A Modern Murder

A MODERN MURDER

It was a shock to discover that Sharon was only twenty years old.
Unkempt and defeated, she bore the stigmata of those that are condemned
to life on the dole, and cannot cope. The stoop of the shoulders and
the adenoidal snuffle bespoke one who had been worn down by life, but
still had many dreary years of pointlessness ahead before she would be
allowed to leave it. It was not so much that she had fought and lost,
but that the odds against her had been so heavily stacked that she had
never learned to fight at all.

At age eleven months she had been found in a cupboard in her mother's
bedroom by an alarmed client. She was speedily removed to a children's
home and made a ward of court. Fifteen years later she had been thrust
into a callous world, as passively hopeless as those starving wretches
in the Sudan who know that fate is immutable and that there is no point
in contesting the inevitable.

Made in a thinly complaining voice, her opening remarks confirmed the
diagnosis. Her fifth 'partner' had left her, staying just long enough
to commit the last vestiges of her credit to his drink problem. The
bailiffs had beaten a path to her door but, as she had nothing upon
which to distrain, they had always left empty handed. A warrant for her
arrest for non payment of council tax arrears had been issued some two
weeks earlier, but had not yet been executed.

Her circumstances were dire, but not exceptional. In the course of any
week several such cases crossed the portal of the Greenhaven Citizen's
Advice Bureau. Lilian sighed silently, opened her note book at a clean
page, inscribed the name of Sharon Smith, and prepared to do battle
with the minions of mammon.

Lilian was the sort of product for which Caledonian pedagogues laboured
unstintingly, Quietly spoken Scots cadences instilled a sense of
confidence into the most troubled of breasts. Her fierce pursuit of
fair play, a piercing intellect and a genuine concern for her clients
made her a sought after advocate and a feared adversary among those who
had supposed that they could exploit the weak with impunity. Her
Calvinist upbringing had produced an unwavering execration of the
second best tempered by a genuine compassion for those whose best was
never good enough. Already in late middle age, and with thirty years of
nursing behind her, she remained faithful to the first love of her
life, the succouring of the needy. In this her deep and sympathetic
knowledge of the human condition augmented her unabated zest for the
triumph of compassion and natural justice. Now in retirement,
immaculately clad in a tartan skirt and plain jumper, she wrestled with
the problems of the disadvantaged two afternoons a week.

Over the following weeks Lilian came to know Sharon well. Every Friday
afternoon Sharon was the first in the waiting room and would ask to see
Lilian. With so doughty a champion in the lists Sharon's star was
halted in its downward plunge and assumed a stable, if somewhat lowly,
orbit. The utilities were prevailed upon to allow her the use of a
meter, causing her to pay well over the odds for her supply, but
heading off the constant attentions of the debt collectors. The council
tax authorities graciously accepted a weekly payment from her pitifully
small dole, and the social services found her a place in a hostel which
prevented the amassing of any further arrears. Under Lilian's tutelege
Sharon's existence became ordered, if still penurious.

It was a Friday some three months later that Sharon came into the
bureau, badly bruised about the face - but glowing. It seems that she
had visited the doctor and been told that she was pregnant. When she
sought to tell the father the good news he had beaten her up - as a
foretaste of what to expect if she were to mention his name to the
Child Support Agency. Nevertheless, the prospect of being a mother had
transformed her. Gone the despairing nullity of her demeanour; in its
place was an eager young girl with something marvellous to look forward
to.

As time went by her expectations intensified. A recalcitrant housing
department found her a small flat to move into when she came out of
hospital; the hitherto disinterested social services suddenly saw to it
that she attended pre-natal classes, and that her health was properly
monitored. She strode about with a new found confidence that increased
with the ever more obvious signs of her impending motherhood.

Although the need was no longer pressing, she visited Lilian as
faithfully as before on Friday afternoons. She would bring in trivia
that she was collecting for her child - a matinee jacket from a charity
shop, a baby's blanket donated by a neighbour, a carved wooden cradle
found in a skip, and hold them up for Lilian's approval. Each week she
would give lengthy and minute descriptions of her preparations and the
baby's movements within her. This child was to be her apotheosis. Her
life was to have a new purpose. The child's future was planned and
described in the finest detail with never an unhappy moment being
allowed to intrude into its state of bliss.

With four weeks still to go Sharon failed to appear for her Friday
interview. Lillian thought little of it, supposing that it had clashed
with some pre-natal ritual or other.
When she failed to appear the following Friday Lillian rang the social
services to enquire after her. It appeared that the baby had arrived
early in difficult circumstances. For a while both baby and mother were
in intensive care, but Sharon had been discharged and had taken up
residence in the new flat for which she now qualified. The baby boy,
christened Toby in a hurry just after his birth, was doing well and
would be joining her in a few days.
Two more Fridays went by unattended, but, on the third, Sharon came in
with the baby in a carrycot. The pride with which she showed him to
Lillian; the way she caressed his head and her inability to take her
eyes off him throughout the interview spoke far more eloquently of her
love for him than any words that she could summon.

Nevertheless she had a problem. Whilst she was in hospital she had
failed to re-apply for benefit. When she arrived home it was to find
that her benefit had been stopped and that she was penniless.
Unbelievably, when she rang the Department of Social Security, they
were callously offhand. They would not backdate the benefit and they
would not undertake to accelerate her application for its
reinstatement. She could be without money for weeks. Lillian's call to
their office produced the same response. Lillian rang the social
services, who undertook to monitor the situation, but Sharon left the
office still without any early prospect of receiving a giro cheque.
Incensed, Lillian began to prepare an appeal against the
decision.

The following Friday Sharon came in to say that she had been given an
appeal date some five weeks hence. Meanwhile, the support received from
the social services was proving insufficient and the baby was beginning
to lose weight. In addition, the utilities that were paid directly out
of her benefit were beginning to harass her again. Lillian rang the
electric and the water company. They both granted a stay of execution,
but pointed out that they had a duty to their share holders, and that
legal action and disconnection could not be obviated
indefinitely.

Lillian never saw Sharon again. When she failed to appear on Friday
Lillian rang the social services. They curtly informed her that Sharon
was in a local mental unit pending assessment and would not comment
further.

Over the ensuing weeks Lillian learned the details of what had happened
to Sharon and Toby.

Things had started to go down hill on the Monday morning. By the
morning post Sharon received a disconnection order from the electricity
company. An over zealous bailiff, with the right of walk in entry,
seeing her cradle, had distrained upon it on the grounds that she also
had a carrycot on wheels. Later, at the benefits office, she was met
with bad tempered rejection by an over stressed clerk who accused her
of harassing her and told her peremptorily that her benefit payments
were as distant as ever. On the way back, in the rain, Toby had started
to cry. He was still crying when she reached her basement bedsit. There
she found her social worker busily writing on a clipboard. Looking up
as Sharon entered she had put the clipboard face down on the table, but
not before Sharon had seen the word 'care' as a sub heading. It was
actually part of an upward reassessment of the help that mother and
child would need, but to Sharon it meant that they were going to take
her baby from her.

Sharon drove her mentor from the room with a ferocity that surprised
her and terrified its object. As she did so she realised that her
chances of keeping her child had been severely damaged by her
behaviour.

Toby continued to howl with the irresistible cry with which nature has
equipped the young of the species. Designed to command instant
gratification it drove Sharon to desperation. She tried to put him to
the breast, but she did not seem to have been lactating properly as he
came off after two minutes and continued to cry. Reluctantly she made
up the last remaining feed and fed it to the frantic Toby. Sated at
last Toby burped loudly and fell into a deep sleep.
Later that night Toby awoke to find himself in a damp cot. Normally
Sharon would transfer him from cot to cradle, but the cradle had gone.
Sharon removed his nappy, cleaned him, and replaced it with her last
clean one. He continued to wail inconsolably, as he was hungry as well
as wet. Sharon took him into her bed and cradled him in her arms. His
hunger fuelled his distress. The more Sharon tried to comfort him, the
more he cried. This led Sharon to cry with him. Desperation fed upon
desperation, bouncing from mother to child and back. Her inability to
satisfy his needs tore at her self respect. They had been right all
along. She was no more fit to be a mother than any of the other things
for which she was so regularly rejected. A total inadequate, she could
not even succour her own, darling, Toby.

All at once Sharon became calm. For the first time in her life she knew
what to do and knew that it was good. Not for Toby the long years of
failure and rejection. Not for him a life of poverty and unhappiness.
She saw clearly now why God had placed her upon the Earth. With tears
streaming down her cheeks, she took a pillow and held it over Toby's
face until he ceased to struggle.

The next day the DSS were told of Toby's death. With a few swift passes
over the computer, Sharon's benefit was downgraded and put on hold.
Switching to another file, the adjudicating officer entered a saving of
?12.50 per week and sat back for a moment's satisfied reflection as the
system accepted its kill.