One of Your Own (33 page)

Despite Ian’s and Myra’s efforts, there was plenty of ‘forensic’ for the police to find in the sitting room and Myra’s bedroom. Into a series of plastic bags went samples of hair, blood and clothing, two tape recorders and tapes, hundreds of photographs and negatives, a tartan-covered photo album, a photographic lightbulb, two revolvers and bullets from a cardboard box and the Adesga carrier bag containing the murder weapon. The letter Ian had been writing when Talbot knocked on his door was discovered under the sofa bed: ‘Dear Tom, sorry I could not phone yesterday. My family are at Glasgow this week. I was crossing the road in town last night when someone on a bike came round a corner and knocked me down. Except for a few bruises I was all right until I got up this morning. I could not put my weight on my ankle. I must have weak ankles or something. If it is no better tomorrow, I will see the doctor. Ian.’
²²

By half past two, Benfield and Talbot were back at Hyde station, where Detective Policewoman Margaret Campion had been called in from another case to question Myra. Irish-born, one of only two detective policewomen in Cheshire, and with sixteen years of experience in the force, she was the ideal person to interview Myra, whom she suspected would be difficult. She began questioning her just after two o’clock: ‘This morning a man’s body was found in your house. Who is that person?’
²³

Myra replied: ‘I don’t know and I’m not saying anything. Ask Ian. My story’s the same as Ian’s.’

‘Come on. What’s the story of last night?’

Myra took Ian’s initial statement at the house that morning as her brief: ‘We came home from work about six o’clock, then went out about eight o’clock and then went to the outdoor [off-licence] in Stockport Road, Longsight, for some wine. We often go there. Then we went up to Glossop way near the moors and sat talking for ages. It was just a normal evening out before all this happened. It was the same as hundreds of other evenings out.’
²⁴
She didn’t realise that her version of events already differed from the one given by Ian; he told police that they’d spent the entire evening in Manchester prior to meeting Edward.

Campion didn’t mention the discrepancy. ‘Would you care to tell me what happened at your house last night?’

‘All I’m saying is that I didn’t do it and Ian didn’t do it,’ Myra responded. ‘We are involved in something we didn’t do. We never left each other. We never do. What happened last night was an accident. It should never have happened.’

‘An accident? If what you say is true, it’s in your interests to tell the truth of what did happen.’

Myra shook her head, ‘No. Ask Ian. His story is the same as mine. We never left each other. Ian can’t drive and that’s that.’ Then she asked urgently, ‘What are they going to do with Ian, because what he has done I have done.’

Campion paused, then asked, ‘Do you realise how serious this matter is?’

‘Yes,’ Myra shot back. ‘And I also know David Smith told you all this and he’s a liar.’

‘David Smith alleges you cleaned up the mess in the living room after the murder of this man.’

‘Yes, and I suppose he told you he sat on the chair benevolently looking on while I cleaned up.’

‘Is it true that you went to David Smith’s house last night and he walked home with you?’

‘Yes.’

‘What time did you go there?’

‘I’m not saying. All this happened because there was an argument and that’s that.’

‘How did this man get to your house? Who brought him there?’

‘I’m not saying how he got there or when. I’ve told you before, I’m not saying anything.’
²⁵

The interview was terminated. Myra would repeat the same words – ‘I didn’t do it, Ian didn’t do it, ask David Smith’ – like a mantra in the weeks ahead. Ian occasionally made a few minor blunders, but Myra refused to be drawn. She came close to blurting something out when the police suggested that she was a prostitute and Edward was killed because he’d refused to pay up, but she recovered herself.

Various people came and went that day. Dave and Maureen remained cloistered in one of the rooms, away from Myra. Nellie arrived, ferried in by the police with Myra’s Uncle Bert, and pleaded with her daughter: ‘Myra, they say you’re in a lot of trouble because you won’t talk to them. They’re talking about bodies being buried on the moors.’
²⁶
At this, Myra became upset. Nellie told her that Gran was staying with the Hills for the time being, but no one believed the story they’d concocted about Myra causing an accident by dangerous driving. At four o’clock, Nellie and Bert left, promising to return that evening.

Half an hour later, a small, stooped woman in spectacles and a pillbox hat arrived at the station. She was shown into a building across the yard. Alex Carr stood watching Myra as the sound of loud sobbing filtered through the window. Myra went on sipping her tea as Edward’s mother, Edith, identified the savagely wounded body of her eldest son in the mortuary. Carr formed an opinion of Myra that didn’t waver until his own death decades later: ‘She was totally lacking in emotion. She never showed any remorse at any time when I spoke to her. She was hard and evil.’
²⁷

At half past six, Benfield returned to Hattersley for another poke around the house. Lights were on in almost every window across the estate, with families settling down for tea and telly. He walked down to where Myra’s car was parked at the foot of the slope and found a dog-eared brown wallet on the dashboard. He felt inside and pulled out three sheets of paper.

He knew immediately that he was holding in his hands a blueprint for murder. Some of the abbreviations were immediately obvious – GN for gun, HAT for hatchet and so on – but others were more obscure. He tucked the papers into his pocket. At eight o’clock, he slid the notes across the desk in the CID room to Ian, who struck him as ‘a normal fellow [who] looked a bit worried’.
²⁸
Ian asked after Myra, but Benfield pressed him on the list. Ian admitted it was his but claimed to have written it
after
the murder.

‘What does OB mean?’

‘Object.’

‘DET?’

‘Details.’

‘CARR?’

‘Car.’

‘STN?’

A slight pause, then Ian said, ‘Stationery, paper.’

Benfield asked him why he had written about guns when the murder was committed with an axe.

‘For if anybody had seen us burying the body,’ Ian replied. ‘The guns were for self-protection.’ Then he offered: ‘Pro-P, that’s Pro-Plus, a stimulant. ALI means alibi. METH is method. CLOTH is clothing. BULLS, bullets.’

‘And P/B?’

Another flicker of a pause. ‘Penistone Burn.’

Benfield frowned. The reference was lost on him, though he knew Penistone was a town on the eastern side of the Pennines. He decided to leave it for the time being; he was still turning over the question of whether or not to arrest David Smith. Benfield’s theory was that they had meant to dispose of the body that night, but Ian’s sprained ankle prevented them from getting any further than the car, where he had left his wallet with the disposal plan inside, because however much Ian protested otherwise, Benfield was convinced that the plan had been written
prior
to death.
²⁹

He left Ian and decided not to charge David Smith. Fairley explains: ‘The argument was this: if you’re going to charge Hindley, you’ve got to charge Smith, because what you had at that time was Hindley helping clear up, no more than that. Who else helped to clear up? Smith. We took Smith’s shoes off; there was blood on his shoes and Brady said Smith had kicked Evans. He had this stick, too; and the stick wasn’t as thick as your finger, bit of string tied on it, that had blood on it. Smith told Dixie Dean that he’d spent time with them on the moors and Brady had told him he’d killed more. I know Dixie Dean’s view, because that came through loud and clear before he left to return to Stalybridge – he thought Smith was saying this to get himself out of a tight spot. He didn’t believe him. But in those days you didn’t lock people up easily.’
³⁰

Fairley’s own views on David Smith were already solid: ‘All right, he was a bit of a rum customer, but if it hadn’t been for Smith, other children would have been killed. People were so vicious about that poor lad after it all came out, but he saved lives
and
he enabled us to bring home those children who had already been murdered so that their parents could give them proper funerals. Without him, we would never have known where to start. Smith was the one man more than anyone who brought the whole thing to justice. Albeit unknowingly in parts, but he did it and it wasn’t an easy thing to do. Because if he hadn’t come to us, Evans would have ended up on the moor and we would never have been any wiser. The men who mattered on that inquiry – Jock Carr and Joe Mounsey – they believed in David Smith completely. Unfortunately, mud sticks and he ended up an outcast. But it’s about time people started realising he’s a hero, not a villain.’
³¹

Before detectives sent Dave and Maureen home, they asked him if he had any ideas for getting Myra and Ian to open up. Dave had two novel suggestions: kill Puppet to make Myra squeak, and stick a spider or daddy-long-legs in Ian’s cell and watch him start crawling the walls.

Myra was still in the canteen with Puppet. Her mother returned with her lover, Bill Moulton. Myra slipped into the skirt and blouse Nellie had brought; the clothes she had worn earlier were taken away for tests. She was appalled when detectives told her they needed samples of her saliva, blood and pubic hair. The results showed that she and Edward Evans shared the same blood group and a medical examination revealed that she hadn’t had sexual intercourse recently; she told the doctor it was two weeks since she and Ian had last been intimate.

At twenty past eight that evening, Ian was charged with the murder of Edward Evans. He responded, ‘I stand on the statement made this morning.’
³²
He wrote the same words on the charge form, signed it and was escorted to the basement cells for the night. At nine o’clock, Arthur Benfield strolled into the canteen where Myra was sitting with Puppet on her knee, next to her mother and Bill. She recalled, ‘I was both terrified and reluctant to tell the police anything which could have harmed Ian in any way. I said such stupid things . . .’
³³
In fact, she uttered very little. Benfield asked her if she wished to say anything about the events of the previous evening.

‘No,’ Myra shook her head. ‘Not until you let me see Ian.’

‘He’s been charged and will be up in court in the morning.’

Myra stared back at Benfield. ‘Then I’ll be at court and I’ll see you after I’ve seen Ian.’
³⁴

‘You can go,’ Benfield said shortly. ‘But not to Wardle Brook Avenue.’

‘And Ian?’

‘He’ll be spending the night in a cell.’

Myra’s expression altered immediately; she looked crestfallen.

Nellie took her daughter home. Myra was silent for the rest of the evening, apart from a small cry of astonishment when she saw a column on the front page of the
Manchester Evening News
: ‘Body Found in House – Murder?’ She quickly scanned the article. There was a comment from Talbot about Ian, who was not named (‘A man is helping us with our inquiries’) and then, at the foot of the page, ‘Mrs Ellen Maybury, aged 76, who has lived there for twelve months with her granddaughter Myra Hindley, aged 23 . . .’
³⁵

The path towards infamy had begun.