You Can Run

by Steve Mosby

  Mr Townsend

  By now you will have received my letter and my GIFT to you of the ring that your wife will no longer be requiring. You will know the truth about what happened, but I am here now to tell you that truth is a LIE and just a TALE that I told for the benefit of OTHERS. I would apologise, but the reality is that it is YOU who owes ME an apology, as you will soon understand.

  I want to tell you another story about a girl named Melanie.

  She saw something she shouldn’t have done, and told something she shouldn’t, and she became briefly FAMOUS as a result of taking what was MINE, what belonged to ME, and pretending it was HERS. And even worse, her inadequate husband then took what was MINE and tried to make it HIS. Forthat, you will SUFFER, I promise you. You will SUFFER for the rest of your life, because if YOU DON’T then SHE WILL.

  I enclose a photograph as evidence of these words. You will NOT go to the police. I will be watching to make sure you don’t. You will NOT trace this email or this photo, as I know more about technology than you and I have been very clever. If you want her to live then you WILL WAIT for further instructions. If you do not, then she will go into the RED RIVER cursing your name.

  Townsend stood quietly as Emma and I read. There was an attachment. I clicked on it; the image that appeared was all but identical to the one Townsend had received this morning.

  ‘They’re all like that,’ he said.

  More than ten years, I was thinking. More than ten years.

  She’d been alive the whole time. I couldn’t comprehend it.

  ‘How many have there been?’

  ‘Fourteen more, after the first. One for each of the stories he sent me. And then the new message today. Click back to the folder. They’re all there, along with the attachments.’

  I did so, opening each message in turn and reading what was there, then viewing the attachments. The photographs blurred into one after a while. All that really changed was the date in the corner of the newspaper the man used as backdrop. Proof – as he had promised – that Melanie would remain alive so long as Townsend did exactly what he was told.

  According to the second email, that had involved publishing the short stories that were sent to him.

  ‘They had to be under my own name,’ Townsend said. ‘I couldn’t bring myself to do that. Not exactly. But the slight change seemed good enough for him, and I was never going to publish under my own name again anyway; that was part of the deal. And it’s not like it mattered. People did find them. You found them. He wanted to destroy my reputation and hurt me, and he did both. Every single one of them tore me apart inside to put online. But I did it anyway.’

  Townsend was staring past us at the computer screen.

  ‘And you decided not to report this?’ I said.

  His gaze still fixed on the screen, he shook his head slowly.

  ‘I tried to track the emails. I even paid for an expert to help – although I scrubbed the content of the message first. She told me that whoever had sent it was using some kind of anonymous server and that it was impossible to trace. She said even the police wouldn’t be able to. I couldn’t send the photographs to her, but I did my best with them myself. The data had all been filtered off. There was nothing.’

  I was almost shaking trying to take all this in. He had published the book based on Melanie’s experience, and she had been abducted because of it. For over ten years, he had dealt not only with the secret guilt from that, but also the guilt and pain of this private correspondence from the man who had done these things, and who had forced him to publish those hateful stories to punish him. Bearing it alone the whole time.

  At that point, I really was about to grab him: clutch fistfuls of his cardigan and demand more, even if he had nothing more to tell. Because whatever he’d been through, as unimaginable as it was, people had died while he remained silent – Anna had died – and Melanie was still out there somewhere. She had been out there for over ten years, suffering God only knew what, and we needed to find her.

  I took a step towards him.

  ‘Why? Why did you go along with it?’

  ‘Because I’d betrayed her once already, and I couldn’t do it again.’ Townsend was still staring at the screen, oblivious to my anger. ‘I had to sacrifice everything for her. I had to keep her safe.’

  Finally he looked at me.

  ‘I did it out of love,’ he said simply.

  I don’t know what I would have done then, but behind me, I heard the computer beep once. And when I turned round, I saw that a new email had arrived.

  Forty-Two

  Blythe was standing by the cellar door, the knife in his hand.

  ‘I want to go down now.’

  He was looking at the old padlock that held the door shut, the key for which was in Bunting’s pocket. Blythe had been amenable enough up until now, and had accepted Bunting’s appeals to wait, but it was clear from his body language that time was up. The man was utterly still, staring at the lock that was keeping him from the woman below as though it was the only thing in the world.

  Bunting was sitting on the settee, still working on the laptop.

  ‘Wait a little longer,’ he said.

  ‘No.’ Blythe sounded blank. ‘Now.’

  Bunting glanced over again. This time, he noticed the way Blythe’s jaw was clenched. He was turning the knife around in his hand as though he might attack the door with it at any second. Not just the door, of course. Blythe’s interest had worn out, and his patience along with it. If Bunting didn’t open the door right now, he could tell the Red River Killer was going to turn on him.

  ‘All right.’ He took the key out of his pocket. ‘Here.

  He threw it through the doorway. Blythe caught it and immediately undid the lock.

  ‘Just don’t start without me,’ Bunting called. ‘I want to see this.’

  But Blythe was already heading down. Shit. Bunting turned his attention back to the laptop – back to the story – and wondered if it was ready. It needed to be; it was going to be the last.

  I want to tell you a story about a girl named Melanie. . .

  In each of the other stories, he’d explored a huge variety of possible scenarios following Melanie West’s abduction, all of which he had known Townsend would find torturous and painful to read and then be forced to publish. And yet none of those scenarios had been remotely accurate. Whereas this – finally – was as close to the truth as he could allow himself. In many ways, it was the most horrific one of all. It was the tale of a special victim, taken for a specific reason, who had been kept alive for years in order to torment the man who had stolen something that didn’t belong to him and tried to make it his own. It was a story of prolonged hope that ended, finally, with that woman’s vicious murder.

  After all these years, it was Bunting’s final revenge on Jeremy Townsend for taking what had always belonged rightly to him. It would have to be good enough.

  He found a random line in the first paragraph of the story and typed quickly. SIMON BUNTING 23 CROSS STREET HE’S HERE HELP ME. Then he pressed send.

  Immediately he felt the message flying free, and was aware of the sudden inevitability of it all now. There was no going back. There hadn’t been from the beginning, he supposed, but everything would accelerate from here. He had very little time left.

  He shut down the secure browser and took one last look around the living room.

  He was ready.

  Time to go down to the cellar.

  He had always written stories.

  When he was a teenager, his parents had thought it was a childish pursuit and had never supported him. He could remember his father reading one in disgust – but then he’d always disgusted his father, hadn’t he? And then there had been all the rejections over the years for the stories he’d submitted. Throughout it all, he had never given up hope and had continued to have faith in his own talent and ability. In the end, he realised now, he had done something considerably better and more remarkable tha
n any of the authors of the books that lined his shelves.

  Most books and stories were safe, discrete things. They existed solely in words on the paper glued between the covers of a book or across a handful of pages in a magazine. There was a beginning, a middle and an end, all read in order, and once the story was finished it was contained and could be placed to one side. Over the years, Bunting had begun to understand that his personal genius lay in a different direction.

  He had begun his project tentatively. There had never been a Red River Killer. There had been Blythe and the things he did, but it was Simon Bunting who had created the character, building him up piecemeal from the clay provided to him, fashioning him through the letters he sent. Bunting had built a story using real people. And rather than it being trapped between the covers of a book, it was spread through thousands of newspaper articles and online comment threads, and alive in the minds and fears of people everywhere. It was a story composed from countless fragments, its chapters not laid out in order but interwoven throughout the psyche of a whole country.

  He had transformed an ordinary killer into a story.

  Now it was time to give that story the ending it deserved.

  When he arrived down in the cellar, his heart was beating hard. Blythe was leaning over Melanie West, the knife in his hand. Melanie remained blindfolded, with her hands and feet bound together, but she was awake now. Bunting could hear her talking.

  ‘What’s going on?’ she said. ‘What’s happening?’

  God – he was actually going to miss her. It surprised him how calm she sounded. But then he’d always treated her well, hadn’t he? They’d always got on together. And although the last couple of days had seen a substantial variation in their routine, she had no reason to suspect she was in any immediate danger. She didn’t realise that Blythe was poised above her, a knife in his hand, his arm tensed, his gaze searching out the first place to stab her with it.

  Goodbye, Melanie, Bunting thought.

  The End.

  He brought the wrench down on Blythe’s head with as much force as he could manage.

  Part Five

  Forty-Three

  Statement by Simon Bunting

  Date: Thursday 30 June 2016

  I grew up in Moorton, but have no memory of ever meeting John Blythe during my time there. To my knowledge, I have never encountered him in this city either. Equally, I have only ever been peripherally aware of the Red River murders, as I find media coverage of such horrific crimes prurient, distasteful and upsetting. I actively avoid such reports. I had not read or watched the news recently, and had no idea of the developments in that particular case.

  On 29 June, I was off sick from work with a headache. This morning, I was better, but phoned in sick again anyway. I decided to use the time to visit my parents’ graves in Marwood Cemetery in Moorton, as I often do. I therefore became aware of the police presence in Moorton itself, and was stopped at a checkpoint by an officer who can corroborate this account. However, I had no idea of the reason behind it, and, frankly, little interest. After visiting my parents’ graves, and because the weather was reasonable that day, I decided to avoid the congestion in the village and instead drive home along back roads. I estimate this will have been late morning or early afternoon, but can’t be sure of the time.

  A short distance north, I saw a man with a backpack standing by the side of the road, waving his arms at me for help. He was dressed like a hiker or a camper, and looked as though he had been living rough. I did not recognise him at the time, but now understand this man to have been John Edward Blythe. A woman was lying motionless in the road at his feet. As I approached in my car, the man stepped further out, to the extent that I might have struck him if I continued. There was little time to think, and anyway, my instinct was to stop. The first impression I had of the scene was that the woman had been hurt, perhaps having been hit by another vehicle, and that the man was trying to flag down assistance. I would always want to help in such circumstances, and so I stopped the car.

  I had not connected the situation with the police activity in the village, and at that point sensed no threat, so stepped out of my vehicle to see what had happened. The man grabbed me almost immediately and held a knife to my throat. He was very strong, and the level of violence was so shocking that it actually took a moment for the fear to set in. I can’t remember the man’s exact words, but it was obvious he was threatening me, and when I recognised that he had a knife, I became convinced I was going to die. I tried to keep calm, and told him to take the car but please not hurt me. He ordered me to help him get the woman into my vehicle.

  As I approached her, I realised her hands were bound and she was blindfolded. At that point, I could not tell whether she was alive or dead. I had no choice but to do as he asked, and while I deliberately took my time in the hope that another car would arrive at the scene, the road remained empty the whole time. The man opened my boot and made me place the woman inside. He took my car keys and told me to get in the driver’s seat, which I did. He then sat behind me, returning the keys to me and telling me to drive.

  He gave me directions throughout the entire journey. He still had the knife, and he told me that if we were stopped by police, he had nothing to lose and would kill me and then himself. I was torn between hoping for assistance and fear of encountering some kind of blockade. As it happened, by following his directions, we didn’t see a single police officer or vehicle. Given the heavy presence in the village itself, this seemed surprising to me, although the man seemed to know the area very well.

  I do not remember where we drove, partly because I was very afraid, and partly because the man was directing me down seemingly random roads, some major, some minor. He seemed intent on losing us, although his motivations were not clear, as for the most part he was rambling and incoherent. I could not make sense of much of what he said, and it felt like he was talking to himself rather than me. We did not stop at any point, and the journey went on for a long time. Eventually he asked me where I lived, and when I told him, he laughed. I did not understand this at the time, but now that I am aware we live in the same city, I realise he must have seen it as a happy coincidence. He told me we would go there, and continued to give me precise directions.

  I do not know exactly what time we reached my house, but it was early evening and already growing dark. He told me to reverse into the driveway. I was panicking, but he told me that he would not kill me if I did what he said. I did not believe him, but thought that inside the house I might at least be able to find a weapon or escape from him somehow. He took my keys and made me carry the unconscious woman inside, and then down into the cellar. He placed a newspaper under her head and made me take a photograph of her. He then ordered me back upstairs into the front room, where I was told to sit on a chair and not move.

  The man locked all the doors and disconnected the phone line. Throughout the night, he kept listening at the cellar door, and checking the curtains in the front room. I was allowed to use the toilet, but was escorted. The man continued talking to himself a great deal, but it was impossible to follow his train of thought, as little he said made sense, and again, I was too frightened to pay close attention. The conversation was a jumble and a blur. He had a laptop, which he set up on the coffee table and he spent a good portion of the night typing. He seemed sometimes pleased with what he was doing and sometimes disappointed, although to begin with I had no idea why.

  In the morning, he passed me the laptop and asked me to read what he had written. It appeared to be a horrible short story of some kind. He had written about a woman being held captive for years, and then brought to a house and murdered. It was clear it related to the current situation. So as not to anger the man, I said I thought it was good. He explained that he had abducted the woman in the cellar many years ago, and that he had sent stories to her husband in order to punish him for some perceived slight that I did not understand. He told me this would be the final story, and that this one w
ould be true and so it needed to be perfect. He continued to work on the story for some time afterwards.

  I had no way of telling the time, but I believe it was early to mid afternoon when it happened. The man had been growing increasingly agitated and distracted, and his attention was focused more and more on the cellar door. He seemed to have forgotten about me altogether by this point, and instead appeared to be coming to some kind of decision in his head. After a time, without saying a word, he picked up the knife and moved over to the cellar door, which he opened before disappearing downstairs.

  Alone for the first time in nearly twenty-four hours, I was too shocked to know what to do. The front and back doors were locked and the man still had my keys. Similarly, he had disabled my telephone. I sat there for a moment, too afraid to move. Then I moved over to his laptop, where I saw that the story he had written had been pasted into the body of an email message but not sent. Without any real clue what I was doing, I typed in my name and address and a plea for help, connected to my home wireless, and then sent the email.

  At that point, I considered escaping. It would perhaps have been possible to force open one of the downstairs windows, climb out and seek help. But from the content of the story I had read, I knew that the man was intending to murder the woman in the cellar, and I could not allow that to happen without at least attempting to save her. I was very scared, but I went through to the kitchen. A few days previously, the tap in the kitchen had broken, and I’d used a wrench to fix it, which remained on the window ledge. I tried to be as quiet as possible, but I was physically shaking as I made my way downstairs.

  When I entered the cellar, the man was standing over the woman with his back to me, and seemed unaware of my presence. He was staring down at her, turning the knife around in his hand, and it was clear he was about to hurt her. She was awake now, but still blindfolded, and was asking what was happening, but the man was ignoring her and breathing heavily. This went on for a few seconds, perhaps even longer. Then he suddenly crouched and moved the knife towards her. At that moment, I swung the wrench down as hard as I could and struck him on the back of the head.