Evil Relations (38 page)

I feel the blue mist rolling in closer.

Reaching home, I go straight upstairs and pull off my piss-sodden jeans, hurling them away from me. They fall crumpled and stinking into a corner. Maureen and Dad are where I left them, even though I’ve been out of the house a good couple of hours. My head boils with anger as I pass Dad in his seat. I stack the records on the stereo and turn the volume up as loud as it will go, even though the kids are having their afternoon naps upstairs. Buddy Holly’s voice fills the room. The speakers vibrate with the effort of containing him.

Then Dad turns to me and suddenly comes back to life, shouting, ‘Turn that bloody racket down!’

I glare at him, telling him to fuck off as he gets to his feet. I meet him halfway and my fist slams him back into the chair. The skin above his eyebrow bursts open obscenely, leaving a gash big enough to poke in a finger. The music bounces off the walls. Dad looks up at me pitifully, aghast, and I explode in every direction.

The music comes to a screeching end as I kick in the front of the stereo. I grab handfuls of records and smash them against the walls. Anything I can lay my hands on is thrown; the coffee table splinters, and plates and cups shatter. I attack the sitting-room door with my fists and feet, reducing it to a mass of holes, then in a blinding, non-stop rage I kick at the debris on the floor, screaming, ‘Fucking bastards! Rotten fucking bastards!’ Somewhere among it all I hear Maureen’s piercing screams and Dad shouting, ‘For Christ’s sake, Dave! Stop, please,
stop
!’

I pause, breathless and heaving. For the first time, I clearly see the blood soaking the front of his shirt and the fractured mess that was once our belongings. The minutes pass and then slowly Dad reaches down into the chaos and begins salvaging what he can. Appalled at myself, I help him and we work silently until the floor is clear. Dad leaves for the hospital to get his eye stitched up and I sit watching the blue mist roll and recede, roll and recede. It’s thickened since I last saw it, and much closer, but still not as close as I fear.

When Dad gets back from the hospital, I tell Maureen to get dressed: we’re going out. My mood is something quiet and dark but without anger. I make my peace with Dad and he agrees to babysit the kids, glad to have the house back to some sort of normality.

At the Social Club, Joyce is sitting in her usual spot and calls us over. I ignore the bouncer’s dirty look and give Maureen a nudge into the main room. But the night passes by slowly and I don’t feel like drinking as much as usual; I even turn down the opportunity to have a joint in the Gents with Lloyd. It’s getting late. I go to the bar for last orders and another hero steps forward. I listen with resignation to the old filth and accusations, but when I glance at him, I think I recognise him as one of the morons who attacked me the last time we were here.

I turn. The man steps closer, his mouth spewing shit. I notice a few women getting up from their table and realise they’re itching to give me a good kicking. He looks as if he can do this thing alone without being wound up by a pack of she-devils, but one of the women yells, ‘Fucking do the bastard!’, and then a painted claw comes over his shoulder, grabbing at my hair. This is the signal; quick and ferocious, the women pile in, scratching, screaming and kicking. The men unhurriedly pull their wives and girlfriends off me, landing a few punches of their own for good measure.

Suddenly Lloyd grabs me and shoves me through the doors. Joyce has hold of Maureen and together the four of us walk to Joyce’s home in silence.

I sit in the living room, bone-cold but calm. Joyce has removed all the doors inside and replaced them with long rows of colourful string-beads. She fetches me a tinned beer and chooses a favourite Otis record of mine to pop on the stereo. She smiles at me as she turns the volume to a soothing level. Maureen sits opposite me in her own world, unreachable.

Then I hear it: a pack of them are at the door, kicking it in. Otis fades as the beads clatter like hailstones and there in front of me is the hero from earlier, fists clenched, face full of hate, but a complete stranger to me, as I am to him. Outside a crowd is screaming, ‘Get him out, get the bastard out here!’ I stand up, already beaten. This thing has to end. I look at Maureen sitting motionless in the chair, her eyes an empty black pool. The blue mist is coming closer, rolling in fast from somewhere beyond the city.

There’s a knife in my hand.

This thing has to end. I look down at the knife through the mist and think:
Ian was right, fucking morons, there isn’t one life worth saving in this world
.

I raise my head and then my hand. Now it’s over.

The ringleader collapses backwards into the street, blood streaming from his face. I feel Joyce’s arm come around me, gently taking the knife away,
you won’t need that any more, Dave
. She kisses me and quietly tells me to leave.

Maureen is at my side, her hand in mine. We walk in silence down the street, watched by dozens of appalled eyes. But the mist has gone.

*

I was ill and I didn’t know it; that has to be the worst affliction imaginable. Looking back, I can see and feel it all as if it happened yesterday, that slow plummeting into oblivion. I was 21 years old and close to feeling nothing at all. I was numb in mind and body.

Why couldn’t anyone hear what I was thinking?

I walk into the local police station hand-in-hand with Maureen. Somewhere on the estate an ambulance wails. A man is bleeding on the ground and I don’t know how many times I stabbed him. Will he live, might he die, who is he? In my gut, a new feeling is starting to grow, a realisation of where I’ve ended up. I’m so calm now that I could float on air. Everything is becoming clear again and I am someone else’s responsibility at last. It’s all over.

Maureen and I talk quietly as we walk. It’s been months since we’ve spoken to each other as normally as we do now. I tell her to
look after the kids and explain to Dad that there was no other way out, it had to end like this
. I ask her how does she feel?

She smiles and squeezes my hand.

But as quickly as it came, the peace I felt is beginning to dissolve. My jaw aches with tension as I ask her
what do they think I’ve done, they’ve got Ian and Myra, what do they think is left?

She doesn’t look at me.

Outside the station we kiss. Then we go in and at the small counter I tell them:
You might be looking for me, my name is David Smith.
The duty constable stares at me:
That’s right, sir, we are.

I turn and look at Maureen after the arrest is made. We smile at each other and for the first time in years I see her as a person in her own right and not the embodiment of the foulest name on earth. But time has nailed me to the ground; it’s too late for us. We kiss and I’m led away.

Goodbye, Maureen Smith. I’m sorry, but I just couldn’t handle the Hindley thing.

* * *

On 18 July 1969, under the headline, ‘Moors Trial Witness Sent to Prison’,
The Times
reported that David Smith, ‘labourer, of Slater Way, Hattersley’, had pleaded guilty to wounding William Lees with intent to do grievous bodily harm on 8 June that year. The article continued:

* * *

My trial is quick. I plead guilty and, having been told to prepare myself for seven years in prison, I get three.

I’m alone in the dock at Chester Castle, surrounded by a glass screen that was put in place when my sister-in-law and her boyfriend stood on trial here. I was a witness then; now I’m the defendant and this same dock has held all three of us in its confines.

But at last I’m beginning to think properly. I have space and time to breathe. Things in my head are decelerating.

There is just one thing that wakes me up at night in a cold sweat. It’s a memory, a private thing, but I’m aware of it like a shadow at my shoulder, constant, menacing.

On the night I used the knife on William Lees, in a slow, deliberate voice I kept repeating over and over and over again, ‘You fucking cunt, you dirty bastard . . .’ The last time I heard those words was at Wardle Brook Avenue on the night Ian Brady hacked Edward Evans to death before my eyes.

On 20 July, I sit perched on the bunk in my cell at Risley Remand Centre, waiting to be transferred to Walton Prison. I wish I could find a place of deep solitude, somewhere to think myself well again. My sentence hasn’t really sunk in yet.

Keys rattle in the lock and the library screw throws a newspaper onto the bunk. ‘I’ve cancelled your order,’ he tells me. ‘They’ll be shipping you out in the morning.’

I roll a few cigarettes and settle down to read the
Daily Mirror
. Four words fill the entire front page: ‘Man On The Moon’. I’m thinking:
now, that’s what you call a headline.
I love the story; I soak it up, page after page of it. And that night, after last slop-out, I stand at the barred window, looking up at the sky. I imagine that headline belongs to me: ‘Man On The Moon’. That’s where I want to be, on a one-way ticket of my own. If there’s a heaven, then the moon must be that much closer, and if it gets me closer to the people I miss, then being the Man On The Moon is who I want to be.

David began his sentence at Liverpool’s Walton Gaol (now HMP Liverpool). North of the city centre and constructed between 1850 and 1854, the prison originally housed both sexes, but in 1969 its burgeoning population was solely male. Shortly after arrival, David was placed on Rule 43 (now Rule 45) following the governor’s decision to segregate him for his own safety. His fellow inmates within the unit were mostly child sex offenders, former police officers and supergrasses. Life on the segregation wing involved virtual isolation for 23 hours a day and deprivation of almost all opportunities for work, education and social contact. Visits from the outside took place individually in a small room where a thick sheet of glass separated inmate and visitor.

David feared that final detail, added to the enforced separation caused by his sentence, would prove disastrous for his marriage to Maureen. He resolved to come off Rule 43, hoping that normal visits would help bridge the gulf between them. The governor granted his request with one proviso: since David’s safety couldn’t be guaranteed at Walton, the only option was to transfer him to another prison. He was moved to HMP Lancaster, a small prison within a medieval castle overlooking the city itself and infamous as the site of the 1612 Pendle Witch trials. After weeks in largely solitary confinement, David found mixing with other inmates difficult and closeted himself in his cell at the first opportunity. Having spent time alone, he had renewed hope that his marriage could be salvaged; when he received a letter from Maureen telling him that their relationship was over, it was too much to bear. His fragile psychological state crumbled.

David’s memoir deals starkly with this period, beginning within days of his arrival at Walton Gaol.

* * *

‘806713 Smith, sir.’

I report to Walton’s governor, shorn this morning by the con-barber of my shoulder-length, Lennon-style hair. I’m just a number within the system now and don’t have to think for myself any more. The governor gives me a critical look and tells me, ‘We’re placing you on Rule 43, Smith. Governor’s discretion.’ I try to protest but one of the screws standing opposite me shouts ‘Shut it!’ and I do.

I’m led to my empty cell, where, within a few hours, two other inmates will join me – proper 43ers, whose crimes make them hated by the rest of the cons. I clench my teeth at the prospect of never being alone; I’ve worked out that I’m ill and think that if only I had a cell to myself for a while yet, I could stop the world and get off – or at least slow it down for a while, long enough to bleed out the pain and start clawing my way back to sanity. It’s a weird thing, but prison has already been good for me. On paper I’m a criminal, stripped of every liberty, but it doesn’t feel like that. Ever since I arrived, my solitary cell has offered a freedom I thought was lost to me. For the first time in years, I’ve been able to rest back on a bed and close my eyes without fear. No horrors, no screams, no cold sweats – just the thoughts that I
allow
into my head. I can fly away into the past or dream about a future. Prison has made a free man of me.

That changes when my cellmates turn up. I hate losing my solitude and withdraw like a snail into its shell. The nightmares come back with a vengeance straightaway. Then morning arrives: slop-out time. There are around twenty Rule 43ers housed on the ground floor of our wing; above us are two floors of ‘normal cons’. I walk out with my cellmates and stand in line, waiting to empty my pot. It begins quietly at first, like a playground chant, and then rises until I’m deafened:
Smith, you fucking bastard, filthy cunt, murdering bastard, nonce, child killer, murderer, murderer, MURDERER . . .