Killer Couples (21 page)

‘Speak, speak!’

Kevin, conscious of the whirring of the camera, tried to remember the script he’d just been told to say. He mumbled something about being kept for his own safety.

‘Are you being nicely fed?’

The question was like some sick joke. Kevin couldn’t
remember the last time he’d had a proper meal and hadn’t gone to sleep with the sound of his own hunger growling in his ears.

‘I’m being fed perfectly, actually,’ he lied, his arms instinctively crossing over his concave abdomen. If he said the right thing, they might be happy with him and not hurt him today. He had to try to think of something that would please them.

‘I have been previously enjoying it,’ he ventured, as if he were describing a stay in a holiday camp. ‘It’s very good.’

Amanda Baggus tried to smother her giggles as she watched ‘Prick’ struggling with his words. It was so funny, hearing him thanking them for everything they’d done for him. He really was pathetic. She just hoped he wouldn’t soil her carpet – there was a sour, decaying smell about him that made her cringe.

Summer would normally have been Kevin Davies’ favourite time of year. A nature lover, he’d be gone for hours, days even, walking in the beautiful Forest of Dean countryside with one of the various dogs he’d kept over the years. But the summer of 2006 was different. The few snatched seconds where he was shuttled between shed and house were the only time Kevin saw the sun. Sometimes, when he’d been locked up in the darkness for a particularly long time, the sudden daylight when the shed door was opened would be practically blinding and he’d blink upwards, squinting in fear at whichever of his three prison guards stood in the doorway, silhouetted against the impossibly blue sky.

As June dissolved into July and then August, Kevin could only dream about heading out into the cool forests, where a person
might walk for hours and never come across another soul, just surrender himself to the beauty of nature, allow himself to be carried on the breeze like a leaf from a tree, each journey becoming an adventure.

And then the summer was gone, passed in a blur; like scenery glimpsed from a moving train, forever out of reach. September arrived and the streets of Bream were once again filled with children, bags slung low over shoulders, heading off to a new school year.

And still Kevin’s nightmare wasn’t over. Still the relentless cycle of chores, beatings and slow systematic starvation continued. He grew ever weaker, ever thinner.

‘Get up! What are you doing?’ The harsh, shrill voice held an edge of panic as Amanda Baggus gazed in horror at the prone figure on the kitchen floor.

It was late in the evening on 26 September and ‘Prick’ had been allowed into the house, but all of a sudden he had fallen to the floor and now she couldn’t get him to stand up. She couldn’t even tell if he was breathing.

Waiting for the ambulance to arrive, they came up with a story. Kevin had turned up at the house earlier that evening, asking if he could stay the night. Then he’d collapsed on the floor. Everyone knew he had a history of epilepsy – no one would question that he’d fallen while suffering a seizure.

By that stage, the three were so deeply entrenched in their own twisted reality, where they were the bosses and the man in the shed didn’t really exist as a human being – just a name on a
benefit cheque, a dog that needed whipping – that they didn’t think of how the scene would look to outsiders. A 6ft 2 man, weighing just 7 stone, his bones pressing through his pale,
light-starved
skin like groceries in an overstuffed shopping bag, his body covered in burns and bruises…

When Kevin was declared dead, police officers came to search the house in which he’d died, their minds unable to shake off the image of the cross seared into his buttocks, or the scars from where scalding liquid had been thrown over his skin.

‘I think I’ve got something,’ said an officer. The camcorder, with its damning hostage film, was wrapped in plastic and removed from the house; ditto Amanda Baggus’ diary, gleefully detailing each new atrocity in her neat schoolgirl writing. Spatters of blood were found on the ceiling, walls and furniture of the house and in the shed that, for the last months of his life, had been the only home Kevin knew. The kidnapping that had lasted for months in the very midst of a gentile, close-knit English community was finally at an end.

In July 2007, Amanda Baggus and David Lehane were jailed for ten years and Scott Andrews for nine, after being found guilty of assault and false imprisonment. To the outrage of many, particularly Kevin’s heartbroken mother, murder charges had to be dropped as it was impossible to prove Kevin’s epilepsy hadn’t contributed to his death.

There will always be bullies in this world, people who get a thrill from inflicting misery on others weaker than them. The
tragedy of Kevin Davies is that he came into contact with a couple whose bullying natures had first brought them together, who reinforced one another’s warped view of a world which had themselves at the centre. Anyone weaker became fair game.

‘I can’t believe anyone would be so cruel,’ said Elizabeth James, after the trial of her son’s persecutors.

The truth of it was that Amanda Baggus and David Lehane didn’t believe what they were doing was cruel. They thought it was fun. Isolated, bullies are destructive. In pairs, they can be deadly.

‘Go on, JUMP!’

He was tired, so tired. His legs felt like they’d been weighted down by concrete blocks. Each step was a test of endurance, like wading through PVA glue. And still they climbed higher and higher.

‘I can’t go on any more.’ The sob ripped from his throat like a razor blade.

‘You have to, Steve. Otherwise the snipers will get you. They’re hiding in the bushes, you know, just waiting for you to slow down.’

Fearfully, he looked over into the dark shadows where men he didn’t know were waiting to shoot him. There, that faint rustling of leaves. Was that one of them, trying to get a better position so he could take aim?

‘Come on, Steve. We’re nearly there.’

The others seemed to be finding something funny, but he couldn’t for the life of him imagine what it might be. They were behind him, giggling. Every now and then when his legs grew too heavy, one of them would give him a shove to jumpstart him into moving again.

Why was he so tired? Why did everything feel so strange? He just wanted to go home again.

‘I don’t want to go there.’ He was gazing in horror ahead, where the path led onto a viaduct, with 100ft drops on either side. ‘It’s too high. Don’t make me go there!’

Their voices were bubbling with barely suppressed laughter.

‘You
have
to keep going, Steve. You don’t want to be shot, do you?’ they said.

Legs trembling, he edged out along the viaduct, trying not to look down to where the town of St Austell lay in the darkness like a miniature model village, the sea an inky expanse in the distance. He was just so tired.

Finally they stopped. He clung onto the railing, hoping it would stop his shaking legs from buckling under him.

‘Now climb over.’

Through his exhaustion he heard the command as if it had come from a long way off. He struggled to make sense of it. Why did they want him to climb over this railing when it was so high up? He was too tired – he just wanted to go home.

‘Climb over – or they’ll shoot you.’

Terrified, he peered behind him into the shadows. He was
sure he could hear people moving, the sounds of gun barrels being clicked.

Whimpering with fear, he began to climb over the safety rail. He was trembling so much that he could hardly force his limbs to move. On the other side, he hung onto the top rail and tried to wedge his feet under the bottom one, but that wasn’t allowed.

‘You have to hang down from the railings,’ they told him. ‘It’s your only chance.’

He was now so tired that he’d stopped trying to make sense of it. All he knew was that he was being given commands, and he had to obey or something terrible would happen to him. Sobbing openly now, he crouched down and moved his hands lower down the rails. And then he was hanging there, his legs dangling over the sheer drop. Only his hands gripping the rail, palms slippery with sweat, prevented him from falling into the terrifying abyss below.

And then the girl stepped forward. Maybe she’s coming to help me, thought the exhausted man, hope rising suddenly above the fear. She had a smile on her face, as though she was sharing a joke she was about to let him in on. But instead of extending a helping hand, she raised up her leg and brought her foot crashing down on his knuckles… again and again…

‘Come on, you prick, jump!’ she jeered.

And then everything went black.

Steven Hoskin was thrilled when he got the keys to what would be his first-ever home of his own. OK, it was only a
housing association bedsit, but for the 39-year-old man who suffered severe learning difficulties, this was a major breakthrough in independence.

Situated in the Cornish market town of St Austell, in a quiet residential close, the tiny flat was a huge step forwards for Steven, who’d lived with his mum until she became too ill, just a couple of years before, and had been in and out of temporary accommodation ever since. Here, he’d be able to unpack properly, to make a real home for his beloved pet terrier dog, perhaps even make a few friends.

Steven had grown up in the nearby village of Maudlin, near Bodmin. Although he’d found school an ordeal, his easy-going nature had made him a well-liked figure around the closely-knit village. Local people realised he was essentially a child trapped in an adult’s body, and they watched out for him, making sure no one took advantage of him. The move to St Austell would take him well out of his comfort zone. Would he be able to meet people he liked there, away from his familiar support network?

When he first moved into Blowing House Close in the spring of 2005, Steven was understandably nervous. St Austell isn’t a huge town. Bordered on one side by the sea and on the other by the towering arches of the Trenance Viaduct, built by the Great Western Railway in 1898, these days its main claim to fame is being the closest point to the Eden Project, situated just a couple of miles away. But to Steven, who was used to living in a small village where everyone knew who he was, it might as well have been New York City.

He spent ages gazing out of his window at the street corner below, where he always saw the same young man hanging around. This man was hardly ever alone. As he stood there, he’d be joined first by one group of youngsters, then another. For lonely Steven, that convivial corner looked like a charmed place so he was thrilled when, one day, the man on the corner started chatting to him.

‘Guess what?’ he proudly announced to his friends back in Maudlin the next time he spoke to them on the phone. ‘I’m in a gang!’

To Steven’s amazement, the man on the corner, Darren Stewart, had taken a real interest in him. He’d been keen to find out exactly where he lived and had even started to invite all his friends round to Steven’s flat. From being a quiet, rather lonely place, the little bedsit was suddenly filled with people all through the day and night. To Steven, desperate to feel he belonged, it was a dream come true.

‘Can’t you keep the noise down? How many times do we have to come round here?’

Steven didn’t like it when his neighbours came to the door to complain about the loud music and the sound of people coming and going all through the night. But he couldn’t tell them to leave, could he? They were his friends. He didn’t want to be on his own again.

Secretly though, he was a bit nervous of some of the people who came round. Steven wasn’t worldly by a long stretch of the imagination, but even he knew enough to see that there was a
lot of alcohol going round at these impromptu ‘parties’, and lots of ‘other stuff’ too.

In reality, 30-year-old Darren (Daz) Stewart was turning Steven Hoskin’s flat into his own private party venue – a convenient pad where he could supply alcohol and, rumour had it, drugs to the neighbourhood’s teenagers, a place where he and his girlfriend Sarah could get all their mates round and have a laugh.

Sarah Bullock was just 16 and completely in thrall to her new lover. To her immature mind, Daz Stewart was the epitome of the cool, sophisticated older man. He knew everyone and always seemed to have a regular stash of amphetamines to hand. And now he’d found them this flat so they no longer had to hang around street corners. Yeah, it was a shame about the loser who lived there, who was always hanging about, but that was just something they had to put up with. Anyway, he had his uses – he was gullible enough to hand over his benefit money without a word.

Within months of moving into Blowing House Close, Steven Hoskin had a new flatmate: Darren Stewart had moved in. But if Steven had been envisaging friendly chats in front of the TV or companionable meals for two, he was much mistaken.

‘You must have some more money. Hand it over, or you know what’s coming to you!’ Daz Stewart knew exactly which tone of voice scared his new flatmate the most. A bully by nature, he enjoyed seeing the fear in Steve Hoskin’s trusting brown eyes as he scurried around, looking for any money he may have overlooked.

Really, Daz thought contentedly, this was working out better than he could have expected. He now had a base of operations,
somewhere to bring his mates and a ready source of income. All he had to do was keep plying Steve with alcohol, put the frighteners on him every now and then, and he was good as gold. Besides, he was proving very useful for some things.

‘Oi, get me another drink!’

Sarah was lying on the sofa with her head in Darren’s lap, waving her empty beer can around.

Wearily, Steve hauled himself up and made his way to the little kitchen to fetch another can from the fridge. He didn’t like the way Sarah and Daz talked to him now, but he didn’t know what he could do about it. He didn’t want to go back to being lonely again, and he was also scared of what they might do to him. They were always pushing him about and hurting him, but he didn’t know how to make it stop.