Throw Me to the Wolves

by Patrick McGuinness

Lynne Forester has certainly lined them up: two ex-teachers, four ex-pupils, the school headmaster, some neighbours, and a man who used to work in the recently defunct music shop I remember at the top of Jackdaw Lane. Wolphram was a regular there, a good customer, and I can’t imagine what the man who sold him styluses and guitar plectrums and CDs has to say. She has more in store, I know, because she needs to ration it all, keep on with the sneak previews, the tasters and the titillations. Lynne and her like can make anything happen if they want to, back there in the past. You can retrace a dead girl’s footsteps, but you can’t change the turning she took. No, but you can take a man’s past and coat him in guilt.

  I try to replicate how we read newspapers; how the newspaper reads itself inside us:

  I look at the photos first, then I leaf through the pages with that half-alert eye which makes us flick to the end of the paper – tabloid or broadsheet, it makes no difference – taking in a few images and headlines, a few adjectives, the eye-to-brain shorthand of the newsprint-browser, until I get to the letters and horoscope and sports pages, where I stop and turn back. I have a small word-hoard already, a shiny catch from the eye’s first, slack, dragnet: dandy, aesthete, strange, creepy, sexual, death, obsessed, boys, homosexual, temper, inappropriate. Then Emily Dickinson, gay poet Thom Gunn, suicide, Sylvia Plath. It is like the cream at the top of the milk in the old glass bottles, something distilling itself upwards, a thick fat foretaste of what lies below. The words wink at each other across the columns. They are in on it, too. Then a diaspora of other words, more innocent, but infected now by the purpose they’re put to: alone, loner, distant, intellectual, always overdressed, formal, and then, laughably but I’m not laughing, books, foreign films, poetry, death.

  Gary’s coffee is there. He has made it himself and not used the machine. It tastes no better, but this small act of consideration suggests he has bad news.

  ‘They’re charging him.’

  The Doc

  As deputy head, Doc Monk also teaches other subjects, and, just when they’ve abandoned Latin in the hope of avoiding him forever, he returns in the guise of a history teacher. He keeps his trembling Jack Russell in a basket by his desk, and every now and then the dog takes a turn around the room, its crusty arsehole displaying icicles of fur-trapped turds. Stalagshites, Danny calls them. Doc Monk covers his walls with posters of Caesars and emperors, maps, battle scenes and monuments. What he teaches is obedience and manly incuriosity, and if the school has an ethos, it is that. It is how empires got built. History is kings and queens and beheadings and wars.

  When Danny asked him, ‘Was there any other history going on?’, the Doc replied, ‘Such as?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Danny, who is by now confident and sophisticated but unnervingly innocent at the same time: ‘in factories or farms; in shops and in people’s houses.’

  The Doc takes off his spectacles, rubs his eyes, puts them back on and stares at Danny. He is performing the patient teacher explaining to stupid pupil script. He has all the scripts filed away in his head, which is a library of malice: ‘History is about events and the men who make them. If you want to be a social worker you can do that in your own time.’

  ‘Does history only happen to certain people?’ asks Danny, pushing it.

  The Doc looks at him sideways – Danny is at the front of the class. The Doc tends to stand right up against the first row of desks, while the boys lean as far back as their chairs will let them – they look like flowers bending in a gale – and though he can’t quite catch the irony, he knows there’s something a little serrated along the comment’s edge.

  ‘I’m talking about History capital H. No one’s interested in factories and farms and debating whether women cooking and cleaning counts as history … that’s sociology and we don’t do that in this school.’

  ‘Who decides what history is then, Dr Monk?’

  The Doc doesn’t like where this is going. He doesn’t like, either, the barely perceptible weight of sarcasm on the doctor.

  ‘I wouldn’t blame your classmates if they put you in your place from time to time,’ the Doc replies, looking specifically at Hugh Lewis and Leighton Vaughan at the back, who are alert for any encouragement to violence. ‘And, anyway, since you’re interested in history, perhaps we can discuss the murderous history of your terrorist compatriots. Perhaps you yourself are one of them, some sort of sleeper – after all, that’s how they work, isn’t it? Sprinkle a few Fenians in our towns and cities, leave them to blend in, make friends, get jobs, start families, and then BANG’ he smacks the table with his palm. Everyone jumps, Danny most of all: ‘Suddenly there’s a dozen dead and injured, blood all over the walls and people’s remains are being spooned up by paramedics. SPOONED UP!’ he shouts. ‘That’s your history. Shall we study that?’

  Danny is suddenly shot down; first his face drains to pale and then it burns red, an agony of blushes. Being an adolescent is like that: you feel strong, funny, subversive, you swagger and go out too far on the ledge of yourself and then you fall.

  ‘Maybe you’re one of them?’ says the Doc quietly.

  The laughter stops. There’s a pause, while people compute the change in tone. It’s as if the air has been replaced. Then, snarling comes in where the laughter was. Things have moved from ordinary bullying, common-or-garden humiliation, standard-issue power-play, to something else. It is like a break in the weather where the storm has prised open the sky and counts the seconds before it hits.

  ‘I’m not Irish,’ says Danny defensively. Defensively against what? he thinks, gathering himself and adding, ‘Not that it would be a problem if I was. If I was I’d be proud.’

  ‘Proud, are we?’ says the Doc quietly, his eyes on the class rather than Danny. ‘Well, you’re certainly better fed than many of your countrymen. I think we have a sympathiser here; maybe even our very own sleeper.’

  Vaughan walks brazenly to the front and smacks Danny across the back of the head – the muffled knock of knuckle on skull. You know it’s got to hurt, and when Danny looks up with his eyes stinging with pain and tears pearling, he finds the back-row bastards laughing. Vaughan rubs his knuckles proudly and returns to his seat. The Doc appears to be consulting his ledger and he pretends not to notice.

  Danny has been getting cocky for a while. He’s cleverer than anyone else. He answers back, has a way of exposing other people’s stupidities that embarrasses them all the more because he doesn’t mean to. There’s something dangerous about unintentional offence – the way it provokes people even more than pushing mockery or contempt into their faces. He is also elegant and self-contained, and Ander notices – they all notice – how he seems to grow more proportionately than they do. He doesn’t have the El Greco gangliness of other adolescents. He gets taller, fills out in just the right ways; he’s not clumsy, doesn’t get the rash of spots over his forehead or sweat so hard he steams in the frost. He wears better clothes, too. Actually, no: clothes just look better on him. Not that he looks bad unclothed either, as they all notice on the way in and out of the shower, or when they’re changing for the various sports they’re crap at.

  So, yes: Danny has it coming. Had it coming.

  ‘I’ve got something lined up for you,’ says the Doc with a sunniness they’ve never seen before. ‘Come and join me here at the front.’ He waits. ‘There’s nothing to be afraid of.’ If the Doc were the type to reassure, then it would be reassuring. But Ander knows immediately that things are looking bad.

  ‘Me?’ asks Danny, wrongfooted by the Doc’s constant change of tone. The Doc is smiling, and it seems to hurt his face because his eyes waver and bulge with the strain of it. There’s a lot of tooth in that smile, thinks Ander. A lot of bite.

  ‘Yes, you, Danny McAlinden, we’re going to put some of your ideas into practice. Come and join me up here.’

  Danny is suspicious, but there’s still enough trust in him, or, rather – not quite the same thing – enough wanting to trust, for him to get up an
d walk the three or four steps to the front of the class where Doc Monk beckons him.

  ‘Sit down,’ asks the Doc gently, putting his hands on Danny’s shoulders – though Danny is taller – and pushing him down into the seat.

  Danny sits.

  What is now about to happen Ander has never stopped replaying in his head.

  The reason we return to things isn’t that they’ve happened, but that somewhere inside ourselves we think they can still be made to happen differently. If only we can find the right seam, the ridge in the roll of Sellotape which the finger runs over and over trying to feel, so we can pick it with our nail and lift it and unspool it all.

  The Doc is small and weak, but the energy of his sadism gives him enough sinewy strength to drag Danny, still in his seat, sideways and up to the middle of the front of the room. When the Doc gets angry or excited he starts very faintly to smell. It’s not pungent or nauseating, like Morbender’s smell of intimacy and decay – it’s more like he’s fermenting, bubbling up slowly. He then tells Danny to stand and takes the chair and pulls it to the front, so the back of the chair is against Danny’s waist. Automatically – it must be the accused in all of us, the defendant inside – Danny places his hands on the back of the chair like someone awaiting sentencing. It is strange how easy it is, how learned the behaviour: put someone in front of others, make them stand alone before a crowd, and they start to behave like they’re on trial. The Doc knows this. The rest of them are about to learn it.

  ‘One of the foundations of modern society is the rule of law, along with the right to a fair trial,’ he begins. Danny looks at him hopefully, and later the boys will think that was Danny’s undoing, trusting the Doc and smiling, because that was the signal to everyone else: the signal that everything goes now, that it’s open season on Danny, that he was ready and waiting for his own dismantling.

  Doc Monk: ‘Think of this as an exercise in democracy: a chance for everyone in the class to come up and explain the charges against you or speak in your defence should they so wish. We will later take a vote on whether you are guilty or innocent of each of the charges individually. Since we don’t have a jury, your peers will be the jury. I will be the judge, just to keep things ticking along. You will of course have the chance to defend yourself …’

  ‘I don’t … understand …’ says Danny, panicking. There’s a crackling of excitement at the back of the class – approved bullying, and in a theatrical context like this, it’s an unexpected thrill. The courtroom idea is especially delicious, because it adds an air of ritual and unreality to the base brutality to come. It’s like sharing a high.

  Not everyone sees where this is going, but Ander is beginning to, as is Neil Hall a few rows behind. He can hear Neil gasping fucking hell. Danny, because he’s in the middle of it, hasn’t grasped it yet.

  ‘A trial, Mr McAlinden, a trial. You seem so interested in all those communist heroes of yours, your Trotsky, your Lenin, your International Brigades … closer to home your Irish Republican Army and your striking miners in their little Moscow … this is a chance for you to help us relive one of their favourite pastimes: the Show Trial.’

  Danny tries to leave, but Doc Monk stands in his way: ‘Come now, what are you afraid of? This is part of the lesson – think of it as historical re-enactment, it’s all about bringing history closer to us …’

  Danny could just get up and push him away – he is a head and a pair of shoulders taller than Monk, it wouldn’t be hard – but power doesn’t work like that, and nor does submission. Even before it begins, Danny is shedding his aura of intelligent calm, his physical composure, his elegance and authority. All the things the others envy him, he is about to lose in public. The worst of it is that even those who like him might secretly enjoy it, just because he needs to be brought down, brought closer to them in their fragility and anxiety. They’ll even like him more because of the humiliation and the pain they’ll watch him endure.

  Danny tries to speak but the words have deserted him, and every now and then the Doc mocks his accent when he tries to raise his voice. The Doc, meanwhile, is gathering the decor for the courtroom vibe – Bible for witnesses to swear on, black gown for the judge, an old pipe for a gavel. Ander wonders if he’s done this before – the props are so close to hand.

  ‘These historical re-enactments are all the rage these days: you know those medievalists in their chain mail with their swords and shields, those battle-recreations they sometimes have near the bridge … well, let this be our own little version of that …’ he laughs.

  ‘Perhaps we need a couple of courtroom security staff to keep the defendant in place?’ he says, summoning Lewis and Vaughan from the back. Burly, thick, vicious and obedient, they come to the front and stand on either side of Danny.

  Even Doc Monk’s dog has woken up.

  Squeeze the Day

  I notice Gary says they’re charging him. Not we. It’s a Deskfish decision, because while Mr Wolphram has been sitting in that cell, fidgeting in that interview room, the secondary sweating has been done behind me, by Deskfish in his executive aquarium with the trophies and the certificates left over from his predecessor, who died in the saddle and whose family never claimed them back. Deskfish uses them now, and figures, correctly, that no one checks the name on certificates and trophies, only the achievements they testify to. ‘Police Communicator of the year: Regional Winner, Derbyshire’ is Gary’s favourite.

  It was based on this certificate that Gary invented the game ‘Niche Accolades’, in which competitors are tasked with inventing superlatives for activities with diminutive catchment areas and restrictively specific eligibility conditions. ‘Best-performing Moldovan bank’, ‘Miss Frodsham’, ‘Yorkshire philanthropist of the year’ …

  ‘They haven’t got enough to charge him,’ I tell Gary, keeping to his choice of pronoun.

  ‘They’ve got enough circumstantial stuff, Prof: her in his car, her in his flat, him in her flat … him getting times and dates wrong, telling lies or looking like it. The car was used on the day after she died, maybe with her in it. She’s worried about stalkers, she’s looking up help sites. He’s incapable of giving straight answers, he’s got no alibi—’

  ‘People who live alone don’t tend to have alibis, Gary, you and I of all people should know that.’

  ‘Touché, Prof, but, come on, let’s face it …’ Gary’s voice tapers off because he wants me to say it for him:

  So I do: ‘He’s not exactly normal, Gary, is that what you mean?’

  ‘Ah, Prof – you beat me to it.’

  We say nothing. I stir my coffee, tap the spoon against the chipped rim of the cup. It says ‘Best Dad in Norfolk’ on it, and it too belonged to Deskfish’s predecessor. It is the specificity that gives the title its lustre: less is more.

  ‘Look,’ Gary goes on, ‘they need a result, Deskfish needs something to tell people. Okay, he’s a spineless desk-humper surrounded by a dead man’s certificates [Gary pronounces it stiffikuts], but he’s also the one they go to first: the public, the newspapers, the TV reporters, the top brass worried about PR, the shopkeepers spooked about Christmas footfall … They’re all at him, Prof, phoning, tweeting, emailing, texting … I feel for him, Prof. A bit.’

  ‘And he’s just given in – the whole point of getting a result is that it’s the right result, not some morsel to keep the outside world happy …’

  ‘It’s about running out of time. Look, we’ve got this great big turd hanging by a tiny thread over our heads, thin as a baby’s hair, Prof, just waiting to fall on all of us, you, me, Deskfish, everyone—’

  ‘It’s a sword, Gary, the sword of Damocles—’

  ‘It’s a turd now, Prof – where d’you think you are? Lord of the Rings? The point is to get out from under it before the thread snaps.’

  ‘But now we have to spend our time proving he did it rather than investigating who might actually have done it. That’s two very different things.’

  ‘Let’s
hope they’re the same then, shall we?’ Gary shrugs. ‘Look, the balance of probability is that it was him – you know how it goes: husband/boyfriend, relative or neighbour. Boyfriend’s across the Channel, relatives were up in Newcastle, neighbour … well, neighbour is weird, tells lies, is obsessively clean and tidy, and has traces of her in his flat and car. Face the facts, Prof: what are we supposed to think?’

  ‘It’s not facts, though, is it? Facts is what we don’t have. You don’t believe any more than I do that it’s right to charge him. Even if he is guilty there’s nothing to hang it on. We’ve barely finished house-to-house, we haven’t had all the computer checks in, we haven’t spoken to witnesses properly yet and we haven’t even recreated her last movements. There might be a dozen people out there whose memories are about to be dislodged.’

  Gary looks down at the desk, picks up a pen and stirs his coffee with it. ‘It’s all about time, isn’t it? We’re running out of time so they charged him. Get your head around that and work with it.’

  ‘Running out of time in relation to what? Lynne Forester’s articles or solving the actual crime? Anyway, he didn’t even consult us, did he?’

  ‘He didn’t have to, Prof. It’s his call. He’s the one who deals with the front-of-house stuff, the PR and the explaining, so he’s the one feeling the heat. Anyway, look at it this way: we need to charge him to keep him in, and we need to keep him in so we can charge him. And when he’s seen the papers he’ll be grateful, ’cos if he gets out they’ll string him up. Everyone’s a winner!’

  Gary takes the remote control and flicks on the twenty-four-hour news: it’s Mr Wolphram’s flat thronged with reporters and photographers. A permanent crowd of neighbours, well-heeled in expensive coats, and a few men and women in tracksuits and football tops who have come by bus to check out the ‘scene’. Soon there’ll be SCUM PAEDO MONSTER HANG HIM in spray paint across the walls, but as long as the police are there it’s just shouting. A guard of three constables stands awkwardly in front of the gates. It’s live-streaming news, and the darkening sky I can see from this office window is the same darkening sky that lowers itself, half a mile away to the west, onto Mr Wolphram’s house, drapes itself over the iron gates and settles onto the gravel. All the floors are now black-windowed; even the talkative couple in the top flat must have left to escape the attention.