Joe Victim: A Thriller

“Point out what you need to,” Schroder says. “Let’s just get this done before this whole thing turns into a circus.”


Wellington taps his index finger on the surface of the table. “My daughter is a university student,” he says, and Schroder knows there are two ways this can go. Wellington is either going to say a guy with a daughter doesn’t want a guy like Joe out on the streets. Or he’s going to say something worse. He’s going to say something bad has happened to his daughter. Only he’s wrong, because Wellington doesn’t tell him either of those. Instead he says, “She phoned me an hour ago. My daughter studies law. She’s into her third year. She loves it. Wants to be like me. Wants to defend innocent people.”

“She’s going to be in for a shock,” Schroder says.

“Because there are no innocent people?”

“They’re just rare, that’s all.”

“Maybe. Maybe not as rare as you think. But you want to have a guess as to what the Canterbury University students are going to be doing on Monday?”

It doesn’t take much of a guess. “Protesting,” Schroder says.

“Yeah? What do you think, for or against the death penalty?” Wellington asks.

Schroder shrugs. “I don’t know. Half for it, half against it, I guess.”

The lawyer smiles. “Neither,” he says. “They’re planning on going just for the show. My daughter says it’s the talking point all over social media at the moment. Hundreds if not more students are going to treat the event as a party. There’s even a competition where the student who can get the most airtime on camera wins a bottle of vodka. So for the chance of one bottle of vodka a bunch of these kids are going to be dressing up in costumes and trying to get into every camera angle they can to get on TV, but that’s not why they’re going—it’s just an additional bonus. They’re going because it’s an excuse to drink and be loud and drink some more and throw up in the gutters. They’re going because they think it’s cool. Even my daughter is going. They don’t care about Joe Middleton or the justice system because all they care about is drinking. That’s their generation. It’s my daughter’s generation. Kind of makes you wonder why the hell we’re doing all of this, why we’re trying to make a safer world when that’s who we’re making it safer for.”

“I’m not sure what you want me to say,” Schroder says.

“Nothing you can say. It is what it is. But I just want to point out that if you think you can avoid this turning into a circus, then you’re probably the only genuinely insane person I’ve truly ever met.”





Chapter Thirty-One


If Raphael had known he would be having guests, he would have tidied up more. He feels embarrassed and hopes Stella doesn’t think he always lives like this. He actually does live like this pretty much all of the time these days. For a while there he used to care about how badly he lived, how badly he ate, then, thank God, he just stopped caring.

“Sorry about the mess,” he tells her, but she doesn’t seem to mind. He suspects her own house is in a similar state after she lost the baby and her husband left. She rubs her belly as if she were still pregnant. He remembers his wife doing that all the time when she was pregnant with Angela. He remembers lying in bed beside her at night with his hand on her stomach, feeling the baby kick, his wife smiling and amused, him being somewhat freaked out by it all. Back then he wasn’t seeing too much difference between a kicking baby and what happened to that poor bastard over the dinner table in Alien.

“Can I get you a drink?” he asks.

“Just water.”

He goes into the kitchen. The dishes from breakfast are still scattered over the counter, along with a week’s worth of toast crumbs and splashes of water around the sink. He grabs two fresh glasses and fills them and gets out to the lounge. Stella is looking at the photographs on the wall.

“This is Angela?” she asks.

“Yeah.”

“And these are your grandchildren?” she asks, looking at a photograph of the kids.

“Adelaide is six,” he says. “She started school this year. She goes to school in England and keeps hoping her school is secretly like that school in Harry Potter. Hoghoofs, or whatever it’s called. Vivian is four and wants to be a ballerina,” he says, “and a pop singer too.”

“Cute,” she says.

“I don’t get to see them,” he says, and he’s angry at his son-in-law for that, which is why there are no photos of him on the walls, but at the same time he can’t blame him for moving away. Can’t blame him at all. “I get to speak to them once a month if I’m lucky.”

Stella hands him a plastic bag full of clothes that’s been riding in the car with them all day. “Try it on,” she says. He pulls out the light blue shirt and the dark blue pants. “Should be your size,” she says.

“Where did you get it from?”