Interview with Detective Laura Warburton

Interview with Jay Darkmoore, and the infamous Detective Inspector Laura Warburton, of the Wigtown Major Investigation Team.

JD – Laura.

LW – Jay.

JD – How nice of you to join me tonight at such short notice.

LW – Thank you for having me. I’m sure the world won’t burn down in the time we’re talking.

JD – Let’s hope not. So, first question, how are you?

LW – Breathing.

JD – That’s good.

LW – Depends you look at it. Anymore?

JD – Plenty. A lot of people want to ask you questions. This one is asked by Stacy Night over on Instagram.

LW – You asked your followers for interview questions?

JD – You’re very popular.

LW – I would have done my makeup if I would have known. Or bring Bagpipe.

JD – How is he?

LW – Bagpipe? Just a cat. Does cat things. Sleeps. Eats. Shits. Sounds like a good life to me.

JD – Where did Bagpipe come from?

LW – I got him as a rescue shortly after I moved up North. I needed something to take my mind off the shit that had led to me moving up here in the first place. I was taking out the bins, and I found him in the back of a bush down the side of my house. Heard him meowing. He was so ill, the poor thing. A lot of his fur was missing. He hissed at me when I first picked him up. He was terrified. A little tuna however, he was happy to come inside. He didn’t have a chip, or a collar. I knocked on a few doors and put the word out, but no one came forward. He needed a name. Mittens or socks was too cliché. So, I thought of the most random thing I could think of, and Bagpipe came to mind.

JD – Why Bagpipe?

LW -  Because no matter what you call a cat, it won’t come to you. I found it funny, and the name stuck.

JD – I love that. You’re so kind.

LW – Kind. Desperate for attention. Needing some kind of purpose. Doesn’t matter really. The result is the same, regardless of motivation.

JD  - So back to the question.

LW – Of course. Sorry.

JD – Stacy Night from Instagram. She asked ‘why did you join the police force?’

LW – Fuck. You know, that’s a question I often think about myself!

JD – You’re laughing?

LW – Yeah. I think every cop starts for the same reason – because they want to help people. But we quickly find that when they step into the world of policing, that that quickly changes. You spend a lot of your time dealing with the shit the other agencies can’t be bothered with. Mental health? Call the police. Children that go missing from care? Call the police. My neighbour called me a slut on Facebook. Call the police.

JD – Does that actually happen? The Facebook thing?

LW – More than you know. It’s worrying. I got into trouble once because I had someone call us to report that someone had called them a ‘cunt’ on Facebook, and my response was, ‘are you?’ I was taken off the case at that point.

JD – It boggles the mind.

LW – It does. So, in answer to your question, I joined the job to help people, but with the abundance of terrible managers who get promoted because of how good they are at licking the arse of their superiors, rather than being a good leader, is scarily prevalent. I joined the job, do what I can, and continue to do what I can. Contrary to belief, I am a good supervisor. Much better than the others I have had working over me.

JD – Will you get into trouble for saying things like that?

LW – I couldn’t care less. The more I do this job, the more I see the flaws in the running of it. The core beliefs of the police these days is statistics and pleasing the Home Office. We have forgotten what we are here to do. Help the vulnerable. Put those who commit crimes in prison. Rinse. Repeat. Further to that… stop me if I’m rambling…

JD – No, this is great.

LW – We still do have those core beliefs. Mostly in the cops on the ground who go to the end of the world to help those in desperate need. I admire that. But the fact that bureaucracy gets in the way. It’s upsetting.

JD – This one is closer to the bone. I hope you don’t mind.

LW – Give it to me. I’m not scared.

JD – What was your original job ambition before you entered into a relationship with Ron?

LW - …

JD – Are you okay?

LW – Yeah, sorry. I just... I knew he would come up. I always wanted to lead. To be a detective. I let things get in the way. I always said, ‘don’t shit where you eat,’ and Ron was a prime example of that. He, for want of a better phrase, fucked me up beyond believe. My position in the Met was already eroding.

JD – How so?

LW – Have you spent more than twenty minutes with me?

JD – Seems your heart is in the right place.

LW – It is. But the bosses don’t like it when you tell them to fuck off, you’re busy helping someone and can’t get to the next call that has come through. Anyway. Ron helped my career, that’s true. He was influential. Popular, and vouched for me to get the inspector position. He helped me a lot in that regard. In some fucked up way, I should thank him. Because otherwise I wouldn’t have gotten the position at the MIU. However, him going overboard was one of the reasons I had to leave. Everyone believed I was somehow responsible. That I was the reason he died. I gave up trying to clear my name. Friends and colleagues all trapped under his spell. It was extremely toxic. I heard about what was happening up here, in Wigtown, and I jumped at the opportunity.

JD – And what is happening up here?

LW – No comment.

JD – One last question from Stacy.

LW – I’m going to punch her if it’s about Ron again.

JD – You’ll have to find her first.

LW – That won’t be hard.

JD – Why are you laughing?

LW – Because everyone thinks they can evade the police until we’re breaking down their door at five in the morning. Anyway. Go with the question.

JD – She asked what do you enjoy about your job? That the police see the darkest aspects of humanity and carry on like its nothing. So, what do you enjoy, and what do you hate?

LW – That’s actually a very good question. But first, I would like to clear a misconception. Firstly, the police aren’t machines. We deal with horrific shit all the time, but that doesn’t mean we are immune to it. Drunks fighting in the street. Dead bodies. Burglaries. It’s all in the day to day. We deal with that all the time. Me, anyway. What affects me though, is when we can clearly see that someone is being abused, and they won’t leave the perpetrator. It’s not all black and white, that someone can be abusive, and the other party will up and leave. It’s much more complicated than that. So, when I get repeat calls to an address of a women being abused by their partner, or a man being abused by their girlfriend or wife, then I feel like grabbing them by the shoulders and screaming at them ‘let me help you!’ But it’s so difficult. Which is why when they do finally decide to have faith in us, we have to act on it and give them the best service as possible. So, my answer to that question is the same to each of them. I love helping people, and I love when I can really make a difference in someone’s life. When I can lock that abuser away. Get the victim on courses and therapy to stop them going through it repeatedly. When I manage to really turn someone’s life around. But you must take care of yourself. Police officers can soak up so much hate, so much sadness in a single shift. The adrenaline spikes are insane, and you can be left mentally, physically, and emotionally bereft after a long shift. You must take time to care for yourself. Some go the gym. Get outdoors. Have a bath so hot your skin is peeling off.  Whatever it is. Make sure you take care of yourself. You can’t help the broken if you’re broken too.

JD – And the part you hate?

LW – The part I hate is when you try everything you can, and they still end up dead.

JD – Do you need a minute?

LW – No. Keep going.

JD – Favourite type of alcohol?

LW – The wet kind that comes out of a bottle. But, if I had to choose, it would be red wine. The darker the better. I don’t like how it stains your teeth though.

JD – What would your death row meal be?

LW – I have actually put a lot of thought into this. When your job is to put terrible people in prison, it crosses your mind what would happen if you were in that position. I would have to say a nice steak, medium rare, with thick cut chips, and some steamed asparagus on the side, and a very nice helping of peppercorn sauce.

JD – My mouth is watering. We should grab some of that after this.

LW – I appreciate the offer, but like I said, I don’t shit where I eat.

JD – Noted. Favourite song?

LW – I have a varied taste in music. I like classical. Claud Debussy’s Clair De Lune, or Chopin’s Nocturne number two in Eb Major are favourites of mine. However, I really like metal: Slipknot. Mudvayne. Sleep Token. All that stuff. But my number one song, has to be Perfect by Fairground Attraction.

JD – What is a happy memory of yours?

LW – When I was a girl, around ten, I went to Finland with my mother. We went sledding down a huge snowy hill. About a third down, we came off the sled and rolled in the snow. We laughed the rest of the walk down. It was magic.

JD – Did you meet Father Christmas?

LW – I met someone who was dressed like him. But I when I figured it out, I was told that the real one was busy. Which made sense. He has a lot to do.

JD – What do you want for Christmas?

LW – A good night’s sleep!

JD – You’re laughing again.

LW – The joys of being a cop. The price we pay. We pour more than just our hearts and emotions into our work. We pour our time and energy too. We sacrifice meals, sleep, comfort, birthdays, family events, Christmas’s, New Year. You name it. Halloween is the worst. Somehow someone somewhere thought it was a good idea to arm everyone in the country with explosives and let them all wear masks and set fires, and we wonder why its utter chaos that time of year.

JD – This one is from KBMillion on TikTok.

LW – That’s just for kids dancing, isn’t it?

JD – BookTok is great. Good place to find books. KBMillion has asked ‘do you think serial killers are born, or made that way?’

LW – I don’t think anyone is inherently born evil. Yes, people can be more wicked than others, but I believe it starts in the home. Every killer I have spoken too have all said that it started when they were younger. Yes, some are quicker to falling into darkness than others, but it starts in childhood. Abuse. Poverty. Adverse Childhood Experiences. Even children that have a great life but are spoiled by their parents and get everything they want can become killers. They become entitled. So, no. I don’t believe killers are born. But then again, remove the laws of society, and our true nature comes out. Maybe killers are just living more authentic to our true selves? Maybe their just animals. Maybe their lost souls.

JD – Do you have children?

LW – No. Nor do I want them. As a woman, I have had a lot of shit for that. That I put myself and my career first. Firstly, I need a partner, and being bisexual, I can only procreate with only a select half of who I like to fuck. But my track record with men hasn’t been great. Ron wanted us to have a child. He told me once when we were having a meal. I can’t remember where it was. Italian, I think, but he told me he wanted me to come off my birth control. I said no, which is like throwing petrol on a fire to an abusive person. You’re taking the control from them. He screamed at me, threw my wine over me, and stormed out the restaurant.

JD – That sounds awful.

LW – You say that, and it was. But by that point it had become normal. I was just upset that he picked the wine. It was £15.00 a glass.

JD – You shrug off such things so easily. How?

LW – One thing about domestic abuse is that it becomes part of your every day. It isn’t always like that - violence. Sometimes, if not most of the time, it’s subtle. A comment. A lie. A little gaslighting. Eventually, you just want the argument to happen, because it gets it out the way, and then there’s the happy time after it. So no, I don’t want children, because I don’t ever want to be tied to another person for life. People can change, and it’s good to have an exit strategy. That’s much harder with a child in the middle. A child won’t fix a broken or abusive relationship. It just makes it much, much harder to leave it.

JD – Another TikTok question.

LW – Fuck sake.

JD – This is from Lain Benson. Oh…

LW – Go on.

JD – They have asked ‘what would you do to me, Jay Darkmoore, in a purge scenario.’

LW – Well that depends how fast you can run.

JD – Moving on quickly… Last one  - Terry H TT&B. ‘Where do you see yourself in ten years?’

LW – Alive, if I can help it. Everything else is a bonus.

JD – So we’re nearing the end of this part of the interview. The next part will be for our direct supporters on Patreon, so I have one last question for you, which is, what are we not talking about that we really should be?

LW – The mental health of our emergency workers. And I don’t mean mental health awareness. We’re all aware of it. I mean how shit the mental health of our emergency personnel is, and how the government , for all they say, do not give a fuck. Think about it – if we didn’t have the ambulance, police and the fire service, the fabric that holds society together would rip and tear overnight.

One in three people of the general public in the UK will experience one traumatic event in their lives. A first responder will be exposed to almost four hundred traumatic events in their career. Approximately twenty percent of police officers in the UK exhibit symptoms of PTSD or CPTSD, and a lot of them are unaware of it. Twelve percent of ambulance personnel, and eighteen percent of fire fighters. Just yesterday I had to sign off a detective on sick leave because they had to go through someone’s phone that had committed suicide. The guy hung himself from a tree, and there were messages from his children, six and five, begging him to come home. The detective analysing the phone put on a brave face, but I knew it had shaken him, so I sent him home and put him in touch with occupational health. My superior was only interested in who would take on the cases he had ongoing, which meant I had to put additional strain on the other staff on the team. I am not saying we need to moddy coddle officers. They know the job they signed up for, but the culture of ‘just get on with it,’ is frankly, absurd. Pair that with bosses that wear crowns on their shoulders who are stat hungry to get more Home Office funding, their next promotion regardless of the efficacy or morality of what they’re doing to the officers and the public, all because the government have frankly fucked the system up so badly, meaning public service is impacted, that compounds the distain people have for the police, and the nature of what police officers do, I suspect that statistic is just scraping the barrel. Never had we have more officers leaving the job that was once a career for life. Never have we seen such low morale. Imagine if the police stopped policing. The effects of that would be unthinkable.

JD – Laura, you have given us a lot to think about. If you’re happy, we can have a minute, and then ask you some questions from our supporters?

LW – Can I get a glass of wine?

Patreon only content -

JD – What do you think about prominent celebrities in the world – Andrew Tate, for example…

To read the exclusive answers to the toughest questions, click here.

How to Write a Psychopath

American Psycho

Psychopaths are incredibly fun to read in books and watch on the big screen and have been popularised by some very infamous and somewhat controversial films and books, from American Psycho written by Bret Easton Ellis, Hannibal Lecter by Thomas Harris and even James Bond by Ian Fleming.

                But why is it that these characters have captured both love and fear in our hearts? What is it about them that makes us want to know more? Is it their propensity to violence? Their ability to be cunning and manipulative without feeling any remorse? Is it their self-confidence and being able to think under pressure? Whatever the reason, our hearts have a soft place in them for psychopaths in literature.

                In this blog, I am going to tell you how to create your very own in your fiction, and it will maybe help you spot these same traits in other characters you enjoy.

Hannibal Lecter

 Traits of a psychopath –

                Most Psychopaths are male, with them making up approx. 1% of the population, and are estimated to make up 50 – 80% of the prison population. Women that show high traits of Psychopathy are more likely to be diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder, which along with Psychopathy, is a ‘Cluster B’ personality disorder along with Narcissism and Histrionic Personality Disorder as outlined in the Diagnostical and Statistical Manual Version 5 (DSM – 5 for short) of the American Psychiatric Association.  

                Psychopathy lends itself to having many different traits, all of which are useful in certain situations, and can even benefit those in certain careers (below). Most people can dial these traits down as and when they need them, but a psychopath can’t and would always have these traits on the high setting in their brains.

                These are low empathy, impulsivity, calm under pressure, manipulative, charming, ruthlessness and emotionally detached and show a lack of remorse for their actions.

James Bond

This list can make for some fantastic characters and even make for some fantastic story arcs. Maybe a character is charming and loving, and then later down the line, we see that it was all manipulation to convince someone to give up their life savings, and then abandon them. Tinder Swindler, anyone?

                Or maybe we have a character that is a military soldier, a warrior, who is ruthless and can cut through the enemy without a shred of remorse? A police officer who will do anything to crack the case, or a surgeon who has the steadiest hand to make that vital, life-saving cut with everything on the line?

                Psychopaths make for excellent characters. They make incredibly fun heroes to write about, and add a lot more depth to the ‘bad guy.’ We can look into their childhood, in that a psychopathic person would have normally come from some kind of abusive childhood, and uses psychopathy as a way to navigate the world based off of that. It gives the character more back story. More depth.

Professor Kevin Dutton

According to psychologist Professor Kevin Dutton, most psychopaths are split into two categories. Those with high traits and a low propensity to commit violence, and those with high psychopathic traits and a higher propensity to violence.

                Those that are of lower violent tendencies are more likely to be characterised by high-pressure positions, such as politicians, CEOs, police officers, lawyers and high-end athletes. These could make for some great characters and some side characters, and maybe even a villain or two in there? Maybe the villain is a top businessman of a rival company that is trying to sabotage the hero’s chances at getting their foot on the corporate ladder? Or even a detective that drinks too much and is emotionally vacant when around other people, but is ruthless and driven to catch the bad guy?

Jack Torrance - The Shining

The psychopaths that are high in psychopathic traits with a higher level of predisposition to violence would be our classical villains such as serial killers, a criminal mob boss and even a soldier that has gone rogue.

                Psychopaths make for great foreshadowing opportunities too, as they can be very manipulative. In your story, you can have the psychopath dropping hints and leaving clues for the rest of the characters to find, and then when the big reveal comes later in the book, the reader can connect the dots and have the ‘Oh my god!’ moment that we all love to create when they figure it all out.

Lorna - By Jay Darkmoore

In my dark romance ‘Lorna,’ the main character in the story ‘Christian’ is a psychopath, and he will stop at nothing to not only win the heart of Lorna, his new infatuation but also kill and destroy the lives of anyone that dares stand in his way.

Order it here on kindle unlimited today.

                Psychopaths are so much fun to write and can offer a lot of depth to your characters and the story. Even just highlighting certain traits outlined above and giving them to your characters can make a lot of difference to your writing.

                Have fun with it and thank you for reading.

                But what about other writing ideas? What about being able to break through writer’s block?

Click here to read on.