by Rosie Walker
Helen can hear murmured voices in the background of the call.
‘Melanie says have you called her?’
Helen digs her knuckles into the corners of her eyes. ‘Yes, thank you. Repeatedly and all day. Straight to voicemail.’
‘And her friends?’
‘Of course. Catch up with Melanie after our phone call is over, please. I’m not going to repeat it all again. None of them have seen her since she left the pub last night.’
‘Has she stopped out all night before?’
Helen scoffs. ‘No. Has she when she’s staying at your house, Tony?’
‘Okay, then.’ He is using his pacifying voice; the same tone he uses on Zoe when she’s having a tantrum. ‘I’m sorry. You must be worried. I’m worried too, but she’s a tough cookie. She’ll be home soon, I’m sure.’
‘I don’t know why you’re so sure. Blind denial won’t help if she’s in danger.’
Tony sighs. ‘I thought you wanted me to get off the line?’
‘Yes,’ she snaps. But thinks better of it. ‘Can you please get over here? Bring all Zoe’s stuff, and then if the police come you can answer questions from the officers about what happened last night and why you don’t know where the hell our daughter is.’
Zoe
Zoe’s mouth fills with bile, on the brink of vomiting with fear. Years. That’s how long this woman has been a captive here.
The door is still locked, but Zoe and her fellow captive sit on either side, talking through the wood.
‘I lose track of time. It’s been cold many times. Winter.’ She doesn’t always speak in full sentences, but she’s coherent. Probably not used to talking with other people any more. Her speech is unnatural: sudden gasps and tics interspersed with eerie silence. Zoe can’t relax, as every sound or scrape sets Zoe’s nerves on fire with fear that their captor is returning.
‘Does he keep you in here all the time?’ Zoe’s shivering, every muscle firing and jerking, her skin covered in goosebumps.
‘Sometimes. Other times we go to the big house, up through the woods. When the coast is clear.’
Zoe crosses to the window. She presses her face against the glass and peers out into the trees. ‘There are two of us now. We can overpower him and escape.’ She turns back to the locked door, pulling at it once more. It doesn’t budge. ‘We have to.’
‘There’s no way,’ the woman’s doesn’t sound like an old woman, but she doesn’t sound young either. Her voice has the depth of middle-age, like Zoe’s mum or a bit older.
‘Why not?’ asks Zoe. A sob creeps up her throat and she swallows it down. ‘We have to try. I can’t be here for years too.’ She crosses the room and places her hand flat on the door. It’s damp and cold. ‘You can’t stay here any longer. We need to get you out, somewhere safe.’
‘No one knows me. No one misses me. No one’s looking.’ The woman doesn’t sound sad as she says this, just states it as fact.
Zoe shakes her head. ‘Well, people are looking for me. And when they find me, they’ll find you too now. My friend was there, Abbie, she’ll call the pol—’ Zoe stops. Will Abbie call the police?
The woman breathes in sharp. ‘Your friend?’
Zoe sits down on the floor, her back against the door. ‘I thought she was my friend. But I’ve been thinking a lot in here.’ She points around the caravan, even though no one can see her. ‘I don’t know if she’s trustworthy.’
‘Oh?’ the woman shifts, her voice quietens a little as she moves away from the door.
‘I keep thinking she might have led him to me somehow. Maybe even without knowing.’
The voice is loud again; the woman has moved back to the door. ‘An offering.’
Zoe runs her hands through her hair, her fingers catching in the tangles. It feels like the whole world is broken and spiked, like she was wrong about everything she once believed in. Even if she gets out of here, how can she trust anyone again? How can she trust strangers, her friends, even her family? Abbie might be genuinely evil. At best, Abbie’s destructive self-obsession put Zoe in this danger. Dane isn’t looking for her; he just let her stumble into danger without a backwards glance. And Max – lovely, gentle Max – creeps about on the dark web reading about paedophiles and serial killers like Mr X. For fun. What kind of person does that for entertainment?
‘An offering. Something like that, yeah.’ She looks around the caravan, at the sagging sofa and damp-streaked walls. ‘What’s happened to you here?’
‘He keeps me alive. The others die.’
She flinches. It’s not a surprise, but the blunt statement fires deep into her stomach like a bullet. She scrunches up her eyes, turns her face towards the wall, but the question escapes her lips. ‘How do they die?’
The woman shifts, her movements reverberating along the floorboards to where Zoe sits. ‘They die in many ways. Awful, terrible ways. He doesn’t work alone. He likes to share.’
The rumble of a car engine signals the approach of the monster. At the sound, the woman shifts again, her voice panicked. It sounds like she stood up. ‘Don’t tell him we met. He’ll be angry if he finds out I talked to you.’
Zoe scrambles back to the sofa, away from the door.
‘He wants to feel he’s in control.’
The door creaks open and daylight fills the caravan. Zoe raises her hands to shield her eyes from the light.
‘Untied yourself again, I see.’
‘Fuck you,’ she says, her voice cracking with thirst.
‘Now, now,’ he says, looming over her. She tries not to flinch. ‘If you’re going to have an attitude like that, I won’t give you any of this water and food I brought you.’
‘Fine,’ she croaks. ‘Give me the water.’
‘Please?’ he says.
‘Fuck. Please.’ And under her breath: ‘Shitbag.’
He kicks her in the side. ‘And use my name.’
‘Paul.’
‘Paul what?’
She can’t remember.
He chuckles and throws a bottle of water at her head. ‘Paul Herbert.’
She grabs the water and gulps it down, rivulets coursing down the sides of her mouth.
‘Slow down, my pretty,’ he hisses from his seat on the sofa. ‘It’s not good to rehydrate so fast. You might die.’
She stops drinking, breathing hard and fast. ‘I might die anyway.’
He laughs loudly. ‘Oh, you’re not stupid, are you?’
‘No, I’m not. I know that you won’t get away with this.’
He laughs again, his chuckle slow and dry. ‘Ah, now there’s where you’re wrong though. Because I have got away with it many times, and you will be no exception. I was born to do this.’
‘Oh yeah? Bet your mum is really proud of you. Does she know what kind of freak you are?’
He rolls his eyes.
‘They’ll find me, you know. There were witnesses in that pub who saw you.’
‘Your stupid friends?’ he shakes his head. ‘Too far up their own arses to see anything except their own colons. All they could describe was that stylish hat.’
‘You think you’re clever, but you’re really not.’
‘A lot of planning goes into a life like mine.’
‘This isn’t a life. You’re an animal.’
He sniggers. ‘Thank you.’
‘Whatever.’
He stands up, his movements sharp and powerful. Despite her stubbornness, Zoe flinches and moves away from him, shuffling backwards under the table, trying to get out of his reach.
‘No point struggling now. We’re going on a little trip.’
He steps towards her. She shuts her eyes as tight as she can, and clenches her fists, ready to fight and kick if she can. But he leans down and wraps his arms around her thighs, lifting her over his shoulder as if she weighs nothing.
He steps down out of the caravan and into the woods of the early afternoon, which smell of moss and leaves, fresh and clean in comparison to the i
nside of that dusty, mouldy caravan. She takes a deep breath into her lungs, noticing the autumn sunshine filtering through the leaves onto the forest floor.
Zoe lifts her head as Paul carries her away from the caravan, sees eyes glinting through a smudged window as the woman watches Zoe get carried away.
Lancaster’s Predator Professor: Leonard McVitie’s legacy
By Urban Dark Reporter
Third in a series of articles exploring the newly catalogued archives of Lancaster’s most prolific lunatic. Today we speculate what made McVitie who he was, using three key papers from his 26 years of imprisonment in the Lancaster County Lunatic Asylum.
See also:
Investigating Leonard McVitie
Uncovering the archives
The archives of Leonard McVitie give us an unprecedented insight into the mind of a deranged serial killer, while also shining a light onto the low levels of supervision and the free reign that even dangerous criminals were given in the old model of institutional incarceration.
What we see when examining his writings is his feverish desire for immortality. McVitie worked hard to pass on what he knew. He wanted to empower another to control, kill, and impersonate as he had done so successfully for so many years. What isn’t clear from his correspondence is whether he was successful at finding a willing protégé, and who that might have been.
1) The Memoir: what made McVitie into a killer?
Lucky for us, among his papers is an unfinished memoir. From those scrappy chapters, we can determine some details about his life before he began committing crimes.
As a child he attended boarding school, so his parents must have been affluent yet distant. He does not mention the name of the school, nor does he specify the name of his one close friend during those years.
It seems that he and this friend enlisted together in the British Army at the outbreak of the Second World War, where he developed his taste for killing.
It’s also where he learned to assume others’ identities: the real Leonard McVitie died in 1941 during Rommel’s attack on Brega in Operation Sonnenblume. The man we now know as McVitie traded identity documents with a corpse; his original name lost to the chaos of battle.
Although it is not stated in McVitie’s documents, he must have committed a serious criminal act which required this identity theft in combat. This probably marks his first murder.
2) The Lesson Plan: McVitie’s immortal legacy
Amongst McVitie’s papers is also what can only be described as a syllabus. This list of lessons and their contents shocked me to the core, and I can only skim over their subjects here: how to choose the best victim, disposing of a body, keeping your victims alive while in captivity. McVitie’s pupil is unidentifiable, but we assume they were a fellow inmate.
See also: How to get away with murder
Somehow, even under the supervision of the Lune Hospital’s doctors and nurses, McVitie was teaching another patient how to kill, and how to get away with it. We know the conditions in the hospital weren’t great: overcrowding, understaffing, budget cuts … and therefore it seems that McVitie was able to hand down this information to an individual who (we assume) was then subsequently released back into society.
3) The Handover
One theme which emerges throughout all of McVitie’s writings is his fetishisation of the apex predator in nature, and his fixation on the ‘lone wolf’. He seems to have corresponded with other criminals in institutions around the country, and although we don’t have his letters, the archive does contain some responses. They are not friendly replies. The tone is defensive, seeming to reflect a competitive jostling for position which clearly McVitie prompted in his outgoing mail.
This assumption is confirmed with some barely legible notes in a notebook dated ‘1984’ (McVitie died in Spring the next year). The first pages contain scrawled phrases indicating a territorial/ownership attitude, like ‘There can be only one’.
Then, as if coming to terms with his imminent death, there is a draft letter to an unnamed recipient:
I am ill [illegible – 4 words], it is your turn to kill.
I’ve taught you well; do not disappoint me. There can be only one, and I have chosen you.
It’s unclear if that letter was ever sent. The rest of the notebook is blank.
Comments:
1488-HH: Lol bet he learned some cool stuff from the Nazis
Phoneguy: Lone wolf and needs a follower? WEAK
Combaticus: I wonder what the missing four words said? ‘And I have failed’ would fit.
Rogersmith52: That is unlikely, considering he didn’t fail. He actually succeeded: he sought to pass on his knowledge so his skills weren’t lost after death. So that suggestion just doesn’t work.
1488-HH: Do you think Rogersmith52 can write a comment that isn’t a sanctimonious mansplain? Get a life, dude. If I met you in real life I’d set you on fucking fire
Thomas
The doorbell rings as Maggie and Thomas are flicking through the kids’ channels on Sky, looking for the best after-school shows. Maggie stops on a channel where a girl spies on her neighbours through a pair of binoculars, writing observations in a mini notebook.
‘This is the film I was telling you about,’ says Maggie. ‘Harriet the Spy. Harriet’s the coolest.’
Thomas doesn’t respond. He can’t concentrate on anything, knowing they’re going back to the woods later. He won’t let Maggie go on her own. But his stomach is full of knots thinking about those woods where someone is screaming and anything could happen.
‘You not going to answer the door?’
Thomas shakes his head. ‘Mum’ll get it. It’s for her anyway.’
She pokes him, and points at the TV. ‘Harriet spies on people. Makes notes. Solves mysteries. Just like us! Everyone’s got secrets. Especially grown-ups.’
Thomas turns to look at her. ‘Just leave it, Maggie.’
Maggie tucks her skinny legs underneath her and leans forwards. ‘Leave what?’
He shakes his head, looking at Maggie. Her hair’s wild after a day at school, sticking out at every angle as if she’s been rolling down hills at lunchtime. ‘I don’t want to be a stupid spy, okay?’
She punches him in the arm, hard.
‘Ow!’ He says, rubbing his arm. ‘I’ve said I’ll go back with you and get the knife back. But after that I’m done. No clubhouse and no mysteries. It’s dangerous and I don’t like it any more.’ He looks around the room and sees the pile of board games in the corner. He lowers his voice and looks at his feet. ‘Can’t we just play Monopoly or something? Something that isn’t stupid and dangerous like breaking into derelict buildings full of murderers.’
‘Fine, on one condition.’
He frowns. ‘What?’
‘Let’s go find out who was at the door.’
***
They crawl along the landing to the top of the stairs and stick their heads through the bannister to hear the conversation below. They can see a sliver of the kitchen through the half-open door, watching Mum’s feet pace back and forth as she makes tea. The visitor is a woman, their voices low murmurs over the sounds of the kettle and cups and saucers.
‘Can you hear anything?’ Maggie whispers.
Thomas shakes his head, holds his finger to his lips. He can hear little fragments of sentences:
… haven’t heard from her …
… you might know something …
… only seventeen …
… police on their way …
‘Is someone crying?’ Maggie hisses. It does sound like crying: a stifled whining sound, and the soothing tones of Mum’s voice over the top, the same as when she’s comforting Thomas after he’s skinned his knees.
‘They said something about the police.’
He hears movement from the kitchen, sees a foot through the gap in the kitchen door. ‘They’re coming out, let’s go.’ He doesn’t want Mum’s visitor to know they heard her crying.
***
When Mum calls them down to dinner ten minutes later, Maggie’s still on about their plans to go back for the knife. ‘Duncan said the old asylum’s got security guards in it. Your Dad’s friends with them or something, so he told Duncan when it’s best to snoop around. A few guys take it in turns; they’re there most of the time. So, if there was a murderer, we’d be able to shout and get someone to help us.’
They run down the stairs, stopping in the hallway bathroom to wash their hands. ‘Did he ever go inside the asylum?’
She shakes her head. ‘He said there was no way in when they tried – only small holes big enough for a kid to wriggle through. But that was years ago. One of his friends did once, though. I’ll tell you about that later. It’s a really cool story.’
Mum looks up as they enter the kitchen. ‘What are you two chattering about? Putting together another scheme?’
‘Yeah! We’re spies and explorers!’ shouts Maggie. ‘Who was at the door?’
Mum’s hand slows as she spoons lasagne onto three plates. Her mouth turns down at the corners. ‘That was Helen from next door.’
‘Why was she crying?’
Thomas glares at Maggie, willing her to shut up. ‘We weren’t spying.’
Maggie sticks out her tongue at him.
Mum looks cross. ‘I should hope not.’ She brings the plates to the table and sets them down. ‘She’s worried about Zoe, her daughter. She …’ Mum pauses as she sits down at the table and picks up her knife and fork. She looks tired, her cheeks sagging. ‘Zoe didn’t come home, and Helen wanted to know if I had any ideas about where she might be.’
Thomas remembers seeing Zoe sometimes when she’s going to school; she’s pretty and always smiles at him.
‘Why would you know something?’ asks Maggie. ‘Because of your job?’
Mum’s quiet, thinking about how to answer. ‘She asked if I’d seen Zoe, or … yeah, kind of because of my job. Sometimes I write investigations about missing girls the same age as Zoe. Trying to find out where they are.’
‘Why aren’t the police trying to find the girls?’
