The Trickster Chapter 1: Plea Bargain, a white wolf fanfic

Trickster – Chapter One 'Plea Bargain'

South London, England - Two Years Ago

"My client wishes to record a plea of not guilty on the grounds of diminished responsibility, my Lord."

The pudgy solicitor, whose name was, rather unfortunately for him, Melvin Rowbottom, sat down next to his client who at this particular moment was occupied with stabbing a biro between the outspread fingers of his hand. Rowbottom nudged him sharply in the ribs with an elbow and he dropped the biro and looked up attentively.

"Mister McKinley, do you understand the plea that your solicitor has put forward on your behalf?"

"Is this where I say 'yes'?"

"Yes."

"Quite so." The judge peered over his glasses at the young man who had returned to the all-important job of playing with the biro. "In that case, Mr McKinley, I will declare this court adjourned with a view to setting a date for your hearing. In the meantime, you will be returned to the psychiatric wing of the detention centre where you will undergo extensive psychiatric testing in accordance with your plea-bargain. Do you understand?"

"Do I?" Another sideways glance at the solicitor who by now was looking remarkably harangued.

"Yes." Melvin Rowbottom wasn't traditionally known for being a patient man, and Mason McKinley was stretching his patience tissue-thin.

"Yes." Mason gave the judge a beaming smile. "Perfectly," he added, for good measure.

"So be it." The judge banged his gavel and the court adjourned. Mason was returned to the 'care' of the police officers who duly carted him back off to the small cell that had served as his home since he had been released from hospital two weeks previously.

He took the biro with him. When you had an imagination as rampant as Mason's, something that simple could give hours of amusement.

At twenty five, Mason McKinley was of average height and average build, with a raffish air about him. He was not, at first glance, what you could even remotely call handsome, but he had a certain quirkiness about his manner, and the tendency to (usually) harmless mania that made him the kind of young man that people enjoyed being around. He was an exceptionally charismatic young man with a smile that could generally win anybody over.

He was blessed, although that may not have been the best word, with a wicked sense of humour and was one of life's natural practical jokers. His bright blue eyes sparkled with wickedness and intelligence – although he'd never achieved academically, he was as sharp as a tack.

Mason McKinley could have been anybody he wanted to be. Instead, he had become a drop-out. But he was happy. And that, he reasoned, was important.

He had been engaged in any number of criminal activities from an early age, having fallen in with a bad crowd at the age of fifteen, leaving home at sixteen and spending his life in an assortment of squats and roach-infested apartments until six weeks ago, when one of those moments of madness had finally caught up with him.

Of all the things that he stole, he enjoyed stealing cars the most. He had always gotten a huge kick out of the excitement that came with taking a high performance sports vehicle and they tended to be the ones he went for. Rarely did he take them for any reason other than to go for a joy ride, trash the car and dump it. His bread and butter were old bangers: the sort of cars that could be stolen and taken to the cut 'n' shut guys for further sale. He made very little money out of it, but it kept him in cigarettes, dope and beer.

This particular car had been a beauty, though. It had started its life out as a brand new Lotus Elise, resplendent in British Racing Green – and was utterly immaculate and very, very lovely. Mason had seen it and within seconds had known that he had to have it.

Within an hour, it was his.

And two hours later, when he'd been engaged in driving at one hundred and thirty miles per hour down the M1, five police cars in pursuit, his criminal activities had finally caught up with him. He'd lost control of the vehicle and had ploughed into the central reservation barrier at around eighty five miles an hour. Somehow, he had been pulled alive (but unconscious) from the wreckage, with only whiplash, concussion, a broken arm and cuts and bruises to show for it.

The car, alas had been destroyed. Mason had wept when he'd heard the news, but that was largely down to the fact that he'd been as high as a kite when he'd stolen it and had been going through a particularly nasty come-down.

Mason had spent four weeks in hospital where he was swiftly assessed by the doctors to have a minor drug and alcohol dependency and slowly but surely the truth about his criminal activities began to come out.

Thus is was that he had appeared that morning on no less than twenty six charges, including car theft, destruction of property, breaking and entering, possession of cannabis, drink-driving, driving without insurance and one count of actual bodily harm.

Things were not looking good for him.

This was a point that Melvin Rowbottom was trying, without any apparent success, to communicate to his client. A third-rate solicitor, he had been assigned to Mason when it had become apparent that the young man had no means to pay for legal representation and he and his client had taken an instant dislike to one another. To Mason, Rowbottom represented everything that he had ever detested about 'the system'.

To Mason, 'the system' was everything that he hated. He counted school-goers, regular workers and most definitely solicitors amongst those who fell within 'the system'. He'd bucked the system at the age of twelve, receiving exclusion after exclusion from schools in the area for variously fighting, smoking and drinking. Eventually, his mother had given up even trying to see him to school and had let him run wild. Her interest in him had dwindled shortly after he had been born anyway, so there was no love lost between them.

"By pleading diminished responsibility, we stand a good chance of avoiding a custodial sentence," Rowbottom was explaining to a disinterested Mason, who was more interested in doodling on the table with the biro that he had brought in with him. "At least a prison custodial sentence. A lot will depend on the outcome of the psychiatric tests. Are you sure you're up to them? Health-wise, I mean."

Realising that he couldn't just leave silence in the wake of a direct question, Mason looked up. "I feel great," he said, after considering it. His arm was still in plaster up to the elbow and his face only just starting to fade from the bruising he'd sustained in the high-speed crash. "What sort of tests?"

"Frankly, the ultimate aim of court-related psychiatric testing is to assess your overall ability to function in society. Given the problems you have with drink and drugs, I don't imagine you're going to have any trouble convincing them that you're mentally unstable – no offence."

"None taken."

Actually, quite a lot of offence had been taken and Mason squirreled the man's face away in the recesses of his memory for future use.

"You smoke marijuana on a regular basis, you've told me that. Do you do anything harder?"

Mason shrugged. "Dropped the odd tablet here and there," he said. "Someone gave me a dog worming pill once telling me it was Ecstasy. That was a fun night." He saw Rowbottom's look of disgust. "No," he finished. "Just the dope. Now, anyway."

"Do you grow your own?"

"Do I look like an idiot?"

"Do you really want me to answer that question, Mason?"

"Do you want my fist in your gob, Melvin?"

"No. Now do yourself a favour, grow up – and answer my question."

"No. I don't grow my own." Sulky.

"Do you pass on drugs to other users?"

"You mean am I a dealer? No, I prefer the joys that car theft has to offer. And setting fire to things. I like setting fire to things." Mason's blue eyes sparkled and he beamed happily. "And setting fire to cars is probably the most rewarding thing of the lot, I mean, have you ever sat and watched an engine fire? It's amazing."

Rowbottom made a few notes on his pad. Usually he dragged 'diminished responsibility' out as a last-ditch attempt to prevent his clients from being thrown into prison. With Mason McKinley, however, it looked like he was onto the real deal. The kid was clearly nuts.

"You'll be held in a detention cell until they sort out your psych dates," he explained to Mason. "They'll likely keep you in solitary given the nature of your plea, but I need you to tell me if you suffer any violence at the hands of the guards. This place isn't exactly Center Parcs."

"No kidding? I was about to ask where the water slides were." Mason leaned back on his chair so that the front legs left the floor and stared up at the ceiling, almost immediately fascinated by the missing roof tiles and the pattern he could discern in the stippled finish of those that remained.

Rowbottom watched him in silence for a few moments. If the kid was acting, he was doing a convincing job of it.

"I'll be back in the morning," he said, starting to put his notes back in his briefcase and pressing the button that would bring the guards to the interview room to 'escort' his client to the poky little solitary confinement cell. "Remember, let me know straight away if you have any problems."

"Mm-hmm."

Twenty minutes later, Mason had been transferred to the room that would become his home for a short time. All things considered, things weren't too bad.

He experienced no problems from the prison guard other than a brief and animated argument about wanting to go for a cigarette after curfew.

Rowbottom returned, as promised, the following morning to find a decidedly tired-looking young man who sprawled on the table miserably in between questions. He looked pale and tired and sickly.

"Withdrawal not going well?" Rowbottom was surprised to realise that he actually cared. There were people out in the Big Wide World who committed murders, rapes and other crimes against humanity, whereas apart from the one case of ABH that had been brought against Mason, his brand of criminal activity almost invariably avoided physical harm to anybody.

"Shut up. And no. I want a smoke."

"You can go outside for a cigarette if you need one that badly."

"I've smoked my quota for the day already. And I don't mean tobacco. I want a joint."

"You can't have one."

"I hate you."

Despite himself, Rowbottom quirked his lips in a smile. His client was almost surprisingly likeable in his attitude; like an overgrown child who was being told off for tormenting a kid sister.

The thought led neatly into Rowbottom's line of questioning for the session.

"Tell me about your family, Mason."

"Haven't got one."

"Parents both dead? Any siblings?"

A one-shouldered shrug and a dishevelled head lifted off the table.

"My mother's probably still alive. Dunno. I haven't spoken to her in like, ten years. Never knew my dad and reckon as Mum never knew who he was either. She wasn't interested in me, just whoever was between her legs at the time."

"No brothers or sisters?"

"Mum had a baby – a girl - when I was about eight," he said, "but she was taken away by Social Services. I wanted them to take me, too, but they said that I would be good for her, that staying with her might make her more responsible." He laughed, humourlessly. "Rich, that, isn't it? I would be good for her. What about what would have been good for me?"

The bitterness was strong, although the way Mason told the story, he made it evident that he didn't care one bit, not really. The bitterness was directed at the system that had denied his young self's needs.

It transpired that Mason's mother, Lynne McKinley was what could only be described as a 'working girl' who had been fond of her son for a brief time and then seen him as nothing more than a burden. Mason had finally left home at fifteen, moving in with a much older friend. He'd not been in touch with Lynne once since that day.

Rowbottom made a note to check out the validity of Mason's story, although he'd seen the same thing before. It would count very much in his favour in terms of mitigating circumstances.

"No idea who your father is?"

"Fucking hell, no. Even Mum couldn't hazard a guess. She said I didn't look like anybody she remembered, but I find it hard to believe she could remember any of them." Mason leaned forward, an almost cherubic smile on his face. "I'm a bastard, aren't I? It made me the topic of much ridicule at school. Used to get into fights all the time. Got me expelled on a near weekly basis until I ran out of schools. Then I stopped going."

Became rebellious in self-defence against school bullies. Rowbottom noted this down on his pad and considered Mason thoughtfully. His opinion was rapidly changing, and he didn't know why. The boy was certainly charismatic, that couldn't be denied. He had the sort of personality that caught you up in its flow and if you didn't hold on tight, left you gasping in its wake. It was something that if it was harnessed and used correctly could help create a most convincing defence case.

"When you go to court, it is unlikely that you will be called to the stand to answer questions unless the psychiatrists think you are able to. Would you object to me telling your story on your behalf?"

Another one of those one-shouldered shrugs.

"Whatever."

"That's all we have time for today, Mason. How are you bearing up?"

"I'm fine. Bored shitless, but fine."

"Can I get you anything? A book? Puzzles?"

"Some dope, a bottle of Jack Daniels…"

"Mason…"

"Man, I'm joking. Talk about your sense of humour failures."

"I've had word from the police psychiatrist. He'll be in to visit you this afternoon. Now, I want you to tell him everything you've told me this morning, OK?"

"You won't be there, then?"

"No, it has to be a private interview. The court don't like solicitors present during psych evaluations in case we…manipulate things our own way."

Privately, Mason suspected that Rowbottom couldn't manipulate a lump of plasticine, but said nothing.

"Make sure you convey to the psychiatrist how sorry you are for any trouble that you've caused. Remorse will go a long way in your favour, OK?"

"Sure." Mason felt suddenly tired of the whole situation. Maybe he should just change his plea to guilty and get thrown in the nick for a while. He'd get out again in time and at least it'd be somewhere to live that wasn't a squat or rancid apartment. Rowbottom saw the look on his client's face and felt suddenly sorry for him.

"Here," he said, handing over a box of cigarettes of which about five remained. "Go crazy."

"I thought I already was." There was a pause. "Thanks, man."

"See you tomorrow."

"I'll be here."

The morning rolled along without incident, Mason sleeping through much of it. It was about all there was to do, after all, and he'd not exactly slept that well the previous night. No means of escape or relax that he was used to – which was, of course to say, drink or drugs – had left him bolt awake.

At three in the afternoon – according, at least, to the clock that Mason could see on the wall outside his cell – the on-duty officer came to collect him to lead him back to the interview room to meet the psychiatrist.

The twists and turns of Fate are often enchanting, always enthralling, and Lady Fate danced well that day. Less than an hour after he had been left alone in the interview room, waiting for the psychiatrist, Mason's life would change forever.