I Came to Find a Girl

by Jaq Hazell

  Onwards – across the crossroads and round the corner, past the corner shop and beyond to more terraced housing, an alleyway, a dead end – the camera stops, moves around. Who is in pursuit?

  There is nothing, until a semi-naked girl emerges and freezes, as if startled, and you know she’ll go, run anywhere within a moment, but for that second or two she’s there on the pavement wearing only a purple bra, mismatched pink knickers and a furry, full-headed fox mask. My knickers? My bra? Why a fox mask?

  My throat was tight, and sweat broke out across my forehead, while all around me noise was muffled. This isn’t right.

  Fox-girl is perhaps in her early twenties, her hair long, brown and deliberately unkempt over her shoulders, her feet bare, her face obscured by the mask.

  And now at her feet: fresh, bright flowers in fantastical, lurid colours piled on top of others that have rotted down to brown paper mulch within their wrappings of faded cellophane. It’s Flood. It has to be Flood’s work. He’s got me again? How has he made it into Tate Modern?

  Somewhere, there will be a small discreet card – I have to read it.

  The film had finished and was about to start again. The four Japanese women began to chatter as they made their way out. I rose unsteadily to my feet and followed.

  The Japanese girls gathered to take a photo outside the cubicle next to a wooden cabinet containing the fox-head mask.

  I searched for the name of the video piece. A card stuck to the wall just outside the cubicle read: The Last Haunting, videotape on continuous loop. Jack Flood.

  Why the ‘last’ haunting? I spun round, my head reeling. I needed to sit down. The whole room was full of Flood’s work. There were old-fashioned wooden cabinets positioned on two sides of the room in an L-shape, with large information boards that detailed Flood’s working processes.

  I considered heading to another adjacent gallery, one with a bench.

  The gallery assistant in the corner, a woman with a heavy fringe and a large mole on her upper lip was watching me, perhaps aware of my unsteadiness. I peered into another glass cabinet. There were small sketches: a naked woman, face down on the bed. Oh my God – the underwear? It was a dismal purple and pink combo from M&S. And next to it were test tubes holding nail cuttings, some hair and other detritus. Is it mine? The hair’s the same colour. It was like a Victorian cabinet of curiosities with small sketches and collections of objects in pots and jars: hair, nail clippings and buttons.

  Buttons? Are any of them metal? Yes, there’s one and it says ‘Diesel’. It’s the missing button from my favourite jeans.

  On the wall, to the right, was a photograph of an artist’s studio: a large, light-filled room with white walls on one side and exposed brickwork on the other. It’s messy, with canvases leaning against the wall and open pots of paint on the floor. While in the corner, half hidden, are brown paper packages, one of them torn open – peeking through is one of my embroidered pieces from my graduation show.

  Flood’s the mystery buyer. He bought my entire show.

  My head was spinning; I felt faint and needed to sit down.

  A guide entered and stood in the centre of the gallery. She was about forty with a gentle wave in her dark bobbed hair. She began to address a group of about ten people. “Jack Flood is one of the leading British artists working today. This particular piece follows his much lauded work: She Had Her Whole Life Ahead of Her.”

  I can’t listen to this. “Excuse me.” I squeezed past. People looked askance. I was sweating – everyone in my way, like they’re walking right at me. Get out of my way. Let me pass. I’ve got to get out.

  The lady, the nice lady who had a black plait, dark lipstick and a Portuguese accent, told me I had fainted. I’d been taken to a small medical room and given water and a comfortable seat. “How are you feeling?” she asked.

  I shrugged and tried to smile as if I were fine.

  “Have some more water.”

  “I need to get going.”

  The lady pursed her lips, like she was reluctant to let me go, but I wanted to get out and escape – get as far away as I could from Flood’s godforsaken trophy art.

  Thirty-nine

  Seventeen films of seventeen different women were found on Flood’s computer, laptop and phone following a police raid. And each file was clearly labelled: Jenny Fordham, Mia Jackson, Loretta Peters, Connie Vickers, alongside another thirteen names.

  The police managed to trace most of the women. Two, however, are as yet unaccounted for – missing, presumed dead.

  I was so grateful to DC Jan Wilson. She was so patient when I called from outside Tate Modern. I had exited the gallery in a panic and stopped at the railings by the river, looking out towards St Paul’s, while the Thames below had turned grey and choppy, and there, as always at the back of my mind at the sight of any river, was Jenny. The sky had clouded over to form a solid sheet of dark metallic grey. A storm’s coming, I thought, and made the call.

  Within hours the gallery had been raided, the ‘artwork’ seized, and the following days’ headlines filled: ‘Police Seize Flood’s Murder Trophy Art’ – The Sun. ‘Murder and Rape Claims Close Tate Modern’ – The Guardian.

  Flood denied everything, and I was told there was a strong likelihood I’d have to go to court. I barely slept and when I did, I’d wake with images of myself in the witness box wearing a fox-head mask, unable to speak. Or, there were dreams where I was being endlessly pursued. I was aware it was Flood behind me but I could never see him and I could never get away.

  I made a lousy witness. I can only remember what I can remember and it’s limited. I did point that out. But then there was the film, the one with my name on it. And DC Wilson persuaded me I had a lot to offer the prosecution.

  Don’t look at him; don’t make eye contact, I told myself over and over whilst I waited outside the courtroom. I twisted my fingers together, took my rings off and on, and bit my nails, which I don’t normally do. But then I went in, took the oath and looked straight at him.

  There are probably only a handful of instances in anyone’s life where you can distinctly recall how it felt to meet someone’s eye. With Flood, there had been a number of times: the evening I first saw him at his show, the time I ran from Ruby’s after seeing him reflected repeatedly in the surrounding mirrors, at my own private view when he made a swift exit and then in court when months of dread culminated in his attempt to intimidate me – his eyes boring into me across the room. That was when all my fear about facing him dissipated as I saw him for the loser he was, flanked by prison officers and stuck behind bulletproof glass.

  The formality of the court was intimidating: official, old-fashioned, wooden panels, men and women in wigs, long impenetrable arguments between lawyers and efforts to wrong-foot everyone, not least me and my hole-filled memory.

  Why did I go back to Flood’s hotel room? It’s a question I’ve asked myself time and time again and it was the first question the defence lawyer asked.

  He was a short, dark-haired man with blue eyes, in his early thirties and not unattractive. “Miss Jackson, what time was it when you agreed to go with Mr Flood to his hotel room?”

  Whatever I say, it won’t sound good. I had rehearsed this moment in my head during all the nights I couldn’t sleep and yet still I sensed the wrong words were about to slip from my lips. “I didn’t exactly agree to go to his room.”

  “You went of your own accord?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then you agreed.”

  “We were going to go for a drink somewhere, that’s what I agreed to do, but Mr Flood needed to change his clothes. He said someone had spilt a drink on him.”

  “Could you not have waited in the lobby?”

  Why didn’t I do that? That’s what I had wanted to do. I felt myself flush, frustrated at my own stupidity and angry at Flood, the lawyer and myself.

  “Mr Flood persuaded me to share a drink with him in his suite. He said we wouldn’t stay long.” That wa
s it, the truth, one moment in my life when I was duped. I was stupid and it could well have been the end of me.

  At that point in the courtroom, my attention slipped and again I looked at Flood. He was so still, in control as always, his dark eyes on me, watching my lips move with every word I spoke. I bit my lip and clenched my fists, determined to hold it together.

  “Miss Jackson, can you hear me?” The lawyer was staring at me. Had I missed something? “Miss Jackson, I understand you left it quite some time before coming forward to make a complaint, is that correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why was that?”

  “I felt stupid. I couldn’t remember exactly what happened.” Argh, that’s not what I meant to say at all. I knew it sounded bad.

  A small, thin-lipped smirk passed across Flood’s face.

  “And yet here you are now to tell us you can remember, is that right?”

  “I couldn’t remember exactly because Jack Flood spiked my drink and what I do remember is waking up four hours later, naked and running out and vomiting.”

  There was no evidence that Flood had spiked my drink because I took so long to report the ‘incident’ to the police. The judge (who was female) instructed the jury to disregard my comment as ‘speculation’.

  “That will be all, Miss Jackson,” said the defence lawyer.

  My evidence was all but useless. I wouldn’t look at Flood again.

  Stupid Girl: that song was back in my head taunting me, as I held on to the witness stand to steady myself, willing my legs to move in a reasonable fashion in order to get the hell out of there. I glanced back at the jury, tears in my eyes. I am such a failure, I thought. Is that what they’re thinking? They were all watching me of course and I hoped it was empathy I could sense but I had no idea.

  Forty

  Interior, unspecified: Flood’s face fills the screen but it’s slightly fuzzy, the film quality poor and he is so close his face appears distorted; his cheeks look bigger than normal. He has a large stitched laceration to his left cheek and a swollen mouth. Has he been attacked?

  “Who lives in a place like this?” Flood moves the camera away from his face and does a 360-degree scan of the room. There is a basic bed with a thin mattress, a small two-drawer cabinet and a heavy, locked door. The walls are bare, though there is a reasonable amount of light filtering in through the barred window.

  “I’ve not been able to film until now.” His voice is quiet, conspiratorial. “They’ve taken everything.” He shakes his head. “Creativity is a basic human right and yet I have no creative outlet. They say it’s negotiable and dependent on my behaviour.” He shakes his head again. “I just got hold of this mobile that I’m filming on. I’m the prison scribe. I write letters for the illiterate inmates.”

  Film cuts and recommences. “This phone isn’t good enough. It has an inbuilt camera but it only records short clips, not that anyone will listen. They’re not used to artists. They don’t understand. They tell me there will be opportunities to draw and paint but not to film. It’s prohibited. But filming is my thing. I told them that I am Britain’s foremost video artist. They’re philistines, especially the governor. He’s the worst kind – a philistine who thinks he’s cultured – his art appreciation stops with Constable and Lowry.”

  The camerawork is shaky. He’s agitated. “The fundamental issue here is that I’m innocent. The films that they used as evidence against me are art. No one was hurt in the making of those films. They’re art.” Flood touches the scar across his cheek. “I have a room of my own. I’m on ‘seggy’. It’s a social dustbin – nonces and low-life. I am not like them.”

  He looks down. There are heavy bags under his eyes. His hair is greying (no more hair dye). He has aged ten years in a matter of months. There is shouting and a door bangs shut. Locks are turned.

  “I’m told a lot of prisoners claim to be innocent at first, so no one listens. I write letters to the press and my MP. It’s a gross miscarriage of justice. Someone has to see that. Believe me, the truth will out.”

  Camera cuts momentarily.

  Flood remains in his cell. His tired, grey head looks up at the camera he’s holding at arm’s length. His baggy eyes plead. “They must let me work. It’s the only way I’ll get through this. Without my work I am nothing.”

  Forty-one

  It was good to know where Flood was. I no longer needed to rely on the tabloids for information as, despite my poor courtroom performance, he was banged up for life, brought down by his own ‘artwork’.

  The seventeen films of seventeen different women and his magpie need to keep trophy mementoes of his victims made the evidence compelling.

  Jenny, Loretta Peters and Connie Vickers all featured and that fact, along with some locks of their hair sealed in plastic, is what really did for Flood. His compulsion to record everything meant he was found guilty of three premeditated murders.

  The seventeen charges of rape were not quite as straightforward. The jury was split, as some of them believed Flood’s claims that the filmed sex (which was everything but penetrative) was consensual. As with most rape cases there was an element of ambiguity involved. The judge said she would accept a majority verdict and after three hours of deliberation he was finally found guilty. The severity of his crimes, the sexual nature and the fact he abducted women and committed multiple murders led the judge to issue a whole life order. He wasn’t getting out. Ever.

  And I could let it go – or at least try to, for my own sanity.

  Forget Flood. Move on. You’re in London now – anything is possible.

  A fortnight before the anniversary of the day Jenny went missing, an invitation arrived. There was to be a memorial service and that meant Nottingham.

  I didn’t want to go back but felt I couldn’t say no. I tried to persuade Tamzin to accompany me but she said she couldn’t get the time off work and Kelly had only just started a new job at a call centre so there was no way she could go. I would have to face it alone.

  I called Kelly on her mobile. She couldn’t take personal calls any other way as the company she worked for taped all calls for ‘training and monitoring purposes’.

  “I’ve been thinking of you all morning,” Kelly said. “Where are you?”

  “I’m on the train – feels weird to be going back.”

  “You’ll be all right.”

  “How’s life in the Collections Department?” It was Kelly’s job to chase people who were behind with their credit card payments.

  “You have no idea. I don’t know if I can last the week.”

  “Don’t ring me looking for money.”

  “Have you got one of our cards?”

  “It’s probably the only one I haven’t got. Did you hear about Tam? She’s seeing someone new.”

  “Who is it now?”

  “He’s called Steve. He’s a builder.”

  “What happened to Greg?”

  “He’s totally oblivious. I don’t know how she gets away with it.”

  “I’d better get back to work,” Kelly said. “Let me know how it goes.”

  I gazed out the window at the passing fields: cows, fencing, trees, outbuildings, flashes of train stations, car parks, busy gardens, shiny office blocks – all silver like the platinum credit cards they promote. And then I thought of Jenny and how unfair it all was. And Jason – he’ll be there. How will that go?

  The train pulled in. Lethargically, I disembarked and made my way up the metal steps and out of the station, turning right for the city centre, and then left onto Maid Marian Way towards the Catholic cathedral.

  The place was packed, but then that’s untimely death for you; it stirs something even in the remotest acquaintance. I felt a lump in my throat as soon as I entered. Get through this, I thought, as I felt myself well up. I accepted the printed order of service from an usher, shuffled into a seat halfway back and tried to do the right thing: standing when everyone stood, kneeling and singing.

  Mags from Sa
viour’s got up and read out a poem that went something like: ‘Sleep dear angel, please don’t weep/ Your beautiful face is a memory we keep.’

  If she were alive, Jenny would run marathons to escape all this.

  Jenny’s mum gave a reading. She was poised and dignified, although her voice was brittle. Then her dad said a few words, which were almost unbearably moving, and finally it was Jason’s turn.

  I hadn’t spotted him till then. He looked good in a dark suit. I’d never seen him smart and everything he said was heartfelt. I felt guilty even being there.

  Back at Jenny’s parents’ smart Victorian villa, with its matching cream sofas, there was tea or white wine, egg sandwiches and cake and a chance to talk to the old Saviour’s crowd.

  Donna’s hair was puffed up in a higher cockatoo fashion than ever, but she still looked short. “You did so well, Jase,” she said.

  A heavy line creased his brow. “I wanted to talk about the Jenny I knew. She wasn’t the goody-goody everyone makes out. She had a wicked sense of humour.” I touched his arm and felt an instant frisson. But it wasn’t going anywhere. I knew that. It was good to see him again and good to see him looking so well but I just wanted the best for him and that wouldn’t be me.

  “How’s it going at Saviour’s?” I asked.

  He looked around, making sure Vivienne wasn’t in the vicinity. “I’m jacking it in. I don’t want to be a chef any more.”

  “But you’re so good, and we need you,” Mags said.

  “Shit hours, shit pay, little thanks. All this TV chef bollocks making it sound glamorous. I’ve got to get out while I’m still young enough to find something else.”