The police decided to keep the letter’s contents secret and it was not mentioned at the midday press conference. Nonetheless, it was leaked to The Sun and the Press Association, and most morning papers carried the text in full. The police in charge of the case were furious, and DCS Smith felt he now had no option but to enlist the family’s full cooperation and explain his every move, against all police principles.
That night, New Year’s Eve, both Mrs McKay’s daughters and David Dyer, who had become the McKays’ spokesman, appeared at the evening press conference, and Diane Dyer made another emotional appeal on television, this time on ITN’s news.
Early that same morning, the Hoseins had had a visitor. He was a business friend and a master tailor and arrived by appointment at Rooks Farm about 7.30 am to collect some trousers. This he did, seeing nothing of Arthur nor anything suspicious. Later that morning, both brothers picked up Liley in London by car and brought her back to the farm, where she stayed until 2 January, during which time she noticed nothing odd. She said Arthur spent most of the time watching television.
The telephone in 20 Arthur Road continued to ring. One call came from a nurse who recommended that a medium be consulted. The McKay family, determined to explore any avenue to obtain Mrs McKay’s release, contacted a spiritualist who said she was too busy to see them just then but had already received a message from the spirit world about the abduction. Three people were involved, she said, as was Seven Sisters Road – which ended just south of Tottenham, N17. The motive was spite or malice, she said, and Mrs McKay was being held in a ‘very scruffy place’. This impressed the family and they resolved to go further – without telling the police.
They next consulted a famous clairvoyant, Gerard Croiset, who lived in Utrecht in Belgium. A family friend took a photo of Mrs McKay to Croiset, who said: ‘The impression I get is of a white farm … Around it are trees and a green barn.’ It was approached by a road going north-north-east out of London. In the vicinity, said Croiset, were another farm, a disused airfield, a concrete building, and a pond in which was an old motorcycle. He added: ‘If she is not found within fourteen days, she will be dead.’
Somewhat reluctantly, the police followed up the information, finally identifying a deserted building on the Essex-Hertfordshire border. Rooks Farm happened to be only a few miles away.
When the newspapers published their accounts of the McKays’ dealings with Croiset the police were doubly aggrieved – firstly by the implication that the supernatural might be more reliable than police detection and secondly by the influx of related information that now swamped them. ‘Because of Croiset’s intervention,’ said Commander Guiver of the CID, ‘we wasted thousands of man hours. Not through following up his ideas, but because of all the imitators.’ In addition, the McKays’ telephone was again jammed by useless, cranky calls.
But on the evening of Thursday, 1 January, at 7.40 pm, M3 got through again.
Diane Dyer answered the untraceable STD phone call. But M3 was unwilling to talk to her. ‘I’ll contact you later,’ he said. ‘Why don’t we talk now?’ asked Diane. ‘You’ve gone too far,’ said M3. ‘It has gone too far now.’ ‘What’s gone too far?’ persisted Diane. But M3 rang off. A few minutes later, he was back. He said: ‘You tell them they’ve gone too far … They’ve gone to the police … They’ve got to get a million, a million pounds. I’ll contact them tomorrow, and they’ve got to get it in fivers and tenners.’ ‘Where do you get a million pounds from?’ demanded Diane. ‘That’s not my business,’ said M3 and rang off.
Nothing more would be heard from the kidnappers for nine days.
On 3 January, Mrs Hosein and the children returned to Rooks Farm. Nine days later, when she found that Liley had stayed at the farm in her absence, there was a row – Arthur hit Else and she walked out with the children, going to live with a friend for a few days. By now the police, the press and the family all tended to believe that Mrs McKay had indeed been kidnapped. But by whom? The ransom demand was so excessive as to appear absurd, and it was felt that the kidnapping could be an act of malicious revenge directed against the News of the World by someone who had been exposed in its pages or who disapproved of the paper’s lurid and explicit stories. In the meantime, Ian McKay (the McKays’ son), and his wife Lesley, had arrived in England from Australia. Displeased with the way things were going, he would nonetheless soon be instrumental in getting his family to treat the police approach with more respect.
The telephone in 20 Arthur Road rang constantly. There were always two policemen in the house as well as two or more outside, where the press and television crews still stuck to their posts, their numbers swelled by sightseers.
On Friday, 2 January a man had telephoned offering to return Mrs McKay for £500. The hand-over was to be effected on Platform 5 at Wimbledon railway station. DI Minors, in Mr McKay’s hat and coat and carrying a suitcase containing £150 and some paper money, kept the appointment. As a result, a nineteen-year-old waiter was arrested and later fined £100 for attempting to obtain money by deception.
On Saturday evening, at a press conference, the police were harassed by questions they were unable to answer. By then, although most senior officers were inclined (like the McKays and the press) to believe that Mrs McKay had been kidnapped, some were still suspicious of Alick McKay. So the house, the garden and the garage were searched again.
Alick McKay was now allowed to read a statement and was photographed in his dressing gown and pyjamas; this was arranged to give the impression that he was ill. The statement implied that Mrs McKay was also ill and needed certain drugs to maintain her health. It said: ‘I ask whoever is holding Muriel to get in touch with me immediately and let me know exactly what they want. If it is money, then I must know how and where it can be exchanged for my wife. In order to be certain I am dealing with the person who is holding Muriel I must have positive proof that she is safe.’ Six days later, he appeared on television and once more appealed for proof that his wife was still alive.
During that week, the police effort was largely dissipated in the necessary but useless investigation of phone calls and sightings all over Britain. There were also yet more hoax ransom demands. In following up one of them, DS Chalky Whyte, disguised as Diane Dyer in a wig and mini-skirt and carrying £5,000 in a suitcase, travelled on a 47 bus across London to a hand-over point at Stamford Hill, as instructed by an anonymous caller. Two other detectives, dressed as workmen and sitting separately, accompanied Whyte all the way, and the bus was shadowed by two Q cars – so closely that the bus-driver reported their suspect presence to the Stamford Hill police. In another hoax, the telephone caller was caught outside a public toilet in an east London underground station and jailed for three years.
Increasingly, the police were accused both of doing too much – because of the status and connections of the McKays – and also of not doing enough. One line of enquiry they followed led them to Hertfordshire, to Bishop’s Stortford, 8 miles from Stocking Pelham. The billhook found in the hall was said by a Sheffield manufacturer to have been one of many sold and used in Hertfordshire. But that trail was apparently followed no further.
When twelve days had passed since Mrs McKay’s disappearance, and nine days since the last communication from M3, the accumulated fears and frustrations of all those most closely concerned with the case were relieved for a while the morning after Mr McKay’s television appearance. A letter received by the editor of the News of the World on Saturday, 10 January complained that the writer had telephoned Arthur Road several times but the line had always been engaged. The million-pound ransom was now to be delivered in halves, at two collection points. Instructions would follow.
But again there was silence, this time for four days. Then, on Wednesday, 14 January, M3 rang both the News of the World and Arthur Road, the latter call being taken by Alick McKay.
Both calls were brief, and neither contained any new information. ‘You cooperate,’ M3 told Mr McKay, ‘and you’ll get y
our madam back.’ The tape recording of this conversation, as of the others, was sent to an acoustics laboratory – the first time this had happened in a murder case. Voice-printing, then as now, was an uncertain but improving method of identification. As a result, M3’s voice was deduced to be West Indian with American overtones.
The next and longest call to date, lasting thirty-five minutes, was answered on the afternoon of Monday, 19 January, again by Alick McKay, who was in an emotional state after the police had openly admitted their fears that Mrs McKay was dead – a fear already expressed by some of the family.
M3 asked for a first payment of half a million pounds and said, as before, that instructions would follow. Mr McKay demanded that some proof be sent that his wife was still alive. ‘Bring a gun here and shoot me,’ he cried, ‘rather than make impossible demands! … Nobody’s got a million pounds … and it’s ridiculous to talk about it … I can’t give you what I haven’t got!’ ‘If you don’t cooperate,’ said M3, ‘you will be responsible for not seeing your wife again.’ ‘What have I done to deserve this?’ ‘I don’t know,’ said M3. ‘But I’m very sorry we had to do this because your wife is such a nice person.’ When Mr McKay offered to pay £20,000, M3 replied: ‘That’s not enough … It must be half a million, first delivery.’ ‘Take me instead!’ said Mr McKay. M3 rang off.
By this time, press interest in the story had waned, as had the interfering telephone calls. After Mr McKay’s outburst the police persuaded the family that Ian McKay should reply to all calls and try to establish some rapport with the kidnappers. He answered the next call, which came two days later on Wednesday, the gist of which was that the family should have no dealings with the police and that two letters from Mrs McKay were on their way to Arthur Road.
These, and a ransom demand with detailed instructions, arrived on Thursday the 22nd inside an envelope postmarked Wood Green, a northern suburb parallel to Tottenham. The letters referred to Diane’s television appeals (on 31 December and 2 January), one of which Mrs McKay had apparently heard. Her faltering hand wrote: ‘I am deteriorating in health and spirit … Excuse handwriting, I’m blindfolded and cold … Please keep the Police out of this and co-operate with the Gang … The earlier you get the money the quicker I may come home … Please keep Police out of it if you want to see me alive … The gang is too large to fool.’
The ransom demand told Mr McKay to put half a million pounds, in five and ten pound notes, into a black suitcase and to bring it, using his wife’s Capri, to a telephone box on the corner of Church Street and Cambridge Road (the A10) in Edmonton at 10 pm on 1 February. There he would receive further instructions.
The following day, Friday, Ian McKay answered three calls from M3, who was anxious to confirm that the letters and the demand had been received and to repeat his threats. Ian’s belligerent attitude and counter-demands for proof of his mother’s well-being produced an excited volubility from the caller and two more letters from Mrs McKay, plus another ransom demand and three bits of material cut from the clothes she had worn on 29 December. They arrived in one envelope on Monday, 26 January.
The letters were hard to decipher. They were despairing, and, it seems, the last that she ever wrote – probably some weeks earlier. ‘If I could only be home … I can’t believe this thing happened to me … It seems hopeless … You betrayed me by going to Police and not co-operating with the M3 Gang … Love Muriel.’
The ransom note ended:
Looking forward in settling our business on the 1st February at 10 pm as stated on last letter in a very discreet and honest way, and you and your children will be very happy to join Muriel McKay, and our organisation also will be happy to continue our job elsewhere in Australia … You see we don’t like to make our customer happy, we like to keep them in suspense, in that way it is a gamble … We give the order and you must obey. M3.
The police made their plans. The ransom was made up of £300 in real £5 notes, provided by Mr McKay, and of convincing forgeries in bundles with real notes at either end. An electronic homing device was attached to the suitcase.
It was decided that DI Minors would dress as a chauffeur while DS Roger Street posed as Ian McKay, with his arm in a sling in which a two-way radio would be concealed. ‘I’ll have to come in the Rolls,’ the real Ian told M3 on 30 January, after several other conversations between the two. ‘I don’t know the north of London very well, and I’ve also injured my hand a bit and I want to bring the chauffeur.’ ‘Oh, I see,’ said M3 doubtfully. But he raised no objections.
On Sunday, 1 February the Hoseins left Rooks Farm at about 6.30 pm in the Volvo, after entertaining some friends to lunch. At 9 pm the Rolls set off from 20 Arthur Road. Lying in wait about the A10 were over 150 policemen and over fifty unmarked police cars.
DS Roger Street entered the Church Street call box soon after 10 pm. The phone rang. ‘Who’s that?’ said a voice. Street replied: ‘Ian McKay. Who’s that?’ ‘This is M3. These are your instructions …’ Street was directed to another call box farther up the A10, on the corner of Southbury Road. The Rolls set off again. In the second call box, M3 told Street that further instructions were written in a cigarette pack on the floor, a pack of Piccadilly cigarettes, which was empty apart from directions to High Cross, where the suitcase was to be left. M3 said that if Street then returned to the first call box at Church Street, he would receive a call saying where Mrs McKay could be found.
The Rolls drove on north, past a petrol station in High Cross, until it came to a left turning leading to Dane End. Here, two paper flowers stuck in a bank marked the spot where the suitcase was to be abandoned. This was done – it was midnight. The Rolls headed back to London.
But the trap failed. So many policemen, variously disguised, some as Hell’s Angels, drove up and down the road and lurked in ditches and hedges, that the fantasy of catching the kidnappers turned into a farce. In the two-and-a-half hours that followed the drop, almost five times as many police vehicles were noted by the CID men concealed across the road from the drop as civilian cars, of which only ten were logged in that time.
One was a Volvo 144. In it, unknown to the police, were the Hoseins, who drove slowly past the suitcase to a transport café, where they parked and debated their next move. two policemen in plain clothes happened to pull in after them, giving themselves and the game away by their loud comments on the operation. the Hoseins fled back to Stocking Pelham, 8 miles to the east. At Rooks Farm Else gave them a meal and they went to bed.
Early that morning, Ian McKay was primed at 20 Arthur Road by DI Minors and DS Street on where they had gone and what they had done, in case M3 rang again. It seemed a hopeless prospect. Everyone in St Mary House was sadly depressed.
But a day later, on 3 February, an indignant M3 telephoned, accusing Ian McKay of setting a trap. Police cars, he said, had been seen around the pick-up spot. Ian tried to convince M3 that he knew nothing of this. The conversation, as was now usual, was a lengthy one. M3 said he would only talk in future to Alick McKay. He was now off, he said, to a meeting of the gang to discuss Mrs McKay’s fate. ‘I am going to plead for your mum,’ said M3. ‘I’m fond of her – your mum – you know … She reminds me of my mum.’
The day before this, and not until then, the Hertfordshire police were officially involved in the enquiry. at the same time, some Flying Squad detectives making routine investigations around the scene of the drop asked a sergeant in the local police station if any West Indians lived in the neighbourhood. The sergeant replied in the negative, but added that he believed two Pakistanis were living in Stocking Pelham.
The detectives went there and made further enquiries, establishing that the ‘Pakistanis’ were called Hosein and were not too popular. the sergeant, questioned again, said he knew about the Hoseins because of some motoring offences; they had two cars, a Morris Minor and a Volvo. On the detectives’ return to London, the information was filed away in the crime index.
The Hoseins, undeterred by the eviden
t odds against them and blindly confident about the outcome of the game they were playing – and probably excited by the sight of the suitcase – telephoned Arthur Road twice on Thursday, 5 February, the day after Mrs McKay’s birthday. This time, M3 spoke at length to Mr McKay. The £500,000, he said, was to be put in two suitcases and taken by Mr McKay and his daughter Diane in the Rolls to the Church Street call box at 4 pm the following day.
Preparations were swiftly made, and more wisely after the overkill of the previous Sunday. In Wimbledon, DI Minors shaved off his moustache in order to impersonate Mr McKay and donned a fur hat and a camel-haired coat. DC Joyce Armitage dressed herself in Diane’s clothes. This time, the Rolls had an unseen passenger. DS John Bland was hidden in the unlocked boot with an oxygen mask and two cylinders.
They set off at 3 pm on Friday, 6 February, half an hour after M3 made his final call. It came from the East End, where Arthur Hosein was delivering trousers. Ian McKay answered the call. ‘They’re on their way,’ said Ian. ‘This is the last and final chance,’ said M3. It was, for all concerned.
DI Minors was kept waiting at the Church Street call box for forty-five minutes. When M3 rang, he was told to go to the East End of London to a call box in Bethnal Green Road, 6 miles away.
Commander Guiver, supervising police manoeuvres from an ops room in Scotland Yard, moved some of his forces south. The Hoseins, who were in the area already, parked not far from the second call box and at about 6 pm observed the Rolls arrive. They then moved on to make the call that Minors now awaited. He and Joyce Armitage were told to leave the Rolls at Bethnal Green underground station and to take the Central Line tube to Epping, where they would receive another call on a booking-hall telephone. Unwilling to risk any trouble on a train crammed with commuters, the police took another risk.
Murder of the Black Museum 1875-1975: The Dark Secrets Behind a Hundred Years of the Most Notorious Crimes in England Page 57