Down to the Woods

by M. J. Arlidge

  Hudson shot a look at the name tagged to the photo – ‘Hellmanned2008’ – then turned to DC Reid. The latter read his confusion.

  ‘It’s Dean Clarke’s online alias, a bit of word play on Helmand. He served there from 2007 to 2010.’

  ‘Right … Where did you come across him?’

  ‘Lots of places, he posts quite regularly. Mostly on weapons sites and survivalist forums. It’s a lot of beefed-up guys bragging to each other about how tough they are, how they would be the only ones left standing if society collapsed. It’s all pretty homoerotic, if you ask me.’

  Hudson let that one go – he was still getting a handle on DC Reid’s unusual sense of humour.

  ‘He also contributes to several forums, plus he has his own website.’

  The welcome page for Lastmanstanding.co.uk now filled the screen. It featured a close-up of Clarke’s piercing, emerald eyes, framed by darkness.

  ‘The welcoming image is designed to intimidate, I guess. The rest are fairly standard shots to excite military obsessives and muscle worshippers.’

  Reid pulled up the gallery shots, some of which featured Clarke stripped to the waist, his bulging muscles and tattoos on display. Hudson let his eyes run over the latter, most of which were military in character.

  ‘We’re sure he was in the army?’ Hudson asked, surprised.

  ‘He says he was in the Special Forces and claims to have over a dozen service kills to his name. He goes into quite a lot of detail about those – his use of automatic weapons, knives, his bare hands on one occasion …’

  Hudson’s gaze fell onto Clarke’s meaty palms, which seemed a giant’s in comparison to his.

  ‘He also talks a fair deal about what will happen when the walls come tumbling down. How he and others like him will need to be ready. My guess is he’s been watching too much Walking Dead.’

  ‘Does he have many followers? Who reads this stuff?’

  ‘It’s fairly popular. Some ex-soldiers of course, but it’s mostly teenage boys and young men who are angry with the world. Some of his followers sail pretty close to the wind, condoning racist killings in America, sending death threats to politicians and celebrities. It’s a fairly toxic bunch, to be honest, and I think I’ve had my fill for one day, so …’

  Rising, Reid gestured to Hudson to take his seat. Thanking his colleague, Hudson continued to scroll, pulling up a picture of Clarke in full battledress, right down to the camouflage gear, flak jacket and blackened face. Staring at this disquieting, aggressive image, Hudson found himself more and more intrigued by Dean Clarke. This was a young man who used to have purpose and prestige, but was now working for his father in a low-rent junkyard. He was a practised killer, living locally, full of anger, suspicion and hostility. An elusive figure too, with a keen interest in weapons, regularly disappearing for night-time excursions. Was it possible that he was their man? That the unusual weapons used to hunt down Tom Campbell and Lauren Scott could have been fashioned from the discarded metal that surrounded him at work?

  It was an intriguing possibility and one which Hudson was determined to run to ground. Reid and the others could go – he would remain where he was. Now that he finally had a scent, there was no way he was abandoning the hunt.

  65

  His eyes never left him, but he said nothing.

  Terry Clarke sat opposite his son, who was devouring his dinner with an intensity that was unpleasant to behold. Since his wife passed away, Terry often ate on site, a stock of ready meals on hand. Occasionally, Dean joined him, but he wasn’t much of a companion, eating and leaving as quickly as he could. These brief encounters made Terry feel strange – it was depressing how little he knew his son these days, how lifeless their shared dinners were, yet he was loath to give them up. They reminded him of happier times, when the three of them used to eat together in the family home. He had promised his late wife, Nancy, that he would continue to keep an eye on their errant son and it was not a pledge he intended to break.

  ‘Had the police round here earlier …’ he said, pushing his plate away from him.

  Dean’s fork froze momentarily, then he resumed eating, consuming a couple more mouthfuls, before grunting a response:

  ‘And?’

  ‘They were asking about you. About your vehicle.’

  Another brief pause.

  ‘What they asking for?’

  ‘You tell me.’

  His son plunged a final forkful into his mouth. He chewed slowly, before eventually replying:

  ‘Nothing to tell.’

  ‘Then why did they come? We’ve never had the police around here before –’

  ‘Right upstanding citizen, aren’t you?’

  His son’s tone was mocking.

  ‘I’ve cut corners,’ Terry replied, irritated. ‘But I have never broken the law.’

  ‘Keep telling yourself that.’

  Shaking his head, Dean rose.

  ‘Where you going? We’re not finished yet.’

  ‘Yes, we are.’

  Dean was on the move and Terry was quickly after him. Haring across the room, he grabbed his son by the shoulder, spinning him around.

  ‘What’s going on, boy? What you got yourself into?’

  Anger flared in Dean’s eyes. Unnerved, Terry took a step back, but the anger suddenly dissipated. To be replaced with something worse – disdain.

  ‘Don’t ever lay a hand on me again.’

  ‘I just want to know what’s going on. If you’re in trouble, I can help. Your mother would have wanted that.’

  ‘There’s no trouble.’

  ‘Then why did they come here? What’s in that vehicle?’

  Dean’s hand shot out, grabbing him by the throat, and Terry now felt himself spinning. Half a second later, he slammed into the wall, the breath knocked from him. Stunned, he blinked wildly, as Dean moved in close.

  ‘Be careful, old man. Be very careful.’

  ‘I … I don’t mean to pry.’

  But Dean held a finger to his lips, silencing him.

  ‘And stay out of my business.’

  It was not what his son said that unnerved him, though that was bad enough. It was the way he said it. Cold, detached, steely.

  ‘Of course … I just worry ab—’

  He didn’t get to finish, his son flinging him roughly to the floor and stalking from the room. Terry watched him go, his heart pounding, at a loss to explain what had just happened. He had known for a long time that his son was aggressive, troubled, unpredictable, but he had never felt personally threatened by him. Had his wife’s recent death unhinged his son in some way? Had he finally lost him?

  Terry Clarke had felt many emotions over the years – regret, sadness and confusion chief among them. But tonight, for the first time, he felt scared.

  66

  Helen stared at the fragile face, searching for answers. The photo of Lauren Scott was a recent one and seemed to capture a moment in time. You could read the trauma, the neglect in her features – the deep lines under her eyes, the stained teeth, the thinning hair – but also a sparkle of hope in her expression, a sense that life could be about to get better. How tragic this photo seemed now.

  Helen had retreated to her office. Joseph Hudson was the only other soul present, but for once he seemed utterly absorbed in his work, so Helen took his lead, poring over the details of Lauren Scott’s life. The pressure for progress was growing. Simmons had handled the press conference adroitly, but the questioning – about the nature of the attacks, the lack of leads, the competence of the team – was aggressive and sustained. Simmons had worked hard to reassure the assembled journalists, while still withholding some of the more unpleasant details of the attacks, but the sense of rising panic was unmistakable, both in the station and in the wider city.

  Why? Why had these two innocent people been attacked? This was what everyone wanted to know, but still Helen couldn’t fathom it. There had to be a clear motive, some obvious connection between the two,
but, if so, it was hard to discern. They had both been born in Southampton, but other than that there seemed no overlaps. There was a possible drugs link, but in truth even this seemed tenuous. Tom Campbell had one possession charge from his teenage years, a lucky escape given he had enough on him to warrant an intent-to-supply charge, but this paled into insignificance compared to Lauren Scott’s history of offences. Lauren had fallen off the straight and narrow early in life, while Tom Campbell seemed the very definition of it – sober, hard-working, successful.

  And yet … was it really possible they had been targeted at random? This wasn’t a drive-by or chance encounter. Their abduction and murder had been premeditated, calculating, precise. Having been spirited away from their tents, they had been driven to remote parts of the forest, where they could be hunted down without fear of detection or interruption. These murders had been well planned and efficiently executed, without a single clue as to the killer’s identity. The local press, Emilia Garanita in particular, might be portraying the perpetrator as some kind of maniac, but in reality he was anything but. The killer knew exactly what he was doing and was adept, even professional, at it. Which made Helen feel that there had to be a connection between the victims, a reason as to why they were selected.

  The perpetrator was taking great risks, abducting his or her victims while they slept next to their partners, in crowded campsites, in peak tourist season. Furthermore, the victims weren’t swiftly dispatched – they were let go, given a chance to flee. The odds were against them, but still it was an incredibly risky game to play if the perpetrator genuinely had no interest in the identity of his victims. There were easier ways to isolate and abduct victims if it was purely a love of hunting, the thrill of the chase, that was driving these attacks.

  Frustrated, Helen tossed the photo of Scott aside, picking up a company portrait of Tom Campbell instead. She took in his smooth skin, his confident gaze. At first, Helen had thought Nathaniel Martin had targeted Campbell because of his crimes against the forest, because of his connection to Nexus. This remained an active line of enquiry, but in truth there seemed little reason for Martin to target Lauren Scott. She didn’t particularly like camping, seldom visited the forest and, as Martin was already being hunted by police search teams, would he really have taken such a risk, coming out into the open to strike again? It was possible, of course, but until the search teams smoked him out, they wouldn’t know for certain.

  Helen felt sure there must be a connection between Campbell and Scott, a reason why they were singled out for special treatment, but it remained hidden. She had pored over the details of their lives and found nothing, which made her now wonder if the connection might lie elsewhere. This was not something Helen had properly considered before, but picking up a holiday snap of Lauren and her boyfriend Matteo on a sunny Spanish beach, she wondered now if she had been foolish to overlook this possibility. The victims had been terrified and brutalized, almost beyond imagination, but memories of Melanie Walton’s shock, of Matteo Dominici’s distress now came back to her. Their suffering would be less acute than their partner’s initially, but would be much longer lasting. They would carry the awful images of what had happened to their loved ones – hunted down and left to bleed out – for the rest of their lives. The after-effects of this kind of trauma, laced no doubt with survivor guilt, could be profound, could even drive people to suicide. Was it possible then that Walton and Dominici were the link?

  They had scant information on their lives so far, but they would have to remedy that tomorrow. First thing, they would burrow deep into their pasts, seeing if there were any crimes or misdemeanours, any hidden links, that might cast a new light on these baffling murders.

  In the meantime, they would continue to flounder in the darkness, searching for a killer who refused to be found.

  67

  He plunged deeper and deeper into the darkness, ever more alarmed by what he was seeing. Joseph Hudson hadn’t moved since his colleagues left, his cold coffee sitting untouched in front of him, as he climbed inside Dean Clarke’s world. Having exhausted Clarke’s mainstream offerings online – bored now by his citations, medals and service kills – he had taken a walk on the wild side, using one of the team’s Tor browsers to access the dark web.

  In a previous posting, Hudson had spent eighteen months seeking out paedophiles, arms dealers and drugs gangs in its shadowy recesses. All manner of depravity and criminality lurked within and he knew he had to be focused to find what he was looking for. He searched first for weapons-dealing forums, concentrating on those which catered for exotic tastes – sites that sold samurai swords, studded maces, crossbows and the like. Twenty minutes’ surfing yielded little, apart from a growing disquiet about the number of whack jobs in the world, but eventually he stumbled on Clarke. His online moniker was slightly different here – ‘2Helmandback’ – but the shadowy close-up of his masked face was a replica of his online branding. Perhaps Clarke felt his piercing eyes were his best feature.

  Clarke was a regular visitor to the dark web, making frequent contact with other weapons enthusiasts to discuss, purchase or trade weapons. Their exchanges were conducted openly, without codenames or subterfuge, the various participants talking at length about their need for – and the performance of – the weapons they were seeking. Clarke was more active than most, a serial trader in all manner of knives, swords and bows … there seemed no end to his interest or enthusiasm. By Hudson’s estimate, he must have a small arsenal of weapons, something he was evidently very proud of. In a photo posted three weeks ago, Clarke could be seen licking the blade of a twelve-inch bullet knife, his eyes wide with excitement.

  Many of these posts had links to other offline sites and these were even more disturbing. Hudson now found himself thrust into the dark world of military-themed torture porn, scrolling through posts featuring footage of war zones, battlefields and besieged cities. Some were decades old – Hudson was particularly chilled by footage of inmates at Auschwitz being abused by their SS guards – but most featured the recent conflicts in the Middle East. Predictably, the Allies were the good guys and the enemy – uniformly labelled ‘ragheads’ – were the victims. There were images of snipers chalking up kills, two US Navy Seals emptying their magazines into a grounded combatant, even a proud British infantryman standing above the body of a teenage girl. Worst of all were the pictures of those unlucky combatants who had been tortured for information and then killed – one young man hung upside down, while his captors posed and laughed next to him.

  Dean Clarke was a regular contributor, sharing and commenting on the disturbing images. His racism was clear, as was his thirst for blood. His pride was also evident, Clarke going to great lengths to describe his own experience in this field, detailing the throats he’d slit, the insurgents he’d gunned down while at prayer. Nothing seemed too base for Clarke, nothing off limits – in his world it was dog eat dog, with no exceptions for age, gender or circumstance.

  Throughout all of his postings, Clarke was keen to portray himself as a man of action, a warrior. It was an image decidedly at odds with his daily existence, working in the scrapyard under the watchful gaze of his father, and it made Hudson think. What was the relationship like between the two? Why was Terry Clarke so worried about his son? And why was Dean Clarke so angry?

  It was getting late now and Hudson knew it was time to go home, but somehow he felt compelled to stay. He couldn’t take his eyes off Clarke – his postings, his posturing – and even now his gaze was drawn to his latest offering on the ModernWarrior forum. It was a restricted site used by men with bloodlust in their eyes, many brandishing weapons they claimed to have used. Clarke’s latest picture was newly added and it stopped Hudson in his tracks.

  Flanked by a dark background, Clarke stood in full camouflage gear, his emerald eyes just visible through a black balaclava. He was in battle pose, arms raised and readied, his crossbow pointing directly at the camera.

  68

  It was f
irst light, but the forest was alive with activity. Helen tramped through the thick brush, the dew clinging to her boots, aiming for the search officers huddled together in the clearing. She had received the call just after 6 a.m. and had raced across town.

  ‘Can we clear the scene, please?’

  The team reacted, parting to allow Helen through. They had resumed their search for Nathaniel Martin bright and early, but had not ventured far off the beaten path when they stumbled on the body of a pony, lying discarded and forgotten in the brush. As with the first horse, the beast had been laid low by human hand, five crossbow bolts jutting from its flank.

  As the officers drifted away, Helen crouched down by the corpse. This was their second such discovery, but there was no doubting that this pony had been killed first. It was already in an advanced state of decomposition, the stench of decay strong. Maggots riddled the body, a significant part of which had been stripped to the bone by other forest dwellers. Both of the unfortunate creature’s eyes had been plucked out, giving the horse a sinister, even demonic air.

  Were there other ponies lying undiscovered in the forest? Or was this the first? If so, it was evidence of the perpetrator’s methodical build-up to his crimes. The beast Helen had chanced upon had been efficiently dispatched, downed by three well-aimed bolts. This pony had suffered more – five bolts this time, only three of which could have inflicted a fatal blow, the other two being lodged in its back and rear leg respectively.

  Staring at the corpse, Helen wondered if this was by accident or design. Were the errant shots the ones that slowed the beast, before it was dispatched? Were they just badly aimed? Or did this random scattering of shots signify something else? To Helen, it looked very much like overkill, as if someone had enjoyed themselves, loading and firing five times, unleashing the final bolts even after the horse was dead perhaps. Part of her hoped this killing denoted an amateurish beginning, but another part feared this was the work of someone with a taste for death.