murder
Backstory
It’s probably fair to say that Patricia Cornwell is generally adjudged the undisputed mother and queen of forensic thriller writing.
It was her first novel, Postmortem, that kick-started this genre and spawned a fascination with the world of the dead. BBC series like Silent Witness, and Waking the Dead, which explore unexplained deaths, are aired at prime time. Just this week, Channel 5 has started showing a brand new 3-part documentary, Cause of Death, taking viewers inside a coroner‘s office as he and his team investigate unexplained deaths.
But way back in the 1980s, it was not instant hits all round. Initially Cornwell had to endure the usual run of rejections, and even when Postmortem was published, it took time before it was duly acclaimed. When she slipped out in her lunch break from the mortuary where she worked for her very first book signing, precisely no copies of the book were sold, and she fielded just one question: an elderly lady asking where she could find the cookbooks!
Since then, of course, she has achieved phenomenal success, won an impressive raft of literary prizes, and sold over 120 million books. Probably her most famous character is Chief Medical Officer Dr Kay Scarpetta, and next week her 26th book in the series comes out. 26!! But it’s Scarpetta’s backstory, and that of her niece Lucy, and policeman colleague Pete Marino, that help to drive the novels – a massive achievement in itself to sustain the suspense and time-lines across so many years, a backdrop to countless horrific crimes and painstaking investigations, each a compelling read in its own right.
Another powerful characteristic of her books which I am in awe of is the precision – whether it’s the minute records of exactly which bones were fractured in a frenzied attack, or the precise level of decomposition of a body, or the battery of tests needed to establish where a body has been, the scene is described in meticulous detail. She lists as her interests:
Forensics | Forensic Technologies | Ballistics | Weapons | Explosives | Pathology & Autopsies | Crime | Historical and Unsolved Criminal Cases | Jack The Ripper | Helicopter Piloting | Scuba Diving | Archaeological Excavation Experience |
It shows! And she’s famous for working tirelessly to stay up to speed as methods of detection and analysis evolve.
But until this week I was unaware of her own harrowing personal story. Interviews with her to mark the publication of Livid on 25th October, have revealed a grim start in life. She was just five years old when her father walked out on Christmas Day. Shortly afterwards she was molested by a local patrolman, and required to testify in court before a grand jury. Her mother suffered from psychotic depression and spent large swathes of her daughter’s early life in hospital, meaning Patricia was either responsible for caring for her at home or in foster care herself. Her foster mother verbally abused her, bullied and force-fed her (leading to subsequent anorexia). She also left Patricia’s beloved dog locked in the basement to die of neglect. The grown up Cornwell is still riddled with deep-down anxieties about families and responsibilities.
By her own admission, in Scarpetta she has created a character who would have rescued her from all this torment – someone who is unflagging in the pursuit of justice for the murder victims who end up on her autopsy table. But it doesn’t require a PhD in psychology to see the origins of her deep empathy with inner turmoil and the effects of suppressed emotion which are so evident in her fiction. She has used her own personal tragedy and her extraordinary literary talent to make sense of the world. In her own words: I think your pain becomes your poetry, your gift. What a gift!
Broadmoor
Broadmoor. The very word carried a deeply chilling resonance. The most infamous high security hospital in the world. Makes me think of spine-chilling names like Peter Sutcliffe, Ronnie Kray, Charles Bronson … serial killing, cannibalism, paedophilia, arson, and the like heinous crimes. Or the horrific occasion in 1977, when two inmates trapped a third in a locked area in Broadmoor, and tortured him to death, skinning him alive, ramming a spoon into his brain, before garotting him. What kind of a mind could conceive of, and calculatedly carry out, such barbaric acts? I still remember the shivery sense of profound relief when these men were locked away in this maximum security psychiatric hospital facility for the criminally insane. Little public sympathy for them; widespread fear should they ever be released; a general ‘throw away the key’ mentality! ‘Monsters’, ‘evil incarnate’, ‘irredeemable’. ‘The more whole-life sentences running sequentially the better.’
But TV journalist Jonathan Levi, and cultural historian Emma French, have uncovered a much more nuanced picture of this notorious place. In their book: Inside Broadmoor, (published in 2019 but written before the new hospital was opened in the December of that year) they bring together their observations based on nearly ten years observing and interviewing staff, experts and the patients themselves, and they find that the staff really believe in redemption and rehabilitation – at least in most cases. No matter what they’ve done these men deserve to be treated humanely, and they aim to give them the best chance of a future.
This generosity of spirit from the staff comes in spite of the fact that the threat of violence is ever present. There are on average five physical assaults on staff members each week, but violence is seen as intrinsic to some of the medical conditions these patients suffer from, so it’s viewed more compassionately here than by the public at large.
The authors asked why did the men commit such dastardly deeds? Might they do it again? Can clinicians unravel the mysteries of their brain chemistry and render them safe? Are any conditions untreatable? Is there such a thing as pure evil? What can we do with those who are beyond help? What draws people to this work: 8-900 staff at any given time, all sworn not to reveal any information outside the hospital? If the inmates are themselves the victims of appalling histories, does society owe them anything in compensation?
It’s hard to believe that 200 of Britain’s most dangerous men can be housed here together, maximum unrelenting security measures notwithstanding, some of them day in day out with no reprieve of any kind for decades. Each one suffering from a serious mental disorder rendering every man a grave and immediate risk to the public, not to mention their combined threat.
There is a popular misconception that, when someone goes to Broadmoor, they are there for life; in reality only a very few high-profile criminally insane individuals remain there for decades. Over the years a lot of work has gone into de-stigmatising and altering perception of severe mental illness, with great emphasis on intensive programmes of drug and psychological therapies. The old prison mentality and ethos has largely gone. As a result, nowadays, the average stay for a Broadmoor patient is less than 6 years, and there is a notably lower reoffending rate than in the UK prison population overall. This is not to say the men all go free into the community – depending on their diagnosis and progress they may be sent to a variety of other less high security institutions.
The demographics of today’s patients have changed radically over the last 150 years. Religious and ethnic factors play a significant part in this, and the authors concluded that, It is tragically clear that work needs to be done urgently to address these inequalities.
What really emerges is the vulnerability of these men alongside their criminal insanity.
It is nothing short of chilling that … the fate of many Broadmoor patients was fixed from early childhood. Critically, theirs was a childhood not just of deprivation and economic hardship, but of abuse too … Childhood experiences, often shocking and sickening beyond belief, seal the fate of many patients very early on.
One illustrative case is Dillon, born into a ‘satanic’ family. Father broke his bones, sexually abused him, and raped and beat his mother. From birth, mother rejected Dillon, convinced he was evil. She sexually abused him and tried to kill him repeatedly. He was kept locked up in the attic, not allowed to talk to his brothers, or tethered naked to a post and made to eat food off the floor like a dog. By the age of 5 he was an arsonist. From the age of 7 he went into care but became arsonist, kidnapper, violent offender, out of control alcoholic. What chance did this boy have in life? And yet most of us don’t see beyond the violent, criminally insane adult. The staff in Broadmoor do.
One consequence of receiving effective medication, therapy and healing, is that patients can arrive at a deeply vulnerable moment; they begin to have consciousness of the crime that brought them to the hospital in the first place. This is a point of profound fragility. In some cases it’s more than they can handle and proves lethal; they take their own lives. Suicide is rendered possible in the lower risk areas, especially in Victorian buildings where ligature points, such as bars at the windows, have remained because of a shortage of funding to make the necessary alterations.
Hmm, a shortage of funding … Maintaining these dangerous men in secure units under constant surveillance is horrendously expensive. It costs upwards of £300,000 per annum to keep each patient in Broadmoor – five times the cost of a prison stay. Peter Sutcliffe’s 32 year stay in Broadmoor cost the taxpayer in the region of £10 million. In just one of a number of rooftop protests, Charles Bronson did £250,000 of damage.
I found this book profoundly challenging – challenging my preconceptions, my prejudices, my lack of real understanding: the barbed wire around my own reactions. I commend it to you.
Truth and ethics
I’m suffering from a troubled conscience as I write this post.
Nobody surely could have failed to be horrified at what happened to Sarah Everard in March this year. Her brutal kidnap and murder stirred the anger and sorrow of the nation, compounded by the fact that her killer was a police officer. – a police officer using his privileges and knowledge to desecrate and murder an innocent young woman. We’ve all been taught to trust the police, so it erodes the very fabric of our security. And the links between other sexual offences such as flashing, and subsequent rape and murder, brought the crime closer to us all.
Small wonder then that I felt sick to the pit of my stomach at the opening to Cold Kill by Neil White. Chapter 1 launches straight into the murder of a young woman, experienced through the eyes of the killer … wearing heavy boots, a polo shirt, a police crest on his breast, a black and white check ribbon around his cap, handcuffs dangling from his belt. By page 4 ethical questions are screaming in my head. Should I even read this fiction? Should writers write purely for entertainment about what is a living nightmare for some families?
I should explain I was led to the book by blurb about the author. Neil White failed all his exams at school, but in his 20s returned to education, qualified as a solicitor in his 30s, and now spends his days in the courtroom and his evenings writing crime fiction – a story of triumph through hard work and application. I was intrigued to know just how able this writer is. And yes, he’s certainly able! His brilliant capture of the first murder caught me unawares and raised all manner of qualms.
And boy, did this whole book challenge me! Moral dilemmas aplenty. Reporters wheedle their way into the living rooms of the distraught and grieving families, as they share intimate stories about the victim and the relatives, as they seek to titillate public curiosity. Just how morally right is it for reporters to intrude on private horror and pain in the interests of selling newspapers or raising viewing figures? One of the reporters is in a relationship with a police officer … where does that place them when it comes to a collision between personal and professional loyalties?
The public gather – like knitters at the guillotine. To what extent should their ghoulish interest be exploited? The fathers of the murdered girls have backstories; one an ex cop, the other heading up a dark underworld. How much of their past histories should be exposed to public scrutiny?
A retired child psychologist has confidential information that could prove vital in the murder inquiry … but which principle trumps which? Old confidences from a child patient, or the young women this killer is targetting now?
In the case of Cold Kill, there’s an extra level of revulsion knowing that the killer is there, unnoticed, invisible, privy to what the detectives are thinking, what the police are searching for, what the lawyers are advising. Part of their world. Secretly smirking. Laughing up his sleeve at their blindness, his own cleverness. And his ubiquitous presence is conveyed so effectively by occasional sections devoted to his perspective, amidst the narrative relating to the investigators. He is merely ‘he’. Sent shivers down my spine, feeling those cold eyes everywhere, watching, waiting, plotting, exacting terrible revenge, seeing his macabre MO like a signature at each killing. 
I did read to the end in spite of my reservations, and indeed this author is a compelling storyteller. But nevertheless I felt guilty for having been ‘entertained’ by crimes that have devastated the lives of real families. I’m still analysing this surprising development. Have I lost the art of differentiating fact from fiction? Or is this a matter of timing?
Domestic psychological thrillers
Although I’ve read a large number of thrillers in an effort to understand the secrets and techniques that make for success, I’ve come across surprisingly few that fit more precisely into the family-based variety I’ve been trying to create myself; ‘domestic’, so-called ‘real-life’ fiction. So when I saw Until You’re Mine by Samantha Hayes in a supermarket second-hand charity corner at the weekend, I snapped it up. And I read it in two days.
I love the cover (her trademark style apparently), and the strap-line spoke to me: To create her family she will destroy yours. My kind of territory, huh?
And it got better and better the more I read about the book and its author. She’s dipped a toe in being a barmaid, a fruit picker, a private detective, a factory worker; she’s lived on a kibbutz, holidayed on Cornwall (my home county)… – a colourful life even before she took up crime writing. And in her novels she focuses on current issues, designed to challenge the reader to think, What if this happened to me or my family? Exactly what I try to do.
And indeed, Until You’re Mine bears some striking similarities to my own new novel, Killing me Gently, which becomes available for purchase this coming weekend*. Both are based around a young career woman, trying to adapt to being a mother; things clearly not being what they seem to be; threats hanging over families; marriages and relationships in peril.
In the case of Until You’re Mine, there are three principal women involved. Claudia Morgan-Brown has a history of numerous previous pregnancies all ending in miscarriages or still births – leaving her feeling ‘ an unworthy shell of a woman‘ and ‘a freak‘. Around perfect families with perfect babies ‘jealousy stuck in my craw like a bowlful of mud shoved down my throat.’ And yet her job – a job she loves – revolves around parents and children. As a social worker heading up a child protection team, she’s constantly dealing with dysfunctional, violent, abusive, disadvantaged families. Nor is she a stranger to the painful experience of removing children from their inadequate or unfit parents.
And it’s in the course of her work that she goes to check out the welfare of 2-month-old twin baby boys, Oscar and Noah Morgan, whose mother has just died of pancreatic cancer. They are being well cared for, but Claudia falls in love with their so-recently bereaved father, James, who reciprocates the emotion. ‘He was hurting. I was hurting. Together, we were mended.’ And now she’s heavily pregnant with James’ baby, but determined to keep working up till her due date and take the minimum of time off after the birth.
Husband, James, is a naval officer, a submariner, away for long stretches of time. And in reality Claudia knows very little of his past life. She does know, however, that he has inherited wealth from his first wife, enabling them to live in a huge and beautiful house, and that he has secrets about which she knows nothing. They decide to hire a live-in nanny to enable Claudia to keep doing what she’s good at.
Enter Zoe Harper, who comes with impeccable credentials, and is clearly really good with children. The twins adore her. We, however, know from the outset that Zoe isn’t what she appears to be. She lives in the ‘centre of an ever-changing lie’. We know she is preoccupied with pregnancy and babies. We know she’s recently left an intense relationship but still longs to make contact with her past. We also know she has her own agenda and is on a mission which somehow relates to counting down to the birth of Claudia’s child.
The third woman is Detective Inspector Lorraine Fisher. She’s dealing with domestic crises at home – an errant husband and a rebellious teenage daughter determined to abandon her education and career prospects, leave home and marry her boyfriend. And on the work front Lorraine is dealing with two cases of pregnant women being sliced open and left for dead. Both the victims had troubled pasts and had been in the care of social services. Both had been wanting to terminate their pregnancies early on but for some reason had not gone through with it. Both babies and the first mother have died, but the second mother has survived, and somehow the survivor is the link between the social worker, nanny and detective.
Through the eyes of all three women we inch forward towards the critical date – the birth of Claudia’s baby girl. It’s tense, gripping stuff. But the three stories simply don’t hang together. Who is to be believed? Three women desperate to become mothers. Three women juggling competing demands. Three murders already. We’re counting down the days to deadlines with huge trepidation. The suspense keeps us glued to the pages. The killer twist in the tale, when it comes, is brilliantly executed. And the last sentence is perfection.
Phew! A serendipitous find but highly recommended. And I’ll certainly be hunting down more of Samantha Hayes’ books.
* Yep, at last! We’ve had a few glitches in the publishing process this time, hopefully now ironed out. More on this next week.
Splinter the Silence
In Splinter the Silence, Val McDermid explores the issue of internet trolling/hate mail/harassment/villification/abuse of women who put their heads above the parapet to speak about discrimination and injustice. In this fictional case, the public figures are apparently hounded to the point of suicide, although the reader knows from the outset that they are actually being murdered, each killing disguised to mimic the suicides of famous feminists. The murderer has his own reasons for objecting to women who step outside their domestic role and tell men what’s right or wrong.
Well, sadly, I know people in real life who would still tether women to the kitchen sink if they could. I have myself come in for criticism for being a woman and daring to voice and defend an opinion; for having ideas above my subservient station. Fortunately, positive responses have far, far outweighed the negative, so it hasn’t been that difficult to maintain perspective, but then, I’m not an A-list celebrity, so such pernicious or malicious activities don’t hit the headlines, the number of critics doesn’t reach stratospheric levels. Nevertheless, I can vouch for the discomfort of being on the receiving end of such unjust vitriol. It’s not as far fetched as you might imagine.
This week I’ve been thinking a lot about the matter of standing up and being accountable, and about all the cases coming to public attention right now that lend themselves to strong column inches. I’ll itemise a few, but please note, I have no privileged access to information on any of them, so the facts I include are as subject to distortion and prejudice as any other media-generated stories.
OK, serious time, folks. And in every case multiply the questions many times over.
Ten days after legally completing his transition from female to male, a transgender man, TT, underwent intrauterine insemination, resulting in a pregnancy. He has now taken his case to the High Court in an effort to be the first to have no ‘mother’ registered on the birth certificate. Hello? ‘Cake’ and ‘eat’ instantly spring to mind. Expensive legal and parliamentary resources are to be deployed to look into the ramifications of the current laws governing fertility treatment.
One British doctor is reported as saying, now that it is medically possible to transplant a womb into biological males, it would be illegal to deny them access to this opportunity to carry a child to birth. What do you think? Would it?
What about the rights of the unborn child?
One author of a letter to the Telegraph outlined the scenario and concluded, ‘The lunatics truly have taken over the asylum.‘ Do you agree? Or is this a case of establishing the deep-seated needs of people who have struggled all their lives with their dysphoria?
Then there’s the issue of rights and dignity and bodily integrity and mental welfare of female athletes with naturally high testosterone levels? Renewed calls have been made for such women to be given drugs to lower their levels before they compete, or for them to be channelled into other categories such as intersex competition.
What about the effect on these sportswomen of the abuse and accusations levelled at them?
Is it a fair playing field?
Other scientists have cast serious doubt on the integrity of the research behind this latest demand; how many people either know of this or have the scientific or mental wherewithal to judge the issue fairly?
Exactly four years ago, on their half-term break, Shamima Begum and two school friends fled this country, aged only 15, to join Isil and become jihadi brides. In those years, Begum has borne three children, two of whom died of illness and malnourishment. She has told the world she doesn’t regret her actions, that she was unfazed by the sight of severed heads, that’s she’s into retaliation, but wants to bring baby number three back to her home country.
We have no way of knowing just how much coercion lies behind her public pronouncements, but her responses to interviewers chill the blood. The government have refused to jeopardise more lives by sending anyone to rescue her, but at first the lawyers told us, she’s a British citizen, she cannot be rendered stateless, so legally speaking, there is no choice; we must have her back. Then a couple of days later we hear that no, the government are not obliged to repatriate her … and indeed the Home Secretary has revoked her British citizenship … she has dual Bangladeshi nationality … the baby has a Dutch father …
What consequences should this girl’s actions have?
Whose rights take precedence?
What kind of a future lies in front of her or her baby son?
Who should assume responsibility?
Is it a measure of our own more civilised behaviour that we rise above the terrorists’ creed and show compassion now towards this girl?
What of all the other people who’ve dabbled in terrorism but who now want to return?And a zillion other questions.
No wonder opinion is divided.
Retired accountant, 80-year-old Geoff Whaley, diagnosed with MND two years ago, decided that an agonising and undignified death was not for him; he would go to Dignitas in Switzerland for a controlled end to his life. But his careful planning was threatened days before his proposed departure by the appearance of police at his door, interviewing his wife of 52 years under caution, in response to an anonymous tip-off. It was this unwelcome intrusion, coupled with the laws of this country opposing assisted suicide, not his impending suicide, that engendered fear and anguish in this man, provoking him to protest to the BBC and MPs:
‘The law in this country robbed me of control over my death. It forced me to seek solace in Switzerland. Then it sought to punish those attempting to help me get there. The hypocrisy and cruelty of this is astounding.’
Put aside for a moment your personal views on assisted dying, and ask, what could possibly have motivated someone to blow the whistle in this way at the Whaley’s eleventh hour? Genuine concern, self-righteousness, extreme religious views, a sense of public duty, malice? Or what?
Should other people’s private scruples be allowed to control the rights of families in such tragic circumstances?
Imagine being born in war-ravaged Yemen, stranded in a hospital in a country where social, political, economic and health care systems have all collapsed, where about half of the 28 million inhabitants are living on the brink of famine. Now add to that the babies being conjoined twins. Their picture appeared in the British press; the Yemeni doctors appealing for help from the UN to get them to Saudi Arabia.
What should our response be?
What is our responsibility in such cases?
What chance did they realistically have?
At least 6,800 civilians have been killed and 10,700 injured in the war, according to UN statistics. Did these two extremely vulnerable boys warrant such an exceptional rescue mission?
In the event they died in their homeland, but the questions remain.
I could go on … and on …
All the youngsters who become victims of disturbing material on line … the BBC being criticised for not offering abortion advice after an episode of Call the Midwife featuring a backstreet abortion … impecunious students being paid to contract dangerous tropical diseases like typhoid and malaria in the search for new effective vaccines … the matter of a 97-year-old Duke of Edinburgh flouting the country’s law on the wearing of seatbelts …
I have opinions on all these issues. You don’t have to listen to me. You are perfectly entitled to disagree with me – fundamentally and even vociferously. But you ought not to shut me up! Especially not in a threatening or damaging way.
The Crying Tree
Daniel Robbins has been on death row for nineteen years (half of his life) when the execution warrant arrives.
29 October 2004. One minute after midnight.
29 October is my birthday, so the date instantly hooked me in. When we’re young we count down the days – or sleeps! – to such dates; imagine counting down to your own death, or that of someone you love.
Robbins had a troubled upbringing, in and out of care, and there’s now no one in the outside world who’s in contact with him. But he remembers one thing his real mother taught him: Truth is not necessarily what people want to hear, and now he’s in prison because he failed to tell the truth – the truth about how, in 1985, he came to shoot dead 15-year-old Shep Stanley. Shep’s father is Deputy Sheriff Nathaniel Stanley (Nate), and it was he who found the fatally wounded boy. He cradled Shep while he bled to death, and his testimony helped put the 19-year-old shooter in the state penitentiary, and on death row.
Shep’s mother, Irene, is beside herself, depressed and suffocated by pain. Shep was the apple of her eye, her world. Even her daughter, Bliss, feels left out. Believing she couldn’t cope with hearing the truth about what really happened on the night of her son’s murder, Nate keeps the secret for nineteen years. Until, that is, he discovers his wife has been secretly writing to the condemned man for years … that she’s forgiven him. Incensed beyond control he blurts out the truth. The revelation catapults Irene into a frenzy of activity which takes her all the way to the window opposite her son’s killer.
The book, The Crying Tree ( a perfect title) is cleverly structured. The first section flips between the years leading up to the murder and its aftermath (1983-1990) – and the days immediately after the death warrant comes through (the first two days of October 2004). The second part picks up at 1995 and takes us up to 7 October 2004. The third and fourth sections inch us ominously through the remaining days of October 2004 as the condemned man counts down the rest of his mortal life.
I didn’t see the twist at the end of section 3 coming – always a thrill! – and Irene’s reaction to the truth Nate reveals is powerfully captured in some brilliant passages describing her whole life disintegrating (P247-8), beginning with ‘Irene drove south on Highway 3, speeding past river towns like Neunert and Grand Tower. Headlights made her squint, trains made her stop, and the words her husband had said made her shake with fury … she had no idea what to do with Nate’s confession.’
Alongside the story of the Stanleys’ life and tragedies, we walk beside the man responsible for masterminding the actual execution, Superintendent Tab Mason. He’s a damaged soul himself after years of terrible abuse. He feels the weight of his responsibility acutely – it’s not a job, it’s an ‘ordeal’ – and he has real issues with the notion of forgiveness. Execution is a rare occurrence in Oregon; the last one was seven years earlier, and this is Mason’s first case being ‘in the driving seat’. ‘We’re talking about a man’s life, and I won’t be tolerating any talk that may lead someone to believe we are in any way eager to take on this job.’ He’s determined that every man jack involved in any way, is prepared for this. ‘There are thresholds on the road to killing someone … everyone, from officer to cleanup crew, had to figure out whether or not he had it in him to cross over that line.’
But his careful planning and preparation is thrown into chaos when the murdered man’s mother writes to him … when she arrives seeking mercy … when her daughter supports her – a woman who is herself a criminal prosecutor who’s ‘probably put more men to death than he had sitting in his entire unit‘! It’s a ‘compellingly outrageous‘ situation to be in.
The author of this superb book, Naseem Rakha, an acclaimed journalist, doesn’t shirk the big questions either. The rightness of capital punishment. The Biblical understanding of Do Not Kill. Religion and homosexuality. The meaning and consequences of forgiveness. How grief affects people. Punishment and imprisonment. Nature versus nurture. Weighty questions all.
And her command of language is fabulous. I Iove the idea of
– a face ‘buttered with sympathy’ or ‘buffed of expression and the eyes drained of color’, of – a man running to ‘get as far away from himself as possible’.
– the women in a backwater, ‘their long flannel shirts covering up what gravity had claimed’.
– the people in the tavern ‘strung out on a line waiting for life to turn better’.
Her masterly handling of suspense and conflict, particularly in the chambers where the deed will be/is done, chills the spine. I experienced a CT procedure recently which necessitated everyone else leaving the room leaving me alone in the tunnel with an IV infusion to automatically shoot dye into my veins and thence into my heart, while a robotic disembodied voice warned me it was coming, and my body reacted strangely to the substance. It felt weirdly isolating. And I could see parallels. Only, in my case, I lived to recall the experience!
The Crying Tree is no run-of-the-mill miscarriage of justice story, no who-really-done-it. This is a tale that gets deep inside the heart of a family torn apart by the murder of a beloved and talented son, an act that forever changes the meaning and cohesion of their lives and relationships. Some of the attitudes and language make us cringe today in the UK, but this was the US in the 2000s, and it’s a salutary reminder of how prejudice, ignorance and intolerance can ruin lives. Shep’s mother ends up realising she failed her son, but ‘We all make mistakes … Every one of us. And we all pay. One way or another, we all pay.’
A masterpiece from a hugely talented writer.
To act or not to act
Remember last week I mentioned the cases of child abuse or mistreatment that go to court? That got me thinking.
I’ve been creeping uncomfortably close to this area in my current novel, Killing me Gently – the delicate relationship being built up in the early weeks and months following the birth of a new baby and mysterious things happening which perplex the professionals responsible for ensuring everyone’s safety. We know that some children can be very difficult to love; some appear to reject overtures of maternal affection; some parents struggle to bond with their child for assorted reasons; some parents actually harm and even kill their children. Cruelty and rejection can come in many guises (as I’ve had brought home to me recently in the experiences foster carer Cathy Glass recounts), but so sensitive and nuanced is this whole topic that primary care teams and social services can be unsure of how best to support such families, when to intervene, when indeed to remove the child from the biological family.
Perhaps it was this preoccupation in my writing life that reminded me of a recent news report that I filed away for reference purposes. At the beginning of August a serious case review found that professionals had missed a series of opportunities to save the life of a little girl, Elsie Scully-Hicks, in Cardiff. Pause for a moment and just look at that gorgeous little smiling face … And then take in the fact that this precious life was snuffed out before she even saw her second birthday.
Elsie had been placed with fitness instructor, Matthew Scully-Hicks, and his husband, Craig, at the age of 10 months, and following due process, formally adopted by them just two weeks before her death aged 18 months. The couple were described as well educated and articulate, and highly regarded by each of the involved agencies as good positive parents. They’d already successfully adopted an older child. Indeed, such was their standing that a catalogue of significant bruises and fractures were dismissed as normal childhood accidents (as Elsie’s adopted father alleged). There was indeed a conspicuous lack of professional curiosity about each of her many injuries.
In reality the stay-at-home dad was struggling with her care – he described her as ‘Satan in a babygro’. And when she was just 18 months old, he shook her so violently before throwing her to the floor, that he killed her. Last year he was jailed for life after being convicted of murder at Cardiff Crown Court.
The agencies concerned have promised to learn lessons from this review, but of course, nothing can bring little Elsie back. No one involved in this case will ever forget her. I rather suspect some professionals will never forgive themselves. I shudder to think what it’s like to live with these weighty responsibilities; just getting inside the skin of health visitors and social workers grappling with such judgements in my fictional world is more than enough for me – and I know the outcome! Pause for a moment and think of all those courageous people engaged in making these momentous decisions every day. And living with the consequences. I salute them.
Countdown
What a week. The brutal murder of MP Jo Cox; Tim Peake‘s return to earth after six months in space; an historic referendum on the UK’s position in Europe; … I’ve counted down to my own author-event at Blackwell’s Bookshop this evening, not just in days-to-the-referendum, but in significant news flashes. And I want to pay my own small tribute to Jo Cox and her family who have epitomised dignity, humanity, unity and compassion. If only her legacy could continue to overrule the vitriol and power-struggling and falsehoods which have characterised this campaign.
So, tonight we launch my latest novel, Inside of Me, into the bigger world, courtesy of Blackwell’s Bookshop in Edinburgh.
I always knew it would be hard to do justice to this one without giving away a surprise but significant element which is only revealed at the end. So I had to explore various angles which might ‘sell’ the book to a live audience without containing spoilers. On this occasion I decided to concentrate on two points: body image and disappearance.
I suspect that only a tiny minority of people go through life perfectly content with their own body image; I’m certainly not among their number. All manner of hang-ups, me. All my life. And sobering statistics for suicide, mental health, eating disorders, self-harm, obsessions and addictions, cosmetic procedures, gender changes, all bear testament to a wider societal dissatisfaction. Small wonder, fueled as we are by the messages, overt and subliminal, from magazines and the internet; from social media; peer pressures; completely unrealistic expectations and cultural ideals. My book fits into this context, exploring what it means to live with unhappiness and troubled thoughts and unachievable goals.
One example will suffice: 15-year-old India Grayson looks in the mirror and perceives a size 3 body as grossly overweight. She aspires to have the courage to binge eat and deliberately vomit. Her mother can only stand on the sidelines, powerless to prevent her beloved daughter, on the very cusp of adulthood, starving herself to the point of collapse, forced to wait for medical intervention until the teenager is at death’s door or at imminent risk of significant deterioration. But India’s not seeking death; she’s seeking control. So how far should she be allowed to go along the path to self-destruction? What right has her mother to intervene?
Disappearance is the second recurring theme I chose to speak about. Three teenage girls vanish one after another. So does India’s beloved dad, leaving a neatly folded pile of clothes on a windy beach. Are these events connected? India’s mother has her niggling suspicions, doubts and fears but she’s suppressed them and certainly hasn’t shared them with a single soul. But now, eight years after his supposed suicide, India is convinced she heard her father’s voice on a crowded London station. She has to find him. The truth when it emerges is not what anyone expected; it challenges their notions of family and relationships, of image and identity. It makes us wonder, to what extent is it right to pursue our own goals and ambitions, when they conflict with the interests of others?
As part of my thinking about body image, I’ve been reading A Lot like Eve by Joanna Jepson. A newly ordained curate, Jepson came to fame in the early 2000s when she challenged the courts over cases of abortion for nothing more disabling than a hare lip and cleft palate. I remember her well – and her arguments. She was uniquely qualified to adopt this cause having herself been the victim of bullying and humiliation because of a facial disfigurement, and having also witnessed reaction to her brother who has Down’s Syndrome. What I didn’t know is how she has struggled with her faith and calling. This book is a moving exploration of her own battle to find acceptance and peace in her personal as well as her religious life. And who else would see their calling to be chaplain to the fashion industry?
A Place of Execution
Every once in while a book comes into my orbit that’s so well crafted that it leaves me buzzing. Sacred and Profane, Fingersmith and Past Caring spring to mind.
This week I’ve been awed by the skill of crime writer Val McDermid in A Place of Execution. Written in 1999 it’s not new but it’s only just come to my attention, recommended unreservedly by a friend – thanks, Barbara.
The main story is set in the early 60s in Derbyshire around the time when the Moors murderers were perpetrating their deadly attacks on children in the Manchester area. The historical context, together with the unembellished matter-of-fact account of the investigation seen through the eyes and mind of a young detective in charge of his first major case, gives a sense of real-life happening to this fiction which got me off to a promising start.
When thirteen-year-old Alison Carter goes missing from the tiny hamlet of Scardale there are those who believe the events are linked. Law graduate, fast-tracked-for-promotion, Inspector George Bennett is not among them. His every instinct tells him the squire’s step-daughter has been abducted and murdered by a local person. But gathering evidence in a close-knit in-bred community, hostile to anyone from outside its ranks, is an uphill struggle. Each fragment of evidence comes at a price.
PARTIAL SPOILER ALERT. If you plan to read this book you might want to skip the rest of this post. It doesn’t reveal the most important facts but it does indicate the progress of the investigation, trial, outcome and subsequent findings.
A compelling case builds as George is guided towards his goal:
– two people swear to seeing a man walking the fields when he claims he was elsewhere;
– a fragment of wool, a smear of blood, a duffle toggle, and trampled vegetation suggest a struggle in nearby woodland;
– a disdainful old woman points them in the direction of a disused mine-working long forgotten by the locals but recorded in a book in the squire’s library;
– torn woollen tights and semen-stained gym knickers found in that mine indicate rape;
– the squire’s wife finds a gun wrapped in a bloodied made-to-measure shirt hidden in a dark room, damning evidence of a terrible crime;
– photographs hidden in an underground safe give incontrovertible evidence of foul goings on in Alison’s bedroom.
George and his colleagues are so appalled by what they find, so convinced of the man’s guilt, that they pursue the criminal with all the resources at their disposal and at the expense of their own private lives. The fact that George is about to become a father for the first time adds zeal to his crusade. A compelling case is built for the murder of Alison Carter even in the absence of a body. But the rapist has powerful lawyers with formidable reputations on his defence team. George’s own motivation and integrity are dragged through the mire in the courts.
The evidence of the photographs, though, is powerful stuff; the jury are appalled by what they see and unanimous in their verdict. The first part of the book ends with a stroke-by-stroke account of the hanging of the perpetrator of this terrible violation and murder. As the man falls through the trapdoor and his neck is dislocated, George’s firstborn son enters the world. One life begins as another one ends.
But the reader is left with a sense of unease. Everything points to this man’s guilt but something isn’t right. The rest of the novel (146 of 549 pages) is devoted to events thirty-five years later. A journalist who grew up not far from Scardale and who was contemporaneous with Alison Carter, has finally persuaded George Bennett, now retired, to talk for the first time about his experience of the Carter case, for a book. He finds it unexpectedly cathartic. The manuscript is almost ready for submission to the publisher when George is persuaded to revisit Scardale. What he finds there so shocks him that he feels forced, without explanation, to withdraw permission for publication. So powerful is his reaction that he ends up in Intensive Care fighting for his life after a severe heart attack.
But the journalist is too close to the scoop of the century to back down so easily. She too visits Scardale. She too sees what George sees. What should she do? What will she do? If she agrees to withhold the book she will lose the opportunity of a lifetime; is she publishes she will ruin many other lives.
The truth about what actually happened in Scardale in 1963 is immensely more complex and unexpected and horrific than George ever dreamed of. Far more people suffered than he knew. But the fact that a man was hanged for a murder he did not commit because of his own actions will haunt him for the rest of his days.
This is a beautifully executed tour de force of a book with a subtlety and intricacy that mark McDermid out as a brilliant writer. I found it compelling reading and wanted to start all over again to seek out the cues I missed first time around. And it’s very rare for me to say that about any book.
Locked in to a fate worse than death
Tony Nicklinson is 58. He’s paralysed from the neck down, can’t speak, and his only means of communication is by moving his eyes on a screen linked to a special computer. And yet his brain is so alive and intelligent that he can hold his own in arguments with twitters and QCs alike.
Prior to the stroke, Mr Nicklinson was a handsome, successful, fun-loving man, keen on extreme sports. He was in Greece on a business trip, when he suffered a catastrophic stroke in 2005. Now he is in a locked-in state, dependent on carers for his every need, with no hope of recovery. He considers his life as ‘miserable, demeaning and undignified‘. He ‘has no privacy or dignity left‘, and he rates it a state worse than death. He’s held that view since 2007; it’s no passing whim. It’s what’s described as a ‘voluntary, clear, settled and informed wish’ in legal parlance. Watching him on The Channel 4 documentary, Let Our Dad Die, surely no one could help but sympathise with his viewpoint. Even the Greek doctor who saved his life is appalled by the consequences of his actions, although no blame attaches to him.
In March Mr Nicklinson won the right to have his case heard by the High Court. The hearing took place last week (starting 19 June). There was considerable media interest in the run up to it. Lord Falconer visited the family at home. BBC’s Fergus Walsh went to see for himself what kind of a life a locked-in patient has. Channel 4 aired its documentary. Though he could communicate with these people in his own home, Mr Nicklinson was unable to attend the hearing in person, so he stated his arguments through emails and lawyers.
His case? Simply put, he is incapable of taking his own life, so he wants the judges to rule that, when he decides he wants to die, a doctor will be immune from prosecution if he/she helps him. Mr Nicklinson fully realises that the law as it stands prohibits anyone else taking his life; that would be murder. His defence rests on the view that he is being discriminated against, because of his disability. He is looking for assistance to do what he would do for himself were he able. Furthermore he adds poignantly, why should other people be allowed to condemn him to a life of increasing misery?
His barrister described it in more ponderous legal terms: ‘a serious interference of his common law and Convention rights of autonomy and dignity’.
It’s important to note that Mr Nicklinson is not seeking a change in the law. He is seeking two declarations from the court.
1. That in the circumstances of his case – and where an order has been sought from the court in advance – ‘the common law defence of necessity would be available to a doctor who, acting out of his professional and human duty, assisted him to die‘.
2. That the current law of assisted suicide and euthanasia is incompatible with his Article 8 rights of autonomy and dignity .
The QC acting for this family argues that a prior sanction by a court ‘would provide the strongest possible safeguard against abuse’. And furthermore ‘it would also provide a safeguard against the concern, often expressed by disabled opponents of legalisation, that a change in the law would lead to a change in people’s attitudes to disabled people, who they predict would come under subtle pressure to seek an assisted death through fear of being a “burden”.’
But any loosening of the limits frightens the legal fraternity. Speaking directly to Mr Nicklinson, Lord Falconer made it perfectly clear that in his judgement, modifying the law to accommodate such an act would be ‘crossing the Rubicon’. He was himself sympathetic to assisted suicide in cases of terrible disability with no prospect of improvement, where the patient expressed a sustained wish to put an end to their misery, but ending someone else’s life is murder and that must always be unacceptable.
Pause here for a moment and ask yourself: What answer would I give to Tony Nicklinson?
Watching the documentary I wanted to weep with this man. His chagrin, his pain, were palpable. But there again, as Christina Petterson put it in The Independent,
‘… the law isn’t about how we feel. The law isn’t about how you feel if you were once healthy and fit and happy, and now aren’t. The law, as Lord Falconer said on that Dispatches, is the same for everybody. “If people want to kill themselves,” he said, it’s an “entirely private matter”, but “they can’t kill somebody else”. The law, as the disability rights campaigner Kevin Fitzpatrick also said on the programme, is meant to offer protection. “When you develop a society where some people judge that other people’s lives are not worth living,” he said, “that’s the Rubicon.”‘
There can be no happy ending for the Nicklinsons, neither Tony, nor his wife, nor his daughters. But each time a tragic case like this comes to court, and I watch the family being forced to parade their lives in front of others, to expend dwindling energy on fighting their cause, I feel there has to be an alternative.
I can, of course, see the dangers inherent in a change to the law against taking life. The consequences could be inconceivably horrible. I accept too that these extreme cases make bad laws. But the fact remains, that these exceptional circumstances do present from time to time. And they seem to cry out for special judgements.
Would it be so terrible to openly acknowledge this fact, and to relieve these families of the necessity of taking their cases to the courts? Why not constitute a sort of Ombudscommittee – a gathering of carefully selected, experienced and wise folk, representing law, medicine, religion, ethics, patients – who could quietly, rationally, compassionately, debate the very few cases which fall into this terrible legal limbo, taking guidance from others as and when they need it? Not in such a way as to drive the debate underground, not to sweep the anomalies under the carpet, but to take individual cases away from the heat and distortion of media coverage, protecting and supporting those for whom this dilemma is a lived reality not a theoretical argument.
I haven’t ever seen this idea promoted, and it’s the first time I’ve aired my own view on this. So what do you think? Would you be in favour? Or can you see some glaring reason why this would not be an acceptable way forward?
What would your solution be?