Chapter One

There were a few odd goings-on in the town of Midwesterley on the 12th July, 2004, and I don't just mean the school shooting. I wonder, and I suspect its the case, that those twelve gunshots at Midwesterley Grammar, bang,bang,bang, were the cataclysm not only for those unfortunate deaths but for the prevarication of the collective mind: the forgetting of the immediate past, the unsurety of the immediate future. Bang,bang,bang, and the townsfolk forgot everything that was appeared not to be in direct relation to those gunshots. For you see, reader, for the past ten years I have investigated those odd-goings on, those mind-wiped events that paled into obscurity once the shots were underway, I have looked beyond the police dossier's, I've interviewed Lee Mason, the so-called perpetrator and I know, I know. I know this: everything you think you know, everything you think you've been told, everything is a lie-

The phone went. 'Shit!' He looked up from the down-trodden type-writer, temporarily broken from reverie, and set back down again to write. Couldn't a phone-call wait for the truth? The man, middle-aged yet matured by a ruffled look, let it ring, in the knowledge that because it wasn't the secret phone, the phone he had set up for witnesses and victims for the book, that the ringing was from his work mobile, which by denomination wasn't going to be important. Resting his fingers on the keytop, the man awaited the next flurry of words: I can already envision those naysayer's who claim this book as conspiratorial rubbish. Perhaps the police, and particularly the Republican government, will be of this view. I have not portrayed these authorities in the best of lights. The phone went off again- he ignored, irritable yet anxious to get words to paper. But conspiracy is thought founded on no foundation, merely prospective. However, when I visited Midwesterley for the first time, Autumn '04, and on subsequent, intermittent trips over the next ten years to investigate the Grammar school shootings, I found those pillars of fact. I found- inevitably? surprisingly? I am not sure- the pedestal unto which my theorizing could become interminable, immortal truth. This is what this book is- truth.

The phone rang for a third time. Whoever it was was desperate. It rang a fourth, fifth, sixth time, echoing around the attic in which he had begun the book. He instinctively pulled the opening page out of the typewriter, and locked it up in the safe, with all the diagrams, statements, charts and leaked documents he had stored up. Ringringring. Unsure why, for a few minutes ago the man was happy to ignore it, the persistence of the person on the other line suddenly suggested to him that this call was significant. 

The man picked up.

Unknown number.

'Hello, Ben Walker speak-'

'You're the journalist, aren't you?' He had a gruff voice, muffled somewhat, as though he were speaking right into the receiver. It had an unnerving effect on Walker, that lone voice in his bare attic room. 'The one fired from the Times? Are you still there?'

He paused, tentatively. 'I'm here, I'm here. That's me. Say, how did you get my number?' By way of contrast, Walker was well-spoken and English accented.

'That doesn't matter right now. I have to speak to you- immediately. You're still doing that book on the Midwesterley shootings, right?' Yes, Walker replied. 'Right, well, we need to talk. Sundown diner-'

'But it's nearly 2AM-'

'I know the time, Walker sir. But I cannot stress the importance of our meeting tonight. They're onto me, and when I've told you what I know about the shootings, they'll be onto you too.' The voice on the other line had always been direct, but there was now a certain finality to his tone. His voice then quavered,and Walker couldn't hear his next part. The close sniffling paused, Walker's cue to question, but he wasn't quit sure where to begin.

The silence was filled with a pungent sense of mutual fear.

'What's your name? Who's 'they'?' 

'I was the first police officer on the scene. They wiped my name from the records, I was never there, never came close to the school.'

Walker was mute.

'You can Google my name if you want. Iker Hernandez, spelt I-K-E-R. They got rid of me before I could talk, it's corrupt, man, it's crazy. This Sundown joint's open 24/7 but I can't stay here for long, they'll come looking sure enough'. The line cut.

Walker didn't wait; he climbed down the rungs of the ladder leading to the attic, jogged downstairs and leant over his Apple Mac. 'Iker Hernandez' he slowly breathed as he tapped in the letters. Sure enough, a handful of articles came up, all from September 2004, hust a couple of months after the shootings. Police officer expelled after indecently assaulting women on the job, the Indiana Tribune reported. POLICE OFFICER PERVERT, shouted one of the tabloids. Ben Walker wasn't sure how much he could trust this apparent molester, but, if he did, then it looked as though he had been purged, expelled, stripped of status so that no one would take his word. Hernandez knew something that 'they' didn't want getting out, but what?

Walker picked up a tape recorder, and got into his disheveled Jeep outside. It was deathly quiet on the suburban street, a peace reserved by nighttime destroyed by the roaring motor.  He wildly reversed, headlights penetrating the windows of empty cars, and he kicked into forward gear, speeding down the road. A few seconds later, an expensive-looking Mercedes purred into life. It, too, raced forward in the direction of Sundown in pursuit of the man ahead.

Ben Walker was being followed.

A Short Story: 'Presidential Musings'

In April this year I wrote a thousand-word short story entitled "Presidential Musings" and entered into the Chalfont St Giles Literary Festival writing competition and won fifty pounds out of it! You had to play off of the quote they gave you, 'All's fair in love and war'. A couple of my friends have been asking to read it for a while so here it is, in full, for you to read. Thanks.

I am not what I am.

Under the guise of cameras and flashbulbs, I am your leader. President of the United States, a nation founded upon free-thinking, democracy, and... corruption. Calmly authoritative, I relay the same old shtick my predecessors have fervently promised and fervently reneged on: tax cuts, a decrease in unemployment, and the like.

But, truthfully, politics at the top transcends such menial issues. It’s a chess game, with high stakes and even higher consequences, and I am the Grand Master.

My father, also at the top of this heady pedestal in his day, forewarned me of power and its unscrupulous influence. He’d grip me, a plucky young kid, by the shoulders, his wizened old eyes burning into mine: ‘Power does untold things, son,’ he’d say, a sense of urgency in his tone. I was then ushered out of his office, my office, left to explore some other indistinguishable hall, corridor or office of the Presidential home, never quite sure of his meaning. He was right, by the way. Only now do I now know that, Exhibit A to support his argument.

“No leader wants a war to blight their reign”, said no one ever. That desire for one’s name to be etched into the history books as that President is such that the slightest provocation engendered me into full-throttled battle. There is that chivalrous notion- but then there’s money, the chance to make lots and lots of it.

We were up against some Dictator-ruled hole in the Middle-East. Oil equals money. Money equals power. Remember that.

•  

A distant hand counted down the seconds till transmission...

3

...I straighten my tie, the excitable hush of the production crew noticeably dimming...

2

...A single cough is heard, seemingly miles away, the bright lights blinding...

1

... I prepare to tell a bold-faced lie to billions...

“Our nation is fighting a war on terror”, I uttered gravely into the lens of the camera. The ease of my duplicitousness was almost scary.

I continued, stony-faced, as if there wasn’t some huge chunk of the picture I was purposefully withholding. I obligingly stared ahead, reading off the autocue, clinging onto the words like a child holds a teddy-bear, inwardly scolding myself.

“Annnnnnnd... CUT!” A voice said distantly, but I couldn’t hear, didn’t want to hear.

This was the scene five years ago, when I played first move to this ill-fated game of chess, this war. I had irrevocably, indubitably lied.

But no matter, I told myself as I finally shut the door on the Office, sweat on my brow, on my own again and rid of the outside world. I was President of the United States of America. No one can stop me.

•  

Turns out you can be stopped. Five years on, and I’d been called checkmate: the New York Times had leaked some story, and I was held accountable.

Days blurred, and then there I was: sat before the elders, with whom my fate was held in their hands. Sat before a sea of  faces, it felt strangely comforting that I was utterly powerless. They too, along with the rest of the world, were victims to this scandal I’d instigated- consequently, I would like to think my apology was sincere. But then again, I wasn’t sure.

The decision had been finalised- I was to resign the following morning, as soon as I’d finished my last public engagement, a Charity Ball. ‘Will do you some good, the chance to answer your critics directly’, the oldest one said with a look of revulsion over the top of his half-rims.

I left, unsure whether to laugh or cry.

·          

Tonight, it seems, the novelty of meeting the President has kept the naysayers at bay. It’s like being held in a time vacuum.

The fundraiser’s held every year at the Presidential winter gardens, a gaudy edifice that lets the moonlight through, giving a ghostly pallor to proceedings. Shake hands, ‘Good Evening?’, ‘’How are you?’, move on, repeat. I feel a million miles away.

The party (if you could call it that) had wore on, and I was allowed a brief respite, swilling a half-glass of whisky on the middle of the dancefloor. Winnie appeared.

‘Hey, First Lady,’ I say, deadbeat. It’s a stupid nickname I’d come up with as a young governor with big dreams, back when I’d assumed politics was about democracy and equality and justice and helping others and a whole load of other rubbish.

‘Hey, yourself.’ Winnie’s slow Southern drawl stops time. She’s my muse, and yet I hadn’t told her The Big News, so this weighed heavily on my mind. ‘You’re looking tired, hun...’

The Jazz players start a slow number, so we move slowly, mournfully, whispering in hushed undertones. I looked at her. The comment was meant teasingly, but she’s right. My reflection against the moonlit window nearby conveys heavily-set eyes, skin held taut against cheekbones.

‘What’s wrong?’ She enquires, and I lie of course, because I am a deceiver, corrupt in war and marriage.

‘Nothing, nothing...’ I mumble thickly, clenching the material of her black gown tightly, breathing heavily with all intentions of being truthful, when she’s called away to take a photo.

She leaves, First-Lady-Smile firmly affixed upon her face.

A phrase comes to mind, and I’m not sure where I heard it: All’s fair in love and war.

I’m broken from my reverie by the screaming, and I hear snatches of sound-

“There’s a man with a gun!”

I think.

“Red Alert, Mr. President we have to move!”

I think and I scoff. The phrase suggests that anything goes, that all is “fair”. I think of my late father, Winnie, and the angry elder with the horned-rim glasses. It’s not all fair, it’s not. There are consequences.

I feel what I think is a sharp pang of guilt hit my heart, and then I sink to my knees, catching the dazzling red on my once-white silk scarf.

It’s not all fair.