Isolation - a heart-stopping thriller, Shutter Island meets Memento

by Neil Randall

  Later than afternoon, when I returned home from school, I found a note from my parents, telling me that they had to attend to something, a family emergency, if I remember rightly, and that they wouldn’t be home until about four o’clock. Since lunch-time, the image of the slut touching herself like that had never once left my mind. In English class, my favourite subject, I couldn’t concentrate at all, to the extent that I received a mild reprimand from the teacher, Mr Hall, who was like a second father to me, an inspirational figure, a kindly, learned man who leant me some amazing books. With the house to myself, I rushed upstairs to my bedroom, stripped naked and began to reenact the scene in the strip of woodland adjoining the playground. And by that I mean, I crumpled up my quilt cover to resemble the slut’s grounded body, twisted a fold of material around my penis and thrusted away in the same manner the older boys had thrusted away at her, grinding my hips up and down. Within seconds, I felt a tingling sensation, like nothing I had ever experienced before, and searing hot liquid jetted out of my penis.

  At school, I had heard classmates discussing masturbation before, but had always avoided such base talk. Now I had experienced it firsthand, however, I wanted to repeat the sensation time and again. Picturing the slut’s fingers slipping into her vagina, I desperately wanted to find something I could insert my penis into. Foolishly, driven mad by this freakishly intense physical desire, I selected a thick, two-litre, glass, Coca-Cola bottle, which I felt sure I could ease my penis inside, experiencing the tightness, the enclosure I so badly wanted to replicate. Perched on the edge of the bed, I tried to force the bottle over my penis, to squeeze myself inside, to work it up and down, just as I had a few minutes ago, into a folded piece of quilt cover. In my lustful impatience (and that’s the only way I can describe such stupidity), I pushed too hard, too fast, too often, and the bottle cracked, the glass around the neck splintering, several jagged shards slicing into the top of my penis. The pain! The blood! The shame! The mad, mad panic! For no sooner had I gone somewhere close to mastering the shock, when I heard the front door open and my parents call up the stairs. A comical scene, I suppose, had I not been that stupid boy, rolling around on his bedroom floor, with blood spurting from his penis.

  Suffice to say, I had no option but to call for help (and believe me, there was a moment when I seriously contemplated lying there and bleeding to death, just to avoid dealing with the situation, my parents, the ambulance, the hospital – all of which were humiliating in the extreme). And to this day, I still bear the scar from my imbecilic actions, a reminder of the dangers arising from sexual desire, when not strictly policed.

  Hugely disturbed, I broke off from reading. Not simply because of the uncomfortable words I’d just read, but because I did indeed have a scar running down the tip of my penis. A scar, my parents had always maintained, which resulted from circumcision, recommended by a family doctor. But now, casting my mind back, I found it impossible to remember when I’d first noticed the scar – had it always been there? Or did I have some kind of accident? Did it just suddenly appear?

  Frustrated by this memory lapse, a complete lack of clarity, I decided to read on.

  As stated above, these two incidents, a crude, grubby sexual awakening, had a profound impact upon me. They created what I can only describe as a chasm, a gulf between how I saw myself as a sexual being and those I wished to engage in sexual activity with. In short, I had a skewed vision of lovemaking. I found it hard to distinguish between a consensual act and a non-consensual act – although that may be a clumsy way of expressing it. What I think I’m trying to say is that, for me, sex has, and will always be, about one person’s search for gratification, not some spiritual coming together, making love, two people pleasuring each other. And if you and I are going to unite, Cara, I feel it important that you understand this; that you understand that you can have full possession of my heart and soul, the noblest parts of any person’s being, but never my physical body.

  In the aftermath of the two incidents described above, after my wound had healed, I’m ashamed to admit that I developed a fixation with the school slut. At break-times, I followed her around, I tried to speak to her, to make some, any kind of connection, because, in my undeveloped mind, she represented the easy gratification of sexual desire. An old, clichéd, commonplace phenomenon, I know, because many adolescent boys are drawn to girls of easy virtue, in the hope of gaining essential sexual experience. But for me it was different. I idealised this slut. I wanted her to see me as a kindred spirit, as someone she could entrust with her sexual favours. When she spurned each and every one of my clumsy advances, therefore, when she mocked and derided me, going so far as to shout, in front of a sizeable crowd of children, “Fuck off, Barrowman, no girl in her right mind would touch you with a bargepole. You’re a fucking freak, smelly, ugly, a weirdo”, I felt crushed. I became even more withdrawn, desperate, solitary.

  From then on, there was always something voyeuristic about my sexual dalliances. Her cruel words had made me feel all the more marginalised, exacerbating my self-esteem issues, because I couldn’t imagine any female liking me for who I really was, because I didn’t feel like a proper or very appealing person, but the freak the slut had called me, abnormal, someone to be shunned and poked fun at. Therefore, my fantasies, the things I used to think about in bed at night, changed accordingly – or perhaps it was more an affirmation of previous inklings than a complete change of mindset. Now all I fantasised about was an unconscious, drugged, yet fully living, breathing female lying on my bed, naked. That way, I’d be able to do what I ever I wanted to do to her, explore every inch of her body, without the risk of humiliating myself, of doing something wrong, so she wouldn’t be able to judge me, look at me with anything like disappointment or distaste in her eyes, something I would’ve been unable to handle. So involving, so real did this obsession become, I started to devise various plans, ways of slipping something into the slut’s drink, at a school disco, for instance, or a friend’s birthday party. If I could just get her alone, I could exploit her body in a way I knew she would wholly approve of, in a way she could fantasise about afterwards. And here, I thought about perhaps filming myself taking advantage of her unconscious body, so she could play it back and touch herself, in the same way she touched herself after she was accosted by those boys.

  So what I suggest, my sweet, darling Cara is that we both take yet another leap of heavenly faith. Let me put you to sleep with a mild yet effective sedative. In my room or yours, whichever becomes available soonest, we can seal our union; we can record our unconscious coupling, our selfish acts of pleasure, and play them back, time and again. That way, we will have an eternal testament of our love for each other. Think how truly special that would be!

  In conclusion, I understand how strange, maybe even unsettling, this request might appear. But, and I can’t emphasise this enough, I am fully prepared to go through the same process, the process of being drugged myself.

  So, here I am in my room, awaiting your response. But somehow I know your mind is totally attuned to mine, that we are, to all intents and purposes, already a single living, breathing entity, two hearts beating as one.

  Write soon, my darling, Cara. We have much to arrange – our whole lives together.

  Yours eternally

  Nigel

  Two firm knocks sounded against the study door, disturbing my thoughts before I’d really had a chance to put them into any kind of coherent order. The brass handle rattled and turned. I looked over my shoulder to see Bannister walking into the room.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  “Ah, Mr Barrowman, the, erm…ladies in the dining-room were kind enough to point me in your direction.” He looked right and left, grabbed a chair from beside the empty fireplace, dragged it over to the writing desk, and sat down beside me. “Firstly, let me apologise for slipping off the radar the other day. But, as I’m sure you’re now aware, Mr and Mrs Rouse claimed to have heard from their daughter and—”


  “Claimed?”

  “Why, yes, look at the facts: classified medical reports confirming that Michelle had indeed been abused throughout her childhood, into her teenage years. In such circumstances, and mountains of scientific research backs this up, the perpetrators are nearly always close family members. And if that was the case, then perhaps the diary entries they showed you at the farmhouse the other day were genuine, and the ones found at Michelle’s home were written under duress.”

  “What? So you think Michelle’s parents sexually abused her for years, and then got her to write those diaries and letters, accusing me, just to throw the police off the scent, should anything ever come to light?”

  “Maybe, maybe not.” Bannister leaned closer, propping his elbows on his knees. “However, shocking as that possibility undoubtedly is, it’s not, I fear, our most pressing concern at present.”

  “How do you mean?”

  He glanced warily over his shoulder, before saying, almost at whisper, “What I’m trying to say, Mr Barrowman, is that all of this is highly irregular.”

  “Irregular, why?”

  “Think about it. If the killer really wants to murder every member of your old counselling group, then why would the police risk putting them all under one roof? It’s absurd. It goes against every security procedure I’ve ever encountered. No organisation worth their salt would make such clumsy arrangements. And believe me, with my military knowledge of like operations, I know what I’m talking about. For example, if I was in charge of guarding important people whose lives may well be at risk, I would make sure they were kept miles apart, at secret, heavily guarded locations, not in a remote farmhouse with a solitary squad car outside.”

  This contingency had never entered my mind. But now it had been pointed out, it did seem strange, ominous even – for surely I was far less exposed in a holding cell at Ilford police station than I was here.

  “Did you, erm…talk to the police about this?”

  “Of course I did,” he said. “And their response was deeply troubling, not to mention suspicious. Watson, the chap heading the murder investigation, made up some story about them being close to a breakthrough, that the main suspect was under strict surveillance. But if that’s the case, then surely they’d move in straight away and make an arrest. Four people have been brutally murdered, for pity’s sake! The sooner the killer is in police custody, the better.”

  “But why would the police be so lax?”

  “That’s the question I’ve been asking myself ever since they requested that I join you here.” He shifted position, straightening in his chair. “Look, Mr Barrowman, I think it’s time I told you about a few things I discovered when running a background check on you, things which didn’t make any sense at all.”

  In detail, Bannister told me about a government contact who’d supplied him with medical files, primarily concerning Doctor Rabie’s groundbreaking treatment.

  “If you know the right people, you can get hold of any information you require. When I looked into Rabie’s background, focusing on the work he undertook around the time you were under his care, I found a string of anomalies. There was no official record of him working with your group, despite the fact he makes consistent if unspecified reference to the treatment he oversaw in his academic work. This threw me for a number of reasons. First and foremost, a therapist of his stature wouldn’t carry out an eighteen-month experimental treatment programme, and not record his findings. Confused, I checked out the old public building where your meetings took place. And again, there was no record of any group meeting being held there for the duration of your treatment. It’s as if everything had been conducted in utmost secrecy, as if it never took place – officially, anyway.”

  “But we met every week! I swear! Our parents had to sign forms, all kinds of disclaimers, they paid substantial fees. I heard my mother and father talking about it. Surely there must be some official record of all of that.”

  “No. Nothing. So it got me thinking – maybe not straight away, but later, when Michelle disappeared – about how I’d got involved in all of this, the kinds of things she confided in me regarding her past psychiatric treatment. More and more, I recalled certain conversations we’d had, the way she fed me pieces of information, as if she was leaving a trail, one that would ultimately lead me to looking into Rabie’s sessions.”

  “Why? I don’t understand.”

  “Well, maybe Michelle asked for my help, maybe she befriended me because she wanted me to find out about the past abuse, to discover that she’d been the victim not of a violent partner – who, at the time, I presumed was you, Mr Barrowman – but something much, much darker.”

  “But that doesn’t make sense,” I said, trying to follow the logical progression of his theory. “If that really is the case, and four people have been killed, then who’s doing the killing?”

  “That we can only speculate upon. But perhaps somebody is murdering people to cover up something far worse.”

  “But what could be worse than taking someone’s life?”

  “Child abuse, a paedophile ring, a network that goes right up to the corridors of power. Which, conveniently, brings us round to the next piece of information that proved somewhat baffling. When I dug around your employment records, focusing on your time with the local council, I found a letter of recommendation.”

  I blinked in confusion. I knew nothing about any such letter being written on my behalf.

  “It was penned by a prominent barrister, appealing to the local authority to give a troubled yet highly intelligent young man – and I’m certain that was the exact phrase he used – a modest administrative post. He went on to list your good qualities, your high I.Q. and positive response to psychiatric treatment, saying that you came from a hard-working background, that the social services had provided you with accommodation walking distance from the office, and that he would take it as a personal favour if the Area Coordinator could find a suitable job for you to do. Imagine my surprise, when hearing about you going missing, Mr Barrowman, and that your last known whereabouts was at the house of a certain Mrs Forbes-Powers. On hearing the name, alarm bells went off in my head. Checking my notes, I discovered that the barrister who’d written that letter of recommendation was the lady’s late husband, Thomas Forbes-Powers.”

  “Her husband?”

  “That’s right. So you see: many inexplicable, baffling events have already taken place.”

  “Well, yes, that goes without saying. And you’re not the only to have discovered some unsettling information.”

  I told him about the letter, the one I sent to Cara all those years ago, and how the women in the dining-room had, quite understandably, in light of the things I’d written, acted with such hostility towards me.

  “But couldn’t it just have been a case of youthful exuberance, Mr Barrowman? I mean, we all said and did foolish, cringe worthy things when we were teenagers, especially where young ladies were concerned.”

  “No, no, you don’t understand. In the letter, I say some incredibly distasteful things. I—” The door creaked open, we both turned to see Liz poking her head around the jamb.

  “Nigel?” she said, squinting up her eyes, as if she wasn’t sure if it was really me sitting at the desk in the dim lamplight.

  Uncertainly, I got to my feet and walked over to the door. Stepping inside, Liz met me halfway across the room. We hugged each other, but her embrace was lukewarm, almost reluctant, as if she wasn’t really sure if she should be wrapping her arms around me like this.

  “Are you okay?” I asked. “I’ve been so worried about you. And I’m so sorry for dragging you into all of this.”

  “No, no.” She lowered her eyes. “It’s not your fault some nutcase has gone on a murder spree, is it? I just didn’t know what to think when you went missing. I was worried sick, fearing the worst, that you might turn up dead. Then the police dragged me in for questioning, making all kinds of insinuations, making out that you might be in
volved in the killings somehow.”

  “I know, I know. Everything is so difficult to explain. I don’t know where to begin.”

  Politely, seeing that we needed some time alone, Bannister excused himself from the room, citing the desperate need for a nice cup of tea. Liz and I sat in the two chairs near the writing desk. Still, our words didn’t come easy. It took many a false start and infuriating silence before we finally began to relay information, fill in the blank spaces that defined the last few days.

  “That’s the thing that don’t make no sense,” said Liz, “–that bloody wooden box, the one I got from my dad’s mate down Portobello, ‘cause he’s had a stall there ever since I can remember, ever since I was a kiddie, and now he’s just up and disappeared.”

  “Yeah, I couldn’t understand that, either. But whoever’s been doing all of this must’ve been following me around, must’ve known that you and I had become, erm…friendly. It’s the only logical explanation.”

  “What? And sorta planted the box on the stall?”

  “Unlikely as it sounds; it’s the only thing that makes any sense.”

  In as much detail as I dare, I told her about the time I spent in the basement, and how Bannister had found a link between not just the widow’s husband but my job at the council.

  “Bloody hell! So do you think his wife pushed you down those steps for a reason?”

  I hadn’t really had time to put it together in my head like that. But now Liz had done so, it seemed more likely than a stranger locking me away, almost at random.

  “Look, there’s something else I’ve got to tell you, something you might not want to hear, but something you really need to know.” I glanced at the letter open on the desk. “The women staying here, the other members of my old counselling group, have got a serious grudge against me.”

  I tried to explain about the nature of the letter, the horrible, perverted things I’d committed to paper, even though I had no memory of writing those words, no memory of the events described in those pages.