Evil Relations (32 page)

‘I didn’t do anything,’ David replied quietly. ‘I’ve said this all along. I didn’t do anything.’

Hoosen referred to the recent trouble in Hattersley – the fight in March 1966, which had come to the attention of the police – before focusing on the content of David’s notebook. He read from it, beginning: ‘“
Every man or woman is one of two things, a masochist or a sadist, only a few practise what they feel
.”’ He paused to glance at the witness. ‘Are those your views?’

Shifting uncomfortably, David said, ‘Well, they do practise what they feel.’

‘Hmm.’ Hoosen returned to the notebook: ‘Let us look at the next page: “
Perversion is the way a man thinks, the way he feels, the way he lives. People are like maggots, small, blind, worthless fish bait . . . Rape is not a crime, it’s a state of mind. Murder is a hobby and a supreme pleasure . . .
”’

‘That is not entirely mine,’ David interrupted. ‘That is what I could surmise as the meaning of the Marquis de Sade.’

‘“
God is a disease, a plague, a weight around a man’s neck
,”’ Hoosen read. ‘Are those your views?’

‘Yes.’

‘“
A disease which eats away his instincts. God is a superstition, a cancer, a man-made cancer, which is injected into the brain in the form of religion
.” Those are your views?’

‘On the subject of religion,’ David conceded.

‘“
You live for one thing, supreme pleasure in everything you do. Sadism is the supreme pleasure
.”’

‘There again I was surmising the words of de Sade,’ David interjected.

‘“
Look around
,”’ Hoosen read. ‘“
Watch the fools doing exactly what their fathers did before them. The Book, they live by the Book!
”’

He lowered the exercise pad and looked at David. ‘These were your views, were they not?’

David took a deep breath. ‘A number of them . . .’

The argument continued for some time until Hoosen switched to David’s poor record of employment temporarily before returning to the notebook again and then once more to the subject of work.

‘Towards the latter part of 1964, did you have discussions with Brady about how to get money without working?’

‘Yes,’ David replied.

‘Did you tell Brady that you could make money by selling pornographic photographs?’

David shook his head incredulously. ‘No, sir.’

‘You are smiling. Why smile?’

‘Because it is the first I have ever heard of it.’

‘Did you have a discussion at some time when you thought that you could raise some money by what you described in your words as “rolling a queer”?’

‘No.’

‘What does it mean?’

‘Robbing a homosexual,’ David replied bluntly, adding, ‘I should think nearly everybody knows what that means.’

Hoosen then put it to him that he and another man had taken Lesley Ann Downey to 16 Wardle Brook Avenue for the express purpose of taking pornographic photographs of the child. David denied the suggestion vigorously, explaining that he had been at the Three Arrows pub that evening for an hour or so while his mother-in-law babysat, and with Maureen for the entire night. When Hoosen replied that Nellie Hindley had already told police she
hadn’t
looked after her grandchild on Boxing Day, David retorted, ‘My mother-in-law is a liar.’

Hoosen then moved on to potential robberies before suddenly declaring: ‘I suggest that nothing was said to you by Brady about having photographs of graves.’

‘Pardon?’ David wasn’t caught out by the question, replying in a firm voice: ‘He didn’t say he had photographs of graves. He said he had photographic proof.’

On the subject of Edward Evans’s murder, Hoosen suggested that David had called at Wardle Brook Avenue to borrow the overdue rent money from Granny Maybury. When he denied it, Hoosen countered that they had borrowed money from Maureen’s grandmother before.

David responded sarcastically, ‘The fantastic amount of two shillings for the electric meter, yes.’

Hoosen then moved on to the killing of Edward Evans, stating: ‘The truth is that you were hitting Evans and kicking him.’

‘The truth is that Brady was hitting Evans with the axe,’ David said.

Brady’s defence then returned to the newspaper deal, asking if it was correct that David and Maureen had been enjoying various extravagances at the newspaper’s expense, before attempting to cajole David into admitting the name: ‘Was it the
News of the World
?’

‘I refuse to answer the question,’ David stated. Then he added, ‘It could have been the
Daily Mirror
.’

When Hoosen sat down, Hindley’s lawyer, Philip Curtis, took over. He, too, asked repeatedly about the newspaper deal. Today, David recalls: ‘It was the defence that got my back up about the
News of the World
. If the prosecution had put that question to me, then I would have answered them gladly. I was threatened with contempt of court over the matter, and an adjournment was called. They sent me out of court where I was told, “Look, Dave, the judge has no intention of playing cat and mouse over this. You might be chief prosecution witness, but that doesn’t put you above the law. If it’s put to you again that the judge is prepared to overlook your initial refusal to answer, providing you give the newspaper’s name next time you’re asked, then you’d better do it.” So when they called me back into the witness box and that same question was asked, I did as I was told. As soon as I’d said it – “The
News of the World
, sir” – I saw the two reporters from the paper sitting in the press gallery get up and leave. The judge wasn’t happy at all about it. He was right that the press shouldn’t interfere with a witness, and I was at fault for letting it happen. Because it did exactly what he said: gave the defence a stick with which to beat me.’

Curtis then turned to the notebook, asking David to read from it. David squirmed, telling the court he would rather not, but the judge insisted. The extract chosen by Curtis concerned religion, and he pointed out that if these were David’s own views – which he admitted they were – then the oath on which he had sworn earlier was rendered ‘completely meaningless’.

Curtis’s line of questioning about his client’s whereabouts on the night of Edward Evans’s murder led to a further adjournment while David’s police statement and his comments in court were compared. If proof were needed that the
News of the World
deal hadn’t affected David’s evidence, there it was in black and white: Hindley’s role in the murder was more substantial and less unequivocal in the police statement than in his comments in the witness box. Hindley’s defence had no desire for the statement to be produced in court and their plea was granted after they had assured the judge there would be no further references to the newspaper deal.

When the court reconvened, the prosecution cross-examined David briefly before he was allowed to leave the witness box. His part in the trial was over. ‘I couldn’t wait to leave Chester,’ he recalls. ‘Maureen was the same. We didn’t stay a moment longer than we were needed. As soon as I’d finished giving evidence, we were off home.’

Although David was no longer present, his name was mentioned frequently during the second week of the trial. On Friday, 22 April, Hoosen opened the case for the defence, advising the all-male jury: ‘Don’t let the length of the case and the number of exhibits hide from you the fact that much of the theory, the very rock on which it is founded, is the evidence of Smith. You may think that he is a crumbling rock on which to found anything.’ He asked them to view David as ‘a man without principle, without scruple, without mercy’ and as someone of considerable intelligence and therefore ‘hardly a man who would have been dominated intellectually by Brady. The Attorney General has suggested that Smith was developed by Brady as a sorcerer’s apprentice or a devil’s disciple. You may think that this may well have been a profound misreading of this case.’ He posited that the jury, having heard David’s evidence and observed his manner, might think him far more involved in the Evans case than he was willing to admit.

Ian Brady was then called, and many of his initial statements concerned his friendship with David. Asked by Hoosen whether there had been a significant conversation between the two of them in the hours before Edward Evans’s murder, Brady replied: ‘He was talking about screwing – that is, housebreaking – and one of the suggestions was that we should roll a queer . . .’ Brady claimed that his first thought on bumping into Edward Evans later that evening in Central Station was that he felt the youth ‘would do for what Smith and I had been talking about earlier on that night’. He told the court that David had hit and kicked the victim and it was he who had pursued the youth when he collapsed on the floor and fell under the table. Asked about David’s attitude during the clean-up afterwards, Brady said he had been ‘theatrical, jocular. He was going out of his way to crack jokes.’ He claimed that it was David who had suggested burying Edward Evans on the moors, near the spot where they had practised shooting the pistols.

Regarding Lesley Ann Downey, Brady also attempted to pin the responsibility for her disappearance on David, stating that it was he who had brought her to Wardle Brook Avenue with a man named Keith; Brady even declared that two of the poses on the photographs had been suggested by David, who he said had left the house with the child and dropped her at Belle Vue. The Attorney General pointed out to Brady that if that were true, then ‘the key moment would be to record Smith saying something when he is taking the child away’. Stymied, Brady muttered that he couldn’t have predicted the events recorded on the tape machine that night.

Questioned about John Kilbride, Brady seemed uncomfortable about the statement he had made to Joe Mounsey; namely, that two men had killed the young boy and that he was familiar with one of them.

‘You do not like being landed with that answer now, do you?’ asked the Attorney General, with a slight smile.

‘I did not tell him that,’ Brady said, bristling. ‘I know what I told him.’

‘It is very difficult to blame Smith for Kilbride,’ the Attorney General stated, ‘because Smith was about 14 or 15 when Kilbride was murdered.’

‘I haven’t the slightest,’ Brady replied.

Asked whether he blamed David for calling the police, Brady said that he did. The Attorney General went on, ‘And, of course, you have hated Smith ever since he went to the police?’

Summoning as much disdain as he could muster, Brady responded, ‘I don’t think he is worth hating.’ But an observer in court noted: ‘When [
Brady
] spoke of Smith, due possibly to some trick of lighting of the court, his eyes appeared to change in colour, and I was convinced that he would have murdered Smith had he had an opportunity to do so.’

Brady’s cross-examination ended on Tuesday, 3 May. Nellie Hindley then took the stand. In the weeks since David and Maureen had called the police, there had been no contact between Nellie and her younger daughter. Bob Hindley had frozen out both Maureen and Myra, blaming them for not having alerted him to Nellie’s adultery. Under the circumstances, it was an easy matter for Hindley’s defence to provoke Nellie into denigrating her son-in-law.

Hoosen prompted, ‘Did Maureen seem frightened of her husband?’

‘She was,’ Nellie replied. ‘I don’t know if she still is, but she used to be very frightened.’

‘Was he something of a bully towards her?’

‘He was if he wasn’t getting his own way all the while, yes.’

‘Was she rather under his thumb?’

‘Yes.’

The Attorney General took over the questioning.

‘Mrs Hindley, you, I take it, do not like Mr Smith?’

‘I have always done my best for them both.’

‘Do you think, whether rightly or wrongly, that he is responsible for your daughter Myra being in the dock?’

Nellie answered, ‘He could be. He is that kind of person.’

The Attorney General persisted: ‘You would be prepared to say a good word for David Smith?’

With withering condescension, Nellie replied, ‘Oh, he is good when he wants to be.’

When Myra Hindley’s turn to be questioned came, she followed her lover’s lead in attempting to pin all three known murders on David, particularly that of Lesley Ann Downey. During cross-examination, the Attorney General accused Hindley of ‘wicked inventions’ concerning her brother-in-law. One writer in court noted that Hindley’s ‘hatred of Smith for having put Ian Brady where he was came through very clearly’.

The closing speech for the Crown followed, in which the Attorney General described Brady and Hindley as having formed ‘an evil partnership together’. He then turned his attention to David: ‘I do not invite you to the conclusion that David Smith was a young man unsullied by the world in which he lived before he met Brady. He told his story frankly but, of course, it is an unattractive story. Mr Hoosen suggested that the prosecution were putting Smith forward as a sort of devil’s disciple or a sorcerer’s apprentice. But having heard all the evidence of the case do you not think that this might in fact be an accurate description of David Smith in relation to Ian Brady? Certainly David Smith is no angel, but do you think he comes near the standards of criminality which have been disclosed in respect of Brady? Who was the devil of the piece? Who was the disciple? Even on his own evidence Smith must be regarded as being implicated in the murder of Evans; whatever the circumstances may be by which he was induced to be present at the killing of Evans, he saw the killing and did nothing to prevent it . . .’

He finished his discourse by stating that David had reached an unthinkable crossroads on 6 October 1965: ‘Either he had to go on in this evil in which he found himself or had to pull out at this last possible moment and escape. He had a great deal to lose by going to the police. He put himself greatly at risk for his complicity in the murder of Evans and in the preparations for bank robberies and other things because of the incriminating material in that suitcase. But he faced all that and I submit he did it in the light of what he had seen Brady cold-bloodedly do with the hatchet in the living room. It must then have dawned on him with finality that Brady’s boasts about being a killer without a conscience were not idle . . .’