Justice for Helen

by Marie McCourt

  * * *

  ‘Mystery of Girl Who Vanished into Thin Air’ . . . ‘Puzzle of Missing Girl’s Journey’, the headlines screamed on the front pages of the evening newspapers. In just forty-eight hours Helen was topping the list of Britain’s most baffling missing person’s cases. Diana Lamplugh, mother of estate agent Suzy Lamplugh, twenty-five, who had vanished two years earlier, offered support through the Liverpool Echo. ‘Helen McCourt’s mum has my every sympathy,’ she said. ‘There is nothing worse than not knowing. It is absolutely dreadful.’

  The Suzy Lamplugh case was still so fresh and raw. My heart had gone out to her poor mother. I shook my head in sheer disbelief that I was now in exactly the same situation. But Helen would be found, surely? There was no way this could happen to me. The thought of another three decades going by without either young woman being found was unthinkable.

  That same day, Thursday, 11 February, the police started door-to-door inquiries – at every building Helen would have passed on her way home, searching gardens, sheds and outhouses.

  It was only during the trial, a year later, that I learned how quickly they made a breakthrough that day due to the quick observations and reactions of their officers. At one point, I became aware that three people were being questioned at St Helens police station, but, as it was still so early in the investigation, the police couldn’t give me any further details.

  That evening, Father Ashton, the priest at our local church, St Mary’s in Billinge, was saying a mass for Helen’s safe return.

  ‘I’d like to go,’ I decided.

  A convoy of family and friends wrapped up and headed down there for 7pm mass. Someone volunteered to stay behind and answer the phone and front door but I can’t for the life of me remember who it was.

  Clutching my rosary beads and gazing up at the crucifix beseechingly, I whispered fervent prayers: ‘Please God,’ I begged. ‘Please, please, please . . . ’

  Behind, more people filed in – colleagues, neighbours. As Father Ashton uttered my daughter’s name, offering the mass and prayers for her safe return, I felt an aching in my heart. This was like something from a film.

  Afterwards, as we filed out, Father Ashton took my hands in his. ‘God bless you, Mrs McCourt,’ he said. ‘I pray your daughter comes home safely.’

  More people congregated around me.

  Stay strong, Marie. We’re thinking of you. She’ll be found.

  I nodded gratefully. ‘Thank you,’ I whispered.

  Mum and my sisters supported me on the walk back home, hands gently cupping my elbows. I was staring down at my feet.

  Just put one foot in front of the other, I kept telling myself.

  As the George and Dragon came into view, I heard Lynn, a neighbour, exclaim, ‘That’s strange, the pub’s shut.’

  Glancing up blankly, I vaguely remember thinking, So it is. The George and Dragon, normally ablaze with light, music and chatter, was dark, empty and silent. But I barely gave it a second thought. Maybe the landlord’s famed lock-ins had finally caught up with him? Whatever the reason, I didn’t care: finding Helen was all that mattered.

  A tiny flicker of hope sparked as we turned into our road. Maybe God had heard my prayers, seen the pitiful state of me and how much I was suffering, and shown mercy. Maybe, even while we were praying, Helen had managed to escape from whoever had been holding her prisoner, or regained her lost memory.

  As the front door opened, I craned my neck, hoping to catch a glimpse of her sitting on the bottom step of the stairs – a foil blanket around her, paramedics tending to her cuts and bruises. She’d look up, see me and burst into tears of relief. ‘Oh Mum,’ she’d sob, ‘you’ll never believe what happened.’ I’d kneel beside her, smooth her hair, kiss her face, dry her tears as she told me all about how she’d fallen down an uncovered manhole, been pulled into the back of a van, or abducted by aliens. ‘Oh Helen – you had me so worried,’ I’d weep, weak with relief. ‘But it’s OK, love. You’re home now, you’re safe.’

  The image evaporated. The stairs were empty, Helen wasn’t home. As I was helped inside, an overwhelming, suffocating sense of sadness engulfed me.

  There was a flurry of activity in the kitchen as the kettle was boiled, teapots warmed and crockery clattered onto the counter. A cup and saucer were pressed into my hand. I watched the steam unfurl, but couldn’t drink it. My throat felt constricted.

  I’m not sure how long I sat there, watching blankly as life bustled on around me. Tea was poured and passed out, teaspoons clinked against china, biscuits tipped onto plates.

  ‘Mrs McCourt, can we have a word, please?’

  I looked up. It was Eddie Alldred and Detective Sergeant Tom Purcell.

  My heart leapt. Did they have news? Struggling to my feet, I ushered them into the dining room and closed the door. Their faces remained blank.

  DCS Alldred reached into an envelope and pulled out a transparent cylinder. It looked a bit like a test tube – a plastic test tube with a lid. Tentatively, he held it out to me.

  ‘Does this mean anything to you?’ he asked.

  My eyes focused on the tube. It took a few seconds for my brain to whirr, then click into gear . . . to register the small jewel nestling at the bottom. Recognition flickered and I gave a small, involuntary jolt.

  The familiar white opal, surrounded by tiny sapphires, twinkled under my dining-room light. Small and intricately designed, it looked lost as it rolled sadly around in the container.

  I swallowed. ‘It’s identical to earrings Helen was wearing,’ I said finally. ‘She’d chosen them herself with twenty-first birthday money . . . eighteen months ago.’

  Even then my brain was protecting me.

  It’s not Helen’s. It can’t be. Helen’s fine, she’ll be home soon. As soon as they find her . . .

  My response must have been pitiful. The earring was obviously Helen’s. I’d already described in minute detail everything she was wearing when she’d left home on Tuesday morning – right down to her jewellery. By going through her wardrobe and jewellery box I’d known exactly what she was wearing. Don’t forget, she and I pored over the same catalogues, planned shopping trips together and wore the same-sized clothes. But I was holding onto a tiny nugget of hope and saying the words, ‘It’s Helen’s’ would see it evaporate.

  Eddie and Tom exchanged the slightest of glances. Then Eddie slid the tube back into a folder. ‘Thank you,’ he said. I waited for them to say something else. Seconds crawled by. This was tortuous.

  Low murmurs and the gentle clink of teacups in the next room sounded far away. Deep inside me a swell of frustration and despair rose like a wave, threatening to drown me.

  ‘So, have you found her?’ I finally asked. ‘Is she OK?’

  Eddie shook his head. ‘Not yet, Mrs McCourt. But our investigations are continuing. We’re doing everything we can.’

  My voice cracked at my next question: ‘When will you find her?’ I asked desperately, wringing my hands together.

  The detective chief superintendent’s eyes finally met mine.

  ‘I don’t know, Mrs McCourt,’ he replied.

  He paused, then quietly and sadly murmured five words which to this day chill me to the bone: ‘We may never find her.’

  Eddie, like all the officers who worked on Helen’s case, became a good friend. Years later, I’d asked why he’d used those words.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said, looking a bit uncomfortable at the memory. ‘It was just a gut feeling I had.’

  But, back then, in that moment, had I any inkling that he had just prophesised the hellish path I was about to embark on I’d have slumped to the floor of my chilly dining room, closed my eyes and refused to go on.

  Deep down, in the pit of my stomach, I knew something bad had happened. I knew that my beautiful, vivacious, life-loving daughter would never walk through my front door again. But I honestly and truly thought, hoped and prayed that she would be found. The alternative – a lifetime of searching and u
nresolved grief – didn’t bear thinking about.

  Chapter 5

  Never coming home

  O

  n the morning of Friday, 12 February 1988, Senior Investigating Officer Paul Acres informed me that two of the three people being questioned by police had been released, but a third was still ‘helping police with their inquiries’. It had always seemed such a polite, civilised phrase. Now it had such sinister connotations. At that very moment, someone was sitting in an interview room being asked questions about my daughter. Where was she? What had happened? Were they being open and honest, or stubbornly and cruelly, sat arms crossed and refusing to answer?

  I thought of notorious kidnapping cases – like Black Panther victim Lesley Whittle who was found dead in a draining shaft in 1975. What if Helen was tied up in a cave that was gradually filling with water? Had a ransom note got lost on its way to us? Was she dehydrated? Weak? Injured? Even conscious? Was she calling out to be rescued? Horrendous thoughts whirled around my brain. I felt so helpless sitting at home, waiting for news.

  At one point, my neighbour Lynn popped in with groceries and said there were rumours in the village that Ian Simms, landlord of the George and Dragon, had been arrested. It would explain why the pub was shut the previous night, but I just presumed he’d finally been caught by the police having lock-ins. I never, for a minute, dreamed he had anything to do with Helen going missing. Alone, inside my bubble, I was still hopeful that Helen would be found safe and well. I was completely oblivious to the news reports stating that police were now fearing the worst – that the RAF had been called in to fly over the countryside using heat-seeking equipment – the same used in the search for the poor Moors murder victims some twenty years earlier. In an interview years later, Michael recalled heading to our newsagent to buy a paper, seeing that headline, and walking straight out again, stunned. He went to his room and never told a soul.

  Newspapers also reported that police believed Helen’s body might have been hidden in an area of ‘thick clay and surrounded by thorny undergrowth’. More stories told of how upset I was after police warned me to expect the worst, but I honestly don’t remember that conversation. Perhaps my brain decided to block it out or refused to register it. All I know is that, at that point, while everyone else was looking for a body, I was hanging onto hope that my daughter was alive.

  My spirits soared when the police announced a massive search around the village for Helen the following morning at 10.30am and appealed for volunteers to join them.

  Thank God, I thought. They’ll definitely find her.

  The response to their cry for help left police reeling. Coach after coach, packed with people from all over the North and even the Midlands, arrived, clad in wellington boots and warm coats – leaving the village gridlocked.

  It was the biggest search for a missing person the Northwest had ever seen.

  Billinge Main Street was completely overwhelmed. I’m still shocked to see black and white newspaper photos of crowds 2,000 deep, thronging along Main Street, which was packed with police vehicles.

  I was touched that so many people – mostly strangers – had seen the appeal on the news and wanted to help. Billinge, previously a mining community, was still very close-knit. My brothers, sisters, an ashen-faced Michael and Frank, Helen’s friends and colleagues, all joined the search that day. Both John and I had pulled on our wellies and coats only to be told to stay at home: ‘If we find anything, we’ll need to speak to you quickly,’ the police advised. ‘But Billy can take part.’ Disappointment and frustration surged through me. I needed to be doing something . . . anything. But I had to trust the police. They knew what they were doing.

  After having to turn some volunteers away, police divided the remainder into squads, led by search experts, to scour farmland, fields, undergrowth and open spaces around Billinge. Top-ranking detectives and uniformed officers worked side by side. Farmers checked outbuildings and barns, mounted police covered huge tracts of open land. Sniffer dogs strained at the leash as they pulled their handlers along, eagerly snuffling at the ground. Eyes were peeled for disturbed ground, footprints, discarded belongings, anything that would give a clue to where Helen might have gone or been taken.

  John and I sat at home, waiting for news.

  None came.

  At one point police appealed for anyone who had seen a Volkswagen car parked in remote areas to come forward. There were also reports of clothing, possibly blood-stained, being abandoned on a remote path.

  Frogmen and police divers dragged a section of the Manchester Ship Canal while officers scoured the nearby rubbish tip. They worked relentlessly.

  As Saturday turned to Sunday – Valentine’s Day – all across the country hearts were swelling with love.

  Mine was breaking.

  Police continued to bring regular updates. They had been granted a further detention order from St Helens Magistrates Court to continue questioning the man in custody and had until 10pm that night to charge or release him.

  On Monday morning, Senior Investigating Officer Paul Acres visited and asked me to sit down: ‘Late last night, we charged a man with Helen’s murder,’ he began.

  My stomach lurched so violently I clapped my hand instinctively to my mouth. Through the rushing in my ears I could barely hear his next sentence . . . that the perpetrator would be appearing at St Helens Magistrates Court that morning.

  Just one word was resonating around my head. Murder.

  Murder?

  I can remember Paul’s ashen face but nothing else from those moments. As the enormity of that awful word ‘murder’ dawned upon me everything went black.

  By now, police had revealed the man’s identity: he was Ian Simms, thirty-one, landlord of the George and Dragon. TV news bulletins and daily newspapers showed him being led, in handcuffs, into St Helens Magistrates Court.

  I was stunned. We barely knew the man. He’d only taken over the pub eleven months earlier, in March 1987, and wasn’t even behind the bar that often – letting his staff do all the work apart from when he threw his regular stay-behinds.

  Why on earth would he want to hurt Helen?

  It also meant that if Helen had reached the pub, she’d come unbearably close to home – just 483 yards – before vanishing.

  Deep down, I prayed there was some mistake. That Helen was still being held somewhere against her will, that she was still alive. That she would come home to me. ‘You can lose an earring, easily, can’t you?’ I’d say, clutching at straws. ‘Those butterfly backs can be useless . . . ’

  My brothers had exchanged glances on hearing that Ian Simms had been charged with Helen’s murder. As I would discover at the trial a year later, they weren’t surprised at all. All I’d known about Simms was that Helen didn’t like him: ‘Someone new has taken over the pub,’ I remembered her telling me. Then she’d grimaced. ‘He’s a horrible man, Mum. He’s got a lovely wife and children but he’s carrying on with other girls.’

  It became an open secret in the village that, while his wife and children lived with his mother in the nearby family home, Simms told his wife he had to stay on the premises to prevent break-ins. Then he’d brazenly moved his young girlfriend into the pub’s living quarters. Apparently, he’d even waited until his wife, kids and mum had gone on holiday for a week, then flown to Tenerife with his girlfriend. ‘He sounds lovely,’ I remembered commenting, sarcastically. To top it all, there had even been rumours about drug dealings and money lending going on at the pub since he took over. But dubious morals and extra-marital flings were his own affair. What did he have to do with Helen disappearing?

  * * *

  Tuesday, 16 February dawned with an awful sense of finality and foreboding. Helen had been gone a whole week, an entire seven days and seven nights.

  Where is she? Where is she? The question was on a continual loop, echoing around my head.

  Police announced they would be staging a reconstruction of my daughter’s five-mile bus journey
home from St Helens to Billinge that evening in the hope of jogging memories. A young dark-haired model, dressed in a knee-length coat, played the part of Helen. They urged anyone watching to come forward with information, no matter how small. ‘A passing motorist may hold the vital clue to what happened to Helen,’ DS Tom Davies said. ‘Our search will continue until we find Helen and we are confident that we will.’

  I felt so helpless watching the news reports on the early teatime news. And then, from the depths of my brain, a thought flashed: St Martha’s novena.

  Scrabbling in my dressing table drawer, I found the little prayer that the nun had written out for me all those years ago when I was pregnant with Helen and desperate for a mortgage. My heart surged with hope. It had worked then. If I prayed hard enough now, it might work again.

  John drove me to St Oswald and St Edmund Arrowsmith Church in Ashton-in-Makerfield – our old church where the children had made their holy communions and confirmations. I thought there would be less attention there than St Mary’s, the Catholic church in Billinge. It’s also a particularly beautiful church – the inside seems more like a cathedral, with dramatic, sweeping, Norman-style domes.

  After the 7.30pm mass, with the smell of incense still thick in the air, I made my way to the candle stand tucked away in the side chapel, dropped a donation in the box and picked out a tealight candle. As I held the wick into the flame of an already-lit candle, I watched, mesmerised, as it glowed, then burst into life. Placing the candle carefully into the stand, I knelt down and prayed like I’d never, ever prayed before – beseeching St Martha for her help.

  ‘O St Martha,’ I whispered, reading from the faded piece of paper, ‘I resort to thy protection

  And, as proof of my affection and faith, I offer thee the light which I will burn every Tuesday.

  Comfort me in my difficulties and, through the great favour thou didst enjoy when our

  Saviour lodged in thy house, intercede for my family that we may be provided for in all our wants.