Where There is Evil (33 page)

All those people I have come across down the years who muse about what befell Moira in 1957 and pontificate, ‘Of course, it would never happen nowadays,’ need to have their
complacency shaken to its foundations. Not only was it
allowed
to happen then, the same thing was equally condoned in Gloucester: the luring of young women or children, none of whom
suspected the harm she would meet, to satisfy the vilest of sexual appetites. Tenfold, or more. The final tally of victims may never be complete, but in the end, they met the same fate as Moira: in
many cases, missed by their immediate families, but consigned to public oblivion. Some were never reported as missing, such as Rena and her child, because out of sight seemed to mean out of mind.
They had simply gone, and not enough questions were asked.

There are never enough questions asked by those whose job it is to seek information or by ourselves. As ordinary human beings, we should care about the loss of one person, never mind twelve. I
find myself staggered by the view of some people I have encountered who find it hard to fathom why I should wish to fight for justice for a child to whom I was not related. Whether or not it
belongs to you and yours, or is part of me and mine, the loss of a child should be mutually mourned.

I vowed that I would not stop campaigning on behalf of Moira, and would continue to fight to see justice done for both herself and my cousins, and all other victims of sexual abuse. Even when
shutters descended, and rebuffs came consistently from the Scottish Crown Office, with refusals to answer any of my questions regarding my father’s non-prosecution, I decided I would not stop
asking: ‘Why?’

A book that set down the events I have met, the people who have given support, and those who have presented obstacles to justice inevitably raises questions that cannot be ignored. I also saw it
as a way of keeping faith with Moira and ensuring that what happened to her will not be forgotten or covered up.

‘Perhaps,’ I told myself, ‘when I have written the last page, and typed the last sentence of such a record, then maybe I shall finally feel I have redressed the balance, even a
little. I will have done all in my power to draw attention to the attitudes we must change when we deal with abusers.
They
are not going to change, so it is up to us to look at our
strategies for dealing with offenders and the way we treat the victims of abuse.’

The legal system in Scotland is woefully lacking at present in its communications to victims and shows remarkable inconsistencies in the way that it deals with sexual offences going back years.
Some victims abused in childhood receive compensation, others do not. Other pensioners in their seventies have appeared in court over the period in which I have written this book, and often there
have been parallels. Some have received sentences of several years, others generous spells of community service. What is so special about my father that he remains at large in the cover of a big
city where he can so easily continue his lifelong habits? The Scottish Crown Office doesn’t see him as its problem. Again, out of sight, out of mind. But if it was relatives of
theirs
who happened to move into his stamping ground, I feel certain that they would ensure that people were alerted.

There is no question of my cousins or myself seeking financial compensation for what my father put us through, although his behaviour continues to affect our lives. My motivation in writing down
what happened to them, to my friends, to Moira and to me, is to let the public have the opportunity to hear the facts. This is in direct defiance of the Procurator Fiscal in Airdrie who shepherded
me from his office saying that it was not in the public interest that our story was heard. He could not have known that his attitude would only strengthen my resolve. Clearly the last thing he
expected was that the ordinary Scottish woman he brushed off with excuses would go on to bombard the people he represented at the Crown Office in Edinburgh with letters questioning his decision and
theirs, which undermined months of painstaking police work.

It is my hope that, on reading this text, questions will continue to be asked by others, which cannot go away as they hope I have. It has been enormously important to me to write these words
alone and without the help of a third party who might have influenced what I say here. The memories set down are mine and mine alone. I am prepared to accept the responsibility which accompanies
this, and stand by every word written, and I can withstand any attack after what I have already had to bear. Anyone who teaches child-protection courses to others cannot be hypocritical and walk
away from what has occurred.

What is also painfully clear to people like my cousins and myself, to Kate and Joe Duffy of Hamilton, who have campaigned long and hard for the Scottish ‘Not Proven’ verdict to be
scrapped in the aftermath of the acquittal of Frances Auld, who stood trial for the murder of their daughter, Amanda Duffy, is that the Scottish legal authorities rebuke criticism, do not recognize
any accountability to citizens, and see no need to change the way they handle a system that clearly lets down many ordinary people. Despite its worldwide high regard, our legal system is far from
perfect, and needs fixing – now.

It is significant that none of my cousins or myself would have qualified for legal aid, had we tried to launch a private prosecution. South of the border, these are much more common. We own our
homes, which would have had to be remortgaged. There was no way we could contemplate that. Yet Robert Maxwell’s sons got legal aid for their court appearance. Again, it seems it is the little
people who fall through the gaps in our legal system.

Sometimes, however, even the littlest, most insignificant person will not take no for an answer. Sometimes the questions are just too important to be dismissed. Support to keep asking them came
to me from the unlikeliest sources. Strength came from the knowledge that my unease at the way in which all charges against my father were dropped without explanation was shared by several of the
keenest legal brains in Scotland and many of the police élite involved throughout.

I am not the same person I was when events turned my life upside down over five years ago. It’s direction changed irrevocably with what came to light in 1992, and I have had to find my way
back, through a valley of shadows and horror, where what had been only imagined previously, became all too hellishly apparent. I had to absorb hostility on this journey, which came in the form of
attack, verbal abuse and rejection, as I groped for the truth.

At the worst moments, when I was sinking under the sheer weariness of it all, someone would appear and carry some of the weight with me for part of the way. I find that my store of faith in my
fellow human beings has not been eroded. Small acts of kindness boosted me. Amazing links happened which I do not now dismiss as coincidences.

A sense of having restored the balance a little came when Janet Anderson Hart allowed two of her children to come and stay in my home, to help convey memories of their aunt that could be added
to this book; then finally, my family and myself travelled to Australia and met Moira’s namesake.

‘For there is nothing hid which shall not be uncovered,’ Mark’s gospel tells us, and I have emerged from the darkness with my faith renewed. I know that everything that has
happened since 1992 was meant to happen, and I believe that I was guided spiritually.

The road was terrifying, but I was able to make sense of the events of my childhood, and what really happened in 1957, to myself and to Moira. If I do not warn others, however, of the lessons
learned and the knowledge imparted, then the nightmare can and will descend on all of us. For the sake of our children, we can never let it settle again on unsuspecting innocents.

Where there is evil, we must cast it out.

SIX YEARS LATER

The incredibly mild summer of 2003 was replaced by a golden autumn.

I had a week’s holiday due with Ronnie, and wanted to switch off completely, I told Janet Hart. I would not take the book I was writing, a sequel to
Where There is Evil
. I had
promised to read books only for pleasure. Janet laughed and said she doubted that. We were flying to Zakynthos on 12 October, but on 10 October I had an unexpected call. Steve Smith, a reporter I
had never heard of, but instinctively did not trust, wanted to contact Janet. Warily, I said it would be up to her to ring
him
. He was elated.

‘You’re the woman who wrote the book about Moira, right? You’ll be pleased to hear – you’ve been proved right about it all. Someone’s made a deathbed
confession.’

Staggered, I said I didn’t even know that my dad had died, and it was not the kind of situation where I was thrilled to be proved right.

I sat down when he said that he was not talking about my father.

A man called Alec Keil had emerged from Peterhead Prison’s secure unit for dangerous sex offenders. He was a former prison mate of my father’s buddy from
Baxter’s Buses, Jim Gallogley. In 1997 Gallogley had received a ten-year sentence for molesting a child in a tower-block lift. Janet had implored him to help us, suspecting he had
information.

I was sure that he did. Jim had been pals with Alexander when Moira had vanished. He had frequented my home and they had struck up a friendship that Mary could never entirely fathom given their
ten-year age gap. It was not only magazines he brought to swap. Betty, the babysitter my father molested, was Jim’s young sister. Janet pleaded with him to write to her, and was initially
fobbed off.

Jim
had
unburdened himself before he died in April 1999. Frail, with cataracts, stomach cancer, and shaking with Parkinson’s disease, he insisted the confession was to emerge
after his death; he had dictated it to Alec Keil. Gallogley had obviously been haunted by Janet’s plea:

I have been grieving for my poor wee sister for the past forty years. The day she disappeared in Coatbridge was a day that changed my family’s life for ever. Each
year, the anniversary of that day is a sorrowful one for me and all my family. My mother never stopped hoping to see her daughter again. My dear departed parents were never to enjoy a
moment’s peace again, and went to their graves without ever knowing what had happened to her.

Most of us have done things in this life that we regret. Sometimes by chance, without prior warning, we can be given the opportunity to somehow make amends, and to help in some way, to atone
for some of the great wrongs that have been done in this world.

I would like you to answer me truthfully, and perhaps make your heart a little lighter before God does come to judge you. I strongly suspect that Alex Gartshore murdered my sister, Moira. It
would mean the whole world to me if you could ease my heartache and tell me anything you know or may have heard about her disappearance. I yearn to know what did happen to dear Moira, so I can put
her memory to rest before I die.

Janet believed her appeals had not gone anywhere, but they had. Steve Smith said my theory that my dad had abducted Moira, but had help disposing of her body, was accurate. My
fear that a ring involving local men existed was correct, too; more horrifyingly, though, Gallogley’s dossier named other members as ‘police and legals’.

In 1997, Gallogley had sought help in vain from those high up in the paedophile ring. (An irony never known to him was that the concierge who spotted him on CCTV was my cousin. His own sisters
had not had justice, but my relative ensured a different outcome this time. Thanks to his quick thinking, Gallogley was caught red-handed.) Now, Gallogley had shopped his friends; their network had
been active for years.

For me, it explained why the original inquiry had stalled, why Moira’s photograph only appeared on television three months after she had vanished and why Detective Inspector Jim McEwan,
the industrious police officer in charge of the second investigation, met with silence from some former colleagues. Masonic loyalties ran through my mind once more.

Gallogley’s account of Moira’s disappearance confirmed the evidence of a lady interviewed on a Channel 4
Cutting Edge
documentary, called
Missing, Presumed
Murdered
, which had been shown in spring 2000. Agnes Smith, then a young mum, was trying to get home in the storm with two toddlers when the Cliftonville bus appeared.

‘It was virtually the last vehicle on the road,’ she said. ‘Hardly anyone got on – most had set off walking home.’

Agnes claimed that she was the last passenger to exit the single decker, but a girl still remained on my dad’s bus. Agnes had got off in Old Monkland Road before it made its last stop
before the terminus, near the cemetery.

The 1957 police had treated her, Agnes said, as a liar, dismissing her claim. She insisted, however, that a child
had
been there, chatting to the driver. Perturbed that the girl was
unaccompanied, Agnes had remembered her, although she had only seen the back of her head with her distinctive pixie hood. She could recollect no conductress at all. Whoever the clippie was that
day, she had got off in the town centre
before
Agnes got on, trusting him to ‘clock in’ on her behalf at the depot, perhaps because she had a hot date lined up, or was anxious
to get home.

Gallogley said my dad had abducted Moira and abused her, Alex claiming she had ‘been with him once before’. As paedophiles fantasize and boast to each other, I reserved judgement on
that one. I also recalled that turning circle, on the town’s edge, where my aunt lived and street lighting was minimal. I’d seen evidence there with my own eyes of affairs going on
between adults who worked the various shifts.

Jim said Alexander had then driven Moira to Baxter’s huge garage depot in Airdrie, which held umpteen buses. Those outside parked in rows on wasteground, extinguishing lights as soon as
they did so, to conserve energy. Today there is no trace of the garage or grounds where, according to Gallogley, he and another man joined abductor and victim on that vehicle.