—‘Saved’ her? That doesn’t sound good.
—It doesn’t does it? Neither of them could tell their mam cos they wasn’t allowed boyfriends or nowt like that. I dunno if they was even allowed that phone. That phone they had it was shared, you know? They bought it with their pocket money.
—So how did Arla know the messages were for Alice without looking?
—Easy. It was cos Arla didn’t get no messages. That makes me feel proper sad for her, that. Proper sad.
Suddenly I’m starting to put something together in my mind. Maybe it’s my nature, or maybe it’s because the crime this series is about is bereft of a solid motive, but it feels almost disappointing to conclude that Arla Macleod killed her family because she was suffering from psychosis – that she was simply mentally ill. The reason I created this series was to examine that particular bone of contention – the one that resulted in Arla’s supposedly ‘lenient’ sentence in Elmtree Manor, and the subsequent uproar.
If Arla’s mental health is not the whole story, is there something else – something about this boyfriend of Alice’s that the Macleod sisters were hiding? They certainly hid him from their parents. Did this shadowy character somehow have something to do with what Arla did to her family all those years later? It’s a sliver – barely anything – but I know that it hasn’t been mentioned, to my knowledge, during any of the legal and investigative proceedings around the Macleod Massacre.
Then there’s the question of what happened to Arla on the holiday to Cornwall. That holiday keeps coming up, and now we know Arla claims that she was taken advantage of then.
—I suppose I have to ask, finally, why you think Arla did it? To her family. The judge passed a verdict of diminished responsibility. Where do you stand on that?
—It’s hard. I understand why folk were angry.
But, despite everything, Arla was simply just … just a bit weird. That’s why I reckon all this Skexxixx stuff was blown up by the press. I trusted Arla, you know? And the hardest thing about all this is, sometimes I feel responsible in some way. I feel that I should have talked to her a bit more, been a better friend. But in another sense I soothe myself by thinking this could have just happened without any intervention from me, like I didn’t have any impact on her life whatsoever, like I meant nothing.
—Why her family, though? Was it really that bad at home do you think?
—Like I said, it’s odd, but I never knew. She never said and I was certainly never welcome there. This is all … this whole thing is making me feel like a bad person, a bad friend.
—I’m sorry about that.
—It’s not your fault. If it’s anyone’s, it’s mine. I wonder if anyone knew what was going on in her head? Anyone at all?
I begin to think about wrapping things up but I get the sense that Paulette’s still holding back. I take my time and stay quiet and eventually she says something – it’s quiet and she seems self-conscious.
—Can I tell you something? Something Arla said that … that just freaked me out a bit once?
—Of course, please do.
—It was … it was years later, in college. We were sat down at the table and I plucked up the courage to ask if there was anything wrong. She’d been quiet all day. Listless. That probably sounds daft doesn’t it? We were mates, and everything, so it shouldn’t have been difficult. But Arla never … You could never have those sorts of conversations with her; she’d clam up, start acting up, like a kid. But that day … that day it just felt right.
—What did she say?
—Not a lot … not a lot, just something about ‘bad memories’. I sort of hinted about, you know, what happened to her in Cornwall, and she … I was tense, I was expecting her to kick off … but she just nodded. She just nodded and then didn’t say anything else.
Then, after a minute she sort of half whispered something to me. She said, ‘Don’t tell no one … don’t tell…’ And I knew what she meant. I knew she were talking about what had happened to her with those lads in Cornwall. She didn’t need to say it out loud. But her voice when she said it was all raspy and I could feel all the hairs on my arms sort of rise up.
I said I wouldn’t, I promised. I said no way, and she was quiet for a bit. Then she said, ‘If you tell … if you tell anyone, they’ll come for you…’
I got a little flicker of fear then. I asked her what she was on about, who she was on about. Surely some lads from down south wouldn’t come all the way up here? Arla was just dead quiet for ages and then she whispered something that proper shit me up.
—What was it?
—She said something about the ‘black-eyed kids’. She said, ‘Don’t let them in, no matter what they say, no matter how much they beg. Whatever you do, don’t let them in…’
That was it. That was all she said. And it’s shameful to say it, but in that moment I was scared of her. Imagine – just because of that.
—Did Arla ever speak of the black-eyed kids at any other time – before or after that day?
—Not that I remember. She stopped all that sort of stuff after school – that Daruma-san game thing in the boiler room was the last really odd thing she did. That comment, though … I knew in my heart that it wasn’t real. It was just some Skexxixx lyrics or something like that. But it really scared me, it really did.
Maybe if I had asked her more, if I’d pressed her, then things could have been different … I don’t know…
We leave the interview, unfortunately, on this sad and uncertain note.
Paulette poses a good question here: Did anyone really know Arla Macleod? The picture of her painted by the media seems still very different to the one I’m getting through these interviews. From Paulette’s account, Arla seemed more troubled and sad than dangerous and angry. But what to make of the way she treated Deborah Masterson? I am convinced that this could have been an early sign of Arla’s latent psychosis.
I find myself looking back at the link between Paulette’s account of the Daruma-san game and something Mr Marsh, the Saint Theresa’s caretaker, said to me. My phone conversation with him was a few weeks ago so I google Mr Marsh’s full name. Just in case there’s anything relevant.
What I find shocks me.
The first hit is a news story about the suicide of a certain Mr Marsh, not in Stanwel but in a place with the same area code as the man I spoke to. The article mentions, and links to, a video that appears to be an online ‘sting’ by a group of paedophile hunters.
For those unfamiliar with the concept, online paedophile hunters are a relatively new phenomenon, which has come to prominence in the last few years. Their MO is to trawl online social-media platforms, posing as children – a lure for the twisted individuals who then arrange to meet them for sex. It’s disturbing how little effort the hunters have to make. Many hunter groups say that they do not have the time or resources to deal with the sheer volume of attention their decoy accounts receive. These men (it is nearly always men) are lured to meet the decoy, usually in a public place, such as a train station, and are then confronted on camera by the ‘hunter’ group and their details given to the police. Many, many people have been put away due to these groups and their work. While still unregulated, it is a necessary service. It is as simple as that.
I watch the video. It begins with the camera pointing down to a pavement and a voice telling the viewers that this is being broadcast on Facebook live. As the camera position rises, we see it’s not in a train station, but at the front door of a house. A hand knocks on the door which is opened by a red-faced pensioner.
The rest of the video is self-explanatory: the hunter group tell the man what he has done and show him printed records of the chat log between him and the decoy. The man, like most who are caught in this way, pleads his innocence throughout, despite being shown the evidence which he claims he’s never seen. The video is disturbing to watch and effectively questions your morals and your sense of justice. If Mr Marsh is guilty, then he has waived his right to
dignity and privacy – in my book anyway. If he’s not guilty, then … well … I don’t know…
Of course, this sort of thing attracts controversy, with some saying these groups are nothing more than vigilantes. It poses the question ‘what if they’re wrong?’ But it seems, with the evidence the hunter groups collate, unlikely they are.
The news article below the video explains how, not long after the sting, Mr Marsh apparently hanged himself, after being questioned but not charged by the police.
Seeing this story is obviously shocking and poses many questions. It is even more disturbing when I look at some of the messages on my phone. One of them chills me to my very core. It makes me call into question whether Mr Marsh is guilty at all.
From: [Unknown number]
U have seen what we can do :)
Now back off.
After this episode airs, the privacy settings on my social-media accounts will already have been upped, my earlier defiance having dissolved somewhat. However, I will not be bullied or intimidated and stop this series midway through. I feel the weight of the Macleod family on my shoulders. If some of the things that I’ve discovered had been out there before, then I think lots of people would have been asking some big questions about the case and Arla’s conviction.
I want to break down a little bit of what we know so far.
Arla and Alice Macleod went on holiday to a hotel in Cornwall when they were teenagers.
At some point on this holiday, Arla alleges that some older boys got her drunk and took advantage of her. It is sometime before or after this incident that Arla also reports her first sighting of the ‘black-eyed kids’.
Back in school after that summer, Arla’s behaviour changes: there are episodes of violence and the incident in the boiler room.
This changes again after school and in college, when she warns Paulette about the ‘black-eyed kids’ coming to get her.
Then, at twenty-one, Arla bludgeons her entire family to death with a hammer. She claims that, before the incident, she allowed the black-eyed kids to enter the family home.
Arla is convicted of manslaughter with diminished responsibility and remanded in a secure unit for the rest of her life.
With my phone buzzing relentlessly, I realise that I’m close now, that I’ve reached a tipping point in this case. My instincts are telling me to keep on and the constant abusive texts and threats that are yammering from my phone only enhance this sense.
I feel that my most important port of call is Cornwall – the holiday that the Macleods took. It’s going to be a long shot but I need to find out more about what happened there. The chances of finding anyone who was there at the same time as the Macleods are remote, but with every threat I receive, I feel I’m getting closer … closer to something.
I feel I have to keep on.
But at the same time I feel that I’ve inherited Arla’s ‘Daruma-san’ – a ghost that is following me. The question is, why?
This has been our third…
Until next time…
TorrentWraith – Audio (Music & Sounds)
Type Name
Audio Arla Macleod Rec004 [320KBPS]
Uploaded 3 weeks ago, Size 57.3 MiB. ULed by JBazzzzz666
Today I’ve seen nothing so far – just shadows, dancing, moving shadows. Does that count?
And eyes. Glowing eyes.
They’re under things, in spaces between things where there’s black, where there’s shadow. Sometimes I don’t see them, I just know they’re there, looking out at me from the dark places. Because there’s dark places here, despite the white walls, the smell of polish and the crick of the plastic under the bed sheets. Under shelves, in the corners of cupboards and between the creases of sheets … you can’t escape darkness.
It’s my fault, I know. I should have listened to the warnings. You spend a long time opening a door and when you finally get it open, you stand before that opening, staring at the place you’ve always wanted to go. You don’t realise, you don’t even think, that maybe something’s looking back at you, that something’s been waiting on the other side and wants to get through that door too.
You can’t escape darkness.
I dreamed last night, I dreamed vivid. Maybe it were a waking dream or, like, a lucid dream … whatever it was, it were clear as day.
I were a bird. I were … free. I were flying. I could feel me wings rattling, the wind under them, and I were above the sea … for ages. Maybe it’s a subconscious wish for freedom, but it weren’t like that … it were like I was going somewhere. There were cliffs, just sort of rearing up out of the sea. And that’s it – that’s where I were going.
A house. Not my house but, like, one you might see from a train – one sat in the middle of a field, or on top of the cliffs, and you look at it through the window and think, Who lives there? What do they do all day?
The house were in the middle of a field – it must have been a cornfield or something. There were long grass, anyway, and it were all green with like, those tractor marks running round the edges.
It were nighttime in the dream … or more like an evening in summer, where it’s late but still light, but that little house in the field had all its curtains closed. And there were a terrible feeling, a feeling of horror, like a nightmare … cos the grass, the long grass – or crops or whatever – around the house, it were moving, like waggling like there was something in there. And I could see shapes … I could see these black shadows like a swarm, like a crowd of figures coming from every direction, approaching the house from all angles. And … and I knew … I knew what they were. I couldn’t see them, not properly, but I caught a glimpse of a hand, a head.
I were sort of hovering now, you know? Right then I could feel how small I was, how fragile. You know when you touch a bird and you can feel its bones and you know that if you just closed your hand, you’d break it, kill it? I felt like that. I could feel that.
When you see this you’ll say something about a lack of power – lack of control … I’m getting better at all this, aren’t I?
I focused and I could suddenly make out what were moving through that long grass. It were children – raggedy children moving through the crops, making them wiggle. A swarm of them, a mob of them – they were coming from all angles through the field towards that little house. I felt tight – a tightness in my tummy – and I wanted to scream out, like, I wanted to warn whoever was in that house, tell them to get out. But my throat was all closed up, my throat was burned closed, and when I tried to speak all that came out was a whistling, croaking sound.
I think it’s cos they’ve altered my medication, you know? I’m not seeing … whole things as much anymore, like I were before. Now they hide; they flicker in the corners. Shadows and eyes always peering out.
I know that later on we’ll talk about my dream. You’re going to say that you wonder why I had such a dream, and I’m going to have to come up with ideas.
It’s going to be hard for me to put it into words, but what I’ll say is that I can feel something’s … coming; ‘approaching’ might be a better word for it. Something’s approaching – maybe that’s what the dream was about. It were about things approaching weren’t it? In the dream.
I got woke up by voices today. I think that’s the medication too, cos I were proper down today, like it felt like I were dragging my feet through treacle. I’ve got a headache. It’s cos I’ve not had a proper sleep.
It were the same voices as yesterday. But I didn’t do a video yesterday cos you said I should make them when I saw stuff, you didn’t say to do it when I heard stuff.
So, I were down the garden, in the polytunnel. I like the smell in there, especially after it’s been raining – plastic and soil, and the air is warm. There’s a stillness in there that you don’t get anywhere else in here, even at night in my room. I love that stillness, especially when there’s not many people around. It’s like being somewhere else … like being in another…
Any
way, I was in the polytunnel and Sandy was there too – you know the big lad who wears the yellow T-shirt? He says he’s getting out soon, going free. He’s ‘crossing the road’ – that’s what they call it here cos if you look out onto the main drive, you see the road just sort of disappearing into the trees, and there’s a bit that goes over the motorway – a bridge – and once you go over there, you’re free.
Sandy doesn’t like gardening, he’s too impatient and doesn’t like getting soil on his hands. When I first came, he used to get angry about it, whining like a little kid. Sometimes he’d chuck a shrub against the floor or kick a flowerpot. He’s not done that for ages now.
So, Sandy’s stood over there in his yellow T-shirt that’s too small for him now – his tummy pops right out of the bottom – and he’s got his tongue out between his lips cos he’s potting. I remember when Mam used to tell me off for that when I were little: ‘Put your tongue in, Arla!’ she’d snap. ‘You look like you’re simple!’
I were only five or six.
So, I’m replanting some of the strawberry plants, and the polytunnel’s like a sauna, with that soily smell and the still air pressing in on you and making your face damp … but I like it. I’m being careful with the plants, pulling them gently out and pressing them into the beds, pouring a bit of water on them.
He hates you.
I look up. I look up and I know I’ve got my mouth open.
Close your mouth, Arla!
It snaps shut and I’m still looking about.
He hates you and before he crosses the road, he’s going to snap your bones – your little bird bones.
I nearly say something. It’s such a surprise, I nearly forget. I nearly slip up and shout out.
All of them hate you, Arla. They hate you cos of what you did. Scum. You’re nowt but scum.
Hydra Page 14