When bodybuilder Raoul Moat shot three people and went on the run, he sparked one of the biggest manhunts in British history. Now, a bold, highly original book by Andrew Hankinson – extracted below – uses Moat’s own words to tell the story of his life. Here, the author talks to Rachel Cooke

In July 2010, Raoul Moat, a 37-year-old bodybuilder and former bouncer from Newcastle who had recently been released from Durham prison, shot three people: his ex-girlfriend, Samantha Stobbart, her new partner, Christopher Brown, and a police officer, David Rathband. Stobbart was seriously injured and Brown was killed; PC Rathband was left blind and, having struggled to come to terms with his disability, killed himself at his home in Blyth, Northumberland, in February 2012.

After the shootings, Moat went on the run in the countryside around Rothbury, Northumberland. The manhunt to find him lasted seven days and was one of the biggest in recent history, the police at one point employing the survival expert Ray Mears to help. The story filled every newspaper, the sensationalist coverage dividing public opinion. Even Paul Gascoigne got involved, promising Moat, whom he claimed to know, chicken and lager if he gave himself up. On 9 July, having tracked him to the banks of the river Coquet, the police began to negotiate with Moat. He killed himself with a sawn-off shotgun the next day.

In You Could Do Something Amazing With Your Life [You Are Raoul Moat], the journalist Andrew Hankinson (who won a Northern Writers award in 2012) uses Moat’s own words to tell the story of his life, his crimes and his death. Will Self has said that the book “does the commendable job of demystifying evil yet again… showing us the rainy-Tuesday-afternoon-dullness and grinding frustration that can lead some unbalanced people to topple into the abyss”. But it is certain to attract some controversy, given Moat’s tendency for self-justification and self-pity. Here, Hankinson talks about its genesis and what, if anything, he hopes its publication will achieve.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Samantha Stobbart, Raoul Moat’s former partner, who survived after being shot in the arm and abdomen. Photograph: Rex/Shutterstock

What first drew you to Raoul Moat’s story?

It was the way it divided people. I was interested that some people felt very sympathetic towards him and others saw him as a monster. I was living in London when he went on his spree and I think I was more towards the sympathy end of things. But then I moved back to the north-east, where I’m from, and my attitude hardened. I certainly don’t think you can read my book and think he was a hero.

This is Raoul Moat “in his own words”. What does this mean? How much is him and how much is you?

I had a lots of information to draw on. I attended the trial of Moat’s accomplices [Karl Ness and Qhurum Awan, both now serving life sentences] and the inquest for Moat. I couldn’t attend the inquest for Christopher Brown, but I had a written version of the coroner’s summary. I had transcripts of the hours and hours of tapes he recorded [on a Dictaphone] when he was on the run in Northumberland, and there were also some tapes he had made before he went to prison that I was able to listen to.

You would recognise a lot if you matched up all these documents with my book, but I’ve also trimmed a lot, and I’ve added some biographical information that I got from interviews with other people. I’ve also given him a structure, in that the narrative follows the nine days between his release from prison and his death. I’ve stuck with his vocabulary and his phrasing: one of the things that was frustrating for me as a writer was that this meant I couldn’t add a lovely simile or a nice bit of description. But the book is stronger for it. It captures the way he talked, the way he rants, the way he jumps from one idea to another, the way his logic doesn’t make sense. And when he lies [which is often] I always correct that [by using square brackets, also used for clarification].

Why did you decide to use the second person?

I’m a big fan of the second person. I love Jay McInerney’s Bright Lights, Big City, which is all in the second person. If you can get it right, it’s even more intimate than the first person.

Family of officer shot by Raoul Moat take Northumbria police to high court Read more

Keeping us inside Moat’s head means that we barely hear about his victims or their families. Is this something that concerns you?

I don’t feel great about that, no. I do wish there was much more of them in the book. But I couldn’t get access to them. I tried to contact PC David Rathband, and Christopher Brown’s mother, and Samantha Stobbart, but they didn’t want to speak to me. I understood that and I didn’t want to push it.

What would you like readers to take away from reading the book?

It doesn’t have a message. I don’t want a consensus; I want readers to feel all different kinds of things. But I hope it will add to the debate about determinism and free will. I think there were plenty of mechanisms available to Raoul Moat by which he could have got help [for his mental health issues, his problems with violence]. The system could have improved his life. Social services did engage with him, but he didn’t turn up for appointments. I don’t know what the solution is for someone like that.

At first, I thought I would be writing about the north-east, its isolation from the rest of the country and how Moat connected with that. That was the book I hoped to write: a book about place. But I came to realise that these events could have happened anywhere. I called the book You Could Do Something Amazing With Your Life for a reason. I want to be clear that this is a man who made decisions that made his life worse. He was a grown man and he took bad decisions. Ultimately, he decided to kill people and, afterwards, he didn’t really care that he had.

An extract from Andrew Hankinson’s You Could Do Something Amazing With Your Life [You Are Raoul Moat]

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Raoul Moat captured on CCTV footage entering a Newcastle shop on Friday, 2 July 2010. Photograph: Getty Images

A questionnaire arrives from the Regional Department of Psychotherapy. There are 17 pages of questions. They want you to complete your answers and send it back before your first appointment with a psychologist.

It’s 2008. You sit in the house and write your surname, first name, date of birth, address, age and telephone number. On the next page you describe your symptoms:

I FEEL TIRED, ANXIOUS, ISOLATED, HELPLESS, ANGRY. I FIND IT DIFFICULT TO SLEEP OR RELAX

It asks how these symptoms affect your life. You write:

THEY STOP MY LIFE FROM PROGRESSING CONSTRUCTIVELY. I AM AGGRESSIVE AND VIOLENT OUTSIDE THE HOME IF PROVOKED

It asks why you think this happens. You write about the bad parts of your childhood, police harassment, having no family support, worrying about your children’s future, and feeling alone.

It asks what you enjoy and what your achievements have been.

I ENJOY BEING A DAD. MY CHILDREN ARE MY GREATEST ACHIEVEMENT. HAVING THE MORALS I HAVE. NOT LOSING THE PLOT AND BEING IN JAIL. I ENJOY MY RELATIONSHIP

It asks what you’ve found most difficult in life and what has brought the least satisfaction.

KEEPING MY COOL HAS BEEN MOST DIFFICULT. NOT GIVING MY KIDS AND GIRLFRIEND A BETTER LIFE WITH ME

It asks about your family history. You write that your father is UNKNOWN. You write your mum’s name and age. In the siblings box you write ANGUS. For his occupation and marital status you put UNKNOWN. It asks about your relationship with your dad. You write STEPFATHER and underline it.

You write five lines about him. It asks about your relationship with your mum. You write nine lines.

On the next page it says, It would help us to know something of your background.

Could you tell us something about your childhood and family including any changes or separations that you experienced?

Were any relationships especially important to you, for example with brothers, sisters, grandparents, aunts or uncles?

You write,

LOOK, I’M NOW REALLY PISSED OFF BECAUSE THESE QUESTIONS SHOULD BE DISCUSSED IN PERSON, AWAY FROM MY MRS AND KIDS, SO THEY DON’T HAVE TO SEE ME WOUND UP ABOUT THINGS I CHOOSE TO NOT THINK ABOUT. I CAN EXPRESS MYSELF BETTER IN PERSON AND SEE THIS AS TOTALLY DISMISSIVE AND UNCARING, AND WAS ABOUT TO CHUCK THESE FORMS IN THE BIN, BUT WROTE THIS COS I NEED THE HELP. IT IS GOING TO TAKE AN EFFORT FOR ME TO DO ALL THIS, SO CONTACT ME AND I’LL DISCUSS WHATEVER YOU WANT. I DO NOT WISH TO DISCUSS MY LIFE WITH PAPER

You turn the page.

It asks about your schools. You list them.

It asks about previous employment.

ENGINEERING (MECHANICAL). DOOR SUPERVISOR. MECHANIC

It asks about current employment.

UNEMPLOYED AT PRESENT. COULD DO EXTREMELY WELL IF THE POLICE DID NOT PUT THE MIX IN SO MUCH, DESPITE NOT EVEN HAVING A CAUTION TO MY NAME. STRONG EVIDENCE TO BACK THIS UP

It asks about difficulties at work. You leave it blank.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Photographers take pictures at the remains of Raoul Moat’s campfire found by police on 7 July, 2010 in Rothbury. Photograph: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images

The next page is domestic life. You write that you’ve been living with Sam for three years. She’s 19 years old. It asks about your previous significant relationships. You put that you were seeing Marissa from 1998 until 2004. She’s the mother of your two eldest children. You write that you have three children and Sam is the mother of the youngest. You describe your relationship as extremely loving and rewarding.

The next page asks about your relationship with Sam. You write that it’s strong and there are no worrying problems.

She’s honest, faithful and decent. You write that there isn’t much space to put all the good stuff in here. For the bad stuff you put,

CAN RELY ON ME TOO MUCH, AND BELIEVES I CAN TAKE ON THE WORLD AND FIX EVERYTHING

The next section is health. You write that you have asthma and need more help with it. You write that there was a recent accident where your hand got crushed, shattering the bones. It has not healed properly and doesn’t work properly. It looks terrible.

You don’t drink or take non-prescribed drugs.

It asks, Have you ever tried to harm yourself in any way?

YES

You underline it twice.

TWO OVERDOSES

It asks if you’ve had psychiatric treatment or care in the past.

NO

It doesn’t feel like home any more. The garden is overgrown. Maybe you’ve come out of prison a different kid

It asks if you’ve had counselling or psychotherapy.

YES. COLLINGWOOD COURT FOR 12 MONTHS AS REFERRED BY DOCTOR

Can you say what it is about yourself that you want to change?

I DON’T WISH TO CHANGE ANYTHING. HAVE A CALMER FRAME OF MIND AND EMOTIONAL STATE MAYBE

It asks how you expect the treatment to help and what form you imagine it taking.

I HAVE NO IDEA. KNOWING MY LUCK IT WILL BE ALL STRAITJACKETS, ELECTRICITY TO THE HEAD AND A CAGE

The final page asks for any other information. You leave it blank.

You send the questionnaire back to them.

A few days later a letter arrives. You’ve got an appointment with a trainee clinical psychologist on 29 April 2008.

You don’t attend.

Another letter arrives. It says they don’t normally reschedule appointments, but they know this is hard for you, so they’re offering you another appointment. It’s on 13 May 2008.

You don’t attend.

You are discharged from the waiting list.

Two years later you shoot three people and shoot yourself. You will be called a monster. You will be called evil. The prime minister, David Cameron, will stand up in parliament and say you were a callous murderer, end of story.

THURSDAY 1 JULY 2010

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The Rothbury storm drain where Raoul Moat hid while on the run; his final confronation with the police took place on the riverbank nearby. Photograph: Jamie Wiseman/Rex/Shutterstock

They release you from prison at 10.55am. The north-east is bright and sunny [as it often isn’t]. Your mission [as you explained it to another prisoner] is to get the gun, shoot Sam, shoot her new boyfriend, shoot Sam’s mum for trying to split you up, shoot the social worker who pissed you off, shoot the psychiatrist for giving you a negative report [though you can’t remember their name] and point the gun at the police until they shoot you.

Stevie [a friend] picks you up at Durham prison and drives you to Fenham [a suburb in the West End of Newcastle upon Tyne].

The local bricks are red. There are green trees and gardens. You live at 128 Fenham Hall Drive, a semi-detached [council] house with a garden and a bus stop outside the front gate – which you wrote to the council to complain about, because junkies hang around the bus stop injecting heroin and throwing needles over your wall, crowds of schoolkids make access to your property hazardous, teenagers congregate there at night to drink, swear, fight and abuse, someone destroyed your £565 leylandii, and the covert camera in your hedge recorded drunken teenagers having sex in your garden, Lambrini bottles getting thrown at your house, and people vandalising your vehicles and the bus stop, footage and stills of which you handed to Northumbria police [at the end of the letter you add that you want to build a driveway and getting planning permission would be easier if they moved the bus stop].

Stevie drops you off. You look around. It doesn’t feel like home any more. The garden is overgrown. Maybe you’ve come out of prison a different kid. You walk inside. Karl appears with his girlfriend [Tara]. You say hello. They say hello.

Karl’s a good friend [his full name’s Karl Ness and he’s 26 years old]. He does odd jobs for you. He’s been staying at your house to feed the dogs, pay the bills and keep things tidy, but everything looks dirty and unkempt. He passes you the phone. He says the gun isn’t here.

You tell him to go and get it.

He leaves. It’s lunchtime. You don’t feel like eating.

You haven’t felt like eating for weeks. You walk across the road to the barber’s and ask for a mohican, like Robert De Niro in Taxi Driver. The barber starts to cut your hair. You look in the mirror. Your face is tired and gaunt. You don’t look well.

Prison made you ill. You tell the barber and anyone listening that you’ve just done a stretch and will probably be back inside by Friday [tomorrow] because you’ve got arses to kick [nobody laughs].

Ha ha ha

The barber finishes your hair. You walk home and sit on the couch. Karl gets back with the gun. It’s in a blue bag. You take it out. It’s an old sawn-off shotgun, double-barrelled, with one barrel over the other. Karl sorted it out while you were inside [you supervised via the prison phone, being careful as you knew the calls were recorded]. The cartridges are in the bag.

You seal the casings back up and wonder how somebody who had it all ended up in a situation like this

You drive to town, which is only five minutes away. You park on Grey Street [in the city centre] and walk to Bagnall & Kirkwood [a gun and tackle shop], where you buy fishing weights [at 2.09pm] – just small metal spheres, like ball bearings.

You drive home. Karl and Sean are in the street [Sean is Karl’s friend; his real name’s Qhuram Awan; he’s a 23-year-old bouncer; you’ve met him a few times]. They load your BMW on to the recovery truck. They’re taking it to get repaired because Karl, like a monkey in a rocket ship, put normal cooking oil in it rather than the special biodiesel you manufacture in the garden. You help them load it on to the truck and go inside.

You call Sam. Sometimes it’s hard to get a signal in the house because of the lead-lined bricks, but you get through and she answers, but she won’t listen. She just goes on about the puppies, saying how she can’t look after them so Karl needs to go to her house and pick them up, but you can’t go over there, and she shouts and hangs up and you’re left thinking: is this a bad dream? Where’s Sam gone? She was your best friend. Who was that? And you sit on the couch using a lock-knife to open the plastic casings of some of the shotgun cartridges. You remove the shot and put a fishing weight inside instead. You take some of the powder out too. You seal the casings back up and wonder how somebody who had it all ended up in a situation like this, everything just a pile of chaos.

You phone the GP and book an appointment for Monday [nobody knows why]. Karl gets back. He’s fixed the BMW. He sits on the other couch. You Google Sam’s new boyfriend. You know he teaches karate and you guess the classes are somewhere near Sam’s new house [she lives in Birtley, just over the river, south of Gateshead].

You type on the laptop,

taekwondo Birtley

Chester le street martial arts

martial arts clubs durham

You get the names of five possible dojos [church halls and sports centres] as well as instructors. It’s hard to know the right one. You call Birtley leisure centre for confirmation, but they’re no help, so you write the addresses on a piece of paper and hand it to Karl and walk out to the van [at 7pm] with the gun in a bin liner.

Karl programs the addresses into the TomTom and you drive on to the A1, over the river, past the Metrocentre, turning off by the Angel of the North. Karl’s phone keeps beeping. It’s Tara. He texts back and calls her a psycho.

You drive to each dojo and do your recon, but it’s getting late [10pm] and all the classes have finished, so you abort the mission and drive to Tesco’s car park for a debrief [in Chester-le-Street, a small town three miles south of Birtley]. Karl wants to see Tara, who’s at Lana’s house [Lana is Tara’s daughter], so you drive to Lana’s in Lemington [back over the river, in the West End of Newcastle].

You go inside and Tara and Lana are in the sitting room. You tell them what Sam’s done to you and how she’s changed. Lana says you just need a good night out, but no, that’s not it. Karl drives you home.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Police negotiating with Raoul Moat on 9 July 2010. Photograph: Dan Kitwood/Getty Images

It’s 11pm. You call Anth [Anthony Wright; you met him at a gym 14 years ago and worked on the doors together; now he owns a garage in Byker; you earn money by using your recovery truck to drop off vehicles there; he’s 34 years old]. You talk to him for two hours. He’s your best friend and he’s been here for you before, particularly last year, when Sam moved out. It had you in bits, that. She left while you were at work, just disappeared and switched her phone off, giving you no option but to track her down, which you did, because there was stuff on Facebook, and you found out she was at her gran’s house and you drove down there and sat outside, but she wouldn’t come out, not until Anth got on the phone to her, and even then, when she came out, she still wouldn’t agree to move back in, but Anth is always there for you, which you tried to say thank you for in the letter you wrote, back when things got bad [sorry for being a tit] but you never gave it to him [it was a suicide note], just like you never gave the others their letters, like the one to Karl [all tools, etc, are yours if you want], and one to Richard [you’re a good mate], another for Duncan [you are welcome to whichever dog you want], one to the council asking them to look after your kids [I have failed them both and don’t wish to do so any longer], and the longest to Sam [I don’t know what to say except I love you, always have and always will]. That night, when Sam wouldn’t move back in, Anth says he tried to call you, but you’d switched your phone off, so he thought you’d gone ahead with it [killed yourself], but eventually Sam agreed to see you. The point is, Anth helped a lot, because he knows your one weakness is women [you once visited a hypnotist to get over a girlfriend dumping you], but this time it’s not like that.

Raoul Moat accomplices get life sentences Read more

It’s more than that. He can tell you’re depressed. Your voice is breaking. You’re 37 years old, too old to start again.

You’ve come out of prison with nothing. And for the first time he doesn’t have an answer. Tonight is unpleasant.

…

There’s an attic upstairs. You were going to convert it into an office. And you told the girls you’d convert it into a dream bedroom for them. Not anymore. There’s a noose up there.



…



You’re not going to kill yourself tonight. You’ll give it one last try with Sam. It’s you and her against the world.



You can’t sleep. You’ve always had trouble sleeping. You used to spend sleepless nights playing Xbox or looking through the box of cards from the kids, watching the shopping channel, or the Mr Bean DVD, the one where he gets sent to an art gallery in America and they think he’s a boffin, but he hasn’t got a clue really. He ends up sneezing on Whistler’s Mother, and when he tries to rub it off with turps the painting blisters up, and they have a grand unveiling, but there’s just this terrible hand-drawn picture that he’s done instead of the masterpiece. It’s hilarious. You don’t always sit and laugh all the way through a film, but that’s one of the funniest things you’ve seen, definitely as good as Laurel and Hardy, which is the kind of humour you like, especially Them Thar Hills, which is their classic, where they get in a fight and double-team this guy by putting treacle down his pants. You like that sort of thing much more than modern humour, which you don’t get at all.

A joke that’s stuck in your head over the years is about a tramp sitting in front of a jewellery shop. Suddenly an elephant comes along and kicks the shutter down, sucks up all the jewels through its trunk, and escapes down the street. A policeman turns up and asks the tramp if he saw anything. The tramp says, yes, he saw an elephant do it, and the policeman asks what the elephant looked like. The tramp says it just looked like an elephant. So the policeman says, Well, there’s two types of elephant. An African elephant has big ears and an Indian elephant has little ears. What kind was it?

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Police forensic staff at the site of Raoul Moat’s suicide. Photograph: Bruce Adams/ANL/Rex/Shutterstock

And the tramp says, Well, how are you supposed to tell if it’s wearing a balaclava?

Ha ha ha

…

You haven’t slept for weeks. You couldn’t sleep more than an hour a night in prison. It was harder than you expected, harder than the public thinks, surrounded by junkies and scum, locked in a tiny cell for 23 hours a day with people dropping like flies around you. In a single week one slit his throat, one cut his wrists and another hanged himself, because they couldn’t hack the consequences of one mistake [the Ministry of Justice recorded one apparent self-inflicted death and 46 incidents of self-harm at Durham prison while you were there]. You kept busy, weight training, helping other kids train, and you got a job, cleaning, because nobody can say you’re not a grafter, but you couldn’t cope with being away from Sam, so you phoned her and wrote her every day, but an hour is like a week without her, and you started to sink, which is why you popped on the wing a few times, and they gave you medication [20mg of a fluoxetine antidepressant]. That’s probably not helping with the sleeplessness. You’re still gnashing your teeth from it now, like you’re on pills [that’s your diagnosis, but the gnashing could be caused by stress].



You do know there’s nothing wrong with you. You know that for a fact, because when you were seeing the psychiatrist at the Collingwood a few years ago you asked them to check you were on the same page as everyone else, just in case something down the line wasn’t right, and they thought you might be paranoid and delusional [a mental health worker referred you to a psychiatrist and suggested you be assessed for psychosis and paranoia], but when they looked into it they discovered you were right, the police do harass you, and it’s gone on for years [the psychiatrist said it appeared you were experiencing significant trouble with the police], but there was nothing they could do [you were referred for psychotherapy, but didn’t show up]. You are a bit emotionally unstable, you do get over-the-top happy. You have your bad times as well. Like, when someone mocks you or accuses you of something you haven’t done you do over-react, which is why this charge and conviction was hard to take. It was all part of the conspiracy, a set-up. It was a ridiculous charge. You were being done for something you didn’t do, because if you’d really hit a little kid it would have killed them, which is why you started recording everything, so you could go to the Chronicle or on TV, and hit them with everything you had, like you did last time [in 2003 you told the council your daughter fell from your second-floor window and you asked them to put locks on the windows, but you thought it took them too long so you visited their offices], which is when the council accused you of being aggressive and threatening, and you had to tell the reporter it was just anger, but not out of control anger, and all that went in the media, but you didn’t go to the media this time. Even so, your whole body language should have told them you never hit a little kid. You were tried, convicted and crucified before you even got to court.

Your solicitor said to get your head around the fact that people get booked for things they didn’t do, but how can an innocent man accept being hanged? That’s why you wanted to do a lie detector test, but your solicitor said no judge would look at it, and the police wouldn’t look at it, so you wrote to Jeremy Kyle and asked to go on there and do a lie detector test on TV, because how would they have all felt then? How would they have felt if you’d gone on Jeremy Kyle to do a lie detector, and when he asked if you hit that little kid you turned around and said, NO, I DIDN’T HIT THAT LITTLE KID, and the lie detector showed you were telling the truth? How would they have felt then? Because you didn’t do any of this. You’re the most innocent bloke around, but your best wasn’t good enough for them or Sam or the children or yourself. You spent your whole life wanting a family after all these years being alone, and now you’ve had to watch them slide further and further into the devil’s belly, and you’ve got nobody to cuddle into, and you miss them so much.

Extracted from You Could Do Something Amazing With Your Life [You Are Raoul Moat] by Andrew Hankinson, published by Scribe (£12.99). Click here to buy it for £10.39