One of Your Own Read Free Page A

at home, and again the little girl nodded, climbing into the front passenger seat. They piled the boxes around Lesley to hide her from view, then drove away from the hectic noise and light of the fair to the quiet, dark streets of Hattersley.
    After saying goodbye to the other children, eight-year-old Tommy rushed up the stairs at Charnley Walk and burst through the door of the flat, expecting to find Lesley already there. His mother stared at him, aghast, as he stuttered out his sister’s decision to return to the fairground alone. Ann sent Tommy back down to Mrs Clarke’s flat to see if Lesley was there; when he returned white-faced with shock, she and Alan threw on their coats and dashed out with instructions for Tommy and Terry to stay with four-year-old Brett. They ran down Iron Street, Christmas lights twinkling in every window they passed, and headed onto the recreation ground, where the Ferris wheel revolved endlessly on the skyline. One of Lesley’s favourite songs, ‘Let’s Dance’, belted out across the heads of the shrieking, excited crowds. But Lesley – like Pauline, John and Keith before her – had vanished.
    Inside the house at Wardle Brook Avenue, Myra told Lesley to take the boxes upstairs. Ian was already in the bedroom; Myra intended to follow, but the dogs dashed into the hall. She later maintained that she had wanted to shut the dogs in the kitchen, and, as she ushered them out, closing the kitchen door on their whines, she heard Lesley screaming.
    In the account Myra gave over 20 years later to Peter Topping of Lesley’s final hours, she stated that the little girl was screaming because Ian was trying to undress her. She climbed the stairs and in the bleakly furnished room, where a window apparently hung open to let in the bitter winter air, she saw Lesley crying as Ian attempted to remove her coat. ‘I know I should have tried to protect the child and comfort her, but I didn’t,’ Myra told Topping. ‘I was cruel, I was brusque and I told her to shut up because I was frightened people would hear. I just panicked.’ 2 She claimed not to know that Ian had set up the tape recorder she had bought him that Christmas below the divan; a sheet hung down from the bed, hiding the machine. She also told Topping that the tape was recording before Ian started photographing Lesley in the nude, which would appear to be true, borne out by Lesley’s own muffled words on the tape.
    The sequence of events is partially verified by the tape recording: it begins with the sound of Ian moving about the room, pushing the dogs out and checking that the microphone works, then Myra’s voice is heard as she brings Lesley into the room – these are the two sets of footsteps heard on the recording, before a handkerchief was forced into Lesley’s mouth, to gag her.
    Beneath the divan, the spools of brown tape revolved inexorably. 3
    Ian: ‘This is track four. Get out of the fucking road. Get in the fucking basket.’
    Sound of door banging, crackling, heavy footsteps, recording noises, blowing sounds in microphone, more footsteps. Myra’s voice, quiet, indecipherable. Light footsteps walking across the room, whispered conversation and, at the same time, footsteps. Distant speech containing the word ‘upstairs’, then two sets of footsteps .
    Lesley: [screaming] ‘Don’t. Mum. Ah.’
    Myra: ‘Shut up.’
    Lesley: ‘Please God, help me, please, oh.’
    Myra: ‘Come on.’
    Whispering and footsteps .
    Myra: ‘Shut up.’
    Lesley: ‘Oh please, please. Oh. [faintly] Help, oh. I can’t go on, you’ve got hold of my neck. Oh. [screaming] Help.’
    A gurgling noise. Heavy breathing, sounds of distress, laboured breathing .
    Myra: ‘Ssh. Ssh. Shut up, shut up.’
    Screams and gurgles. Lesley crying .
    Myra: [whispering] ‘Keep [unintelligible]. You will be right. Sit down and be quiet. [whispers]’
    Ian: ‘Go on.’
    Whispers. Footsteps on the stairs, then entering the room .
    Lesley crying, muffled .
    Ian: