One of Your Own (18 page)

Myra claimed that her self-professed childhood ability to control her emotions was fundamental in the psychological exercise she and Ian employed before the murder and afterwards: ‘I had learned and continued to learn to hide my real feelings when necessary and only show them when it was safe to do so . . . [This] enabled me to lead an apparently normal existence whilst being involved in the offences.’
¹
They feared being caught but ‘had to combat these feelings in order to repeat the experience’.
²

In his writings, Ian argues that the serial killer’s motive stems from ‘power and the will to power’, which is synonymous with sex in his mind.
³
Having gone ‘unchallenged’ by either God or more secular authorities, the serial killer begins to regard ‘the rest of humanity as subnormal and weak . . . He has created a microcosmic state of his own in which he alone governs.’
⁴

Myra confirmed that Ian’s murderous delusions of power were ‘an aphrodisiac’ to him, and in therapy sessions she admitted that their best performances sexually were in the periods immediately after the murders: ‘We celebrated our bonding with drink and sex. I would lay myself open to Ian in a physical demonstration of our unity . . . Ian and I became further bonded by the blood of our victims.’
⁵
She again denied experiencing any ‘sexual gratification’ from the murders, instead gaining ‘a sense of security due to the fact that one could not be safe without the other . . . There were times when we would be paranoid about each other, but loyalty was a duty we both respected. There was no room for weakness or treachery.’
⁶
The secret they shared ‘bound us together more closely than any ties of affection possibly could’.
⁷

Privately, Ian had moments when he was aware that something had disintegrated horrifically inside him, but he guarded those moments alone: ‘I would sometimes wake in the morning and my higher self would not be there, the compelling self had vanished and it would just be me, and I would be like everyone else, and I would think that I was a madman, and I would get up and look at myself in the mirror and my eyes would look like someone else’s, and it would return, like being possessed by evil spirits, but it is not; it is too much of yourself inside you . . .’
⁸

While Ian and Myra drifted into a drunken slumber before the dwindling fire, Pauline Reade’s parents and brother scoured the streets frantically, then called the police. When the first strands of daylight filtered across the city, instead of waking to Saturday’s routine of an early breakfast and walk to the bakery with his daughter for the morning shift, Amos found himself going over the events of the previous evening in minute detail with the police.

Throughout much of the day, Joan walked about the streets in a state of utter shock, searching for her daughter, Paul at her side. She encountered Pauline’s friend Linda at a bus stop and her pent-up nerves erupted: if Linda had gone to the dance as Pauline had asked, her daughter wouldn’t be missing. Linda ran home, crying bitterly until her own mother explained that Mrs Reade was lashing out in her terror about Pauline. When Pat Cummings heard that her best friend hadn’t gone to the dance or returned home that night, she went straight to the Reades’ home and helped Joan cook a dinner that no one had the appetite to eat. Pat couldn’t hold back her tears; she had nightmares for months afterward about the split second when Pauline turned down Froxmer Street in her new blue coat and vanished into thin air.

In Bannock Street, Myra woke at quarter to seven that morning. The fire had gone out long ago. She nudged Ian and he awoke with a curse about the bloodstains on the collar of his black coat draped across a chair. He took the coat to the sink and ran the tap, dabbing at the stains with a damp cloth. The water whirled in the plughole, faintly pink. Myra brewed tea while he retrieved the blackened knife from the fire; he wrapped the contents of the grate in a newspaper and deposited them in the dustbin, but kept the knife in a sheet of the
Manchester Evening News
to dispose of later.

After breakfast they drove into town on the Tiger Cub; Ian waited while Myra took his coat into a dry-cleaner’s, booking it in under the surname of the American president, Kennedy. When she returned, they drove south-east from the city centre along Stockport Road until Ian stopped for cigarettes. He came back with the fags and a Crunchie bar, confiding that he’d bought them with four half-crowns he’d taken from Pauline’s coat pocket. Myra was appalled; fearing any remaining coins might be traced to them, she told him to replace them near the grave. Ian bristled at the idea but grudgingly relented that she might be right. They drove on towards Macclesfield and turned up a lane. A group of children were playing nearby; Ian gunned the bike to a quieter spot where he unrolled the knife from the newspaper and threw it into a babbling river, followed by a few heavy stones to keep it submerged. He used his lighter to burn the newspaper before they headed home.

The following morning they drove up to the moor on the Tiger Cub to scatter the coins on Pauline’s grave, then visited the Odeon cinema in Oldham. A double bill was playing:
The
Day of the Triffids
, based on the bestseller by John Wyndham, and
The Legion’s Last Patrol
, starring Stewart Granger. That month, Ken Thorne and His Orchestra had a number four hit with the trumpet-led ‘Theme from
The Legion’s Last Patrol
’. Ian bought the record for Myra, to ‘commemorate’ their perfect crime, and claims that if either of them hummed the tune afterwards, it was a private reference to Pauline’s murder.
⁹

When they returned to Bannock Street, Nellie, Maureen and Glenys were there, discussing Pauline’s disappearance with Gran. Fear and confusion ran through Gorton in response to one of their own going missing. Allan Grafton recalls, ‘We all knew each other and that’s partly why Pauline’s disappearance made people so nervous. Everyone tried to keep an open mind about it because people didn’t just vanish in those days – if they did, it was with good reason. But with Pauline no one knew what to think. It threw everything off kilter. Her family were absolutely positive she hadn’t run away, and we believed them. But if she hadn’t run away, what had happened to her? There was no explanation, no clue.’
¹⁰
The police investigation had drawn a blank and, in the absence of fact, rumours were rife that Pauline had eloped with a fairground worker or run away to Australia. On 19 July, the
Gorton & Openshaw Reporter
ran a column about Pauline under the headline ‘Gorton Girl Went to Dance: Missing’, describing her as ‘an attractive, dark-haired Gorton girl’.
¹¹
Joan Reade was quoted: ‘This is a complete mystery. Pauline has no boyfriends and there has not been a row at home. We would rather know that she was safe and have her back home, no matter what she may have done.’
¹²
Mention was made of the money Pauline had on her person at the time of her disappearance and Myra felt vindicated that she had insisted on replacing the coins Ian had stolen.

On 23 July 1963, less than two weeks after Pauline’s murder, Myra celebrated her 21st birthday. Ian bought her a gold-plated Ingersoll watch that she kept until the end of her life. Ben Boyce told her she could have the van as a gift from him, although it needed an MOT, tax and insurance. Myra placed a tax disc borrowed from Ben on the windscreen and drove the van around until she was reported to the police and received a summons. Since it was still registered in Ben’s name, he pleaded guilty to permitting the offence. One weekend, Myra and Ian painted the van’s interior white to remove any last traces of ‘forensic’. They drove to the moor regularly; in her autobiography, Myra writes that being near Pauline’s grave calmed Ian and gave him a renewed sense of his perceived dominion.

They were both fully aware of the local press interest in Pauline’s disappearance. In a letter, Myra related an anecdote about how she had been sitting in Gran’s chair, alone, when she found a notice in the personal column of the newspaper: ‘It said: “Pauline, please come home. We’re heartbroken for you.” I began to cry, rocking myself back and forth with the paper clutched to my chest. I didn’t hear his bike, nor knew that he’d come into the house. [Ian] asked me what was wrong, but I couldn’t answer; I couldn’t stop shaking and crying, for I was devastated about what had happened to Pauline, and for her mum and dad. I really liked Mrs Reade and used to feel sorry for her because she had problems with her nerves and always looked as though she was on the edge of a breakdown. He grabbed the paper off me and soon saw what I’d seen. He put the bolt on the front door in case Gran came back, did the same to the back door, and began to strangle me. Before I lost consciousness, I heard him remind me of what he’d said after Pauline’s murder, and that threat still stood.’
¹³

The
Gorton & Openshaw Reporter
tried to keep up public interest in Pauline’s disappearance. On 2 August 1963, the front page featured a photograph of Pauline looking strikingly pretty, leaning against a car and laughing with her best friend Pat while her brother Paul strummed a guitar. The article quoted her mother Joan: ‘She used to go dancing often. I was not worried at first, but I became alarmed when she failed to return . . . There will be no trouble for Pauline when she does come home’, and included a disheartening comment from the police in charge of the investigation: ‘The search has drawn a complete blank and we are very anxious about the situation.’
¹⁴
Seven days later, the newspaper tried again, asking, ‘Have You Seen Pauline?’ and offered an update on the search: police had drained a large section of the canal in the vicinity of Cornwall Street and Ogden Lane, used tracker dogs, dragged ponds and visited fairgrounds, coffee bars and cinemas, and questioned people, but there was still no trace of the missing girl.

Pauline’s family conducted their own desperate, haphazard search of the city. Allan Grafton recalls: ‘I was a postman at the time, living at my mam and dad’s house in Casson Street, and I used to catch the five o’clock bus to start work at half past five every morning. It’s pretty lonely, standing at a bus stop at that time. My bus left from Gorton Lane and most mornings I’d see Pauline’s dad, Amos, pass by. I’d ask, “Any luck, Amos?” and he’d say, “No, Allan, no luck.” He was out looking for her. I’d see Joan walking about, searching for Pauline, as well. The family were at the end of their tether.’
¹⁵

Every Tuesday Pauline’s mother offered a novena for her daughter at St Francis’ Monastery. Otherwise, her time was consumed with the search. ‘I was always looking,’ she recalled. ‘I even did Avon’s job, going from house to house, thinking I’d find her in one of the houses. I was always ready with my coat on, to run out as soon as daylight came. I went miles on my own, travelling on the buses and thinking I’d seen her and running, getting on one bus and running after another bus. I never thought Myra Hindley or Ian Brady were to do with it at all.’
¹⁶

That summer the couple travelled on the Tiger Cub to Scotland for a holiday. Before their departure, Myra called in at the local police station to ask if they would mind watching out for her van, which was parked on the croft behind Bannock Street. She was a familiar face at the front desk there, asking for coins for the gas meter and checking whether the police had seen Gran’s dog Lassie, who wandered about the neighbourhood.

On a previous trip to Scotland, Ian had shown Myra where he’d been brought up: they visited the derelict tenements of the Gorbals and drove out to Templeland Road, but he didn’t introduce her to his foster mother and siblings, despite spotting Jean Sloan at a distance. They’d climbed the stairs of a tower block to observe Ian’s old home more clearly and a girl emerged from one of the flats and swore at them, wanting to know what they were doing. Ian had answered her with equal aggression but told Myra afterwards that he would never hurt a fellow Scot. In summer 1963, they visited Glasgow again, then drove north to Loch Lomond and sailed on the
Maid of the Loch
, Britain’s last large paddle steamer. From the promenade deck, Ian snapped away with his camera, while Myra admired the scenery that had enraptured him as a young boy.

Returning to Gorton, Myra answered the door one day at Bannock Street to find a policeman standing there. She didn’t mention in her writings whether or not his uniformed appearance frightened her, instead recalling, ‘Outside was one of the tallest, most good-looking men I’d ever seen. He said he’d come to talk to me about the van and could he come in for a few minutes?’
¹⁷
He introduced himself as Norman Sutton and asked whether, in view of the legal trouble over the van, she would sell it to him. When Myra agreed, suggesting £20 for it, he told her he would be happy to pay £25 but couldn’t exchange money while he was on duty and asked if she would consider an evening out with him so that he might hand over the money later. Myra accepted, and recounted the incident to Ian during a picnic. He laughed hysterically and Myra admitted later that she found it amusing too, in view of the murder they had committed.

She arranged to meet Norman after the night-school classes she had enrolled in at her old school, Ryder Brow. She took maths on Friday and English on Wednesday, taught by her old English teacher, Miss Webb, who remembered her. During their conversation, Myra brought up her date with Norman, adding that he was a policeman. Miss Webb said that if Myra ever felt inclined to join the force, she could put in a good word for her because a friend of hers worked at Mill Street station. After the class, Myra found Norman waiting for her on his motorbike, and they drove to a pub in West Gorton, where he said he remembered her from Belle Vue; his mother, May, was the manageress there. After last orders, he drove Myra home. She asked him in for a cup of tea and, in Gran’s front room, she explained that she was seeing Ian. He asked if she was serious about Ian. She nodded, but when Norman kissed her she didn’t rebuff him. They had sex, and Myra claimed later that he asked her to marry him – though he was already married – at which point she felt an overpowering urge to tell him about Pauline’s murder. She quelled the urge and they ended up discussing whether she should apply to join the police force, then made plans to meet after her next evening class.