I’m surprised, if I’m honest, that this grim tale of the Ergarth Vampire reoccurs so frequently; but it seems it’s almost become a touchstone for the town and its people. I certainly don’t believe Rob’s babysitter, so, as we turn from the bridge and take a narrow path downhill, past a wall of ferns and stinging nettles, the mud squelching under my feet and the soily air thickening with every step, I wonder why I’m feeling a sense of foreboding, why I don’t want to look back because I’m worried I’ll see something watching us, some blurry figure with a mouthful of daggers.
The path ends abruptly in a small clearing carpeted with yellow leaves, above it a canopy of poplars, leaning together conspiratorially. It’s damp and shady down here and the only thing that shares our space is a dilapidated folly, cloaked in moss and black with age. It looks like a half-formed cenotaph made of the same dark basalt as Tankerville Tower, a waist-high tri-pillared thing that ivy is slowly demolishing.
—This is it.
—I’m rather underwhelmed if I’m honest.
—Yep. What a mess, eh? Believe it or not, this is actually a grave. Of sorts.
—Really?
—That’s what the story is round here. Look.
Rob walks past the folly and pushes aside some bushes; they soak his sleeves.
—Look here: three paths. This place is a crossroads. Or at least it was. Now look.
Rob walks back over to the folly and lifts a great pile of thick, bottle-green ivy. Beneath it, brown roots coil, silvery insects scurry. There is a small stone plinth, its recesses filled with mould and moss. There are four words carved into this plinth, surrounded by faded carved skulls:
‘Never shall thee wake.’
—This is where they buried the vampire. At a crossroads. After they cut off her head. This is Ergarth’s best-kept secret. Only one or two know it’s here. Well, at least that used to be the case. I’m guessing when your podcast comes out, we’ll be getting a load more visitors to Ergarth Dene. We can charge them a fiver to come splodge round the mud down here. Nice little earner.
—Is it really the vampire’s grave?
—Course not! It’s some daft thing the Victorians built. Who knows? Who cares?
I feel like in a short space of time, we’ve veered off topic. Hugely. It’s more like careering off the road with no brakes. We began talking about the discovery of a dead body in Tankerville Tower and now here we are, somewhere in the depths of Ergarth Dene, facing another ruin, talking vampires. But if I’ve learned anything doing these series, then it’s to roll with the punches and see where we end up.
—And what does this have to do with Elizabeth Barton, if you don’t mind me asking?
—Of course. That’s why you’re here. That’s why we’re here. As I say, not a lot of people know about this place. They all think everything happened at the Vampire Tower. You want to know a bit more about those lads that killed her? Well you’ll need to look down here, in the Dene. This was where Solomon Meer first came to our attention. Right here.
I can see why Ergarth Dene is more of a lure to the young and the bored than the tower. Tankerville Tower is damp and ruined, exposed to the elements. Even with a fire lit, I can’t imagine any sort of comfort being found there. Down here though, in this little valley, there’s trees, hidden paths, bridges and the cover of darkness. Unlike Ergarth High street, or out on the pier, where faded signs inform you you’re being watched, there are no CCTV cameras down here.
—It’s all drugs and drink down here these days. Fights, graffiti, damage. Worse. The council did spend a lot of money having the paths maintained. But nowadays there’s nothing left, so if anything’s done, it’s volunteers who do it. The loony lefties are always on about doling out money to teenagers – give them more youth centres, give them playgrounds. But why, if this is how they’re going to treat things? Why should they get money? When I was a lad, you didn’t shit on your own doorstep.
—What about those three young men: Meer, Flynn and Meldby? Was this their stomping ground?
—I could tell you the story about something that happened down here. I dunno if the police would tell you it. But I was here. I made it my business to be.
I just want to say at this point that Ergarth Police have told me that they have no one willing to talk to me about Elizabeth Barton or her killers.
—We got a call-out a day or two before Elizabeth Barton died. Fire in Ergarth Dene. Kids. Fights, drink and drugs. All that.
—Really? During the cold snap?
—Aye, well, we were dubious too, at first. It was Baltic out there: the roads were blocked, everything covered in ice and snow. But some old dear’s called the coppers and says she’s seen a fire in the Dene. We guessed it was kids. So we head down. It’s the middle of the night. Freezing cold. Luckily the snow had let up but it was brutal out there. Now a car can only get so far down to the Dene anyway, but the road is so steep and slippery, we’d have spent the whole night pulling it out. So a few uniformed coppers and me just go walking down with torches; softly, softly, so as not to spook them, you know? Kids are smart these days, they know their rights. You’ve got to know how to play them.
It’s pitch-black. Our hands and feet are like ice blocks, and we’re even wearing those crampons over our boots. The Dene is like something off a Christmas card: thick snow; all the trees hung heavy with it. We see the fire before we get there, flickering through the trees. It’s nowt really, just a few sticks burning. There’s music on, but it’s not that head-banger stuff they like, it’s dead slow and miserable, I don’t know. It would have been The Smiths or something in my day. We get closer and see that there’s two of them. They’re stood over a fire, heads together like they’re in a meeting or something. A bloody coven if you ask me! One of them’s got a phone in one hand with the music going. Head down. I thought they were teenagers at first, but when we got closer we saw they were older. Twenties. And one’s got a sleeping bag under his arm.
Right here. This is where they were stood.
—Rob points to the vampire’s grave.
—So I get down here, sharpish, thinking they’re spice-heads or junkies, they must be half dead with the cold. But not a bit of it, and I can see that something’s not right. They’re still just stood there. No drinking, no fighting. Just these two and a fire. And you know what I thought? I thought they looked … uncanny. Like something off a horror film. It just didn’t look right.
When they see us coming, they break apart, stand to attention. We tell them to turn that music off, and they do it. And then we notice something else that’s odd.
—Like what?
—There was lots of smoke – I thought they were burning a tyre or something, but there wasn’t that smell you get; just lots of smoke. Like they were burning green stuff.
—What were they doing?
—Burning flowers! They’ve got this massive pile of roses and they’re burning them on top of the vampire’s grave!
—Why?
—Search me. None of them would say owt; they just shrugged – you know how young ’uns do. Shrug and grunt. Thing was, the coppers had another old dear who called the station, a couple of days before, saying she’d seen a couple of hoodies stealing flowers from the churchyard, right off the graves. Sick little bastards.
—Did either of them give you an explanation? What were they burning the flowers for?
—It didn’t look right. When have you ever seen teenagers do something like that, let alone adults? I can tell you what it looked like to me – and the other lads agreed with me. We all thought it looked dodgy. Some kind of Satanic ritual. Witchcraft.
The location and the act of burning flowers doesn’t seem like run of the mill vandalism. I cannot, however, find much about burning flowers being anything to do with witchcraft. But I can see now, where this idea of cult activity began.
—Rob. I’m assuming one of these two was Solomon Meer.
—Correct. I’ll never forget what he said, the impudent lit
tle prick, and I don’t excuse the language. He said he could do what he liked in his own house.
—What did he mean?
—He was trying to be clever. The coppers asked him for his name and address – and he gave his address as ‘Tankerville Tower, Ergarth’, all with this smirk on his face. He was showing off now in front of the other lad – thought he was the big man I swear I could have swung for him. I tell you now, if I could go back in time…
—Who was the other one: George Meldby? Martin Flynn?
—No, it wasn’t them, it was some other reprobate; a younger lad. Gave us a fake name and scarpered. Little shit.
—So what happened to Solomon Meer? Was he charged with anything?
—I wish. We chucked snow on his fire and walked him out of there, sent him home with a warning, told him to stay out of Ergarth Dene and Tankerville Tower. Biggest mistake the coppers ever made, if you ask me. They should have took him down Ergarth nick for the night, scared some sense into the impudent little shite.
—You couldn’t prove they’d stolen the graveyard flowers?
—Nope. It was his word against the woman’s who seen the flowers stolen. The flowers were all burned, so we couldn’t tell where they’d come from. People’s loved ones’ flowers on a fire, I ask you … there’s something not right there.
—That’s an awful thing to do.
—You know, I wish we’d persevered that night. Asked more questions. I knew we had to keep an eye on that one from then on. And we did, but I wish we’d done more. Because there’s not a day goes by that I don’t wish I could have done something to stop him.
—Who was he?
—With his bloody Satanic rituals and ‘I’ll do what I like in my own house’, as if he was entitled.
Solomon Meer. I had his card marked, I’ll tell you that now.
This story certainly makes you wonder about Solomon Meer’s more esoteric interests. Surely he wasn’t burning flowers just for the sake of it. And was the place he was doing it significant? Did this have something to do with the Ergarth Vampire? Rob says he’s one of few who knows about the vampire’s grave. Did Solomon Meer know what it was too? I wish we knew who the other one was. Rob says he looked younger than Meer and appeared more scared by the presence of the police. It’s something we might never know. It might not even be important.
—What do you think he meant by ‘my own house’? Was he just being smart?
—Well, turns out he’d been kicked out of home. Afterwards, folk said he’d been creeping about town, living down in the Dene or up in the Vampire Tower.
—Really? Is that true?
—Search me. Like I say, there’s not enough money for coppers to be traipsing round Ergarth looking for folk like Solomon Meer. The lad was a bloody show-off, an attention-seeker. I imagine he made up a story about being homeless.
I feel like we’ve been down here long enough. The temperature is starting to drop as the sun begins to wane. We start moving, Rob in the lead, up the slim track back to the main path that winds up through Ergarth Dene. I can’t imagine how dark and miserable it would have been during that cold snap in 2018. Surely it’s not possible that Solomon Meer was living outside at this time. We’ll have a look into that in due course.
—There’s one more person we don’t know a lot about, Rob; I’m wondering if you knew Martin Flynn at all?
—Martin Flynn? I only know what everyone knows about him: thick as two short planks and built like a brick shithouse. Honestly, that lad was like a grown man at twelve, and as strong as two of them. He was like the rest of his family; nowt between the ears and plenty behind them. You know they own the abattoir up Skelton Way? A few years back there was a problem there with undercover activists, something like that. But no one dared say anything to them. You don’t mess with the Flynns round here. It was the same after the Barton lass. And as far as I’m aware he was the muscle behind the whole thing. Some folk reckon that it was Flynn who cut off her head, using one of those knives from his bloody abattoir.
—What do you think?
—I wouldn’t put it past him, quite honestly. He was always in trouble, that one, always doing stupid things.
—What sort of things?
—Just mindless really. Vandalism. Breaking things. Your common-or-garden brainless thug. I might not be very PC saying all this, but I don’t care. People say that Martin Flynn had ‘special needs’, but if he didn’t know what he was doing then why was he allowed to wander around Ergarth unsupervised, eh? There was a rumour went round he busted an animal out of the abattoir too. His family beat him black and blue. That’s the only sort of message that gets through to someone like that.
Martin Flynn attended Leighburn Education Unit with Solomon Meer and George Meldby in 2017. Martin was diagnosed with mild learning difficulties – or MLD, as it’s known. Easily the most troubled member of the group, Flynn’s home live was unstable and chaotic. His father was not in the picture and his mother, the owner of the abattoir, worked all hours, leaving Martin on his own from a very young age. The incident that Rob mentions happened in 2017, a few years after George Meldby burned down Fellman’s factory. According to the spattering of newspaper articles I’ve found in online archives, Flynn’s Meats was subject to an undercover investigation by an animal rights group. Allegations of animal cruelty were investigated when activists posted hidden camera footage showing nightmarish scenes, including inadequate stunning and botched slaughter. This cruelty represented ‘breaches of legislation’, according to the Food Standards Agency. A number of slaughterhouse workers received sixteen- and eighteen-week prison sentences, suspended for twelve months, along with 250 hours of unpaid community orders. Today, the Flynn’s Meats website assures its customers that its livestock are ‘reared in an ethical and traditional manner’. There is no evidence that Martin Flynn was in any way involved in this scandal.
I’ll explore more deeply the lives of the three young men who committed this terrible crime in later episodes. For now, my impressions are that they seemed like an odd trio. By all accounts, Solomon Meer was the brains of the operation, Martin Flynn and George Meldby either followers or co-conspirators, it’s hard to tell.
So what do we know so far? The three young men, who had all known each other since their stint in an educational unit when they were in their early twenties, came together to lure Elizabeth Barton to Tankerville Tower, where they barricaded the entrance and left her to die. One of them, it is not clear who, re-entered Tankerville Tower and removed Elizabeth Barton’s head before placing it on her legs.
But why? To me, this question still hangs over everything. There has been much speculation, but as yet I have no satisfactory answer. One more pragmatic theory put forward by many commentators in the aftermath of what happened is that Elizabeth Barton represented everything that these three were not. She was healthy, happy and popular, with a stable home life and budding fame as a vlogger. It is suggested that that was all it took for three angry young men to want to teach her a lesson. In court it was decided that the killing was premeditated: the three intended to murder Elizabeth Barton. Not one of the killers has ever given a reason why they did it, and so the speculation continues.
Rob and I reach our respective vehicles, and as the sun begins to set over Ergarth, hunkering down behind Tankerville Tower, which disrupts what otherwise would have been a picturesque view of the cliffs, we begin our farewells.
—I want to know, before I go, Rob, why you, personally, think that Elizabeth Barton died. Did it have something to do with the Ergarth Vampire? Or were they just angry young men with nothing going for them?
—They still are angry young men with nothing going for them. I imagine Flynn and Meldby might get out early. Meldby won’t last five minutes in jail and Flynn is too stupid to do anything but behave. Once they get out they’ll need new identities, everything. But they’ll get found. They’ll spend the rest of their lives looking over their shoulders, and that serves them right. The Bart
ons have to live with what those three did, all day, every day. As for that vampire stuff? I don’t know. Solomon Meer probably believed it at the time – he was into all that, wasn’t he? Stands to reason with that cult ritual in the Dene, or whatever it was. But I really think it’s more simple than that. I think he just wanted to kill Elizabeth Barton cos she was everything he wasn’t. And she was unattainable. I don’t think there’s much more to it than that. All this vampire stuff – it cheapens what happened. There’s a young lass dead and folk are talking about vampires. Give over.
—So why, in your opinion, has this graffiti appeared? Why is someone now calling the whole affair into question?
—There are sick people out there. That’s all it is. Some sicko trying to get their fifteen minutes. And it’s brought you here hasn’t it?
That’s a poignant place to end our interview. I don’t think there’s much more Rob will be able to tell me.
What this episode has given us is an overview; we have seen the backdrop against which this terrible crime was committed, and we have an impression of those that committed it. As we move on through our six stories, I want to explore the three killers, their backgrounds and their lives. We don’t solve cases here, we present evidence, we talk and we discuss. Opinions are then formed when the facts are before us.
In the following episode we’ll seek to gain the perspective of someone close to the ground in Ergarth, someone who was privy to the unfolding events that surrounded Elizabeth Barton and Solomon Meer. We will also hear, in our second episode, why the notion of a vampire prowling the town of Ergarth, was, for some, very real in 2018.
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