You see, when someone goes missing, especially a child, it’s easy to talk about how lovely they were – how well liked and how popular. It’s easy to flash their cherubic school photograph all over the press. What’s not so easy is to say that that someone was difficult. It’s uncomfortable to describe such a child as challenging, to say that the family of that child was also challenging. It doesn’t quite fit a story like this one to say that a missing child wasn’t particularly liked.
So, as I say, in this episode we will try to get at least a little insight into Alfie Marsden. Whether this has any bearing on the case is yet to be seen. I’m no analyst, no forensic scientist. This podcast is something more like staring at an old crime scene, raking over old graves…
I found Emyr Rice after searching local Welsh newspaper archives. It was an article about the fire that killed his mother that brought him to my attention. Delyth’s son lives in Cardiff and it is in his house that we conduct our interview. On a table in the corner of his immaculate living room is an array of photographs of his mother. The scorched box filled with paper and cassettes looks very tatty against the well-kept furnishings. Emyr has plugged in an ancient metal-rimmed hi-fi. Its bright-yellow paint has dimmed somewhat but looks remarkably intact.
—Look at that – still going after all them years. Always had this on, I did. Never broke, not ever. Hard-wearing. When I got a CD player when I was a teenager, I couldn’t bear to chuck it out. My mam stuck it in the loft. Even the fire never hurt it. Look here, you see where one side’s a bit melted? Meant to be, eh?
Emyr brings over a couple of photographs and shows me his mother. A studious, bespectacled woman – probably around thirty – looks back out at us with a smile.
—These must’ve been taken when I was little, when she started her training. Late eighties, it was. I remember her coming to pick me up and telling me all about what she was doing. She was so happy. I was only about six or seven. Same age as that kiddie, eh?
From what we can gather, looking at the documents that weren’t fire- or water-damaged, Delyth Rice was completing a dissertation on behaviour in young children. It seems the tapes are audio records of her thoughts that she made as soon as she got home from work, and then typed up later.
—It made sense for her to record it all on tape. She was always a slow writer, my mam. Took her ages to even get a shopping list down. Very neat handwriting, though – look at this. She told me that was her school. They used to make them practise handwriting for hours at a time. You couldn’t do that now, could you? It’s all SATS and league tables and that. It made her a bit sad, all that, she said, when there were kiddies who couldn’t even hold a knife and fork, let alone a pen. She was like a surrogate mam to those kids, you know. Always chasing a lost cause. Always going on beyond the call.
While Delyth Rice’s personal story is not strictly relevant to the case of Alfie Marsden, it’s useful, I think, to include a little background. From what Emyr remembers of his mother, she took her job incredibly seriously. It wasn’t about the money, or long school holidays. She did it, he says, because she cared.
Delyth seemed to maintain this attitude throughout a career spent working with early-years children. Emyr remembers the thrill of accompanying his mother into her schools during the holidays to take down old friezes, pulling out tacks from the corkboards with an old spoon, being allowed to use the staple gun to stick up paintings and coloured paper until the classrooms looked like a ‘fairyland’ – Emyr’s word, not mine.
All these touches were well received and lasted long in the memories of Delyth’s pupils, apparently. However, it was something else that drove her, according to Emyr.
—It was the naughty ones she liked, although I dunno if ‘liked’ is the right word. Maybe they were the ones she cared about the most. She had a thing for the ones who came to school with no breakfast, who couldn’t sit still, who didn’t get a bedtime story. I remember the day of the funeral. I was having some time, walking about round town and that, trying to keep it together. I see this massive bloke, scars on his face, tattoos on his neck. He’s coming straight at me. And I think, Great, the day of my mam’s funeral and this fucker’s going to stab me up. Anyway he’s right up in my face and he says, ‘You Miss Rice’s boy?’ I nod. I’m shitting myself, you see. He says, ‘That woman, boy. She cared about me when no one else did. She gave a shit when I was a kid. No one’s ever given a shit like that since.’ And he just walks off.
This story is a good summation of Delyth Rice’s career. It seems that, if there was ever a hard-to-reach child in her class, she’d take the time to reach them.
—I never even knew that Mam had taught him. She never said, when he disappeared. If she remembered him, she didn’t tell no one. It was only when I decided to chuck out some junk in the garage that I saw his name written in her handwriting. That’s what made me listen to the tapes, see? I put two and two together. Mam must have worked with him for a little bit. And I remembered then her telling me about a boy called Alfie when she first started. She always used to tell stories of the naughty ones at teatime. I loved it. ‘Poor little Alfie’ she used to call him. It all made sense, suddenly.
There are other tapes that document the progress of another child – ‘Child B’; nothing to do with Alfie Marsden.
Emyr tells me he nearly threw out the box without looking at it. The half-scorched cassettes he thought were just junk. But it appears that fate had other ideas.
—Here’s the thing. I’d packed my car full of a load of mam’s old stuff for the tip. But it wouldn’t start. Engine just wouldn’t go. I thought it might be too heavy, see? So I takes out this box and it slips out my hands, spills all over the drive and I see all these tapes and that. Then I see the name; it was written on one of the burned tapes. I could just make it out – Alfie Marsden.
Then it all came back, those old memories. I got down my old stereo from the attic, tried playing the tapes. And I couldn’t believe it!
Interestingly, Alfie’s name is nowhere else in the documents, and when I ask Emyr to find me the tape in question, he can’t. He does remember his mother’s stories, though.
—I don’t know if that was right or not. Her telling me about them kids. But I was only little. I was hardly going to tell, was I? It sounds like a horrible thing to say now, but I loved them stories of ‘Poor little Alfie’.
—Do you remember the first time she told you one of these stories?
—I don’t remember one story that started it off. She used to tell me about the naughty boys who smashed stuff up. The first Alfie one I remember wasn’t so much naughty, though … just weird.
—Weird how?
—It was one of Mam’s first days in the classroom, it must have been. She was always dead happy when she talked about it.
The kids mam worked with would have been six or seven – same age as me. Anyways, she told me she goes in there and all the kids say hello to her. She says they all sit on the carpet with their legs crossed, all nice. Except one. He sits with his back to her, at the back, facing the wrong way. ‘What a funny little boy,’ she thought. Later on that day the kids were doing cutting and sticking and that. She says she goes over to the ‘funny little boy’ who’s sat at the back on his own, facing the wall. She asks him if he’s OK, if he wants any help. She says he turns round then and he’s cut up all these bits of paper into strips. How do I remember this so well? Because when he turns round she sees he’s been sat there gluing all these strips of paper all over his face. He looked like the invisible man, she says, just these eyes peeping out.
That’s the first story I remember. Maybe that was the one that got me interested in that lad.
Delyth began her practical teacher training at a primary school in Audlem in 1988, the year Alfie Marsden vanished. She would have been in a placement position in the school, shadowing teachers on the job, leading a few activities with the children. She would, therefore, only have known Alfie for a few months before he disappea
red. Her study was focussed on the behaviour of this ‘funny little boy’ and ‘Child B’. Unfortunately, the first few cassettes documenting Alfie Marsden’s behaviour are too damaged to hear.
—Are there any other stories that you remember about Alfie Marsden?
—I remember she used to say he would never sit still. He was always moving about, always running, round and round.
—Or else sat with his back to everyone?
—Yeah. He sounded like he was a pretty weird kid, God rest his soul. You never heard that though, did you? You never read it in the papers, that he was weird. But what good would it have done for anyone to know that?
The recording you heard at the start of this episode is a section from one of a number of cassettes that Delyth made concerning Alfie Marsden. I feel it communicates the ‘weirdness’ that Emyr describes and the burgeoning connection with children with extra needs that would come to characterise Delyth’s career. However, I also feel it should have raised huge red flags. It saddens me as much as it shocks me that a child of Alfie’s age, having only known a teacher for such a short amount of time, is asking to call that teacher, ‘Mum’. Now, any professional involved with Alfie Marsden would see his behaviour as deeply concerning.
I want to play you some of the other cassettes. This extract is from the cassette Emyr and I both believe to be the earliest concerning Alfie.
—Case study. Child A. 19th of October, 1988.
They all say he never used to be like this. By all accounts in his last school he was a little angel! That’s what happens when mams and dads split up, isn’t it? Poor little soul had to deal with all that disruption at home then had to come to a brand-new school. If only I’d known him over in Prestatyn when he was all sweetness and light, eh?
I’m so tired today. I never thought it’d be like this. However much sleep I get, it’s never enough. Is it terrible of me to be wishing for the holidays already? I’m not even full-time. Dear me. Maybe Child A was a bad idea. I have to spend so much time with him. Maybe that’s what’s making me tired.
He’s hard work, I’ll give you that. If only I’d been here last year when he was all sweetness and light, eh?
Anyway. Today.
Child A’s not allowed out at break. They haven’t told me why, and I don’t really want to ask; I’m still too new. They make him sit in the classroom while the others play outside. It’s sad cos you can hear them sploshing about in their wellies, having a great old time. Child A’s not got wellies on today. He’s got his plimsolls that he wears for gym. One of the dinner nannies is off sick so they’ve asked if I’ll sit with him. ‘He’s no trouble one-to-one,’ they’ve said. I’m scared. I’m not ashamed to say it. I mean, the boy’s only little. But I am scared.
I didn’t think they’d leave me in here on my own with him. I don’t even know what I’m supposed to do! There he is, Child A. He’s just sat there, slumped forwards at one of the tables. Head down. Forehead pressed on the bench. To tell you the truth, I’m not brave enough to approach him. I’ve heard the stories about the things he does: biting, spitting, hitting. What am I supposed to do if he starts all that with me?
It looks like he’s pretty quiet, though, so I start just tidying away. I’m not making a big deal but as I’m going round the room I’m circling him, dead calm, dead gentle, like. I see him look up once and there is this flutter in my heart. Poor little thing. His face is always twisted up in an angry knot. I can feel these trickles of sweat running from under my arms. I remember something that my dad told me when I was a girl. Dead scared of dogs, I was. ‘Don’t show them no fear,’ he said. ‘They can smell it on you. And it only makes them angry.’
I don’t know what else to do, so I just started singing – just a little harvest song I used to sing when I was in primary school.
Cauliflowers fluffy and cabbages green
Strawberries sweeter than any I’ve seen
I’m watching him out the corner of my eye and he’s not moving, but some instinct, some mammy intuition tells me he’s listening. So I keep going, circling closer and closer.
Beetroots purple and onions white
All grow steadily, day and night
All the while I’m playing out this little fantasy in my head. I’m wondering whether, maybe – just maybe – I might be the only one who can tame him. It might be me who he chooses to get along with. I get closer and closer to him, just singing away. I’m looking at him now, and when I get a few feet away he looks right back at me with that scowl on his face.
Just for a moment our eyes lock together. We stare at each other and I think that maybe this is a monumental, profound moment in my career; that maybe we’ve clicked. That this funny little boy will begin to open up.
Then the moment bursts like a balloon, and he’s off – chair on end and he’s racing round the room, rolling against the walls, pulling off the paintings. He’s over at the nature table, and the bird’s nest that Glenda Roberts brought in is shredded and all over the floor. He’s a tornado, a demon. But I just … I just stand there. I think my mouth is saying, ‘Stop it,’ but no sound is coming out.
I should have thought about how much trouble I was going to be in, but all I could think about was this poor little boy. He was banging himself against the walls and screaming blue murder. I thought he was going to hurt himself, so I ran to the door to get someone to help. But as soon as my hand touched the handle … he … just … stopped.
It was like someone had flicked a switch. I looked back at him, and this time he was looking right at me with those slitted eyes and that pinched little face. He slithered. That’s the only word I can use that feels right: he slithered down the wall and back into his chair. I swear – and I’m going to hell for this, I know – but he looked … evil. And he gave this crafty little smile like he knew exactly what he was doing. It was scary.
I took my hand off the door and turned around, and just walked over to all the paper on the floor, the paintings off the wall, and picked them up. I swept the bits of bird’s nest up with a dustpan and brush. Put it in the bin. All the time I was doing it, I could see him out the corner of my eye, watching me with those empty eyes, that pinched face that stayed the same whether he was angry or sad or happy.
So I thought I might have to write up a report of some sort. I spoke to Mrs Moss, explained what he’d done, and she just shrugged and shook her head. It was like all the fight just drained out of her.
‘It’s hard to feel sorry for him, Delyth,’ she said. I was shocked. ‘It sounds terrible, I know, but it’s hard to have much sympathy when he does things like that.’
I think that I knew what she meant. She’d have seen that evil face of his, too. God bless his little soul, she was right.
Emyr gives me a sardonic look after the recording clunk-clicks to a halt. He tells me that this is a good example of his mother being ‘the queen of lost causes’.
—Is that how you think she saw Alfie Marsden – as a ‘lost cause’?
—If he wasn’t a lost cause, then what is? Kids behaving like that at his age – needed a clip round the ear, if you ask me. She never told me how much he had scared her, though. She definitely told me about him ripping the paintings off the walls. He used to do that all the time, apparently. Just to be a pain. At least that’s what it sounded like.
—Your mum did make a difference, though, didn’t she?
—If only there were more like her.
I want to play another recording, this time from the same tape. Unfortunately there is no way of verifying when exactly it was recorded as there is no date read out at the start.
—Mrs Moss said to me that I’m good with him. I thought she was joking at first. Good with him? I never even did anything. I wanted to say I only sang a song, and then he went mad when I tried to get too close. Mrs Moss said he’s usually much worse than that, especially with a new adult. She said it was a good start.
That’s when I could have said that Child A was too much, that i
t wasn’t a good idea for me to use him for my dissertation. I could have saved myself so much hassle. But the truth is … I wanted to. Even though it was too much, even though I felt like I was in too far, Child A was just … fascinating.
So I said I’d start keeping him company at lunchtime, and Mrs Moss looked at me like I was off my rocker. She said that’s what dinner nannies are for and that I should go get something to eat. Secretly though, I think she was glad.
Then I told her about the dissertation and she shook her head at me and threw her arms up like, what could she do about me?
So, when I go in there, the dinner nanny gives me this funny look. As she passes by she does this funny signal with her hand. I just smile cos I don’t know what that means.
He’s sat there, slumped at his desk. He doesn’t even look up at me. This time I know better, so instead of going near him, I go and sit at Mrs Moss’s desk. There’s this little part of me that wants to provoke him a bit. The kids go mad if any other teacher sits in Mrs Moss’s chair. They like routine. Child A though, he looks up, just once, with that scowl of his, then puts his head back down again. He’s not rising to the bait.
I don’t know what to do, then. So I just sit there. There’s a paperback in my bag. An Angela Carter I got from the library. Something about a circus. I start reading and I must have tried to read the same page a hundred times, but I don’t take anything in. Really, what I’m doing is watching Child A, seeing what he will do.
I don’t know what I was expecting, really. Another whirlwind around the classroom? It doesn’t feel like that’s going to happen, not this time. There is none of that tension in the air. No. He just sits there. Head on the desk. It’s like he knows. Like he knows that this time I’m waiting for him to do something, and so he’s doing nothing on purpose to spoil it for me.
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