CHAPTER 26
We weren't learning some mad form of instant death to our enemies, just some basic moves to break out of someone's grip and discourage them from trying to get another one. Above all, what Tom was trying to teach us was observation and awareness. He was forever saying “What is wrong with this picture?”

The work was absorbing, and bruising, and when Karen and Brian joined in it became truly fun as well, especially the first time Em put Tom on his arse. Tom called in an old friend, as he put it, for a few weeks around the verdict, just so the three of us could be that little bit safer at school. Typically, my brother's main concern was the fact that he might have to play football against his old school, which would become his new school when he went home, as he must.

My fitness built, and Valerie talked, and slowly I began to come to some sort of terms with my situation.

“So you wanted to use the men's toilets, Steve? What did you envisage doing?”

“What I always used to, pull it out and wee in the trough”

“And how would that have made you feel?”

“Better”

“So, all the stares wouldn't have disturbed you?”

“What stares?”

“Hmm. Pretty girl, for all intents and purposes, walks into men's lavatory, unzips, produces a penis and lets go. Those stares”

“Well, they could all fuck off”

“But they wouldn't, Steve. That's the point. So how would you feel about their staring?”

“I wouldn't be too happy about it, you know that”

“So why invite the stares? You have a number of choices, Steve. What do you think you should do?”

I knew what she was saying. I could adopt a more obviously female style, go with the flow and just accept how I would look for the rest of my life. Little dresses, heels, bugger that for a choice. That was for girls. I know I got smug when some of the older boys watched me running, but that was really just nastiness on my part.

Or I could allow the butchers at me, cut off my tits and pump me full of boy juice. I had real issues with that, too, apart from the simple fact of doctors with knives. While the only tits I had ever truly wanted resided in girls' blouses,the ones on me had sort of crept up on me. I didn't want them, to be sure, but in the circumstances I didn't actively not want them. They were a part of me, and I was sort of attached to them and averse to blades....and Emily loved them. There was also the fact that my shape could never be male and, to be honest, I did sometimes actively want the stares. Look at this, you gawping bastards, look what they did to me!

Confused? Oh, yes.

The trials had finally run their course, a total of no less than twenty three defendants in the dock, and the Parliamentary enquiry was building up a real head of steam now. Almost every week, some other self-appointed council 'authority' or 'expert' was resigning, and for a while the Cumbrian coastal towns picked up a little as the sackings followed and a few jobs became available for the untainted.

We drove down to London for the verdicts, as we had to. I wanted to see them as their own lives ended. There was no death penalty, that had gone over ten years before, but I still wanted to watch the spectacle. The court was packed as the jury came back in; With fourteen known murders as well as countless charges of assault, both common and indecent, it had taken a long while, and I pitied the jurors.

In they came, faces grim, and extra police guarded the extended dock as the small army of shits were brought in. I scanned their faces as they arrived, looking for any trace of fear or remorse, and there were flickers. Charlie wasn't there, for his own safety, but in a separate little enclosure to one side. The judge entered, we rose and sat, and she addressed the jury.

“Ladies and gentlemen, have you elected a foreman?”

A tall man stood. “Yes, your honour”

“And have you reached verdicts on all of the charges?”

“Yes, your honour”

“Are these verdicts unanimous?”

“Most of them are, your honour. Some are ten to two”

“Please be so good as to confirm those as you deliver them. I will address Elsie Cunningham first. On the first charge, the murder of Child A, how do you find her?”

“Guilty, the verdict of us all.”

And so they went, fourteen times, all unanimous.

“And on multiple accounts of grievous bodily harm to Stephen Jones?”

“Guilty, the verdict of us all”

“Similarly, indecent assault on Mr Jones?”

“Guilty, verdict of us all”

“Attempted procurement of the murder of Mr Jones and others?”

“Guilty, verdict of us all”

So it went, down her list of offences, and then down the list for the other defendants, and while they weren't all found guilty of everything, there was enough to share around. I spotted my lady juror, and she saw me, and smiled and gave a little nod as if to say that the job was done.

Maybe for her it was, but I still had a life ahead.

The verdicts took all day, and once more the Toffs were on hand for a celebration, and we would be back in court n the morning for some of the sentencing. We ate, we drank, we cuddled up as a group, and Nana was more than a little tipsy as we went to our rooms.

Charlie was on me, and he had me by the throat, and I felt him hard against my arse.

“You always were a good fuck, Stevie, and you know what, once I've had you Raynor's going to have his fun”

And there was his cock, in my face, as he swung the hammer, and Em was holding me as I lay on the floor of the hotel room and screamed until the faces went away and Tom hammered at the door, gun out and naked.

He covered himself with a towel, still checking every corner.

“You OK, lad?”

“Sorry, people, sorry...”

I dissolved in tears, and Em held me, and Nana wrapped us both in a blanket until I was at least sane again, and then she did her little tea ritual and things were better, but I lay in the dark afterwards wondering if it would ever be over.

The morning came, and I picked at my breakfast, feeling and probably looking like shit. We made our way to the courtroom and went through the rituals, and then they brought in the first little batch.

The Cunninghams were there, and the Allisons. The judge's voice was quiet, and measured, but she left nobody in any doubt as to the strength of her feelings.

“This case has attracted a great deal of attention throughout this nation. I speak as a grandmother, and a mother, and can honestly say that I was both appalled and sickened by the quantity and sheer depth of depravity and sin, yes, sin, sin and evil, that has come to light thanks to the courage and strength of persons now present. Would that this strength had been found earlier, so that fourteen poor children would not have needed to be sent so brutally into darkness.

“For over fifteen years, Raynor and Elsie Cunningham, here before me, ran an establishment that only the camps of the last war exceeded in the evil practised there. When their activities were uncovered, they sought to escape justice by further murders of poor children they had already tortured. They even attempted the murder of the one child who escaped them and so ended their rule of horror. They were aided by a level of corruption deeply unsettling in its extent. We have been presented with a catalogue of systematic rape, for despite the wording of the law, that is surely what is was, of torture and brutalisation, and bloody murder.

“I see before me Marjorie Allison, school governor and mother, who masturbated while a young child was raped by her husband, who sits beside her, a grotesque and perverted rapist who demeans the office of Police inspector that he once held. Marjorie Allison, Peter Allison, stand.”

My ballgown lover and his wife stood, and she was in tears, and I couldn't give a damn because it was my turn.

“Marjorie Allison, Peter Allison, life imprisonment. Minimum term to be reviewed by the Home Secretary. Raynor Cunningham, Elsie Cunningham, stand”

Raynor rose, and turned to his wife as she remained seated, one eyebrow raised as she faced down the judge. She in turn looked out at the police around the dock, and very quietly said,

“That woman is to stand”

Four officers went into the dock, and the hellbitch lashed out, but the coppers simply slapped her arm out of the way, took her down to the floor and brought her back up in handcuffs. Two other policemen stood by her husband, batons drawn, and he shrugged and turned away as his wife was hauled to her feet.

The judge continued. “I have never presided over a trial of such evil, and hope never to do so again. Not even Brady and Hindley were as evil as you. Your complete lack of any form of remorse leaves me no option but to refer you for assessment in a secure establishment. If you are found to be of sound mind, you will be imprisoned for the rest of your natural life.

“One way or another, Elsie and Raynor Cunningham, the public will be kept safe from you. Take them down, all of them.”

I had had enough, and together with my family we went out onto the streets as flashguns popped and mikes were thrust at me. How did I feel, was I happy with the verdict, would I get my tits out for the Sun, we pushed our way through until I spotted a shabby figure on the pavement, looking at me and crying.

He looked about twenty, dirty and unshaven and despite Tom's warning hand on my shoulder I went over to him. He looked at me, tears streaking the grime on his cheeks, and he simply said “Did that cow go down, Stevie?” and I realised where I knew him from, fists, butter....and then he was gone, into the streets, and I knew I hadn't been the only one.