Dead Girl Found

by Giles Ekins

  Eighty-Two

  Charlotte Mary McBain, known as Charlie, together with John Keith Wells, known as JK, were taken by ambulance to the A&E department of West Garside General Hospital.

  After the cut on her hand had been cleaned, the glass shards removed and then stitched up, she was given pain-killers and transferred to the police station. There she was arrested and questioned under caution about the assault on John Wells. Now that Charlie knew his name, she was more convinced than ever that she had never met him. Even at her most wasted she could usually remember the men she had been with or met at a party.

  After giving her statement, Charlie was released on police bail whilst further investigation took place. She was instructed to return in two weeks. Charlie spent those anxious days telling herself that everything would be all right, after all she was the injured party, the creepy bastard had assaulted her sexually, hadn’t he?

  It was his fault, if he had not come onto me like that. If he had not grabbed my arse and tried to put his hand between my legs, none of this would have happened.

  IT WAS NOT MY FAULT!

  However, a seismic shock awaited Charlie when she presented herself at the police station. She was told that the CPS considered that there was a case to answer and so was charged with Grievous Bodily Harm for the assault on John Wells.

  ‘What about the guy who assaulted me?’ she asked indignantly.

  ‘Sorry, love, the CPS didn’t consider there was enough evidence, your word against his. No evidence, nobody saw nowt, no witnesses!’ said the sergeant who had read out the charge sheet.

  ‘That’s fucking outrageous! The bastard grabbed my arse and tried to grope my cunt and you do nothing about that, but instead charge me. Where’s the justice in that?’

  ‘He needed something like 15 stitches, he’s scarred for life, you could have put his eye out.’

  ‘Should’ve rammed that glass into his balls, that’d be justice, he’d not be pestering girls again then, that’s for sure.’

  ‘That’s as maybe, Charlie, but you’re bailed to appear at Leeds Crown Court. You’ll be notified of the date, make sure you attend, else it’ll go bad for you, you clear on that?

  ‘Yeah, even though it’s a travesty.’

  ‘And be warned, you could be facing a custodial sentence, best be prepared for that.’

  ‘Jail? This gets worse.’

  ‘Just think yourself you’re not on remand, it was a serious assault.’

  ‘The assault was on me, not him!’

  Still protesting at the injustice, Charlie was led out of the police station, ‘Just make sure you attend,’ was the last thing the police said to her.

  Eighty-Three

  At her trial, Charlie pleaded not guilty, asserting that she was instinctively reacting to the assault on her person. However this was not accepted by the court, neither was her plea in mitigation that she was suffering from RTS, the prosecution successfully arguing that no rape had been reported to the police and that there was no record that Charlie had ever sought counselling for the alleged rape.

  She was found guilty, in his summing up the trail judge called Charlie a dangerous young woman who had to be locked up in the interests of public safety and accordingly sentenced her to four years imprisonment

  She was taken down and after assessment, transferred to HMP Askham Grange to serve out her sentence.

  Eighty-Four

  With the daily threat of violence and enforced prostitution behind her, Josie readily settled into life in the squat.

  It was a lazy, easy, indolent life. There was little to do, marijuana was plentiful, heroin was available for a price and when Josie got fed up of (desultorily) cleaning the toilets, nobody seemed to care. She went out on a couple of shoplifting expeditions with Emily, one of the other girls there, but her nerves got the better of her. Even the most dim-witted unobservant shop keeper could not help but notice her anxiety and so the missions were aborted.

  Again, nobody seemed to care.

  The only activity that the ‘collective,’ as they called themselves, showed any enthusiasm for, was political discussions. These discussions centred around the three tenets of: a) the evils of capitalism, b) the genius of Marxism and c) the greatness of Stalin. Anyone who held dissenting views or did not toe the absolute ‘party’ line was denounced as a class traitor, which Josie found ironic. Most of these ‘class warriors’ were from the middle class that they professed to so despise, growing up with all the privileges of being the scions of lawyers, bankers, doctors and wealthy businessmen.

  Josie was at best, lukewarm for the ‘cause’ and quickly found the endless discussions boring. She thought about moving on, but then she had a short relationship with an older man called Mark, He was a Cambridge University philosophy lecturer who had opted out of academic life to become a full-time heroin addict. Josie now started injecting heroin, introduced to the needle by Mark. It was also at this time she got her first tattoos, the first of many, as addicted to the tattooist’s needles as she was the heroin needle. It was a means of expressing herself after so long when she had had no identity of her own, merely a thing owned and abused at will by others.

  But then one day, out of the blue, Mark packed his rucksack and said that he had to go and ‘find his head’ and just walked out of the squat and Josie’s life.

  Strangely, Josie felt relief. It was not that she disliked Mark, far from it. She had found his company enjoyable and the (occasional) sex pleasurable but was finding life in the squat almost as inflexible as her life in Leeds. Mark’s departure therefore now gave her the resolve to move on.

  Eighty-Five

  Hello, Joyce Jowett, who’s calling please?’

  ‘Mum, it’s me.’

  ‘Josie! Oh my God, Jose, Josie, darling, where are you? we’ve missed you so, so much. Are you Ok?’

  ‘I’m fine, just fine, Can I talk to Daddy, please?’

  There was a coolness to Josie’s voice that Joyce could not help but detect and her heart sank. She had hoped that over time the hateful words between them might be forgotten, might be forgiven, but she could tell that this was not so. Hateful words cannot be unsaid, cannot be retracted, they fester like an open wound, and although they can sometimes be regressed to the back of the mind, the merest trigger can bring those words flooding back

  ‘Where are you, Josie, tell us where you are, please, and we’ll come and get, you. And Josie, I’m so sorry for anything I said which upset you, but please just come home.’

  But even as Joyce was making her apology. Josie could again hear the words that had been forever seared on her memory. ‘I wish to God we’d never had you, you ungrateful little bitch. You’ve been nothing but trouble ever since you were born. Go on, get out of this house.

  ‘I’m not ready, not ready to forgive, not yet ready to come home,’ she said coldly, the ice in her voice more devastating to Joyce than blazing anger would have been, ‘Please put Daddy on the line.’

  Reluctantly. Joyce handed the phone over to Dennis, thinking that he will only make a mess of things again and not get the information they needed. He could be so useless at times.

  ‘Josie, sweetheart.’ Dennis exclaimed, excitedly ‘Are you coming home? We have missed you terribly.’

  ‘I’m not ready, I told Mum. I just need some money. Can you send me some money?’

  ‘Of course, but, where are you?’

  ‘I’m in London but that’s all I’m going to tell you. I need some money as a deposit on a flat I’m going to rent. Can you send me a thousand pounds? I’ll pay it back when I can.’

  ‘London? Won’t you tell us where, at least let us come and visit you.’

  ‘No. and if you try and find me, you’ll never ever see me again. I’ll come when I’m ready and on my own terms.’ One of those ‘terms’ would be the complete exclusion from Damien anywhere near her, his rape of her was not forgotten or forgiven either. ‘Will you send me the money?’

  ‘Of course, I’
ll send it to your bank, but I need your account details.’

  Josie read out the account number and the sort code from her credit card but realising her credit card was probably maxed out, added. ‘On second thoughts Daddy, can you make it two thousand?’

  ‘OK, but only on the condition you keep in touch regularly. Let us know how you are, your mother worries so much about you.’

  She should have fucking thought about that before she kicked me out of the house, thought Josie.

  ‘’OK, I promise,’ and she put down the phone.

  ‘And?’ demanded Joyce.

  ‘You heard, she wants money, two thousand pounds.’

  ‘And you agreed?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘You idiot. Don’t you realise that as soon as she gets the money, we’ll never hear from her again.’

  ‘Still had to give it her, didn’t?’

  But for once, Joyce was right. That was the last they ever heard from her.

  Eighty-Six

  HMP for Women Askham Grange, located by the village of Askham Richard near York, does not look like a prison. It more closely resembles a red brick country mansion built by a newly wealthy coal mining magnate with little imagination and even less taste, as if unable to decide what style of domestic architecture he liked and so decided to incorporate them all.

  Nevertheless, despite its confused and chaotic architecture, Askham Grange, as a prison, was far more inviting in appearance than, say, Dartmoor or Wormwood Scrubs. Housing about 128 inmates serving sentences of up to five years, the prison ethos concentrated on rehabilitation and re-settlement back into the community.

  It was for Charlie a redemption. The ordered life, the discipline and the institutional structure all helped to get her life back on track. The pure incandescent rages which had so consumed her life since the rape now subsided. Which does not mean that all was forgiven or forgotten, far from it, but her surroundings , ordered life and the counselling she received enabled her to deal with the anger.

  She worked out in the gym, getting fitter and stronger than she had ever been in her life and although illicit alcohol and drugs were available (at a price) she did not succumb to the temptations.

  She looked, and felt, as well and as attractive as she had ever done.

  Charlie attended classes, including a writing course, intending to resume her ambitions of getting into a good university, probably not Oxford or Cambridge, but a good red brick university rather than one of the more recent upgraded polytechnics.

  Strangely, I felt almost happy in Askham. It was not a holiday camp or spa, but I was happy, although not in an institutionalised way. I had no intention of staying in jail a day longer than I had to and certainly had no intention of ever coming back, but for those months, the demons had been corralled in a secure cage.

  I knew from day to day what my routine was. I kept my nose clean, my head down, stayed out of trouble and made the absolute best of it. I read a lot, even wrote some short stories, (which were crap, of course, but never mind, that was not the point. I was learning)

  I made some friends, good friends, especially Bella, a Jamaican girl who had been jailed for persistent shop-lifting and benefits fraud. We briefly shared a cell and one night she crept into my bed and we had sex. She was no more a lesbian than I was, but at that time and in that place, we needed the comfort of a human touch, of a warm body. The touch of her tongue on my pussy was exquisite, better by far than those charmless, faceless, fucks of my old life.

  Bella was released shortly afterwards but we kept in touch for a while.

  But the gods, the bastard gods who make it their business to shit on you from a great height and fuck up your life, were not yet done with me.

  My mother only came see me in Askham twice in the two years that I was there. She claimed it was too far, too expensive, too difficult to get to and that it hurt her back and knees to have to walk so much. I did not mind, she had never displayed much of an interest or maternal instinct towards me before.

  It was on her second visit, about five months before my due release date when my world came apart again. Big time.

  Eighty-Seven

  As soon as Josie confirmed that the money was in her account, she began to look around for a small flat, a bed-sit with mod cons all in the same room.

  The flat she eventually found, a place just off the Caledonian Road, was an Edwardian terrace house converted into 4 flats. A woman with lots of cats lived in the basement, a Syrian family lived on the ground floor, an elderly widow shared the second floor with her even more elderly sister whilst Josie had the upper floor, the former servant’s room.

  She kept herself to herself, paid her rent on time and made sure that none of the other occupants knew of her secret life.

  Josie was an injecting heroin addict, and although with a permanent address she could now claim benefits, she supplemented her income by working three nights a week as a sex-worker in the Honeypot massage parlour on York Way, near Kings Cross.

  She met up with Devin, the Kings Cross dealer who became her regular supplier of heroin, and almost as a courtesy took him up on his offer of ‘the biggest black dick’ she ever saw, but was not overly impressed, but she would count him as one of her few friends,

  Did she ever think of home, of going back? Probably not, except in anger and sorrow, her brother had raped her, and her mother had all but thrown her out of the house. What was there to go back for?

  Was she lonely? Probably, in a strange way she maybe missed the company in the squat, despite the incessant Marxist indoctrination and anti-Tory diatribes.

  And then one late afternoon she caught the tube down to Kings Cross to meet up with Devin for her buy. He was not there, and so Josie began a frantic search for one of other dealers, dealers that Devin had pointed out to her from time to time. The one she found, dressed in the ubiquitous grey hooded sweat shirt, was aged about fourteen but already had the dead eyes that knew only too well that his life was but a short journey to the cemetery

  Josie bought whatever heroin he had, enough she hoped, to keep her in stock until Devin returned.

  Eighty-Eight

  It was the smell

  The smell of death.

  Eighty-Nine

  The Clusterfuck- part five.

  She sat down heavily in the hard wooden chair in the visiting room.

  ‘Oh, me bunions are killing me, Charlotte. You don’t know what that journey does for me, first to get the bus to the station, train to York. I know it’s not that far from Garside, but it takes hours, stopping at every bleedin’ cow in the field, every sheep in the fold, hours it took, And then the walk from the station to catch the bus out here and the walk up to the gate and all the checks and searches, I tell you, I’m done, plumb worn out and I’ve got to do it all again to get back home. Life’s a trial, I can tell you.’

  ‘Thanks for coming Mum, I know it’s not easy, but I appreciate it. I do.’

  ‘How much longer have you got in here, anyway?’

  ‘A few months, provided I keep my nose clean.’

  ‘Make you make sure you do, Charlotte. I can’t be coming out here all the time.’

  Twice, twice in 18 months she had been to see me, hardly all the time, but I said nothing. What would have been the point. ‘I’m glad you came; I said, actually meaning it.

  ‘Reason I came is to show you this, in the paper. In the ‘Gazette.’ Thought about posting it but don’t know how long it would or even if they would let you have it?’

  ‘Depends.’

  She passed over the newspaper to me, I could immediately see the article she had come all this way to show me,

  GARSIDE GIRL FOUND DEAD FROM OVERDOSE.

  Daughter of prominent local citizen reported dead from heroin overdose.

  The ‘Gazette’ can exclusively reveal that Josephine Jowett, 19, the daughter of prominent business owner, Mr Dennis Jowett has apparently died from a drug overdose in London.

  The Met
ropolitan Police have confirmed that Josephine was discovered two days ago in a squalid London flat, apparently surrounded by drug paraphernalia including needles and quantities of heroin.

  It is believed that Miss Jowett had lain dead in her flat for some days before being discovered by her landlord after other tenants complained of a foul smell.

  A post mortem is to be carried to confirm the cause of death and an inquest is to be held at a future date to be confirmed.

  Two years ago, Josephine had been a star pupil at the Grange Comprehensive and was described by her former headmaster Mr James Edwards as a model student, a bright girl, well liked and full of promise. A tragedy that her life has been so cruelly cut short by the modern scourge of hard drugs such as heroin or crack-cocaine’

  I bet Edwards did not even know who Josie was until he looked her up the year books.

  The ‘Gazette’ extends its sympathies to the Jowett family and will report on any further development as they become known.

  The article was accompanied by a photo of Josie. The photo looked to have been taken when she was about fifteen. She was smiling prettily at the camera, bright eyed, full of life. Obviously taken before the bastard Damien raped her when she was sixteen, (I mean, she could hardly pose for happy family photos after that, could she?)

  ‘I know she was a special friend of yours, even though I never met her, you never brought her around, did you?’

  ‘Meant to, several times, but it just never seemed to happen.’ Fat chance that was ever going, with you slumped all over the settee still in your housecoat, pissed out of your skull and the house stinking of rancid food and cat litter.