My story, Rat Alley is based around the infamous case of 11 year old child killer Mary Bell, who in the summer of 1968 strangled two small boys in the Scotswood area of Tyneside.
I did considerable research into the background of the case, including sourcing period photographs of Newcastle’s west end to get a feel for the time and place. At one point I visited the scene of events, only to discover that Scotswood estate is long demolished and is now a 60 hectare stretch of muddy embankment undergoing “redevelopment” . However I was still able to view much of the former streets using Google Street View. After two weeks I felt that my research had become an unsettling morbid fascination, not just with the case but with a vanished period of Tyneside history. I put the story aside, unable to continue for several weeks.
The original investigation lasted six months from the first murder until Mary Bells’s conviction for involuntary manslaughter in November 1968, and included a cast of characters including victims, families, investigating officers, as well as Bell and her accomplice Norma. My challenge was to condense all these details into a meaningful form within 2,200 words. My first draft focussed on Mary’s interrogation by Inspector James Dobson. The entire story was to have taken place within a police interview room, with events revealed during conversations between Bell and Dobson. However, I found that I was more interested in the location, and the social upheaval going on at that time so I decided to concentrate instead on the day of Brian Howe’s funeral. This provided the opportunity to tell the story of Scotswood itself through the eyes of my central character, and allowed for a climax of sorts as Dobson reaches his troubling conclusion.
From a very early stage in development I felt that the setting was central to the story, almost a character in its own right. I tried to capture the scene as it might appear to an outsider such as Inspector Dobson. To complement the harsh setting I decided to adopt the gritty “hard-boiled” approach of writers such as Dashiell Hammett, by making the narrator speak in terse, staccato sentences. I wanted him to seem detached and jaded, but not unmoved.
The story is told in the first person, as a form of monologue in the head of Detective Dobson, as events take place. My goal was to make Dobson both protagonist and peripheral narrator. I was influenced to write this way after listening to Hanif Kureishi’s description of his story Intimacy [Hanif Kureishi, speaking in Writing Fiction (2005) ,track 17]. I wanted to create a detached, meandering quality as he reflects on the social background to the case. For the description of the murders, I wanted a more direct, focused approach. To achieve this I decided that the narrator should speak directly to the reader in the middle section, telling us what has gone before, and admitting his failings. To lend authenticity to the story, the dialogue spoken by Bell and Dobson is taken directly from interviews and police reports of the time. [Scott, S.L. (2011)]
References
Anderson, L. (2006) 'Point of View: Trying on Voices”, in Anderson L. (ed.) Creative Writing: A workbook with readings, Milton Keynes/Abingdon: The Open University in association with Routledge, pp 99-112.
CD1 Writing Fiction (2005), The Open University/Pier Productions
Gerrard, N (et al) 'The Mob Will Move On, the Pain Never Can', The Observer, 3 May 1998
Sereny, Gitta. Cries Unheard -- Why Children Kill: The Story of Mary Bell. New York: Metropolitan Books, 1999.
Sereny Gitta. The Case of Mary Bell. London: Arrow Books, 1972. (Out of print)
Scott, S.L. (2011). Mary Bell TruTV Crime Library [online] available from http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/notorious_murders/famous/bell/index_1.html [Accessed 7 November 2011]
vBulletin Solutions, Inc. (2002). Remembering HISTORIC NEWCASTLE - Old Photos, Maps, even Stories . . . [online] available from http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=982536 [accessed 12 November 2011]
