Six Stories

by Matt Wesolowski

  —We don’t talk about it, Dad and I; not anymore. Best to leave these things buried … Oh gosh, I’m sorry … poor choice of words, but you know what I mean, yeah? Dad still blames himself for what happened up there, but what could he have done? There were signs already, they knew what was up there, didn’t they? They’d stayed there hundreds of times before. Hell, it was that lot who had insulated the place. They did it one summer; climbed underneath in those white decorators’ overalls and nailed a load of polystyrene to the underside of the floor. Mad, isn’t it? I mean, it was nothing more than a glorified barn.

  It wasn’t just them that used the place. We hired it out to Scouts, Girl Guides, climbers, canoe-ers … canoe-ists? … speelenkers … spelunkers? Those guys that go climbing down holes … As I say, I’m not an outdoorsy type. They all knew what the dangers were.

  Harry’s talking about the Scarclaw Fell Woodlands Centre; a self-catering, single-storey accommodation centre that was far more advanced than the ‘glorified barn’ he calls it. When it still stood, it had five dormitories with about thirty beds, gas central heating, a fully equipped kitchen, toilets, showers, the lot.

  Situated at the very base of the fell, about five miles through the forest tracks off the A road, the centre was an L-shaped building with a car park and a telephone line. The centre was hugely popular. It was quite a distance from the danger of the mines and had plenty of picturesque walks and a river nearby. If you didn’t want to hire out the building, you could camp in its grounds. According to the one remaining logbook, it was fully booked all year round. Climbers, walkers, canoeists, spelunkers, even Scouts and Guides all used the Woodlands Centre regularly. And there are no records of any serious accidents occurring on the land around Scarclaw Fell in the last thirty years. Presumably the danger signs did their job.

  Lord Ramsay acquired the land around Scarclaw Fell after what happened in 1996. The purchase was an ongoing battle that raged for several years between with Lord Ramsay, the local authority, the National Trust and the co-operative of groups that had used the centre. This battle is irrelevant to our story; but suffice to say, money conquered all, Scarclaw Fell became part of the Ramsay estate, the centre was levelled and most of the fell was fenced off. But we’re straying from the point. Back to Harry.

  —The environmentalists threatened to jump all over Dad’s case if he changed things at Scarclaw. Don’t get me wrong, he was going to make it nice! But he said he’d have to drain a lot of it … the marshes … to make the holiday lets; and that was a problem – habitats and stuff. Newts, frogs and other slimy things no one cares about till they’re suddenly ‘endangered’. Those old mineshafts were the main problem, though; they had some rare bats nesting in them, didn’t they? Bats are alright I guess … but they’re a bloody legal nightmare, so I think he eventually just thought ‘sod it’ and left it all alone.

  —Did your father ever visit, go to the Woodlands Centre itself, have a look around? Before what happened, I mean.

  —He may have, I don’t know. It wouldn’t have made much difference to be honest. Dad’s like a bloody Rottweiler with a bone once he sets his mind to something, you know?

  Harry and I talk for a while about the legal wrangling to purchase the land. I ask him a few times why Lord Ramsay wanted Scarclaw so much, but I don’t get a straight answer. Maybe he wanted some new hunting land, for grouse shooting, deer stalking, something like that? Parts of the land were, in fact, created as hunting parks around four hundred years ago. The ancient woodlands are a lingering testament to this. What I do know is that Lord Ramsay seemed to have underestimated the appeal of the land. Even after the tragedy; the fight for Scarclaw Fell went on for a long while.

  Maybe, because Harry’s aware that this podcast will be listened to by millions, he is simply saving face – for his father, his family, I don’t know. Eventually, though, I have to broach the subject we’ve both been avoiding; circling each other like a pair of tigers.

  —It was you, Harry, who found him, wasn’t it? You found Tom Jeffries’ body?

  —Yeah … yeah … I found him…

  OK, so I could have phrased it better, but there’s something about talking to people with Harry’s wealth and clout that makes me a little flustered: it’s that unshakeable confidence they exude, I just kind of blurt things out. For a few moments he looks at me and I think he is going to ask me to leave. Thankfully, he goes on with an unflappable air that I have to admire. Stiff upper lip and all that.

  —Legally, I can talk about it now. Now that the case is officially … ‘cold’ is it called? Resolved? That’s not to say I want to, you understand. But I will, because … I don’t know, maybe it’s cathartic or something, yeah? And you’re not a journalist…

  Harry’s very aware of what will happen when Six Stories airs, he’s not a podcast fan himself but he knows just how popular these things are. He tells me he’s heard of Serial and he’s aware of the potential thousands, possibly millions that will hear Six Stories worldwide. He asks me about whether I think the media will turn to him, or even his father, for answers. Lord Ramsay is an old man, he says; he doesn’t need that. I tell him I don’t know what will happen when Six Stories airs, that I can’t make any promises. It seems he appreciates my honesty. He says he’ll tell me what he told the police before he has to go.

  —So, yeah. OK. So me and a few of my mates are out there, yeah? Having a little recce of the place, a bit of a mission, if you know what I mean?

  Harry’s talking about the lower regions of the fell itself, the woods a mile or so from the relative civilisation that is the Woodlands Centre. This seems at total odds with Harry’s often flustered assertions that he’s a ‘city gent’. I make no comment.

  —And it’s the middle of the night; I dunno, maybe one or two a.m.; we’re having a jolly, you know? A walk around the woods. We’ve got the dogs with us and suddenly they start going fucking mad – barking and yapping like they’ve caught a scent.

  Sitting looking at Harry, with his good skin, coiffed hair and a forehead permanently scarred with worry lines, I’m not sure I can picture him and his friends, who I can only assume were ‘country types’, walking round a wood in the middle of the night with dogs. The police report states they were also carrying lights – great, powerful lamps – which lends further credence to the idea that the Ramsays were using the land for hunting. There are several species of deer in Scarclaw woods, not to mention foxes, badgers and other assorted wildlife that the upper class like to kill for pleasure. ‘Lamping’ they call it: catch a deer in a light, makes them freeze.

  —Now, like I say, I don’t know what’s going on and I’ve had a few drinks, so I just go along with it, you know? I’ve got no idea where we are and we’re going deeper and deeper into the trees, and the undergrowth is really deep, like right up to our waists – brambles and bracken.

  As I’ve said, the Woodlands Centre is surrounded by forest; go just a couple of miles towards the base of the fells and you’re in dense, untamed woodland. Harry’s dogs stop two and a half miles north-west of the centre. This marshy area was fenced off and very dangerous; why Harry and his friends were traversing it in the middle of the night seems more stupid than gutsy.

  —It’s really fucking muddy round there, yeah? You can feel your feet getting wet, and before you know it you’re up to your knees in sludge. The dogs are still going mad and there’s this smell … it’s like … well … it’s hard to describe – kind of sweet; meaty; it gets inside you, you know? A stink like that, gets right into your brain, deep; takes a while to let go. I’d like to think we had sort of an idea about what it was. Like, where in the fucking woods do you smell something like that? So we turn the lights on and that’s when we saw it … half buried in the mud. I swear down, I will never forget it as long as I live…

  The dogs all shot off into the marsh and began digging, uncovering their find, heaving at it with their teeth, easing bones from sockets, tearing at soft, decomposing flesh and depositing
their finds at the feet of their masters. Harry and his friends turned on their lamps, and instead of dazzling deer, they shone down upon the decapitated and half-rotted corpse of a child. A child whose body had been missing for a year. Fifteen-year-old Tom Jeffries.

  —Like I say, I’ll never forget that sight. We honestly thought it was a prank, at first – like one of the guys was messing with us and someone was going to start laughing, and a camcorder was going to appear. But we all just fucking stood there staring. I sometimes see it in my sleep; half buried in the mud, hands bunched into claws like it … like he was a fucking zombie or something, desperate to rise from the grave.

  The local police were duly summoned and the crime scene investigators erected their tents. Rather than a national scandal, it was more like relief that the body that had eluded police, investigators, scientists, and even psychics, for the best part of a year, had finally been found.

  Tom Jeffries had gone missing on a trip to Scarclaw Fell Woodlands Centre with a group of other teenagers and two supervising adults. Unlike today, when such disappearances run riot on social media, Tom Jeffries’ disappearance was largely ignored by the national press. Of course it was reported, as was the discovery of his body; but the moral outrage that dominates society today was simply absent back in 1996. Maybe it was just the times; there was no such thing as social media in the nineties, and the internet was not the crazed animal it is now.

  Or perhaps it was something to do with Jeffries himself. Was it something to do with his personality, his reputation, that simply didn’t warrant a national outpouring of grief? Was it because, at fifteen, Jeffries wasn’t enough of a ‘child’? Was it because he was male, white, and from a stable, middle-class background; an average school student, who blended in, had no real enemies and enjoyed a large group of friends?

  Would Tom Jeffries have been remembered more if he had been a little white girl from a privileged background? This is just one of the questions that Six Stories will seek to answer…

  In this series, we’ll look at the case of Tom Jeffries from six different angles. Six people will tell their stories; six people who knew Tom Jeffries in six different ways. When the stories are told, you’ll be able to decide what conclusions, if any, can be drawn from a death shrouded in uncertainty.

  Welcome to Six Stories. This is story number one:

  —We’ve never had anything like it in Rangers. It was terrible … just a terrible, terrible thing. It drove us apart in the end. No one knew how to cope with what happened up on Scarclaw Fell … and a lot of them just didn’t; didn’t cope, I mean.

  It all fell apart. Everything we’d done. It’d been such a huge part of our lives. Such a shame.

  This is the voice of Derek Bickers, sixty-two. Derek, along with his friend Sally, were the last adults to use the Scarclaw Fell Woodlands Centre. They had booked it for a loose group of teenagers – their own children and their friends – a group that referred to itself affectionately as ‘Rangers’. That day in August 1996, the group consisted of five teenagers and two adults. One of those teenagers was Tom Jeffries.

  —‘Rangers’ – to an outsider, it sounds rather like it was some sort of organisation … which it really wasn’t, was it?

  —No, Rangers was never a proper organisation. There were just a few of us at first, just like-minded parents and friends, that sort of thing. We just wanted something for our kids to do; that’s it really. It was never anything more than that. The name came much later; a Lord of the Rings reference I think. And I don’t want to say I was the chief, or the boss, it wasn’t like that really.

  What’s that? Oh, when it started? Oh, way back; a few of us were planning a camping trip when the kids were little – three, four years old. We’d set the tents up in the garden and Eva and Charlie were charging round them, in and out, like kids do…

  Eva is Derek’s daughter. Eva Bickers was fifteen years old at the time of the trip to Scarclaw in 1996. She was a friend of Tom Jeffries. Charlie is Charlie Armstrong, the son of a friend of the Bickers and of Tom Jeffries. He was also fifteen years old in 1996. He was at Scarclaw too.

  —They were grubbing up great handfuls of leaves from the lawn, chucking them at each other; they were covered in mud, twigs in their hair. We were all saying how much they were going to love it – the camping trip, I mean, how they just seemed so at ease in the leaves, the mud, all that. Not like kids today, all phones and iPads. And at least we were trying to get them to connect with the outside…

  It probably sounds a bit silly now, all a bit middle-class: a bunch of us old hippy types off in the woods, going back to nature, all that. But it wasn’t; it really wasn’t like that at all. We just had fun. That’s all it was about in the end, just having fun.

  I conduct this interview with Derek Bickers on the phone. He’s never heard of me or Six Stories. Sometimes this is just as well. Derek was crucified in the press at the time of the tragedy. He had reporters outside his house, and photographs of him at university – hair over his eyes, acoustic guitar in one hand, the other smoking a joint – were leaked by someone close to him. That betrayal wounded him deeply, more that the headlines that accused him at best of negligence and at worst of pretty much murdering Tom Jeffries himself. It was something that Derek never really recovered from; and, as far as I know, he never found out who had done it.

  Again, it all makes you speculate: should a tragedy like the one that befell Tom Jeffries in 1996 happen now, what might be the impact on someone like Derek of the trial by media and the press condemnation that would surely ensue?

  Derek Bickers was questioned extensively about Tom Jeffries’ death, but was never charged with his murder. He has spent the years since he was released by the police, keeping his head down, trying to get on with his life. I can only imagine how the weight of such an experience could wear you down, even if you were a formidable outdoorsman like Derek. It is clear, when he speaks about the past, that he has fond memories of his time in the wilderness with the group. Derek is a former mountain-climber, canoeist, and fell-runner; six foot something with a head so bald it shines, and a neat, grey beard. I ask him whether he continued his relationship with the outdoors after Scarclaw.

  —I ran. I’ve always run; but I ran a lot after Scarclaw. Great long routes, cross countries, miles and miles, head down. If something like that ever happens to you, running is the best thing. I’d recommend it to anyone. I used to run until my legs had gone, my knees, my ankles; till I was dead on my bloody feet. It was the only thing that helped … it just kind of ordered it all in my head.

  There was speculation that Derek would at least be charged with negligence. Tom and the other teenagers were in his care. Tom Jeffries’ family, however, were adamant they did not want to press charges against Derek, and eventually the lack of evidence and the perseverance of Derek’s friends and family prevailed. The coroner’s report was inconclusive on the issue of foul play and Tom Jeffries’ death was described as ‘accidental’ or ‘by misadventure’. Yet this did not stop the rest of the country, or indeed, the world seeing Derek Bickers as the face of what happened. At least for a while.

  —So, in 1996, Rangers were still going strong?

  —Yeah. Even though the kids were older. We’d kept it going – the camping trips, the walks, all that.

  —There were more members though, right?

  —Yeah; well, there were more people who knew about it by then. Our kids had invited their friends from school; the other parents had heard about it and liked the idea. There were a good, maybe, twenty members of Rangers. It was still informal; it was still more or less just walks in the woods, rock-climbing trips, all that, but now we had a name.

  —What were the age ranges of the group?

  —Well I guess you could say from zero to adult. There were babies, toddlers, pregnant women, teenagers…

  —But they didn’t all go on the trips did they?

  —Not all of them, no. By then, we’d started a loose weekly meeting
in the church hall. It was just a social thing really; people brought cakes, coffee; the younger kids charged about and played and the older ones helped plan the excursions.

  —And you say there was no underlying, ideological theme running through the group – not like the Scouts or something?

  —That’s correct. It was more about friendship, about acceptance. Just a network of parents and kids; friends of friends; something to do, all that.

  —Can you tell me more about the kids who were involved in the trip to Scarclaw?

  —There weren’t many of them. That summer in ’96 there was one of those bugs going round the schools; the kids were dropping like flies – vomiting, temperature. It would have been a bloody nightmare out on the fell, we nearly cancelled the whole thing.

  By then Rangers was, a bit more organised, I suppose. We had to be: dietary needs, consent forms that sort of thing. These were other people’s kids we were responsible for; we couldn’t muck about. We had a meeting; me and the other adults…