I had a tough childhood, but my childhood is only involved in this story in a peripheral way. It’s about a pair of brothers I was acquainted with and on the nature of evil. Most of the minor details herein are deliberately vague and all names, place names and much else have have been changed in order to protect innocent relatives of those involved from the self righteous, but the story remains essentially as I remember events happening and all necessary relationships have been retained.

Some would say that is not necessary, but it’s not so long ago that a Welsh paediatrician had her front door spray painted in bright red with the word PAEDO. Urban myth has exaggerated the tale beyond recognition to her escaping with her children from a burning house with a howling mob outside and places the story in various locations, some hundreds of miles away from Gwent, but the reality was bad enough. She was targeted by self righteous, ill educated, scum looking for someone to hurt to justify their own inadequacies. That they did not know the difference between a paedophile and a paediatrician and took action because they had seen her profession in the telephone directory should be no surprise, for the world is full of such. Though I doubt there are any paedophiles listed as such in any telephone directory. I suspect the perpetrators couldn’t read words with that many syllables and only bothered with the first one. The only surprise to me is that the word on the door was PAEDO not PEDO. Make what you will of it all, but the paediatrician moved house the following day. No doubt just in case a mob gathered to burn her out.

Alike enough to be thought twins by most, Alastair and Bertram were actually brothers born ten months apart. They were clever, good looking, tall, charming when it suited them and dangerous. From going to school the brothers had been involved in playground extortion, and from there they worked their way up, and, had got away with attempted murder, rape and any number of serious crimes before, at the age of about twenty, it had all caught up with them and finally been shewn, in court, that they were an exceedingly clever pair of sociopaths.

The crime they finally were locked up for involved an eleven year old girl. They had abducted her on her way home from school. Alastair had held a knife to her throat and punched her face whilst Bertram sat on her legs and cut her knickers off with a knife, which, for reasons you will come to understand, was thought provokingly consistent. The papers reported the pair of them had alternately raped and beaten her before leaving her for dead in an ill frequented piece of woodland.

The girl was found by a dog walker, survived and eventually bore witness against them at their trial. The psychiatric reports deemed them to be dangerously psychopathic, and they were remanded at Her Majesty’s pleasure to a secure hospital. It was envisaged they would never be released. They escaped after nearly twenty years inside and returned home. Their father had died whilst they were incarcerated, and they wanted their inheritance, all of it, and, were prepared to do whatever was necessary to their mother to get it, and they hadn’t had a woman for a very long time.

Going back to the beginnings, or as far back as I can remember, Geoffrey the boys’ father was a colleague of my father’s, both men were astronomers and something to do with the university. Elsbeth their mother was the independently wealthy wife of a wealthy man and a post war housewife. My mother told me Elsbeth was a bit odd and not quite with it, and she had heard of and bought into the latest American trends on parenting by a doctor called Spock and had never reprimanded, never mind punished, the boys. Mum said Geoffrey had little input into their family life. Lucky boys. It was only years later that I realised I had always thought of Mum in terms of her maiden name, Kristiansen and not my father’s name, Kelly. I’m not sure why I included that last remark, but it feels appropriate, so I’ll let it stand.

The boys, both in the year above me at school, were allowed by Elsbeth to carry knives. I’d have been four or five when Bertram was repeatedly stabbing the parquet flooring of my parents’ sitting room in the flat at Oulu with his knife. Elsbeth said, “Bertram, don’t do that please, Darling.” She was ignored. “Bertram, if must do that, do it behind the door, Darling, where it won’t show.” She was ignored. Dad backhanded Bertram so hard he bounced off the wall.

I remember feeing a warm glow of satisfaction seeing someone else, someone I didn’t like, on the receiving end for a change. Bertram was just whimpering when Dad turned to Elsbeth, and said “If you don’t like it, Elsbeth, don’t bother coming back. He isn’t welcome.” My father was pointing at Bertram as he said the last. He turned to Geoffrey, and said, “Geoffrey, you have the right to rear your children anyway you like, and it is not my place to comment. You don’t have the right to expect me not to do something about it in my own home when they are setting an example I do not approve of to my kids.”

Geoffrey like Dad was not quite fully of this world, their work was more important to them than their families and the two men remained cordial colleagues, neither had friends. I don’t think Mum ever saw Elsbeth again. I know didn’t. After that, Geoffrey was still a regular visitor to our flat, but always on his own. Whether Dad went to Geoffrey’s place after that I don’t know, but I suspect he did. He wouldn’t have cared what Elsbeth or her children thought. Thinking back, the boys were peculiar even at primary school, after years there they only spoke English, whereas, although my English was virtually non existent because our family tongue was Gaeilge, like my sisters and all the other kids at school, local or foreign, I spoke the dozen or more playground languages fluently.

I didn’t understand it at the time, but the boys were sexually precocious. It was discovered years later Elsbeth had breast fed them till they went away to school at thirteen and always allowed them to do whatever they wanted with her. Her husband’s lack of family input coupled with her permissive parenting beliefs had turned her into the boys’ sex toy, if not sex slave, long before they’d hit double figures in years. Along with dozens of other school children, I witnessed what I have always presumed was the boys’ first violent sex offence on any other than their mother, and it was my sister Anna who was the subject of their attentions. I was nearly eight when I saw a group of children gathered in a circle on the playground. Thinking it was a fight, I went to watch. What I saw was Anna supine on the ground, Alastair was on his knees with a knife to her throat and punching her face with his other hand. Bertram was sitting on her legs. He had cut her knickers off with his knife and was forcing her legs apart. Somebody said some kids had gone for a teacher.

I didn’t like Anna any more than I liked my other four sisters, but even less did I like the brothers. Unlike the brothers, who’d been pampered and indulged all their lives, I’d been subject to domestic violence since I could remember, and no, before you even think it, I’ve never been a victim of anything or anyone. I was fast, which had enabled me to escape many a beating, and I was big and strong for my age, but most importantly I wasn’t bothered by pain. I’d always known had I cried or backed down Dad would have stopped hitting me.

Alastair was easy, I kicked him in the balls from behind and then twice in the head. I threw his knife into the bushes before turning to Bertram who was now on his feet. I didn’t want the knife because I was frightened of the consequences of what I knew I would do with one. Without his brother to help, Bertram looked scared. He waved his knife at me as I closed on him and looked to one side behind him. Frightened by what he thought was coming on him from behind he turned and as I punched him to the side of his face, he went down. I’d enjoyed hurting Alastair, but three kicks weren’t enough and Bertram got considerably more. I enjoyed it, and it was with reluctance I stopped myself.

It wasn’t the fear of killing him that stopped me, it was the fear of being taken away from home if I killed him. It was all over before Herr Larsen the head arrived. Anna and the boys were taken to hospital. Nothing ever came of it. Neither I, nor any other child, including Anna, was ever asked what had happened. I don’t think anyone was prepared to even think about what had been going on. Nobody wanted to accept that sort of thing could be a possibility back then. To this day, decades later, I wonder how they managed to ignore Anna’s knickers having been cut off with a knife. I went home late to beaten senseless by my father for causing all the trouble. I was accused of starting the fight which at least, for once, was true.

The brothers didn’t know life wasn’t fair, but I did. I do remember refusing when told by my father I would have to apologise to the boys. Obviously I remember nothing after I blacked out, but when I came to I ran away for three months. I did that regularly for the next few years. I spent a lot of my childhood with Sámi kin. Kin via Mum’s Great Auntie Kristiinná’s husband Iđga. Mum knew I was safe, and, never mentioned it to me on my return. I’m not sure my father noticed I wasn’t there. He never referred to my absences. Geoffrey and his family moved back to the UK when I was nine or ten. Life continued as normal for me, waiting till I could just walk away from it all.

I left home long before I’d thought it would be possible. My mother took me to England when I was eleven to sit for scholarship exams at public schools. Her idea was if I could pull it off I would be away from my father, and wouldn’t need his money to stay away. I won a full scholarship to a prestigious school and attended a year early when I was twelve. By then I’d forgotten all about the brothers. I can’t remember exactly when I mentioned a pair of nutters I’d met there called Alastair and Bertram to my mother. She asked what their surname was. I told her, and she told me I knew them and reminded me who they were. Initially I’d been picked on at school because I only knew the barest outlines of English, but, I soon picked the language up along with a reputation for being a loner who wasn’t violent if left alone. I can only assume the boys had been reminded of who I was by Elsbeth, because the two bullies went out of their way to avoid me. School expelled Alastair in the fifth form for fighting with a knife and the story was his parents had been asked to remove Bertram too before he was expelled. My parents divorced whilst I was at school and I was never to meet my father again.

I remember reading in the papers when they were tried and found to be guilty of raping the eleven year old and locked up in a secure hospital. My mother was still alive then, and she was shocked. I wasn’t. That was when, for the first time I was asked for my version of the incident with Anna. I remember saying, “It doesn’t matter any more, Mum, because nobody wanted to listen to me then, and it’s too late to make a difference now.”

My mother was long dead when the boys escaped, she’d died at fifty, weak hearts are a family inheritance on her side. The boys had tracked Elsbeth down and abducted her. They’d raped and abused her in every way possible for over three weeks before Bertram had been spotted going to buy food. They were recaptured and returned to different secure hospitals where as far as I am aware they are to this day. I’m sure it would be in the papers if either died or escaped. Elsbeth lost what tenuous grip she’d had on reality as a result of her experience and spent her remaining years in an expensive care home with her affairs managed by her niece and nephew who were both solicitors.

After her death, her will made the front pages. In a lucid phase, she had left her considerable estate in trust to pay for those who were short of money in the home that had cared for her. Her nephew and niece had tied it up in such a way that the home couldn’t get any money without cast iron justification via the courts.

The boys had gone for their inheritance, all of it, and they’d got none of it. Was it Elsbeth’s and Geoffrey’s fault their sons turned out the way they did? You can decide for yourself, but my view is no. The boys were evil, and a civilised society would have saved its time and effort by cutting their throats before they reached double figures in years. When I have expressed that view before, I’ve been challenged and asked if I would be prepared to do it myself. Of course I should, and sleep easy knowing I had done society a favour I didn’t owe it, but then social workers would tell you someone with my childhood history would be expected to grow up to be a monster. I’d just as cheerfully cut the throats of social workers too. I said that to someone once who coldly told me, “I am a social worker.”

My reply before walking away was, “Well, don’t blame me. It’s not my fault.”

I don’t like Social workers. As a profession they have inflicted more harm on society than any two boys could ever have done. I was never afraid of my father, the worst he could have done was kill me, and even as a child I didn’t think life was that big a deal, but he threatened to have social workers take me away. I went to school with kids in care, and as a result social workers terrified me to the point where I couldn’t sleep for fear they would take me away in the night, which was a major reason why when at home I usually slept under my bed and I ran away so often to where I was safe and they couldn’t get me. My home was grim, but it was my home, and the idea of being removed from it by them was more than I could cope with.

Villains? Of course there are villains in this tale, but I’ll leave it to you to decide who they are.