Where There is Evil (15 page)

I asked myself why MacDonald had been reluctant to accept the help of the Glasgow CID. Why had he not wanted to screen Moira’s photograph on television? Why had he not disclosed that the
policeman’s wife, Mrs Chalmers, had not been the sole witness to the bus sighting?

Everything seemed to point to my father having been missed from the round-up of suspects either through sheer ineptitude or because someone in John F. MacDonald’s force had protected
him.

My next meeting with Jim McEwan took place at Bathgate police station. On 30 April 1992 the reception area was plastered with dramatic posters of a missing fifteen-year-old
girl. The face of Vicky Hamilton, who had disappeared on 10 February 1991, stared down at us from the walls. She had vanished from the main square of Bathgate, as mysteriously as Moira had from
another small town thirty-five years before, when there was eight inches of snow on the ground. She too, has never been seen again.

Disposal of a body in such bad weather conditions is difficult: snowstorms and frozen ground make it impossible to dig a makeshift grave. Jim and I had discussed this when I pointed out the
route my father’s bus had usually taken, where the terminii had been located. I’d shown him my father’s favourite haunts and other familiar places. We agreed that if he had killed
Moira it was unlikely that he had travelled any great distance that night, given the road conditions and fear of being seen. We felt that, if we had had to get rid of a body, we would have chosen
old mine workings or water.

Unfortunately, Coatbridge is riddled with old colliery workings, abandoned pits, lochs and ponds in surrounding marshland, not to mention the Monkland Canal; it had gone right through the town
in the fifties. I told Jim of one memory I had from about age four or five, when my dad took me on a long walk one Sunday to a small loch, where some swans were gliding about in the reeds. Now
named Clyde Calders nature reserve, and visible today to passing M8 motorists, my dad had told me it was called Dick’s Pond. He had known it from boyhood. ‘Aye, Sandra, I used tae play
here,’ he said, showing me how to select a small pebble and skim it across the surface of the water. ‘Come on, you have a go at this!’ I asked him why we couldn’t see the
stones come back up, and he explained: ‘Ye see out there? Ah knew a laddie when ah wis wee, who went swimming out in the middle there. He got drownt. He wisnae ever found again. Ye see,
underneath there’s a big old mine shaft that goes richt doon. Naebody kens how far doon it goes, but they never goat him. Pit a body oot there, and naebody wid ever find it, it’s sae
deep, hen. If ever ah wanted rid o’ somethin’, that’s where I’d pit it.’

Jim told me that he had spoken with the West Yorkshire police, who had provided further information. The offences that had brought my father to the attention of officers south of the border had
related to deception and trying to obtain a mortgage under false pretences. I breathed a huge sigh of relief – then thought, so what if he’s been in jail for other things, and not child
molesting, he’s probably still adept at getting away with that. Jim went on, ‘Look, they’re very interested in what we’re telling them, but your dad’s name
doesn’t show up on their list of known paedophiles. He’s only known to them for these offences.’

‘So what’s new?’ I asked. ‘They just don’t know about him, that’s all.’

‘Well,’ Jim said, ‘Leeds has one of the biggest known rings of paedophiles in Britain, but he’s not known to them through complaints of perversion.’

We stood up to leave, and Jim said he’d be in touch. Over the next few months we spoke regularly on the telephone but could not meet again until July.

Meanwhile, Jim had told me that he would need to speak to my brothers. Although they were three and six years younger than me, and the period in our lives in which Jim was most interested was
1957, when they had been tiny, he had to interview them. He also said that he was keen to know if my father had had any contact with other young female relatives. I was horrified at the very idea.
‘Well, no. I’ve no sisters, and all my cousins who are female are all much younger than me,’ I said. ‘It was my friends he molested, not any of my relatives – they
would be too wee, and besides, I would have known if anything had ever happened. Something would have been said.’

‘These things are often hushed up in families. We may even be making assumptions that only female children attract him – many paedophiles don’t discriminate.’ Then he
asked the question that was repeated by countless others over the following months.

‘Are you absolutely sure, Sandra, that nothing happened to you? I have to ask it. It’s just that when abuse is uncovered like this, it’s rare to find that all the offences take
place
outside
the family circle.’

Although my instincts told me I had not been one of my father’s victims, I was terrified that perhaps this memory might still be lurking in my subconscious.

I decided to convene a meeting with my brothers. We got together at Ian’s house, and discussed our different memories of our father, recalling in particular how he had gone off to Leeds.
We seemed like witnesses of an accident, victims who had seen the same build-up and the same event simultaneously, but who all had personal images of it. Ian had been pulled in and out of the car
parked at our door by my parents. He had witnessed not only the row between our parents, over the presence of Pat Hanlon in the car, but also our mother hitting back with the frying pan. She had
fought like a tigress and won.

Norman had shared my father’s interest in cars and the two had been close, but he too felt bitter about the way we had been abandoned. He was the only one of us who was upset when he never
received a birthday or Christmas card, and the only one to visit my father in Leeds, in an attempt, perhaps, to mend bridges. He went only once and would not discuss what had happened there. Norman
remembered how I had tried to keep myself and my friends out of my father’s way, and how I’d insisted on a bedroom door I could lock from an early age. Both my brothers swore that their
father had never molested them. Physical beatings, yes, sexual overtures, definitely not.

But I still needed to talk to my cousins.

Before we set off to the United States for a family holiday with our friends Janet and John McGill and their children, I saw Ashley several times for counselling. She felt the
holiday would do me the world of good, as long as I got a balance of rest and sightseeing. She was right and everyone ensured that, for two weeks, the worry took a back seat, and I relaxed.

Janet and John knew of the chain of events unfolding in my life. Janet told me that she had heard years before from a relative that my father was well known to all of the half-dozen Coatbridge
cinema owners as a perpetual nuisance, someone who sat next to children or young women and pestered them. He had been asked to leave a number of times. Most women moved to avoid him, but many
children sat frozen with shame and did not know how to react. Janet had never felt it appropriate to tell me until now.

Before we went away, I drew up from our extensive family tree a list of all my cousins from the huge clan on my mother’s side, concentrating on the girls. I dismissed those who had gone to
live abroad, which left six, all much younger than me, three sets of sisters. The eldest would have been fourteen or so when my father left Coatbridge, the youngest only three or four. I shall call
my three sets of cousins A and B, C and D, E and F.

Before I approached any of them, I phoned an aunt I felt I could trust for advice. I was convinced that nothing could have happened to her daughters, both lovely, well-adjusted young women, whom
I adored. But as soon as I broached the matter, there was an awkward silence. I repeated that I couldn’t say why I needed to know but for the sake of my health I did. Finally, she said I
should speak privately to C, the elder of her girls. She would say no more, and hung up.

I was stunned. I had looked after C as a child, and I have always felt close to her. I rang my cousin and asked to see her right away. She told me to come to her home.

She and her husband were shocked by the terrible state I was in when I arrived. After some tea, I stumbled through an explanation, and although C was upset, she was relieved that I was not about
to tell her I was leaving my husband – she and her partner could think of no other reason why I should be so distraught!

When I asked if my father had ever made sexual advances towards her when she was little, she looked at me directly and said, ‘Yes, it’s true. When I was six. Did my mother tell you
what happened? I’ve had some counselling about it, which has helped, in the last little while, but I’ve never been able to say anything to you about it because he was your dad.

‘It was a beautiful warm day, some time in the summer of 1962. My little sister and I were both in similar outfits, little cotton dresses, with matching bolero-style sleeveless jackets, so
it must have been scorching. So good, that we were taken to visit Granny Frew, and were able to have afternoon tea in the back garden at Ashgrove. A rug was put out, and while the adults sat in
deck chairs, we’d our own little picnic, then we went off to play. Your mum was there, and mine, and they both were enjoying chatting in the sunshine to wee Katie. You weren’t there, or
your brothers, but your dad was working in his garage.’

Grandpa Frew had had a hut that screened off the area where the picnic was being held from my parents’ garden. That land ran to one side of our home, and formed a large triangle dominated
in the centre by the garage my mother had had built for my father’s exclusive use. Within months Alexander had filled this garage with all his usual junk.

‘I don’t know what he actually shouted to get my attention from the front garden, where D and I were playing. She was only four years old then, so I really was expected to keep a
close eye on her and make sure she didn’t venture on to the road. But he used some kind of pretext to lure me into the garage, perhaps it was an offer of sweets, I don’t know. I recall
he was sitting, not where the garage doors were open, but up near the top, beyond his black car, with its bonnet up. He’d something on his knee which he was fixing. I wasn’t keen to go
further up into the gloomier part of the place, but whatever he said, it must have been persuasive. As I passed his car and approached him, I felt something wasn’t right, and I hesitated. I
remember he said: “C’mere, hen, there’s something Ah want ye tae hold for me here.” Well, I couldn’t see what exactly he was doing, and it was drummed into us to be
polite, so I stepped closer. I was a pretty helpful wee girl, and it would look bad to say no, but I didn’t like him. I saw that it was one of those old one-bar electric fires that he had
across his knees, with a flex hanging over on to the floor. He’d on these navy blue work overalls over his own clothes. I didn’t know why he was inside his garage on such a nice day.
Anyway, I was really quite close to him by now, almost within arm’s reach, when I stopped dead. He had this really weird expression on his face, a funny look that I just didn’t trust.
He said, “Come on, hen, I want you to hold this for me. Come on, haud it jist for a minute, that’s all ye’ve to do. It’s a cable.”

‘Well, I could see that what he was pointing to, something big and white and sticking right out of those overalls, wasn’t anything electrical, but it sure as heck gave me one
almighty shock! I was rooted to the spot, and staring with such incredulity, I could describe his underwear for you right down to the last detail. But I couldn’t think what to do – I
don’t know what your dad would have tried next, though I had nightmares afterwards about that. Strangely, it was D who really saved the situation. She’d followed just at the back of me,
all curiosity, to see what Uncle Alex wanted me to do, and as I stood there, transfixed, I suddenly felt her at my elbow, peering round and trying to see what he was showing me. I just panicked,
because I knew I must protect her, though I couldn’t have said exactly from what. I backed away, turned abruptly and said,
“Run!”
and grabbed her hand, and we rushed
out.’

I was incredulous that my father could have done such a thing while a tea party was in full swing just yards away. His cunning was frightening too, for of course he had been smart enough to
leave the doors of his garage standing open: any passer-by could have glanced in his direction, but the car bonnet obscured a perfect view. This outwardly normal scene meant that if he was accused
of anything by a child, he could claim that their imagination was over-active, and protest that no one would dream of exposing himself where he could be so easily seen.

‘I got my little sister back to where my mother was, and she saw we were both very upset. I whispered to her that my uncle Alex was doing bad things. She took me inside right away, and I
was categorically told never to repeat such an accusation.’

Jim McEwan had been absolutely correct about denial within families.

‘I wasn’t believed. I was told to stop telling such lies, and we were taken home.’

Despite my aunt’s apparent refusal to believe that anything sinister had occurred, she ensured that for the next few years contact between her daughters and my father was minimal.

Yet because her mother had been so adamant that C had told lies about my father, when later, aged eight, she was indecently assaulted by a neighbour, she said nothing, but attempted to avoid her
attacker. Shortly afterwards this same teenage boy came to babysit for her parents. Eventually, they noticed how his visits terrified her and he was asked to stop coming, but not before the damage
had been done.

My cousin told me that she had had counselling, which had helped, and that she was fund-raising for Childline in Scotland: she wanted to channel the anger she felt at what had happened into
something positive. ‘There are far too many people out there saying, “Child abuse? What’s all the fuss about?” Or they say the figures are overestimated, denying
they’ve ever come across it. Or they kid themselves that these sordid events only happen in poor families, which is rubbish. I’m a classic example of a child who spoke up, but
wasn’t believed. I wasn’t a naughty kiddie who told whoppers, but it was easier for my mother to deny everything I said that day and call her own daughter a liar, rather than raise the
alarm. It was hushed up, as it often is, and not confronted. Well, I’m not prepared to hush it up any longer.’