by David Smith
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:
He appeared yesterday in the same court as Ian Brady and Myra Hindley (defendants in the Moors case).
Mr D Morgan Hughes, for the defence, said Mr Smith’s act was a direct consequence of the Moors Murder story, which the people of the neighbourhood could not forget.
Mr Alan Lees, for the prosecution, said there had been trouble in Hattersley Labour Club in which Mr Smith and Mr Lees were concerned. The next night, Mr Lees was on his way home when Mr Smith pulled a knife from his pocket and stabbed him several times.
Mr Hughes said, ‘Had he not been involved in the murder trial he might not have been in trouble. For most of the time he has been out of work. He got a job in a foundry but when the employees heard of it they either walked out or threatened to do so.’ Mr Justice Veale said he expected Mr Smith had been subjected to sustained hostility and that there had been difficulties for him, but this was not the first time he had been in trouble. He had been before the court four times for assault.
* * *
From David Smith’s memoir:
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.
Chapter 19
‘Had he not been involved in the murder trial, he might not have been in trouble . . .’
– D. Morgan Hughes, defence barrister, 1969
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.
* * *
From David Smith’s memoir:
‘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 . . .
They empty their pots over the rails and a rain of shit and piss drenches us, the missiles clattering through the wire mesh that separates the floors. Wiping the stinking filth from my eyes, I see the screws supposed to be guarding us grinning from the shelter of the cell arches.
There is every kind of pervert on Rule 43, but each morning it’s my name the cons shout as they bang their fists against the rails. I shut my eyes, needing to get back into my cell, to be alone behind a closed door in order to think myself back to the only safe place I’ve ever known.
I have to wait until we’re allowed back to our cells, but the minute I’m through the door I crawl into my bunk and pull the thin cover over my head, shutting out the light and giving in to the darkness that surrounds me.
Time passes quicker than you might expect in prison. A new year begins; a new decade. I daren’t hope that 1970 will be good for me, but it’s hard to imagine anything worse than the last few years and enough for now to know that the ’60s are over.
Then out of the blue, a reminder. January is only a few days old when I get a visit from Mattin and Tyrrell, the two detectives who gave me such a hard time during the Moors investigation. They arrive with a folio of photographs and ask me to go through them to see if anything of significance occurs to me. It doesn’t, but I agree to return to the moors and Derbyshire with them in the near future. They tell me the visit has to be confidential; they don’t want the press finding out about it. Neither do I.
Soon afterwards, one of the screws opens my cell at 5.30 a.m. and tells me to get changed into my civvies and come to reception. Two other policemen are waiting to drive me back to Manchester. Once there, I’m handed over to Mattin and Tyrrell again and we head in an unmarked car up to the moor and to a couple of other places I seem to remember visiting with Ian and Myra. I grit my teeth the entire time, or so it seems, feeling as if I’m being pitched into the nightmare all over again. Even the wind strikes my face with the same chill roughness, making me sway on my feet in the long grass that wraps itself around my ankles so securely it’s as if it won’t let go. We’re looking for a particular spot that’s of interest to police, but I’m lost and am glad to my soul when Mattin and Tyrrell – both of them behaving very civilly towards me – suggest returning to the station to take another look at Brady’s bleak photographs. After a couple of hours, they accept that there’s nothing else I can tell them and call someone to drive me to Walton. Being back in my cell is an odd sort of relief. I hope with every breath in my body that I never have to go back to the moor again.
Things change in the prison: Rule 43ers are ‘re-housed’ in another area, on a landing above the normal cons, which means an end to the putrid morning downpour. We have our own screws now, Paddy and Mr Heywood, a better breed of prison officer. I’ve been placed in a cell with two of the worst and most unrepentant sex offenders within these walls – I wish the do-gooders of this world could spend a week with them. After evening lock-up, my cell door remains unofficially open for a couple of hours and I play chess with the screws. Life seems a bit less pointless; I even have a guitar and play the songs that form the soundtrack to my 22 years.
I’m beginning to feel a bit more at ease with myself. Routines are rigid and I spend 23 hours a day in my cell, but the silent hours comfort me. I sit on my bunk – the top one – looking out through the bars and listening to the sound of my mind slowing down. The green filth of memory has stopped curdling inside my skull. I am becoming self-aware again, realising that something is healing within, and the pain subsides as the past takes on a different shape. I don’t know when I first became ill; I only know that part of me is getting better.
But my recovery is far from complete. I am paranoid, suspicious of everyone outside Walton. Rule 43 allows me only closed visits; I sit in a small cubicle, separated from my visitor by a thick seven-foot-tall sheet of armoured glass. Joyce comes alone; Dad and Maureen visit together. I sense their unease and watch their body language obsessively. When my eyes meet theirs, I know that they are lying to me in some way – I feel it, even behind the glass. Afterwards, I return to my cell and lie quietly on my bunk, hands behind my head, staring up at the ceiling. I feel as if something is approaching out of sight, first the breeze of trouble, then the gale.
In the exercise yard, I walk the line, those painted circles and stripes on the concrete. I dig my hands deeper into my pockets, thinking. I know Maureen feels the pressure most of all, and I want to do something – at least I’m well enough to know that I should help her. She and the boys and Dad have been re-housed in Moss Side and my guts churn at the thought of them there, close to Tom, the man I found her with on the stairwell in the shebeen.
Time passes. Dad visits alone frequently, making excuses for Maureen. I say nothing as the months go by without a single appearance from her. I talk to Joyce, though, and she tells me about Tom. My Miss Jamaica knew Tom long before that night at the shebeen, when he approached her about Maureen. Joyce admits that she brought the two of them together and I smile indulgently, pretending not to care any more. She tells me that Maureen sees Tom regularly and parties with him, but insists it’s nothing to do with her any more.
I think Miss Jamaica is lying out of her beautiful black arse.
Dad visits again, trotting out the usual excuse about Maureen not being well. He assures me the boys are fine and I wait until he’s finished spoon-feeding me all his crap.
‘Well?’ I ask.
‘Well what?’
I lean forward, nose almost touching the cold glass: ‘Tell me what the fuck’s going on out there and piss off with all this made-up shit.’
He falters for a moment. Then the truth pours out of him, even though he insists that he doesn’t want to have to be the one to tell me: Maureen’s stopped bothering to come home at all. A few mornings ago he met her in the street with Tom, the two of them draped around each other. When he eventually dragged her home and smashed every plate in the kitchen to make his point, she said nothing except, ‘Please
don’t tell Dave.’
Our visit ends and I have to find a way of controlling the pain and anger. I lie on my bunk, thinking it through. The restricted regime of Rule 43 is shredding my marriage and the soul-destroying closed visits have driven us further apart. We need to be together, to be able to hold hands and kiss without having to press our lips against a sheet of unfeeling glass.
I think back to that night at the shebeen. There was no one to blame but me for how I treated her, yet nobody tried to stop me. Maybe we were just white trash to them, after all.
I want so badly to see her properly, to kiss her mouth and tell her: it’s all right, girl, everything will be all right. I make up my mind to come off Rule 43, to get off protection in order to give us time together. I need to have open visits, but to do that . . . I have to join the regular cons.
I explain the situation to Mr Heywood, the landing screw, and he tells me that I won’t last five minutes in Walton without the protection of Rule 43. Inmates coming off the rule are deliberately ‘shipped out’ to other prisons, where they can join the normal cons with their misdemeanours known only to the governor and staff. He does agree, though, that I’d have far more ‘freedom’ as a con, including open visits, television, recreation classes and minimal lock-up, but it’s a different and very dangerous world from the one I’ve grown used to on Rule 43.
He urges me to be sure of my decision and I tell him I’ve got no choice: I have to see Maureen properly, not like a caged animal. He manoeuvres me along the landing, out of sight of the sex cases and other screws. ‘Watch your back and walk away,’ he instructs.
I smile; the walking away doesn’t come easily. ‘Thanks, boss,’ I say, and we shake hands.