by Steve Mosby
#8: writer_at_heart
*tumbleweeds* Is it only you and me that are interested here, by the way? I’ve got an evening free tonight. I’m going to look into this some more. . .
#9: writer_at_heart
Okay, I’ve got something. Not sure what to make of it so far, but I think it’s definitely him, although it’s a bit weird. I did a search for his surname and her name, and I found some more news reports but none of them mention he was a writer. But I also found a bunch of other links too, and this is where it gets interesting and strange. Buckle yourself in, my friend. There’s a writer called J. S. Townsend, and he’s published a series of short stories online. See the link here. And look at the titles. ‘Melanie 1’. ‘Melanie 2’. So Melanie West was the woman abducted. Her husband was Jeremy Townsend. And now we have a J. S. Townsend writing stories with that name? Couldn’t be a coincidence, I thought, and when I read them, I was sure of it. Click through and see for yourself. I think we’ve found our boy.
#10: crimefan_33
Holy fucking shit! You’re totally on the money. It has to be him. I don’t know enough about the circumstances of the Red River case, but once you’ve read a couple of them, it’s obvious, isn’t it? They’re all about his wife and what might have happened to her?
#11: writer_at_heart
Yes. I haven’t read them all yet, but they all seem to start off from her going missing, and then each one is different – spinning a different story about what might have happened to her. Like he’s imagining all the different possible scenarios. But then, I guess he didn’t know, did he? I think (???) the abductions hadn’t been connected at that point, had they? Maybe they had. I’m not sure. But maybe he was just exploring all these different possibilities.
#12: crimefan_33
That’s really quite sad.
#13: writer_at_heart
It is, isn’t it? It’s very sad indeed. Maybe that’s why he published them under the initials? To keep them separate? It’s similar, so maybe it was a personal project for him, something he was compelled to do for some reason, but at the same time he didn’t really want other people to know it was him?
#14: crimefan_33
(Plus, they’re not very good, are they?)
#15: writer_at_heart
Hmmm. I don’t know about that. They’re certainly different, though!
#16: crimefan_33
Yeah, definitely that. Because WHITW was quite good, from what I remember. We all know that writers disappear for all sorts of reasons, but this is very sad. It’s like he lost everything at that point, and these are an attempt at getting some of it back, but they’re just not very good. Like he’s flailing around trying to do what he always used to do, but he lost his writing talent when he lost her.
#17: writer_at_heart
I’m beginning to wish I hadn’t started this thread . . .
#18: crimefan_33
Agreed. I think we should be circumspect here actually. It’s possible that he could read this thread at some point, and so we should be careful what we say. Possibly a bit late for that (oh for an edit function, mods. . .), but I’m not sure he would have wanted this to be made public. I think we should move on from this now. What do you think?
#19: writer_at_heart
I agree. Although the name change wasn’t too extreme, was it? Maybe it was more like ‘I’m a different person now’? But I’m sure he could have capitalised on his original success if he wanted to, and he clearly chose not to. I think we should respect that. Vote to close and lock for further comments? (I’m not sure what we’ll do if you say no!)
#20: crimefan_33
Agreed.
#21: writer_at_heart
Cool. And Jeremy, if you ever do read this: I’m really sorry for what happened to you and your wife. I only started this because I remember liking your book and was wondering what had happened to you. That’s what we do here! But all the very best, and I hope you’re okay.
#22: crimefan_33
Seconded. Lock requested.
So it seemed that Townsend had published more fiction, albeit under a slightly different name, and in what sounded like a less professional capacity: just stories posted online. Although from the discussion on the forum, there was some argument as to whether they could be considered stories at all, or even fiction.
I clicked on the link in the forum.
A moment later, a new site loaded – an anonymous BlogSpot address. The title at the top of the page read:
THE MELANIE BOOK
J. S. Townsend
I wondered why he’d changed his name. Was it like those posters had guessed: an attempt to differentiate his life now from the one prior to his wife’s disappearance? Or was it out of shame because he knew that the work was inferior, even though he still felt the urge to publish it anyway? If so, why that need?
The menu at the side of the screen listed the story titles, just as the posters had described: ‘Melanie 1’, ‘Melanie 2’, etc. Scrolling down, I saw there were fourteen of them altogether.
I clicked on the fourth one at random.
As soon as the page loaded, and I read the first line, the unease I’d been feeling about Townsend since meeting him bloomed again, larger than ever now. I remembered the Red River letters and my chest tightened.
I want to tell you a story, it began, about a girl named Melanie.
Nineteen
Sitting in his car, parked up between two different street lights from the night before, Simon Bunting prepared himself for what he was about to do. There was no fear now, helped partly by the fact that he was exceedingly tired. It had been a long twenty-four hours.
But a productive one.
He’d spent most of the last few hours working his way around the house, ticking items off his plan as he went, and occasionally – disappointingly – finding new ones. But he was as ready as he could possibly be. The house was prepared, he had disposed of anything that might incriminate him, and aside from the newspaper, which he would have to buy in the early hours tomorrow, everything he needed was in the car with him right now. When he set off from here again, he wouldn’t be going home.
He’d plotted his story carefully. Now it was time to start writing it.
He opened the laptop and loaded up the anonymous email program. There was one new message. Last night, he’d been afraid when he’d seen those two bold lines at the top of the screen, and had hesitated before opening them. Now, though, he felt completely in control, and he opened the message immediately.
I said where are you? You little shit, you runt, you nothing. You WORM. After all this time you think you can just WALK AWAY from this and go on with your life as normal? You will have some HONOUR. . .
He read the rest of it, and then forced himself to read the whole thing through again. Despite his intention to remain calm, the ferocity of the message was still startling, and he tried to approach the text as dispassionately as possible. His grammar is appalling, he told himself. But then it always had been. When he was finished, he read the email a third time, this time analysing it for additional information he might have missed. There was nothing.
Blythe was correct about needing to keep the laptop out of police hands, so at least they were superficially in agreement about that, but the animosity was otherwise clear enough. If Bunting had ever allowed himself to believe that they were partners of some kind – kindred spirits, even; that the Monster was under his control – then that illusion was well and truly shattered. The man clearly despised him.
Bunting picked up his notepad, with its columns of assets and obstacles, and considered the matter for a moment.
He wrote JOHN BLYTHE in both columns, then set it aside again and looked back at the email.
You little shit, you runt, you nothing. You WORM.
Anger flared inside him then, and he allowed it to. How dare Blythe look down on him? Blythe was a man who tortured and murdered women, for God’s sake. Bunting knew that he was none of the things
he’d been accused of. And he was much smarter than Blythe, of course. Smarter than most people. Smart enough to take control of the situation.
He’d prepared impeccably. There were still a huge number of practical considerations to be dealt with, of course, and it would be very difficult indeed. Taken together, the obstacles seemed almost insurmountable. But a story was only ever just one word after another, and that could be done. He would need a degree of luck, and there would certainly be some nervous moments ahead of him. It had been a busy day, and he had a busy night to come. But if each part of the story he was building clicked neatly into place – or even just slotted in eventually with a nudge – then it would work.
You little shit, you runt, you nothing. You WORM.
His eyes scanned down to the bottom.
Your only choice is to help me. Reply to me NOW or I will not be held responsible.
Worm, he thought.
You’ll see.
They’re all going to see.
And then, still smiling to himself in the darkness, he began to compose his reply.
Part Three
Twenty
Emma and I set off early the next day.
Just before nine o’clock in the morning, we were driving along the winding country lanes towards Moorton. The wilds around us were thick with purple heath, the grassland in the distance dyed in patches of yellows and browns. As we crested the top of a hill, the land fell away and the village appeared below us.
From a distance, it looked beautiful. The miles of land around it were dotted with farms, and in the far distance, beyond the village itself, I could see the dark spread of the woods. The river that curled across the land here was silvery and still, and the whole scene seemed misty and sleepy in the morning sun: a place that would yawn and stretch and wake up slowly at its leisure. If we’d stopped the car and got out, I doubted we’d have heard anything apart from the wind.
‘So this is where Blythe grew up,’ Emma said.
‘Yes.’
‘It seems a little incongruous, don’t you think?’
I didn’t reply. I knew what she meant, though, and as we drove into Moorton itself, that impression of incongruity became even stronger. The narrow cobbled streets were picturesque, and the shops all looked like small stone cottages, nestling between the houses. With the window down I could hear the quiet rush of the river a few streets away. The church we passed looked to have been in place for centuries. Beside it, a war memorial stood fenced off, still festooned with garlands of poppies, the red bright against the sunlit grass at the base. All in all, it seemed so peaceful that it was hard to imagine it had spawned a man like John Blythe.
But, from experience, we both knew that life didn’t work that way. Moorton might have looked tranquil, but you didn’t need terrible social conditions, economic deprivation and grim buildings to create a killer. All you needed was a closed door; all you needed was other people. While there are no absolute certainties in the formation of psychopaths, there are warning signs you find in a high percentage of their childhoods: the lack of a coherent home life; neglect; domestic or sexual abuse; household alcoholism; head injuries; petty violence; poor academic performance; animal cruelty. We knew Blythe had suffered at least some of those things. Monsters are made, not born, and the truth is that they can be made anywhere.
Today, of course, there was an additional incongruity. As we drove slowly through the centre, it was impossible to ignore the scale of the police activity in the village. Further to the sighting of Blythe at the petrol station south of here, there were now two additional scenes being investigated, both of them to the north of Moorton itself, both discovered overnight. At the first, Blythe’s vehicle had been found at a makeshift campsite down a dirt track half a mile from the nearest main road. There were the remains of an old fire and a half-eaten meal, along with marks on the ground that suggested a tent had been pitched there. The tent, along with any clothing and belongings he’d brought with him, was not present at the scene.
A search team was currently scouring the area, but the evidence suggested he’d left the site some time ago, possibly even as the news of the findings at his house had broken. At that point, he would have known that he was a wanted man and his vehicle was compromised, and he must have decided to fit as much as possible into a backpack and go on the run.
The second scene was less clear cut, but it was further north, much closer to the woods and mountains, and all the evidence so far suggested that was where he was moving to. This location was the present focus of the search, and where we were meeting DI Warren, our counterpart here in Moorton.
In the meantime, the police presence in the village itself felt overpowering. There were numerous vans and cars parked up along the roadsides, with officers ambling along the pavements in pairs, many of them armed. A house-to-house search was presently taking place, although I doubted it would yield any results. In reality, this was all for reassurance more than anything else.
‘Seems a little heavy-handed,’ I said.
‘Public relations,’ Emma replied. ‘Although I guess, for all we know, Blythe could be holed up somewhere here.’
‘No, I think you were right the first time.’
It didn’t seem like a productive use of resources to me. I thought about that dark spread of woods beyond the village, and remembered what Ferguson had said outside the incident room on the first day. I think he’s going to kill himself. Bet you. He’d probably said it just for the sake of disagreeing with me as much as anything else, but even so, I wondered if he was smarting slightly at the developments overnight. Blythe appeared to be on the run, so I had been right and he had been wrong, and I imagined that would bother a man like Ferguson. For my own part, I just felt apprehensive. We had been hunting Blythe down metaphorically for two days. Now, knowing that he was out there somewhere in front of us, we were about to start doing so literally.
I tried to weigh up how difficult that was going to be.
Although I didn’t know Blythe, I had already formed a mental picture of the man. He was big and strong – physically quite formidable. An outdoors type, certainly; I could imagine him fishing and hunting. He had grown up here in Moorton and presumably knew the countryside well, which meant he had the knowledge and endurance to live off the land. The search area was large and awkward.
At the same time, our own resources were formidable. Logistically, we would soon have more than fifty armed police officers in the vicinity, along with many other casuals. They weren’t all locals, of course; the department here had become stretched massively overnight and had drafted in units from several other areas. There were five armed response vehicles and numerous officers, including two sniper teams, on their way, along with a helicopter fitted with infrared cameras that was being readied to aid with the search of the extensive woodland.
And Blythe was only one man.
Sometimes that could work to a fugitive’s advantage, of course; it’s harder to spot a speck than something larger. But Blythe’s face was all over the news. He was presently the most wanted man in the country, and almost anyone he encountered would recognise him. His only real chance of evading capture lay in living – and staying – off the grid, but even then, if we concentrated and worked methodically, we would find him eventually.
We will get him.
I watched the village through the passenger window, imagining him somewhere close by and fighting down the urgency that came with that.
We will.
As well as the police, the media had – of course – already descended on Moorton, and I saw several news vans parked up, with crews filming on the pavement, the cameramen slowly turning, gathering establishing shots of the beautiful village around them. Even passing in the car, you could sense the excitement amongst the reporters: the feeling that something was going to play out here, and that the endgame for the Red River Killer was in sight. Every reporter would want to be there when it happened. They would cross cordons, push bou
ndaries, get in the way. In the meantime, they were busy recording footage for the endlessly rolling news channels. There would be people safe in homes across the country right now watching developments play out in real time: a real-life horror reduced to the status of the last thriller they watched on DVD.
At the far edge of the village, we reached the tail end of traffic caused by a checkpoint that had been set up. Looking out to the right, I saw the local primary school: a surprisingly large building, with a peaked roof and a spacious playground. It looked very old. I wondered if Blythe had attended there. Right now, five armed police were stationed at the various gates. More overkill; more wasted resources.
The playground was thick with parents and little boys and girls arriving for lessons. Today would be a very different day for the children, I imagined. Many of them were far too young to understand what was happening in their village, but it would certainly be something to talk about and remember. To spread ever more frightening and exaggerated stories about as the years passed. Perhaps, I thought, wherever Blythe was found would acquire a name and become a landmark on those obscure internal maps that children use to navigate their villages and towns. When we name things, we give them power. In children’s minds, the Red River Killer, and what happened to him out here, would undoubtedly become part of the village mythology.
After we had edged forward and passed the school, I glanced at the playground in the wing mirror and caught sight of two little boys running together slightly apart from the other children. They were dressed in different uniforms from the others, too, and seemed as though they didn’t belong.