If I come back that is.
Oh my gosh it’s cold!
See you guys there, I [......................] of you!
Byee!
Episode Six: The Quiet One
—I’ll never forget how it felt when they found me. ‘Miss!’ one of them said. ‘I’ve found that little girl. She’s hiding in the bin!’ I’ll never forget it as long as I live. All those teachers, the dinner ladies, the other kids who didn’t even know my name before, they were all around me, hugging me. Everyone at school suddenly knew who I was, everyone was telling me it was OK, everyone was telling me I was lovely, that they liked me, that I was pretty. I got to sit with all the popular girls at lunch. I was first in the queue and the dinner lady let me have extra pudding. Custard and cake. She called me a ‘pretty little bobbin’.
There was a special assembly the next day, all about including people, all about being nice to people who don’t fit in. Kids who are different. I remember sitting there in the front row in my brand-new skirt and tights that they’d bought me. I was wearing a jumper that didn’t smell of grease or mould. It was like there was this light that I never knew was there had suddenly turned on inside me. That light was shining out, and everyone could see it. Everyone knew that the special assembly was about me.
The day after the assembly everyone wanted to play with me; everyone wanted to hold my hand in the yard, wanted to let me play with the best toys. Even the boys were asking me if I wanted to play football with them. I’d never felt like that before and I’ve never felt like it since. It must be what supermodels and celebrities feel like. I couldn’t wait to go to school after that. Sometimes I didn’t do any work in my lessons and the teacher wouldn’t say anything about it. People fought and argued to sit next to me and help me.
I had gone from being nobody to being the queen of the school. The centre of the entire world.
Then we moved house.
Just like that. I’d been the star of the week – I had my certificate and my green sticker with my name on it, and Mum was waiting at the gate with all these suitcases.
‘Quick,’ she said, and I had to pull this huge suitcase along. I dropped my certificate – it was raining and I watched it soak into a puddle. No one dared to stop us or say anything to Mum, but they were all looking as we pulled those stupid suitcases all the way to the bus stop. I stuck my green sticker on the back of the seat on the bus. I didn’t know where we were going, but if we ever came home, this would be my seat on the bus.
But we didn’t go back. I don’t even remember where that was.
We went on a train after that for hours, and then another bus that made me feel sick until we ended up at a house on an estate somewhere. It smelled. The bathroom had a carpet that was always wet and my clothes got mouldy in the wardrobe. I started going to a new school that was much bigger than my old one; it was loud and it was crowded, and I was totally lost. I didn’t know anyone and the kids were all louder with an accent I couldn’t understand. So I started hiding again, but this time there was no special assemblies or kind teachers. This time, some bigger kids found me and they told me I was a weirdo and a tramp, and chased me. That happened every day. I hid but they would find me and chase me, and sometimes they would hit me. I got put in a bin one time; it stank and I was sick.
Then we had to move again. I was glad. A flat this time, then another one. More trains and buses and suitcases, and I always thought about that green sticker that said my name and I wondered if I’d ever get that bus home again. There were no more star-of-the-week certificates or green stickers, just fists and bins and running; chewing gum in my hair. Spit all over my coat.
So I learned what to do when we moved. I learned to forget about certificates and stickers. I learned to forget about old cuddly toys black with mould in the corners of bedrooms. I learned how to keep everything I needed, everything precious, in one bag, ready to move. I learned how to look after myself, how to steal food from the shop when I was hungry and how to turn Mum over onto her side so she didn’t die in her sleep.
On the outside I learned how to blend in. I learned how to be like the rest of them. More importantly, I learned who to be seen with. I learned that so long as you’re with certain people, no one sees the dirt on your clothes or the flea bites on your legs. I learned that the people at the top got there because they stepped on others, because they are monsters, because they’re dead inside.
I learned that the people at the top, the people I needed to be with get there by drinking blood.
Welcome to Six Stories.
I’m Scott King.
Over these last five weeks, I’ve been treading the much-trodden paths that lead through the case of Elizabeth Barton. I’ve spoken to her family, the people who knew her and a few who knew her killers: Solomon Meer, George Meldby and Martin Flynn. There is still no doubt in my nor anyone else’s mind that these three young men were responsible for her death. The exact details are still sketchy. Maybe we’ll never know which of them removed Elizabeth Barton’s head or why.
This is a fresh and rather grim grave we’re raking over.
There are still questions that lurk around this case; the motives of the three killers have always been unclear. And what was going on between Solomon Meer and Elizabeth Barton? I still feel like there is some integral part of this case that’s missing.
I’m slowly coming to the conclusion that everything – every rumour about an ancient vampire that haunts Ergarth Dene and about a deadly Internet challenge – all these things have a grain of truth to them, but these grains are buried under conjecture and gossip.
So where to go next? We need to end up at the truth. Who locked Lizzie in the tower and why?
Unfortunately, it looks like speaking to any of the three convicted for the murder of Elizabeth Barton is going to be impossible. My requests to their families and to the prison service have been ignored. I felt like I had reached an impasse and that maybe three young men killed a young woman for little to no reason, that maybe I should leave it at that.
However, things have changed.
I received a text message from Jason Barton, Elizabeth’s brother, telling me that I’m looking in the wrong places. The actual wording was: ‘You’re very cold right now’.
I feel like I’m being herded; placed in the position of being able to tell this story, the correct gate open somewhere before me. And now I have someone snapping at my heels to hurry me towards it. Someone wants this story told in a certain way.
In the last episode, I feel we saw a side of Solomon Meer that has, until now, been hidden. A vulnerable, malleable side. Does it absolve him of what he did? Certainly not, but it does beg questions about the death of Elizabeth Barton. Were he and the other two solely responsible for what happened?
Jason Barton’s text message suggests to me that there’s something I’m missing. If I am, why didn’t he tell me this when he and I spoke? It feels like Jason is starting to take control of the narrative here. Is this something he’s been trying to do since the start?
Is he more like his sister than he would admit?
Again, that question, ‘Who locked Lizzie in the tower?’ pecks and presses with increasing persistency.
So I packed up and left Ergarth again to travel south west. To Bristol. To meet Jason Barton.
Again.
We’ll come to whose voice is permeating this episode soon, I promise.
—I learned a really important lesson in school that had nothing to do with maths or science or fronted adverbials. It was a lesson about being beautiful. I watched loads of other girls try and be beautiful. Some of them were; some girls didn’t need make-up and fake tan; they were just beautiful. But that’s not how to be beautiful. Not really.
Maybe ‘beautiful’ isn’t the right word. Because there were loads of beautiful girls that didn’t get anywhere. Maybe I mean ‘powerful’.
Yeah.
If you were powerful everyone would tell you you were beautiful. Eve
ryone would inbox you if you were powerful. If you were powerful, you didn’t need to be beautiful. But if you were both…
Well, that’s not right. No one is both.
In the school I was in before Mum moved us to Ergarth, there was a girl called Mercedes Yaxley. She was beautiful and she was powerful. Honestly, I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone more perfect than her. Her hair, her skin, her body, her face.
I became her friend almost immediately. By then I knew how to, and you know how I did? By crushing the competition. I became friends with Mercedes Yaxley by humiliating other girls, fighting, spreading shit and bitching about anyone who raised their pretty little head and tried to get anywhere near me.
I became Mercedes’ best friend, her second in command. I dated her cast-offs and commanded a little army of nasty bitches.
But I didn’t know her. No one did. Because I realised soon enough that she wasn’t human.
This is something I realised about power and beauty and all of that stuff. No human can have both. It takes another type of creature to be both powerful and beautiful.
I arrange to meet Jason Barton again at a cafe in St Nicholas Market, in Bristol city centre. Bristol is on the opposite coast and opposite end of the country from Ergarth – some three hundred miles. It’s a bustling place, and as we’ve met before, I knew I’d recognise him. However, our time to meet came and went.
Frustrated, I attempted to call Jason on the number he gave me, yet it rang out. Had this all been a waste of time? If this was a stitch-up, what was the purpose of it? I drank a couple of cups of coffee and decided to be on my way. But what did Jason mean by me being ‘cold’? There was definitely something to find here; maybe I wasn’t looking hard enough.
As I was getting up, a woman sat at the back of the cafe caught my eye. She was in her mid-twenties, average height, wearing a hoodie pulled up, her face in shadow. She hurried away, head down, looking at her phone.
As I was walking back toward Temple Meads train station, my phone buzzed with a message: We were just checking you’d come. Meet at Arnos Vale Cemetery. 2pm. Jason.
This was all becoming a bit cloak and dagger – my resolve to look monsters in the eye, not to hide, to meet people face-to-face, was being tested. So I took a bus across the city to the vast Victorian cemetery that sprawls out not far from the centre.
On the way I connected to the bus wifi and received another notification. This was a link to a selection of videos; each of them lasted no more than a minute. All of them were filmed in and around Ergarth; by now, I easily recognised the place. The videos had no sound, and were the same scene shot from various different angles. Elizabeth Barton walking down Ergarth High Street and stopping at an alleyway between two betting shops; a huge council refuse bin looming from the shadows. The most striking video was taken from inside the alleyway; from what appears to be a lower angle. Elizabeth approaches the camera, a look of concern on her face. As she gets closer she smiles once, before her face collapses into a scowl. She reaches for the camera, teeth bared. The video ends. I texted back, presuming it was Jason, but received no reply. What he was showing me, I was not sure.
Arnos Vale Cemetery is an impressive place with winding paths and hills among reams of sepulchral towers and monuments, many of which are claimed by undergrowth and ivy. It’s huge; forty-five acres, a former country estate, sloping upwards through surprisingly dense woodland. Slender trees lean over the paths, creating a cool canopy; the curls of old iron fencing is visible through the foliage. Shrouded in a respectful quiet, Arnos Vale is both a public place and a working cemetery. The day was pleasant with sun dappling the paths through the leaves. I certainly did not feel under threat. So I stood at the entrance gates, between two huge walls with the sound of the road behind me and the stillness of the graveyard in front.
Then she appeared again. The woman from the cafe. Still hooded, emerging from behind a towering obelisk. She beckoned me up the path and I followed. The air became cooler, the sound from the road almost nonexistent here. I turned on my recorder.
—Who are you?
—I know who you are. You’re looking for the Ergarth Vampire.
—I’ve come a long way, hoping to know more about the murder of an innocent young woman. Personally, I don’t believe vampires really have much to do with it.
—Well let’s see shall we? I’m Gemma by the way. Gemma Hines. Nice to meet you.
Gemma’s voice is the one you heard at the top of the episode. Our recording was actually rather good quality. There’s the occasional tweet of bird song, our feet crunching on the gravel of the path. Arnos Vale was more or less empty; we had the place to ourselves.
Gemma Hines, of course, is a name I’ve heard throughout this series. She was a girl who had a party back when Elizabeth, Solomon, George, Martin and Jason all lived in Ergarth. Gemma and Jason were pupils at Ergarth High at the time. By this point, Elizabeth, Solomon, George and Martin had all left.
All of them were apparently present when Gemma was supposedly locked in the bathroom by Solomon Meer. From what I’ve been told, this was Elizabeth’s revenge for not being invited to the party. Gemma tells me not to worry, we’ll get to that night soon. First, I tell her, I want to know why Jason Barton called me here and exactly where he is. Gemma tells me all will become clear, soon enough.
—The thing about the story of Elizabeth Barton is that no one wants to hear from the quiet ones.
—Ones like you?
—Like me. There are other stories that no one wants to hear.
—I’m here now, aren’t I? Halfway across the country.
—So can I start?
—I’m listening.
—Mum moved us to Ergarth when I was about twelve or thirteen. We were running from something. We always were running from something. Something or someone. I imagine that it was a debt most likely. I knew all about debts by then and the sort of people who collected them. High-interest loan sharks. Blood-suckers.
—Vampires?
—You’re getting it. Vampires have to move with the times too. They can’t have cloaks and fangs anymore. They have other, more modern ways of operating. They’re everywhere. It’s an epidemic.
Gemma tells me the stories you heard at the top of the episode. Her early years were all about survival. Always moving, always running. Gemma Hines had to work hard to fit in quickly wherever she went. She uses the word ‘vampire’ a lot.
There is so much I want to ask here, especially about the strange videos I’ve just been sent, but I think it’s all going to come out as we walk through the paths, past rows of guinea graves – the cheapest burial option for Victorian paupers … three coffins stacked on top of each other below the surface.
—Mum used to invite them in. That’s how a vampire gets inside your house, isn’t it? You have to invite them. A few of them asked me to call them ‘Daddy’; one of them said it in a way that made my fucking toes curl. When he stayed over I used to sleep with two pairs of knickers and leggings on.
But he didn’t last long.
None of them did.
I still don’t know who my real father is, my real daddy. I might try and find out – ask my mum for my birth certificate, but I don’t imagine she’ll know where it is. It’ll have been sold for crack. Is a birth certificate worth anything? Who knows? Who cares, because he’ll just be a name won’t he? What closure will it give me to see his name? I might look him up on Facebook, see if he’s posting Brexitty shit on Twitter.
Or I could just leave it alone.
—I’m sorry that you had to go through that, Gemma.
—Me too. But I’m not after sympathy. I want you to know that I know vampires. I know how to identify them.
—I understand.
—I also know how to beat them. How to get rid of them.
We’d moved north. We’d been somewhere near Derby before, and now we were in Yorkshire. Doncaster I think. It was worse up there cos of my accent – they all called me a cockney.
They didn’t know nothing. I started this school, year seven, halfway through the year. I still had a black eye from some shithole in Stoke and everyone was scared of me.
There was a teacher. I can’t say his name; let’s call him Mr Smith. I got put in his form. He sat me at the front right next to this freak girl who wore lace gloves and dyed her hair black. There was something not right about Mr Smith. I could tell that straight away. It was the way he looked at you; his eyes were like little ghost-hands all over your tits. I swear you could feel him looking at your arse when you had your back to him. He made my skin crawl. There was something else too; it was the way he made you feel. It was like he sucked all the energy out of the room. Being near him made me tired.
There were some real bad eggs in Mr Smith’s form, but no one caused any trouble – they were always bored, lethargic, heads on the table, nodding off. He never bothered with the lads, anyway, just the girls. Me and that little goth girl at the front, we got chatting and she knew what he was.
She told me she could see the vampires too.
Mr Smith kept me behind after afternoon registration on the first day to ‘check in’ – see how I was getting on. He had this soft voice, always had a mint rattling round his mouth, too much aftershave. He was always on his own as well, it was like the other staff didn’t like him either.
He asked me how I got my black eye. I could see he wanted to touch it.
I knew what I had to do.
I kept asking to stay back after registration, I told him about Mum; not too much, not enough to get social services out. I told him things were hard. I wore short skirts and black bras you could see through my shirt. I cried a few tears. He told me how women didn’t understand him, how he couldn’t relate to other adults. He told me I was special, that I wasn’t like the others, he told me I was beautiful.
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