The World's End

by Tom Wood

  Helen Scott and Christine Eadie had known each other since their first days at secondary school. Helen, the older of the two by a matter of five months, and Christine met up at Edinburgh’s Firrhill High School in the Oxgangs area of the city. The 1960s buildings housed a school of about 1,000 pupils. The pair had spent their entire secondary school life there and, even as seventeen-year-olds who had been out in the world of work for some time, many of their regular friends hailed from that area and Firrhill School.

  The school then, as now, serves a close-knit, largely working-class community. The area was quite different from the quiet beauty of the Scottish Borders where Helen spent the first part of her life. Her mum Margaret had moved from the Edinburgh area to Coldstream on the banks of the river Tweed in the late 1950s. The epitome of a quiet town, Coldstream is famed as the place where, in 1660, General Monck raised his Regiment of Foot and marched them to London. Once in the capital, Monck helped to secure the restoration the Stuart monarchy. Coldstream is bordered by the estate of the Earls of Home, the most famous of whom was the Tory Prime Minister Sir Alec Douglas-Home. It is also a town that has been touched by tragedy. Just a few miles away is Flodden Field, the scene of the battle in 1513 that saw the flower of Scots nobility cut down by the English. And, a few years after Helen’s death, it was the centre of an inquiry into the disappearance of little Susan Maxwell who was subsequently found to have been murdered by that monster of Scottish criminal history, the child-killing van driver Robert Black.

  Margaret met and married Morian Scott and, a year later, Helen was born. Helen had two older half-sisters, and eventually the family would be completed with the birth of her brother Kevin. By the time Kevin was born, the family had moved to Penicuik, a dormitory town to the south of Scotland’s capital. The family’s final move was into the suburbs of Edinburgh after Helen’s dad started a new job as a British Telecom engineer. Their home was on the strangely named Swan Spring Avenue. This street of relatively new houses in the Comiston district takes its name from the very first piped water supply to Edinburgh. There were a number of natural springs in the area that were tapped to provide supplies to the rapidly growing population and each outlet was marked by a stone carved with the figure of a bird or animal. As well as Swan Spring, there were Hare, Fox and Peewit Springs.

  Helen was part of a close and loving family. At school, she had been quite quiet at first, a little reserved, but eventually her bright personality had come to the fore and she was a pupil who was well liked by staff and students alike. She left Firrhill at the age of fifteen and, just like many of her age group, she was mainly interested in fashion, music and going to the cinema. When she left school, her closest friend was a girl called Jacqueline Inglis. She remained friends with Jacquie to the end. Jacquie was with Helen in the World’s End the night she disappeared and was therefore one of the last people who knew her to see the teenager alive.

  Helen had worked hard since leaving school and was never out of a job. At the time of her murder, she had recently started a new job at a kilt shop in Edinburgh’s main shopping thoroughfare, Princes Street. Everything was going well for her. She had a stable group of friends and a determination to improve herself which was evidenced by a recent decision to start night classes with the aim of passing Higher English and Maths. It seemed she saw her job in the kilt shop as a temporary one while she set about getting the qualifications she would need to pursue a career in what seems to have been her chosen occupation of childcare. She had already demonstrated her aptitude for this by becoming the favoured babysitter for her sister’s two children.

  Like many girls in their mid teens, Helen’s weekend fun centred on her newly found ability to get into Edinburgh pubs and clubs with a group of friends that remained fairly constant despite the fact that they were underage. Their regular haunt was a bar called the Spider’s Web in Morrison Street in the city centre.

  Helen’s last night began in the usual sort of way. She had arranged to meet her close friend Jacquie Inglis at Jenners’ corner on Princes Street. The landmark store in the heart of the city centre is often referred to as the Harrods of the North and is a regular starting point for people meeting up for a night out in Edinburgh. The pair walked through the fading autumn light to the Mount Royal Hotel which overlooks the valley of Princes Street Gardens, lying between Edinburgh’s Old and New Towns.

  After a drink at the Mount Royal, the girls began to head for their next rendezvous in the High Street, the central part of the famous Royal Mile. Their journey that night took them over Waverley Bridge and, from there, it was a long steep climb up Cockburn Street to the High Street. Helen and Jacquie were heading for the Royal Mile Centre and the Wee Windaes pub where they had arranged to meet Christine Eadie and a newer member of their group, a young woman called Toni Kivlin. She was somewhat older than the rest of the girls but they enjoyed her company and she fitted in well.

  Detailed examination of the statements provided by many of the people present that night showed clearly that, by the time the four met up at about eight o’clock, they had all had a drink or two. More was soon on the way as the party of four proceeded to make short visits to several other pubs in the area. There had been a typical teenage disagreement at one point – just a slight falling-out. Christine was becoming irritated by Helen’s light-hearted behaviour and told her to stop acting stupidly and a bit of an argument ensued. There had been a minor fuss too when Toni Kivlin went to the toilet in one of the pubs only to emerge seconds later in something of a panic, saying she couldn’t stand the sight of blood. It seems Helen had suffered a nosebleed. It didn’t amount to much and soon they were off again, eventually walking into the World’s End pub at just after ten o’clock.

  During the new investigation I read in detail the statements given by Christine and Helen’s friends at the time of the original inquiry and it was striking just how ordinary a night out it was for this group of teenage friends. The little dramas played out that evening are just the same as those played out in every town centre across the country every weekend but, in this case, the knowledge of how the night was to end could only add considerable poignancy to these descriptions of innocent, everyday events.

  Helen and Christine started drinking whisky at the World’s End and they squeezed into a space near the payphone in the busy bar. Just how busy it was that night was shown to the wider public by a striking artist’s impression of the scene printed in the Edinburgh Evening News in an attempt to help what had become a double murder investigation. There were of course no mobile phones in those days but, then as now, teenagers love to talk on the phone and first Helen and then Toni were chatting to pals on the bar payphone. It was clear from the statements given by people in the pub that drink was beginning to play a large part in how this group behaved. Helen came off the phone at one point after speaking to a young male friend of hers in Coldstream where she still had strong connections. She took exception to a comment Christine made about having to phone the boy in a call box in the Borders town because he didn’t have a telephone at home. Helen had walked out of the pub only to be brought back in by a peacemaker from the group sent outside to fetch her.

  So it went on. The girls managed to get a seat at a table and soon other friends had joined them. They were now a large group who were engaged in animated conversation. Everybody knew one another – they were a regular crowd who met up most weekends. Boys and girls, they were all around the same age and, in some cases, they had been friends for years. Christine and Helen had obviously put their differences aside and were as usual at the heart of the crowd. To the others, it was very noticeable that they were happy and smiling. Like many true friends, there could be a disagreement one minute which would be forgotten the next and life goes on.

  It was at this point, unbeknown of course to any of this group, that things were about to go wrong. Jacquie Inglis and Toni Kivlin went to the toilet together and emerged a short time later to find that Helen and Christine had been joined by t
wo men. No one can be certain but it seems entirely likely that the pair standing in the crowded bar talking to the tipsy teenagers were embarking on a carefully laid plan that would lead to the rape and murder of these two innocent girls. If this belief is indeed correct, it gives a first chilling insight into the character of the men who had the nerve to engage the girls in conversation and quickly befriend them knowing, as I am sure they must have done, that their intention was assault, rape and murder. The men would probably have been watching the group before deciding to move in on Helen and Christine and begin the process of ensnaring them. And, what’s more, they’d have been perfectly aware that the girls had friends in the pub who could easily return to be in their company, giving the friends a greater chance of being able to identify or at least describe the two men chatting to Helen and Christine. Such behaviour demonstrates a coolness, a determination and a total disregard for life if that life stood between them and their gratification.

  Jacquie was later to tell officers that the men appeared to be in fairly intense conversation with Helen and Christine. They appeared unremarkable and certainly gave no one any cause for alarm. One was in his late twenties, of medium height and quite stocky. Jacquie Inglis noticed he had piercing brown eyes. His round face had prominent cheekbones and was topped by parted dark hair that lay across his forehead. His flared brown-and-white striped trousers, brown V-neck jersey and light-coloured shirt were the fashion of the day. The second man was about the same age but slightly taller. He too was wearing the flared trousers that were so popular in the late 70s. Jacquie left the four of them to get on with it and began chatting to another friend who invited them all to go to a party that was going to start quite shortly. She asked Helen and Christine if they wanted to go too. In what was to be a fateful decision, Christine said a definite no and Helen didn’t appear to reply. The conversation with the two men was obviously more engaging. One of the men was leaning over the table and then walked to the bar where Jacquie thought he bought the girls a whisky each. It was the last moment she saw her friends alive. Just a few moments after witnessing this scene, the group going to the party left the pub. In the event, I suppose, like so many of these things, the party they went to fell short of expectations and Toni and Jacquie left in the early hours of the next morning to go to their respective homes by taxi – the end to just another Saturday night out.

  It was 10.30 on Sunday morning when Jacquie got the first clue that something was wrong. Helen’s dad Morian phoned her to see if his daughter had stayed the night with her. Later that day, a slightly concerned Jacquie went round to the flat where Christine was living, only to discover there was no sign of her or Helen. She went to a telephone box to tell her missing friend’s dad. After more phoning round, Jacquie met up with some of their friends from the night before in another High Street pub. They were joined by Morian and Margaret Scott who, by this time, were extremely worried. The group decided it was best to report Helen and Christine missing. The mystery of their disappearance was not to last for long. Shortly after her visit to the South Side police station in Edinburgh to make the missing person’s report, Jacquie heard a newsflash on the radio saying the bodies of two girls had been found. She immediately phoned the police and a detective came straight to her house to take a statement. The officer had the painful task of confirming that Jacquie’s worst fears had been realised and that, pending formal identification, it was indeed her friends who had been found dead in East Lothian.

  The subsequent murder investigation was going to need comprehensive profiles of both victims so officers spent considerable time unearthing the details of Helen and Christine’s short lives. In an inquiry like this, no aspect can ever be dismissed as too small. Most murder victims are known to the killers so the first step in nearly every murder inquiry is to establish who the friends and acquaintances of the deceased were and who they were last with.

  Christine had been largely brought up by her maternal grandmother in a loving and generous family. No doubt she threw up the challenges of many teenagers but it was clear that, by the time she had reached the age of seventeen, she was an attractive, confident and outgoing young woman with an appetite for life. After she was killed, officers found a diary in Christine’s flat. In it were extensive accounts of her life and experiences but none of the details yielded any clues to her killer’s identity.

  On leaving school, Christine had worked for a time in the city council’s Education Department before taking up a post as a typist with a firm of surveyors in Edinburgh.

  The information about the girls given here and heard in court during the trial serves to reinforce one simple but very important fact – something that can get buried as a crime is described and discussed in newspapers and amongst professionals working in the various fields involved. So it is worth pausing for a moment to remember that all crimes involve real people – relatives and friends who, often through no fault of their own, find their lives devastated by sheer evil and inhumanity. In the case of the World’s End murders, it was not just the dead girls who were affected. It is their family and friends – the parents who live with the agony of loss every single day of the rest of their lives and the brothers and sisters who never get over the tragedy and the loss of their sisters’ futures. Had their lives not been snuffed out thirty years ago, Helen and Christine may have been mothers and even grandmothers today. Who knows how many future lives and opportunities were ended that night in October 1977? As I became more acquainted with the details of the World’s End inquiries and those of the other murdered victims that eventually were linked to the investigation, the suffering of those left behind screamed out of the files and reports that crossed my desk.

  It is a sad fact that many of the relatives of murder victims never recover from their grief. Some die prematurely and are often said by those who survive them to have succumbed to a broken heart. Unable to cope with the grief, some take their own lives and, in their despair, others turn to the bottle in the hope of finding some kind of solace. Yet, in the cruellest of ironies, it is usually the murderers, the infamous, who are remembered by the public. Sadly, notoriety sometimes brings with it a form of immortality.

  One of the biggest changes I have seen in my police career is the recognition of this fact and a realisation by the service as a whole that more has to be done to help the victims of crime and those affected by it. This is one of the prime motivations in my decision to write this book and give my royalties from it to the charity Victim Support Scotland, whose work I have seen at first hand and come to admire. It is right to say, however, that as the 2003 investigation into the events all those years ago began, we found ourselves reaping the harvest of old police attitudes.

  Until the last ten to twenty years, the difficulties facing those affected by crime were all too often ignored or treated lightly by the investigators. this was because of a number of reasons. The main one was, of course, cultural. Police attitudes change as those of the rest of society do and, in the old days, victims of crime could be seen as something of a nuisance – a hindrance to the effective investigation and detection of criminals. All too often, they were seen as simply a source of information and not fully appreciated as human beings in their own right – human beings who were often going through the worst and most devastating experience of their lives.

  In hindsight, of course, this was short-sighted. Families of victims can be of immense practical assistance to the investigation. They usually only seek courtesy, respect and information and, while there was a traditional reluctance to share any information in a difficult investigation for fear that it might be leaked to the press, this fear was usually misplaced. In many years of investigation, I can think of hardly any families who have betrayed the trust of the investigators and, in the thirty-seven years since the tragic loss of their girls, the families of Helen and Christine have behaved with the utmost dignity. In the most nightmarish circumstances and in the long glare of publicity, the Scott and Eadie families have carried
themselves with great courage. They have always supported the police investigations and, over the years, have gained the utmost respect and admiration of all the investigators.

  But this isn’t always the case. Not all relationships between the police and the families of victims are as good as those the police shared with the Scott and Eadie families. Sometimes tensions between families and police arise – for example, if people feel they are being starved of information or just not given the courtesy and respect they deserve. Cases from different parts of Scotland that could potentially be linked to the deaths of Helen and Christine were identified so it was decided that a joint operation, to be known as ‘Operation Trinity’, would be set up to coordinate them. When the deaths of their loved ones were initially investigated, there had been some tension between certain members of the families and the police so one of the priorities for officers working on Trinity was to establish good relationships with surviving family members from the outset. In line with modern police practice, family liaison officers were appointed and it was up to them to try to ensure that they rebuilt any broken bridges that the passage of time had done little to mend.

  Of course in the last ten years the importance of family liaison has been recognised and is now a specialist area of policing with carefully selected officers receiving training to help in this, their most difficult and sensitive role. To get close to, to almost be part of, a family in grief is to share that grief. To follow the case and take the families through from crime to investigation to trial and beyond can be extremely demanding. The role of family liaison officer is not for everyone and the long-term effects can be stressful, even life changing. I know of several colleagues who have been permanently marked by difficult or harrowing cases. In the sometimes tough world of the officers serving in murder squads, family liaison is sometimes seen as a soft job, a secondary consideration. Experienced officers or those who have done the job themselves know different.