2004 - The Reunion

by Sue Walker

  “This next, I want you to listen to very carefully.” He paused for a moment. He was worried about her. She looked as if she was going to pass out. Very pale, shivering, bewildered. Too bad, though. She was here now. And Alex? Well, she knew what was coming, one way or another.

  He inserted the next tape, hearing his own voice sounding strangely unfamiliar, its utter calmness belying the truth of what was being said…

  *

  Sheena. I considered it best to deliver my message, my plea of mitigation and understanding, if you like, to you. I feel that I have let you down very badly. I’ve let everyone down. My family especially. But, professionally, I want to use you as my conduit to try and make you understand why you found me perhaps less than forthcoming about my adolescent psychiatric history. I know that you and Debbie Fry have been trying to work it out. Well, here is the answer. You are an extremely able psychologist, and I imagine, given all the material you now have, it will not be too difficult a task to understand what I am about to say.

  The list of names you see in front of you are those of former patients who were resident at the so-called Unit described in the Journal of Adolescent Psychology. You will see my name among them. We were not the first intake, but resident some time after the Unit opened. Between 1977 and 1978 to be exact. A diabolical synchronicity of time, persons and place.

  During that time, early November 1977, the group was taken on a holiday to Argyll. We stayed at an outward-bound centre near Loch Fyne. One of our days, November 8th, involved an orienteering exercise. An exercise that ended in shambles, a fiasco. Late afternoon that day, some of us got lost. Or rather, we deliberately went AWOL. We wanted to give the staff some trouble. On our wanderings we encountered two children. A brother and sister, Crawford and Fiona Hamilton. In short, Fiona was tied up. Blindfolded, cut, raped, buggered, tossed into a loch to drown. The boy was tied to a tree, forced to watch, and then eventually hanged from that tree before his weighted corpse was sent to join his sister’s at the bottom of Loch Fyne. The offences were committed by the patients from the Unit whose names are underlined, my own included. We were all monsters.

  Danny Rintoul and Alexandra Baxendale committed the most sexual abominations on the girl. Danny repeatedly raped and buggered, while Alex did the same, using the handle of a hunting knife. I attempted to rape her but, thankfully, became impotent. Caroline Franks beat and cut Fiona, but it was Alex who was instrumental in urging us to throw Fiona into the loch, having been told by the screaming girl she could not swim a stroke. Alex then instigated the hanging of the little boy. I wonder, Sheena, how you would explain that behaviour? Because I am largely at a loss even now, even with my training and clinical experience.

  I’d like to say that it was because we were all so mentally ill, to the point where we were unable to comprehend what we were doing. I cannot. I’d like to lay the blame at the door of the dope we were smoking and the whisky we were drinking too much of. I cannot. They may have been the fuel for what we did. But, in essence, they were just the incidentals to that horrific event. Not, most definitely not, the cause. The cause lay within us, as individuals, as a group. But I am powerless to analyse it any further. It remains a dark, the darkest of events, immune from neat psychological explanation.

  In addition to those mentioned, there was one other present that day, Isabella Velasco. Sadly, now dead. I had a long talk with her recently, before her death. I agonized about going to see her. But I’m glad that I did. She walked away from the group when she saw them begin to bully the two children. She and Danny Rintoul had a row some yards from where we were, and then she walked off, Danny saying that she wanted to be alone and would meet us all later up at a place known as the high road. But she worried about that bullying episode for weeks after, though she was strenuously assured by Danny Rintoul that all that had occurred was a bit of fun. Eventually she put it from her mind. But that was her mistake. You see, Isabella Velasco’s absolute horror at realizing the truth of what happened that day has led her to take her own life, as you can see from the news cuttings I have enclosed.

  When I met her recently she seemed calm but in truth was in a very bad way. She had, through Danny, been informed of the awful truth of what happened that day by Loch Fyne. However, for some reason, she wasn’t told the entire truth. Perhaps because Danny hadn’t been given the time to explain all before he fell to his death from the ferry.

  Whatever, Isabella was under the impression that he alone had done die awful deed, and gave no thought to die others’ complicity. Perhaps because of Danny’s history of sexual crime, she assumed he had revisited that part of himself on his own. In any event, the knowledge had been a double blow, since her renewed friendship with him after twenty-six years had also renewed her interest in her past at the Unit She said mat she had discovered a new-found need to look at her life then. Remarkably, she’d even gone as far as trying to track down her old medical records. Miraculously she had found some. How, I don’t know. She made an oblique reference to ‘medical friends up north’. She said mat she was looking forward to revisiting her time in the Unit. She had blocked it out for so long. But now she had an overriding reason to face up to it, thanks to her burgeoning relationship with Danny.

  But she was to be in for…well, to say ‘shock’ is a gross understatement, is it not? She could barely remain composed as I explained the truth of what went on and who was involved. She broke down at the recent memory of her running to Alex after Danny’s death, diinking she would find help and support from that most dangerous of women. But after that initial panic-stricken visit to Alex, it was Alex who took it upon herself to keep in close touch widi Abby. Not, as she tried to make out to Abby, through concern, but to keep a watching brief on her.

  Isabella struggled to take in all that I told her, and described her feelings at finding out what the others did, once she had left diem at the loch-side. The news made her physically sick in my presence, such was the shock. You see, that day she merely thought she was leaving the group to carry on with some gratuitous bullying. How little she knew.

  However, she did tell me a few interesting things about her time in the Unit after the killings. She noticed a change in the atmosphere of -the pkce. Atmosphere, you see, was always an all-important factor in gauging life there. She recalled, as did I, that the staff appeared to be aware of it but ignorant of the cause. Isabella herself withdrew from her one friendship with another patient, Innes Haldane. Innes had no part in the murderous events.

  There was, though, a deep effect on us from what we did. Alex had constant nightmares during the rest of her stay at the Unit. She was also perceived by the rest of us to be, paradoxically, the most brutal yet the weakest or least trustworthy of the guilty ones, though that position has been ruthlessly reversed by her in adulthood. But, knowing what I do about her, I don’t think she was anything like the threat that at the time we thought she was. Yes, her subconscious in sleep may have given her away at times, but the conscious Alex was and is always on alert. Nevertheless we had to be sure, and thus we subjected her to pressures to ensure that she stayed quiet. In one case we played a practical joke on her, so threatening that we knew it would ram our message home. We knew Alex, how her mind worked. We all knew each other’s vulnerable spots. Alex, once warned, would not break, not give us away. She would never, never have done anything to imperil herself. Not with her obsessive need for power—a need that has clearly grown over the years. She views the world as revolving for only her and she is omnipotent over it all. A true psychopathic take on the world, Sheena?

  And as for my own part. Yes, I am equally culpable and my punishment is already well under way. Can you imagine what it has been like reading the articles about my abducted daughter side by side with those about the Hamilton children, all those years ago? The clash of destinies, fates. I couldn’t believe it And yet I could. It was a punishment. No doubt. But not punishment enough. I think Katie being taken and, mercifully returned, though harmed, crystalli
zed all that I had ever thought about what we did. In the first place, I still do not know why we did what we did. It was a combination of time, place and the most terrible of group dynamics. And…and almost as soon as we had done it, we…how can I put it…we came back to reality. Realized the horror of what we had done. We immediately made a pact never to divulge it, never to discuss it, and we pledged to keep in touch for ever, contacting each other every anniversary. Every 8th November. We had to trust one another. One fell, we all fell. I know we lived on terror the next few weeks and months, fearing the bodies’ discovery. But, incredibly, it never happened. And when they did appear four years later, it was like some blasphemous miracle. No evidence of the killings, no ropes, meagre human remains, incompetent police work. Yes, that’s all the parents got, to live and die with. A sloppy and bungled police investigation. A rapid conclusion to ‘accidental death’, which no one questioned;

  And what, all this time, did I think I was going to do? Go to the police? Possibly, probably. Tell the parents? I think that’s what drove me. I thought of how I felt about Katie that short while she was missing and what it would’ve been like if she’d never come back. I had to do something. Would telling the parents be crueller than not? Anyway, I met with both Danny and Alex in recent months and discussed it all with them. In truth, I don’t know what could be done legally now. What evidence is there? None. Nothing physical. The bodies were undiscovered for nearly four years. There was little left to examine. And the original police investigation had been grossly incompetent. No one had seemed to consider foul play. Nor had they looked, really looked, to see who else was staying in the area at the time. A posse of adolescent mental patients within spitting distance had seemed to elude them. Fools! No, there is no evidence. Just my word, and the, presumably, still provable fact that we were in the area on the night in question. But the biggest blow has just come to me. I have, after some inquiries, discovered that the Hamilton parents are both dead. Gone to their graves not knowing the truth. It is too much. Too much.

  However, none of that matters now. It’s all too late. I have my own plans for justice, for self-punishment. As for the others? Fkst, Lydia Shaw. She was not present at the killing of the Hamilton children, but she found out about it and said nothing; possibly, and I give her the benefit of the doubt, she didn’t believe we could’ve done such a thing. She had apparently overheard some talk on the day we had a reunion picnic in St Monans, though wasn’t quite sure what to make of it. I visited Lydia Shaw some time ago and found out then exactly what she knew. She was contrite and frightened. I said that something was probably going to come out but that I wouldn’t involve her. I now know that Alex too visited her. That encounter was rather more threatening than mine, the consequences of which are there to see. I have been to see Lydia at her convalescent home, slipping into the grounds unnoticed, not wishing to invite innocent but intrusive questions as to who I was, why I was there. I wanted to see what state she was in. Sadly, Lydia became rather agitated at my visit. Alex had been there before me and put the fear of God into an already broken and largely irreparable Lydia. She knew about the deaths. And only Alex could have told her. Alex has done her work there, in more ways than one. I shudder at the memory of that visit. There’s no doubt that Lydia will be convalescing for the rest of her life. A cruel turn of events for a woman whose main crime was to be overly inquisitive.

  One vital piece of information you should have. Danny’s death was an accident. Not suicide. I know what happened. That is all you need to know. Again justice found its own way through with him as with so many of us. Those whom justice has left untouched, that is, Alex, I plan to confront. I have no life left after tonight. Sheena, please be sure to pass all I have sent you on to those who will require it.

  I regret only one thing. The death of Isabella. Perhaps I should have shown some restraint. Not told her everything and maybe, maybe, she’d still be alive. Perhaps my own selfish unburdening—oh, yes, it was a relief—in telling her every second of the hell we perpetrated was too much for her. I have no doubt that the rather…rather extravagant, yet highly symbolic way in which she chose to end her life was meant as recompense to those poor pitiful children and their parents. Although I doubt her penance will ever be appreciated. Not in this world.

  As for the rest of us? All the misfortune that has befallen us must be laid at our own doors. We thought we could escape responsibility for an act of such inexplicable evil that I can never begin to understand it, despite my own lengthy forays into the world of the mind. We have or will pay for that.

  *

  Innes was conscious of Simon turning off the now hissing tape. But still her mind seemed empty. Unable to function. She was no longer cold. Only numb. She had a notion to stand up, perhaps flee the room, but her limbs refused to work. She tried to hurtle herself back to the fifteen-year-old she had been then. To recapture the atmosphere. How could she not have known? Not have heard something later? Her whole memory of them all had been transformed in an instant. Her memories were not of fellow mental-illness sufferers. Rather, they were all…Simon, Carrie, Danny—yes, Danny! And Alex…all killers. Rapists. Monsters!

  She sensed another movement from him and looked up. With deliberation, he placed the tape recorder on the floor, wiping his tears away with trembling fingers. He stood up and walked over to Alex, ripping the gag from her lips with a ferocity that made her wince with the pain.

  “It’s all rubbish, Innes! Pure crap! He’s mad! Don’t believe a word he s—”

  The instant change in his demeanour to one of threatening violence kept Innes silent. He spat the words at Alex. “Admit it! Tell her what I said is true. Tell her, damn you! I want to hear the truth from jour lips!”

  Simon was standing over her, waiting. Innes watched as Alex stared straight ahead, refusing to meet his eye. Anyone’s eye. Twenty-six years on, her behaviour was identical to her most insolent episodes in group therapy. But Simon was no Dr Laurie, and the whiplash of his hand on Alex’s cheek echoed through the room. Innes watched as a chillingly unresponsive Alex lifted her head up from the pillow, gradually and deliberately unrushed, as a slow gash of blood meandered its way towards her chin.

  But the blow had been too much for Innes. She saw where things were going and managed to get to her feet. “Stop it! Stop! Simon, please. We must go to the police or something. Please don’t do…don’t do anything…anything…” She didn’t finish the sentence. His look of fury kept her nailed in place, and, meekly, she lowered herself back down on to the bed’s edge. But she noticed that he too was shaking, staring hard at the hand he’d struck Alex with, as if it didn’t belong to him.

  Despite her attempts at an impassive front, Alex was struggling to sit up now, eyes fixed in the middle distance. Still meeting no one’s eye. Her breathing was laboured, the lamplight picking out the clamminess of her forehead. Unbidden, the memory came back to Innes—the memory of one particularly bad nightmare Alex had had after the Christmas raffle. She remembered Anna and Ranj had come upstairs and roused Alex. She’d sat bolt upright, sweat all over her face and body. Just like now. And that raffle! Only now did she realize the significance of the ‘prize’ of rope and knife. A diabolical practical joke.

  She heard him shouting at Alex, his voice catching, almost like a sob. “Tell her. Everything!”

  Innes held up a shaking hand. “She doesn’t have to. I believe you, Simon. I do believe you. Oh, Christ, Alex.” She was aware of the tears falling down her own cheeks and welcomed them. At last something. Something to feel. She also felt her breathing quickening, the telltale choking sensation causing a fluttering in her chest and tightening of her throat. She wrestled in her jacket pocket and pulled out the paper bag. Aware of the looks of puzzlement from the others, she blew the bag into a balloon and started breathing into it and inhaling. After two five-breath cycles, she was calming down, though her heart-rate felt unnaturally high.

  Silence, save for die sound of her folding up die bag. The h
iatus was broken by the hacking cough of Alex. Innes looked at her and shook her head. She wanted out of this room, out of this place and, most of all, away from Alex. Away from diem both. But she needed to go along with Simon for now, and if she could, try to talk him out of whatever he had planned.

  She heard Alex cough again. A preparatory clearing of the throat. A noise Innes recognized from the past, when Alex would occasionally tease them all through group-therapy sessions and then, without warning, decide that it was time to do a bit of grandstanding. She was going to talk. At last.

  “He’s right. It was die day we went orienteering. You weren’t involved in our group, remember? You had a cold or flu or somediing, and we’d fixed Lydia widi that broken monkey-rope. Anyway, we were fucked off. We got lost Were bored. Annoyed. We bumped into the kids. Just by chance.”

  She stopped, wiping blood from her mouth, her body racked widi a palsy of fear. It was obvious now mat her defences had failed her. Perhaps because die worst was about to be heard. Innes nodded for her to go on, uncomfortable images already settiing in her mind.

  “Isabella didn’t want to get involved. She wanted us to give them dieir toy guns back and leave them alone. The boy was getting annoyed and the girl? She was afraid. Shit scared. Anyway, Carrie and I told Isabella to fuck off. She walked away. Then Danny ran after her. I heard them arguing. Danny suddenly reappeared. Then we started the psychodrama thing. Soon Carrie had blindfolded the girl, like we used to do in the trust-game part of psychodrama. I think we used the bandanna that Simon was wearing that day. Anyway, Carrie wanted to role-play like a real psychodrama and make the girl be Lydia, I s’ppose ‘cause she really hated Lydia. She was so fucking fed up with her. Anyway, the psychodrama game didn’t really work. And then…and then it changed.”