Evil Relations (19 page)

There’s no time for empty glasses; memories flow and the laughter is easy. The girls talk loudly about their childhood in Gorton over the blaring trumpets of Ian’s beloved Glenn Miller. ‘In the Mood’ gets us all going and I picture Mr Braithwaite, the Jamaican man from next door, walking on the path outside, hearing the brass getting into its swing, glasses chinking, and the sound of our laughter. Ian is raucous as the whisky slides down his throat with practised ease:
fuck them niggers and monkeys next door and fuck the Jews as well.
I laugh and join in:
yeah, dead right, fuck them, robbing Jew bastards
, even though I’ve never met a Jewish person in my life and don’t know anything about them or their religion. But so what, fuck everyone and, whilst we’re at it, let’s get some good old ranting Hitler speeches on, even though we don’t understand a word. Baby, this is the way to spend a Saturday night, we’re so fucking great, screw my hero Bob Dylan too, he’s Jewish . . .

The whisky and wine explode together. Myra’s skirt rises a little too much as she wriggles herself into a more comfortable position on the settee, maybe she hasn’t noticed. Ian obviously hasn’t, and I’m not going to mention it, why ruin the day now that Myra is laughing again? She and Ian roll about in hysterics on the rug as the Goons yap like mad dogs on tape,
Ying Yang
this and
Neddy
that, what the fuck are they on about? My head is throbbing, but go on, fill my glass again, cause life just got a whole lot better.

* * *

One of the dogs scrabbles at the kitchen door: David gets up to let it out into the yard area and it dashes, an auburn blur, past the fine greenhouse he built for Mary and across the lawn.

He returns slowly to his chair at the table and sits deep in thought for a moment before explaining: ‘Until Angela’s death, Brady couldn’t “get” to me. Before she died, everything was good in my life, as far as I was concerned, and he knew it. All the Hitler stuff . . . he had those speeches put onto vinyl by a company specialising in that sort of thing. He’d bring round his latest record of Hitler and Goebbels addressing rallies, and some German marching songs. He’d get right into it, banging his fist on his knee, pointing with a bony finger to insist that this bit or that bit was important, translating it for me. I wasn’t interested back then and couldn’t understand a word – it was
his
thing, him talking
at
me while I was drunk. I’d nod away, but I wasn’t really listening. He used to watch a programme called
All Our Yesterdays
as well – it showed wartime newsreels and he’d set up his camera to take photos off the telly of Hitler, waiting for a good shot. Myra was just as obsessed. But it was the
sound
they loved more than anything because, let’s face it, their German wasn’t that good. So although he tried his best to get me into it all, it didn’t work because there wasn’t a great deal Hitler and Goebbels said that he actually understood.’

He pauses, frowning. ‘And you’ve got to take into account the massive part alcohol played in all this. I’m not using that as an excuse for one minute, but just bear in mind that whenever we met up, drink was always involved. Even when we still had Angela with us . . . I needed the drink because I wasn’t interested in what he was saying otherwise. I was into my rock ’n’ roll – Nuremberg rallies weren’t my idea of a party. It pissed me off when Brady slung aside my Gene Vincent records in favour of Hitler ranting away about Jews.’

David gives a mocking laugh. ‘He was a funny sort of DJ – Herman Saville. And of course, none of it made sense. He’d say he hated Jews, but a Jewish tailor made his clothes and he was dead pernickety about those threads. Yet he’d launch into a spiel: “Do you know America is run by Jews? What do you think Marks & Spencers is all about? The Jews are in charge of everything . . .” When he was on a rant, the records would be turned down low and he’d talk with that bloody finger of his in the air. Where were the girls? They were there for some of it. At Wardle Brook Avenue, me and him had a chair each and the girls would perch on a drop-leaf table – that was the table where Edward Evans fell and Brady dragged him out from under it . . .’

He breaks off and is silent for a moment, then returns to the subject of those nights: ‘So, the girls would sit on the table and chat away, not paying us any attention. When they went to bed, the atmosphere would change. More drink would flow and he’d become more intense. We’d leave the chairs. I’d be on one side of the Formica coffee table and he’d be on the other, ashtray filling up between us, booze on the floor, music or speeches playing in the background. I found it very hard to understand him then because I never really got to grips with that accent of his, but when he was drunk . . . he’d really go for it, spittle gathering at the corners of his mouth, beady eyes – a mad man intent on having his say.’

The seismic shift in their friendship came immediately after Angela’s death; that changed everything. ‘Brady saw an opening then,’ David repeats. ‘That’s when he decided which way things were going to go. He knew that I was totally vulnerable. Nothing seemed to mean anything to me any more. I bailed out of life – my own, and everybody else’s too . . .’

Ian Brady had a tried-and-tested means for drawing someone deeper into his world. In the early stages of his relationship with Myra Hindley, he encouraged her to think not only about politics and culture as she had never done before, but also recommended certain literature for her to read. He pushed her towards the classics – Blake, Wordsworth and Shakespeare feature in their post-arrest writings to each other – but also urged her to read philosophy and erotica, beginning with Henry Miller and Harold Robbins and progressing to the then largely forgotten Marquis de Sade, whose books are filled with sexual cruelty and murder. ‘If crime is seasoned by enjoyment, crime can become a pleasure’ ran a line from de Sade’s novel
Justine or The Misfortunes of Virtue.
Superficially, this subversive ‘education’ was intended to expand her knowledge, but in truth it became a means of exploring their own increasingly brutal desires – and acted as the stimulus towards making them a reality.

David recalls his initiation: ‘I didn’t know what Brady was leading up to – only he, and possibly Myra, knew that. He gave me Harold Robbins’
The Carpetbaggers
to read first. Robbins was a very popular author at that time anyway. Brady recommended his books and others with mildly sexy stuff in them. Then he gave me
Fanny Hill
, which was banned, and
The Adventures of Molly Brown
, which was a variation on
Fanny Hill.
I was a 16-year-old lad, so I was happy to skim the dull passages to get to the raunchy bits. You’ve got to remember the era itself as well – censorship was still firmly in place and would be for a while. There was only one cinema in Manchester that showed what were known as “continental” films – Cinephone on Market Street, where the Arndale Centre is now.’ He grins suddenly: ‘The audience was all blokes sitting far from each other, with their overcoats folded across their laps, waiting to see a bit of Swedish boob. It wasn’t any ruder than that because of the British censor. The films themselves were utter rubbish, but no one went for the storylines.’

His smile subsides as he picks up the thread of the conversation: ‘So, I read
The Carpetbaggers
,
Fanny Hill
and
Molly Brown
. Then all of a sudden Brady handed me
Sexus
by Henry Miller. Now, to a 16-year-old lad in 1965, that stuff was really naughty. Miller was regarded as an intellectual and Brady viewed his work as classy erotica. I read the sequels to
Sexus
as well –
Nexus
and
Plexus.
Brady would say to me, “Try reading that one, Dave,” and he’d hand me the novels with pages thumbed over to indicate the pertinent bits. It was just plain daft, all of that; two blokes sniggering over mucky books. Then Brady switched gear again.’

Tib Street, in the centre of Manchester, had an eclectic mix of shops and a seedy reputation: pet shops sold puppies with distemper and the bookstores were those where the majority of sales were ‘under the counter’ paperbacks and magazines. It was ‘literature’ from a Tib Street shop that Ian now suggested David should study in depth, books with titles such as
The Kiss of the Whip
and the ubiquitous de Sade.

‘Brady wanted me to compile some notes on those books to find out what I thought about them in more depth,’ David recalls. ‘I did as he asked and took my little notepad round to Wardle Brook Avenue so that he could have a look at it. With hindsight, I can see what he was doing, but at the time I just accepted it. Brady was ten years older than me – I was fifteen when we met and he was twenty-five. Two years down the line, that gap hadn’t narrowed as it would have done had we been middle-aged men. I was intellectually naive – streetwise, but uneducated. I thought I was learning something useful from him, even though I didn’t have a clue what it might be. But I’d read the latest book he had for me and try to write some sort of dissertation on it. I couldn’t write it out word for word, obviously, but I’d interpret what I’d read into my version of the original, in order to demonstrate that I’d understood it. He would then read my notes and go through the “set text” with me, discussing what he felt the author was trying to express.’

David stops abruptly, rubbing his chin and grimacing. ‘Later, in court, they failed to get to the bottom of that. In the ’60s, no one knew about grooming – grooming was combing your bloody hair. But looking back, that’s what was happening, although I wasn’t aware of it. The defence tried very hard to imply that the notes I’d made were my own ideas, but they were wrong. It was simply me proving to Brady that I’d understood the books – the philosophies behind them weren’t my own. I did it for him. And one of the passages that interested Brady was de Sade’s rumination on murder. It begins: “Should murder be punished by murder? Undoubtedly not . . .”’

The passage is from
The Life and Ideals of the Marquis de Sade.
It continues: ‘The only punishment that a murderer should be condemned to is that which he risks from his friends or the family of the man he has killed. “I pardon him,” said Louis XV to Charolais, “but I also pardon him who will kill you.” All the bases of the law against murderers is contained in that sublime sentence . . . In a word, murder is a horror, but a horror often necessary, never criminal, and essential to tolerate in a republic. Above all it should never be punished by murder.’

In an address to the Medico-Legal Society in 1967, one year after the trial, William Mars-Jones, QC, quoted from David’s notes about de Sade: ‘You are your own master. You live for one thing, supreme pleasure in everything you do. Sadism is the supreme pleasure!!! Look around, watch the fools doing exactly what their fathers did before them. The book, they live by the book!!’ Mars-Jones added: ‘That is a quite remarkable composition for a lad of this background and this education. It is clear that this was a lad of above average intelligence. He had the misfortune to be born illegitimate, as was Brady. It may well be that the fact that they were brought up by relatives gave them cause to have some grievance against society. Brady was above average intelligence. In the light of the evidence, I hope that you will be satisfied that in this case the power of the written word was clearly demonstrated.’

* * *

I’m stoned on red wine, my mood dark, listening to Ian:
niggers, black bastards, monkeys, filth, kill them all, black tide, send the bastards back to the jungle, right?
Yeah, dead fucking right.
Think about going with one, seen the kids, like apes they are, that’s where it should be stopped, stop the bastards breeding. Hitler was right with the Jew bastards, inter-breeds the lot, drag them out, kick the shit out of them, get fucking rid . . .

Maureen and Myra went to bed a long time ago, sleeping hutched up together like they used to as kids, in the single bed in Myra’s room. The full-blooded conversations between Ian and me only happen when the girls aren’t there. Myra knows what’s going on, what Ian is building up to, long before I do. But she isn’t part of it. His ideas are hers, though; they share the same views on everything and he’s doing a good job on me now that Angela is dead. Religion means nothing to me any more. My daughter’s death is everybody’s fault and I haven’t found a way of coping with it. I don’t care about anything, least of all myself. So let Ian spout his philosophy into the night as long as he shares his whisky and wine.

Between us on the coffee table, surrounded by empty bottles and a full ashtray, is a chessboard. Three pawns lie on their side where Ian knocked them over during a fevered rant about how the Nazis got it right and Churchill was a stupid bastard. I try to focus on the black, upright King and Queen. But the alcohol gurgles inside my brain, making the small sitting room spin. I’m seeing double dogs and inside its cage the budgie is making a racket that goes right through my skull. The drinking has been hard and fast, conversations manic, and now Ian’s eyes are kaleidoscoping, as he spits out another load of spleen.

I struggle off the floor into a chair and put my head in my hands. I want to vomit, but if I get up I’ll keel over. I don’t know why Ian’s put the electric fire on – it feels like the roasting belly of a ship’s engine room and the whisky is heating my insides to boiling point. I raise my head as he says my name. He grins and lifts his glass: ‘Prost.’ More fucking German . . . why can’t he just say ‘cheers’ like everyone else?

His raised glass is the last thing I see.

Hours later, I wake up on the fold-down settee with a blanket over me. The room is dark, the fire out, even the ever-chirping budgie has gone to sleep. I’m in the middle of the worst hangover of my life as I struggle to semi-consciousness, mouth rotten, head screaming pain. In the pale light filtering in through the curtains, I look across at the table. Glasses are overturned, the ashtray is piled high, and chess pieces lie like strange figures on a battlefield.