Bible John's Secret Daughter

by David Leslie

  Finally, she opened up the letter and a handful of papers fell out. Only two mattered, but after all she had tensed herself to meet with what she discovered felt a huge letdown. There was her original birth certificate with, as she knew it would be, the space for the name of her father left blank. It was as if she had read a murder mystery at the end of which the author had omitted the name of the killer.

  What she really wanted to see was the report from the social workers who organised the adoption and, after scanning it, she realised why Hannah had not filled in the father’s name. It was because, as she had confided, she did not know it. The report simply said he was thought to have been a 20-year-old Glasgow shipyard worker. Isobel knew how creative Hannah had been in telling them that. Too drunk to learn or remember anything about her companion in the car, in order to avoid embarrassment and the realisation she might be thought of as having loose morals, she had invented an age and occupation. It stood to reason, Isobel was convinced, that had the man gone that far in telling her about himself, he would certainly have added a name, any name if necessary. That the report included the fact that Malcolm would not let Hannah keep the baby came as no surprise. She had already gleaned that during the chat with the dead woman’s friends. The social workers had concluded it was in Isobel’s ‘best interests’ to grow up with another family.

  When she had finished reading, she passed the documents over to her family, waited until they had read enough, then went outside and asked the two waiting CID officers to enter. She handed them the papers and, after asking permission to read them, they scrutinised them closely before looking up, clearly trying to hide their disappointment at the absence of a father’s name.

  ‘They kept apologising for putting me through what they had to put me through and said they were pleased for my sake that the name they were looking for hadn’t appeared on it. Whose name was it? We had never discussed any particular person, although the name of a man being linked to the World’s End and other murders had been splashed over a lot of newspapers for some considerable time.

  ‘I had been afraid that his name might turn out to be in the social work report as being that of the man who had sex that night with Hannah and therefore be my father. Of course, it was not.

  ‘I had assumed the detectives were referring to this same man in the context of him being one of the killers they were looking for. They never spoke his name but when I mentioned it they said my DNA was not linked to him but to another person who had probably been with him at the time.

  ‘Again, they never gave the name of this second man and it came as a surprise to me to hear someone else could also have been involved. I told the police I had been fascinated as much by the intrigue of their investigation, by the part my role, as it unfolded, played in the overall picture, as by discovering a name that would probably mean nothing to me. Probably they could not understand my feelings and I cannot blame them for that.

  ‘They were still apologising when we parted and promised to keep me in touch with developments, but I knew they would not or, more likely, could not. At least now I could get on with living, knowing – or maybe hoping – there were no more skeletons to fall out of the cupboard.’

  THIRTY

  THE WEST WING

  Many women have a fascination with the future. It is illegal to take money by claiming to tell what course a life will take, but there is nothing to prevent legions of crystal-ball gazers, decoders of tealeaf formations and tarot card readers telling their armies of devotees what the stars would seem to have in store for them and making a very prosperous living from it. How their customers then choose to interpret these omens is up to them. Hannah Martin was no exception.

  On most of the schemes that are home to the working classes, there will reside someone, often a female, who is regarded sometimes with awe, sometimes with caution, because she is known to have a gift to look into the unknown and see what awaits. At times of great family stress, she will be invited in to lay her tarot cards on the table and explain the meaning of each of the figures they show. She will perform this task at the drop of a hat and customarily for free, although the handing over of a small gift is the norm.

  Hannah was an avid student of anyone willing to sit down with her and prophesy. As years slipped past and the unknown beckoned, the need to continually update what lay in store became an obsession, like that of the 60-a-day smoker waiting for a church service to end, trying meanwhile to recreate the taste of that first draw. There were occasions when Hannah would hear her portents twice or even three times in a single day, desperately hoping to be told good fortune awaited, that a tall man with dark hair would change everything.

  It was not as though she needed reassurance that John Healy’s £10,000 would materialise. She remained certain of that and even bought herself a tarot pack, perhaps with the intention of teaching herself to somehow hurry along the prediction for which she yearned. As we know, it would never arrive, but was her longing so strong that it held her to an earthly solitude? Did she chain herself to the life that had treated her so badly in the hope of somehow receiving the rewards she was convinced would someday arrive? This is not as fanciful as it might seem because of two incidents that left those who witnessed them believing, wondering, if Hannah had wanted to make known her presence long after she was dead and her body turned to ashes.

  While she was alive, she would often take out the black velvet cushion cover that had been handed down to family members, bearing her forename, an ancient Hebrew word meaning ‘Grace of God’. It was a beautiful piece of work that carried with it decades of love. She guarded it jealously and took seriously her commitment to ensure the line of its ownership was continued. But her death, sudden at that, meant she had been unable to fulfil that duty, something Hannah’s old friend in particular knew would have upset and distressed her. Someone else, with whom she had been distantly involved, announced they knew of the existence of the cloth and insisted it should be given to them. It was not a matter in which the old friend could intervene, but she knew where in Hannah’s home the relic had been stored and indicated a particular cupboard in which it would be found.

  The friend gave an assurance there was no lock to the door, that it opened freely and easily, but when an outsider pulled at the little handle it refused to budge. It seemed an unseen hand inside was holding it closed. Hard as the door was pulled, it could not be moved. In the end, a joiner had to be sent for and, with chisel and hammer, he eventually succeeded in gaining access.

  ‘It was,’ said the friend, ‘as if Hannah was watching what was going on, was holding the material and saying to herself, “I don’t want this person to have this.”’

  Most of us take for granted the fact that we have friends. We use and occasionally abuse them, not realising that to the lonely a single friend may be all he or she has, and need the constant assurance that friendship exists. In her childhood friend, Hannah had found someone on whom she could lean. When she emerged from the isolation she’d imposed upon herself in order to recuperate from the bitterness of the Mason experience, Hannah needed this friend’s constant presence and it was one she could not relinquish even after the curtains had closed on her life.

  One of Hannah’s favourite television programmes had been The West Wing, an American drama starring Martin Sheen as the fictional Democratic president. It is set in the west wing of the White House, the president’s command base. Hannah was an avid watcher from the start, although her death would deprive her of many episodes. Or would it?

  Soon after Hannah had died, her friend’s television set for no apparent reason ceased to work. There was no outward sign of a problem and tests could not discover any internal malady. Its failure was put down to simply being a problem associated with modern technology in which a microscopic part for some reason known only to itself decides to play up.

  In her home one night, the friend heard a noise and, upon investigating, was startled to discover her television had returned to life. It wa
s switched off and had not functioned for some time, but there was a picture with sound and the programme was just beginning. It was another episode of The West Wing. The friend decided not to tempt fate by running through the other channels, so instead sat down and watched the show, a tear trickling from the corner of her eye as she thought had Hannah still been alive this was precisely what she would have been doing at this hour. She sought out a newspaper to see what other programmes there would be later, but as The West Wing ended the set turned itself off. She twiddled with the controls, but it didn’t come back to life. It was a bizarre and unnerving experience.

  ‘Maybe Hannah wanted to let me know she was still around,’ she said. ‘I’d like to believe it was she who switched on the television, and my set at that.’

  CONCLUSION

  According to friends, Hannah Martin died still convinced the man who attacked her near Landressy Street was the man, or at least one of the characters, known as Bible John. They do not doubt she manufactured the scant information given about her attacker in April 1969. After all, the natural reaction to being offered a lift home by a stranger would be to ask his name and where he lived rather than his age and occupation. The circumstances of this incident point to the man who fathered Isobel being Bible John. He alone knows the truth, but where is he? Theories abound, most of them fantastic. Again, only he knows, but what is certain is the astonishing physical similarity between his daughter and the portrait painted by Lennox Paterson.

  It is remarkable that an American-inspired investigation into a series of murders in Scotland should have led to Isobel discovering the likely identity of her father. Two years ago, she left Scotland and now lives on the south coast of England, where she is a highly respected and regarded executive. Most days she takes from her purse a photograph of Hannah and wonders about answers to the secrets her mother took with her. She is proud of her natural mother and devoted to the family who adopted her.

  Hannah was not to know it but, during the last weeks of her life, John Healy was moved to Castle Huntly open prison in Angus and would be allowed an occasional weekend at home in Thornliebank. After he was released from jail, he had a brief flirtation with Dundee Football Club but now lives quietly in Glasgow.

  At the time of writing, Angus Sinclair has been charged with raping and murdering Christine Eadie and Helen Scott and is awaiting trial.

  By yet another of the odd quirks that punctuate the Hannah Martin story, Sinclair and Thomas Ross Young were both held in the jail’s ‘C’ Hall until the latter was moved in the autumn of 2006 for health reasons to Saughton in Edinburgh – the same prison that Hannah would visit to smuggle cigarettes to a relative. Two years earlier, Young, now 72, was arrested on suspicion of murdering Pat McAdam in 1967, though it was later decided that he was too unwell to be tried.

  Graeme ‘Del Boy’ Mason still lives at the home he once shared with Hannah on Clova Street. In 2003, he set up Magnetspruce Limited, describing himself as a domestic-appliance engineer, but formal records indicate the business was later dissolved.

  The Barrowland lives on, hosting packed concerts, the gaudy lights of its glittering sign still a much-loved landmark. The streets that surround it have changed, but there are some who believe that on dark nights they can hear the voices of the dancers, many now dead, ghosts sailing a sea of sorrow, among them a teenager called Hannah, seeking affection but finding only disappointment.