Helen didn’t need asking twice. She’d pulled off her coat, maroon scarf and green mittens and tossed them over the back of the two-seater settee. There was a perfectly good closet in the hallway with a hanger for coats and space for boots and bags, but she never used it. Then she’d taken the stairs two at a time, clutching her shopping bag, to try on her new clothes for me. As I heard her on the landing, I’d called out to her to wait: ‘Don’t come down, love. I’m doing chips and the smell will get on your new clothes. Stay there.’
I’d closed the kitchen door behind me, went to the bottom of the stairs and peered up at Helen on the landing – wearing her new outfit, dark trousers and a cream satiny blouse.
‘Ta da!’ she’d called, doing a little twirl.
I’d beamed. ‘Smashing, love – you look really smart. And it means I get my blouse back!’
Helen had taken to borrowing my best blouse for work. Cream and satiny, double-breasted, with long sleeves and a fitted cuff, it was quite ‘cocktaily’ with pleats down the front and a little gathering at the back.
‘It’s far too good for your office,’ I’d sighed, each time she swiped it.
Now she’d bought one quite similar my blouse would be safe.
I’ve never worn it to this day . . .
Next morning, she’d headed off – earlier than usual so she could leave early that afternoon – with a spring in her step. It’s funny the difference a new outfit and an upcoming date can make . . .
‘Is there a possibility she might have stayed with a friend?’ the second detective asked, breaking into my thoughts.
I shook my head. ‘She’d have rung to let me know,’ I repeated.
There was silence apart from the detective’s pen scratching in his notebook.
‘What happens now?’ I asked, as he snapped the book closed.
The DS looked up. ‘We’d like to borrow this photo,’ he said, gesturing to the portrait. ‘ . . . and put an appeal out on the news. We’ll also be going to Helen’s office and checking what she was wearing, and what time she left.’ I tried to hide my exasperation. I’ve already told you all that. But I can see now they have to check every single piece of information – they couldn’t take anything at face value.
John had to remind me afterwards that they also searched the house, garden and garage during that visit. I honestly don’t remember. But he’d heard them coming upstairs and shown them to Helen’s room where they looked inside her desk and under her mattress. With hindsight, they were searching for any clues that she was unhappy or planning to run away.
It was still dark as their car pulled off the drive. I continued to ring the station on the hour, every hour. They were used to me now: ‘Not yet, Mrs McCourt. We’ll be sure to let you know, Mrs McCourt.’
Upstairs, I heard Michael stirring. Stiff and cold from a night upright in the armchair, I walked to the kitchen to flick the kettle on. My haunted reflection stared back at me.
This is bad. This is very bad.
At 7.45am, I dialled Helen’s work number. It sounds ridiculous now but a tiny part of me was still praying for a miracle, that I’d hear her pick up in her usual ‘Good morning, Liverpool Royal Insurance,’ sing-song voice. That she’d taken leave of her senses, been locked in the toilets overnight – anything but this complete absence.
Instead, it was a voice I didn’t recognise: ‘Helen McCourt’s phone?’
It was her boss.
‘Oh hello, Mrs McCourt,’ he began cheerily. ‘She’s not here yet. I’ve been up half the night as the garden gate was banging in the wind, keeping me awake. Eventually, I decided to get up early and beat Helen into the office. She always takes great delight in getting in before me and then greeting me with a “What time do you call this, hmm?” tapping her watch,’ he laughed.
That sounded like our Helen.
There was a stunned silence when I explained that she hadn’t arrived home from work the evening before. That she’d been missing for more than fourteen hours; that the police were involved. ‘But she left early to get her train,’ he insisted. ‘I saw her.’ Again, he went through all the possible scenarios: Could she have gone for a drink? Stayed with a friend?
Colleagues arriving at work were stunned to find the police there – searching Helen’s desk and establishing her movements the day before. They were devastated. The woman who came in every Wednesday to restock the vending machine was so upset, on hearing the news, that she had to be sent home. Helen had chatted and laughed with everyone in the building, from the highest boss to the cleaners.
Back in my kitchen, pips signalled the 10am news. The lead item was a person killed in the winds the evening before. ‘And police are searching for a twenty-two-year-old office clerk who vanished on her way home from work yesterday evening. Helen McCourt, of—’ I rushed out of the kitchen with my hands over my ears. If I didn’t hear it, it wasn’t real. Then I thought of Mum – I couldn’t have her waking up to this.
‘John?’ I called. ‘You’d best get to Skelmersdale and pick up me mum.’
No matter how old you are, when things go wrong, when you’re scared, you revert to being a child again: you just need your mum. I needed Mum beside me.
For more than thirty years I have lived with the awful realisation that, in her final moments, when Helen needed me, I wasn’t there. Occasionally, and out of the blue, it still hits me like a sledgehammer to the chest. Did she call out for me? Did she cry? It causes a physical pain, a heartache, that takes my breath away.
One by one, my family began to arrive. Mum came first; worry was etched into her face and her skin was ashen as she hurried towards me, arms outstretched.
Next was Margaret, then Pat.
‘Marie, what’s going on?’ Pat cried. ‘The police are stopping all the cars coming into the village and searching boots.’
Helen’s dad was away working down south. The police contacted him and brought him home. My brothers, working all over the country, received word to come home urgently. One by one, they arrived, their faces pale with worry. ‘Is it true,’ they asked, stunned, ‘our Helen’s missing?’
More police officers turned up. A family liaison officer (FLO) introduced herself. ‘I’m here to support you,’ she said gently.
At one point, someone switched on the TV and I did a double take as my daughter’s beautiful face filled the screen. It was the lead item on the lunchtime news.
This can’t be real. This can’t be happening.
I closed my eyes and rocked forward and back in my chair. ‘Mother of God and all the saints in heaven,’ I whispered, ‘please, please, please, bring Helen home.’
More than three decades on, my prayers, my intercessions, my pleas, have never changed.
Chapter 4
Please come home, Helen
T
he kettle boiled continuously that day as family and friends of Helen’s arrived, wide-eyed with disbelief and desperate to help. Everyone racked their brains to think of something, anything, we might have overlooked. Each time we drew a blank.
Helen would have let us know.
An incident room was set up in the village hall. Police officers came and went in a blur, searching every inch of the house. Michael and John were taken into different rooms and questioned about their whereabouts the evening before. Frank and David, Helen’s previous boyfriend, were also questioned, but quickly eliminated from inquiries.
A search of Helen’s room revealed her diary and her passport, both filed neatly in her desk. (Helen’s room might have been untidy but she was meticulous about order when it came to paperwork.)
‘So, she hasn’t gone abroad,’ one officer said.
‘I know that!’ I wanted to scream. ‘Please find her.’
Having confirmed with her colleagues that Helen had switched off her computer, called her goodbyes and left her office, as planned, at 4pm that day – Tuesday, 9 February – the police painstakingly retraced her movements. By interviewing commuters and station s
taff, showing Helen’s photograph, they quickly established that she had caught the train from Moorfields to Lime Street station in Liverpool, before catching the 4.16pm connecting train for St Helens. Passengers remembered her sitting in the front carriage, engrossed in a book.
So, she’d reached St Helens – we knew that – two-thirds of the way of her journey home. Police then focused their attention on the last leg – her journey on the 362 bus from St Helens to Billinge.
More than three decades on, I’m impressed at how thorough the police were. At 5pm, they waited until all the passengers had boarded outside the Theatre Royal in St Helens – Helen’s usual bus stop – before asking for their co-operation in an investigation into a ‘missing person who was believed to have been on this bus twenty-four hours earlier’.
‘Anyone who did not take this exact bus last night should disembark and board the bus behind,’ one officer announced. ‘All those passengers who did take this bus last night, please move to the same seat you took then.’
Within minutes, they’d established exactly where Helen had sat – chatting to another passenger – all the way to Billinge.
‘Helen was a real chatter-box,’ one passenger had commented.
At 5.15pm she’d got off at her usual stop – at the junction of Main Street and Rainford Street, just outside Billinge Clinic. From there, she had just a 700-yard walk home. One female passenger remembered looking out of the window and seeing Helen struggling to walk into the wind as the bus went past – ‘She was clutching her coat and bags and her hair was blowing everywhere,’ she recalled.
Shielding her face from the driving wind, Helen had last been seen walking along the pavement, following the road as it veered left into Main Street. From there, she headed towards the few shops on the left and the pub and restaurant on the right – that stood between her and home.
And then – on this wild, windy, night – Helen had vanished into thin air.
* * *
The Liverpool Echo featured Helen on their early front page that evening – under the headline ‘Riddle of Office Girl Who Didn’t Arrive Home’. The story reported how extra police had been drafted in to scour woodland around the village. Police divers were on standby to start searching local lakes and rivers.
Later, two new police officers from Merseyside Police arrived at my home. They introduced themselves as Paul Acres, Senior Investigating Officer, and his boss, Detective Chief Superintendent Eddie Alldred – head of Merseyside CID. It was clear they were now taking this very seriously.
The questions continued. Did Helen have any money worries or relationship issues? Had she been planning any holidays? I shook my head. She and her friend, Hilary, had been planning a trip to Majorca and were looking at brochures, but that was as far as they’d got. There was no way she’d have gone on the spur of the moment. Besides, her passport was in her room!
DCS Alldred then shifted in his seat. ‘Mrs McCourt, did your daughter have any enemies?’ he asked. ‘Can you think of anyone who might have wanted to hurt her?’
I shook my head vigorously. ‘Absolutely not,’ I said. ‘Helen has never upset anyone. She’s popular with lots of friends.’ It never occurred to me to mention the incident in the pub on the Sunday night. Helen had been so dismissive of it – it had been just an accident, a misunderstanding.
He nodded. ‘Was anyone pestering her?’
I frowned. ‘Not that I know of,’ I said. I racked my brains. Then a thought occurred. I felt awful saying it, but . . .
‘Mrs McCourt?’ he prompted.
I hesitated. ‘The manager, Ken Booth, had started sending drinks over to Helen,’ I said. ‘It made her feel a bit uncomfortable.’
Helen had come home one night feeling a bit awkward about some banter that had gone on at the bar. Apparently, Ken had put his arm around her and joked about running away with her. He’d said to his wife, ‘You’d better be careful. This is my girlfriend and one day, we’re going to ride off into the sunset together.’ His wife had burst out laughing and said, ‘Will you do me a favour, Helen? Let me know when it’s happening and I’ll have everything packed – even his toothbrush!’
‘I didn’t like it, Mum,’ Helen had told me. ‘His wife’s lovely’ – everybody was lovely according to our Helen – ‘and I get on well with her. He’s started sending drinks over to me, too. I don’t want them, but I don’t want to be rude.’
Soon afterwards, John and I had gone to a charity quiz at the pub. Halfway through the night, Helen and her friend, Brenda, had pulled up chairs and joined us.
When Ken came over with ordered drinks for John and I, he also placed a drink in front of Helen: ‘Here you go, love,’ he’d said. ‘On the house.’
I placed my hand on his arm and lowered my voice. ‘Excuse me, Ken,’ I said. ‘Will you do me a favour and take that drink away? Helen doesn’t need it. And if she does want a drink, we’re here to buy it for her.’
Without a word, Ken picked up the drink and slipped away. Helen glanced across at me: ‘Thanks for that, Mum,’ she mouthed. As far as I know, the drinks and banter stopped.
‘But Ken’s harmless,’ I stressed now. ‘There’s no way he’d have hurt Helen.’
The officers listened and nodded. ‘Thank you, Mrs McCourt.’
Three decades on, I thank God that I mentioned that incident, because it was only by going to speak so quickly with the manager that police made such a major breakthrough in the investigation. Another few hours and my daughter’s killer would have successfully covered his tracks.
* * *
Helen’s disappearance had been leading the news bulletins all day. Reporters regularly knocked at the door, asking for comments and interviews. As the numbers congregating outside on the road swelled, John closed our blinds so they couldn’t see in.
Then my family liaison officer said BBC News had requested an interview with me the following morning.
I stared at her in horror. The BBC? The very thought of it terrified me. Then I paused. There must be a reason why families made appeals on television. ‘If I do it, will it help?’ I asked.
She nodded. ‘Definitely,’ she said.
I spent a few moments considering it. The prospect of appearing on camera had me running for the hills, but if it helped Helen . . .
‘OK, I’ll do it,’ I said.
After another sleepless night, I sat ramrod straight on our settee as cameras and microphones were erected around the room. My hands were clasped rigidly in my lap to stop them shaking and I could feel my knees trembling – I had never, ever done anything like this before.
Billy, my ex, had been asked to take part, too, and took a seat beside me. Just before the cameras started rolling, he reached across and took my hand. I pulled it away.
‘Don’t,’ I said through clenched teeth.
From the moment Helen had gone missing I hadn’t allowed anyone to touch me – not even my son, my mum, my beloved sisters or John. If they reached towards me, I stepped back. If there was no room behind me, I moved briskly to the side, out of range.
It was as if I was in a bubble and no one else could join me. I needed to keep my wits and sanity about me – stay in the moment, remember every minute detail to help the police with whatever it was they needed to know. Years later, people would ask incredulously: ‘How on earth did you know what your Helen was wearing?’ But I did – right down to her jewellery.
My memory had never been great, but right now it needed to be – and remain – pin-sharp. Terrified of the impact falling apart might have, I had to stay strong. I sat stiffly, clenching my jaw to stop the tears from spilling over. My eyes were so dry, they stung.
I had to behave like this just to survive, but looking back, it breaks my heart to think of the impact this had on my loved ones. I was an empty vessel. A husk. All I wanted, all I needed was to hear the words: ‘We’ve found Helen.’ Nothing else mattered.
‘Please,’ I begged beseechingly into the camera lens, ‘if anyone kno
ws what has happened to my daughter, let the police know. If she’s being held against her will, please let her go. We need her home.’
No sooner had the cameras packed up than another crew turned up. ‘Sorry,’ said my family liaison officer (FLO). ‘It’s Granada TV.’
I sat back down and nodded. ‘If it will help, I’ll do it.’
Outside, there was a growing throng of reporters. ‘Do you think you could come out and briefly talk to them?’ my FLO asked. ‘If you just answer a few questions then they’ll go away.’
Taking a deep breath, I went outside. They all thronged towards me. Some had notebooks and pens, others held up dictaphones. As camera bulbs popped, I felt like a rabbit trapped in headlights and had to fight back the urge to run back inside and slam the door. I had to do this for Helen. The questions came thick and fast. How was I coping? Did I think Helen was being held against her will? What would I say to her?
TV dramas often show journalists in a bad light – hounding families and ruthlessly chasing exclusives. However, I’ve found the vast majority are fair and trustworthy and simply trying to do their job well – as all of us are. Even then, in those early days, I knew it was important to work with them if I wanted to find Helen. Once I’d stammered a few words, they – and their editors – were happy. They went away and highlighted my plight.
Over the years, I have made a point of always trying to answer every phone call, grant each and every requested interview. Without the press continually writing stories I wouldn’t have been able to keep Helen’s story alive for three decades and have such success with my campaign to change the law in her name. Some have become lifelong friends.
I always urge families: ‘Work with journalists, they can help you. Yes, they don’t always get things right, but if that happens, contact them and let them know.’
Taking a deep breath, I now spoke to them. ‘If anyone has information, no matter how small, please call the police,’ I stammered, before breaking down. ‘We think Helen is being held – though heaven knows why. All we want is for her to be home, safe and well. I haven’t slept. The worry is agonising . . . ’
Justice for Helen Page 6
