The Sinner
Page 32
Also by Martyn Waites
The Old Religion
Prisons and Me
It’s no secret I’ve been in prison. A couple of prisons, actually. I talk about it all the time at events and in interviews. Never hide it. In fact, I like saying it because it pulls people up, makes them give me a second, untrustworthy glance. Sometimes they even check their wallets or their watches. Or flinch, wondering whether I’m going to attack them. Then I go on to explain I was there for a reason. You see, I used to be a Writer-in-Residence. They relax then, a little bit. Because even though I tell people I was on the outside going in and could leave at night, there’s a little bit of that word – prison – that powerful, stigmatic word that everyone has an opinion about, but most people don’t actually understand, that stays there until I speak further. And sometimes, unfortunately, afterwards.
Long story short, I answered an ad in the paper from the Writers in Prison Network and ended up in Huntercombe Young Offenders Institution for two and a half years. And I loved it. It may well have been the happiest job I’ve ever done, which sounds contradictory at least since I was behind bars doing it. I was working with kids up to eighteen. The place I was going into had just appointed the country’s first full time Arts Co-Ordinator, helping a group of inmates form themselves into a rap act – X-Konz – and perform at Capital Radio’s Party in the Park that summer. The Governor came to see me (unheard of in most prions, I later found out) and gave me a two-word brief: ‘Bring life’. I tried my damnedest.
Another Writer-in-Residence told me before I went in that the lives and backgrounds of the kids I would be working with were the stuff of nightmares. And straight away I found that to be true. I wrote a short story, Let’s Pretend, about a teenage rapist who’s in prison because his mother sold him to a paedophile ring and who, on being let out, can’t go to his terminally ill father and instead has to become a procurer of young boys for his tormentors or they’ll abuse his baby daughter. My then wife said it was the most depressing thing she had ever read. My boss called it a normal day at the office.
Some of the kids I worked with were unreachable, even at that young age. I can admit that. And it was sad. I still tried to work with them, though. Their futures weren’t bright because their pasts had been so damaging but they still needed help, coping strategies, even if I was just a guy trying to get them to write stories and maybe change the endings to the ones that had led them into prison. To get them to imagine, to dream. One of my class said that when he sat down to write a story, the walls just opened up and he was free.
It was a polarising environment. There were no ‘meh’ days. Because I was working in such close emotional proximity to these kids, (without, as Home Office rules stated, giving too much of myself away – try making that one work) getting them to open up, talk freely, relax and know that what they said or wrote in my writing room wouldn’t go back onto the wing with them and that if anyone tried to do that they wouldn’t be back again; it was demanding, full-on work. And sometimes things went brilliantly. Really brilliantly. I had the privilege of helping people to turn their lives around for the better, by using writing as a breakthrough instrument. I had great poets, rappers, story writers and magazine editors. Kids who found something they were good at and could be valued for. Who were made to feel worthwhile for the first time in their lives. Later, I had a group member decide to get help for his alcohol addiction because of realisations he’d come to through his writing. A father took me out to lunch to thank me for helping him to re-establish a relationship with his son because all he talked about in their visits was writing class. Or the one guy who said he was having so much fun he didn’t want to be released.
Like I said, great stuff. But, I always stressed, it wasn’t me, it was the process. And by that same definition, good days would be followed by bad days. A combination of factors, the process not working, the prison system being what it is, any number of things, I felt like there was nothing I could do. Days like that I went home and drank copiously.
After two and half years of this I moved to work in an adult prison. Not Blackmoor, I hasten to add, that place is entirely made up. And then after that I felt quite burned out. I like to believe – have to believe – that what I did helped though.
Unfortunately, since 2010 the prison budget has been slashed and my kind of work – along with anything broadly rehabilitative – was the first to go. Now our prisons are overcrowded, understaffed and we recently had a moron of a Justice Minister who banned prisoners from receiving books until he was challenged in court. A far cry from my experience. Then, I felt like I was trying to grasp something that was always almost out of reach but could be found. Sometimes I managed it, other times I wasn’t so lucky. I just hope there are still people within the prison environment doing that now.
Dear Reader,
Hello once again. If you’ve read The Old Religion, that is. And if you have, then thank you so much. I really appreciate you doing so and hope you enjoyed it. Obviously I’d prefer you to love it but if not then fine then I hope you had some kind of strong reaction to it rather than just, ‘Meh’. Because after all, the opposite of love isn’t hate, it’s indifference. That’s a quote from Dynasty.
However if you haven’t read The Old Religion and this is your first one of mine, then welcome aboard. I’m very happy to have you. And I hope that feeling is mutual. If you want to know a bit more about me and The Sinner then read on. If you don’t, then fine. I’m sure you’ve got a Netflix subscription or something.
First, here’s a bit about me. The Sinner is my twentieth novel. Hooray. I’ve managed to keep going for that long. Most of the novels under my own name have been gritty (I’m contractually obliged to use that word) urban noir settings, mainly in my native North East of England. I’ve also written eight thrillers under the pseudonym Tania Carver. And I was chosen to write Angel of Death – the official sequel to Susan Hill’s The Woman in Black. I’ve won awards and been in the bestseller lists, both here and abroad. The Old Religion was something of a departure for me. My first novel with a totally rural setting incorporating elements of folk horror. I loved writing it and a sequel was inevitable. However I didn’t want to just repeat myself. I wanted something a little different. The result is The Sinner.
Not everyone in prison is guilty. Great tag line for the cover. (I didn’t think of it, incidentally. I just handle the bits inside.) And it’s kind of true. I used to work in prisons and young offenders institutions as a Writer in Residence. The first thing that struck me was just how arbitrary the justice system is. Every single prejudice and cliché that I had about was confirmed straightaway. The richer you are, the less time you do and the punishment is inversely in proportion to how much money you have or where you are on the social scale. But I’ve written elsewhere about that. I’m here to talk about The Sinner.
I was aware that it was going to be a follow up to The Old Religion, using the same lead character, Tom Killgannon. Whereas the first book had used all these sweeping open spaces, this one would be cramped and claustrophobic. The Old Religion played with folk horror. This would have the vibe of a haunted house. I wanted every character (or nearly every character) to be guilty of something. To be haunted – imprisoned, if you will – by their past actions. To be the sinners of the title. Also, and rather incongruously considering it’s set in a prison, I wanted a homage, at least in part, to Geoffrey Household’s classic novel of rural pursuit, Rogue Male. Did I manage? Read the book and find out . . .
By the way, if you would like to hear more from me about The Sinner and my other future books, you can visit www.bit.ly/MartynWaitesClub where you can join the Martyn Waites Readers’ Club. It only takes a moment, there is no catch and new members will automatically receive an exclusive ebook short story from my previous novel, The Old Religion. Your data is private and confidential and will never be passed on to a third party and I promise that I will only be in touch now and again with book news. If you want to unsu
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However, if you like what you read then please let people know. Social media (I’m on Twitter as @MartynWaites), Amazon, GoodReads, all of that. It really does make a difference for writers.
But enough of my yakkin’. It’s time to get banged up with The Sinner. Enjoy, dear reader . . .
All the best,
Martyn Waites
Sometimes helping a stranger is the last thing you should do . . .
‘Spectacular’
Lee Child
Ex-undercover cop, Tom Killgannon is in the Witness Protection Programme hiding from some very violent people and the Cornish village of St Petroc's offers him a chance to live a safe and quiet life.
Until he meets Lila.
Lila is a seventeen-year-old runaway. When she breaks into Tom's house she takes his wallet which holds everything about his new identity. He also knows that Lila is in danger from the travellers' commune she's been living at.
But to find her he risks not only giving away his location to the gangs he's in hiding from, but also becoming a target for whoever is hunting Lila.
AVAILABLE NOW
First published in Great Britain in 2019 by Zaffre
This ebook edition published in 2019 by
ZAFFRE
80-81 Wimpole St, London, W1G 9RE
Copyright © Martyn Waites, 2019
Cover design by Bonnier Art Department
The moral right of Martyn Waites to be identified as Author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organisations, places and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN: 978–1–78576–551–3
Hardback ISBN: 978–1–78576–549–0
Trade Paperback ISBN: 978–1–78576–550–6
Paperback ISBN: 978–1–78576–552–0
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Zaffre is an imprint of Bonnier Books UK
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