An Individual Will

by J.G. Ellis

  Chapter Eighteen

  The school issued an immediate statement expressing sympathy for Chloe’s family and describing her as “a first class student with many friends who will miss her acutely”. It was decided not to describe her as popular, since this might suggest that it would have been somehow less tragic had she been unpopular. An internal investigation would take place and counselling offered to the other students. The school were worried politically, of course. In an age of easy – and ugly – attribution, they wanted to avoid responsibility for her death being laid at their door. I couldn’t help wondering about the possible consequences for the school if Caroline added to their woe by killing herself. Just say “Yes, miss”... all the time. It’s hard to escape the conclusion that the most powerful weapon young people have available to them is the ability to take their own lives. It must be curious if and when one realizes that, and it was fairly obvious Caroline already had.

  Unlike the school, the family were understandably less deft at issuing a statement; but under pressure from the press, they issued one via their lawyer: The family are coming to terms with the death of their daughter, Chloe, and are too distressed to talk to the media at this difficult time. They ask for space and privacy in which to grieve. In other words, Please leave us alone. We had yet to locate Samantha, and nothing was said about her officially. She was seventeen and notionally a free agent and could be anywhere in the world. It was only her family’s conviction that she was dead, a conviction supported by Caroline, that made her a priority in our investigation. That is, or was, until DC Neil Taylor sent me two links – or URLs – and phoned me to say I should view them as a matter of urgency. I remember feeling put upon – somewhat irrationally, clearly, since people – my colleagues – were only doing what they were supposed to be doing. I had, I think, a sense of, a worry about, things running out of control. Rather obviously, this was something I had – and wanted – to keep to myself.

  I considered the sites for less than five minutes before forwarding the information on to Superintendent Wilson with the message that I thought – and was sure he would think – that this was likely to prove media sensitive. He would want to prepare a strategy to firefight the press, who would be dribbling and frothing at the prospect of a social interest story. What leads a talented young person to choose death, and those left behind to celebrate that death? It was the kind of story that could – and would be made to – wear a lot of different agenda costumes.

  The first site I clicked on was a tribute to Chloe and Samantha Johnston, the other was dedicated to Adrian Mansfield with links to articles about his sister, and a blog site dedicated to her writings. As well as tributes and comments and discussion on the main sites, there were also links to social networking sites and video sites. Someone had captured Adrian’s preferred death image and published it online, presumably something that had been pre-planned. The image, interestingly from an investigative point of view, had him dead in the boat with the handle of the knife, hitherto unseen and still undiscovered, protruding from his chest. His head was thrown back in an echo of a crucifixion. So someone simpatico had stabbed him post-mortem, and had obviously been with him at the end. The despoiler had come later.

  We would – rather disastrously – now be expected to find out everything about these blogs and accounts – who had set them up, when and from where – and probably, and absurdly, be expected to have them taken down. As we stood on the threshold of this – teetered on the brink, as it were – I wasted time advising Superintendent Wilson that we shouldn’t do anything other than glean from the sites that which would benefit the investigation. These were, after all, simply personal weblogs that could be set up by anyone in five minutes for the price of an email address, and then later personalised to good, bad, or indifferent taste. A video taken down in one account could be uploaded to another and then posted in a blog. An account could be opened as quickly as it was closed, and there were numerous sites from which to choose. It was, in short, something of a waste of time and resources. He disagreed, and said that we needed to know when they were set up and by whom – and, if possible, the IP numbers of the computers from where they had been viewed, since these were likely to be in the vicinity, and would give us the account details and addresses of those who had accessed the sites. More importantly, and this was the nub of it, we had to be seen to be making the effort. He was non-committal at this stage on whether or not he thought some or all should be taken down. I said, somewhat disingenuously, “Don’t you think it’s a bit too early to be fretting about media hysteria, sir?”

  To which he replied, “I’m going to assume that that’s a sophisticated joke, Barbara.”