Minette Walters - The Devil's Feather

From: BandM@freeuk.com

Sent:Sat 14/08/04 12:33

To: connie.burns@uknet.com

Subject:Your stalker

Dear C,

This is the new address for my laptop. It’s been a nuisance setting it up, so I hope it was necessary. I hear what you say about this man passing himself off as one of our friends because you had some of their names and addresses in your laptop, but I’m not so gullible as to answer unsolicited emails, even if they do purport to come from Zimbabwe. However…as your concern is for your mother, I’ve gone along with it.

Now that the dust has settled a bit, I would appreciate a full explanation. We’re staying in a very cramped room in a mediocre hotel, and it would help to have a time-frame. Your mother’s idea of packing was to include our good stuff and leave out anything comfortable, so we’re dressed to the nines on a Saturday morning and extremely bad-tempered. Our only other choice is to stay in pyjamas all day, but we’re liable to kill each other if we don’t go out.

We’re not happy, C. We’ve done as you asked because you used emotional blackmail to achieve it, but we’ll need some very good reasons to continue. Your mother’s worried and depressed because she doesn’t know why you’re afraid of this man, and I feel powerless to do anything for the same reason. I’m inclined to overrule you and take it to the police. You may have me over a barrel, in that I can’t give them his name, history or full description, but I can give them your address, C, and I may still decide to do that in your own interests.

I’m sorry to be a grouch but you’re asking a lot of us. You may be used to living out of a suitcase, but we’re well past the age of finding it amusing. In case you’ve forgotten, your mother turns sixty-four at the end of the month, which is another reason why she’s cross. Apart from the fact that we won’t be coming to stay with you, the light in the hotel bathroom is less forgiving than the one at home(!).

Please don’t do what you normally do, and leave this sitting in your inbox for days on end. I will not go away if you ignore me. If I don’t receive a reply by tomorrow, with an explanation of why all this is necessary, I shall go to the police. And that’s not emotional blackmail, it’s a threat.

This is emotional blackmail. If we have to remain in this room much longer, you’ll be responsible for your parents’ divorce.

All my love, Dad xxx

From: alan.collins@manchester-police.co.uk

Sent:Sat 14/08/04 14:19

To: connie.burns@uknet.com

Subject:Additional information

Dear Connie,

In fact I’m working a weekend shift, so I received your email this a.m. May I quote something my father taught me when I was nine years old and being bullied at school? “The secret of happiness is freedom; the secret of freedom, courage.” When I pointed out that I didn’t have any courage, my father said, “Of course you do, son. Courage isn’t about trying to hit someone who’s bigger and stronger-that’s foolishness-it’s about being scared to death and not showing it.” He was a self-educated coal-miner who died of emphysema when I was 15. I’ll tell you about him one day. He’s never going to make the history books, but he was a good man who spoke a lot of sense.

If Dad was talking to you now, he’d say it was courage that kept you alive, but he’d also tell you that the downside of putting on a brave face is that you have to work through your fears on your own. And the mind has a dangerous habit of distorting facts.

I expect you’ve worked out numerous reasons why MacKenzie didn’t kill you-all of them discounting your own contribution. In abusive situations, victims invariably underestimate themselves and exaggerate the intellect and power of their abuser. He thought Surtees would put two and two together? He didn’t trust his accomplices? You’d falsely accused him and he’s not a murderer at all? They’re all hogwash, Connie. Any man prepared to imprison and brutalize a woman is certainly capable of murder, and there was nothing to stop him following his well-tested MO of disfiguring (even beheading) you, leaving Iraq, changing his identity, and letting terrorists take the blame.

I wish you’d see yourself for what you were-a prisoner without power-but I fear you’re rewriting history to show yourself in the worst light. I may be wrong, but I’m guessing you were forced to do certain things you’re ashamed of, and now your imagination is busy exaggerating your willingness to cooperate. Will you think I’m belittling your experience if I say these feelings are common to every woman, man or child who’s been abused, raped or sexually assaulted? It’s extremely hard to retain a sense of self when the intention of abuse is to reduce the victim to the level of slave.

Since it’s obvious MacKenzie failed in that purpose-you wouldn’t have contacted me/produced the photograph if he hadn’t-can I suggest that the reason you’re still alive is because you won his respect? The way you reacted, however that was, worked in your favour. I’m sure you’ll believe it’s because you cooperated-all surviving victims do-but you’d be wrong to assume that, Connie. There’s no question the two murdered women, whose corpses I saw in Sierra Leone, began by cooperating. Any trained SOCO could read that from their rooms-from the lack of evidence of fettering to the clear indications that intercourse/rape happened on the beds. They set out to appease, and succeeded only in provoking.

So why didn’t that happen to you? What did you do right that they did wrong? I can only assume that he saw you as a person rather than an object. Perhaps you hid your fear better than they did. Perhaps he never fully possessed you. Who knows? But I urge you not to jump to the conclusion that it was because you’re white and spoke his language. To a man like that, any defenceless woman represents the means to self-gratification, and he may not know himself why he didn’t follow through.

I also urge you not to conclude that because you were blindfolded and came away “unmarked,” he never had any intention of killing you. It’ll persuade you that you could/should have rejected some of his demands, and that would be a wrong inference from the facts you’ve given me. If you reread my report on the Sierra Leone murders, you’ll see there are several indicators to suggest the murderer had been in the victims’ rooms for some time-last sightings of the victims, rearrangement of furniture, evidence that food had been consumed, etc.

I made the suggestion in the report that the killer “played” with his victims before unleashing his final attack because he enjoyed watching their responses. It would have been a roller-coaster ride of hope and fear, and the fewer marks he left on them, the greater the hope they would have had of survival. I believe this is what he was doing with you, Connie, and the reason you’re still alive is because you played his “game” better than they did.

In passing, one of the reasons I wanted a pathologist sent out to Freetown was because both the women I saw appeared to have petechial haemorrhaging of the eyes (small spots of blood under the surface). It’s possible they were caused by the ferocity of the attack, but petechiae are commonly found in cases of suffocation-as, for example, when a plastic bag is used to obstruct the airways-and I did wonder if the killer’s “play” involved this type of torture. It’s favoured by totalitarian regimes because it leaves no marks. Mock drownings are also popular…but tend to “saturate” anything over the victim’s eyes. If it’s any comfort, there’s nothing you can tell me that I haven’t seen or heard before. There’s a depressing familiarity about the way deficient men bolster their self-esteem, and it invariably involves the attempted “humiliation” of another human being. In your case, I’m glad to see that the attempt has proved unsuccessful, despite your (hopefully temporary) belief to the contrary.