She wrinkles her nose. She knows his name, of course. When he transferred over from Wakefield in the summer, she was alerted during the Monday morning briefing that they had something of a celebrity joining them, and to be alert for any and all attendant problems. She’s had nothing to do with him yet. Spotted a small man with a dark widow’s peak wheeling a trolley of books in the library, but that has been the sum total of their interaction. She’s tempted to allow him to participate in the course if only to see what sort of stories his mind will conjure up.
She shudders. Decides, on balance, that his mind needs no help in expressing itself.
Googles him, just for the hell of it.
Reads, as she eats her noodles.
Considers his image. Watches her own reflection swim in the colours and patterns on the screen.
Looks into the face of a killer.
And for the briefest moment, allows herself to remember.
The warm blood. The feeling of glass skewering flesh. The hot fear in her belly and the desperate fight to survive.
She looks up, through the ceiling, to where her son plays video games with his friends.
Closes her eyes.
Makes peace with it. Makes peace, as she has every night for fifteen fucking years.
Former Pupil at Elite School Jailed for Sick Abduction
By Jonathan Feasby
A FORMER classmate of two Cabinet ministers has been jailed for an indefinite period following the attempted abduction of a teenage girl.
His victim yesterday told this reporter that she believed he was ‘truly evil’ and did not believe herself to be his first victim.
Griffin Cox, 44, was sentenced by Judge Michael Marwood at York Crown Court yesterday. Earlier, a court had heard that Cox, a buyer for a boutique furniture company, had grabbed a 15-year-old girl from a quiet street, having previously posed online as a twenty-something music student in order to gain her trust.
Having made arrangements to take her to a performance at York Opera House, he then claimed to be the tutor of the young man she was due to meet, and talked her into getting into his car. At which point, his victim told the court that he ‘turned into something from a horror film’.
Police who pulled Cox over for a minor motor vehicle infraction found the terrified student hog-tied and masked in the back of a rental car he hired for the sole purpose of abduction. At his lavish home, filled with expensive furniture, police later discovered a ‘white room’, adjacent to his well-stocked wine cellar. Painted perfectly white, it was entirely soundproofed and contained run-off channels transferring any spilled liquids into the drainage system.
Police last night refused to rule out the possibility that Cox may have been responsible for more abductions, and he was described by a senior detective as ‘a truly evil man’.
Cox, raised in a 60-room stately home in rural Cambridgeshire, spends much of his time abroad. He is single and childless but is an esteemed patron of the arts and a globally renowned expert in stringed instruments. His defence team yesterday urged Judge Marwood to consider their client’s previous good character, and provided dozens of character witnesses, including a letter from a retired Home Secretary who said that Cox was ‘a decent man’ who could have accomplished extraordinary things if not for his mental health problems and a traumatic childhood. His mother, Procne Henshaw-Cox, was an eccentric figure who transformed the grounds of the stately home into a replica of a Classical Italian palazzo and garden, before her death in 1974.
Speaking after the sentencing, Cox’s victim, who cannot be named, told reporters: ‘He was so charming. So believable. He made me feel that I was the centre of his universe and that I was safer with him than anybody else. But when he showed me the truth of himself, I glimpsed something that can only be described as “evil”. I’ve started going to church again since this happened. There must be a god, because I know I’ve met the devil …’
FOUR
The hardest part of prison is the loss of silence.
Of all the privations and punishments thrust upon Griffin Cox these last years, it is the intrusion of other people’s noise that he finds hardest to endure. He can stomach the smells: the lingering miasma of bleach and piss, of sweat and spice. He can convince himself there are fleeting elegances in the architecture and décor; ways to locate beauty in the damp green walls; to admire the workmanship in the cream-painted iron railings and staircases that wind up through the floors. He has even learned to value the nearness of violence: sharpening his senses to something lupine – his primal antennae neatly attuned to the petty hatreds and unspent frustrations that make the air of HMP Holderness sizzle like burning oil.
No, it is the intrusion of unsolicited noise that Griffin Cox cannot yet abide. Even after all these years of incarceration, it is the aural infringements that he considers his true punishment: his act of penance for a solitary mistake.
Outside, Cox took great steps to ensure a life filled with glorious spells of pure, perfect soundlessness. Here, now, he can conjure the acoustic memories. The tiny, private sounds.
His breath.
The sinewy rustle of shed garments.
The muffled screeching of the wriggling, terrified specimens who fought so hard against the gag.
The quiet acceptance: the giving up hope – the commencement of his glorious transformation from living and corruptible thing, to a truly immortal beauty.
Cox has always felt most comfortable in environments where the only sounds are those for which he is responsible: a conductor in a mute orchestra. Feels sanguine only when he is master of the song. Prison offers him no such peace. No such blessed isolation. His days
