Carstairs by David Leslie

Author:David Leslie [Leslie, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781785300196
Publisher: Black & White Publishing
Published: 2015-09-10T00:00:00+00:00

16

PLAYING TRUANT

It was a fine Wednesday morning in May 1976 as Robert Monan, aged fifteen, and his sister Margaret, two years younger, set off from their home in the town of Saltcoats, Ayrshire, for school. They never reached their classrooms. Tragically, nobody would ever know whose idea it was to play truant. Instead of heading for St Andrew’s Academy, the secondary school where footballer Roy Aitken had been a star pupil, the youngsters went off in the opposite direction.

Maybe they were heading for the seaside or wanted to watch the ferries arriving at nearby Ardrossan from the Isle of Arran. Perhaps they had secretly arranged to link up with some of their closest friends. Robert and Margaret were popular with their schoolmates, well liked but prone to taking a sly day off from time to time. Whatever they had planned, their day would soon develop from one of hopeful anticipation to a terrifying nightmare.

For Margaret in particular, the heaven of escaping lessons would turn into hell. A pretty girl, who already attracted admiring glances from some of the older boys at school, she lived at home with her mother, three other sisters and Robert. Perhaps it was because he was the only male sibling that she was so devoted to her brother, even protective of him despite being younger. The two were inseparable. When they did not return home from school for their tea their family became concerned but then youngsters often went to play and eat with friends without first telling their parents. However it was not Robert and Margaret who would eventually come through the door that night but police officers, nervous and gentle because of the terrible news they were about to impart.

That evening, two local brothers had spotted a couple in a field not far from the Monan home. At first, because they were lying so close together they thought they were about to intrude on a courting couple. Embarrassed and not sure what to do, the brothers went home to tell their father, who decided to investigate. What he found sent him running to call police. Robert and Margaret were dead. Someone had smashed their heads in. A senior detective, appalled by what he saw, described the attacks on the children as ‘brutal, violent, vicious and nonsensical’. Nobody disagreed.

It was not just the manner of the killing that terrified parents in Saltcoats and in neighbouring Ardrossan and Stevenston – the Three Towns – but the real horror came in knowing that the maniac who had snuffed out the lives of the teenage siblings was still at large and, for all anyone knew, likely to strike again. Police swarmed into the area, not just to look for the murderer but in an attempt to reassure Threetowners that they and in particular their children were being protected. Officers visited schools, quietly talking to children about the importance of going straight home when lessons ended, of always telling their parents where they were and, whenever possible, staying in groups.

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