Innocents. Jonathan Rose

what the injection was and she did not ask. She did not know what her son’s sexual problem was and she did not ask. She would never hear the details from Stefan but, in due course, would learn his intimate secrets along with millions of other people who would read of Stefan Kiszko in the papers.

      Where the absence of exercise, controlled diet and self-control had failed to put a ceiling on Kiszko’s ballooning weight, illness succeeded. He had lost two stones in weight whilst in hospital and his leg injury still required that he walk with a stick, but the person inside remained the same and Stefan was happy to be at home with his mother, helping wherever he could. Although he remained unable to return to work Stefan found that, as his recovery progressed, he was able to assist his mother more and more and, when the house move came about on 6 November Kiszko was to be found at the wheel of his Hillman Avenger, ferrying household items on a roof rack and in the boot. The ability to serve his mother contributed to Kiszko’s recovery: he was doing what he liked best. They were together again, as close as ever. He recalled that, during his time of illness at Crawford Street Charlotte had moved a bed settee into his bedroom so that she could be near him at night, to keep an eye on him and to be close at hand should he need her. The bond, broken only by physical separation, was now restored.

      At 23, he lived with his mother in a tight community, which regarded Stefan as being abnormally close to his mother. As he grew up into his teens he had become aware of the jibes about being tied to his mother’s apron strings, but he had shrugged them off with more than a measure of bewilderment. People’s curiosity about the relationship followed him from school to college to his first job at the tax office in Rochdale. ‘It’s a mother fixation,’ he had overheard one clerk telling another. He had never fully understood his supposed fixation with his mother or whether the comments were designed to be hurtful, salacious or were possibly some sort of compliment.

      Certainly he felt no shame for his love of and attachment to his mother, and the whispering campaign did not hurt him, for Stefan was never happier than in the company of his mother. He loved her, in the purest sense of that word. He respected her and admired her and paid heed to her advice, but she was also his friend. His best friend. Just about his only friend. He looked up to her, metaphorically at least, for at six feet two inches and weighing approximately seventeen stones, Stefan Kiszko towered in lumbering form over the bird-like lady who was his mother, Charlotte. Children had always found Stefan a figure of fun, an amiable giant with slightly popping eyes and turned-out feet. He waddled down the street like a bloated Charlie Chaplin. Even his name of Stefan marked him out as somebody ‘offbeat’. At the tax office he was the only man of his age who did not shave. He had quite a high-pitched voice and, almost inevitably, he did not have a girlfriend. His teeth were brownish because of his near-addiction to sweets, which he always carried in his baggy trouser pockets and which made him a soft target for the neighbourhood children.

      He was an object of amusement. His imposing physical shape contrasted starkly with his apparent meekness, high voice and closeness to his mother. The fear which his height and girth might otherwise have caused was completely dissipated by the knowledge that he was too shy to speak to girls, too interested in his mother to bother anyone else and, in particular, by reason of it being well-known that Stefan Kiszko had never in his life done harm to another living thing.

CHAPTER EIGHT

       … And All Things Nice

      Once Maxine Buckley and Michael Rigby had pointed out the man who they believed had scared them it was incumbent on their parents to take appropriate steps.

      The police were notified and, at 10.20 p.m. on 5 November 1975 WPC Shaw and PC Oliver went to 31 Crawford Street where they spoke with Kiszko regarding the complaint of indecent exposure on 4 October 1975. For the first time in his twenty-three years Stefan Kiszko was to have experience of police officers as inquisitors.

      This interview provides an interesting illustration of the power of Charlotte Kiszko compared to the weakness of her son. WPC Shaw’s statement, which was read to the jury at the later trial, says that she ‘spoke to Stefan Ivan Kiszko in the presence of his mother’: it is, for a moment, difficult to believe that she is speaking not of a 14-year-old boy, but of a 23-year-old clerk in the Inland Revenue.

      Not that he was, at first, able to say much. The officer explained the nature of their call, saying, ‘I have received a complaint from two girls that a man fitting your description indecently exposed himself to them on Saturday, 4 October 1975, at about 12.45 p.m. in Jackson Street, Rochdale.’ WPC Shaw administered the caution, telling Kiszko that he did not have to say anything unless he wished to do so, but that anything he did say would be taken down and might be given in evidence. But it was Charlotte Kiszko who spoke, saying, ‘You have no right to accuse my son of such things, he is a sick boy, he has only been out of hospital a couple of days, after being in for six weeks,’ and then, ‘My son wouldn’t do a thing like that and I don’t like what you’re saying about him.’ Charlotte was exaggerating; she may not have intended her words to be taken as the literal truth. They would recur later to torment Stefan. The officers then asked Kiszko if he would go into another room with them, but even then they went so far as to ask Charlotte if they could interview him on his own. She, perhaps not entirely unnaturally, asked why the police did not want her there, but she then accepted the explanation that he might be embarrassed to talk in front of her, and let the police and her son go without her into the living room.

      Once the police officers had taken Kiszko to a room away from his mother, they were able to direct his attention to 4 October, and to ask him where he had been that day. He replied that he had been with his mother until after lunch, and had later gone out with a friend to take some things to Kings Road, where they were moving. Boxes full of household items tended to confirm that the Kiszkos were indeed moving house. He said that he had been in hospital for six weeks, from 6 August 1975, and had not, therefore, been in hospital on 4 October. He calmly explained that he had been at home with his mother on 4 October, until 3 p.m., and was not, therefore, in the vicinity of Jackson Street at about 12.45 p.m. But when the officers tried gently to give him the opportunity to confess to indecent exposure, with PC Oliver saying, ‘We appreciate that this type of offence is very embarrassing but we understand,’¹ Kiszko became highly agitated and jumped from his seat with the words, ‘I am a civil servant, this is ridiculous, I want my mother here,’ and Charlotte Kiszko, who had been waiting in the hall, doubtless listening in to the conversation, entered to defend her son. Kiszko turned to his mother and said, ‘They have just accused me of exposing myself to some girls,’ to which Charlotte retorted, ‘That’s stupid. He never would do a thing like that.’

      Kiszko went on to tell the officers that he did own a car, and showed them his bronze Hillman Avenger, registration number VDK 157 K which was parked in the garage. He explained, however, that he had not driven that or any other car for several weeks, because of his bad leg. He denied owning a parka coat or jacket, but when the police searched the house and found a blue anorak with a hood, and said to him that that coat was just like a parka,² Kiszko replied, ‘Yes, I suppose it is.’

      The coat was not taken, and the officers, having heard him once more deny indecent exposure, left the house with a warning that they would be making further enquiries. These particular officers were to make no further enquiries in this matter. Instead, they notified the relevant police officers who were investigating the murder of Lesley Molseed, and the reports of Shaw and Oliver joined the forest of paperwork in the incident room, where they would lie, untouched, for several weeks.

      Despite the events of late October and early November in Rochdale, the investigation proper (as it was at that time) remained very much on the track laid down by Holland, although by the middle of December it was becoming clear to Dibb and Holland that the flow of information had all but dried up, and that the enquiries in the Rochdale area were nearing completion. It was time for a further review of the entire investigation.

      Three hundred and seventy-nine items, including knives, vehicles and clothing had been taken from the crime scene, the body of the child and from suspects, and had been submitted to Ronald