Evil Relations (46 page)

I nod and tell him again; it’s a secret I could never keep. Those childhood lessons in morality stalk the room and I’m ready to meet them. The doctor sighs heavily. He explains that Dad is very close to death and we need to call for an ambulance, even though he’s without pain. Then the police must be informed.

Gripping my arm, he leads me out of the room and shuts the door. ‘I want you to know that I do understand these things, David.’ He nods slowly, as if answering some private question of his own. ‘No matter what, your father will be at peace soon.’

When the ambulance arrives, I climb into it holding Mary’s hand. Together we watch as the medics fit Dad with a mask, feeding him oxygen in a necessary bid to prolong his life. The drive to the hospital is quick, and while Dad is examined another doctor approaches me to ask what tablets Dad has taken.

‘He hasn’t taken any tablets,’ I reply. ‘I gave them to him.’

His eyes fix on mine. ‘How many?’

‘The full bottle.’

He moves away. Dad is transferred to a cubicle, where the curtains are drawn swiftly around his bed. A few minutes later the doctor reappears and explains that nothing will be done; Dad’s life will soon be over. A priest enters the cubicle and I get to my feet; I don’t want to hear the death rattle. We leave quietly, walking the few miles back to the house. From the telephone box I use as if it’s my own, I call the hospital. They tell me that Dad has died, and when I replace the receiver I pick it straight up again to give the Duchess the news.

Then the police arrive.

Mr Griffiths is a copper in the Joe Mounsey mould. I like him instantly; a great boulder of a bloke, he has a habit of twanging his braces. He looks at me not unkindly and asks: ‘A death has been reported. Is there anything you’d like to tell me?’

I explain what I’ve done, while he listens intently, twitching his braces. A minute of respectful silence passes before he states: ‘David, on account of what you’ve told me, I’m arresting you on suspicion of murder.’

A second officer approaches me with handcuffs, but Mr Griffiths stops him: ‘It’s all right, no need for that.’ Then he turns to me again: ‘I’ve already spoken to the doctor and he’s put me fully in the picture.’ He nods towards Mary. ‘Take a few minutes for yourself.’

I hold Mary tight and we speak urgently but quietly. The boys are in bed. One last hug and then I go outside, where Mr Griffiths is waiting for me on the doorstep.

‘Have you any money?’ he asks.

I shake my head.

‘Cigarettes?’

I shake my head again.

‘Does the wife smoke?’

I nod, not troubling to tell him that Mary and I aren’t married.

‘Come on, then.’

He walks me past the police car and across the road into the newsagent’s. Beneath the fluorescent strip lights, he picks out two packs of twenty cigarettes and two boxes of Swan Vestas, handing me half the purchase: ‘Here, you’ll be needing these. I smoke a pipe myself.’

I hide a bitter smile.
Yeah
, I think,
don’t you all
. Then I sit in the car, watching Mr Griffiths walk up to the house where Mary is standing huge-eyed at the door. He gives her the cigarettes and matches, then retraces his steps and squeezes his large frame into the car, sitting next to me.

‘Well, David, I think you’ve been in something of this kind of situation before.’ He pauses and purses his lips before adding gently, ‘But maybe this time not as bad.’

His kindness isn’t wasted on me.

* * *

Jack Smith died several hours after David gave him the fatal glass of milk into which he had ground 20 sodium amytal tablets. At the police station, Griffiths handled the case as a mercy killing, despite the official charge, having spoken at length to the family doctor. He treated David – who was calm but in shock – with compassion, and spoke to him at length that evening, going through his statement in detail before David put his signature to it. Afterwards, Griffiths told him, ‘I’m going to leave you for a while now to give you chance to compose yourself. I’ll send a cup of tea in and you’ve got your cigarettes, so I’ll see you in ten minutes.’ David knew what was coming next and realised he was being given a rare opportunity to prepare himself. He drank the tea that was brought in and smoked a couple of cigarettes.

When Griffiths returned to the interview room, he asked David to stand – usual police procedure – and charged him with the murder of his father. David shook his head when asked if there was anything he wished to say in his defence. Griffiths indicated that he should sit down again, explaining, ‘I’ve told them that you’re to be allowed to keep your cigarettes and matches. But we’ve got to put you in a cell and you’ll be brought up before the magistrates tomorrow . . .’

David spent the night at the police station. In the morning, before he was led into court, Griffiths took him to one side and said, ‘I’ve had a word with your solicitor. We’re not opposing bail. All right?’ Bail was granted and David was allowed to return home. But several days later, when he was brought before magistrates again under the court system, that bail was withdrawn.

‘It was a horrible moment,’ he recalls now. ‘They were different magistrates, but I still don’t know why they decided to remand me in custody. Mr Griffiths was visibly shocked and my solicitors were disgusted. Mary was in court, of course, to support me, and she was distraught as I was led away.’ He pauses. ‘My trial date was set for a few months ahead and the place they sent me to await it was Risley Remand Centre near Warrington. Brady and Hindley were held there in the months before the Moors trial.’

The past had come back to haunt him, and there were other ghosts to be confronted too.

Immediately after David’s arrest, Mary and the boys moved in with her father in Hyde. The boys’ case worker, Mrs Delaney, appeared one day with the news that Maureen had requested access to her children.

‘I was already worrying,’ Mary remembers, ‘because I was still only 15 at the time and didn’t want anyone else to know about me and David. So when Mrs Delaney turned up, I panicked a bit. But then something terrible happened: the boys were handed back to Maureen. David was on bail then and there was nothing we could do. But the whole thing was resolved very quickly because Maureen decided she didn’t want the boys after all. Less than a week after demanding them back, she abandoned them on the steps of Hyde Town Hall. They brought the boys home to us and we thought that was an end to it, but then David had his bail taken from him and Maureen insisted on having the boys back again.’

Mary shakes her head slowly, struggling with the memory: ‘The boys didn’t want to go. Paul was very upset. He clung to my neck and Mrs Delaney had to physically pull him away. He was screaming for me. She got angry, telling me off for not handing them over properly. But I was deeply upset, too. Then exactly the same thing happened again: Maureen decided she couldn’t cope. Mrs Delaney turned up at my door and said flatly, “She doesn’t want them.” So, thankfully, they brought them back to me.’

Asked for her opinion about Maureen’s conduct towards the children, Mary lifts her shoulders in a gesture of helplessness. ‘Who knows? Only Maureen could answer that. I always felt it wasn’t so much that she wanted the boys for herself, more that she didn’t want
me
to have them. I never felt that she wanted to be a mother to them. But that’s pure surmise on my part. I didn’t have any contact with her at that time. I was just so happy when Mrs Delaney arrived with the boys that second time.’

In Risley (‘Grisley Risley’, to its inmates), David struggled to cope with being away from Mary and the children. He describes it as ‘a black pit of a place’ and declares: ‘Prison was preferable to Risley. We were locked up there for 23 hours a day, with absolutely nothing to do. There were no association areas, and if you were lucky you’d have your cell unlocked in the morning and be instructed to mop the corridor. That was a good day in Risley. The only advantage it had over prison was that we were allowed unlimited tobacco because we hadn’t yet been convicted. But it was hugely depressing.’

David’s solicitors successfully appealed against the withdrawal of bail. ‘My cell door was opened at around four o’clock on a Monday afternoon and I was told to report to reception because I was going home,’ he recalls. ‘The relief . . . I had a hasty shower, got my own clothes back and was out of that place faster than a speeding bullet.’

His trial was set for early November 1972. ‘Did I think it was going to be all right?’ he ponders. ‘Yes, I suppose I did. Mary and I had a meeting with my barrister, and he instilled a bit of optimism in us. His chambers were very
Rumpole of the Bailey
– everywhere you looked, there were books. Leather-bound mostly, stacked askew on every surface, Bible-thick books with gold lettering on the spines. My barrister and a few members of his team spoke to us. He had all the prosecution papers for me to read – that never happened at the Moors trial – and took me carefully through the entire process, going over the questions that were likely to be asked. He schooled me in what to say and how to say it. That bolstered my confidence. He told me that although what I’d done wasn’t murder, there was no leeway in the law to allow for that. Therefore, murder had to be the charge. Then he told me, “We’re going to plead guilty.” I was appalled, but he said, “No, we’re going to plead guilty to manslaughter.” So I knew what to expect.’

He laughs suddenly. ‘I also had to be examined by a psychiatrist again. Mary went with me. The two of us were wearing patched jeans. This very well-to-do and earnest psychiatrist in his herringbone suit was enthralled by our appearance. It was all he seemed interested in, and for some reason it worked in our favour.’

David’s trial at Manchester Crown Court was given extensive press coverage. Predictably, every newspaper referred back to the Moors trial of 1966. Inside the court, David focused on the charge he faced and the life sentence he would have to serve if found guilty. In the public gallery, Mary – now pregnant – sat with the Duchess and Uncle Bert.

‘I was terrified,’ David admits. ‘My barrister told the court that we were entering a plea of guilty to manslaughter, which gave the jury the satisfaction of knowing that guilt had been acknowledged somewhere down the line. But the judge seemed to me to be biased against me because of the Moors case. That was the impression I got when he gave his address to the jury and my barrister suspected the same thing. When all the evidence had been heard and the jury went out to consider their verdict, I sat in the corridor, wondering which way my life was going again. Any confidence I felt before evaporated while I was sitting on that bench, staring down at the floor.’

The jury found him not guilty.

‘I nearly collapsed with relief,’ David remembers. ‘Then I heard this furious rustling behind me, as all the journalists began scribbling in their notebooks. I turned and caught Mary’s eye – she looked ready to faint. But after the judge had thanked the members of the jury he addressed me: “I accept your admission of manslaughter. There will be no further trial – I shall sentence you today.” I stood there, frantically doing calculations in my head. What did you get for manslaughter? Seven years? Five? My barrister hadn’t told me that. Then the judge declared, “I sentence you to two days’ imprisonment, but take into account the time you served on remand. You are free to go.” I was astounded – I just couldn’t believe it. Then I turned round again and saw Mary making her way through the crowd to me. It was over.’

On 8 November 1972, under the heading, ‘Moors Case Witness Cleared’,
The Times
reported:

The
Daily Telegraph
added another aspect:

In the corridor outside the court, journalists and photographers were gathered in vast numbers. There was a scramble as David and Mary emerged with their arms around each other.

‘All I could hear were the flashbulbs going off and stupid questions,’ David recalls. ‘One reporter shouted, “Did you mean to do it, David?” We were just glad to get out of the building. The press pursued us across the square, but we lost them eventually. Ironically, though, I went straight from court to give an interview – Uncle Bert had set up a newspaper deal again, knowing that the headlines would cause more trouble for us. But once that was done, I felt as if the whole horrible thing was behind us. Mary and I were looking forward to our baby being born.’

He takes a deep breath. ‘But then the Hindleys came back into our lives.’

On 6 April 1973, Mary gave birth to a daughter, whom she and David named Jody. That same month Maureen divorced David on uncontested grounds of ‘unreasonable conduct’. At the custody hearing, she was granted access to their three children.

‘She came one Saturday with Nellie,’ Mary remembers. ‘I never really got to know her but found her . . . well, a bit gruff. Nellie was very pleasant, but there was no conversation as such. They just collected the boys – who had been looking forward to seeing their mum and grandma – and took them for a day out. After a while, the boys started spending the odd Saturday night with Maureen. She was allowed to see them once a week, but it was usually once a fortnight when she turned up. Then she began coming alone, without Nellie, and her behaviour was peculiar. She would come in, flop down in a chair with one leg thrown over the chair arm and sit there for ages, swinging her leg up and down, and rambling on and on. I felt very uncomfortable when I was alone with her because we were on completely different levels. She was actually quite dismissive about the boys. She brought presents for them, but I never saw her cuddle Paul, David or John, which would have been the most natural thing to do. It was as if she had no genuine motherly feelings for them at all.’