by Sandra Brown
Marion and I had arranged to see Jim together in Glasgow. She had brought a large manila envelope for him, with several typed pages of manuscript. Unfortunately, when we arrived he was not around. We left the envelope with a note and Marion dashed off.
Soon afterwards, I met Alistair Duff, the lawyer recommended by Richard Kinsey. In recent weeks, I had seen him on the television news as Alistair had been interviewed by journalists after agreeing to represent the two Libyan nationals named as suspects in the Lockerbie air disaster of 1988, should Colonel Gaddafi ever allow them to come to Scotland to stand trial for the bombing. On television, he had seemed older, with a precise, formal manner. In the flesh, however, I realized he was about my own age and much less formidable.
‘I know very little of the background to this matter, so go ahead and start from scratch. I’ve half an hour. Fire away,’ he said.
He listened as I told the story. A deep cleft formed between his brows as every now and then he made a note or fired a question.
I glanced at my watch desperately. To attempt to explain in minutes such a complex web of events seemed like an impossible task. I groaned inwardly. To my relief, at 5.30, he agreed we should both go home and reconvene later at his house.
When I got to his rambling Victorian villa, we went into a room I supposed was his study to resume my story. My host put on a fire to take the chill off the room, but I could not help shivering. Talking about my father always had this effect on me, and so it remains.
At last I stopped. It came as a huge relief when he looked at me and said, ‘I have never heard anything like this in my life. It is straight out of the stuff of nightmares – it is so surreal, it could make a film but I believe you. My personal reaction aside, what I have are enormous concerns why Crown Office, of which I have long experience, is doing precisely nothing about your father. Firstly, it seems very surprising that the PF at Airdrie is not willing to take up proceedings in relation to the allegations made by your cousins. It seems to me there’s enough evidence there to justify them. Secondly, in the present climate, it is entirely in the public interest that such matters be addressed. Finally, even if the Crown took the view that for some reason these particular charges were not worth prosecuting alone, it would be only sensible to keep them live, so that if he is ever charged with the girl Anderson’s murder, these other things could be dealt with at the same time, thus increasing the likelihood of a conviction. It seems illogical to dismiss them summarily.’
I described the correspondence stalemate that had gone on for months, and said I had concluded that the only strategy left to try was writing to John Major at Westminster.
‘Right. It’s worth a try,’ he replied. ‘Should that effort run into a brick wall as well, there are two influential figures I know, one in the Commons, one in the Lords, who might help pressurize Crown Office to re-examine its decision or at least have some sort of meeting with you. Their clout might help following on from the representations by John Smith and Lord James. You write the letter to the PM and let me check it for you before sending it off, and we’ll take it from there.’
I went straight home to compose it.
Alistair and I had briefly discussed John Smith’s problems in the Monklands, with allegations rife of nepotism and religious discrimination, and I had not been surprised to have had no further news of him. So I was astonished when he telephoned me the next day. He apologized for his delay in getting back to me, and said he had seen the articles of October and November in the Sunday Mail. He imagined that the Crown Office would not be thrilled by them. What an understatement. I had to smile at his deliberately neutral tone. However, he went on to say that he felt, regretfully, that he had done all he could, and his involvement could not continue in our representation.
‘Why?’ I jumped in. ‘The Moira Anderson case happened in the Monklands, my father molested and abused a number of children there, and my cousins – the two worst affected by all this – live there. And it is your constituency, Mr Smith.’
‘Well, naturally I am concerned about everything that you have divulged about your father’s pattern of behaviour, the fact that he appears to have been missed by the police in 1957 altogether, and the very worrying stories that your cousins have claimed happened to them.’
‘If you’re concerned, then why do you feel you can no longer support our case?’
After a brief pause, he explained.
‘Let me just check what you are saying here, Mr Smith. You feel that as Leader of the Opposition, you cannot afford to become embroiled in this situation with Crown Office, and you really feel you have done all you can for myself and my cousins?’
‘That is correct. I have every sympathy with your situation. Your public-spiritedness is to be commended, but unfortunately the outcome is the worst possible. The Crown’s decision does seem somewhat inexplicable, but I have done what was asked and do not feel, as Leader of the next Labour government, that I can afford to become further involved in what could evolve into an explosive issue. I can’t be involved in a campaign. I am sorry, but that is how I see it.’
I replied that I had taken legal advice, and would now have to go over Lord Rodger’s head. Who, I asked, might be the Lord Advocate’s line manager?
There was a great roar of laughter at the other end. ‘That’s a good one! He is totally independent. No one oversees his decisions.’
‘I find it quite incredible, Mr Smith, that Lord Rodger’s not accountable to anyone.’
‘Well, yes, it’s a unique feature of our Scottish legal system. I suppose, though, if he has to heed anyone, it would be John Major.’
I told him of my letter to the PM, and he wished me well warmly.
Mindful of my earlier costly mistake, I completed a three-page letter to Downing Street. Alistair suggested two tiny changes, but otherwise declared it to be ‘excellent’. I posted it with a huge pile of Christmas mail on 10 December.
It was not, however, until after the holidays that a note acknowledging receipt of it, from a Miss Gorman, appeared, along with my Open University results. I had passed – and reasonably comfortably too, to my delight. Before I knew it, I was immersed in my next course, on child psychology, for 1994.
Still there was nothing from Westminster.
College resumed around my birthday on 7 January, and a piece of information came unexpectedly to me. One of my colleagues, whose father had been taken ill and died, had departed in a rush to Sydney, Australia, before Christmas. Such was the frustration point I had reached that I had decided to ignore my assurance to Jim McEwan that I would not contact any of the witnesses outside my own family circle. I could remember the married name of Moira’s sister, and the unusual name of the wealthy suburb where she lived which, in passing, Jim had mentioned. It was time, in my view, to join forces to get something done. I asked my colleague to help and, when she returned, she gave me a contact number. I calculated time differences and dialled.
My first call to Janet’s home must have been shattering for her, but she listened carefully and agreed we should work together for justice. Both of us were in tears by the end of it – she because she felt so frustrated at being on the other side of the world and was desperate to meet me; and myself through sheer relief that she had not rebuffed me. We agreed that we would correspond immediately and keep our link under wraps.
‘I haven’t heard anything from Jim McEwan for weeks now,’ she said. ‘Is he still on the case?’
‘Technically, yes,’ I replied, explaining the changed circumstances. ‘When I last heard from him, divers were going down to search the pond this week despite freezing conditions. And obviously they’ve waited for the media interest to die down a bit.’
‘What I find very worrying is that when my relatives, the Mathewsons, recently went to Airdrie police station, they were told that the case was now closed.’
‘That isn’t correct, Janet, so I don’t know why they would be told that.’ I explained, ‘Everything has been
moved to Coatbridge police station, according to Jim. They still have a set of family photographs and pictures of my father with other Baxter’s bus staff which they have not returned. But it sounds like they want it all to disappear again.’
Finally she pleaded before hanging up that if I heard of anything being found where the divers were searching, I should let her know right away. ‘Please,’ she said. ‘It’s awful being thousands of miles away. If any remains are found, I’d fly direct to Scotland and never mind the cost. I owe it to my parents to ensure Moira is given a Christian burial.’ Her voice cracked. ‘That’s been the worst thing of all. Not having a body, not having a grave to visit, all these years. It broke my parents’ hearts. So cruel. If John Major actually reads your letter, I hope he’ll have some compassion for my poor mother and father who both died not knowing. I least now I do. I know why you won’t give me your dad’s address, but I’ll always be grateful to you for doing all this, and going to the police.’
Her words haunted me for hours after that first call. What a tragedy. When there is no body, how do you begin grieving?
Anger flooded through me against my father, the Crown Office, and those too apathetic to do the right thing.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Only my husband and one or two friends knew of the call I had made to Australia. The conversation with Janet echoed in my head for days. The most terrifying aspect of it was her conviction that the tall man in overalls who had motioned her over to his car near her home and indecently assaulted her, as a young girl, had also been my father. Shaken to think that lightning could strike twice in one family, I had asked her to give me a brief description of her attacker. ‘I told Jim McEwan all about it when he took my statement,’ she had replied. ‘A great tall fellow with a small dark car, that’s all I can remember. That and what he said to me: “C’mere, come and help me hold this.” When I went over to see what he was doing under the bonnet of his car, he grabbed me and said, “Hold this dip stick for me, would you?” I was mortified when I saw what I was to hold.’
I had hardly been able to answer her. An image of my father in his navy boiler suit with its buttons down the front, the clothes that had terrified A, surfaced. Not only was Janet’s description accurate, the words the man had used mirrored the experience of my cousins C and D. ‘We were warned, you know, that a bad man lived near the town hall,’ she added. ‘And now you say your folks did. Tell me what your father looked like, Sandra.’
‘Very tall, and dark, with strange, light-coloured eyes. If you’d met my dad’s gaze in the street, you’d remember him. I always felt uncomfortable with the way he looked at me, and any young female for that matter. And he had a black Baby Austin car.’
‘It has to be him!’ Janet had spat out the words with loathing, so I was not surprised when she answered the letter I sent her with a furious tirade against the police of 1957, who had made such empty promises to her parents. Not only had Andrew reported the assault on his eldest daughter, she herself had reported it to staff at Coatbridge High School. While noting that she was not the only victim of the man with the black car, the school had declined to take any action. It seems incredible to think that the local police would ignore an attack on a girl from a family who had hit the headlines in such a tragic case, but this appears to have been exactly what did happen. Andrew took to escorting both his remaining daughters to school, having lost all faith in the local cops.
In mid-February 1994, I finally met Moira’s childhood friend Elizabeth Taylor, now Nimmo. I arrived without warning at her comfortable home in Glenmavis, which she took in her stride. We chatted about Moira for several hours. Elizabeth shook her head at the craziness of the legal system. I asked about her memories of Dunbeth Park. Was she the ‘Beth’ I had remembered as being with Moira? I described the girl I hazily recalled.
‘She’d a rounder face than Moira, darker, different hair, and she was wearing something pink on top, with those sort of culottes that we called divided skirts then.’
To my disappointment, she shook her head. ‘No, we were lookalikes, I wasn’t noticeably darker than her, and we wore our hair in the same style – people sometimes confused us, in fact, so it doesn’t sound like me.’ She shrugged. ‘We went there a lot, though, with my wee dog, which Moira loved, Lucky. Your memory doesn’t ring a bell for me, but it could be that the Beth you’re looking for is her cousin. I’ll give you her number.’
I left her home, pleased that for once I’d not broken down speaking of what I had recently been through. Elizabeth had passed on Jeannette Mathewson Fryer’s number. I spoke to her at length, then she gave me a contact number for her sister, Beth. It seemed odd to be speaking to the grown versions of the two cousins who had been due to take Moira to the pictures so long ago, and who had been surprised when she failed to rendezvous with them at their grandmother’s home. Once again, however, I drew a blank: despite a long, encouraging conversation about the whole affair, this Beth turned out not to be the one who had been Moira’s companion that day. And yet I was sure she had not been a casual acquaintance of the little girl’s, but someone she knew well. I gave up with a sigh.
I had still had no reply from Westminster.
A huge double-spread article on the saga of the reopened investigation was featured in the Airdrie and Coatbridge Advertiser of 25 February 1994, on the thirty-seventh anniversary of the disappearance. I noted with interest Eileen’s comment:
We can reveal police divers are this week expected to resume their search of a local pond where the youngster’s body is thought to have been dumped. Strathclyde’s underwater search unit began scouring the little-known stretch of water in Coatbridge at the end of January. They have since made a number of searches but so far have found no traces . . . Recent sub-zero temperatures have hampered the effort and forced last week’s dive to be called off because the pond was frozen over. The search for Moira’s body marks the culmination of an intensive police investigation relaunched two years ago. Despite the exhaustive probe, the youngster’s remains have to date never been recovered or her killer brought to justice. It ranks as one of Scotland’s most bizarre unsolved cases, which last year saw a woman brand her father a child-killer and launch a campaign to have him charged with Moira’s murder. The renewed investigation may have failed to yield tangible results in terms of body or killer, but it did succeed in turning up several dramatic new leads which advanced the case beyond all reasonable expectation, given the passage of time. It is now accepted that she did not vanish on the way to the local shop for her grandmother, but instead took a bus ride to death, after embarking on a secret errand to buy her mother a birthday card . . . The mother’s prayers that one day her daughter would return safely were never answered. Moira’s killer was aided and abetted by the atrocious weather conditions on that fateful Saturday in 1957. A blizzard provided a cloak for him to strike and dispose of the body without being spotted by a single witness. As the snow fell, and the temperatures plummeted, local people were understandably preoccupied with getting home out of the biting cold.
But the only certainty in a case littered with uncertainties is that Moira Anderson did not make it home safely that evening. And what became of her is a grisly secret only she and her killer share.
Alistair rang me early one morning to check if I’d heard anything from London. I read to him the reply I’d finally received, which had come from the Scottish Office in Edinburgh. It was from a civil servant named Elva Langwill, and apologized for the two-month delay. The PM had passed my letter to the Secretary of State for Scotland. She was replying for him:
Although the Lord Advocate is a Government Minister, when he, or Crown Counsel on his behalf, take decisions in individual cases, they do so as independent prosecutors acting in the public interest. While the Lord Advocate is ultimately responsible to Parliament for his actions, he cannot allow himself to be influenced in individual cases by factors which do not arise from the merits of the cases themselves. It is therefore not
open to the Secretary of State, or indeed the Prime Minister, to seek to influence the Lord Advocate in the decisions he makes as prosecutor, or to call him to explain the reasons which lie behind a decision taken in a particular case.
The independence of the Lord Advocate in matters of prosecution is a fundamental feature of the system of criminal justice in Scotland.
The writer closed by saying that she was passing on my letter to Lord Rodger himself, and she appreciated this might not be the hoped-for response, but trusted it clarified things.
‘For heaven’s sake!’ Alistair cried, in exasperation. ‘You should not be getting replies from the Scottish Office, Sandra, when they’ve absolutely nothing to do with it. And it’s ludicrous that they’re passing on your correspondence to the Crown Office when that’s the very body you’re complaining about! It’s totally outrageous. Time for you to write to the two others I suggested: John McFall in the House of Commons, and Donald Macauley who sits in the Lords. They’re both the relevant spokespersons. Get off a résumé of the events to them, and I’ll back it up with a supporting letter. Let’s arrange an appointment.’
We met up in mid-March 1994, just after I had seen Jim, to whom I revealed that I had now made contact with Janet Hart in Australia. He was noncommittal on this and, to my disappointment, confirmed that the pond search had not revealed any remains or artifacts which could be linked to her sister. He could see I was as determined as ever, and rolled his eyes with amazement when I told him I was putting together the transcript of the William O’Connor tape so that I could send Janet details of the meeting that had led to police interest in the Witchwood area. I hoped it might bring Janet some comfort.
It was to be my last meeting with Jim, who hinted that he was busy tidying some loose ends in his post. It seemed that moves were afoot, and I was delighted for him when I heard in April that he had won promotion to Detective Chief Inspector. I bought a card to congratulate him and sent him my best wishes on his success, with a sense of relief that his involvement with me had not hurt his career.