‘Or his heart stops.’ Catch and throw.
‘And then his phone is turned off a few minutes later and never turns on again,’ Pip said, lowering her head so her hands could take its weight.
‘Well,’ Ravi began, ‘Luke wasn’t exactly quiet about wanting to kill Jamie, because he thinks he’s the one who catfished him. Isn’t it possible he chased Jamie to the farmhouse?’
‘If Luke was the one who hurt Jamie, I don’t think he would’ve talked to us at all, not even for nine hundred quid.’
‘Fair point,’ Ravi said. ‘But he did lie initially, could have told you about seeing Jamie when you first talked to him and Nat.’
‘Yeah, but, you know, he went out there to cheat on Nat, and Nat was sitting in the room with us. Plus, I’m guessing he prefers not to be associated with missing people, given his line of work.’
‘OK. But the words Jamie said to Luke, they have to be important somehow.’ Ravi sat up, squeezing the socks in his hands. ‘They are the key.’
‘Child broomstick? Child brown sick?’ Pip looked over at him, sceptical. ‘They don’t sound very key.’
‘Maybe Luke misheard. Or maybe they have another meaning we can’t see yet. Look them up.’ He gestured towards her laptop.
‘Look them up?’
‘It’s worth a try, Grumpus.’
‘Fine.’ Pip pressed the power button to awaken her laptop. She double-clicked on Chrome, bringing up a blank Google page. ‘OK.’
She typed in child broomstick and pressed enter. ‘Yep, as I suspected, we’ve got a lot of Halloween costumes for small witches and Quidditch players. Not very helpful.’
‘What did Jamie mean?’ Ravi wondered aloud, sock-ball back in the air. ‘Try the other one.’
‘Urgh, fine, but I’m telling you now, I’m not clicking on images for this one,’ Pip said, clearing the search bar and typing in child brown sick. She pressed enter and the top result, as expected, was a website about kids’ health, with a page titled Vomiting. ‘See, I said this was pointle—’
The word got caught halfway up her throat, stalling there as Pip’s eyes narrowed. Just below the search bar, Google was asking her: Did you mean: Child Brunswick
‘Child Brunswick.’ She said it quietly, sounding out the words on her lips. They felt familiar somehow, pushed together like that.
‘What’s that?’
Ravi slid off the bed and padded over as Pip clicked on Google’s suggestion and the page of results changed, replaced by articles from all of the large news outlets. Pip’s eyes skimmed down them.
‘Of course,’ she said, looking to Ravi, searching for the same recognition in his eyes. But his were blank. ‘Child Brunswick,’ she said, ‘that’s the name the media gave to the unnamed kid involved in the Scott Brunswick case.’
‘The what case?’ he said, reading over her shoulder.
‘Have you not listened to any of the true crime podcasts I’ve recommended?’ she said. ‘Practically all of them have covered this case, it’s one of the most notorious in the whole country. Happened, like, twenty years ago.’ She looked up at Ravi. ‘Scott Brunswick was a serial killer. A prolific one. And he made his young son, Child Brunswick, help him lure out the victims. You’ve really never heard of this?’
He shook his head.
‘Look, read about it,’ she said, clicking on one of the articles.
HOME > TRUE-CRIME > BRITAIN’S MOST INFAMOUS SERIAL KILLERS > SCOTT BRUNSWICK ‘THE MONSTER OF MARGATE’
By Oscar Stevens
Between 1998 and 1999 the town of Margate, Kent, was struck by a string of horrific murders. In the space of just thirteen months, seven teenagers disappeared: Jessica Moore age 18, Evie French age 17, Edward Harrison age 17, Megan Keller age 18, Charlotte Long age 19, Patrick Evans age 17, and Emily Nowell age 17. Their burned remains were later discovered buried along the coast, all within one mile of each other and the cause of death in each case was blunt force trauma.[1]
Emily Nowell, the final victim of The Monster of Margate, was found three weeks after her disappearance in March 1999, but it would take police a further two months to track down her killer.[2]
Police zeroed in on Scott Brunswick, a 41-year-old forklift driver who’d lived in Margate his whole life.[3] Brunswick was a close match to a police composite sketch released after an eyewitness saw a man driving late at night in the area where the bodies were later found.[4] His vehicle, a white Toyota van, also matched the witness’ description.[5] Searches of Brunswick’s home uncovered trophies he had kept from each of the victims: one of their socks.[6]
But there was very little forensic evidence tying him to the murders. [7] And when the case was brought to trial, the prosecution relied on circumstantial evidence and their key witness: Brunswick’s son, who was 10 years old at the time of the final murder.[8] Brunswick, who lived alone with his only child, had used his son in committing the murders; he directed the boy to approach potential victims in public places – a playground, a park, a public swimming pool, and a shopping centre – and to lure them away on their own, to where Brunswick was waiting in his van to abduct them.[9][10][11]The son also assisted in the disposal of the bodies.[11][12]
The trial of Scott Brunswick began in September 2001 and the son – nicknamed Child Brunswick by the press at the time – now 13, gave testimony that was essential in securing a unanimous guilty verdict.[13] Scott Brunswick was sentenced to life imprisonment. But just seven weeks into his sentence at the high-security HMP Frankland in Durham, Brunswick was beaten to death by another inmate.[14][15]
For his role in assisting the murders, Child Brunswick was charged by a juvenile court to serve a 5-year custodial sentence in a juvenile detention centre.[16] When he turned 18, a Parole Board decision recommended his release on a lifelong licence. Child Brunswick was given a new identity under a witness-protection style programme and a worldwide injunction was imposed on the media, preventing the publication of any details about Child Brunswick or his new identity.[17] The Home Secretary stated that this was because there was a risk of ‘vigilante-type retaliation against this individual if his real identity became known, because of the role he played in his father’s horrendous crimes.’ [18]
Thirty-Seven
Connor stared at them both, his eyes narrowing, darkening, creasing the skin on his freckled nose. He’d come straight here when Pip texted him that she had an urgent update; walked out of school right in the middle of a Biology lesson.
‘What are you saying?’ he asked, nervously swivelling in her desk chair.
Pip levelled her voice. ‘I’m saying that, whoever Layla Mead really is, we think she’s been looking for Child Brunswick. And it’s not just because Jamie said it to Luke. Child Brunswick was ten at the time of the final murder in March 1999, and he was thirteen in September 2001, when the trial began. That means that right now, Child Brunswick would be twenty-nine or recently thirty. Every single person Layla has spoken to, including Jamie at first because he lied about his age, has been twenty-nine turning thirty soon, or recently thirty. And she’s been asking them lots of questions. She’s trying to work out who Child Brunswick is, I’m sure of it. And for some reason, Layla thinks this person is in our town.’
‘But what has this got to do with Jamie?’ Connor asked.
‘Everything,’ Pip said. ‘I think he’s involved in this because of Layla. He goes to meet Luke Eaton, a meeting Layla had set up, and says the words “Child Brunswick” to him, looking for a reaction. A reaction Luke doesn’t give.’
‘Because he’s not Child Brunswick?’ Connor said.
‘No, I don’t think he is,’ Pip said.
‘But then –’ Ravi stepped in – ‘we know that after meeting Luke, Jamie went immediately to the abandoned farmhouse, and it’s there that whatever happened . . . happened. So, we were theorizing that maybe . . .’ He glanced at Pip. ‘Maybe he went to meet someone else. Someone else Layla thought could be Child Brunswick. And this person . . . did r
eact.’
‘Who? Who else is there?’ Connor said. ‘Daniel da Silva or Mr Clark?’
‘No.’ Pip shook her head. ‘I mean yes, those are the other two people we know Layla was talking to. But one is a police officer and the other is a teacher. Child Brunswick couldn’t be either of those things, and I think Layla would’ve worked that out when talking to them. As soon as Adam Clark told her he was a teacher, she stopped talking to him at all, wrote him off. It’s someone else.’
‘So, what does this mean?’
‘I think it means that if we find Child Brunswick,’ Pip tucked her hair behind her ears, ‘we find Jamie.’
‘This is crazy. How on earth do we do that?’ Connor said.
‘Research,’ Pip said, dragging her laptop back across the duvet and on to her lap. ‘Find out everything we can about Child Brunswick. And why Layla Mead thinks he’s here.’
‘Which isn’t easy when there’s a worldwide injunction on publishing anything about him,’ Ravi said.
She and Ravi had already started, reading through the first full page of article results, noting down any details they could find which, as yet, was nothing but his age range. Pip had printed out Scott Brunswick’s mugshot photo, but he didn’t look like anyone she recognized. He had pale white skin, stubble, light wrinkles, brown eyes and hair: he was just a man. No trace of the monster he had really been.
Pip returned to her search and Ravi to his, Connor joining in on his phone. It was another ten minutes until one of them spoke.
‘Found something,’ Ravi said, ‘in the anonymous comments on one of these old articles. Unconfirmed rumours that in December 2009, Child Brunswick was living in Devon and he revealed his true identity to an unnamed female friend. She told people, and he had to be moved across the country and given another new identity. Lots of people complaining in the replies about waste of taxpayers’ money.’
‘Write it down,’ Pip said, reading through yet another article that was essentially just a reworded version of the first one.
She was the next to find something, reading off the screen: ‘December 2014, a man from Liverpool received a suspended jail sentence of nine months after admitting to contempt of court by publishing photos claiming they were of Child Brunswick as an adult.’ She took a breath. ‘The claim was false and the attorney general expressed his concern, saying that the order in place is not just to protect Child Brunswick, but also members of the public who may be incorrectly identified as being him and consequently placed in danger.’
Not long after, Ravi got up from the bed, unbalancing her. He ran his fingers through Pip’s hair before going downstairs to make them all sandwiches.
‘Anything new?’ he said when he returned, handing plates to Pip and Connor, two bites already missing from his own sandwich.
‘Connor found something,’ Pip said, skimming down another page of results for the search term Child Brunswick Little Kilton. The first few pages of results had been articles about her from last year, the ‘child detective from Little Kilton’ who’d solved the Andie Bell case.
‘Yeah,’ Connor said, releasing his chewed-up lip to speak. ‘On a Subreddit for a podcast that covered the case, someone in the comments said they’d heard rumours of Child Brunswick living in Dartford. Posted a few years ago.’
‘Dartford?’ Ravi said, re-settling behind his laptop. ‘I was just reading a news story about a man in Dartford who committed suicide after an online mob spread false rumours that he was Child Brunswick.’
‘Oh, he’s probably who the rumours were about,’ Pip said, typing that in on her notes and returning to her search. She was now on the ninth page of results on Google, clicking on the link third from the top, a post on 4Chan where the OP briefly outlined the case, ending with the line: And Child Brunswick is out there right now, you might have walked past him and never knew it.
The comments below were varied. Most contained violent threats about what they’d like to do to Child Brunswick if they ever found him. A few people posting links to articles they’d already found and read. One commenter said in response to a particularly graphic death threat: You know he was just a small child when the murders happened, his dad forced him to help. To which another commenter had replied: he still should of been locked up for life, probably just as evil as his dad, bad seed and that – it’s in the blood.
Pip was about to hit backspace out of this particular dark corner of the internet when a comment almost at the bottom of the page caught her eye. From four months ago:
Anonymous Sat 29 Dec 11:26:53
I know where Child Brunswick is. He’s in Little Kliton – you know that town that’s been in the news loads recently where that girl solved the old Andie Bell case
Pip’s heart kicked up at the sight of it, echoing around her chest as her eyes doubled back over the reference to her. The typo in Little Kilton: that must be why this hadn’t come up sooner in the search results.
She scrolled down to read more in the thread.
Anonymous Sat 29 Dec 11:32:21
Where did you hear this?
Anonymous Sat 29 Dec 11:37:35
My mate’s cousin is in prison, Grendon Prison. Apparently his new cell mate is from that town and says he knows exactly who Child Brunswick is. Said they used to be friends and CB told him his secret a couple years ago
Anonymous Sat 29 Dec 11:39:43
Really? : )
Pip’s breath shortened, barely reaching her throat any more. She tensed and Ravi felt it, his dark eyes falling on her. Connor started to speak from the other side of the room and Pip shushed him so she could think.
Grendon Prison.
Pip knew someone at Grendon Prison. That was where Howie Bowers had been sent after pleading guilty to his drug-related charges. He started his sentence in early December. This comment had to be about him.
Which meant Howie Bowers knew exactly who Child Brunswick was. And that meant . . . wait . . . her mind stalled, peeling back the months, shedding them, searching for a hidden memory.
She closed her eyes. Focused.
And she found it.
‘Shit.’ She let the computer slide from her lap as she stood up, darting towards the desk and her phone lying on its surface.
‘What?’ Connor asked.
‘Shit, shit, shit,’ she muttered, unlocking her phone and thumbing into her photo reel. She swiped down to scroll it back, back through April, and March, and Josh’s birthday, and all the haircut photos Cara had needed her advice on, and back through January and the Reynoldses’ New Year’s Eve party, and Christmas and Winter Wonderland with her friends, and her first dinner out with Ravi, and November, and screenshots of the first news articles about her, and pictures from her three-day stay in the hospital, and the photos she’d taken of Andie Bell’s planner when she and Ravi broke into the Bell house and, oh hey, she’d never noticed Jamie’s name scribbled there in Andie’s handwriting beside a spattering of doodled stars. Back further and then she stopped.
On the 4th of October. The collection of photos she’d used as leverage to get Howie Bowers to talk to her last year. The photos he’d made her delete and she later restored, just in case. A younger Robin Caine seen handing over money to Howie in exchange for a paper bag. But that wasn’t it. It was the photos she’d taken just minutes before those.
Howie Bowers standing against the fence. Someone walking out of the shadows to meet him. Someone who handed over an envelope of money, but he wasn’t buying anything. In a beige coat and shorter brown hair than he had now. Cheeks flushed.
Stanley Forbes.
And though the figures in her photos were static, unmoving, their mouths were open and Pip could almost recall the conversation she’d overheard seven months ago.
‘This is the last time, do you hear me?’ Stanley had spat. ‘You can’t keep asking for more; I don’t have it.’
And Howie’s response had been almost too quiet to hear, but she could have sworn it was something like: ‘But if you d
on’t pay me, I will tell.’
Stanley had glared at him, replying: ‘I don’t think you would dare.’
Pip captured that very moment here, Stanley’s eyes filled with desperation and anger, closing in on Howie.
And now she knew why.
Ravi and Connor were both watching her silently as she glanced up.
‘And?’ Ravi asked.
‘I know who Child Brunswick is,’ she said. ‘He’s Stanley Forbes.’
Thirty-Eight
They sat there, silent. And Pip could hear something hiding beneath the silence, an imperceptible hum in her ears.
Nothing they’d found could disprove it.
Stanley mentioned being twenty-five in an article about house prices four years ago for the Kilton Mail, placing him right within the correct age range. He didn’t seem to have any personal social media profiles, which ticked another box. And something else Pip recalled, from last Sunday morning:
‘He doesn’t always recognize his own name. I said “Stanley” last week and he didn’t react. His colleague says he does it all the time, has selective hearing. But maybe it’s because he hasn’t had this name long, not as long as he lived with his original name.’
And they’d agreed; there were too many signs, too many coincidences for it not to be true. Stanley Forbes was Child Brunswick. He’d told his friend, Howie Bowers, who then turned on him, used the secret to extort money from him. Howie told his new cell mate, who told his cousin, who told his friend, who then put the rumour on the internet. And that’s how Layla Mead, whoever she was, whatever she wanted, found out that Child Brunswick was living in Little Kilton.
‘So, what does this mean?’ Connor said, opening a tear through the thickening silence.
‘If Layla had narrowed her Child Brunswick suspects down to two,’ Ravi said, talking with his fingers, ‘and sent Jamie to confront them both that night, that means Stanley was the one Jamie met at the farmhouse where he disappeared. Meaning . . .’
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