by Carl Andrew
“Agreed,” responded David. “Now, what do we do with our little blogger friend?” he asked.
“I still believe we need to adopt a course of positive engagement. Let’s give him the Department of Social Behaviour story in two weeks and make him feel like we’re open and transparent. He’s too influential to have as an enemy,” Vanessa suggested.
“That concerns me, I won’t deny it,” said David. “However, I don’t think we have another choice. We can’t control him but we can use him as a mouthpiece. I just hope he writes the piece positively.”
“I’ll make sure of that David. I think Leon and I have built up a little rapport,” Vanessa replied with a sly grin.
“Yes, you’re very good at building up useful relationships Vanessa. I’ll leave it in your hands. Keep me posted on this and anything relevant you discover about our scientist friend.”
“Will do,” concluded Vanessa.
With that, the meeting reached its conclusion. Both Vanessa and Russell went off in separate directions to their next appointments, Vanessa’s being with a sealed envelope.
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Mid-November - Bolton, Lancashire
After days of quizzing, Leon’s family finally accepted his excuse for the visible injuries he had. They knew there was more to it but realised it was futile pushing any further.
Leon just wanted to get back to normality and was keen to get on with some writing. He’d left the blog alone for a few days and felt he needed to add some content.
He was contemplating the topic area to focus on so had a look through his email to clear his inbox. He hadn’t been able to check it recently and found he had a stack of new messages.
Sifting through them he had the usual collection of spam as well as opinions from those readers who didn’t want to make a public comment but still wanted their voice to be heard.
His eyes then focused on an email with the subject line:
HOUSE OF ANIMAL DR ATTACKED.
He read on and saw the email was obviously sent with anonymity in mind, based on the email address of the sender, but it contained information about an attack by animal activists on Dr Jennifer Hopwood’s house.
Someone somewhere wanted him to pursue this story and he was too interested in Dr Hopwood to ignore it.
He continued reviewing the email and saw that the information was definitely intended to be positive about Dr Hopwood, positioning her as an innocent victim as opposed to the animal murderer the activists would have people believe.
The person who sent this email, whoever it was, was definitely on her side. His view of Dr Hopwood was also positive so he digested the information, formed the blog post in his mind and started typing…
Animal Behaviour Expert Targeted by Activists
The home of Dr Jennifer Hopwood, acclaimed scientist and the UK’s foremost expert on animal behaviour, was targeted by activists last night in what would appear to be an unnecessary and unprovoked attack.
Dr Hopwood has been the victim of a spate of break-ins over the last few months following one of many similar occurrences at her laboratory recently.
Each time, thugs covered the walls with red paint, stole files and damaged possessions seemingly to send a message to Dr Hopwood to intimidate her into stopping her work.
From information received by ‘The Day Today’, the confusing aspect of this sorry situation is that these people, these animal rights activists, are deluded in that they believe the scientist to be hurting animals in the name of science.
However, anyone who has followed the brilliant career of Dr Hopwood would know that this is not the case. Animals are not cruelly tested on in her laboratory, they merely have their behaviour recorded and monitored.
Dr Hopwood’s work has led to many important breakthroughs in the understanding of our natural world as well as medication.
Protest is a very powerful tool that can be all too often misguided diluting its ability to make a real statement for the right reason. It would appear that this has happened in this case.
One would hope the cowards that committed this act of vandalism realise their mistake and cease this course of action against arguably one of the brightest minds this country has produced.
Without such foresight and pursuit of knowledge, this country would slow down its innovation to nothing more than an amble.
As always, share your thoughts with us below or contact us at [email protected]
When Leon finished typing, he stared at the screen and read the words. For some reason, this post was written with far more emotion than he had previously allowed to enter his writing.
Watching Dr Hopwood on Newsnight and reading about her work had stirred up a passion borne of admiration in Leon. It was like he was writing about an attack on a friend.
He pressed enter to publish his post and released his emotional diatribe to the world.
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Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire
Sarah read and re-read the story. Who the bloody hell does he think he is writing this rubbish? She thought to herself.
She was fuming. The influential blog ‘The Day Today’ had, in a single blog post, ruined the hard work she and the other guys had put in to stop the cruelty Dr Hopwood was inflicting on innocent animals.
She and the rest of the activists had been painted as irrational and unnecessary in their actions. This blogger had no idea what was really happening.
Before she had a chance to gather her thoughts she had written and fired off an email offering an interview to ‘The Day Today’ to tell the activist side of the story.
What had she done? She had effectively gone public. This blogger now had her email address, name and confession……
Sarah sat there staring at the screen for what seemed like ages. She was rigid and couldn’t really focus on anything in particular.
Rational thought was locked in a struggle with irrational fear for control of her emotions. One side suggesting the blogger may not even read or react to her email, the other pondering what she would do if he accepted her offer of an interview.
There would be no winner until she either got a reply or enough time passed to allow other matters to focus her thoughts.
She decided to distract herself by looking for jobs she had no intention of applying for.
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10 Downing Street, London
Vanessa was unsure of her next move. The envelope showed up very little to link Jennifer Hopwood with any of the activists suspected of the attack on her house.
In fact, the findings were relatively dull. She was married once but her husband had died. She’d never been with anyone else since. The only seemingly loose end was a daughter called Abby who had migrated to Canada a few years ago with no contact since.
Other than that, both her parents had died and she had no brothers or sisters. She kept in touch with no one, had no contact with old work colleagues or school friends. She was absolutely reliant on her job for any kind of social stimulation.
She read the report over and over but nothing jumped out at her that could explain why Jennifer did not want to pursue charges against the activists.
Finally, she reached for the phone. After numbers were pressed, the dial tone switched to a ring.
“Hello”
“Hi it’s me,” said Vanessa. “I need you to check out the daughter. Keep this totally silent and also find out if any of the known activists have stuck their head up recently.”
“The daughter will be a challenge. I have a few contacts in Canada but it’ll take time. I’ll come back to you with the other stuff tomorrow,” came the gravelly-voiced response.
“Do what you can,” Vanessa concluded pressing to end the call before packing away the report that was on her desk and securing it in a locked filing cabinet drawer.
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Bolton, Lancashire
Finally able to enjoy a shower without feeling the pain of the water invading the various cuts and lesions following the attack, Leon revelled in the hot water soaking his body.
He had always relied on a shower to bring him back to life and give him the vitality to make the most of the day. He stayed under the water for longer than normal but shorter than would stand him accused by the family of hogging it.
He turned the water off, stepped out of the shower and dried himself. That part, the towel against his sores, was still causing him discomfort. He winced more than once but could feel it getting easier as each day passed.
Refreshed, he went into his temporary bedroom to get dressed. Before he reached the wardrobe, he flipped open the lid of the laptop, bringing it back to life.
In the five seconds or so before his desktop appeared, he had time to reach for his clothes.
Pulling them on, he glanced at the screen and noticed his latest blog post already had 30 comments.
He finished getting dressed and started reading through them. Most were neutral and an equal number were in support of his post as were against it. None required a response.
He pulled up his email and saw he had 40 unopened messages. He began the usual process of delete or review. He had become very good at seeing the preview of an email and knowing instantly if it was worthless or of value.
Going through each message he acknowledged those that required a response and deleted those that clogged up his inbox day in day out.
He had the usual spattering of spam; offering either drugs that would help him enlarge his penis or requests from lawyers, doctors or royalty from far flung reaches of Africa presenting him the chance to become the beneficiary of a mountain of money from someone he had never heard of.
A collective delete quickly got rid of those.
One email did catch his eye however. It was from a Sarah Jenkins and appeared at first glance to be genuine. He clicked it open and read it.
How dare you! You call yourself a blogger who’s independent in his views. You claim to provide the real story of what’s happening on Britain’s streets and yet you write this crap about Dr Hopwood, condemning the real heroes in this story, the activists.
We attacked someone who has no care or consideration for God’s creatures, someone who wilfully abuses her position as a scientist to inflict pain on innocent animals.
If you want to show that you’re balanced and consider both sides of the story, why don’t you interview me and find out the other perspective. Stop being a mouthpiece for the Government.
When he finished reading he contemplated his response. He had to be true to his word and fair to his readers. He had always promised to follow a story through and had no other choice.
He responded to Sarah and accepted her offer of an interview enquiring where she was based in order to find an appropriate location for the interview.
Within a few minutes, she had sent a reply. She would only agree to an interview if it was held in Huntingdon, close to where she lived. Leon responded in agreement and a date, time and location were set for two days later.
He knew he would have to leave his personal impression of Dr Hopwood to one side and conduct this interview with the impartiality he always tried to observe in these situations.
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Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire
Sarah sat in front of her computer shivering. She wasn’t cold, she was exhilarated, scared, amazed, fearful, all of the above.
What should she do now? She was two days away from an interview with the UK’s most widely read blogger. Should she tell the others? She thought to herself. No, they’d be angry at her, surely.
It was then that she realised she’d made a huge mistake. She had another reason why she didn’t want such exposure.
“Think Sarah, think,” she heard herself saying.
Her eureka moment came a few seconds later and she began typing another email. No salutation, straight into the meat of the note:
Another thing, no photos and no real names, you can call me Emma for any article you write following the interview but I refuse to allow any photos to be used. Understood?
After clicking send, she sat there praying for a response as each second passed.
The send and receive button was quickly becoming a notable companion as she continuously flirted with it until finally, a response appeared.
She opened it and almost disappointingly read:
Sure.
Perhaps she expected more words to match her level of anticipation. Still, it was all arranged and she was becoming more comfortable with the outcome.
In almost a perfect display of Britishness, Sarah turned her computer off, walked into the kitchen and made a cup of tea.
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Bolton, Lancashire
With the interview set up, Leon got down to finding out everything about the activists. He wanted to be prepared and wasted no time in digging for information.
He searched through old news archives and recent articles. When he found names linked to the activists, he searched for their details.
He also had a fake profile on ‘Unite’ that kept him in touch with the more social of social networks.
He spent a good few hours making notes and rifling through the information on his screen. Satisfied with his work, Leon went downstairs to follow the familiar call for lunch.
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Luton, Bedfordshire
She was still complaining as the bus was pulling up to the stop. Her phone was stuck to her ear and the recipient of the call, was having to do a lot of listening.
“It was so out of order. I mean, I didn’t do anything wrong, bloody Mrs Green. She’s such a bitch. She could’ve just let me go at the same time as the others. Now I’m so bloody late. My mum’s gonna kill me.”
The doors opened and she nodded to the driver as she traversed the step. Walking along the road she was unaware of her surroundings as she carried on her diatribe.
It was a cold winter evening and she pulled her coat tighter around her neck, seeking out whatever warmth she could find.
She took a left off the main road and headed up Windsor Street. All of a sudden, she heard a beep and an echo as her phone battery succumbed to an over expense of energy.
“Shit,” she cried out audibly, “Bloody phone.”
Journeying up the street a little further, she put her hands in her pockets and wiggled them around to try and get the feeling back into her fingers. The bitter wind that swept in was certainly having a negative impact.
She passed the shops on the left and continued on across a narrow, dark laneway that led to the back of the small retail area.
She was lost in her thoughts, thinking about what she was going to say to her mum, how she was going to explain off this latest indiscretion.
The sudden and unexpected pull on her jacket jerked her backwards with such a force that she was unable to muster a sound from her mouth to audibly respond.
In a second, hands were all over her. She couldn’t see how many people there were but they were definitely a group of males.
A little more composed now, she tried to scream but felt a knife next to her face.
“Make a sound you bitch and I’ll cut your face, understand?” A menacing gravelly voice said.
She nodded and felt the freezing sensation of tears rolling down her cheek. Her clothes were being ripped off but she felt too numb with fear to feel the cold.
Hands were pawing at her breasts and groping her buttocks. At that point, perhaps it was the realisation that she was going to be raped, shock set in and her mind went blank in a defence mechanism against the horror she was facing.
One of the guys had his phone out and was recording the whole attack.
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br /> “Go on son, give the slag what she wants,” he said.
The gang threw her onto her back, spread her legs and proceeded to take it in turns to rape her.
She began helplessly sobbing. There was nothing she could do.
Suddenly, she heard another male voice but this one sounded different, it sounded older and strangely safer.
“Oi, leave her alone you bastards. I’ve called the police.”
The solitary, older male grabbed the nearest boy who was holding the camera and threw him to the ground. As he did so, one of the other boys left the girl alone and went to help his friend.
“Mate, you want to walk away if you know what’s good for you,” he said.
The older man walked over to the girl and grabbed the first guy he could to try and pull him away.
The girl started to believe she would be ok. She would be safe.
She opened her eyes and caught a glimpse of her saviour, her hero. He dumped another of the gang onto the ground like a rag doll. He was strong. He was going to save her.
All of a sudden, one of the gang picked something up from the ground and struck the man in the face with the object. She saw blood spurt out from his mouth.
She saw the brick in the attacker’s hand.
“No. No. Leave him alone,” she cried.
The boy swung the brick towards the man’s face again and caught him on the temple. The man went down on his back. He was out cold.
The boy with the camera was back on his feet capturing what was unfolding again.
The boy pounded the man’s face with the brick with such force and violence he appeared almost crazed.
His eyes were wide and he kept smashing and crushing the man’s skull until the life left him.