by Rosie Walker
The rise of Mr X
Still unidentified, Mr X and his multiple murders haunted Lancashire for nearly 10 years—
Helen stops reading and pushes the laptop away from her on the table.
‘Mr X,’ she whispers.
Her memory whisks back to the early years of her marriage with Tony, the late nights and early starts of his first big case in the Police: the unsolved murders of young women across the county. No matter how many nights he stayed late at the office, chasing leads, interviewing suspects, Mr X remained unidentified and free.
It haunted Tony for years, until eventually he requested a move out of CID and into Special Branch. After Zoe was born, he couldn’t bear to be near the parents of murdered daughters. Terrorists – even during the worst of The Troubles – were less disturbing to Tony than his failure to catch a monster and protect the lives of local girls.
She shakes her head, feeling a rush of sympathy and sadness for Tony and the man he used to be. He was so kind, so hopeful, so ambitious. But the Mr X case took that from him, disillusioned him and eventually defeated him into early retirement and a quiet job in security at the University.
But Helen’s not finished reading: there’s more to this article. She pulls the laptop back towards her:
Many young women went missing during Mr X’s reign of terror, with at least three confirmed cases and up to ten suspected.
Constantly in the news throughout the late 80s and early 90s, the murders were also at the forefront of the news due to in-fighting within the Lancashire Constabulary, who failed to charge even one suspect.
The killings continued at a terrifying pace for years, before they mysteriously stopped in the mid- to late-90s. Many now believe that Mr X is dead: a killer that prolific does not just stop their crimes.
Hand-me-down murders?
After the mid-90s, Lancaster enjoyed a brief respite period, with few missing cases and no unsolved murders. But at the time of writing, some circles believe that a recent spate of missing girls (up to six at the time of writing) implies that there’s a new serial killer in operation in the local area.
Local police deny the possibility, declaring that no evidence and no bodies means no murders. But commentators and true crime enthusiasts have detected a pattern, and that pattern is an echo back to both Mr X and McVitie:
Helen leans closer to the picture on the screen. It’s a grid of girls’ faces in two columns, the left column entitled ‘1990s’, the right ‘2010s’.
‘Woah,’ she says. ‘They’re like twins.’
Despite the time difference, the girls look almost identical: all beautiful teenagers with centre partings and long, dark hair.
The article continues:
As you can see from the image, today’s killer has a type, and so did Mr X. The two columns of faces juxtaposed tell a sad, scary tale of a hunter and a pupil, just like McVitie and Mr X – one generation later.
And sure, the police and some members of the public present the argument that there are no bodies, so no recent victims are confirmed dead. The missing girls (including Sadie Duncan, Joanna Bamber, Roberta Clarkson and Anna Keyne) might be in the back alleys of Blackpool as you read this, alive and well. But the demographic, the facial similarities and the very clean MO suggest otherwise.
Urban Dark Reporter believes that there is a serial killer in operation in Lancaster RIGHT NOW. That serial killer learned everything he knows from Mr X, who learned everything he knew from Leonard McVitie.
We need to act now before they activate the fourth generation of monster.
Helen’s skin prickles with sweat. Three generations of killers, handing down their knowledge, the police totally unaware. And her poor Zoe possibly caught up in this, the victim of the third generation.
She flattens the palms of her hands to the table on either side of the laptop, focuses her attention on the cold of wooden kitchen table, its surface smooth under her hands.
Her eyes skim the article, looking for a clue to the author’s identity. Why did Max send it? Did he write it? And if so, how did he get this information? The only name is ‘Urban Dark Reporter’. She clicks on the name and gets taken to the ‘About’ page.
Covering both breaking stories and cold cases, Urban Dark Reporter uncovers the crime stories overlooked by local police forces, particularly focussed on the North West of England. We’re a team of vigilantes so anonymous that we don’t even know who we are; all our reporters write under the ‘Urban Dark Reporter’ pseudonym and submit articles under false names. Got a scoop? Email [email protected]
She tries Tony’s landline, desperate to speak to anyone.
She waits for their voicemail beep and leaves her message: ‘It’s me. I found a girl’s shoe yesterday. No, not yesterday. The day before, at the old hospital. I think it’s Mr X who took Zoe. Anyway, I’m going there, to the hospital in Flagstone Woods. Meet me there if you get thi—’
There’s a click as someone lifts the receiver.
‘Mr X?’ Tony’s breathing is ragged, like he ran to the phone. ‘What has this got to do with that piece of shit?’
Helen pauses, waiting for Tony to process the rest of her voicemail.
‘You found Zoe’s shoe?’ There we go.
‘No, not Zoe’s. Someone else’s.’
The line crackles as Tony pauses. ‘You’re not making any sense, Helen.’ She can tell he’s trying not to snap at her, trying to moderate his tone and not get angry. He always gets frustrated when he doesn’t understand something.
Helen closes her eyes. She stops her frantic pacing around Zoe’s room, stops and stares at the spines of the books on her daughter’s bookshelf. ‘I’m going to send you an article. It links together the missing teenagers with Mr X—’
‘No. Mr X stopped offending years ago. He’s dead. He has to be dead. That’s why it stopped.’ Tony’s probably rubbing his eyes, running his hands through his hair, scratching his stomach through his pyjama t-shirt. She remembers the middle of the night phone calls when they were married, Tony pacing the bedroom as the sun began to peek over the horizon. Tony’s voice is frantic. ‘Killers like Mr X don’t just stop for no reason; they keep slaughtering until they’re caught, or they die. They don’t go into fucking retirement.’
Helen tries to keep a steady tone. ‘I know, but this article says he’s passing his knowledge down. And that shoe Alfie found, up at the hospital – that’s where McVitie was a patient.’
He groans down the phone. ‘McVitie? Who’s McVitie?’
‘I’ll send you the article and you can read it. There’s a series of them, on this website. In the meantime, I’ll get in the car and go—’
‘Don’t be stupid. You can’t go on a wild goose chase in the middle of the night just because someone lost their shoes in the woods.’
‘Yes, I can,’ she says, pulling open one of Zoe’s drawers and picking up a scarf, burying her nose in the smell of her daughter’s skin. Her eyes fill with tears. ‘And it’s nearly dawn. No one is doing anything to find her, not even you.’
He sucks in his breath at this but doesn’t interrupt.
‘I just need to be out there, finding her, doing something. I won’t sleep any more. I can’t sit here waiting and not trying to find her when she’s out there somewhere …’ her voice cracks. ‘I can at least look for her.’
‘Helen, it’s four in the morning. There’s nothing you can do right now. The police are on it, and they’ll be doing everything they can.’
‘It’s not ENOUGH!’ she shouts, and Alfie slinks out of the room, his tail between his legs.
Tony sighs long and hard, air crackling and reverberating along the phone line.
‘I know it’s not. She’s our baby, Helen. Mine as much as yours. And I want her found just as much as you do.’
Helen nods slowly, even though he can’t see her. She knows she’s grasping for options, desperate to do something. Even if it makes no sense.
‘The press
have reported on it. On Zoe. Janet Mitchell says her case looks like the others. The … the other missing girls.’
‘Mitchell is a hack, Hel. You can’t trust a journalist. They’ll say anything to get information for a story. She’s using you.’ Tony doesn’t sound as sure as he did last time. ‘But it can’t be Mr X again. It just can’t be. Send me that article too, I’ll have a look.’
Helen sighs with relief. ‘Thank you. I’ll send the links.’
‘Do you want to come over here?’ he asks quietly.
She stops pacing and frowns. ‘Now?’
‘Yes, now. Why not? You said it yourself: neither of us will get any more sleep tonight, and there’s no need for you to be on your own, rifling through Zoe’s stuff and torturing yourself remembering every argument you ever had with her.’
Helen lets out a short, dry ‘Ha,’ and covers her eyes with her hand as they sting with tears. ‘You know me so well.’
‘Come over here, love. Be with the rest of your family right now.’
She starts to cry again, wildly relieved at the idea of being with other people, people to talk to and who can absorb some of her ranging thoughts, instead of them bouncing around her head getting bigger and scarier in the echo chamber of her mind.
‘Thank you. I would really like that.’
‘Bring Alfie too. He shouldn’t be on his own and then you won’t have to worry about him needing to go outside.’
‘What about the kids’ allergies? And Melanie?’ Melanie has never allowed a pet in the house.
‘The kids can take an antihistamine if they get snuffly. And Melanie can deal, it’s just for one day. She loves Zoe too; she won’t make a fuss on a day like today.’
Helen nods. ‘I’ll be over in ten minutes. Thanks, Tony.’
‘Bring some biscuits to soak up all the tea we’ll be drinking.’ He starts to say goodbye but interrupts himself. ‘Mr X,’ he mumbles, almost to himself. ‘I can’t frigging believe it. I won’t believe it.’
DAY THREE
Thomas
In the bluest, scariest part of the dawn when the creeping light makes the shadows move, they find a hiding place in what looks like an old staff room: two ripped sofas, rusted lockers and most importantly, a lock on the door to secure them inside.
‘Anything?’ Maggie whispers, opening and closing lockers as slowly as she can so they don’t squeak.
He shakes his head, trying to find something, anything that might help them escape. The lockers contain nothing but old papers, mouldy clothes, some chipped mugs and an ancient tin can with no label. He pulls some papers from a locker and drops them on the floor.
The sun has started to rise, illuminating the winding corridors of the asylum’s basement. The twists and turns, dead ends and locked doors are both a panic and a relief to Thomas: a panic because they’re lost and have no idea of how to get out, and a relief because if they can’t find their way out then maybe the murderer can’t find them either. Their only goal is to hide from the bad guy.
Zoe lies on one of the sofas, her face still. He’s not sure whether she’s sleeping or unconscious. Her breathing tells him that she’s probably asleep, so he wills himself to stop worrying about her maybe dying and decides she’s okay for a bit. Now he’s got more brain power for thinking about escape.
Maggie drags a wooden chair across the room, its legs making scraping noises on the floor.
‘Stop!’ Thomas hisses, running across to her and snatching the chair. ‘Don’t do that, are you trying to get us killed?’
Maggie bites her lip.
‘What are you doing?’
She points at one of the windows. It’s around seven feet up, about as wide as Thomas’s shoulders and pretty narrow, but maybe big enough for them to climb through if they can get up there and prise it open.
He sets the chair under the window and Maggie climbs onto it, but she’s still too short to reach it properly; she certainly can’t climb high enough to push it open.
‘Here, let me try.’ He climbs up on the chair beside Maggie. He’s about five inches taller than her but it’s still too high to grip the handle and open it. ‘Okay, get down,’ he says, and they both jump to the floor.
He turns the chair around so the back of it is against the wall, and climbs up again, stepping carefully onto the top of the chair back, which he leans against the wall so it doesn’t topple. His head is now level with the window, and he can see that there’s a metal bolt which locks the window from the inside.
‘Yessssss,’ he whispers.
‘What?’ asks Maggie.
‘I think we can get out,’ he says, grabbing at the bolt. But the bolt won’t move. It’s rusted shut.
‘Shit,’ he says, enjoying the feeling of swearing like a proper grown-up for the second time. ‘It’s stuck.’
‘Shit,’ says Maggie.
‘Pass me the knife?’ He reaches down and Maggie places it in his hand. The wooden handle is smooth against his palm and it’s shaped perfectly to fit in his fist. It feels nice. He unfolds the blade and wiggles it behind the bolt, trying to loosen some of the rust so he can slide the lock. He does this all along the bolt, and it feels like it’s working because soon he can jiggle the handle.
‘Here, let me have a go,’ says Maggie, and climbs up on the chair while he’s still standing on the back.
‘No, it’s not strong enough, get down,’ he says, but it’s too late. There’s a splintering noise as the back of the chair breaks and they both tumble to the ground, a sharp pain in Thomas’s hand as he lands.
All the air escapes from his lungs and he lies on the floor for a second, thinking about how close they’d come to escape.
‘Oh, God, Tom, your hand,’ says Maggie.
He sits up and looks at his right hand. It’s covered in blood. It’s dripping everywhere and there’s a pool of it underneath him too. His vision goes fuzzy, like an old television tuned to a non-existent channel with black and white static. He takes a big breath, and another. It doesn’t hurt yet, but the knife must have sliced his palm as he fell.
Maggie runs to one of the lockers and grabs one of the old t-shirts. She pulls his arm over his head and ties his hand up tightly.
‘Keep your hand in the air and don’t move it,’ Maggie orders, and looks around the room for the next escape solution.
He lifts up the old t-shirt and stares at the gash, wide and open like a mouth, laughing at him.
‘What’s this?’ Maggie pokes at the papers with her toe, the ones Thomas pulled from the lockers earlier.
Thomas glances at it and shrugs, looking down at his injured hand. ‘Nothing useful.’
But Maggie’s not listening. She crouches down to peer at the papers. A lot of them are torn and crumpled, but a few are intact. ‘This one’s a newspaper article, about this hospital.’
Across the room, Thomas feels a flash of frustration. ‘I don’t care, Maggie. I’m trying to get us out of here. I don’t care about a stupid old newspaper.’ He tries to keep his voice quiet, but it comes out with such force that it’s almost a hiss.
She picks up the papers.
Thomas grumbles. ‘Come on, Maggie.’
‘Shut up for a second and look at this.’ She holds out the papers towards him, dust cascading from them and floating around in a shaft of morning light oozing through the dirty window.
He snatches the papers from her hands, frowning. ‘Whatever this is, I’m sure it’s less important than getting out of—’ he stops talking. ‘Woah.’
He pulls the papers close to his nose. It’s an old newspaper, stained brown with age. He can tell it’s old without even looking at the date, because there are so many words and stories crammed onto each page; newspapers now look a lot different. He checks: it’s a Lancaster Guardian from July 1984. She stands next to him, looking at it over his shoulder. ‘Right?’ she says, a touch of glee in her voice. She jabs at the photograph with her fingertip, crumpling the page.
The headline reads �
�Lune’s the Daddy?’
‘What does that mean?’
Maggie shrugs.
‘Move your finger,’ he whispers. There’s a picture of the Lancaster Lune Hospital, with a group of people smiling on a lawn in front of the building. The lawn doesn’t exist any more, swallowed by trees and weeds. The caption reads ‘Staff and patients ready for a day out at Morecambe Beach, June 1984. Unnamed patient circled.’
Maggie places her finger back on the page, over one of the faces, the one with a circle around it. It’s a girl in her mid-twenties standing next to a woman in a nurse uniform, both of them smiling like everyone else.
‘She looks like Zoe,’ Maggie whispers.
Thomas doesn’t agree, but she’s definitely familiar. Even in black and white, the nose and the hair … His stomach churns, acidic and burning. He shakes his head. ‘We know who that is, but it’s not Zoe.’
Maggie’s eyes widen as she stares at the picture. Thomas can’t take his eyes off it: she does resemble Zoe, but even in black and white, he knows who that is.
‘It’s the old woman,’ Thomas hisses.
Underneath ‘Lune’s the Daddy?’ the subtitle reads ‘Scandal as asylum patient pregnant’. And below that, in smaller letters: ‘Questions raised about supervision levels as pregnant female patient discharged early’.
‘Look at this.’ She slides her finger down the picture, towards the girl’s wrist.
The girl’s right hand is restrained, shackled to the nurse. Her left hand is resting on her pregnant stomach.
Helen
Helen drives across town in the blue-grey dawn, feeling a strange kinship with the other drivers on the roads and those out walking the streets, wondering why they’re out so early – are they going home or setting off somewhere? Have some of them had as much upheaval as her today?
