You Could Do Something Amazing with Your Life [You Are Raoul Moat] Read online

  You sign your name and print it,

  R.T.Moat

  …

  Karl cooks more burgers. Sean writes another letter to his sister, which you read. He says you’re treating him good and will get him a dictaphone so he can interview you, and she shouldn’t worry, because you’re not out to hurt anybody but the people who bullied and tortured you for years, and she should console his mum and dad if they know, and keep these notes for future reference.

  He also writes a letter to his friend, which you read. He says it’s no joke, he’s being held by the Birtley gunman, and please ring his sister to tell her he’s okay, and the rent for the lock-up will be late, and nigga hoi the kettle on [a private joke].

  Sean starts writing his diary of being a hostage. It’s going to be an account of his time with you. He might turn it into a book.

  …

  Karl writes another letter to his sister-in-law [which she never receives]. You read it. He says you shot a policeman last night, but she shouldn’t worry, and he’s still a hostage, but is being fed and watered, and you’re going to kill as many police as you can before getting gunned down yourself.

  …

  It’s dark. You walk to the car park. Karl and Sean come with you. A guy’s moving a branch out the road. It must have blown down.

  Sean says something about it being a breezy night, but you and Karl keep your heads down. Another guy is walking his dogs. Nice night, one of you says, then you get in the car. Sean drives.

  …

  You go to Karl’s brother’s house to drop off the second letter [it gets dropped through the letterbox; nobody’s home].

  …

  You go to your friend Andy’s house in Newcastle, the same one as last night, and hand over the 49-page murder statement you wrote today. You tell him it needs to go to the Chronicle.

  …

  You go to Sean’s lock-up in Blaydon. He presses the key fob. Karl goes inside and gets a shotgun. Now you’ve got two.

  Nice one.

  …

  You go to Sean’s friend’s house and drop off the other letters and key fob for the lock up. There aren’t any police around.

  …

  You tell Sean to drive back to base camp.

  The roads are dark.

  Quiet roads.

  You tell him to stop. You get out.

  There’s a badger. It’s been run over. You pick it up by its leg. It’s mangled and bloody. You throw it on the windscreen and tell Sean to drive.

  You tell them it’ll make a nice hat.

  Ha

  [MONDAY JULY 5, 2010]

  YOU WILL DIE IN FOUR DAYS

  Sean goes shopping.

  It’s Monday morning.

  You text him a shopping list with a reminder to get a needle and thread for the badger hat. LOL.

  He buys milk, burgers, chicken dippers, water, lamb kebabs, biscuits, cutlery, torches, a couple of phones, a dictaphone, three tapes, a Yorkie bar and a Toffee Crisp.

  At base camp Karl cooks. You eat a burger.

  Your plan is to steal an X5 [a police vehicle] with all the guns inside. You formulate exit strategies and talk about camera locations and possible public activity, things like that, but what you’re thinking, inside your head, is that you’d give anything to have a quiet meal with Sam right now, out here in the countryside, but it’s all fucked, properly fucked, and you’re going to be on the naughty step for a very long time after all of this. The strange part is, you’re actually less stressed today than you were a week ago. It all just feels like a weird video game now, a cross between Bourne Identity and Grand Theft Auto, like you can do whatever you want, when you want, because people don’t see what’s really going on. They don’t want to see. They just want to live their happy lives. Which is why the police get away with what they get away with, but not anymore. You’ve read these pleas in the papers, about how they’re wanting a reasonable resolution out of this, well there can’t possibly be one, because you’re a cop killer for a start. Though in fairness, the papers reckon that officer from the other night is fifty-fifty. So there you go. That’s life. You’re not too fussed about not killing him. You were going to go and finish him off, but it’s not really the point. He got two shots. That’s enough. At the end of the day, if he’s looking a bit of a mess, it might not have been him that’s been picking on you, but he can hold the officers that were picking on you responsible. So what do you do now? Every time you think about shooting yourself, which you think about a lot, it’s not that you’re not able to do it, it’s just that somebody else can do it. The weight’s been lifted off your head now. It’s not a case of having to take a bunch of tablets. You can just go out and keep shooting police officers and eventually you’ll get hit. At the end of the day you expect to get sniped. You’ll have to get sniped, then it’s over. You want it to be over. You don’t want to be doing this for ages, because the longer you’re doing this the longer you feel the fucking pain, you suppose. So that’s what you’ll do. You can’t turn back what you’ve done. An idea did come into your head today though. Sean was saying how he’s going to write a book about all of this, and him and Karl can sell their story to the highest bidder, because there’s plenty of money to be made out of this, and what you thought is, if you get a dictaphone, you can make an audio log and give it to the papers, then people will know the truth, which is why Sean’s bought a dictaphone from Argos this morning, so you can sit in the tent, put a tape in and press record [this is an edited and rewritten version of a seventy-six-page typed transcript of recordings you made, containing your thoughts],