Evil Relations by David Smith & Carol Ann Lee

Author:David Smith & Carol Ann Lee
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781780574806
Publisher: Mainstream

From David Smith’s memoir:

This is a seven-days-a-week circus, held in the Big Top of every police station in the Greater Manchester area. Ringmasters change on a daily basis: Talbot, Benfield, Nimmo, Mattin, Tyrrell, Mounsey, Carr, Cunningham. Different days in different stations with different detectives, all still asking the same fucking questions. Interview rooms filled with inter-force rivalry and testosterone-fuelled egos thicker than pipe smoke; it’s the old good-cop, bad-cop routine, each suit hunting his piece of glory.

These men keep me awake at night. It brings me out in a cold sweat to realise that not only are my sister-in-law and her boyfriend trying to pin their crimes on me, but also that men like Talbot suspect me of things I don’t even know about yet. At Hyde, I am a suspect. At Manchester, I am a murderer, no two ways about it. Stalybridge is the same. And no one makes their views clearer than Eric Cunningham, who, along with his anonymous smug-faced sidekick, interviews me for hours at a stretch as if he’s speaking to shit on his shoe. He tucks into tea and chocolate biscuits and raises an eyebrow when I ask for a glass of water. I don’t get anything to drink, or eat. In the end, his attitude makes me break my own rule: I refuse to answer any questions he puts to me. When I’m told that he’s coming to interview me again, I tell the desk sergeant, ‘I am not speaking to that man,’ and I mean it.

The rest of the suits, at Manchester especially, have got a dirty tricks campaign up and running. Maureen’s interviews with the police have been over for a while now, but she and Dad accompany me to every station. I feel sorry for the two of them, having to pass long hours in the canteen, smoking and drinking endless cups of tea. Lately, they’ve had a couple of visitors: Mattin and Tyrrell. The two suits stroll into the canteen and pitch up at Maureen and Dad’s table, confiding, ‘We’re getting close now, we’re almost there with your David. He’s almost cracked. We’re that close’ – finger and thumb held together – ‘to breaking him.’ Dad struggles to contain himself, and Maureen bursts into tears, not understanding that she’s being deliberately wound up.

When I join them at the end of the day, Maureen is still upset and shaking, and Dad wants to know what the hell is going on. I have to fight the urge to explode, and do my best to explain that Mattin and Tyrrell are playing a game. Often the two stooges nudge Dad and say, ‘Your David has told us this . . . What do you reckon? And you, Maureen? You’re his wife, you know him better than anyone. Is he capable of something as bad as that?’ Within minutes, Tyrrell and Mattin are back in my room and one of them, usually Tyrrell, shakes his head regretfully: ‘Poor Maureen . . . she’s sitting out there, all upset.

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