‘Now, we all know there’s no smoke without fire, but the police can’t think like that, not when they don’t know for sure. They did their best to get to the bottom of it, but with the best will in the world, there wasn’t much they could do. No fingerprints on the notes at all, not one. And nobody to see a thing, out there in the middle of nowhere. Makes this place look like Piccadilly Circus.’
‘So what happened?’
‘Well, that’s just it. All I know is, she got her windows mended, and she never bothered the police again. She’d never talked to anyone round here much, and you can imagine how it was after that. Even if she’d been the friendly sort, there’s plenty wouldn’t have given her the time of day. Nobody heard another peep out of her. Next thing anyone knows, her house is on the market. And she’s gone not six weeks later.’
‘So whoever they were, they didn’t stop.’ I spoke slowly, without thinking. ‘They threatened her again, and she didn’t trust the police to protect her.’
‘Knew she didn’t have a leg to stand on, more like.’ Maureen’s voice was at once cosy and utterly judgemental. ‘Wouldn’t waste your sympathy on the likes of her. Someone found out who she was and what she did, and good riddance. I remember reading about it in the papers when I was first married, and a horrible story it was as well. I don’t care what these social workers say. There’s no two ways about it—evil people don’t change their ways.’
Sudden suspicion sparked in my mind. ‘How long ago did all this happen?’
‘Don’t you know?’ For the first time in the conversation, Maureen looked ill-at-ease. ‘Oh, I’m sorry, love. I thought you must.’
‘Know what?’
‘It was right before you moved in,’ she said gently. ‘You bought her house, you know. You bought Rebecca Fisher’s house.’
CHAPTER SIX
AS I LEFT THE SHOP and started walking, I was barely conscious of my surroundings. I could have passed anything or anyone, and wouldn’t even have registered their presence. Cold, bright shock was beginning to fade around something altogether more unsettling; the implications of what Maureen had told me started to unwind in my thoughts.
I remembered the way I’d felt when I’d overheard the teenage girl and her boyfriend discussing the same subject—how superficially interested, how essentially indifferent. Now, my feelings had changed out of all recognition. This new revelation felt as vertiginous as a camera zooming down hundreds of feet in a split-second, from an aerial overview of a village to a close-up shot of number four Ploughman’s Lane. The reassurance of distance had been snatched abruptly away. Rebecca Fisher had lived here, after all. And she’d lived in our house.
My imagination showed me a sheaf of ancient news cuttings—yellowed pages faded almost to the point of illegibility. Only some of the horror announced itself clearly, random words—MURDER, EVIL, MONSTER—driving home something that was almost too huge to comprehend. The hand that had wielded that knife more than thirty years ago opening the cutlery drawer in our kitchen. Turning on the taps in the bathroom. Reaching into the built-in wardrobe that now contained my clothes and Carl’s, as its owner thought about her past, remembered those notorious events…
Fresh shock, as I realised we’d met her. That March, she’d shown us round the house herself. She’d been somewhere in her mid to late forties. She’d called herself Miss Hughes.
It was as if I’d carelessly tossed those memories into some internal dustbin, knowing I’d never need them again. I found myself struggling to retrieve them, wishing I’d preserved them with greater care. Rediscovering a woman who’d talked a little too quickly and nervously for a listener’s comfort, whose every word and gesture had reflected what the estate agent had told us—she was keen to sell the house, was offering a heavily reduced price in exchange for a quick sale. A vague ghost image of her face came back to me, and I found myself juxtaposing it with another; a face spelt out in grainy black-and-white newsprint dots, serene, angelic, notorious.
She hadn’t worn well over thirty-three years; the fair hair turned dry and rough-looking, the pale eyes bloodshot. The slight build had grown scrawny with age. But it had been Rebecca Fisher. There was no doubt at all.
As the white house appeared in the distance, my attention turned abruptly inside out—there was nothing in the world but the scene ahead. That old house and its low-ceilinged rooms that had the faint tarnish of history, of lives and events that had taken place there long ago. And with cold crawling certainty, I understood there’d been more to that feeling than I’d realised—a ten-year-old killer had grown up and come to live there, had been driven out in fear of her life.
The front door creaked slowly shut behind me. The hallway felt even chillier than usual. As always, there were too many shadows. They seemed more sinister, reminding me who else had seen them, who would have let herself in just as I’d done, who might have…
Stop it, I told myself sharply, and went into the kitchen to put the kettle on. But my thoughts kept turning back to a case I’d read about in passing, that I’d never dreamed I’d come to associate with my own life.
It had been her best friend, I remembered, that she’d stabbed to death all those years ago. What had the girl’s name been? Emma? Elaine? Something along those lines. I found it inexplicably appalling to realise I hadn’t even paid much attention at the time—it had just been an article about an old crime used to fill up space on a slow news day, like a TV repeat of an ancient sitcom. Anything could have distracted me from reading it, then. If a phone call had come for me halfway through, I’d have put it to one side and forgotten it existed.
But she lived here, I thought. I turned away from the kettle as it boiled, moved restlessly into the big, bare-walled living room. The oak beams that ran the full length of its ceiling made everything we’d brought with us from Reading look soulless, out of place. Our furniture had been bought to complement altogether smaller rooms, where everything encouraged newness and modernity and space. For the first time, I noticed how wrong it looked in this context, like a hastily-set-up camp in an empty house, as if we didn’t belong here and could be driven out in the middle of the night, carrying our belongings in a few bulky bags.
A haunted feeling that I’d have laughed at mere hours ago. Rebecca Fisher’s name kept repeating in the back of my mind, where a dark red light had snapped on above her image. And I realised how little I really knew about the previous owner of this place, the nervous householder who’d watched us a little too closely as she’d followed us round. The murderess.
Upstairs, the spare room faced onto the back garden as the bathroom did, and shared its odd breath of dank-edged age. It was easily the least prepossessing room in the house, and its few items of furniture had been placed rather than arranged—the narrow single bed, the rickety table beside it. Built-in cupboards provided extra storage space we didn’t need. By the window, a self-assembly workstation housed the computer I’d written my first novel on and now used for nothing but emailing Petra, along with a printer, and an elderly fax machine of Carl’s that he hadn’t touched in over a year.
The computer took some time to start up, as ever. I sat through its endless, bewildering warm-up processes as patiently and uncomprehendingly as a savage watching a witch-doctor’s incantations. When it was up and running, I went straight into Google Advanced Search. Under Exact Phrase, I typed in Rebecca Fisher. I entered, and waited.
www.eastlancashireonline.co.uk
TEASFORD—HOME OF THE UNEXPECTED BY WILLIAM HODGE
If you were to mention the East Lancashire town of Teasford to the average person in the UK, he or she would probably link it at once with a single horrific event—that, of course, being the notorious Rebecca Fisher case of 1969. It is sad that, even today, its unwelcoming public image remains unchanged. Over the course of the last thirty-three years, Teasford has become a very different place, and most people have completely the wrong idea about it.
It is true that, at the time it was most in
famous, Teasford was very much the bleak town that the national newspapers described. The mining industry had been its main source of employment and prosperity throughout the first half of the twentieth century. However, this had been in a steady state of decline for some time, and Teasford’s last remaining pit had closed in 1967. Since then, unemployment and deprivation in the area had increased dramatically. By 1969, the town’s only major employer was the textiles factory owned by Dennis Fisher, who was of course Rebecca’s adoptive father. In spite of the way newspapers have described it, it was not at all coincidental or surprising that Eleanor Corbett’s own mother had worked here since 1965. As a widow with seven daughters to feed, Eileen Corbett would have had little choice.
Increasing poverty in Teasford naturally led to an influx of petty crime, most notably burglaries and prostitution, but it was far from the hostile environment people imagine. In character, it was surprisingly friendly and neighbourly, summarising all the good and bad points traditionally associated with the region. Families were large and close-knit, and the safety of young children and elderly people seemed guaranteed. While financial deprivation was immense, poor families had nothing to fear from their neighbours, and very few of these people would ever lock their doors in the daytime. This side of the town’s character could be seen most clearly in the large network of post-war terraces adjoining the railway station, which remain to this very day (those familiar with the Rebecca Fisher case may well remember that Eleanor Corbett had grown up in this area herself).
Today, however, any visitor to Teasford would see at once how dramatically it has changed. The textiles factory has been closed for more than twenty years, and a host of new employers have sprung up to take its place; an industrial park on its outskirts is home to several large call centres and an electrical goods manufacturer. Further regeneration can be seen in the modern housing estates which have sprung up around the town over the last twenty years. In 2003, far from being an unemployed miner, the average Teasford citizen is likely to work in a bank or an office, to live in a large and pleasant home and to shop in the town centre’s branch of Sainsbury’s. Grimy pubs have been replaced by the likes of the Rat and Parrot, and when you walk around the town, you are struck by how dramatically it has escaped from its deprived legacy.
It is undeniable that the tragic events of 1969 could have taken place just as easily anywhere else in Britain. With that in mind, it is deeply regrettable that they continue to cast such a long shadow in people’s memories. Sadly, however, Rebecca Fisher remains Teasford’s most famous daughter, and it is likely that her memory will alter perceptions of this town for some considerable time to come.
www.guardianonline.com
WITHOUT PREJUDICE
How a landmark ruling from 1969 may have many things to teach us about the nature of rehabilitation
ISABEL MANSFIELD
Sunday 20 April 2002
The phrase ‘secret identity’ has the unmistakable feel of John Grisham territory; one is instantly reminded of Mafia informants in the United States, treacherous spear-carriers exchanging information for a lifetime of guaranteed safety. With that in mind, it would appear a highly dubious and even immoral practice, which should surely be frowned on in any right-thinking society. All the more surprising, then, that it should have occurred in this very country more than twenty years ago, and that—much to the barely-veiled disappointment of the tabloid press—its outcome has been entirely successful.
When the notorious Rebecca Fisher case of 1969 was on every front page and news bulletin, the rise of public hatred for its central figure was startling and virtually unprecedented. It undoubtedly had as much to do with Fisher’s appearance and status as with her age and the reality of her crime; the hackneyed phrase pure evil becomes far easier to use when neither financial nor social deprivation can be cited as mitigating factors. Nonetheless, in the years following her incarceration, this unsettling mood of mob fury towards her showed little, if any, sign of abating. It was to guarantee Fisher’s safety following her eventual release that Edward Clarke, then Home Secretary, passed the landmark ruling ensuring her lifelong anonymity, stating that the issues involved hinged ‘on almost unique circumstances’.
Inevitably, the details remain heavily shadowed to this day, and the sheer intricacy of the work involved again turns the mind to Hollywood thrillers; documents from birth certificates to National Insurance numbers have been altered, and those involved in the process legally bound to the utmost secrecy. The facts, however, remain simple enough for any child to grasp. Subject, of course, to her continuing good behaviour—a second violent offence would render the ruling instantly null and void—Rebecca Fisher was released and is now living as a completely different person.
Would justice have been better served if this notorious young woman had been released, under her own name, into a climate of violent hostility? To any sensible human being, the question answers itself at once. This is why I believe that Clarke’s landmark ruling lends fresh depth and relevance to the concept of rehabilitation and, on a more emotive level, that of redemption. As Fisher’s story demonstrates, there exists a realistic and viable alternative to the mob’s unspoken mantra of ‘Give a dog a bad name, and lynch him’.
www.truecrimebypost.com
A MIND TO MURDER, Linda Piercy. Shocking true-life tales of some of Britain’s most unexpected killers, including Doctor Crippen, Dennis Nielsen and Rebecca Fisher. Buy online here
CHAPTER SEVEN
CARL GOT HOME from work at about seven thirty. ‘Hi, Annie,’ he called from the hallway. ‘Smells good. What’s cooking?’
‘Poached salmon fillets in milk. I’m doing them with asparagus.’ I stepped out of the kitchen, smiling. ‘I thought we should have something a bit special tonight. Looks like a celebration’s in order.’
He looked at me, frowning slightly—a formal, earnest-eyed figure, still in his work suit and work mode. ‘How come?’
‘Something wonderful’s happened. I can’t quite believe it myself.’ I felt giddy, as I had done all afternoon, oddly weightless and a little unreal, as if I’d just stepped off the world’s biggest, fastest fairground ride. ‘I’m inspired again. I’ve got an idea for my second novel.’
A few seconds’ dubious silence. I could see he was trying his hardest to look pleased for me, but not really understanding the importance of my news at all; privately bemused. ‘Oh, I know you don’t get it, but it’s fantastic—I can’t describe how good it feels to be inspired again when I’d started thinking I never would be. And it’s so ironic how it all started—it’s a terrible story, I should be horrified by it—I feel like a vulture, I’m quite ashamed of myself—’
The words came out with breathless, feverish, almost hysterical hilarity; I heard that note in my own voice as I saw it reflected in his face, his look of carefully veiled caution. ‘Hey, slow down, slow down,’ he said. ‘What story are you talking about?’
‘Well…’ Everything about my body language was jittery, electric. I sat down, knowing it was the only way I could stay still, and made a huge effort to speak more slowly, more calmly. ‘I went to Abbots Newton Stores again. Got talking to the woman who works there. Carl, Rebecca Fisher did live here. She was the woman who showed us round this house.’
His expression had become wary, doubt gathering in his eyes. I hated to see it there, and ploughed on with a zealot’s determination. ‘It’s true—she knew all about it, there’s no question she knew what she was talking about. She seemed like the kind of village gossip who knows everything about everyone. When Rebecca Fisher lived here, someone found out who she was and started trying to drive her out—she got anonymous letters and all her windows were broken. That’s why she had to leave as soon as she could; that’s why this house was such a bargain.’
I watched him, and was overwhelmingly relieved to see him begin to believe me. ‘How did she know all about this?’ he asked, but it was just a question now, carrying no undertow of suspicion. ‘T
he woman in the shop?’
‘Her son-in-law’s with Wareham police. Rebecca Fisher called them out when she saw what had happened to her windows. Apparently, there was nothing they could do. She put this house on the market soon after. I thought she seemed jumpy when she first showed us round here, didn’t you?’
‘Maybe a bit on the nervous side. But there’s nothing so unusual about that.’ He spoke absently, and I sensed ninety-nine percent of his mind focused elsewhere. ‘It doesn’t bother me if she used to live here, and if all that really happened—you know me, I’m not that imaginative. I’d have thought it would scare the hell out of you, though. What’s all this about a new inspiration?’
‘Well, when I got home from the shop, I was a bit freaked out. I thought I’d like to find out a bit more about the original case, get some idea of what she’d really been like. I looked her up on Google, did some surfing. Most of it was pretty predictable, just rehashing what I knew already. But a couple of the articles really got me thinking. About where she grew up, and that whole secret identity thing. They just…sparked something off in my imagination. It’s terrible, I know, but I couldn’t help realising it would make an incredible basis for a thriller.’
Even now, guilt was fighting a valiant but doomed battle against elation. In the brief silence that followed, I thought I could see condemnation in his eyes, and spoke defensively. ‘It won’t be exploitative, it’ll be a serious book. A good story, but serious. And it won’t be based all that closely on the real case. Just loosely. Inspired by.’
While I was still trying to sound calm and rational, I could feel my voice picking up speed. ‘I couldn’t think of anything else all afternoon. In the end, I just had to get some notes down. Okay. My idea. A woman’s released from prison with a whole new identity, settles down in the middle of nowhere; everyone just takes it on trust she’s who she says she is. Gets a job, a husband—even he doesn’t know a thing, and she’d never dreamed of telling him because she loves him too much, is scared he’d be appalled and leave her. Well, time passes and she’s got a whole new life; she’s a happy fifty-year-old woman with a family of her own. Then someone arrives in the village. Someone who knew her in prison. They start blackmailing her.’ Ahead of that, there was nothing in my mind but blank white space, a cursor blinking at the top of an empty screen. I watched Carl’s face closely. ‘That’s all I know so far. What do you think?’
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