Fifty-Nine
King shivered. A muffled voice from behind the microphone spoke.
‘Do it.’
King didn’t respond.
‘DO IT.’ Louder.
King flinched so badly the chair he was sitting in jerked. ‘OK, OK,’ he said. Quickly, wanting to reassure for fear of reprisal, like a child might. His head shook, his voice cracked and dry.
‘I am Martin King. I work… worked at Ryegrove Hospital, a medium and low secure unit, part of the North Bristol Mental Health Trust. In 1999, we admitted a girl by the name of Miranda Dorell. She was very disturbed, diagnosed with schizo-affective disorder, resistant to treatment. To accepting any form of treatment. Eventually, she began to respond. It isn’t unusual for such patients, bipolar patients with schizophrenic tendencies, to avoid treating their bipolar disease. They yo-yo. Miranda Dorell did not want to be at Ryegrove, but she’d been sectioned from the courts. She had a brother. They were very close. I might even say pathologically close.’
Something changed in King’s expression then. It might even have been a rueful smile dragged up by a fleeting memory.
‘She was attractive. The sort of looks that turned heads, and she was very aware of that fact. She flirted outrageously with some of the other inmates. We, as staff, were all on our guard, as we always were with manipulative young women. The unit was going through renovations at the time. It was difficult, sometimes, to keep track of exactly what was going on with a new perimeter fence, closure of old buildings, construction of newer ones.’ King hesitated, looked up again at the person behind the camera, dropped his eyes and continued.
‘It’s no excuse for what happened, I know. One evening, Miranda wanted to talk. We arranged to walk in the garden. The two of us. She said she liked to look at the railway line, see the trains passing. I agreed. It was summer, and I said we’d be out for twenty minutes. We were out for fifty and if I could take that fifty minutes back from my life I would…’ King blew air out of his mouth, as if there was a lit candle in front of him he was trying to extinguish. But all he was doing was composing himself before continuing. ‘There was a spot near the fence next to some woods where you could to see the railway. When we got there, she became very excited. She thought she’d seen a rabbit in the woods and ran in after it. I followed. But it wasn’t a rabbit in the woods. It was two men. One of them was her brother. I’d met him on visits’ King shook his head. ‘Joshua Dorell was… is a very sick person. Sick in all senses of the word. I am certain he has a mental disorder, but he is also high-functioning. An intelligent mind behind a very dark, sociopathic persona. The other man, Krastev, had a shotgun. A sawn-off, stubby thing. They made me do things… with Miranda. She was a willing accomplice. Insurance, Joshua Dorell called it. They took photographs of me naked with her. But I swear it was at gunpoint, I swear it. They wanted me to get Miranda released and said that if I didn’t, they’d show the photographs to the press and my wife. I had young children—’
A noise, sudden and very loud, erupted on the video. Something metallic being banged down on a hard surface. It made Anna jump. It made King almost fall backwards in the chair he was tied to.
‘Stop lying,’ said a voice in a tooth-grinding growl. ‘You slimy shit. You weren’t forced into anything and you know it. Either tell me the truth now or tell me with a knife between your pathetic coward’s ribs.’
King’s eyes were round, white-rimmed orbs, locked on to something at about waist level off-camera. About the level someone might hold a knife.
‘All right, all right!’ King’s protestations were shrill and desperate. ‘They didn’t make me do anything. I had sex with Miranda. She was very physical. She did all the running. Her brother…’ King shook his head. ‘They weren’t normal. They were… are unique. A sibling folie à deux. They shared everything. Had no empathy. I was fascinated by them, I admit that. But I swear I didn’t know what they were planning that night.’ King’s eyes dropped, and when he looked up again, it was as if they had sunk deeper into his face.
‘They took me to the fence. They were laughing. It was like a show to them. Joshua had brought the circus to his sister. Krastev disappeared into the woods through the tunnel they’d built. When he got to the other side of the fence, he walked across to the railway line. There was someone else there. Smaller, a boy. He argued with Krastev, tried to get away, but he was already tied and easily overpowered.’ King’s voice dropped low. ‘I saw the train coming. Saw its lights. It wasn’t dark, but dusk was falling. I watched from inside the fence as Krastev dragged the boy out from behind a stack of sleepers and threw him under the train.’ King’s breathing became suddenly ragged. Sucking in air as if he’d been running.
‘I watched the Dorells as it happened. I watched them smile, watched them hold hands as the train smashed into that poor kid. Joshua Dorell said that what I’d seen made me special. That they’d given a tormented soul a release. Then he said I was going to be a part of it. That I already was.’
King’s head fell. He was crying. It went on for thirty seconds before a muffled growl was followed by a plastic bottle full of water hitting King in the chest, thrown by the person controlling the camera. King jerked up, fear overtaking his self-pity again in a flash. He sucked in another lungful of air, composed himself and spoke.
‘I fixed it for Miranda Dorell to get an early release. I lied, cajoled colleagues. Got her out after a few more months. I never went for a walk with her again. But on the night this happened I was in a state. A real state. I couldn’t go home. I didn’t know what to do.’ He paused, looking into the camera as if asking for understanding.
‘You could have reported it, you shit,’ Dawes muttered. But King couldn’t hear him.
‘I was in my office when Alison Johnson came to see me. She was concerned about another patient. Colin Norcott. He claimed to have seen something at the fence. Saw people staring out at the railway line. Thought he’d seen something happen there. Alison was worried.’
King’s mouth made ugly shapes, as if he was disgusted at hearing himself speak these words. ‘I lied to her. I said that I’d seen something as well and that I was about to go and investigate, drive around to the railway line in case an animal had been injured. Alison said she’d come with me. She had a thing about animals. I had Dorell’s contact number. He wanted constant updates on his sister’s progress. Before we left Ryegrove that night, I sent him a message.
‘There was blood all over the tracks. Then Alison found a severed hand. She became hysterical, wanted to call the police. I tried to stop her, to explain. That’s when Krastev came out of the bushes.’ King’s voice was calm now. His delivery dead. ‘He didn’t hesitate. He knocked her down. Hit her twice on the head, then strangled her. God help me, I… I helped him bury her. I went to see Norcott. I told him he’d been seeing things. That Alison had gone away and if he told anyone else, they’d go away, too. I modified his treatment so his symptoms were not completely controlled. His own psychopathy took care of the rest. By the time of his release he’d suppressed everything. Buried it silently inside. Or so I thought. But then the police found the bodies by the railway tracks. Norcott was always a little unstable. He was following Beth Farlow, a nurse he’d become attached to. When he saw reports of the bodies being discovered near the tracks, it opened the old wound. He took the discovery as a sign that he could now tell someone what he’d really seen at the fence that night all those years ago. Beth told me she’d seen him. Signs of him. I went to her house, saw Norcott go in. I had to do something. I’d managed to hide everything so well… I… I knocked on Beth’s door, pretended I was there to help.’ King hesitated, licked his dry lips before going on. ‘Norcott attacked me.’
Behind Anna, Dawes reared up. ‘You bloody snake.’
King continued, ‘He was wild. As wild as he was when he killed his neighbours. I’ve told the police the rest. I told them—’
More muffled sounds off-camera. Not easy to make out. But Anna thought she heard a few words she recognised. ‘Fucking liar’ and ‘squid’.
King inhaled and then exhaled. Juddering noises. His voice rose again, became urgent.
‘Dorell, Joshua Dorell, maybe Miranda too, used me to play their games. I know he used others; we were all part of the Black Squid network. The Dorells got their claws in you and they’d never let go. They made me an administrator. Made me lead these disturbed kids down a path of “deliverance”. That was Dorell’s choice of words. I did it. I’m not sure how many times I succeeded.’
King let his head drop.
‘Krastev used to confirm the deaths. Though from what I saw on the railway tracks that night, I suspect he was instrumental. But after a couple of years he disappeared. Later, Dorell said we ought to make the players use their own phones, or drones even, to film their suicides.’
More voices off camera. King looked up.
‘Sorry? Of course I’m sorry. I’m sorry for it all. But you don’t know what it’s like. You have no idea what it’s like to have your family threatened—’
Sounds of movement, furniture scraping, the camera jolting, tilting on its side to show a different wall. Shouts, yells, a scream. Then the camera upright again, King bleeding from his nose, snivelling, staring back.
‘My name is Martin King. I colluded in the killing of Alison Johnson. I am an administrator of the Black Squid. And I am sorry.’
A momentary edit, the screen blank and then a piece of paper. A line of numbers – GPS coordinates – and then a face, balaclava covering it, glasses beneath.
A new voice. Muffled through the covering. But Anna knew who it belonged to without any need of confirmation when it spoke.
‘Come and get this bastard, Anna. He wanted you to see him as a victim. I reckon his knock on the head was self-inflicted. I went for him because he was the only one who knew all the players. The Dorells, Norcott, Alison Johnson and your missing nurse. He’s lying about her, too, by the way. And he’s lying about being made to do the things he’s done. He and the other Black Squid fuckers do it because they get a sick kick out of it. But I don’t trust myself. If I make him talk any more, I don’t trust myself to stop. So I’ve stuffed a gag in his filthy mouth. He’s all yours. You know he’s in this up to his lying neck. Find something to put him away with.’ Shaw held up a phone. ‘This is his. I need it for a while. I’ll post it back to you when I’m done.’
The video stopped.
Anna and Dawes sat in silence, looking at each other.
‘Jesus,’ Dawes muttered eventually. ‘It was him, wasn’t it? In the balaclava. Hector bloody Shaw.’
Anna opened up Google Maps and punched the coordinates into the search box. The map that came up was of Wiltshire. Anna recognised Warminster. But the map was centred on a place called Imber. Anna zoomed in towards lots of empty space and a few buildings.
‘Doesn’t look like there’s much there.’
‘There isn’t,’ said Dawes. ‘Not now. But there used to be a village there. Farmhouses, pubs, a church. I think the church is still used, but the rest has been abandoned thanks to the MOD. It’s on their training grounds on Salisbury Plain.’
‘How do you know that?’ Anna asked.
‘Did a missing person search there once. Teenager. Never found anything. But I walked through it. It’s a bloody creepy spot.’
Anna got up. ‘So, what are we waiting for?’
‘Might be a trap.’
Anna shook her head. ‘Shaw doesn’t want to harm me. He never has. He wants whoever killed his daughter and it looks like he’s just caught one of the big fish.’
‘The confession might not be worth much,’ Dawes said. ‘It’s obviously under duress.’
Anna nodded. ‘You’re forgetting Beth Farlow. That’s abduction and attempted manslaughter right there. Never mind what he did to Norcott.’
Dawes collected the mugs and Anna followed him to the kitchen, where he was washing up.
‘You’re well trained,’ she said.
Dawes was looking out of the window into Anna’s back garden. There was nothing there but dripping bushes and wet furniture. ‘Does Lexi bite?’ he asked.
‘No.’
He upturned their cups and placed them on the drainer. When he turned his face towards Anna, she read a volcanic anger dancing behind his eyes. ‘Pity. We could have sent her in to find King first.’