lucky lie, which hid the true face of the terror of Plymouth’s Lapwing estate. Graffiti, demanding money with menaces, breaking and entering were all in Mason Dingle’s blood, and the police knew it was only a matter of time before young Master Dingle followed his brothers in the family tradition—a life of some sort of ongoing detention.
But before he got there (which he absolutely did) Mason Dingle helped to catch the man the tabloids later dubbed the Van Strangler.
Naturally, the police did not even know that such a child killer was on the loose. Children disappeared all the time, and a few turned up dead. But this happened all over the country and police forces in the 1980s did not have the resources to compare notes in any but the most high-profile murder cases. For all the government’s Orwellian bleating about improvements and manpower and databases, the police detection rates remained at roughly the level that they would have achieved by periodically sticking a pin in a list of the usual suspects.
And anyway—until Mason Dingle took a hand in the proceedings—none of Arnold Avery’s victims had been found and Avery himself had never been arrested or even speed-ticketed, so all the databases in the world would not have thrown his name across the desks of investigating officers.
So when he saw Mason Dingle all alone, scratching something no doubt filthy into the seat of a red plastic swing in the battered Lapwing playground, Avery pulled over in his white van, got himself ready, and whistled to get the boy’s attention—confident in the inabilities of the Devon & Cornwall, or any other police force.
Mason looked up and Avery’s heart lifted to see his sweet face. He waved the boy over and Mason sauntered towards the van.
“Gimme directions?”
Mason Dingle lifted his eyebrows in assent. Everything about him, Avery saw now, was like a small man. Here was a boy with older brothers, if he’d ever seen one. The way he slouched, his manly undereagerness to help, the cigarette tucked behind his tender little ear beside the shaven temples. But oh, his face! The face of an angel!
Mason bent down to the window of the van, looking off into the distance as if he barely had time in his busy schedule for this.
“Right, mate?”
“Yeah,” said Avery, “can you show me on this map where the business park is?”
“Just down there and take a left, mate.”
“Can you show me on this map?”
Mason sighed, then poked his head inside the van to look down at the map spread across Avery’s lap.
“Can you point at it for me?”
For a second Mason Dingle couldn’t take in what he was seeing, then he jerked slightly, bumping his head on the door frame. Avery had seen this reaction before. Now one of two things would happen: either the boy would start to redden and stammer and back rapidly away, or he would start to redden and stammer and feel compelled —
But Mason Dingle took a third path; as he pulled backwards through the van window, he twisted the keys from the ignition. “You dirty old bastard!” he said, grinning, and held the keys up.
Avery was instantly furious. “Give those back, you little shit!” He got out of the van, zipping himself up with some difficulty.
Mason danced away from him, laughing. “Fuck you!” he yelled—and ran.
Arnold Avery reevaluated Mason Dingle. Appearances had been deceptive. He had the face of an angel but obviously he was a tough kid. Therefore Avery expected the boy to reappear shortly with his keys and either a demand for money, or at least one older male relative or the police.
The thought didn’t scare Avery. Mason Dingle’s street smarts had worked for him so far, but Avery guessed that they could also be used against him. Nobody believed nice children about things like this—let alone troublesome brats. Especially when the man being accused of such filth and perversion just sat around and waited for the police to arrive instead of behaving as if he had something to hide. So Avery lit a cigarette and waited in the playground—where he could not be surprised—for Mason Dingle to return.
At first the police were disinclined to take Mason Dingle seriously. But he knew his rights and he was insistent, so two policemen finally put him in a squad car—with much warning about wasting police time—and drove him back to the playground, where they found the white van. They were checking that the keys Mason had produced did indeed fit the van when Arnold Avery approached angrily, and told them that the boy had stolen his keys and tried to hold them to ransom.
“He said if I didn’t pay him he’d tell the police I tried to fiddle with him!”
The police focus switched back to Mason and, while the boy told the truth in remarkable detail, Avery could see that the police believed his own version of events only too eagerly.
And so everything was going Avery’s way until, with a sinking feeling, he saw a small boy approaching with a man who looked like a father on the warpath.
While he maintained his composure with the two police officers, inside Avery was cursing his own stupidity. All he’d had to do was wait! Everything would have been okay if he’d only waited! But it was a playground, and playgrounds attracted children, and even though the stocky eight-year-old now bawling his way towards him wasn’t really his type, the first boy had taken so long to come back! What was he supposed to do?
So, in the final analysis, it was all Mason Dingle’s fault. Although when Arnold Avery ventured this opinion to a homicide officer almost a year later—after half a dozen small bodies had been discovered in shallow graves on a rainswept Exmoor—the officer broke his nose with a single backhander, and his own solicitor merely shrugged.
It all fell apart.
Slowly but inexorably, connections were made, dots were joined, and Arnold Avery was charged with six counts of murder and three more of child abduction. The murder charges were limited to the number of bodies they could find on the moor, and the abduction charges limited by the items found in Avery’s home and car which could be positively linked to missing children—although Avery never admitted taking any of them. A one-armed Barbie doll belonged to ten-year-old Mariel Oxenburg of Winchester; a maroon blazer with a unicorn crest on the pocket had once warmed Paul Barrett of Westward Ho!, and a pair of nearly new Nike trainers found under the front passenger seat of the white van were proudly marked in felt tip under the tongues: Billy Peters.
Chapter 3
MRS. O’LEARY SAID THAT “SINCERELY” WAS THE WRONG WORD. In business, one wrote “yours faithfully.” Steven changed it but thought she must be wrong. He would rather be faithful to people he knew and loved than to the manager of the local supermarket whose fish had fallen so far below the advertised standards as to kill his grandmother.
When he wrote his personal letter, “sincerely” sounded so stiff and formal. But, he thought pragmatically, it was Mrs. O’Leary doing the marking, so he’d better stick to her versions.
Mrs. O’Leary pointed out his spelling error too, but didn’t fuss too much. She said his letter was very good; very authentic—and read it to the class.
Steven wished she hadn’t. He felt the eyes of other boys branding him like laser tattoos. We’ll get you later
