Where There is Evil Read Free Page B

passengers had come forward. James Inglis had been waiting for the bus and knew Moira: she had been playing in the snow at the bus stop when the bus arrived, he
said, but he was less sure that she had boarded it.
    One other person reported seeing a child loitering at a bus stop in Whifflet around teatime. She seemed to be waiting for someone, they said, scuffing the icy pavement with her feet to keep
warm. Their description of her shoes was accurate, but they had not noticed who had picked her up. The buses had stopped because of the weather, but the child appeared to have had an arrangement
with someone. She had simply melted away into the night.
    Instead of reconstructing the five-minute bus journey to the Whitelaw Fountain in the town centre and then on through Whifflet to the town centre, though, police concentrated their efforts on
issuing descriptions of Moira’s clothing to all policemen in Greenock, where a search was organized. All ships’ crews anchored in port were interviewed to see if they recollected a girl
answering Moira’s description. None did. Back at Coatbridge, police discounted the bus sightings, and visited schools to question pupils. This met with little success.
    When detectives came to my primary school their talk was directed at older children in Primary 4–7. Gartsherrie Academy had a large central hall, and, a Primary 3 child on an errand, my
curiosity got the better of me. Clasping the jug I’d been given to fetch water from the cloakroom for painting, I listened. I watched as older pupils shook their heads. Many knew her or, like
myself, knew of her, although Moira had been at Coatdyke Primary in Muiryhall Street. I felt a flash of sympathy go through me when I thought of Marjorie, who was my own age. How awful never to see
your big sister again.
    Inexplicably the 1957 investigation team failed to interview Moira’s best friend, who had spent part of that final day with her. That morning, Moira had visited the Limb Centre in
Motherwell with her father. They had returned after 11 a.m. and Moira had popped round to see Elizabeth Taylor with whom she spent most Saturdays at the Regal or Odeon matinées. Elizabeth
Taylor Nimmo, now a grandmother, can recall the events of that day vividly. Moira had come round to her house in Dunbeth Avenue, and asked her to come out to play despite the dark sky, which
promised bad weather, and an icy wind. Unusually for them, they elected to skip to keep warm and tied one end of a clothes rope to a lamp post, taking turns to twirl it while the other skipped.
    Elizabeth Nimmo said, ‘The snow started to come on not long after we started the skipping. Funnily enough the morning had been fine, very crisp and bright with no hint of the blizzard
coming. It turned into a really terrible day, in fact I’d never seen snow like it. Moira said as soon as she turned up that she would have to go for some messages . . . Then my mother noticed
the weather and shouted to me from the window to come in, it was too cold to play. Moira asked if I wanted to go with her, but I wasn’t allowed, and that was that. I went into the house and
watched some swimming which was on television, which we had then. The last I saw of Moira, she was turning the corner towards her home, obviously popping into her mum before she left for her
gran’s house.’ Elizabeth added, with obvious sorrow, ‘Who knows what might have happened if I’d gone with her? Could I have saved her or would the two of us have vanished?
It’s a question that can never be answered.’
    She can still remember how the news was broken to her, and her shock, on the morning after Moira vanished without trace. Usually on Sunday mornings she and Moira went to Band of Hope meetings
but that day her father, deeply perturbed, woke her and said, ‘Moira didn’t come home last night.’
    More than thirty years later Elizabeth had her first opportunity to make a formal statement to the police about her