Guilty Innocence

by Maggie James

  He switches his laptop on. A quick flick through the Internet before bed, mainly to check the football fixtures for the weekend. He clicks on the BBC’s news website, skimming down the sports section. Bristol Rovers will be playing away; he lacks the cash to attend every fixture, though, and given their current form it’s probably not worth the effort. Shame; a diversion from the pain consuming him over Natalie’s rejection would have been welcome.

  He clicks over to the news. As usual, doom and gloom dominate. More problems in the Middle East, the usual wrangling in the House of Commons, concerns over terrorism threats in London. A prostitute found murdered in Southampton. Stabbed, bloodily and brutally, to death. He vaguely remembers something similar a few months ago, a different city, he can’t recall where. Somewhere on the South Coast. Of course, street girls being killed by rogue punters is nothing new. In Mark’s current frame of mind, though, reading about the savage murder of a female hits too close to home. For fuck’s sake, he thinks. Does everything in his life have to lead back to Abby Morgan’s death?

  5

  KNOWLEDGE IS POWER

  As she drives home after the break-up with Mark, Natalie’s consumed, almost destroyed, by the revelation he’s a child killer. It’s as though her brain’s been hijacked by the need to understand, fit the pieces together in her head, get to grips with the fact she’s been so badly wrong about him. Will she ever comprehend the sonar in her head, the tracking device that leads her, unerringly, to life’s bad boys? This is way beyond the realms of petty theft and screwing around, though. Child murder tops a different league and Natalie’s at a loss to fathom how her internal radar has betrayed her yet again.

  The strident blast of a car horn cuts through her thoughts. Oh God. Whilst she’s been whipping herself for her innate ability to pick losers, her car’s drifted into the path of the oncoming traffic. Time to pull over; Natalie’s barely able to see for the tears of self-recrimination burning the backs of her eyeballs. She parks up and switches off the engine, allowing the persistent March drizzle to obscure the windscreen.

  Crushed, she crosses her arms on the steering wheel, pillowing her forehead on top. Her tears take with them her hopes for something solid and lasting with Mark Slater. She remembers, with a shiver of revulsion, the last time they made love, the memory of his body now repugnant. Hands have caressed her that are responsible for the brutal murder of a tiny child; Natalie’s been soiled by their touch and she’s not sure she’ll ever feel clean again.

  Eventually she restarts the engine. This time she’s more careful, more aware, as she drives. Back in her flat, she makes straight for the biscuit tin, a pure reflex action, before the memory of her earlier vomiting stops her. For once, she doesn’t seek refuge in comfort eating, her stomach sending a silent message of protest against food. The urge to dig deeper into the enigma of Mark Slater claws at her. She’s gone from hopeful girlfriend to destroyed ex in the space of an evening, so she needs answers. Now. Mark’s so-called explanation is inadequate, insultingly thin, and as she’ll never see him again, she’s unable to unearth the truth of this – whatever this is – through him.

  Something else is required to sort the mess in her head.

  Natalie digs deep into her memory, trying to force out facts about the murder of Abby Morgan, but few emerge. The killing that shocked the whole of Britain took place too long ago, when Natalie was the same age as Mark, or Joshua, or whatever his name is. Eleven years old. Holy shit. The reality of it rushes over her. Whilst she’s struggling to cope with the breakdown of her parents’ marriage, he’s battering a child to death. At the same time as menstruation becomes an unwelcome factor in her life, a toddler’s blood is soaking into the ground somewhere close by. Where, exactly? Dartmoor, Dorset, Devon; she can’t remember, and the proximity of the murder site to Bristol adds fuel to the revulsion gathering force in her brain.

  Despite not being able to recall many details about the crime, Natalie’s familiar with the basics. Hell, everyone in Britain knows about the murder of Abby Morgan. It’s one of those legendary crimes, like the Moors Murders, never forgotten. Two eleven-year-old boys deliberately luring a toddler from her garden with the intent of killing her? Following through by forcing her into an abandoned farm building? Battering her with a rake handle and then stabbing her to death? No, thinks Natalie, crimes like that don’t fade from the collective consciousness. They remain and fester, torturing the conscience of Mr and Mrs Joe and Joanna Public with the obvious question. How the hell can something so terrible happen in a so-called civilised society?

  She vaguely remembers hearing her mother discussing the case at the time with their next-door neighbour, who’s come round for coffee.

  ‘I blame the parenting,’ Callie says, nodding with satisfaction at having been astute enough to pinpoint the raison d'être behind the killing. ‘You can’t tell me those two grew up being taught right from wrong. More than likely you’ll find neglect, or abuse, or worse, has been going on behind closed doors.’

  ‘Not just with those boys, either.’ Natalie recalls the grim line of the neighbour’s mouth. ‘How come they were able to take the child so easily? Why wasn’t someone keeping an eye on her?’

  ‘Well, you can’t be watching them all the time, I suppose…’

  Natalie’s memories swing forward to a television broadcast, four years ago or thereabouts. She’s twenty-one, still living at home at the time. Callie Richards and her daughter have just finished a fish and chip supper and are watching the early evening news. Joshua Barker and Adam Campbell are again hitting the headlines, this time because they’re being released under special licence. Complete with new identities, different names and faked backgrounds. A move necessary to prevent them from vigilante action from a public that’s never forgiven or forgotten the murder of two-year-old Abby Morgan.

  ‘Should have locked them up and thrown away the key,’ Callie Richards remarks.

  More or less what Abby’s mother says when she’s interviewed for the broadcast. Michelle Morgan speaks movingly about how Joshua Barker and Adam Campbell have been let off far too lightly for her daughter’s murder. How they’ve received a comfortable life, including an education, at the taxpayer’s expense, and now they’ve been released after serving a mere ten years. She dismisses suggestions that they were only children themselves at the time of the murder, too young to realise what they were doing. ‘They knew all right,’ she says, venom flicking from her voice as she spits the words out. ‘They planned it. Came prepared, with a knife. They killed my child because they’re sick and twisted, both of them, right the way through, and they should pay in full for her death. She lost her right to life through them and it’s only fair they should spend the rest of their lives in prison in return.’ The broadcast cuts back to the newscaster.

  ‘What gets me is the waste of public money,’ Callie Richards says. ‘You can’t tell me it’ll come cheap, giving those two new names, and who’ll foot the bill? The taxpayer, that’s who.’

  Natalie’s inability to remember more than the barest of details frustrates her. She’s battling the flicker of hope in her gut, the one repeating his words to her. I didn’t kill Abby Morgan, Nat. She’s desperate to believe him on one level and yet, on another, it’s easier to brand him a child killer. Safety lies in spurning Mark Slater, in retreating to lick her wounds via singleton status. If she’s alone, she reasons, no man can hurt her the way her father did her mother with his frequent infidelities.

  Knowledge is power, so she’s heard, and right now, she’s lacking in power. Time to set that straight. She switches on her computer and does a search on ‘Abby Morgan murder.’ Over three hundred and fifty thousand hits come up. Wikipedia’s top of the list, but she doesn’t click the link. Too dull, the articles always too long, too annotated, to suit Natalie’s tastes. A YouTube link beneath it entitled ‘Yearly Vigil’ catches her attention, and, intrigued, she clicks on it. Seems Michelle Morgan holds a vigil each year at the site of the murd
er, at the time when her daughter died. This is news to Natalie; she doesn’t remember seeing or hearing anything of this. The blurb gives her the bare facts, with the video link connecting to the latest vigil, the one held last year. Natalie skims through the comments. Most are of the ‘lock them up and throw away the key’ variety.

  Her fingers shaking, she clicks on the video link.

  Natalie can’t tear her eyes from the screen. Michelle Morgan stands in front of a microphone. The setting’s a field, the weather damp and drizzly. Abby’s mother appears older than her age, more mid-fifties rather than the late forties she must be. She’s of average height, carrying at least ten kilos of excess fat strapped to her belly and thighs. Reddish-hued hair, pulled back in an unkempt ponytail, wisps of which escape around her neck. No make-up. Unlike her face, her clothes are younger than her years, a little too tight, a tad too bright. Green trousers a size too small, a shiny butter-coloured top that strains across her breasts. She’s flanked on her left by a young woman who looks barely out of her teens as well as a man who’s possibly in his late twenties. After having read the blurb accompanying the video, Natalie realises who they are. Rachel and Shaun Morgan, Abby’s older sister and brother. Rachel’s stance is awkward, her shoulders hunched, her hands thrust deep into her jacket pockets. She’s clearly unnerved by the television camera pointed her way. Low self-esteem lurks in her poor posture and frequent glances at her brother, who seems altogether more stoical. He stands tall, immobile, with no discernible expression on his face.

  ‘It angers me that the two individuals responsible for depriving my family of a cherished daughter are now at liberty, protected by new identities, living their lives in freedom, when my child has been deprived of her own life. Robbed of it in a most brutal and callous fashion.’ Michelle Morgan’s voice is forged from steel, her posture straight and strong, unlike Rachel’s. ‘Where is the justice for the victim? Why did the two boys who murdered my child get food, clothing and education, all at the taxpayer’s expense, when my daughter was denied her right to these things? A culture has emerged in this country of prioritising the criminal over the victim and it has to stop.’

  ‘You think they were released too early?’

  Michelle Morgan snorts her contempt into the reporter’s microphone.

  ‘Of course they were. Ten years for the murder of a defenceless toddler? The sentence was an insult to my dead daughter.’ The camera pans away from Michelle, showing the trees, the field behind her, with the explanation that the wooden farm building where Abby Morgan died has long since been destroyed. A few more platitudes from the reporter and then the link ends.

  Natalie wonders about Rachel’s father, conspicuous by his absence in the video. She braves the Wikipedia link, but it yields no explanation as to why Matthew Morgan – his name is now added to her scant knowledge about the family – doesn’t appear with his wife and children. No mention of his death or emigration.

  Unable to help herself even though she’s aware she’s indulging in a form of self-flagellation, Natalie clicks on the links to footage from earlier years. Michelle Morgan is always there, along with Rachel and Shaun; Matthew Morgan never is. Little difference exists between the links; Michelle says much the same things, her anger unabated, and Rachel looks downtrodden and unhappy, her arms folded to ward off the television cameras. Shaun always stands alongside his mother, Natalie notes, with Rachel on the other side of her brother. Never beside Michelle Morgan. Natalie watches, fascinated, as Abby’s sister morphs from awkward adolescence through to womanhood, her copper hair long at first, then migrating up around her ears in an unflattering pixie cut before settling into the long straight style of recent years.

  She switches her focus to Shaun Morgan, Michelle’s oldest child. He’s a looker, the gangly teenager of the earlier video links changing into a solid, easy on the eye man. Each year, he stands, rock-like, beside his mother and sister. Like Rachel, he never speaks, allowing Michelle her starring role in her own personal tragic play.

  Natalie’s seen enough of the Morgan family. She does a fresh search on Joshua Barker, and close to three hundred and fifty thousand results ping back at her. Numerous newspaper articles quoting Michelle Morgan’s views on the subject of his release. Another one claims to be an interview with a social worker in regular contact with Joshua Barker during his detention at Vinney Green. The picture she paints doesn’t tally in any way with the man Natalie’s been dating. For one thing, Mark has never displayed any hint of aggression, which is why his conviction for child murder confuses the hell out of her. Yet here is this woman claiming multiple incidents of violence from Joshua Barker; how he beat up other inmates, how he frequently trashed his room, how the staff confided in her that they feared him.

  ‘Being with him always sent a chill down my spine,’ the woman tells her interviewer, in deliberately theatrical tones. Her clichéd phrasing betrays her secret enjoyment of her fifteen minutes of fame. ‘He’s already shown what he’s capable of. I often thought – what if I ended up being his next victim?’

  Natalie’s brain imagines an eleven-year-old boy, capable of murder, then morphs him down through the years as he breaks furniture and punches noses in the cinema of her mind. She watches this boy as he terrorises inmates and staff but somehow the movie in her head stops short of fusing the image with Mark Slater. The two simply don’t tally up and nothing Natalie does will get them to splice together. The dichotomy confuses her no end. If she’s unable to believe Mark Slater emerged from the chrysalis of Joshua Barker, how the hell can she believe him guilty of murdering a two-year-old child?

  ‘I didn’t do it, Nat.’ His words come back to her, and she remembers how young he was when Abby Morgan died. Is it really beyond her to accept it might have happened the way he says it did? That he was forced into going along with events by the more dominant Adam Campbell?

  The answer is yes. She can’t, she won’t, allow herself the luxury of such a belief, even though part of her remains desperate to do so.

  No, she’s made the right decision in cutting Mark adrift. Natalie doesn’t intend to waste any more of her life on him. He’s a vicious killer, she reminds herself. Forget him. Her resolution sorted, her stomach more settled, she heads for the biscuit tin. As she crams the sweet chocolaty comfort into her mouth, Natalie clamps down hard on the nagging voice inside her brain. The one telling her she’s misjudged Mark.

  6

  INSANITY, OF COURSE

  ‘Women,’ Tony Jackson says.

  Mark’s guts tense.

  ‘Been seeing anyone in particular?’

  Mark shakes his head. If Natalie Richards has been off limits before in his conversations with Jackson, he’s certainly not going to mention their relationship now she’s dumped him.

  He shrugs. ‘No. Not my style, as you know.’

  Jackson gazes at Mark, causing the knot in his belly to tighten, pulling it tauter, the constriction surging upwards to compress his lungs.

  ‘You’re aware you need to come clean if you’re getting in deep with anyone. We’ve been over this a thousand times.’

  ‘There’s nobody.’ Mark’s tone is emphatic. Besides, it’s true.

  Tension squeezes the air between them. Jackson’s no fool; three decades in the police force have imbued him with a stellar internal radar for bullshit. Thing is, though, he’s screwed if Mark’s unwilling to divulge details of who he’s been shagging. Besides, other things matter more; Mark’s ability to hold down a job and keep out of trouble. Tony Jackson shrugs, evidently willing to let it go, and turns back to his notes.

  It’s the day after Natalie walks out on Mark. The two men are at his flat, where their monthly meetings always take place after Mark finishes work. As usual, Jackson wears civilian clothes to hide his role as Mark’s monitoring officer. He’s somewhere in his early fifties, carrying too many pints of beer around his middle, and prone to large sweat patches under his armpits. A tad florid and more than slightly bald. Mark likes the
man; Tony Jackson has always behaved professionally. Whatever emotions he might have about Abby Morgan’s murder are kept shelved. Never once has he fired barbed comments about kiddie killers Mark’s way, unlike plenty of other law officers have done. Moreover, he has a granddaughter who’s now the same age as Abby Morgan was when she died. Making Jackson’s professional detachment all the more remarkable.

  An impartiality that will definitely end should Mark reveal not only has he been dating a woman regularly, but also that she’s unmasked Joshua Barker. Something of which he’s well aware Jackson needs to be appraised. Right here. Right now.

  Mark stays silent, however. The meeting, never very long these days, ends; Jackson gets ready to leave, all boxes on his list satisfactorily checked.

  ‘See you next month,’ he says. ‘Keep your nose clean and your arse out of trouble.’

  Later on, after his usual seven-mile run, Mark slides into the hot water of his bath, willing the heat to relax his muscles after the punishing workout. He switches his mind back to Natalie. Impossible to blame her for sneaking into his flat and discovering the letter. Not if he accepts responsibility for his own behaviour. How his reluctance to move their relationship beyond the casual has obviously inflamed every one of her insecurities.

  In a way, he’s glad the pretence of being Mark Slater, regular guy, is over and she knows the truth. Even if he’s been rejected because of it. The constant need for subterfuge where Natalie’s concerned has weighed heavily on him. Is it really finished between them, though? Is it so impossible that he can be loved despite having witnessed the murder of Abby Morgan, having seen the rake batter her delicate flesh, the knife slide in between her ribs? Women are, after all, notorious for this kind of thing, maintaining correspondence for years with serial killers in jail, marrying prisoners on Death Row in America, seemingly drawn to the psychopathic side of human nature. Perhaps Natalie will be of the same ilk. Maybe she’ll reconsider, once she’s had time to get over the initial shock. He realises she yearns for love, for security and permanence; the chance exists she might regret dumping him as her anger recedes.