—Really? It does sound like they were quite close.
—Yeah but she was, like, helping him out, if you know what I mean? She was just being nice; letting someone like George feel like he was involved. It was her kindness that killed her, I suppose. She let George Meldby get too close. You know how he burned down the Fellman’s factory? People said it was cos of Tommy Fellman.
—Tommy Fellman?
—The ‘heir to the pasty throne’. Horace Fellman’s kid. He was at the grammar school. A couple of years above us.
—What did George have against him?
—There’d been something going on between Tommy and Elizabeth – on some school trip for the high-achiever kids. It wasn’t anything really. They’d dated for a bit and broken up, and he’d posted all over Facebook about it, called her a liar and a cheat, which was so not true. George didn’t like that. So he did something about it.
—Was George Meldby one of Elizabeth’s ‘flying monkeys’, as you put it?
—I suppose he was. In a way. Like I said, she was too nice, and people like George took advantage. To be fair she had known George for years, we all had.
—Can you elaborate?
—So in school, like I say, George used to hang about with the girls. The lads all used to call him gay. You’d see him at dinner time, just walking aimlessly around by himself. The teachers must have been keeping their eyes on him in case he set anything alight! So I guess we sort of adopted him; like, he just used to follow us about – Lizzie’s gang.
—Lizzie’s gang?
—In high school, we were, I guess, like, the popular girls. Elizabeth was the queen, obviously. She had all the best clothes, the most expensive stuff, the big house. We all wanted to be seen with her. George just hung on. He used to carry Lizzie’s bag for her, sometimes. He was like a little house elf. God that sounds horrible, doesn’t it? It was true though. He used to steal bottles of pop and make-up for us from the ASDA near school. Then he got permanently excluded in his last year and sent to a special school for bad kids. After that he just became … I dunno, like, a feature of Ergarth. This little weird bloke who hung about.
—Did George have a crush on Elizabeth?
—You mean like every other lad in Ergarth? Yeah, probs.
—It makes sense though – maybe he burned the factory because he was jealous?
—Yeah sure. If you want. It’s what everyone said.
—What about the years after you’d all left school? Did George hang about with Elizabeth then?
—Yes and no. But I wasn’t there with her all the time. She had so many people around her all the time by then. She was a local celebrity. Sometimes George was there too, filming, sometimes he wasn’t. He came in the pet shop a few times too.
This was the pet shop that Amirah and Elizabeth both worked in – Four Legs Good on Ergarth High Street. It is now closed.
—He kept reptiles I think: lizards. He used to come in and buy crickets for them sometimes, but mostly just came in and hung about. I think he only came in to see Elizabeth, to be honest – like the vast majority of the male customers.
—Did she ever find this worrying?
—No. She wasn’t fazed by anything like that. We’d both known George for years. He wasn’t being stalker-y, he would come in once, maybe twice a month. He was shabby, grubby, smelled a bit, you know? He just hadn’t moved on since school, still looked the same. We both felt a bit sorry for him; he was just a lonely little oddball really.
—Was George’s crush on Elizabeth a bit too much, perhaps?
—It’s hard to say cos, like, most people had an obsession with her. She had so many orbiters online, so many fans; she also used to get sent loads of dick pics and that. I don’t know how she just seemed so cool with it, you know? Just totally unfazed.
—So in your opinion, why did he do it? Why did George help kill her, if he was such a fan?
—Ugh, it was all Solomon Meer, that piece of shit. George was a lost little soul. Solomon got into his head, changed him. If any of them should have been, like, shown mercy or whatever, it was George. But on the other hand, he didn’t stop them, did he? He joined in with what they did to Lizzie. The lad was a harmless little weirdo. They, like … weaponised him.
Indeed, there was irrefutable evidence at the scene that confirmed George Meldby’s involvement. In fact, the evidence against George was the most damning. He cut his arm on the edge of the gap in the wire fence; fibres from his clothes as well as his DNA were found not only at the scene but on Elizabeth Barton’s body. George pleaded guilty along with the other two, in court. I’m intrigued by Amirah’s description of George as a loner, a hanger-on and an admirer of Elizabeth Barton. It certainly feels like Elizabeth’s kindness towards him – allowing him into her world to help with the videos and to associate with her – might have been too much for him.
I ask Amirah about her experiences of the other two, beginning with Martin Flynn. At the mention of his name, her face contorts into a look of disgust. She takes another meerkat-like look above the booth and drops her voice.
—Here’s a tip for you: don’t go mouthing off about the Flynns round here. They’re one of those families. You know? Every place has them. The Flynns are ours. You don’t mess with them. Just … be careful who you ask about them, OK?
—I will. You went to primary and secondary school with Martin, correct?
—He was a thick, ugly, nasty piece of shit in primary, a thick, ugly, nasty piece of shit in secondary, and only got worse as an adult. No one was surprised when his name came up when Lizzie was murdered.
—No love lost there, then.
—No and if you speak to anyone else about him they’ll say the same. His family owns that horrible abattoir up on Skelton. The smell of that place, it’s like some sort of horrible fog, makes the whole town stink. They all look the same, the Flynns: orcs, we used to call them, behind their backs, of course. They are all thick as shit, hard as nails and stink of meat. Martin would get away with so much in school because of that, and because he was … he was like, slow. Can you say that? He had some disability, some problem, and he took it out on everyone else.
—In what way?
—Like, he would just attack people if he thought they’d said something about him, or if someone looked at him funny. He was pulling the wings off flies in primary school, watching them scuttle round then stamping on them. He used to pull frogs out of the ponds near Ergarth High – pull them to pieces or slice off their skins. Just cruel for no reason. Horrible piece of work.
Amirah drops her eyes and writes on the napkin again:
Everyone round here knows it was him who cut off her head.
—Did Martin have a particular problem with Elizabeth that you can remember?
—Like, one of the things about Martin is that Lizzie kept him around, no one mentions that because it’s not … fitting, I suppose. She kept him near but, like, at arm’s length.
—They were what, associates?
—That’s a good word for it. Martin Flynn would always be around. Like some of the other nastier kids – Lizzie didn’t get on the bad side of people like that.
—You’re saying Elizabeth associated with Martin Flynn for what, protection?
—Ha! Yeah, sort of. Like, she would speak to him but never in front of people, you know? She sort of kept him on a leash. He did have his uses, mind. When Elizabeth was making videos for her foundation, she would go out to the Vampire Tower or onto the streets, filming the homeless people and that. She kept Martin Flynn around, just in case something went wrong, you know?
—Security detail.
—You know the worst thing about Martin Flynn? Nothing was ever his fault. Everything he did wrong, he blamed on someone else. They’re all like that, the Flynns. We all hoped the abattoir would get shut down when they got investigated, but, of course, his mother blamed cheap, immigrant workers. That’s what they were like, if you see what I mean.
It’s a har
sh assessment but its base is in reality. Martin Flynn, at the time of his arrest for his part in the murder of Elizabeth Barton, had a long list of petty criminality: vandalism, GBH, ABH, drunk and disorderly, the list goes on. In court, it was shown that the DNA evidence from Martin Flynn was found mostly on the barricades around the entrance to Tankerville Tower. It was presumed by the judge that it was Martin Flynn’s brute strength that gained the three men access to the inside of the tower, and that meant they could bend the grate back, barricading Elizabeth inside. The rumour that it was Martin who removed Elizabeth’s head with a butcher knife from the abattoir is a common one in Ergarth. Flynn caused controversy during the trial with his persistent shrugging when asked questions by the judge. When asked why he had done what he had done to Elizabeth, Flynn simply stated that he ‘didn’t know’.
—I swear down, Martin was helping out in the abattoir since he was old enough to walk. What he did to Lizzie would have felt like nothing to him. He didn’t even care – you could tell.
—Was Martin, despite his reputation, easily influenced, like George?
—I guess he was. I mean, if you told him to do something stupid, he would do it. No wonder Solomon Meer got into those two’s heads.
—Let’s move on to Solomon. You said he joined the school in year nine?
—Yeah. He’d come from Nottingham; everyone used to take the piss out of him when he first arrived. They used to call him Robin Hood. He used to read all these stupid vampire books and think he was, like, God’s gift to English literature.
Relatively little is known about Solomon Meer before he moved to Ergarth. By all accounts he grew up in the affluent Nottingham suburb of Mapperley. The Meer family were relatively well off; Meer’s father a heating engineer, and his mother a dentist. What we do know is that Mr and Mrs Meer separated and Mrs Meer took custody of Solomon, moving them both to Ergarth.
—What can you tell me about the Solomon Meer you attended Ergarth High with?
—He was a bit of an outsider – round here if you’re even remotely different, you’re automatically an outsider. I know what that’s like. But cos I’ve always been from round here, I’m ‘alright’ – nice that, isn’t it? Solomon liked to make a bit of a show of himself, though. All the charvers used to call him a Satanist and chase him, beat him up. Sometimes it was really harsh. Then, when we got into year ten, he changed; he was different, sort of wild. It was like he didn’t care anymore. He always smelled bad, like sweat; his hair was always dirty and his clothes too. It was like … like he didn’t care anymore. He certainly didn’t care what anyone called him. He didn’t hide. Everyone used to pick on him still, and call him a Satanist, but he would, like, play on that. He would act up with teachers as well, get sent out of lessons, that sort of thing.
—Hang on … ‘charvers’?
—They call them ‘chavs’ everywhere else. Thugs – nasty people, basically. Some people reckon that when you call someone a chav or a charver, you’re taking the piss out of them – looking down on the working class.
—I’ve read about that, yes.
—But it’s not. Being a charver isn’t about class. It never has been. It’s about being a type of person. Like, if you call someone ‘gay’ and throw shit at them because they look different to you, you’re a charver. If you bully people, vandalise the town, rob old ladies, you could be from the richest family and you’d still be a charver. In fact a lot of charvers come from well-off backgrounds. That’s the reality. It has nothing to do with ‘demonising the working class’.
Sorry. Bit of a rant, there. I just wanted to, like, make context.
—Solomon Meer was targeted, but you say he began to fight back?
—Yeah, sort of. He invited a lot of it on himself. They used to ask him if he worshipped Satan and he’d say yes. He used to write all this Satanic stuff in pen all over his hands. One time he made this huge cut in his arm with a broken bit of ruler, just for no reason. Said a demon told him to do it. Mr Threlfall, the head, suspended him for a week for that!
—It sounds like he needed some help, maybe.
—Solomon Meer wasn’t a victim. Sorry, but he wasn’t. It was all for attention. He wasn’t stupid either, like the other two. He was in my English group. Top set. And he was insufferable. He thought he was smarter than everyone else; ‘Oh miss, that’s actually a metaphor…’ – all that sort of smart-Alec behaviour. He would bring in all these old books about demons, written in Latin, to show off. No one could stand him. He kept telling everyone his mum hated him, that she couldn’t handle him, that she wished he was dead, this was every other week until no one listened anymore. No one cared. And you know what? Even if it was true, no one could blame her; it was all his fault.
There is another theory, written by a columnist in a broadsheet weekend supplement, suggesting that Solomon Meer, Martin Flynn and George Meldby were outcasts who had found solace in each other and the idea of a vampire. I haven’t seen any evidence yet that Meldby or Flynn had any interest in the Ergarth Vampire. Amirah tells me that this story was a media creation, and not shared by those who knew the pair.
—You see, for all Solomon was clever, he was also a troublemaker. He wasn’t this little incel or nerd that got bullied and finally snapped. He only knew Elizabeth because he’d been sent to sit on our table for messing about. In fact, I’ll tell you what he’d been doing: he was sat at the back window, making faces and doing impressions of the special-needs kids that came to our school gym on Thursdays. That’s a detail I didn’t notice anyone pick up on. That, like, sums up Solomon Meer really well.
—So you and Elizabeth and Solomon sat together in English in school? Did you notice any antagonism between the two then?
—Actually no. In fact, what was pretty shitty was that, like, when he wasn’t acting like a dick, Solomon could be OK, if he wanted. We didn’t, like, talk to him much, but he was OK. He could string a sentence together at least. More than most of the lads in Ergarth.
—What did Elizabeth think of him?
—Nothing really. Like, she didn’t need to associate with someone like that. She didn’t have a lot of time or patience with him. To be fair, Solomon wasn’t in school long before he was excluded.
—This was for trying to assault the head teacher, wasn’t it?
—That’s right, there was that video of it. Didn’t they even show it in court?
Amirah’s right. There was video footage online of Solomon Meer attempting to assault the then head teacher of Ergarth High, Dave Threlfall. It was used as evidence in court, despite having taken place a number of years before Elizabeth Barton’s death, to try and prove that Meer was prone to violence. For those who haven’t seen it, I’ll let Amirah explain what happened.
—It was the last day before autumn half term. They always used to do an assembly – attendance rewards, certificates, that sort of thing. It was pretty lame; the head would send us off with some inspirational quote for us to ‘think about’. I mean, we were only going to be away from school for a week. Anyway, it was right near the start of the assembly; we were sat in our form classes watching some year-seven dance troupe do their thing. Suddenly there’s this commotion up at the back, and everyone gasps. We hear this huge yell, look round and see Mr Threlfall legging it out the hall with Solomon coming after him. He wasn’t running, Solomon, he was like, striding with his hands balled up into fists. Everyone went quiet and you could hear shouting and banging all up along the corridor.
—What happened?
—What everyone said was that Mr Threlfall had come over to tell Solomon to stop messing about and be quiet, and that Solomon just snapped; he shouted something at Threlfall and then chased him all the way to his office. Everyone says Threlfall locked himself in the office until Solomon went away.
This is more or less what happened. The film – recorded on a pupil’s phone – begins with a whispered altercation between the head and Solomon. The sniggering of the pupils and the music from the PA drowns
out the sound, but Solomon’s roar is audible and the figure of Dave Threlfall can be seen hot-footing it out of the hall with Solomon in pursuit. Solomon Meer never returned to the school.
—Maybe this was the last time you and Elizabeth had contact with Solomon – until the Dead in Six Days videos?
—I mean, we’d see him round. He worked at the bookshop for a bit. But yeah, we didn’t have anything to do with him.
After Solomon Meer was kicked out of school, he worked full-time at a rather peculiar second-hand bookshop called ‘Ergarth Books’. It’s a quirky little shop up a short alleyway beside a tattooist. There’s no proper sign; just ‘ERGARTH BOOKS’ written in black paint on the wall. Behind the door steep stairs lead down to a large cellar-like expanse beneath the empty shops facing the high street.
I want to play you an excerpt from a brief chat I had with Bobby Chambers, the proprietor of the bookshop. Mr Chambers is a rather eccentric and, in his own words, curmudgeonly old man. He keeps a baseball bat with a nail through it behind the counter, and when I ask him how on earth a place like Ergarth Books has survived in the town, he taps his nose and assures me he sold his soul back in the sixties. A framed photograph of Aleister Crowley in his famous Eye of Horus hat is nailed to the exposed brick wall. Unfortunately, due to the subterranean location, I presume, most of the recording of our interview came back blank. I’ll play you all I have left.
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