Gwen Moffat lives in Cumbria. Her novels are set in remote communities ranging from the Hebrides to the American West. The crimes fit their environment, swelling that dreadful record of sin in the smiling countryside cited by Sherlock Holmes.
When Michelle Cameron was ten she killed a younger child.
Kerry was four, much loved and white; Michelle was black. Branded a monster by the media and society she was incarcerated for eleven years. Aged twenty-one she’s released with a new identity, a flat at the top of a tower block, and a shadowy probation officer who is inept but does her no further harm.
Brainwashed by the system Michelle now faces an alien world in a state so ignorant that the first impression, as we follow her thought processes, is of a woman in her dotage. In fact, she is highly intelligent but emotionally bereft. Vulnerable but indomitable, she confronts hostility, real and imaginary, her only friends a small white dog, a despairing druggie called Ryan, and a prostitute with whom she bonded at the juvenile detention centre. There was fellow feeling: Lucy was detained for killing an abusive client when she was under age.
Lucy offers a kind of casual affection whereas in Ryan and the little dog Michelle has found waifs to mother, but she wants more; she craves meaning: someone who will give her an explanation for her crime. Not surprising then that she succumbs to the demands of Zoe, a therapist with a contract to produce a book that will deconstruct the murder of four-year-old Kerry. Michelle is oblivious to the fact that, in attempts to expose the motives of a child killer, she will be flayed alive (and incidentally make a lot of money for the therapist). She is aware only that, for the first time in her life, she has the undivided attention of a sympathetic listener. She starts preliminary sessions.
At this point Lucy is murdered and Michelle is a suspect; her real identity is leaked to the press and the public outcry is strident. She goes to ground only to be tracked down by Zoe who regards the notoriety as enhanced promotion for her book. At the same time Michelle, in her supposedly safe house, is being minded by Tyler, a black police liaison officer who comes to sense something of the person behind the convicted child-killer.
The resolution that follows tragedy is curiously downbeat yet thoughtful and correct. Although Jacqueline Roy has freely acknowledged her debts to David James Smith (The Sleep of Reason) and Gitta Sereny (Cries Unheard) she has failed to discover the motivation of children who kill, whether or not colour is involved, but in Michelle she has created not only a memorable character but a haunting image.
An important book and an amazing debut: a reminder that “race” is not the same as “species” and that we all stem from the Olduvai Gorge.
