—What sort of things did you and Sol talk about?
—He opened up a little bit about his family. He went through a lot when he was a little boy; he saw violence in the house. He was the victim of a few beatings by his father before they moved. How true that is, I’ll never know, but he told me these things and I had no cause to disbelieve him.
He told me about someone he was seeing, too. A girlfriend, of sorts.
—A girlfriend? Was this someone from Ergarth?
—No. This was someone he was talking to online. Sol was very guarded about her. The only time he’d mention her was when he was making a point about something.
—What do you mean?
—So if Sol was talking about something – it was usually to do with vampires – he’d make a point about some characteristic. For example he told me that Polish vampires sleep with their thumbs interlocked; this mystery Internet girl had told him it, so that was that. It was fact. I saw that as symptomatic of Sol’s utter lack of confidence. He needed strangers on the Internet to tell him he was valid.
—Why do you think Sol opened up to you in the way he did?
—We built up a lot of trust you see. The intake is always a bit sparse at the start of the academic year. Sometimes there was only Sol and one or two others in the class. This was a good few months before George and Martin arrived.
I also encouraged Sol to do a lot of his talking through writing. I think he found a degree of solace in writing creatively. I encouraged him to turn his difficult feelings into stories. Before those other two arrived, I actually thought Sol was doing better. The black cloud had retreated a lot. But it came back when those two arrived at Leighburn. Sol really started going downhill.
George Meldby and Martin Flynn were referred to Leighburn Educational Unit at around the same time. What interests me is Jo’s assertion that the relationship between the three was the exact opposite of how it was portrayed in the media. It also conflicts with what everyone else has told me about the three.
—How those two behaved toward Sol had an absolutely devastating effect on his mental health. I was amazed when they were portrayed as a trio – as if they associated with each other.
—You’re saying they didn’t?
—Of course not! George and Martin and Sol? Never. Not in a million years. Not in Leighburn anyway. Sol was scared stiff of the pair of them. That’s what always bothered me the most about this entire affair; what on earth were they all doing together at the Vampire Tower, that night. It made no sense to me whatsoever. Sol seemed terrified and fascinated by the place at the same time. He used to tell me he saw shapes flying in and out at night. That’s where my dreams came from, I suppose.
—What were your impressions of George and Martin?
—I’ll start with George. He was a funny one. You’ll have heard that from a lot of people, I imagine, and it’s true. He was small, quiet, kept himself to himself. He wasn’t one to raise his head above the parapet, was George.
—You were aware of his fire-setting?
—Who wasn’t?
—George Meldby had been excluded from school, had a stint in a pupil referral unit and then nothing, is that right?
—George was your typical rudderless drifter, happy just to pick up his benefits and let life pass him by. He was in a dream world half the time, that lad. I think there were a lot of issues with him as well, what with the fires and everything. He could have done with help too.
This much is true. George Meldby lived at home with his mother, claiming benefits and doing very little after he left school. There’s no real record of him doing much of anything, and he wasn’t much of a trouble-maker. There’s no record of violence with George, save for the Fellman’s factory arson attack. George was referred to Leighburn because he’d shown no inclination to get a job. Sending fit-for-work benefits claimants to better themselves was part of the scheme that was piloted in Ergarth. For a lot of people, it gave them a purpose, it helped them back to work. Not George.
—Was fire and setting fires ever mentioned while George was with you?
—Yes and no. There was a lot of sniggering and nudging and silliness with him and Martin. George was like a little ghost, just passing through. He gave very little away; some staff said he had a slyness to him. I think I only saw him being remotely aggressive – overtly so – once. When he threatened Sol.
—Really?
—Oh, it was an empty threat really, I think, but there was one incident when I caught the tail end of an altercation. It was handbags at dawn, really, but George was telling Sol, ‘I’ll burn your fucking house down.’ I remember telling George he needed to be careful with threats of that particular nature and he slunk off.
—What was the altercation about?
—I did ask Sol, but he said it was nothing; told me to forget it.
—What about Martin Flynn?
—OK. So Martin was your bog-standard Ergarth thug. I’m sorry to say it, but he had no real redeeming qualities. Martin was hard, like you’d expect – he was a Flynn after all. He also had a mild learning difficulty. Mind you, that was never officially diagnosed; his family didn’t really engage with support services. So long as he could work in the abattoir then that’s all they cared about.
—Do you know what it was that Martin had actually done to land himself at Leighburn?
—To be honest, Martin would have done better going to prison. Sounds harsh doesn’t it? But Leighburn wasn’t for him. It was some minor assault charge. We never really got to know.
—To me, it seems coincidence that the two were referred to Leighburn like that at the same time.
—I think it was, yes. The thing with Martin was that he’d grown up learning to solve problems with his fists. Sometimes he’d turn up to my classes and say he couldn’t be bothered and put his head down on the desk. I have to say that I always managed to get something out of Martin on those days, however little.
—When did they start victimising Solomon Meer?
—They never left Sol alone from day one, those two. I’ll never understand what on earth it was about him they hated so much. They never did enough to get them kicked out though. They were smart about it. I used to do what I could – keep Sol behind at the end of lessons, give him a place to read at lunch times. But this wasn’t school. These were all grown men. Young, yes, but still adults. I couldn’t fight Sol’s battles for him.
Despite all this, I will say one thing about those two; something that pulled on my heartstrings: whenever they were caught, they never denied it.
—They were unrepentant?
—It wasn’t that. It was more like … I think Martin Flynn actually summed it up rather well once. He once said to me when I was ticking him off, ‘There’s no point me saying nowt is there? No one ever believes us. Never have. Never will.’ George actually wrote something about it in a piece of creative writing.
—Can you remember it?
—I can. That’s another one I wish I’d kept. It was about fire, of course – it was always about fire with him. I’d asked him to write a piece about a strong, childhood memory; first day at school, something like that. George was quite articulate in his writing, I’ll give him that. There was a story about a boy in a primary school; how a girl who he was in love with had tried to set fire to the toilets and the boy got the blame. She got commended by the head teacher for ratting the boy out. That was fairly self-explanatory.
—It was the incident from George Meldby’s school days? I wonder who the girl was.
—Right. He did another one about a ghost burning down a church. We were doing ghost stories for Halloween, you see. In the story, the ghost makes the boy promise not to tell and he’ll get a reward. From year seven to thirty years old, it’s always what most lads want to write about; ghosts and blood and guts.
—What do you think this story was really about?
—George had this whole victim complex going on – that no one believed him. Martin Flynn was the
same. I found it rather sad at the time, and I remember asking him why he thought that was and he just shrugged. Grunted. Walked off.
—You said George and Martin had a detrimental effect on Solomon Meer?
—Correct. He was starting to open up until those two came, and then he just retreated, the shutters went down. Instead of talking at mentor meetings, he’d just curl himself into a corner with one of those blessed vampire books.
—Vampires. That was Solomon Meer’s obsession.
—It was. It probably still is.
—How did it manifest itself when you knew him?
—It was all Sol talked about. He’d read everything; all the Anne Rice, Poppy Z. Brite, K.J. Wignall; for Sol vampires were everything, and everything was vampires. That’s all he would talk about as time went on. At first, it was more like a literary admiration, but it became an obsession very quickly.
After a while, during mentor meetings, when Sol wasn’t reading, he was ranting. When his mother had moved him to Ergarth, he made a connection in his mind to the Beast from the East vampire legend, became convinced it was his ‘destiny’ to be here. He would say that a lot. That’s the thing with a disordered mind – you can see it flailing around, making connections to things that aren’t there. I asked him to write his thoughts down, turn them into stories. I thought it might help.
Jo reads me the story you heard at the top of this episode. She tells me the vampire it features appeared in many of Sol’s creative pieces, always muttering seduction to his protagonist, always plaguing him with the temptation to kill, to become immortal.
—Sol told me he heard voices, you know. He mentioned it a few times, but I never knew if he meant it or not. I wondered if I should refer him to a hospital or something. He wasn’t acting out enough to be sectioned, unless he did it voluntarily, and he wouldn’t take medication. I think Sol personified what he heard in his head with this ‘vampire’ entity in his stories. It would tell him that it was going to come for him one day. It told him he had to ‘find it’, and I think he spent his spare time doing just that – searching for something. I cannot imagine what that must have been like. Horrible. Just horrible.
There’ll be more than some who take real umbrage with Jo’s sympathetic portrayal of Solomon Meer and say that he was lying to get attention. Lest we forget, Meer was deemed fit to stand trial for the murder of Elizabeth Barton, something Jo describes as ‘typical’. I don’t want to challenge Jo’s view of Solomon yet; every angle has its own value in helping us understand what happened to Elizabeth Barton.
—Is this why the ‘vampire’ idea was brought up by the prosecution? It must have started somewhere.
—It would have started with Sol, that’s my guess anyway. When they were all here – it was only a few months before what happened – he never stopped talking about vampires. He kept telling everyone that the Ergarth Vampire was going to return. The other two found this hilarious, of course. They just made his life even more miserable. Sol began wearing this amulet around his neck; he said he used it to attract vampires. He said that this person online told him how to make it. One of the others – George or Martin – took it off him, apparently. Broke it. For no other reason than they knew it would distress Sol. That sums up what they were like.
—Were there consequences to this? Were George and Martin punished at all?
—It happened off the premises, and it was their word against Sol’s. Of course, they tried to get themselves off the hook – they told me that they were concerned about him, but really they were trying to stitch him up. They said he had this messed-up idea that the Ergarth Vampire was lurking somewhere in the town. They said they were worried he was going to do something daft. Maybe I should have listened to them.
—Did anything come of Solomon’s vampire search?
—I usually walk my dog over near Myrmirth stables; over where there’s the fields and stuff. It was early in the morning, before work. December, still dark. Snowy. Horrible. I never went near the tower, or the coast; the wind was brutal. Problem was, all the fields and paths were clogged up with snow. So I had to take Nicky over by the Vampire Tower where you could actually walk about a bit. I was quick though, I wasn’t wanting to stay around there very long.
—I’m guessing you were wary of the people that were in there?
—Well yes. Of course. Nicky, my Doberman, he looks scary but he’s not much protection – he’s soft as anything. And there’s the gulls up in the tower as well. They’re almost as big as Nicky and they’re aggressive. They’ll swoop right at you, like they want to attack. Anyway, I throw the ball for him and he won’t go, starts whining and I think, Right, time to get out of here. It wasn’t just the addicts, it was the tower as well; such a horrible place, poking up through the snow like a middle finger. Anyway, I can see something. A flash of light; again and again. There’s someone up ahead, they’re all curled up on the floor in the shadow of the tower. I wanted to just get back in my car but, I thought, what if they’re dead or something? Anyway I go over, and it was Sol.
—What?
—He was lying in the snow with his shirt off, shivering. I thought he’d been beaten up or taken something, you know? Then I see he’s got his phone in his hand. He’s not even seen me.
—What on earth was he doing?
—This was when I really started to worry about him, I really got concerned. He was lying there with all this – I mean I thought it was bruises but it was make-up – all this black around his eyes, fake fangs in his mouth, lipstick all over his lips, like blood. He was taking photos. Lying there taking photos of himself. The lad was almost blue with the cold.
—What did you do?
—I honestly didn’t know what to do. It felt wrong. I felt wrong. I felt like I was intruding on something very private. It also … well, yes, it scared me. Something in his face, in his eyes. I … I mean I don’t know what I could have done. I just backed away. I went back to my car. He wasn’t doing any harm, I suppose. Then a few months later … he did what he did…
—What was it for?
—I never asked. I wish I had but I felt like if I’d have brought it up, he may have … I don’t know. I didn’t want to betray his trust, I suppose. I think everything had gone wrong inside his head – this vampire stuff; he loved and hated it at the same time, and it was all starting to blur with reality.
Jo tells me that this was when Solomon’s famous video, ‘Shopping Trolley Sledge’, went viral – a couple of months before the three killed Elizabeth Barton.
—Oh yes, I remember the video. Sol actually garnered some sort of minor celebrity status for that. I remember thinking that maybe it was a good thing for him, some positive attention at last. It seemed to lift him, temporarily. I think maybe the photos with the vampire make-up had something to do with it as well?
The video meant Sol ended up getting attention from the last person in Ergarth he’d have expected it from: Elizabeth Barton. I ask Jo to elaborate.
—Everyone in Ergarth knew Elizabeth Barton. That shiny red car of hers, with the eyelashes and stuff; you’d always see it around Ergarth. Lots of times, she’d be parked up near the food bank. But no one dared touch that car. All the boys wanted her, all the girls wanted to be her. George and Martin had known her a long time, hadn’t they?
—Since primary school.
—That makes sense. It felt like those two had become part of her entourage, her private security firm.
—You know the story about the Fellman’s factory, I imagine.
—Of course. We all did. When George came here, everyone told me it was him. I never mentioned it and neither did he. Like I said before, nothing was ever George’s fault.
—What was Solomon Meer’s view on Elizabeth? Did he ever mention her?
—Only after she visited.
—I’m sorry, what? As far as I know, there was no record of Solomon Meer and Elizabeth Barton ever being in touch save by phone – a single message the night she was killed.
—Oh really? No, she came here a few times – to the unit.
—Why?
—No idea. She simply turned up one day, out of the blue. I saw her arrive outside in her little red car. Sol nearly had a heart attack, bless him. They talked. She drove away. The same thing happened fairly regularly after that. Sometimes he would get in the car.
This is a huge detail that I can’t believe I’ve not heard until now. Jo tells me she was never asked to give evidence in court and never reported it to the police in the wake of what happened.
—I didn’t know what was going on. It wasn’t my business. I assumed everyone was aware that Solomon and Elizabeth knew each other. Everyone knew everyone in Ergarth; they’d been to the same school, after all. These were adults, free to make their own decisions. All I can say is that she was smart. She never showed up when George or Martin were there.
—Why do you think that was?
—I think she knew very well that it would only get them up a height. They’d start showing off, wouldn’t they? Making fun of Sol to impress her. She wasn’t daft.
—What did Solomon say about these visits?
—He was as you’d imagine: rather chuffed. His mood certainly got a bit better. Then it turned again. Back came all the vampire stuff; the poor lad was up and down like a yo-yo.
—What do you think their chats were about?
—Well, I can only imagine it had something to do with those bloody Dead in Six Days videos. Both Sol and Elizabeth did them, didn’t they? I banned all talk of that challenge from my lessons. These were adults, not children – and they were passing round these ridiculous challenges like they were still in primary school.
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