Evil Relations (4 page)

I sit in front of a small desk, next to me Maureen holds Bob the dog, on the desk are my knife and screwdriver. A windowless room with a coal fire blazing away like something normal, the smell of detectives’ pipe tobacco clogging the air from past interviews.

The same policeman who picked us up asks me what it’s all about.

I don’t answer straight away. I’m trying to remain calm, but whatever was with me a few hours before is beginning to fall apart.

Minutes pass. I look at the police officer, he says nothing and patiently waits. My eyes are beginning to feel hot and wet, fucking hell. I stare at the wall, refusing to blink in case the feeling pours out of me. I look at Maureen. She’s crying quietly and very pale. I keep looking at her. We’re in that corridor, her and me, the two of us, alone.

One dragged-up breath: I take the air in until my lungs and chest are bursting, I let it go in one long rushing gush.

‘It’s murder,’ I say, and Maureen lets out a loud sob.

What was the plan that night, Ian? Not the ‘rolling a queer’ story, or the ‘there was a fight’ excuse. Myra must have known by then that if you hadn’t lost the plot already you were well on the way. A quick decision not up for discussion, just
do it
. There was no fight, no raised voices; just screaming after you’d hit him. He was as relaxed as he could be, smoking, talking to Myra.

You rehearsed every second of that killing.

The axe didn’t live in the fireplace; there was never a domestic use for it. Before leaving the house to pick him up, did you put it under the settee? When he was talking to Myra, did you casually walk round the back of the settee and pick the axe up? Only seconds to go now, one strong blow and it’s over. Except it wasn’t: he moves, maybe cigarette to ashtray, the axe doesn’t drop him.

‘You could see the blow register in his eyes,’ Myra said.

You figured one good belt to the head and he’d hit the floor. You had to have total control, but it was all going wrong:
hit him again, shut him up, neighbours could be out in the street, what’s going on, hit him again.
You were meant to be watching me, noting my reaction:
where the fuck’s Smith, what’s going on?

Then finally, fourteen long blows later, it’s over. ‘That’s it, the messiest one yet,’ you said.

Clean up time: at last you have control back and don’t I know it. But why didn’t you kill him before I got there, why wasn’t there a body just lying there when I walked in, you watching my eyes and thinking, ‘Now, you’ll believe me.’

This time you got it wrong.

I’m willing to bet that, somewhere deep inside, Myra knew it too. She would’ve been thinking:
just let this go away, just let this be all right. Please let it be like it was, just the two of us. Fuck you, David Smith
.

Because this was to be a double killing; part two was me, in the middle of nowhere. ‘Eddie’ deep in the hole on the moors and you just blow my head off. How else was it all going to end – happy nights forever more, talking shite and getting pissed, growing old with our ‘little secret’?

No way.

In the room that stinks of spent smoke, the policeman struggles with my story. He asks, ‘Is it still there?’

‘Yes,’ I answer. ‘It’s upstairs.’

He looks at me, eyebrows vanishing into his hair. ‘Upstairs?’

I nod.

‘You took the body
upstairs
?’

I say slowly, ‘Yes, me and him took it upstairs.’

And he gives me another look and goes out.

When he comes back, he’s with a sergeant, who asks me to repeat my story. They go looking for notepads and take a short statement from me, Maureen still crying quietly at my side, me smoking every cigarette I can lay my hands on, eating the things.

Then the big boss comes in. Talbot, all buttons and braid. Scowling as I tell him the same things I’ve been telling his men all morning. Straight away he doesn’t like me and I can’t stand the sight of him.

The room seems to be filling up with people, all looking at me. Someone mentions going to the house. Talbot’s shiny buttons catch my eye again and I know I have to warn him.

‘Wait a minute’ – I hear my voice as if it’s from another room – ‘he’s got guns.’

Talbot swivels on his heel. ‘You didn’t mention guns before. What kind of guns? Shotguns? Airguns?’

‘No, proper guns. A .45 and a .38 and a rifle.’

Talbot and his men stare.

‘Has he got ammunition?’

‘Yeah, he’s got ammunition, lots of it.’

A flicker of apprehension passes from face to face as they realise: this is different.

I don’t want to go back. When they say we need you up at the house, I feel myself go rigid. But while Maureen is left at the station with the dog, I’m driven to Hattersley by two detectives (they’re wearing suits, so they must be detectives). The car smells strongly of their soap and aftershave.

Just before we reach the estate, by the Wall’s factory, one of the men turns to me and says, ‘They haven’t found anything.’

I start to panic, wondering if they’ve managed to get rid of the body, but that wasn’t the plan. I can’t figure it out; my mind races with possibilities and outcomes, but we’re already there, parking just below the house, the high wall of the New Inn to our left, the white fence that surrounds their garden to our right.

I sit mute in the back of the car, watching everything happening in slow motion. On this clean, fresh October morning both ends of Wardle Brook Avenue are blocked off by police cars. Neighbours are gathering, the usual routine forgotten, and I’m thinking:
why do the men group with the men and the women group with the women and the children stand close to their mothers?
I follow mouths moving like television with the sound turned down.

One of the detectives makes a noise in his throat and I look up at the house. Ian and Myra – he is handcuffed – walk along the path.

‘This them?’ I’m asked.

Ian is the first to pass. His eyes meet mine through the car window and I get a quick, sly smile and a brief nod. Myra follows a few yards behind, her white-blonde hair an immaculate cloud, make-up perfect. The look she gives me is seconds long but will stay with me a lifetime: her face is pure stone, black-rimmed eyes unblinking, locking onto me. An animal feet away from its prey.

I shrink back against the cold leather. ‘That’s them.’

The detective in the passenger seat climbs out of the car, speaks shortly to a colleague on the street, then gets back in again, his eyes finding mine in the driver’s mirror.

‘You were spot-on there, lad. It was upstairs.’

He looks at the other detective, who starts the ignition.

How did the metal feel as it snapped around your wrist, Ian? Did the curtain fall slowly or did the entire stage disintegrate beneath you? The uniformed men who watched as you dressed were uninvited strangers that you couldn’t control. Could you feel it inside, both of you? Was it like dying on your feet? Listening to the sound of footsteps going upstairs. To the room.

Hessy, Hessy, can you hear it, it’s over. Secrets, keep the fucking secrets, they belong to us, remember the lessons, tell them fuck all, no memory after ten days, you and me forever, you and me, don’t show panic, tell them nothing, act normal. Fuck Smith, we’ll have him, he’s fucked. Maggots, they’re all fucking maggots. Believe in me and I will save you.

You’re finished, both of you.

But not quite, not yet. Because although I don’t know it, you’ve still got the centre stage to take, and with your last bullet you’ll get me.

You’ll nail me, accusing me of every filth you’ve ever done and more. You’ll feed the media the headlines they crave. You’ll hurl so much shit I’ll drown in it.

I will never, with every breath I am left to take on this earth, regret my actions concerning you two; whatever world you were living in was never my world and you know it, Ian.

But you’ll do a good job on my name. You’ll put it right up there with your own.

Hyde station is in chaos when we get back, uniformed police and detectives in suits and trilbies materialising from the walls as I go in through the side door, where every second person I see seems to own a pipe.

Myra stands with two officers in the corridor. There’s no sign of Ian. I’m rushed past her and there’s a lot of angry swearing behind me from the uniforms: ‘For fuck’s sake, find a fucking room, get her fucking out of here, it’s like a fucking bus queue in this place.’

I’m put in the same room as before, where Maureen is still waiting with the dog. She sits lonely and scared in front of the desk, eyes red from non-stop crying, my empty chair next to her. Four or five people are already in the room, but she is alone.

I sit down and hold her hand. ‘They’ve got them,’ I tell her, but she doesn’t hear me.

‘How’s Myra?’ she asks, her fingers closing around mine.

‘I think she’s been arrested. I think they’ve both been arrested.’

She’s bemused. ‘But it was Ian, wasn’t it? Didn’t you say it was Ian?’

‘No, girl, it was both of them, don’t you remember? In our flat I told you it was both of them. Remember?’

‘Oh . . .’ She looks lost. ‘Yes, I think so . . .’ Her eyes are huge again. ‘Is everything all right, Dave, is everything all right?’

The officers watch and listen.

‘Yes,’ I tell her, feeling self-conscious. ‘Everything’s all right.’ I hesitate, then say again: ‘They’ve definitely arrested Ian.’

She nods her head. That much she understands, but no more.

Our first statements are taken. Hours later we’re still sitting together in that same room, surrounded by coppers, with Bob the dog sprawled and sleeping on the floor. A frustrated detective enters, fuming: ‘Who the hell are Auntie Ann and Nellie? That girl is up to her neck in it and all she wants is a bloody family reunion with Auntie Ann and Nellie!’

Maureen smiles weakly. She explains that Nellie is her and Myra’s mother, and that their Auntie Ann lives not far from them in Gorton. Hearing that the two women are being brought to the station makes things seem a bit more normal for Maureen; her shoulders slacken and a glimmer of light returns to her watery eyes. We’re given tea again and as many cigarettes as we can smoke while we go over our initial statements. The bedlam of the morning is sinking into something else, something I can’t name, but everything is fading, falling fast, leaving nothing behind.

We’re told that Ian has been charged with murder but Myra is free to go and we have to come back tomorrow. A tight knot of unease clenches my gut. While I try to make sense of the policeman’s words, someone mentions that Nellie and Auntie Ann have arrived.

We leave the room and the two women are standing there in the corridor, faces stiff with hostility. Maureen calls to her mother but is met with rigid silence, and a policewoman puts out a hand to hold her back.

‘No, love, just wait a few minutes, they’re here for your sister. Myra’s going home with them. You’ll have to wait till they’re clear of the station.’

We hang around at the other end of the corridor for a while. Then Myra appears, and is given the nod by a sergeant to leave the station with her mother and Auntie Ann. She throws a sharp, contemptuous glance at us and then she’s gone, off to spend her last days of freedom in Gorton with her parents.

And us, we return to Ardwick for the night, to my childhood home, where six months ago the tiny white coffin of Angela Dawn, our daughter, rested in the parlour before we buried her. I call my dad and tell him to come home from London, where he’s been working, then sit like a mute again with Maureen and the dog in that same parlour, thinking:
what the fuck happens now?

* * *

A fortnight later, on 28 October 1965, the
North Cheshire Herald
reported on committal proceedings against Ian Brady and Myra Hindley, now known jointly as the Moors Murderers: ‘A young couple who had been spectators in the public gallery were later chased across Hyde market by a group of shouting women. As cameramen’s flashbulbs popped, the couple dodged in and out of the stalls. The girl, in high heels and a grey suit, had difficulty keeping up with the man accompanying her.’

The public hounding of David Smith, chief prosecution witness in the Moors trial, had begun.

It’s 2.30 on a hot Thursday afternoon in Ireland and I’m looking at a blank page. My fingers are cracked and crooked with arthritis and I find it difficult – and far too much trouble – to contemplate filling the page. But then, as always, a wisp of smoke appears in my mind, a thought, a feeling, somewhere to go, another corridor with no answers.

I allow the smoke to drift and dance away from me, not too far ahead and not too fast. I’m beginning to think and follow . . . in a moment the page will fill with words and today will be gone, leaving me locked in another time. I look out at my colour-drenched Irish world, then bend my head and follow the wisp of smoke again, back to the black-and-white streets of a Manchester suburb. It carries me quickly now down the long corridor, picking up speed . . .

39 Aked Street, Ardwick. I’m here to meet myself, nothing more than an old man thinking back the years, but my heart is in this house. It contains and stands for
everything
that is me, period. Once it was a place of happiness but confusion and sadness floods me as I drift back into it on that wisp of smoke, picking up the special smell of Sunday dinner and the background drone of the wireless.

On the top floor is the attic bedroom; it belongs to me but is filled with sepia-tinted photographs, mainly of a brown-eyed young man in uniform. Steep stairs lead down to the second-floor landing and to Mum’s room, which smells of talcum powder and is softly feminine, where little trinket boxes gleam in the sunlight. Further along the landing is Grandad’s room, a world away from its neighbour – all pot-under-the-bed smells and spittoon boxes thick with phlegm from the old man’s endless throat-clearing. Next to Grandad’s room is a rarity in Aked Street: a new fitted bathroom. We don’t use it as often as we should; like everyone else, we have an old tin bath in the backyard which is brought in on Saturday night to wash the weekly grime from my skin.