Fragments

Fragments is an audio drama written by Julian Simpson. It was first broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on Friday 31 August 2007 as part of the "Friday Play" series.

Synopsis
Teenager Kelly Ryan and her parents move to Pleasant Green, an exclusive village forty minutes from London. They are a nice ordinary family with plenty of money. She has a good education, never been in trouble. But two months later she has murdered a seventy year old retired Royal Marine. Why?

Plot Developments
This is the first of Julian Simpson's radio plays to reference Pleasant Green. The play is told in non-linear fashion through a series of tapes made by Grant, interspersed with scenes from the ongoing investigation into the Grant case: police interviews with Kelly Ryan as well as Carter and Haynes talking about the case, the tapes, and Pleasant Green.

At the start of the play, Carter and Haynes are searching Grant's shed as part of their investigation. The charge of attempted murder becomes an actual murder charge when Carter gets a call from the hospital confirming that Grant has died. During their search of the shed, Carter and Haynes find lots of tapes that Grant made. Over the course of the play, they listen to the tapes and figure out that they are recordings that Grant made by hiding microphones in a lot of houses in Pleasant Green as well as in the GP surgery (owned by Dr. Mortimer, a golf club member whose most frequently-requested and -prescribed medications were antidepressants) and the fitness centre (frequented, among others, by Mrs. Wilson, an empty-nester from London who took 18 months after relocation to work up the courage to leave her Pleasant Green house).

Carter and Haynes repeatedly interview Kelly Ryan, an 18-year-old girl who recently relocated to Pleasant Green and is their prime suspect for the attempted murder of Major Grant. A gun with her fingerprints was found at the scene and her hands were covered in gunpowder. Carter and Haynes cannot figure out her motive at first - the first time they ask Kelly why she did it, she responds: "To get the neighbours talking".

Major Grant, a 70-year-old retired Royal Marine, who grew up and lived in Pleasant Green for most of his life, believed that Pleasant Green was undergoing a process that "looks like progress, but isn't". The original inhabitants have been priced out of the village. The rich people who live there now shut themselves in their houses, complete with high-end security systems and high privacy fences and hedges and are forcing long-standing local businesses to close as they buy their groceries and everyday commodities online.

Haynes, who grew up in the area, remembers Pleasant Green as being a quiet English village in his childhood days. Specifically, he remembers the Three Horses - now a gastropub with "a hundred different kinds of wine [and] food you can't even pronounce" - as "a proper pub [with] proper food, regulars propping up the bar till closing and thick fog of fag smoke clinging to the ceiling" before being turned into a gastropub. Grant also hearks back to this time. He talks about the Johnson family's barn - now a fitness centre which Grant isn't allowed to join as he's too old for their insurance to cover him - as a wattle-and-daub building dating back to Tudor times, with historic features such as a priest hole.

We learn that, upon learning of his prostate cancer diagnosis, Grant had decided to stage what he called Operation Pleasant Green to try to fight the "virus" affecting Pleasant Green through committing acts of anti-social behaviour and vandalism. He had planted his listening devices to be able to check on the residents' reactions to this.

Kelly Ryan, an 18-year-old who recently relocated to Pleasant Green with her parents, befriended him when he committed his first acts of low-key chaos. He used a low-frequency emitter to set off all car alarms on her street for several nights in a row and then covered the driveways in metal tacks to prevent the commuters, including Kelly's father, from going to work.

Together, they wreaked havoc on the town. They printed posters saying "You are not safe" and put them through people's doors and vandalised the cricket ground and the golf club with the same phrase. Grant believed that the residents' reactions to this were a good start, but that there had to be "a final act. Something that will resonate, that will echo through the darkness long after I'm gone. A note that sustains, that keeps the sleepers awake." Him and Kelly decided that this final act would be to take his own life make it look like Kelly had murdered him.

Before taking his own life, Grant recorded one last tape in which he told the police of Operation Pleasant Green. He also stated that Kelly is innocent, that he took his own life and made it look like Kelly did it, but that Pleasant Green isn't worth Kelly ruining her life.

Kelly finds the tape and hides it from the police and is subsequently convicted of manslaughter and serves an 18-month prision sentence. The play closes with this monologue from her:

"My name is Kelly Ryan. I was released from prison two months ago after serving 18 months for manslaughter due to diminished capacity. The property prices in Pleasant Green haven't recovered. I didn't kill John Grant. He took his own life. No one knows that but me. I found the tape the police were meant to find. John Grants didn't take photographs of my father. I did that. I sent them to my mother to free her from the prison that her life had become. She remarried - a man exactly like my father. An animal raised in captivity can't survive in the wild. They said I wouldn't be able to live a normal life with the press attention that will be on me. So they relocated me and gave me a new identity. I'm your next-door neighbor. I'm your new best friend. I'm the woman at the desk next to yours. Behind you in the supermarket. At the next table in the cafe. Sitting beside you on the bus. Lock your doors. Close your curtains. Install the new alarm system. Take the pills. Shut out the world. Refuse to participate. I am watching you. I'm smiling. You are not safe."

Characters
Grant (John Carlisle)

Mrs Ryan (Lesley Sharp)

Mr Ryan (Philip Glenister)

Kelly Ryan (Sarah Smart)

Carter/Gym Instructor (Daniel Ryan)

Haynes (Sean Gallagher)

Mrs Wilson (Nicola Walker)

Dr Mortimer/Estate Agent (Will Keen)

Transcript
Fragments/Transcript