn’t crumble so easily, if at all. If someone’s been inside before they’ve survived unimaginable horrors. They might harbour a lifetime of hatred towards the police, festering deep down inside of them. They may have been in the game their whole lives. It might even be the family business. Prison time, while inconvenient and hardly desirable, is routine, almost all of them have been there before. And besides, cast iron prison time is rarely dished out so easily in the real world, especially without motive, witnesses and, in-particular, evidence. After getting hooked on so many programmes and as I grew older and more inquisitive, I began to actually question the methods and techniques. I wondered how, off screen, it might go a lot differently. Especially with a clever perp, one who knew the law inside out, sitting on the other side of the desk.

So, he asks me again, Detective Farley. More like barks. Orders me to tell him what I know. His partner, Detective Fransone, is placid; younger, friendlier, not to mention easier on the eye. But he’s clever too, he sits easily in his chair and hasn’t said a word so far, a cool expression adorning his face, which makes me wary. But, I fancy taking them on. 

“Listen, I don’t know what to tell you. It’s just a book, they’re just words on a page, a computer screen. It’s not real,” I say, calmly as possible.

“Ms Lane,” Fransone breaks his silence. I remain still but his first words make the hairs on the back of my neck stand up, something Farley wasn’t able to achieve.

“Don’t you think it’s pretty peculiar, maybe even just slightly interesting, that you wrote about wanting your uncle dead? What was it you wrote, ‘I hope my uncle gets murdered in prison… In fact, I’m going to make sure it happens’. Within his first month on the inside he gets stabbed to death and is left to bleed out, his guts spilled out all over the floor. Ugly. Any cop in the world would want to interview someone who’d written that.”

“I have no issue admitting that I don’t care he’s dead, in fact I’m glad,” is my confident response. “He raped 14 young girls, all under the age of 10, over four decades, many of them repeatedly, including his brother’s two daughters. He molested his own two nieces. My sister and I were just 5 and 7. I don’t care one bit that this happened to him. He deserved it. But he was caught for what he did, he was punished, severely. He was 71 and going to die behind bars, that was good enough for me. Actually, that was better. I’ve watched enough cop shows to know how horrible it is for child molesters in prison, even if they do keep them altogether now rather than in general population. Thinking of him suffering daily and deteriorating, becoming a shell of a man, getting preyed upon himself for a change, that was far more satisfying to me than the thought of his suffering and misery being ended quickly by a makeshift knife, even if there would have been a few brief minutes of pain. That’s a stone in the ocean compared to the suffering and misery me and Emie have been through, not to mention his 12 other victims.”

Farley, clumsily, weighs in. “But you wrote the fucking words.” He snarls and spits. His grotesque and unfriendly face may scare some detainees, but not me.

“I write fucking fiction, Detective Farley,” I snap back. “Sure, I might use personal experiences and borrow stuff from here and there, but it’s all in my mind. There was plenty of stuff in Victims that didn’t happen to me or Emie, or any of the other girls. If you think the novel’s opening words are striking, good. That’s what I was going for. It’s what us writers use to entice the readers in. It’s called a hook. It’s like you thinking I’m in here on your hook, but you don’t scare me and I’ve done nothing wrong. You haven’t even asked me if I’d like to see a lawyer yet. So, either charge me with something or let me go.”

“If you speak to a lawyer you’ll be in here longer, plus it makes you look even more guilty,” he replies, thinking that’s going to fluster me.

“Fine, I’ve got nowhere to be, plus it would make me kind of happy to waste more of your time.”

Even more fury rages across Farley's face. Fransone is more puzzled, he tells his partner “We’ve got nothing legitimately to hold her on. We’ve got to let her go.”

The colour of Farley’'s face tells me he's close to combustion on the inside. “Ms Lane,” says the delightful Detective Fransone. “You’re free to go, but please don’t leave the country.”

***

So, anyway. I guess it’s now time to jot some thoughts and ideas down again and start to put into motion plans for my next novel. It can’t be as hard as the last one. And, thanks to someone’s shank in prison and Elijah now dead, plus being a brief suspect in his murder, I have plenty more ammunition for ideas. I could even write a sequel, perhaps. I enjoyed pitting my wits against a pair of seasoned detectives, and you have to admit, I kind of thrived in the box. Certainly had more backbone and courage than many I’ve seen on screen, who crumble like kindling wood when exposed to the flames. I was grateful though that I wasn’t dragged in again. The detectives called by the house two more times after that; the first was just an empty attempt to scare me, they were fishing for more information, but it quickly became apparent I had none and they moved on. The second time was to inform me they’d actually collared the guys who carried out the murder. Two lifers, also rapists. One had murdered several of his victims to keep them quiet. Terrible men, who were somehow slighted and thought themselves superior than a child rapist. Seemingly indifferent to the crimes they’d committed themselves. The investigation was wrapped up pretty quickly after that.

I was happy I’d fooled Farley. I still see his rancid face now and it makes me cringe. I was a little more disappointed in Fransone. He appeared calm, cool and more talented. He had me worried for a while. But perhaps he just looked beyond the novel and my words and thought, knew, they’d need more than mere words in a book. But, even he failed to detect the link between me and the murder. Luke Wilbraham was the prison guard who found Elijah’s body, two minutes after the attack on B Wing in Forge Hill Prison. He had worked there a few years and had a spotless record, so probably wasn’t looked at too hard in terms of pinning any guilt on. Robbie Major and Niall McGuinness readily admitted to killing Elijah. “He was a nonce,” Luke told me they’d given as motive. I think they would have done it for free, he’d said. As it was, each of them were happy with just £1,000. That buys a lot of home comforts inside, apparently. Cigarettes, soft drinks and porn mags – even sex. So I hear. 

Luke didn’t want a penny though, even though he had risked his career. Not that he saw it as much of one. He didn’t care about many of the prisoners under his watch. Certainly not guilty ones. And especially not ones who’d sexually abused someone he loved. Luke is Norah’s older brother, step brother I guess you’d have to say. That doesn’t diminish their relationship, they’re close, but it certainly helped us go undetected. The two of them might as well have the same last name though. They have the same mum. Laura left Luke’s dad because of domestic violence and got remarried to Frank, Norah’s dad, a few years later. He’s older, Luke, but not by much and they were close growing up. He was 14 when she was raped by Elijah, aged just 7. The fact he’s Wilbraham and Norah’s surname is Lovell aided our situation hugely. A red flag would have been raised otherwise, I’m sure of it. Norah had actually come to me with the idea in one of our sessions when I was struggling to deal with the pain and shame of my ordeal, our ordeals. I can’t believe I went for it, but it struck me as something I really wanted, it even seemed justified. I mean, I guess it was in a way. 

The lamps on either side of my desk illuminate my mind and I begin to put words on the white screen in front of me. I’m inspired and I write for almost four hours non-stop. When I do come up for air, I push the tatty old leather swivel chair back from the desk slightly and read back my opening sentence. “I got a man murdered and no-one will ever know.”