Bible John's Secret Daughter

by David Leslie

  ‘Did it give the name of your father?’

  ‘No, that space was left blank.’

  ‘You understand it’s crucial we find out who your father was. It is hardly likely your mother would have been involved, but she may tell us who your father was, even though for reasons of her own she left his name off your birth certificate. Have you ever tried tracking down Hannah Martin?’

  ‘No, I was very happy with my adoptive parents and there didn’t seem any point.’

  ‘So you’ve never made contact with her or spoken to her?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Have you any idea where she is?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Any idea who might know her whereabouts?’

  ‘Sorry, no.’

  They discussed adoption and Isobel’s thoughts on having been given away when she was born. Suddenly, one of the men asked, ‘Isobel, would you be willing to get your adoption papers?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because they might give us a clue as to where Hannah is or was living at the time you were born.’

  ‘Can’t you find that out?’

  ‘No, we would never get permission. It would need to be you who requested them.’

  ‘But how would those details help?’

  ‘As you were adopted, there would certainly have been a social work report and it would have gone into who your father was. It would also give the reason why you didn’t remain with your natural mother.’

  ‘I’d want to think about this. It would be a very big step into the past for me.’

  ‘It’s really important. Please try to see how helpful this would be. Think about it.’

  ‘What would I have to do?’

  ‘Write off asking for permission.’

  ‘And where would I write to?’

  ‘Don’t worry. We would sort all that out for you. We would draft a letter for you to sign. All you would need to do would be to sign it. We’d even post it for you.’

  Isobel insisted she would need a few days to think this over and then asked near which of the dead girls the DNA that closely matched hers had been discovered. She found the men evasive and the longer the chat lasted the more reticent they became about telling her anything. Their refusal to be more forthcoming caused tension and they realised that, having scored one minor success in persuading Isobel to consider going along with the idea of applying for her adoption details, it would be a good time to end the interview. Just under an hour after arriving, they departed, and asked for her mobile telephone number, promising to be back in touch.

  As she watched them drive off, she found herself shaking. Since discovering her mother was called Hannah Martin, she had never felt the need to try tracing her to ask why she had been given away – and a hundred other questions that were now racing through her brain, especially why her father’s name was not on her birth certificate.

  It was a strange sensation being told that the mother who bore her might have been mixed up with a savage sex killer. Until the police visit, having answers had never seemed important; now, she felt something of a drama queen, at the centre of something involving many families other than her own, and suddenly she desperately wanted answers.

  She climbed into her car and went to see the family that had cared for her since her birth. They were equally surprised by the police visit but just as ignorant of the whereabouts of Hannah Martin. Their advice was not to become involved. ‘What point is there in raking up the past?’ they told her. ‘It’s not fair on anyone.’ In any case, they could see no reason why the police should need to pursue their inquiries with her because she could tell them nothing.

  Two days later, with the weekend looming, she returned home one evening and had barely stepped into her home when the telephone rang. The caller identified himself as one of the detectives who had visited. ‘Isobel, I’m sorry, but I have to give you bad news,’ he said. Without stopping, he carried on, ‘We did some checks and traced Hannah Martin. Sadly, she died in December 2002. I am really sorry, but this makes it all the more important that you look at your adoption papers to see if there’s anything in them about your father. We’ll need to come back and see you.’ It was arranged they would call the following week.

  In the meantime Isobel, though unable to feel desolation over the death of a woman she had never known, nevertheless felt a sadness, not just for herself but also for Hannah. As curiosity had from time to time gripped her about her mother, she knew Hannah must often have wondered about her. Now it had taken an investigation into murders almost three decades old to reveal her mother was dead. She had known that the police would somehow track Hannah down and that once that was done Isobel would be unable to resist the urge to meet up with her. Now questions she had been mentally preparing for that rendezvous with the past would never be asked or answered.

  The fact that Hannah was dead changed Isobel’s thinking towards resurrecting what had gone before. Now, by taking further the quest to uncover the truth about her parentage, she would no longer be disrupting Hannah’s life, only her own and that of her adoptive family, and so it was to them she sped with the news. It caused them also to rethink.

  ‘It’s clear the police are going to give you no peace until you have your adoption papers,’ they told her. ‘Maybe you should just go ahead and get it out of the way. Then perhaps they’ll leave you alone.’

  Over the weekend, Isobel thought long and hard about what she was being asked to do. She returned to her computer and once more scanned through details of the World’s End girls’ deaths. How would she feel, she asked herself, if one of them had been her friend or older sister? It would be wrong, she knew, to hinder any chance those parents had of seeing justice done. ‘What if I was in their situation and knew somebody who could help was refusing to do so?’ she asked herself. In the same breath, she realised, ‘I can’t prolong their ordeal.’

  TWENTY-NINE

  FINDING OUT

  By the time the police returned the following week, Isobel had all but made up her mind to cooperate. ‘I’m about to go on holiday and will be away for three weeks,’ she told them. ‘I’ll start off the procedure now, so long as I can have the option of changing my mind when I return. While I am away, I’ll make a definite decision. I’m very sure I know I am doing the right thing, though.’

  She had in fact arranged to holiday with her new boyfriend. She wished the trip could have been put on hold: holidays could be taken at any time, decisions affecting so many futures were a one-off. Whatever she did had to be the right thing; there would be no second chance. When the past came out, it could not be hidden.

  The detectives produced a letter to the Scottish Court Service in which she asked permission for access to her adoption details. After reading it over, she signed it. They promised to mail it off that same day, assuring her that when she returned from holiday a reply would be waiting.

  In between their visits to see her, the men had not been idle. Not only had they discovered Hannah was dead, a bitter blow because it deprived them of the one party who might know for certain the identity of the man who could have crucial information about two murders, but they had traced a close relative of the dead woman. This relation had never known Hannah had had a child, so closely guarded was the secret, but remembered Malcolm Martin as a control freak who dominated his remaining daughter until his death. The relative was happy for Isobel to be put in contact and gave the police her telephone number, together with a plea for it to be passed to her.

  Both met up shortly afterwards, an emotional reunion of two people who had not known the other existed. They decided to seek out other friends of Hannah and placed an advertisement in a local newspaper asking for anyone with information to call a telephone number.

  Sadly, mistakes can easily be made. The number that appeared was the wrong one, turning out to be that of the local council’s social work department, who said at least five callers had responded. Not knowing what it was all about, the social work staff had been
unable to help but after a visit from Isobel agreed that if anyone else made contact as a result of the advertisement they would pass on her number. The newspaper admitted its mistake and happily ran the advert once more, this time for free and with the correct telephone number.

  The outcome was that Hannah’s close childhood friend made contact, told them about another close friend of Hannah’s and suggested the two should get together with Isobel and the relative. Ironically, the meeting was at Strathclyde Country Park, a convenient spot on Isobel’s route into Glasgow. As the four sipped tea and coffee, beneath the waters of the nearby lake lay the remains of Bothwellhaugh, which had been such a part of the dead woman’s life. It was at this point that Isobel learned how Hannah had become pregnant and had been forced to give up her baby, then had become embroiled with a gang of drug traffickers and had fallen in love with a major underworld figure.

  She remembers listening to the stories. ‘I fluctuated between awe and astonishment, shock and embarrassment, and found it difficult at times not to get up and walk away so I could be on my own and have a little cry in private. I had never known her and still could not look on her as my mother, but it was impossible not to feel involved with her. I learned that one of the very few friends who knew Hannah was pregnant and was being made to give up her baby had offered to take me as her own. But her husband had thought it would not be a good idea to be so close to Hannah, who would see me often but know I could not be hers.

  ‘As it was, I’d had a relatively quiet upbringing, but this woman, so naive in her understanding of her own body, had become drawn into the Bible John horror, had calmly walked through Customs checks with hundreds of thousands of pounds hidden in her underwear, had driven to Spain to help a drug baron, had been subjected to horrific pressure from police, had helped wash away clues from cars used in killings and robberies, had carried on while cancer ate away at her and had died without a farthing. And only I knew, now that she was dead, how she had become drawn into mass murders.’

  She set off on a break she by then did not want to go on and within a few days realised her new relationship was going nowhere. She was in New Zealand, spending ten days each on the North and South Islands, but her mind was not on the sights or the sun, rather on what faced her when she returned to Scotland. The trip became an ordeal that could not end soon enough. On the final day, while shopping for presents in Wellington, she spotted a two-day-old English newspaper and, for a reason she would never know, bought it. Sitting in a café with a coffee, she scanned through the pages, then almost dropped her drink. ‘World’s End Killings Linked to Five Other Murders’ read the headline over a brief two-paragraph item that went on to explain: ‘Seven unsolved murders of young women – including the notorious World’s End murders – are being linked by new scientific evidence, police said. Three Scottish forces are investigating the links between the series of deaths in the 1970s and early 1980s.’

  As soon as she read it, she knew Operation Trinity had officially been announced and she, strangely, felt part of it. When she returned to Scotland, it was still major news and would continue to be the source of considerable speculation.

  She went home alone. Opening her front door, Isobel stared at the pile of mail awaiting her and quickly rifled through it for an envelope with an official stamp. It was there, from the Scottish Court Service, and after ripping it open she read:

  I refer to your recent request to view your Adoption papers and write to advise you that I will require the names and address at the time of your Adopted parents. This information is required to ensure the correct Adoption papers are located in Edinburgh and sent to this court for you to view.

  The procedure is for you to come to the Court one morning at 9.30 a.m. along with proof of your identity, a passport or a driving licence is sufficient for this purpose. You will be required to meet with one of our sheriffs, who will grant you permission to view your records.

  It was cold and formal, but she knew no outsider could be expected to understand the many emotions the application had aroused. Court officials would, in fact, contact the General Register Office in the Scottish capital. This is the government department responsible for keeping records sent by more than 300 local registrars of every birth, death and marriage, along with civil partnerships, divorces and adoptions. Much of the information it holds is available to any member of the public – by giving basic details, for example the date of a birth and the name of the child, it is possible to have a copy of anyone’s birth certificate; adoptions, which need to be approved by courts, are the exception. Information on anyone involved is only issued to those who can prove they have a close, normally a family, interest. It is looked on as highly confidential. The numbers of adoptions are slowly dropping each year, the trend being blamed on a combination of factors. In the years that followed the end of the Second World War, Scotland saw an average of nearly 2,000 adoptions each year. Now that figure is just above 400.

  She responded immediately, also enclosing her telephone number. A few days later, she was called. A voice told her the name of a Sheriff Court at which an appointment had been made for the papers to be shown to her. It was in three weeks’ time. She let the two detectives know and they arranged to meet her there.

  ‘You’ve made up your mind to go ahead?’ they asked.

  ‘I don’t think I ever had any doubts,’ said Isobel. ‘It’s the right thing to do.’

  Then she sat back to wait. She recalls becoming increasingly nervous as the day neared. ‘I was both excited and worried. Excited at the probability that details of my life I’d previously only be able to wonder about were being made known to me, nervous because it kept nagging at me that I could be opening a can of worms. If there was something in the papers I’d prefer not to have known, then it would be too late to turn back. I would always have to live with whatever I found in there.

  ‘My own curiosity was not strong enough to be the reason for doing this; my motivation was the help this would give the girls’ families. But as time went on, I became more and more hyper, filled with strange emotions, a sense of daring mixed with uncertainty as to how I would handle all the things I had never before encountered. It was then I knew I didn’t want to be alone when the papers were opened and told my family I needed them to be there beside me.’

  The night before the appointment, Isobel was unable to sleep. She sat late in front of her television screen, drank endless cups of coffee, read books and magazines, and began doing chores about the house. In bed, she was still restless, through her curtains seeing the first light of dawn slowly rising.

  Eventually, she rose early, knowing she had a two-hour drive ahead, but was too filled with trepidation to eat breakfast. Isobel dressed in a demure navy-coloured skirt with matching shoes and a white top. It was not an occasion to be daring or gaudy.

  She met up with her family and headed to court, arriving early and able to have her choice of spaces in the giant car park she spotted nearby. Waiting while time moved on depressingly slowly, she watched others arrive for work or shopping and began to envy them, assuming they knew everything they needed to know about their own pasts.

  ‘I had discovered I was part of the life of a woman who had done the most daring and outrageous things. Yet we also had so much in common. Both of us had suffered hurt through relationships that had not worked out and in which we had been badly let down by men in whom we’d put faith and trust; we had each of us become outgoing, probably as a result of having been forced to stand up for ourselves against manipulative partners; we had jobs that entailed us getting out and about to meet strangers. Hannah had died in the same hospital in which I’d come within a whisker of suffering a similar fate.’

  At a quarter past nine, she and her family saw the two detectives drive up and park close to them. They strode across and introduced themselves, one asking Isobel if she was nervous.

  ‘I’m dreading this,’ she admitted.

  Walking through the doors of the court buil
ding, she got a feeling for how the guilty must feel before turning up to hear their sentences. The policemen introduced her to a clerk who examined her passport and, satisfied she was who she claimed to be, took her to meet a sheriff. She remembers him as being kind and sympathetic and that he was anxious to be reassured she wanted to continue.

  ‘It’s not too late to change your mind,’ he told her.

  When she said she had thought her action over carefully and still believed she was doing the right thing, he told her she could not take away any of the documents she would be shown or photocopy them, although she could make notes. They were together only a few minutes and then he called the clerk back.

  ‘The sheriff wished me all the best,’ said Isobel, ‘and I thought that was exceptionally kind of him because he seemed to understand I wasn’t finding any of this easy.’

  With the others from her family and the police officers, she followed the clerk through the court building. ‘I felt as though I was in a maze and wondered if I could remember how to retrace my steps when I came to leave. I was absolutely terrified and quite worked up as well because I thought I was going to find out an awful lot of information that until now I had not known. The fact that Hannah was dead and now I was about to find out her greatest secret gave me a strange feeling. I didn’t know her, and you can’t really grieve for somebody who is a stranger, but all the same I felt sad.

  ‘Eventually, we stopped outside a door. It was opened and we found ourselves in a small room, almost like a storage cupboard, with a couple of chairs. The clerk handed me a small A4-sized envelope and told me to go inside with my family and open it up.

  ‘“Take as much time as you want,” she said. “But if it’s any help, read it over very slowly so you take everything in.”’

  She closed the door, leaving the tiny group alone looking at the envelope. The detectives had sympathetically announced they would wait outside in case what was about to take place proved too upsetting for Isobel and she needed her family to comfort her.