Random Acts of Unkindness (21 page)

After that, he’d come when I whistled, and I’d hold the bread out of the window. I’d called him Jack, and after a couple of years there were two of them. Jack disappeared, so I did the same process with the next one, who I called Jill, even though I know now it was a male.

They’d change every two or three years, and they were there all year long. I’d feed them twice a day, then they’d sing at dusk. That tinny light in the evenings, where everything looked golden, was my favourite time of day, where me and the blackbird would sit outside. I’d sip my tea and wonder what tomorrow would bring.

I was living a double life, and up until 1985 there was a battle going on inside me. One part of me was doing John Connelly’s appeals for Thomas, appearing in public like a sad celebrity. I knew that there were other parents of missing people, there were a lot of them round here, and we used to talk at the same rallys, all about
them
and how
they
should be punished
.

But John wanted me to do this for just him, and asked me not to contact the other parents. I didn’t want to anyway. I’d been learning to drive and decorating my house, having an inside toilet put in, central heating. I’d had a colour TV for years and I’d watch
Corrie
in my housecoat, still waiting for that knock.

It was then, after eight o’clock, that my other self would kick in. My darkness came when the sun disappeared. I’d go outside and stare at the moon, wondering if Thomas was looking at it. Something was certain; he couldn’t be looking at another moon, just this one. Whether he liked it or not, we shared the moon.

If he was dead and buried somewhere, the moonlight would be shining on his grave, reflecting back at me. I’d unpin my hair and walk around the house, smoking and going over every detail of what had happened before he went. Had I said something wrong? Was my whole approach to mothering wrong? Had I potty trained him too early?

Even now, the women I met in the supermarket and at the veg stalls sneered as they remembered Thomas disappearing. I’d never challenged them. Why should I? They didn’t know anything about how Thomas would kiss me and tell me I was the best mum in the world. He would always draw me yellow, like sunshine, he said.

I’d pace around, up and down, until I was weak with exhaustion. I’d throw myself on the bed and cry and cry, not dramatic, like, more just quiet and sad. I’d wonder what happened to that little girl and, sometimes, I’d peek in the wardrobe just to make sure everything was all right in there.

It was like I was a different person inside, living one life that was the real Bessy, sad and desperate, a life that ended with Thomas and
her
, in
her
prison cell, stopping me getting on.

The other life, my daytime life, was as normal as possible. I’d be up with the lark, no need for an alarm, and I’d feed the birds. It was entirely different in the summer than in the winter, because the days were shorter in the winter, so the nights and the crying were longer.

When May came, though, it was a relief, because I could go out in the day for longer, and pretend I was someone I wasn’t. I’d smile and be polite to anyone I came across, particularly if I knew them as I wanted people to think I was getting over it.

Recovering, as they put it. I’d walk up Ney Street and around the market, never getting too friendly with anyone in case they wanted to come to my house. By now, I had stuff about Thomas everywhere. And there were the smells as well. Newspapers and cuttings, all about
them
.

No one ever came round to see me, so when I shut that door I could do whatever I wanted to, which was mostly smoke and cry.

As the number of people who had direct contact with the Moors Murders lessened, the fewer people understood why I was still waiting. All the people who lived nearby had either moved or had been convinced when Colin left that it was all my fault; I must be a bad person if both my son and my husband left me.

Ken Little had retired years ago, and when I made my weekly visit to Ashton-Under-Lyne police station, I would see a young constable who’d tell me there had been no developments, or even the desk sergeant, if they were busy.

Of course, by 1985, times had changed and there was a lot more to do. There’d been lots of children going missing round here, usually through parents splitting up and one taking them away somewhere, but more often they just disappeared. Rumour had it that most of them were boys and they’d run away, probably to London, John Connelly said. But sometimes they were murdered.

There were bodies found. Each time I heard about it on the news, I would go to the station, even though John had told me not to. Likewise, if I heard on the missing people grapevine that there was an unidentified body, I’d go to the station. I’d even begun to look at the death registers, but when I saw what a massive task it was, I put it on hold.

I’d been down to the police station one day when I saw a paper on the stand with
her
face on the front. Underneath it, there was a story about how
he
had confessed to more murders.

I went back to the police station, taking the paper with me, but they told me, there and then, that Thomas wasn’t one of the children named. He was still a missing person. They told me that the Moors Murders case would be reopened. The rest I read in the papers.

I found out where
she
was, that
she’d
found God, that
she’d
been studying. Funny. My life had just stopped one day in 1964, but everything else had gone on. I’d kept Thomas’s bedroom exactly how it was. Manchester United, his team, had gone on. His football, five-a-side, still played at Ashton Moss.

Colin had still gone on, married Lizzie and become her kids’ dad. Ken Little had gone on, getting a long service medal and retiring to Kent; that’s what his replacement told me.
She’d
gone on, even in prison. Even
he’d
been talking to the press and making a bloody drama out of it all. My life had just stopped. It might have looked like I’d carried on with my life, but inside I was dead. Stone dead.

That’s when I started to drive up to Saddleworth Moor. I wasn’t sure if he was up there, but it was my best chance of talking to
her
. I’d heard that
she
was going up there, to show the police where other people were buried. There was a kind of deep excitement inside my chest when I realised that there was a chance they might find him.

At first I drove to the bottom of the moor, but the police were there and they had it all cordoned off. So I drove up to the car park near a farm and walked over to a wall. I jumped over and went onto the moor for the first time. To me, it was a big graveyard.

I’d never been here before, although I’d wanted to. I wasn’t even sure why. Yet when I stepped onto the grim scrub at the edge, and saw the bright purple foxgloves growing out of it, I felt like I had come home. I’d gone down to the spot where there were yellow markers, death placers, so that when they did bring
her
here they would all know where to look.

Although
she
would know where to look already, because it was
she
who had committed the crime and drawn them all here. I suddenly felt a pang of anger at
her
, a deep anxiety at all the attention
she
was getting, and wondered if it was a busman’s holiday for
her,
just a way for
her
to feel the sun on
her
face as she stood on another grave.

I stood at the designated spot and looked around. It was different, but not all that unpleasant. A kind of dumbed down version of the world, all amethyst and grey, with some bright greens here and there. And birds everywhere. I looked it up later on in Thomas’s encyclopaedia.

‘Many of these moorland species are considered to be in danger or vulnerable. Variations in the habitat suit different species. The red grouse, merlin, short-eared owl, and hen harrier nest among the taller heather, where the plant growth provides them with cover.

In contrast, the golden plover, lapwing, and curlew are often found nesting on the recently burned open areas. Wading birds such as snipe and redshank, as well as duck, nest in the wetter areas. Moorland is also an important feeding area for the Peregrine. Many of the birds which nest on the moor winter in this country, returning to the another life for half the year.’

Two lives. A bit like me. There was a covering of emerald green moss, with heather outcrops here and there. I imagined that if they had brought Thomas here, he would be resting in a warm bed underneath the blanket of moss pulled up around him, the heather duvet keeping him safe and happy in his resting place.

His pillow would be a puffball mushroom and his sleep would be undisturbed here, where it was ever so quiet. The roots would grow around him, drawing him into the ground and he’d eventually become a living part of it, turning in the peat with all the other living creatures that were down there.

What’s more, I could visit him every day, sure that he was here, safe in Mother Nature’s arms. I suddenly felt glad that he hadn’t been disturbed, not like the other poor children. I couldn’t even imagine what their families had gone through when their little kiddies had been dug from the moor and taken back into the horrors of life they had been left with.

I’d never forgotten the faces of the policemen involved in the investigation, the sorrow drawn all over their faces. I’d intentionally not contacted the families of the children who had been found there, because I was never really sure that Thomas was dead.

What if, on the day I made contact, told them what I thought, shared their grief, he walked back in? They didn’t have that luxury. Their children were gone. But then again, they didn’t have my torture.

The road was blocked off at both ends on the day they took
her
to the moor. I sat at the top of Pots and Pans and watched the helicopter land. I couldn’t see what went on, but, like at the trial, I pleaded silently with
her
to tell me if
she
had murdered my son.

She’d
confessed to the murders by now, and between them they’d named five children altogether. Three had been found, one at the house on the day, and two buried on the moor. The police started to dig again, and I stood rooted in horror to the spot when I saw the front of the paper.

They’d found Pauline Reade. The search went on for months, and every day I got as close as I could during the day, waiting for a phone call in the evening to tell me they’d found Thomas.

I’d considered getting in touch with Mrs Johnson, Keith Bennett’s mother, and I’d sometimes seen her on the moor. Who was I to talk to her? Her son was officially dead, mine was officially missing. She was in the paper, on the telly; I was rolled out at John Connelly’s benefits and appeals.

Not that I was complaining, I just felt sidelined, as if I wasn’t good enough to go over it again and again. Her child had been named, she was on the way to knowing what happened. Mine was completely invisible still.

This might sound like all I was worried about was myself, but I was actually devastated. I’d been walking on the spot that poor girl was found just before they started digging, and it was driving me mad.

The problem was, I knew how the families felt, I knew their every emotion, I knew their torture, how every day they still thought about their child. Those children would have been in their thirties now, with families of their own. Jobs, houses, lives.

All of them gone, like Thomas. I was hysterical when the body was found, and hysterical when they didn’t find the other body and closed the investigation. If there had been any hope left in me, it died that day.

I sat on the wall and watched them move the digging equipment down the path. I wanted to shout at them to take it back, find her son, find my son, but I had no voice left. I just watched with sad eyes. It was my fifty-ninth birthday, but people had forgotten about my birthday a long time ago.

I stare through the house and out of the back window, where, as if to reinforce Bessy’s story, two blackbirds sat on the windowsill. As if to tell me that this is real. This is what you’ve been waiting for. I want to read more but I’m angry. I need to think it through and take action.

John Connelly. Mr Connelly Snr. Pat Haywood told me he’d organized and funded Mothers for the Missing. He was a local philanthropist and benefactor. But all the while he was making sure that all the families of the missing boys completely believed that their sons had been abducted or, like the boys last month, had committed suicide.

That their disappearance had gone almost unpublicised, pushed to the back of the local paper, runaways or young suicides.

The case notes say that Little was removed from the case. He clearly found out about John Connelly. To make things worse, John Connelly had used the Moors Murders to cover up his tracks making the mothers believe that their sons were buried on Saddleworth Moor. And who were they to question it? Like his son, John Connelly was head of a criminal hierarchy, making sure that there were enough people below him to take the blame if anything went wrong. Like Harry Pearson, who was probably on the take as well.

These influential men were using their self-made standing in the community to prey on victims from the same community. Ingratiating themselves and diverting suspicion by throwing money at it. Connelly Snr. paying Bessy and probably others, encouraging her to get involved with his campaigns, and Connelly Jnr. providing Pat and the other victims’ families with facilities to meet.

It’s almost unbelievable, but it fits in with everything I’ve suspected about Connelly. And now Connelly Snr. He’d been buying up all the houses in the area from the mothers of the missing children, then manipulating them to believe that those kids were runaways. Bessy, anyway, and probably the other poor families in the photos at the community centre.

I open the file again. John Connelly is mentioned several times in Thomas’s investigation, mainly in a positive sense, as if he is some kind of mass benefactor.