‘You look exactly like Myra Hindley,especially around the eyes,’ announced The People's top reporter, Phil Hall proudly as he set eyes on me all gussied up by The People’s make up team.
‘I wonder if Brady noticed you look like Myra– I wonder if Brady felt sexual towards you?’ Phil said as he eyed me up himself.
He then took me on a plane to fly up and go back and see Brady again dressed up as Myra, my eyes thick with Brady eyeliner and my blonde hair back combed
into a bee hive.
The Myra look must have turned on Phil because he kissed me that first night the press had me kept in a hotel in South of France called Pond du Gard. Phil was still dating The Sunday Mirror editor, Tina Weaver.
Tina got her revenge when she pulled the plug on me as the Sunday Mirror’s investigator at a later date but back then we were both sharing the handsome reporter who was one day to climb to the editor of Hello Magazine.
Mass murderer, Ian Brady of course had been overwhelmed to see me that Friday when the People flew me to visit him.
On encouragement from Phil whom I dated for six months after France I continued writing to Brady to get Phil stories. Brady later - invited me come and see him again for a third time - but the next time the killer Brady wanted to see me all alone.
Moors killer, Brady had campaigned for this end and as he was a legal wizard, Brady soon won his legal rights to have his visits unsupervised.
When would it stop? It seems like I lived like a dolly yet something within me allowed it.
Brady wrote in his next letter that was reproduced on the front page of The Sunday Express in 1995. ‘I have now got unsupervised visits. We will be alone together. How does that make you feel? Are you afraid I may bite you?’ He went on the letter to say that Hannibal Lector was based on him because the actor who had first played him was Scottish.
I was only writing to Ian Brady on Phil Hall’s orders to get more stories on him. I assumed it was a joke that he wanted to bite me. When he did - the visit was written about all over the world – Brady fought it in the High Court his crazy lawyer ran out after he lost the case and The Independent reported that Brady had won against The Sunday Express – The Indy had to print an apology a day later. The Express had won.
When they published my Best-selling autobiography – their lawyers smartly copied the Indy apology the next day and I never heard from Brady again. He did not take losing kindly.
The visit had left me with PTSD and I had needed to get therapy to get over it.
It was 1996 - Ian Brady serial killer/rapist of five and the man who called himself demon folk was in the building in front of me. I approached the heavy, navy, wrought-iron gate of Ashworth Hospital in Merseyside on that gloomy, cold day in the winter.
‘You will be all alone with me this time, Brady wrote to me in the last letter before our visit – are you afraid I may bite you? How does that make you feel?
I wasn’t afraid, he was terribly interested in Hannibal Lector and this was his way of showing it. Once inside, I was taken to the main visiting room near the canteen. I was an idiot to be there – if it were not for my boyfriend Phil hall and his hunger for Brady I would never have continued writing to him. Why? I had spent my life with a Hart fiddler – my adopted father. I didn’t need to filthy myself with another one.
‘He’s in there already,’ announced a skinny blond nurse as he walked out, shutting the door. The room was dark as the day was grey and the light was going at four o’clock. I had arrived late and the visiting appointment had already ended. I saw the serial killer Brady immediately as I entered: a dark-haired figure in a pinstripe suit, his appearance too smart for the grey surroundings. He looked like a solicitor waiting patiently. As he had promised in his letter, it was just me and him. I sat down on an uncomfortable wooden armchair.
‘Make yourself at home, Chris.’ Brady did not look up to meet my eyes. Dark glasses covered his own, so I could barely see them. I knew that he could still see me; this was his way. He was shy. It didn’t strike me to be afraid, as he looked so normal. I did however feel a burst of anxiety and wonder what we would talk about.
His armchair was positioned very near to mine. A coffee table was pushed to the side, so our knees would be nearly touching. I was numbed out.
‘I hope you don’t mind it strong and sweet,’ said Brady as he poured and fussed like a maiden aunt with the tea things. He was incontrovertibly effeminate. The navy flask had BRADY carved into the side of it. ‘I don’t.’ I stared at him in silence. He was 57 years old. Sitting so close to him, I could smell his smell: Hai Karate aftershave and mint. I could also sense the intense aura of fury that lay beneath his surface charm. He was a liar.
‘You’re extraordinary,’ said Brady, still not meeting my eyes.
‘Am I? Why?’
‘Your intriguing job, the things you write, your need for adventure and the way you really think for yourself – it all impresses me. I keep all your letters,’ said Brady in a way that sounded like a threat.
I stared at him. I hated myself for wanting something from this shit bag on legs.
‘I’m glad,’ I lied.
He pulled off his glasses and his grey eyes burned through me. His eyes were such a watery-grey they appeared colourless. After what felt like several minutes of enduring him, he put the glasses on again.
I looked around the room and focused on the bare white walls and institutional furniture. Brady looked shy all of a sudden, and I struggled to find a way to keep the conversation going. Then I remembered: he had read books. I must talk about books, make him feel relaxed.
‘The audience always waits with baited breath for the villain of the piece to appear,’ he said in response to my chatter about characters in books.
‘Perhaps they do, but doesn’t it depend on which villain?’ I fidgeted uncomfortably.
I thought of the letters he had written in which he said he felt no remorse for his crimes. He seemed to believe that he had managed to live his life to the full, while most people were too scared to kill and rape children. He was so disgusting and insane. Brady was speaking. ‘You came here to get something from me. There’s always a motive, isn’t there, with you, Chris? Not one of life’s givers, are you?’
‘I bought you some soap. I left it at the gate. I saw it in a shop on the way here. I thought, oh, he probably needs one of those and so
I went in and bought a bar.’
‘Hmph.’
‘Did I do wrong?
‘I don’t need fucking soap, it itches. Don’t use it. I bathe in plain warm water.’ ‘Sorry.’
‘Forget it.’
‘Did you buy me my smokes?’
‘Oh God – no.’
He looked at me open mouthed, as if he didn’t believe me. Then . .
.
‘It’s OK.’
‘I’m sorry.’
I was back in control; I had deliberately forgotten.
‘I want to write a book examining my need to dissect evil like I’m searching for something. What is it I’m searching for? Is it evil itself, do you think? Or a key to get out of evils grasp.’
(I had told him about my life in letters and my painting.)
‘Evil? If you like evil creeps, then there’s plenty in here to choose from.’
‘Really?’ I felt curious.
‘The staff.’
‘Are they?’
‘Aye.’
He let his mouth form into a wide grin. ‘By the by, I’m getting out of here. I’m going on hunger strike. I intend to die. Quickly as possible is my aim.’
‘Don’t.’
‘What’s it got to do with you?’ his voice was cool as ice. ‘In what way are you connected to me?’
I swallowed hard and looked at the floor. ‘No kind of a way.’
‘I find your expression of pity suffocating. Your pity’s wasted on me. I don’t even watch films where I’m likely to emote.’ ‘You sent me a DVD of King Kong and told me you’d cried to it.’
He looked at me speechless for a minute – then . . .
‘When I was fucking seven.’
‘Oh, I’m sorry.’
He chuckled. ‘You do amuse me, my little eagle.’
He leant over and reached out his pale, bony fingers and held onto my hand. He took off his glasses and looked deep into my eyes as he squeezed my fingers. I felt uncomfortable under so much scrutiny. He was holding my hand so tightly that my rings pinched into my fingers. The only way I could cope with the situation was to pretend he wasn’t who he was – a rapist. Brady himself was very willing to go along with that. He got out a cigarette for each of us and looked around for a way to light them. He stood up to peer through the tiny slat of a window into the hall to look for one of the staff, then said, ‘Shit, they’re lining up for medication. It must be late – I have to take my medication.’
As he went out of the door, he turned back and said, ‘Hang on. I can’t go out with these two cigs in my mouth or that lot will think
I’m being presumptuous.’ He jerked his head to the men outside the door. I had no idea what he was banging on about.
I sat alone, half expecting him to return and say we had to wrap up, but when he returned he looked dazed.
‘Do they give you bromide?’ I asked. I wanted to find out what made him kill was it the captors at borstal I knew they got guinea pigs for MK Ultra there especially in USA prisons for young men.
I hadn’t intended it as a flirtation, but he seemed to take it that way.
‘No, leave off, Chris. There’d be an outcry if they did that to us.
I’ll prove it to you if you like; I’ve no bromide in my system.’ He ogled me up and down.
‘No thanks.’
‘Shame, from where I’m standing.’ Brady laughed.
I tried to change the subject. ‘The cops are asking you to go back up onto the Valleys again, so it said yesterday in The Independent.’
‘Aye, I read it in The Guardian, the only decent newspaper. You’ll remember, when I went back last time, it was all over the news.’ He paused to pick back up and light the cigarettes he’d abandoned before going to get his medication. ‘We were searching!’ he said as he lit them both and then handed one to me looking at my reaction. Brady reached for my hand again. He caressed it as he spoke.
‘You looked hard. The terrain had changed. You really, really tried,’ I said as I smoked the cigarette he had lit for me. ‘What’s the point of looking any further? I know you’re desperate to help –
but . . .’
He smiled at me and leaned back in his chair. ‘When they arrested me, word got to me that they’d found the girl. I was in the cop cell and I thought, yeah – they’ve found her. They didn’t find her.
Understand?’
‘No.’
‘This last time, I led the know-it-all cop and his team over it.’ He stopped to laugh. ‘We actually walked over it.
I wanted to tell them we were walking over it, to have the cops laugh with me about the absurdity of it all, the clownish humour of it all? But they were humourless bastards.’
He drew hard on his cigarette. ‘How much pleasure did that give me?’ he asked gaily. ‘I don’t know.’
He nodded. ‘Immense!’
I stumbled for a rejoinder. ‘Great.’ His hand still held mine. I did not pull away because I was enjoying it.
‘It’s time now, though. I don’t want her to suffer any more!’
‘Who?’
‘The mother!’
‘His mother?’
‘Yes. Her. Yes. She wrote to me. I’ve still got her letters. Nice woman.’
‘You’ve decided to help her now?’ I stubbed out my cigarette in the ashtray. My other hand was still stretched out and held by his. The medication had made him drunk and confident. There was no demonic here; it was human evil – there was something pitiful about him.
‘Aye, I have.’
He stood up and came and stood very near to me. It was so hot and airless in the room I felt as if my neck would drip.
‘You don’t own me. No one owns me,’ said Brady.
Own you? I have long ago burrowed under your bars, Brady, you ice-man. At night when you go to sleep, I’m the last thing on your mind and the first thing as soon as you wake. My father wanted to fuck me and so do you. The visit was over. I reached forward to hug him good bye and he the drunkard pulled me close, his hands gripping around my waist as he ground his hips against mine. He pushed my hair back off my face and mentioned that we were so like two characters in the movie, Now Voyager, a Bette Davis film he had enjoyed. Bette plays a lonely ugly duckling, unable to function in relationships because of the way she had been treated by her bitchy mother, who had flattened her self-esteem and made her act mad because she saw herself as bad. After spending time in an institution, she is transformed and falls in love with Jerry, her psychiatrist and her Doctor, but they cannot be together as he is married.
Brady said, ‘Remember the line, “Oh, Jerry, don’t let’s ask for the moon. We have the stars.”’ He cupped my face in his hands and positioned his long legs either side of me. Then he brushed back the strands of blonde hair from my face again. I looked up into his amused grey eyes. He leaned down as if he was about to really enjoy me, then he shoved his tongue into my mouth and explored me with the hunger of a man who hadn’t kissed a woman in decades. I pulled away. I felt sick. Brady had been able to follow up his offer to bite me. He was getting stuck in. He was
58 and he thought he was ‘worth’ a blonde in her 20s. To survive being close with Brady I had ‘forgotten’ about his mass murdering, especially the bloody and brainy killing of the teenager with an axe. Ian Brady had trussed up the dead teenager afterwards by mopping up brains bone and warm, messy red blood swilling up the walls of his council house. But now, it came crashing back into my mind as my mouth dripping in his gob.
I felt something pass through me. Edward Michaels screaming out for mercy came right inside of my head. Eddie’s bloodshot eyes were begging for mercy. Eddie crawling away from an axe covered in his blood. My stomach churned. Eddie looked up again, but this time he was Daniel Morgan the private investigator off to meet The News of The World. I blinked and looked back at Ian Brady who stood looking at me as if he was in shock. I wiped my mouth again and felt weird and spaced out. Oh, no, no, what have
I done? Don’t be afraid, he’s just a man. But he’s not just a man.
He’s a devil and its like he has shoved his darkness inside me.
I backed away from Ian Brady over to the other side of the room. I expected to look up and see him grinning, but he was so dazed and afraid. I felt suddenly powerful. No, not so much a Devil are you
Brady? I have the power and now you’re my fucking little human
bitch.
I had been wasting my time with him; a truly demonic man would never be overwhelmed by a kiss. He was crazy, not Satanic and so he would have no keys to the underworld to help me find my stolen part.
He had let forces come though him, but they weren’t actually in him – he was a victim of the occult Black Magick but now he was a ‘shell’ arrogantly claiming their power to kill as his own, little realizing that it was disgusting and vilest thing in the universe to kill anyone and he would be better off exposing evil - but he was weak and he was arrogant and he was stupid.
Media attention as Hannibal Lector had got to imperious arrogant Brady and he lapped at it enjoying his power as England’s caged pet demon.
I left the idiot and went to the hospital bathroom.
After coming out of the toilet, I found there was no one around, so
I went down to his room, the third down on the left in Newman Ward and I found him sitting on his bed. I put my arm around him like a nurse might, pity for him flooded my veins – poor ol’ schumck – how unfortunate for his victims to meet him and his girlfriend who encouraged him.
As I looked at him on his bed and felt infused with a desire to hurt him. He looked so upset I knew that I had him, like a collector scooping up a specimen and pinning it down. He looked afraid.
I had once read a verse – it was Shakespeare’s The Tempest. For that he was a spirit too delicate
to act their earthly and abhorr’d commands.
Refusing their grand hests, they did confine him.
Into a cloven pine, within which rift.
Imprisoned he didst painfully remain.
I knew it was a clue about my life. Someone had pinned me down. In the Crusade of Rescue of Rescue Orphanage they were cutting out my press clippings and they began to add it to my file, Child 87.
*
Phil Hall and I got on the nearest ferry. France loomed up on the horizon and we hired a car and drove all the way down to the
South of France and it was boiling. We booked in to a lovely Hotel next to the Pont Du Gard in Provence. We all had separate rooms and they all had balconies. On the night we made love and he asked me to become his – he had uprooted my life, making me infamous and luring me into his bed. What could I do but follow him down to his roll of death down into The News of The World dungeon.
Suddenly, I felt like I had made contact with real writers like
Hemingway and Elliot. Phil Hall, chief reporter of The Sunday People, sat and typed the long story of my life and sent it back from the South of France to London and his newspaper. I watched him wrapped in his towel – he was beautiful. He would stand up intermittently and flash his body at me by lifting the towel. I was smitten as I watched from the courtyard below sipping French coffee and admiring his well formed, tight tanned buttocks.
After his daily typing Phil and I swam in the hot Mediterranean sun and swam in the warm river underneath the Pont Du Gard and dining on fine cuisine on the terrace we had fallen in love and had become ardent and passionate lovers on the hot, muddy banks of the river in the dark and then again in our rooms. The sound of crickets reminded of the way he bit my next whenever he came.
After the front page and the following weeks centre spread,
BRADY HUGGED ME GOODBYE - that I wasn’t paid for, my
adopted parents threw my stuff in carrier bags into the street.
‘The press found you out for what you are - the Devil’s Daughter. Thank God, you’re not my blood shamed by this public unveiling. You’re not my real daughter, get away from my house. Never come here again or contact us,’ Mummy shouted from the upstairs bedroom though the tiny slat that opened in the double glazing. It was a very dark and cold night and I was twenty one and I was homeless, so I rang Phil who gave me a bed for the night. I also got the sack from the private detective agency where I worked so now I had no job to pay rent. I was homeless and jobless.
It was from Phil that I first heard the term – ‘we ruin lives don’t we,’ as he looked at me with a grin as I lay in the single room in the hookers B and B where he bought me.
After Phil made love to me on the little dank bed, he left and the owner came in without knocking and asked me if I wanted to join his team and work for fifty pounds per night giving men blow jobs for a fiver a piece. I hoped Phil hadn’t known it was a hooker’s B and B run by a pimp he had put me into when my Mother threw me out of my home. I refused the owner of the B and B and slept the night in tears until Phil came to take me out. Later I couldn’t make love to him again as he lay naked beside me in the grotty bed in the shabby hotel.
‘I understand perfectly,’ the good looking tabloid reporter said as he buttoned his crisp clean white cotton shirt and got up and left.
I was terrified and my life had been uprooted by the very root. I was chucked out of my home by my adoptive parents and told to not use their name anymore. I was told to leave my job. This is what the press mean by life ruining. There it was - my first introduction to Fleet Street. I was its road kill. How odd of me to want to join it. Yet, I wanted to run with these life destroying serpents of course I did. I didn't want to be ever fucked over by them again. I thought that the best way to protect myself was to join in with them.
With my life smeared and destroyed as the daughter of Ian Brady – even though it was horse shit and my already slim life choices spent. I watched and listened as Phil filed stories when we dated.
In Fleet Street, he taught me. ‘You find your victim, you observe, investigate, compile your proof and then you move in for the kill. A kill is when you bloody their life across the front pages, then they’re your road kill.’
I felt so much like the actor Jim Carey in the movie ‘The Truman Show.’ I was beginning to see that all around me other people had an unreal glow, like the characters in a shitty soap opera. I wanted to find the edge of this bullshit soap opera creation and unzip the canvas and escape outside into the real life.
I first saw News Corp from across the room as Phil and I sat sipping champagne in a book lined, lamp lit Fleet Street wine bar.
Both of us sat and watched these sinister looking newspaper
editors.
The News Corp editors stood in a group of five. They fascinated me. They were dressed in crombies. They gathered in a tight knit circle excluding all. They smoked expensive cigars, drank the best whisky and acted as if anyone outside their tight knit group was shit on their shiny shoes.
They exuded an air of evil like men in 70’s thrillers. They drew me. I longed to pick up my pen and write about these murderous looking creatures. They drew Phil too. He and I were to end up in their offices in less than five years. He was overall editor of The News of The World, before Andy Coulson and me as the newspaper’s favourite gum shoe.
But that night as lovers we sat drunk wine in Bootleggers amongst the champagne quaffing page three girls and admired - these were the men of News Corp– the men of The News of The World. , Fleet Street’s most powerful Sunday tabloid.
I sat with Phil and stared at this enigmatic circle of men. Phil, taught me all about them - the dark and dangerous men of News Corp.
I hadn’t been impressed by my boyfriend Phil Hall’ brains – he was like me, poorly educated and working class – if my sexy hot boyfriend could get onto Fleet St as a writer without an A-level to his name - then so could I.
I enrolled for another chance at a degree in psychology at the University of North London and I began to study hard.
Over the next few years - I submitted stories to Fleet St newspapers via Phil who was still a reporter on The Sunday People. Quite a few were printed and I filed copy to the copy takers in the way Phil had taught me.
I then went to live in New York to get some THe Thirty-Three experience as a reporter and I wrote stories like - Madonna Loses Her Mane and other tales like The Howard Beach trial. Phil sent me money for doing this when they were published in The Sunday People to my grotty apartment in Brooklyn. It was not much – a hundred pounds per story and I functioned as the Sunday People’s unofficial New York correspondent.
Phil and I degenerated into his paranoia that now I was coming along as a reporter that I was going to somehow return and tell the tale of his abuse of my entire life by calling me related to Brady.
He began to rekindle ex squeeze Tina Weaver, the reporter he was dating before he met me.
I returned from New York and I went to work for a private eye and ex lover I had known before Phil. John Boyall. My two dark worlds were beginning to unite. I had united them to destroy one of them.... if Anna was to be believed it was what I was doing under orders all along – I just didn’t know it. Monarchs only follow orders ….Marionettes don’t have lives. We are but slaves to an agenda.