by Neil Randall
“Indeed she did,” Watson replied. “And in great detail. Referencing the fable about the horned owl, she told Miss Green that the mark of death was now hanging over everyone who attended the counselling sessions, over everyone who—”
“Wait! Why would Michelle want to avenge herself on a group of troubled young people who were in the same position as she was? If her parents really were abusing her, then why not just go after them?”
“Because Miss Rouse alleges that every member of the group was aware of the abuse she was suffering, that you all withheld information that could’ve saved her from years of agony. Therefore, she feels that you should all suffer, too. With that in mind, we’re planning to move yourself and Miss Green to the safe house the other group members have been sharing for the last few days. That way, your safety will be ensured. That way, Miss Rouse will be unable to harm you.”
When the officers left the holding cell, I thought back to my relationship with Michelle, isolating certain moments in time and place, when she’d been upset and emotional, moments when she may’ve let her guard down, when perhaps she’d tried to tell me something important, but I’d been too blind to see. But there had been so many uncomfortable scenes, big outbursts of emotion, what I’d taken for crocodile tears, when Michelle had broken down, telling me about all the times she’d self-harmed, how much she hated herself, how she’d really, truly wanted to end her own life. Only now, after hearing such disturbing revelations, did I realise that nearly all her disclosures were about effect rather than cause, that all she’d confided in me were the various outcomes, withholding what was ultimately behind all those dark, desperate impulses. Were, therefore, her diaries and letters really a cry for help, after all? Because her parents, the people closet to her, had abused not just her body but her trust, had let her down so monstrously, she now associated any kind of affection with abuse, to the extent that she had to implicate anyone (and by that I mean specifically myself, Doctor Rabie and the rest of the counselling group) who had ever showed her any kindness or consideration in the past.
“Incredible!” Price walked into the cell shaking his head. “After everything that’s happened today, now this Bannister chap has turned up out of the blue.”
“What?”
“Yes. Just as police were arranging your transit to the safe house, he simply waltzes into the station.”
Apparently, Bannister, after dropping me here, had called Mr and Mrs Rouse, to receive further instructions. Completely unexpectedly, they told him that Michelle had just contacted them by telephone, requesting an immediate meeting.
“By all accounts,” Price explained, “Miss Rouse was distraught, rambling, saying that she’d taken things too far, that she wanted to turn herself into the police, but desperately needed to speak to her parents first, face to face.”
Mr and Mrs Rouse then persuaded Bannister to lie low for the next twenty-four hours, contacting no-one, with the proviso that if he didn’t hear from them after that time, to presume that something had gone badly wrong, to hand himself into the police, telling them everything he knew.
“Which, I’m delighted to say, includes a complete corroboration of your story re: your whereabouts following your escape from the basement. And, in addition, the location of the Essex farmhouse – the scene of which police forensics teams are at this moment painstakingly examining.”
A huge sense of relief washed over me.
“And what else did Bannister say?” I asked, seeing him as the key to not just my own credibility, but many things regarding Michelle, because he’d clearly been closest to her right up until the time of the horrific killing spree.
“Well, from what I gather – and please remember, Bannister is still being questioned – the vast majority of his story, the information he’s provided regarding his background, relationship with Miss Rouse et cetera, has checked out. There is clear evidence of him attending meetings for victims of domestic abuse, and of him and Miss Rouse setting up an organisation for the protection of those very same vulnerable people.”
“And what happens now? What’s next for me and Liz, for everyone else from the counselling group?”
“As I understand it, you will be moved to the safe house as previously planned. But, suffice to say, you are no longer implicated in any wrongdoing. Suffice to say, you are now considered a victim not a perpetrator or accessory in any crime. In a few short hours, you’ll be able to have a shower and a change of clothes, you’ll be able to walk around in relative freedom – well, at least you won’t be encased in this windowless hole with its four lifeless walls, anyway.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
On arrival at the remote farmhouse, I was led into a sprawling front room with exposed wooden beams and a roaring open fire. In each corner, standing lamps provided soft, subdued light. From either sofa or armchair, the women turned and stared at me. All appeared pensive, some smoked, others’ held cups of tea or coffee. And even though there were few physical similarities between them – fat, thin, tall, short, dark or light hair – they were all strangely alike, in movement, expression, the way they held themselves, what they wore, even (although the dowdy cardigans and sweat bottoms had more to do with comfort than any true reflection of how each dressed in everyday life).
To try and lighten the atmosphere, I went up to each woman individually, shook her hand, and said how glad I was to see her again, only I wished it was in better circumstances – clichéd, granted, but sincere and appropriate nonetheless. Regardless, each one of them looked at me with utmost enmity and distrust.
Wendy, her plain, unremarkable face just as I remembered it, was the first to engage me in any substantial conversation. As she asked me about the original photograph sent to the office (clearly, all had been well briefed), I couldn’t help but picture her at one of the counselling sessions, an eighteen-year-old girl sucking back the tears, telling us about her debilitating obsessive compulsive disorder, how it took her over an hour to leave any given room, for fear of having left a gas ring on or a tap running.
“As you can imagine, with so much time on our hands, we’ve gone over every detail of the case, analysing the evidence, looking at things from each and every conceivable angle. Helen and Riordan were gentle souls. It’s painful to think of them being murdered in such a brutal manner.” Her eyes darted right and left, as if seeking approval or encouragement from the other women looking on. “And it didn’t really surprise us that you were the first point of contact. In the past, at the sessions, I mean, you were always the, erm…one person who channelled the flow, so to speak, who dictated things.”
This was so contrary to the sessions as I remembered them, I asked her exactly what she meant.
“Well, not to be unkind, Nigel, but you were terribly forward back then, weren’t you? your behaviour completely inappropriate, the way you went from girl to girl, trying it on, propositioning us, the way your groping hands used to wander, made us all feel very, very uncomfortable. Not to mention your outspoken views, on everything from the futility of counselling to an almost joyous endorsement of suicide.”
The forthright manner in which she qualified her previous comments completely threw me. Even today, I remembered each session as being a torturous ordeal for me – a shy, withdrawn young man who rarely left his own bedroom. Only when directly prompted (and this could be an arduous verbal coaxing, Rabie asking question after question, receiving only a few fractured sentences in return for his patient efforts) did I ever speak to anyone. To be told, years later, that I’d behaved like an irreverent, lecherous, sex-fiend was not only shocking but patently absurd. It was as if Wendy was talking about somebody else.
“That’s complete nonsense. It took six months before I felt comfortable telling anyone my name. For hours I sat in that poky little room feeling like a rabbit in the headlights. I—”
“Seriously?” said Cara, a tall, painfully thin woman with high cheekbones and porcelain skin. “Are you telling us that you don’t rememb
er the way you flirted with all us girls? For the first few sessions, you spent all your time working on Helen, sitting next to her, carrying her bags, acting like an obsequious lackey, telling her how beautiful she was, how intelligent, laughing at any vaguely amusing thing she might’ve said. It was a truly awful spectacle, how creepy and fawning you became, primarily because it was so blatant, because everyone knew exactly what you were after. Even more so, when Doctor Rabie mentioned your masturbation problems, how you always liked an audience, and how you kept getting caught exposing yourself.”
“What?” The incident she was presumably referring to, an excruciating episode at a local mental facility, occurred when I was trialling a powerful new anti-psychotic drug. To the best of my memory (and I had to be kept in full restraints for a week afterwards, a cloth gag inserted into my mouth to stop me from swallowing my tongue) was like an outtake scene from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Wired up on the strong, wholly unsuitable medication, suffering from wild heart palpitations, more scared than I’d ever been in my entire life, I attempted to escape from the facility, having convinced myself that the people there were trying to kill me. In the ensuing chaos, one of the orderlies tried to chase me down, ripping a gown from my back. The outcome: me, fully naked, running around the ward, down corridors, out into the car park. Hardly a case of exposing myself, or masturbating in front of people.
“That’s completely inaccurate. I wasn’t ever—” But before I could continue, a woman I’d never seen before poked her head into the room and told us dinner was ready.
Over an almost unbearably tense three-course meal, the realisation that these women held me not just in contempt, for past deeds I had no, or a very different recollection of, but in some way responsible for everything that had happened only deepened. With thinly-veiled references and caustic asides, it was clear that they saw me as the catalyst, a Frankenstein to Michelle’s monster (if she truly was guilty of such horrific crimes).
At a long table, we sat squashed together, an intimacy that wasn’t altogether pleasant or in any way welcome. As a result, I began to feel incredibly self-conscious, scared to move around too much, to lift my knife and fork, even, until every mouthful of food I put into my mouth felt taut with danger, a fear of bumping someone’s elbow, of chewing too loudly, breathing too much. By the time the main course was served, I wanted to crawl up into a ball, to disappear, to be anywhere other than I was right now.
In the end, in an admirable if clumsy attempt to diffuse the situation, Clare, flame-haired, freckle-faced, a chain-smoker, one of the more distinctive characters in the group, then and now, banged her open palm against the tabletop, rattling the condiments and glasses.
“Look. We’ve all talked this thing to death.” She turned and looked directly at me. “None of us were happy about you joining us here, Nigel. There’s so much resentment towards you, so many things from the past which don’t sit easy with any of us.”
“Resentment?” I said, having difficulty controlling my voice. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. I can think of nothing from the past that could have offended you so much. If anything, there were times when I felt incredibly intimidated by each and every one of you.”
“Huh!” Cara spluttered. “That’s rich. I don’t know how many times you shouted me down during a session, how you mocked me when I was trying to talk about my problems, to express myself, to open up, to understand why I felt the way I did.”
“But that was Jeffrey, not me. I never—”
“Oh sure.” Cara rolled her eyes. “But only because you egged him on; only because you had him wound around your little finger. Don’t think we didn’t know what was going on behind the scenes – the way you manipulated him, turning him into your little puppet. Of course Jeffrey was the one who got into trouble, who irked Doctor Rabie most, but you were the one who planted all the seeds of discontent. You were the one who made all our lives hell.”
Gloria, nervous, prematurely aged, a thick plait hanging down close to her waist, shot to her feet.
“I can’t believe you can sit there and lie through your teeth. First you pursued Helen, then Riordan. I saw you at work, firsthand, the time you cornered Riordan in a corridor, how you pinned her up against a wall and forced your hand between her legs.”
“What are you talking about? Bar Michelle, Riordan was the only other member of the group I considered anything close to a friend. We used to talk, exchange books and compilation tapes. I would never have dreamed of forcing myself on her. Never!”
“But I saw you, Nigel,” said Gloria. “And because of everything that happened, because you were so sleazy and twisted, we seriously thought you were the killer, that you were murdering each girl, in the order you molested them back then. Some of the things you used to say – the rape fantasies, the sexual violence – it made me sick.”
This provoked my most vehement denial yet. Impassioned words flowed, arguments, counter-arguments, refutations, statements of facts, things which were irrefutable in my mind, things which proved I was innocent of all allegations, that I would never have acted in the way they were accusing me of acting. But even as I spoke, at the back of my mind, a nagging voice kept repeating: Why? Why would they make something like this up?
“And if you won’t accept hearing this.” Cara stood up, pushing her chair back with her legs. “Maybe you’ll acknowledge it in writing, you own writing.”
She stormed out of the room, returning two or three minutes later with an envelope in her hand.
“Here.” She thrust it towards me. “Go into the study next door. Read it. Read it all.”
I took the envelope and turned it over. A single word – Cara – was written on the front, in my own distinctive, slanting handwriting. Of this I had no doubt whatsoever.
“And when you’ve finished,” she said, “maybe you’ll have the decency to at least acknowledge and respect our past pain.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
It’s hard to confront a version of yourself you never knew existed. But that’s exactly what I was about to do – confront a different Nigel Barrowman, a stranger writing in my own hand, expressing thoughts I could neither understand, rationalise or condone.
Dearest Cara,
I thought it was about time that I told you how I feel about you. Every night before I go to bed, you are the last thing I think about. When I wake up in the morning you drift back into my consciousness like a blissful, angelic vision. I love you. And I know you feel the exact same way about me. During sessions with Doctor Rabie, our eyes have often met across the room. Your sweet smile is a truly wonderful thing; the way it lights up your beautiful face always sends a shiver up and down my spine. The two of us being together forever is written in the stars. All we have to do now is be brave enough to trust in each other. For believe me, the gifts true love, the joining of two hearts, affords, are the most exquisite imaginable. Sweet Cara, take the chance, grab it with both hands!!!!
Before I go on, however, before we make that heavenly leap of faith, there are a few things you should probably know about me. With trust and love, remember, comes complete honesty. When I was much younger, around ten or eleven years old, in the penultimate or final year of middle school (when you’ve been prescribed as much medication, and undertook as many hours of counselling as I have, times and dates become muddled in your mind), two very unpleasant incidents occurred in quick succession, which perhaps contributed to the worsening of my condition. Around this time, I started to develop, physically, much quicker than most boys of my age. By that I mean, I went through an accelerated, traumatic puberty, rendering me a full grown man, with fully developed sexual organs and adult desires, but without the requisite maturity and understanding to control myself. In one of my classes was what I can only describe as (and please forgive the crass, offensive terminology, but I assure you, in this particular instance it is as apt as it is justified) a filthy slut, an eleven-year-old girl, no more than a child, who wore short skir
ts, make-up, who was forever talking about sex, boasting of sucking boys off, of getting fingered or rogered, of doing all kinds of disgusting, depraved things, in and out of school. One break-time, some older boys attempted to teach this slut a lesson. In the most brazen manner imaginable, in full view of the younger children, she had been flirting outrageously, flashing these older boys her knickers, pulling up her blouse and showing them her surprisingly full, rounded breasts, even going so far as to grope their crotches, feeling their erect penises through their trousers. Like pack dogs, the boys, no doubt aroused, balls of pent-up sexual confusion, chased the slut into an adjoining strip of woodland. Curious, me and a few other children who had witnessed the scene, rushed over to see what was happening. In a clearing, a secluded nook, the boys had forced the girl down onto her back, and were taking turns, pulling up her skirt, clambering in between her legs, and thrusting away at her, (“dry-fucking” was the terminology the other children used), in effect, having sex with her through their clothes. Being young and naïve, this scene naturally captivated me, for each time one boy moved aside for his friend, I caught sight of the top of the slut’s milky-white thighs. Her flimsy pink knickers had become twisted, sodden, wet through, showing wispy patches of dark, matted pubic hair.
When the bell sounded for the end of break-time, the boys and the other children panicked and ran off in the direction of the main building. I, however, remained for a full minute, maybe two, watching the slut, dazed, breathless, but with a strange, tranquil look upon her face, eyes squeezed shut, legs still splayed, knickers down by her knees now, fully exposing her genitalia. Just as I was about to walk away, fearing she would see me and get angry, she moved her hand down towards her vagina, and started to touch herself, to gently stroke the strange mass of pinkish flesh, inserting a finger deep inside, as if exploring her body, her pleasure, moaning, perhaps experiencing something close to an orgasm.
